Who cares what some bureaucrat wrote in some city policy? If what Glik, and people like him, were doing was not, in fact, against the law; then the cops were 100% out of line in even speaking to him, much less arresting him. And they should be facing catastrophic civil and even criminal penalties of their own.
How the heck does anyone figure that policy overrides the law?
It doesn't override the law, which is why Glik won. But it does make it hard for the police department to punish them. How does this sound: "Yes, we know we told you to do this, but it was illegal and so now we are going to punish you?"
But to argue that an arrest that ended up being illegal but was made in good faith is the same as the act of kidnapping a child is akin to MPAA saying that copyright infringement is the same as armed bank robbery. It's insanity.
For what its worth, the city settled after a court ruled that the officers did not act in good faith. The reasoning went something like this: They arrested him for violating a law against the making of secret recordings. But they had admitted to the court that the reason they knew he was making a recording was because he was holding up a recording device for all to see, so it obviously wasn't secret.
The city tried to argue that the legal questions involved were too subtle to be decided in the field and so the officers were right to arrest him and let a judge sort it out, but the court rejected that argument too ruling that the matter was clear cut.
It seems odd that the testimony was 'could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today'. If we are going to have a patent system it seems unreasonable that the argument that the technology in the patent in question is too critical to the way society operates and is so central should be a reasonable argument for invalidating the patent claim.
I'm not intending to make any claim about this particular patent. I only wish to say that that seems like a stupid reason to invalidate a patent based on the patent framework that we seem to have.
It is not a decisive legal argument, but it is not without weight. In this case, the patent holder was claiming to have a right to a share of the profits from a huge range of Internet technologies. At the same time, the claimed invention was basically just some minor tweaking of the way the parts of an information browser were integrated. This is a strong indication that the patent is defective (too broad).
Interestingly the plaintif tried to use the argument you mention. It didn't work because they hadn't actually invent this technology, they just used some of it and slapped a patent on it. So no, the fact that the technology to which a a patent troll lays claim does not in and of itself strengthen his case.
This does not refute my point. Yes, you _can_ block e-mail without blocking web traffic. No, it wasn't a spam bot. But network administrators do not generally waste a lot of time investigating the sources of things that look like spam. They just drop in a total block on the IP address and forget about it.
If a network administrator doesn't know (or care) about the the difference between inbound port 25 traffic and outbound port 80 traffic he doesn't belong in that job!
You don't fix things with a mallet... you'll break things like that, usually more than you intended or expected.
Perhaps, but beside the point. I have seen system administrators do this. That is why I consider the assumption that most of the posters make that the university administration deliberately blocked the website to be dubious at best. This is a case of "never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence."
"The lame excuse offered by the university was that a student had created a petition and was using the change.org site to "spam" other ASU accounts; of course, even if that had been the real reason, it would have easily been possible for ASU to block mail from the change.org servers, without blocking all students from accessing the website."
The so called spam was email sent to students from a petition not a spam bot. As the author indicated you can block it via email you don't have to block the actual site.
This does not refute my point. Yes, you _can_ block e-mail without blocking web traffic. No, it wasn't a spam bot. But network administrators do not generally waste a lot of time investigating the sources of things that look like spam. They just drop in a total block on the IP address and forget about it.
The article was written by someone who does not know this. He seems to be surprised that outbound traffic was blocked. Again, this is common practice. He also seems to be surprised that the university spokesman could not provide another example of a website that they had blocked. This is probably because they do not deliberately block websites.
The university spokesman is not making lame excuses. He is saying, "look, we were spammed and we blocked it. That is what we do in such cases."
Since we are second guessing the system adminstrator's decision and suggesting more limited blocks that he could have put in place, why not second-guess the decision of Change.org to send e-mail from their web server. If they stopped doing that, it is less likely that it would get blocked.
Universities should not be censoring arbitrary websites on the internet.
Chances are ten to one that this isn't censorship at all. I work in a university IT department. We have constant problems with spam, worms, password guessers. We block IP addresses all the time. Generally these are the addresses of botnet members. Since nobody wants to connect to spam bots anyway, nobody ever complains about these blocks. I suspect that a system administrator in this case saw the flow of spam, mistook change.org's e-mail server for a spam bot, and just blocked the IP address.
I believe this is a common practice. That being so, it is unlikely that the person who blocked the address even knew about the Change.org website. And who consults the university administration before blocking a spammer?
Civil disobedience means that if they decide to sue you that you plead guilty to the crime, take the sentence they give you, and forego appeals..
Civil disobedience means to break the law as a way to draw attention to its injustice. Appealing a subsequent conviction is a legitimate continuation of that protest. Of course, the appeal must attack the law itself, not deny the fact of that the law was broken.
Using the principle famously exemplified by Gandhi and Rosa Parks is admirable, as long as you're willing to go to the lengths that they're willing to go in order to do it. If that's genuinely your goal, and you're okay with it, then I applaud you and support you. However, if you're going at this with even the slightest intent to settle out of court, plead 'not guilty', or appeal a verdict, then you're not following a cause, you're justifying copyright infringement.
According to the Wikipedia article on her, Rosa Parks appealed her conviction.
Re:Another politician with half a brain?
on
EU ACTA Chief Resigns
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Exactly.
This "ACTA Chief" sounds like a coward If he is displeased with the process, and he's the one in charge, then he should be using his position to make the ACTA a formal treaty to be passed b y the People's representatives in Parliament. To scurry away shows an supreme lack of fortitude and irresponsibility.
He is "using his position", just not in the way that you expect. Giving up a well-paying job because you believe that what your superiors require you to do is unethical is a dramatic way to draw attention to the problem. The alternative, to take their money while trying to undermine their goals is problematic at best. He would have had to mute his criticism and would probably soon have had to resign in disgrace.
This way is much better. First of all, it makes a news story. Second, he can now speak frankly about the ACTA and his opinion will be considered important because he is "the former ACTA chief who resigned in protest".
If there's incriminating evidence, surely this is a perfect example on why the person can't decrypt as it WOULD self incriminate them!
Revealing the password could incriminate him, but is it testimony? I think that is the key question. The fact that the person is required to reveal a piece of information makes it feel like testimony, but it might not be. That which the person is required to reveal does not in and of itself incriminate. The (pre-existing) contents of the 'box' which it opens may.
This distinction is important. Remember that the purpose of the 5th amendment protection against self incrimination is not to set the guilty free but the make it harder to presure the innocent into making false confessions. A beating with a rubber hose may convince an innocent man to invent incriminating evidence against himself. It could also convince him to reveal his encryption keys, but it cannot deposite false evidence inside the encrypted volume.
I am not saying that people should be forced to reveal their encryption keys, but I believe the self incrimination argument is weak.
In this case, they did ask that something they have the copyright to be taken down.
Actually, Universal only claims to have copyright to the first video. This seems unlikely since the video is a criticism of Universal. Now they have taken down a video that is a news report on their disputed claim to the first video. Use of short clips to illustrate a news report is such a classic case of fair use that no rights holder can claim to be unaware that the use is lawful. A takedown request is either grossly incompetent or malicious.
What Megaupload has done here is brilliant. They have baited Universal into conducting a dramatic live demonstration of the dangers of giving copyright holder unilateral takedown powers.
Such metrisc also disincentivize people taking proactive steps to reduce the number of incoming tickets (i.e. making the system/environment more robust or your users more educated), and disincentivizes managers for so doing by reducing the number of people needed to service incoming tickets (thus reducing the size of the empire and the pay grade of the manager).
I've seen both "disincentives" in action. It ain't pretty.
I strongly suspect you are right. Years ago we used file and print server software from a large corporation. The print server function as delivered was completely inoperative. Customers would find it didn't work, call the help line and receive complicated instructions for hacking it to get it to work.
Some years after we started using it I went to a conference for users of this software. A tier three support person was at my dinner table. He said that they had run a report on the help line ticket database and found that 3/4 of the tickets were for printing problems. I said, "Of course they were. The printing function is completely inoperative!" to which he replied, "We didn't know!"
I remember thinking that the help line must have had great metrics. 3/4 of calls could be handled by pulling out the notes on hacking the printing system and reading them to the customer.
I have yet to talk to a help-line person who even understands the concept of a defect in the product that should be reported to the developers.
Care to explain why? In regards to the constitution (Perhaps that's what you meant?), I try to interpret everything exactly as it says. I prefer not to play guessing games by trying to guess what the people were thinking while making it (and I feel that doing so would open it up to even more corruption).
I imagine he considers your statement that "I try to interpret everything exactly as it says" to be nonsensical because there has never been a text written that can be interpreted without knowing at least some context. Even computer programs, though famed for their precision, can only be properly interpreted correctly if one has sufficient information about how the runtime system operates.
One can either interpret a text in the context of what one knowns about the writer's state of mind, or one can interpret it in the context of one's own beliefs and prejudices.
The second method is what leads to the conclusions such as that violating the terms of service of a website makes one's access unauthorized and hence a computer crime. In other words, it leads to the corruption which you are trying to avoid.
Well, you need to look into constitutional law a little more. First amendment rights vary according to the type of speech and the subject.
Well, if you want me to read the first amendment, then I'm not finding anything about that.
If you want me to look at the invisible exceptions that judges have 'interpreted' into the constitution, then I guess you're right.
Everyone who reads the Constitution interprets it, even those who claim that they are not interpreting it because they take "exactly what it says". Let us take the First Amendment as an example:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If we insist on perverse literalism, then the statement "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" means that anyone can say anything at any time. That would make it ok to shout Fire! in a crowded theater, file false reports with the police, grosely misrepresent one's wares, and slander everyone in sight.
At the other end of the interpretation spectrum, the contextual references to "the press" and "petition for redress of grievences" means that freedom of speech applies only to statements about the conduct of government officials and other matters of clear public interest.
I do not think it is unreasonable for judges to hew a path down the middle and decide that speach which presents a "real and present danger" is least protected and speech about public affairs enjoys the most protection. This man's speech is somewhere in that middle ground.
amoral/môrl/ Adjective: Lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.
Immoral:
immoral/imôrl/ Adjective: Not conforming to accepted standards of morality.
What exactly am I missing here?
The difference is that one of them (amoral) refers to a lack of interest in the other (namely the question whether a particular act is moral or not).
It seems though that the original poster is using the word amoral in an extremely non-standard way. I think he is trying to say that providing for in-game transactions is not in and of itself moral or immoral. In other words, the concept is morally neutral.
In standard usage of the word in-game transactions would not be described as amoral because they are not reasoning beings able to consider moral questions.
Describing an act as amoral also implies that there is a plausible moral question which the actor has ignored. The behavior of James Bond is amoral because he goes around violating behavior norms without once asking whether his actions are proper.
For a great many reasons the biggest one being that I could replace rm while using rm.
Can you expand on the technique you might use to replace rm with rm ?
rm is a poor example since it seldom runs for more than a few seconds. Firefox is a better example. On Linux one can generally use Firefox while a batch of upgrades is being installed even if Firefox is one of the things being upgraded. (I say generally because occasionaly there will be a slight incompatibiity between the new and old Firefox which does not clear up until one restarts Firefox.)
Which means I don't need to reboot to do that.
You don't need to reboot to replace open files in Windows, either, you just need to close whatever it is that has them open.
In many cases the only practical way to close them is to reboot.
And exactly which OS(es) allows you to rename or move files that have write exclusive locks on them? Because, from what I can see this has, again, nothing to do with Windows.
Windows does have some unusual limitations which make it difficult to replace programs and DLLs if they are running or loaded. On Linux, MacOS X, most Unixes one can simply delete the program or DLL and create a new one with the same name. Processes which loaded it before you replaced it keep their connection to the old file. When the last such process terminates, the disk spaces used by the file is freed.
In contrast, Windows does not allow one to delete an open file (whether it is locked or not). This makes upgrading applications and OS components much more complicated. It is necessary to close all running instances of the program or DLL to be upgraded. In the case of system processes or important DLL files, this may not be possible. It may be that the best one can do is store the new files elsewhere and create a script which will copy them into place during the next reboot (when almost all programs and services are stopped).
But throwing it our would not have established a precedent. Actually letting it go to trial and passing a clear verdict is probably the biggest help the judge could give the accused in this case, especially regarding their potential countersuit.
The judge decides whether the purported actions of the accused constitute a crime. The jury decides whether he really committed those acts. In this case we would expect the judge to decide whether it would have been illegal to film in the jail. If he decided that it would have been illegal, the jury would have to decide whether the accused did film. Because a jury only decides what the facts were, it cannot establish precedent.
The puzzling thing here is that the accused were accused of "wiretapping". Making a sound recording using a microphone can (in some circumstances) be illegal, but it is never wiretapping.
You realize that "amen" is the battle cry of the enemy (corrupt power mongers attempting to enforce insane, anachronistic, laws), correct?
And I can't tell if you are joking. You do realize that "amen" means "so be it", correct? It is an accepted way of expressing complete agreement with what another has just said.
So we are left with a society now that has biology driving us to want monogamy from our partners and to seek out polygamy for ourselves.
I guess I am confused. In your reply to ccguy you seemed to be saying that it was because of religion that ccguy wanted his wife to be monogamous. Now you seem to be saying that it is evolution that has made him that way and religion simply reenforces it.
I never mentioned anything about persons' past behaviour, so where you most of your post from I'm a little puzzled.
I didn't mention anything about persons' past behavior either.
But is it not religious memes that make you have this problem?
So you are saying that a person whose mate has been unfaithful is upset simply because he has learned that his mate is a sinner? By your logic, persons together in a long-term sexual relationship but unmarried should not feel jelousy because they each already know that they are both fornicators.
While religous and cultural theories of sexuality have a huge impact, I don't think they can explain something as viceral as sexual jelously. People feel jelously because sexual intercourse is an intense shared experience of extrordinary intimacy. I don't think we need to look furthure to understand why many wish to share it with only one special friend.
I do not buy the free love retoric which tells us that we are monogamous because priests told us that to do otherwise is a sin or the family solicitor told us that otherwise probahttp://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/07/08/128216/Fitness-Site-Accidentally-Shows-Sexual-Activity#ting our will would be messy. (I have actually seen the last seriously suggested.)
First, many people (including my mother) have little to no idea what Facebook is.
Possibly though these people--at least by my observation--are becoming quite rare, and generally geriatric and very rural.
Sure, Facebook is very popular, but I don't think one has to be computer illiterate in order to know "little or nothing" about it. Well, lets see what I know about Facebook:
It is a website
Its users create personal web pages
They can link these web pages to the web pages of other users
I suppose there are one or more ways for the users to send messages to one another
This website belongs to a category called "social networking"
I would call this "little or nothing". Nor do I think this weird. I know about Facebook about as much as I know about the NFL, Dancing with the Stars, or the Ford Motor Company.
Also, how is specifically inviting those "activists" to take part anything like "screening out dissenting voices"? Can't have it both ways.
Go back and read the last two paragraphs of the linked article. The French Culture Minister expected this debate to be calm. But, it did not turn out to be calm because they did not screen out dissenting voices.
You'll notice I wrote 110v(P-E) as in phase to earth, the hilarious American "split-phase" system is merely a testimony to how poor your domestic supply.
It's hard to jingoism your way around facts, but you still made a good go of it.
It is true that in the US we use the three wire Edison system and that it does have 110v to earth while in much of Europe they use straight 220v with one side earthed. But exactly how the transformer secondary is earthed does not change the amount of available power. The Edison system simply makes it possible to easily have both 220v and 110v in the same building.
Your statement that the US system "necessitates the use of 2-phase supplies for domestic heating" is true, but I do not see how this is a disadvantage. All you are saying is that one must connect the two supply conductors of a large electric heater to the proper terminals in the service panel so that it will receive 220v. So what?
(Aside to US electricians: I know that in your trade split 110v/220v supply is considered single phase. The poster is calling it two-phase because the two hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase. If we were to use strictly consistent terminology, the very old 110 volt only service has a single phase 110 volts from neutral, almost all houses now have two phases 180 degrees apart at 110 volts from neutral, and many office buildings have three phases 120 degrees apart, often at 110 volts with respect to neutral.)
As other posters have pointed out, you are wrong about water heaters. Only the very smallest are ever connected to a 110 volt supply. You are correct in your statements about electric tea kettles and power tools. Since almost all outlets in the typical American home are wired between one of the phases and the neutral, they can only deliver about 1500 watts.
I suspect that the justification for the Edison system is that 110 volts is less dangerous than 220 volts. This system provides a (supposedly) safer 110 volts for most plug-connected devices while still making 220 volts available for those things that need it.
In other words, your complaint is not with the US electrical distribution network, but with the fact that 110 volt outlets predominate in the US home.
I believe the biggest disadvantages of the US system are that it requires wires twice as thick and that many appliances (such as air conditioners) that should be running on 220 volts run on 110 volts because the manufactures know that few users would buy them if they had to install a 220 volt outlet in order to use them.
Finally, yes, there are 50 amp 220 volt/110 volt service panels still out there. At least in New England they are now very rare. 60 amp was standard in the 1960's and nothing less than 100 amp is installed today.
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So?
Who cares what some bureaucrat wrote in some city policy? If what Glik, and people like him, were doing was not, in fact, against the law; then the cops were 100% out of line in even speaking to him, much less arresting him. And they should be facing catastrophic civil and even criminal penalties of their own.
How the heck does anyone figure that policy overrides the law?
It doesn't override the law, which is why Glik won. But it does make it hard for the police department to punish them. How does this sound: "Yes, we know we told you to do this, but it was illegal and so now we are going to punish you?"
For what its worth, the city settled after a court ruled that the officers did not act in good faith. The reasoning went something like this: They arrested him for violating a law against the making of secret recordings. But they had admitted to the court that the reason they knew he was making a recording was because he was holding up a recording device for all to see, so it obviously wasn't secret.
The city tried to argue that the legal questions involved were too subtle to be decided in the field and so the officers were right to arrest him and let a judge sort it out, but the court rejected that argument too ruling that the matter was clear cut.
It seems odd that the testimony was 'could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today'. If we are going to have a patent system it seems unreasonable that the argument that the technology in the patent in question is too critical to the way society operates and is so central should be a reasonable argument for invalidating the patent claim.
I'm not intending to make any claim about this particular patent. I only wish to say that that seems like a stupid reason to invalidate a patent based on the patent framework that we seem to have.
It is not a decisive legal argument, but it is not without weight. In this case, the patent holder was claiming to have a right to a share of the profits from a huge range of Internet technologies. At the same time, the claimed invention was basically just some minor tweaking of the way the parts of an information browser were integrated. This is a strong indication that the patent is defective (too broad).
Interestingly the plaintif tried to use the argument you mention. It didn't work because they hadn't actually invent this technology, they just used some of it and slapped a patent on it. So no, the fact that the technology to which a a patent troll lays claim does not in and of itself strengthen his case.
This does not refute my point. Yes, you _can_ block e-mail without blocking web traffic. No, it wasn't a spam bot. But network administrators do not generally waste a lot of time investigating the sources of things that look like spam. They just drop in a total block on the IP address and forget about it.
If a network administrator doesn't know (or care) about the the difference between inbound port 25 traffic and outbound port 80 traffic he doesn't belong in that job!
You don't fix things with a mallet... you'll break things like that, usually more than you intended or expected.
Perhaps, but beside the point. I have seen system administrators do this. That is why I consider the assumption that most of the posters make that the university administration deliberately blocked the website to be dubious at best. This is a case of "never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence."
You didn't read the article:
"The lame excuse offered by the university was that a student had created a petition and was using the change.org site to "spam" other ASU accounts; of course, even if that had been the real reason, it would have easily been possible for ASU to block mail from the change.org servers, without blocking all students from accessing the website."
The so called spam was email sent to students from a petition not a spam bot. As the author indicated you can block it via email you don't have to block the actual site.
This does not refute my point. Yes, you _can_ block e-mail without blocking web traffic. No, it wasn't a spam bot. But network administrators do not generally waste a lot of time investigating the sources of things that look like spam. They just drop in a total block on the IP address and forget about it.
The article was written by someone who does not know this. He seems to be surprised that outbound traffic was blocked. Again, this is common practice. He also seems to be surprised that the university spokesman could not provide another example of a website that they had blocked. This is probably because they do not deliberately block websites.
The university spokesman is not making lame excuses. He is saying, "look, we were spammed and we blocked it. That is what we do in such cases."
Since we are second guessing the system adminstrator's decision and suggesting more limited blocks that he could have put in place, why not second-guess the decision of Change.org to send e-mail from their web server. If they stopped doing that, it is less likely that it would get blocked.
Universities should not be censoring arbitrary websites on the internet.
Chances are ten to one that this isn't censorship at all. I work in a university IT department. We have constant problems with spam, worms, password guessers. We block IP addresses all the time. Generally these are the addresses of botnet members. Since nobody wants to connect to spam bots anyway, nobody ever complains about these blocks. I suspect that a system administrator in this case saw the flow of spam, mistook change.org's e-mail server for a spam bot, and just blocked the IP address.
I believe this is a common practice. That being so, it is unlikely that the person who blocked the address even knew about the Change.org website. And who consults the university administration before blocking a spammer?
Civil disobedience means that if they decide to sue you that you plead guilty to the crime, take the sentence they give you, and forego appeals..
Civil disobedience means to break the law as a way to draw attention to its injustice. Appealing a subsequent conviction is a legitimate continuation of that protest. Of course, the appeal must attack the law itself, not deny the fact of that the law was broken.
Using the principle famously exemplified by Gandhi and Rosa Parks is admirable, as long as you're willing to go to the lengths that they're willing to go in order to do it. If that's genuinely your goal, and you're okay with it, then I applaud you and support you. However, if you're going at this with even the slightest intent to settle out of court, plead 'not guilty', or appeal a verdict, then you're not following a cause, you're justifying copyright infringement.
According to the Wikipedia article on her, Rosa Parks appealed her conviction.
Exactly.
This "ACTA Chief" sounds like a coward If he is displeased with the process, and he's the one in charge, then he should be using his position to make the ACTA a formal treaty to be passed b y the People's representatives in Parliament. To scurry away shows an supreme lack of fortitude and irresponsibility.
He is "using his position", just not in the way that you expect. Giving up a well-paying job because you believe that what your superiors require you to do is unethical is a dramatic way to draw attention to the problem. The alternative, to take their money while trying to undermine their goals is problematic at best. He would have had to mute his criticism and would probably soon have had to resign in disgrace.
This way is much better. First of all, it makes a news story. Second, he can now speak frankly about the ACTA and his opinion will be considered important because he is "the former ACTA chief who resigned in protest".
If there's incriminating evidence, surely this is a perfect example on why the person can't decrypt as it WOULD self incriminate them!
Revealing the password could incriminate him, but is it testimony? I think that is the key question. The fact that the person is required to reveal a piece of information makes it feel like testimony, but it might not be. That which the person is required to reveal does not in and of itself incriminate. The (pre-existing) contents of the 'box' which it opens may.
This distinction is important. Remember that the purpose of the 5th amendment protection against self incrimination is not to set the guilty free but the make it harder to presure the innocent into making false confessions. A beating with a rubber hose may convince an innocent man to invent incriminating evidence against himself. It could also convince him to reveal his encryption keys, but it cannot deposite false evidence inside the encrypted volume.
I am not saying that people should be forced to reveal their encryption keys, but I believe the self incrimination argument is weak.
Do you mean 'soda'?
This is a question of English dialects. See: http://popvssoda.com/
My mother once got a funny look from a guest from the Midwestern United States when she offered him 'soda'. To him soda was baking soda.
In this case, they did ask that something they have the copyright to be taken down.
Actually, Universal only claims to have copyright to the first video. This seems unlikely since the video is a criticism of Universal. Now they have taken down a video that is a news report on their disputed claim to the first video. Use of short clips to illustrate a news report is such a classic case of fair use that no rights holder can claim to be unaware that the use is lawful. A takedown request is either grossly incompetent or malicious.
What Megaupload has done here is brilliant. They have baited Universal into conducting a dramatic live demonstration of the dangers of giving copyright holder unilateral takedown powers.
Such metrisc also disincentivize people taking proactive steps to reduce the number of incoming tickets (i.e. making the system/environment more robust or your users more educated), and disincentivizes managers for so doing by reducing the number of people needed to service incoming tickets (thus reducing the size of the empire and the pay grade of the manager).
I've seen both "disincentives" in action. It ain't pretty.
I strongly suspect you are right. Years ago we used file and print server software from a large corporation. The print server function as delivered was completely inoperative. Customers would find it didn't work, call the help line and receive complicated instructions for hacking it to get it to work.
Some years after we started using it I went to a conference for users of this software. A tier three support person was at my dinner table. He said that they had run a report on the help line ticket database and found that 3/4 of the tickets were for printing problems. I said, "Of course they were. The printing function is completely inoperative!" to which he replied, "We didn't know!"
I remember thinking that the help line must have had great metrics. 3/4 of calls could be handled by pulling out the notes on hacking the printing system and reading them to the customer.
I have yet to talk to a help-line person who even understands the concept of a defect in the product that should be reported to the developers.
Care to explain why? In regards to the constitution (Perhaps that's what you meant?), I try to interpret everything exactly as it says. I prefer not to play guessing games by trying to guess what the people were thinking while making it (and I feel that doing so would open it up to even more corruption).
I imagine he considers your statement that "I try to interpret everything exactly as it says" to be nonsensical because there has never been a text written that can be interpreted without knowing at least some context. Even computer programs, though famed for their precision, can only be properly interpreted correctly if one has sufficient information about how the runtime system operates.
One can either interpret a text in the context of what one knowns about the writer's state of mind, or one can interpret it in the context of one's own beliefs and prejudices.
The second method is what leads to the conclusions such as that violating the terms of service of a website makes one's access unauthorized and hence a computer crime. In other words, it leads to the corruption which you are trying to avoid.
Well, you need to look into constitutional law a little more. First amendment rights vary according to the type of speech and the subject.
Well, if you want me to read the first amendment, then I'm not finding anything about that.
If you want me to look at the invisible exceptions that judges have 'interpreted' into the constitution, then I guess you're right.
Everyone who reads the Constitution interprets it, even those who claim that they are not interpreting it because they take "exactly what it says". Let us take the First Amendment as an example:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If we insist on perverse literalism, then the statement "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" means that anyone can say anything at any time. That would make it ok to shout Fire! in a crowded theater, file false reports with the police, grosely misrepresent one's wares, and slander everyone in sight.
At the other end of the interpretation spectrum, the contextual references to "the press" and "petition for redress of grievences" means that freedom of speech applies only to statements about the conduct of government officials and other matters of clear public interest.
I do not think it is unreasonable for judges to hew a path down the middle and decide that speach which presents a "real and present danger" is least protected and speech about public affairs enjoys the most protection. This man's speech is somewhere in that middle ground.
Amoral:
amoral/môrl/
Adjective: Lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.
Immoral:
immoral/imôrl/
Adjective: Not conforming to accepted standards of morality.
What exactly am I missing here?
The difference is that one of them (amoral) refers to a lack of interest in the other (namely the question whether a particular act is moral or not).
It seems though that the original poster is using the word amoral in an extremely non-standard way. I think he is trying to say that providing for in-game transactions is not in and of itself moral or immoral. In other words, the concept is morally neutral.
In standard usage of the word in-game transactions would not be described as amoral because they are not reasoning beings able to consider moral questions.
Describing an act as amoral also implies that there is a plausible moral question which the actor has ignored. The behavior of James Bond is amoral because he goes around violating behavior norms without once asking whether his actions are proper.
Can you expand on the technique you might use to replace rm with rm ?
rm is a poor example since it seldom runs for more than a few seconds. Firefox is a better example. On Linux one can generally use Firefox while a batch of upgrades is being installed even if Firefox is one of the things being upgraded. (I say generally because occasionaly there will be a slight incompatibiity between the new and old Firefox which does not clear up until one restarts Firefox.)
You don't need to reboot to replace open files in Windows, either, you just need to close whatever it is that has them open.
In many cases the only practical way to close them is to reboot.
And exactly which OS(es) allows you to rename or move files that have write exclusive locks on them? Because, from what I can see this has, again, nothing to do with Windows.
Windows does have some unusual limitations which make it difficult to replace programs and DLLs if they are running or loaded. On Linux, MacOS X, most Unixes one can simply delete the program or DLL and create a new one with the same name. Processes which loaded it before you replaced it keep their connection to the old file. When the last such process terminates, the disk spaces used by the file is freed.
In contrast, Windows does not allow one to delete an open file (whether it is locked or not). This makes upgrading applications and OS components much more complicated. It is necessary to close all running instances of the program or DLL to be upgraded. In the case of system processes or important DLL files, this may not be possible. It may be that the best one can do is store the new files elsewhere and create a script which will copy them into place during the next reboot (when almost all programs and services are stopped).
But throwing it our would not have established a precedent. Actually letting it go to trial and passing a clear verdict is probably the biggest help the judge could give the accused in this case, especially regarding their potential countersuit.
The judge decides whether the purported actions of the accused constitute a crime. The jury decides whether he really committed those acts. In this case we would expect the judge to decide whether it would have been illegal to film in the jail. If he decided that it would have been illegal, the jury would have to decide whether the accused did film. Because a jury only decides what the facts were, it cannot establish precedent.
The puzzling thing here is that the accused were accused of "wiretapping". Making a sound recording using a microphone can (in some circumstances) be illegal, but it is never wiretapping.
Can't tell if joking or horribly deluded.
You realize that "amen" is the battle cry of the enemy (corrupt power mongers attempting to enforce insane, anachronistic, laws), correct?
And I can't tell if you are joking. You do realize that "amen" means "so be it", correct? It is an accepted way of expressing complete agreement with what another has just said.
Sexually transmitted diseases...are specifically related to clandestine, dishonest, sexual encounters.
And I thought they were related to sharing sexual partners.
So we are left with a society now that has biology driving us to want monogamy from our partners and to seek out polygamy for ourselves.
I guess I am confused. In your reply to ccguy you seemed to be saying that it was because of religion that ccguy wanted his wife to be monogamous. Now you seem to be saying that it is evolution that has made him that way and religion simply reenforces it.
I never mentioned anything about persons' past behaviour, so where you most of your post from I'm a little puzzled.
I didn't mention anything about persons' past behavior either.
But is it not religious memes that make you have this problem?
So you are saying that a person whose mate has been unfaithful is upset simply because he has learned that his mate is a sinner? By your logic, persons together in a long-term sexual relationship but unmarried should not feel jelousy because they each already know that they are both fornicators.
While religous and cultural theories of sexuality have a huge impact, I don't think they can explain something as viceral as sexual jelously. People feel jelously because sexual intercourse is an intense shared experience of extrordinary intimacy. I don't think we need to look furthure to understand why many wish to share it with only one special friend.
I do not buy the free love retoric which tells us that we are monogamous because priests told us that to do otherwise is a sin or the family solicitor told us that otherwise probahttp://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/07/08/128216/Fitness-Site-Accidentally-Shows-Sexual-Activity#ting our will would be messy. (I have actually seen the last seriously suggested.)
First, many people (including my mother) have little to no idea what Facebook is.
Possibly though these people--at least by my observation--are becoming quite rare, and generally geriatric and very rural.
Sure, Facebook is very popular, but I don't think one has to be computer illiterate in order to know "little or nothing" about it. Well, lets see what I know about Facebook:
I would call this "little or nothing". Nor do I think this weird. I know about Facebook about as much as I know about the NFL, Dancing with the Stars, or the Ford Motor Company.
Also, how is specifically inviting those "activists" to take part anything like "screening out dissenting voices"? Can't have it both ways.
Go back and read the last two paragraphs of the linked article. The French Culture Minister expected this debate to be calm. But, it did not turn out to be calm because they did not screen out dissenting voices.
You'll notice I wrote 110v(P-E) as in phase to earth, the hilarious American "split-phase" system is merely a testimony to how poor your domestic supply.
It's hard to jingoism your way around facts, but you still made a good go of it.
It is true that in the US we use the three wire Edison system and that it does have 110v to earth while in much of Europe they use straight 220v with one side earthed. But exactly how the transformer secondary is earthed does not change the amount of available power. The Edison system simply makes it possible to easily have both 220v and 110v in the same building.
Your statement that the US system "necessitates the use of 2-phase supplies for domestic heating" is true, but I do not see how this is a disadvantage. All you are saying is that one must connect the two supply conductors of a large electric heater to the proper terminals in the service panel so that it will receive 220v. So what?
(Aside to US electricians: I know that in your trade split 110v/220v supply is considered single phase. The poster is calling it two-phase because the two hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase. If we were to use strictly consistent terminology, the very old 110 volt only service has a single phase 110 volts from neutral, almost all houses now have two phases 180 degrees apart at 110 volts from neutral, and many office buildings have three phases 120 degrees apart, often at 110 volts with respect to neutral.)
As other posters have pointed out, you are wrong about water heaters. Only the very smallest are ever connected to a 110 volt supply. You are correct in your statements about electric tea kettles and power tools. Since almost all outlets in the typical American home are wired between one of the phases and the neutral, they can only deliver about 1500 watts.
I suspect that the justification for the Edison system is that 110 volts is less dangerous than 220 volts. This system provides a (supposedly) safer 110 volts for most plug-connected devices while still making 220 volts available for those things that need it.
In other words, your complaint is not with the US electrical distribution network, but with the fact that 110 volt outlets predominate in the US home.
I believe the biggest disadvantages of the US system are that it requires wires twice as thick and that many appliances (such as air conditioners) that should be running on 220 volts run on 110 volts because the manufactures know that few users would buy them if they had to install a 220 volt outlet in order to use them.
Finally, yes, there are 50 amp 220 volt/110 volt service panels still out there. At least in New England they are now very rare. 60 amp was standard in the 1960's and nothing less than 100 amp is installed today.