As others have noted, probably not treason, but you should be able to nail them with violating their oath of office. You know, the one they took where they swore to uphold the Constitution.
Upon determination of a violation, they should be thrown out of office.
That means if 90% of Congress passed something that turns out to be unconstitutional, they get thrown out, and a replace election held for those seats. Oh, and they should be ineligible to hold any public office for the next decade or so.
Even better, if no candidate gets a positive vote total, throw them all out and hold a new election that none of those candidates are allowed to run in.
For Earth, perhaps. But for Mars and Luna, space elevators could still be built. In fact, a Lunar elevator could be built out of Kevlar, without the need for carbon nanotubes.
He lives on Okinawa, not the Japanese mainland. It's 400 miles away. Population density is 580/sq km.
For comparison, Manhattan has 25,800/sq km. Roughly 44 times as densely populated. Yet Manhattan does not have $70/month Gigabit fiber to the home. Why? Is Manhattan is too far from central hubs? Or that an area with a median household income of $47,030 would be unable to support sufficient $70/month connections?
Or is it that the telecom companies are getting fat on selling DSL/cable, and don't want to invest in the bandwidth it would require to support all those people at that speed? Perhaps with some addition pressure from media companies, that don't want consumers to be able to exchage gigabytes of data with ease?
Alternative Freedom
Dirs. Twila Raftu and Shaun Cronin. 2006. N/R. 68mins. Documentary.
An indictment of the "war" on free culture, this collagelike doc examines the current copyright crisis. A handful of surprisingly fascinating talking heads--including free-software pioneer Richard Stallman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig--criticize corporations for preventing technology sharing and experimentation. To punctuate their arguments, the directors intersperse ironic movie and news clips (which, given their unabashedly biased point of view, they probably didn't secure the rights for). Although the effect is at times overwhelming, the film smartly continues the debate about an important issue. (Opens Thu; Pioneer.)
--Raven Snook
Since actual piracy is hard to track, the code should be read:
addDRM(music); switch (whatHappensAfter) {
case "sales go up":
println("See?! We TOLD you the evil pirates were stealing! DRM works!");
break;
case "sales go down":
println("Ahh! They're stealing more to spite us! This is war!");
break;
case "sales stays the same":
println("Those filthy pirates will steal no matter what we do! We must make the DRM stronger!");
break; } addMoreDRM(music,movies,television,software); money++;
Because, of course, piracy is the sole factor in why sales go up or down. Product quality, quantity, pricing, changes in public taste (fads) and the state of the economy as a whole have no effect.
If copyright infringement were really funding terrorism, the simple solution would be to legalize it: if anyone could copy anything they wanted without penalty, there would be little incentive to buy "pirated" goods from bad guys!
More seriously, I intend to contact my congresspeople and tell them to vote against this.
When do we get to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hdonate to some congressman and have him introduce legislation reducing copyright terms, clarifying fair use, etc?
I would like to see them offer all shows for free in mp3 off their website for a limited time period, then as a paid download after a week or two.
I dislike the "lock up the archives" business model. It encourages people to download and horde stuff before it disappears, makes links to the content in question disappear, or at least blocked behind a coin-lock, and generally breaks the web.
I much prefer the "archives over X weeks old are free, but you have to pay for current content" system, where impatient people fund the system, as opposed to historians. Our society has more impatient people than it has people searching for old content. Plus, by offering the archives for free, you can get new people hooked, and let them become impatient wanting to view/hear/experience the current offering, and pay.
Reasons for a.kids.us rather than whitelisting current sites:
1. Much, much simpler for software to implement. No need to check a million entry list to see if the site is whitelisted. In fact, a simple firewall could provide filtering for all protocols, including older non-whitelist aware applications, if needed.
2. The US can pass laws restricting exactly what is and is not allowed, with penalties, as part of the.kids.us domain registration agreement without stomping on the 1st amendment.
3. No need to keep downloading updates. No worries about that site you whitelisted last year expiring and being taken over by porn. No worries that the new kid-oriented site your kid wants to get to isn't on the current whitelist. Content providers do the work for you, buy choosing to register or not register in the domain.
4. Easy ability to subdivide age-appropriate ranges:.under6.kids.us,.under12.kids.us,.teens.kids.us, etc.
5. Get the Government off the backs of the rest of us. Rather than them continuing to try and turn the Internet into a kid-friendly sandbox, give them their own sandbox to play in. We don't let kids take bicycles on freeways, we build bikepaths. This lets the politicians claim to be "doing something" and "thinking of the children" without creating trouble elsewhere.
It's fine for the copyright holder(s) to exclusively license their work(s) to a corporation, even for free, but the right for them to terminate the license at will (despite any contractual wording to the contrary) should be built into law.
I'll disagree. One sided termination is a bad idea as noted by other posters. What I think I would prefer to see is to forbid, by law, exclusive licenses. Allow copyright holders to relicense their work to other parties, at any time, despite what any existing contract they have says.
That way, authors or musicians who's works are being kept out of print by publishing houses can go to another publishing house, or even self publish. (And none of this music recordings being work-for-hire that the record companies get the copyright on.)
Which is a sad state of affairs. When I was a kid, people talked and wrote about the "copyright holder", not "copyright owner".
Copyright is a limitted monopoly, granted by the public. If you are given one, you get to hold it for a number of years, after which, the monopoly is disolved, and the work becomes part of the public domain.
At least, that is how I remember how things used to be. I am sure whoever sponsored changing the language from "holder" to "owner" was intentionally slanting the language in this war of perception, much like the push to stop calling things "infringement" and instead "theft".
You mis-understand, the voter does not get a receipt.
What happens is eletronic voting machine replaces the role of the pen in marking a paper ballot. This in no way violates the concept of a secret ballot any more than marking your ballot with a pen and dropping it in a box does.
The paper ballot is placed in the vote box. The paper ballot is the official vote. Machine totals can be used for preliminary results, but some percentage of the machines will be auditted, to make sure their totals match that of the paper.
They're planning a television service, and have allocated a swath of their bandwidth (which could otherwise be used for net and phone traffic) to back this service.
Funny, my local cable company have allocated large swaths of their bandwidth (which could otherwise be used for net and phone traffic) for crap like the YES network. Maybe I can force them to allocate the bandwidth to net traffic?
Some people are willing to pay $50+ for a new game, only because they know when they finish they can turn around and sell it for $30+.
If they could not "get back" that money, they would buy fewer new games. More casual gamers like myself wait, find out what is good and what sucks, and buy the good used games six months or a year or so after release.
Think of what the car market would be like if you could not sell your used (excuse me, "pre-owned") car.
Movie studios used to charge $100 dollars for a movie (on video tape!). Only rental stores bought them, for the most part. Then they learned that the magic point was $15-20. Sure, they make less profit per sale, but they make so many more sales, it is well worth it. Perhaps video game producers should learn the same lesson?
When I tell a girl I admire her Riemannesque topology and say her virtues are greater [...]
Dude! There is your mistake right there, you praised her virtues. You don't want to remind a girl she is supposed to be being virtuous. Instead, you should let her know in explicit terms what you are looking for.
Next time, tell her you want to manipulate her peicewise smooth manifold.
why, after millions of years of evolution, are we so bad at finding [happiness]
I would hypothesize that individuals who are really good at finding happiness are not very good at passing on their genes. If you find something that makes you happier than reproduction, why would you reproduce?
Slashdot Mirror
As others have noted, probably not treason, but you should be able to nail them with violating their oath of office. You know, the one they took where they swore to uphold the Constitution.
Upon determination of a violation, they should be thrown out of office.
That means if 90% of Congress passed something that turns out to be unconstitutional, they get thrown out, and a replace election held for those seats. Oh, and they should be ineligible to hold any public office for the next decade or so.
Even better, if no candidate gets a positive vote total, throw them all out and hold a new election that none of those candidates are allowed to run in.
The short answer? Interoperability. If only 1 in 10 of my friends and family can read email from me, do you think I'll bother to use Linux?
For Earth, perhaps. But for Mars and Luna, space elevators could still be built. In fact, a Lunar elevator could be built out of Kevlar, without the need for carbon nanotubes.
That's the Declaration, not the Constitution.
More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox
For comparison, Manhattan has 25,800/sq km. Roughly 44 times as densely populated. Yet Manhattan does not have $70/month Gigabit fiber to the home. Why? Is Manhattan is too far from central hubs? Or that an area with a median household income of $47,030 would be unable to support sufficient $70/month connections?
Or is it that the telecom companies are getting fat on selling DSL/cable, and don't want to invest in the bandwidth it would require to support all those people at that speed? Perhaps with some addition pressure from media companies, that don't want consumers to be able to exchage gigabytes of data with ease?
Acutally, that depends on the state. In some states, even felons currently in prison can still vote! See the Straigh Dope answer http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mfelonvote.htm l
Since actual piracy is hard to track, the code should be read:
addDRM(music);
switch (whatHappensAfter) {
case "sales go up":
println("See?! We TOLD you the evil pirates were stealing! DRM works!");
break;
case "sales go down":
println("Ahh! They're stealing more to spite us! This is war!");
break;
case "sales stays the same":
println("Those filthy pirates will steal no matter what we do! We must make the DRM stronger!");
break;
}
addMoreDRM(music,movies,television,software);
money++;
Because, of course, piracy is the sole factor in why sales go up or down. Product quality, quantity, pricing, changes in public taste (fads) and the state of the economy as a whole have no effect.
More seriously, I intend to contact my congresspeople and tell them to vote against this.
When do we get to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hdonate to some congressman and have him introduce legislation reducing copyright terms, clarifying fair use, etc?
I dislike the "lock up the archives" business model. It encourages people to download and horde stuff before it disappears, makes links to the content in question disappear, or at least blocked behind a coin-lock, and generally breaks the web.
I much prefer the "archives over X weeks old are free, but you have to pay for current content" system, where impatient people fund the system, as opposed to historians. Our society has more impatient people than it has people searching for old content. Plus, by offering the archives for free, you can get new people hooked, and let them become impatient wanting to view/hear/experience the current offering, and pay.
Need? Probably not *need*, but desire.
.kids.us rather than whitelisting current sites:
.kids.us domain registration agreement without stomping on the 1st amendment.
.under6.kids.us, .under12.kids.us, .teens.kids.us, etc.
Reasons for a
1. Much, much simpler for software to implement. No need to check a million entry list to see if the site is whitelisted. In fact, a simple firewall could provide filtering for all protocols, including older non-whitelist aware applications, if needed.
2. The US can pass laws restricting exactly what is and is not allowed, with penalties, as part of the
3. No need to keep downloading updates. No worries about that site you whitelisted last year expiring and being taken over by porn. No worries that the new kid-oriented site your kid wants to get to isn't on the current whitelist. Content providers do the work for you, buy choosing to register or not register in the domain.
4. Easy ability to subdivide age-appropriate ranges:
5. Get the Government off the backs of the rest of us. Rather than them continuing to try and turn the Internet into a kid-friendly sandbox, give them their own sandbox to play in. We don't let kids take bicycles on freeways, we build bikepaths. This lets the politicians claim to be "doing something" and "thinking of the children" without creating trouble elsewhere.
That is why I generally favor .kids.us (or .kids.ca, etc) over .kids. Let each country determine what "child friendly" means in their own country.
'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
--Humpty Dumpty
I've considered modding my PS2 to play European discs, but then there's still the PAL/NTSC problem.
Darn it, I already own 2-4 of Karaoke Revolution. Disc 1 seems to be out of print (why?) with insane ebay prices.
What isn't Sony release SingStar in the US?
I'll disagree. One sided termination is a bad idea as noted by other posters. What I think I would prefer to see is to forbid, by law, exclusive licenses. Allow copyright holders to relicense their work to other parties, at any time, despite what any existing contract they have says.
That way, authors or musicians who's works are being kept out of print by publishing houses can go to another publishing house, or even self publish. (And none of this music recordings being work-for-hire that the record companies get the copyright on.)
Which is a sad state of affairs. When I was a kid, people talked and wrote about the "copyright holder", not "copyright owner".
Copyright is a limitted monopoly, granted by the public. If you are given one, you get to hold it for a number of years, after which, the monopoly is disolved, and the work becomes part of the public domain.
At least, that is how I remember how things used to be. I am sure whoever sponsored changing the language from "holder" to "owner" was intentionally slanting the language in this war of perception, much like the push to stop calling things "infringement" and instead "theft".
You mis-understand, the voter does not get a receipt.
What happens is eletronic voting machine replaces the role of the pen in marking a paper ballot. This in no way violates the concept of a secret ballot any more than marking your ballot with a pen and dropping it in a box does.
The paper ballot is placed in the vote box. The paper ballot is the official vote. Machine totals can be used for preliminary results, but some percentage of the machines will be auditted, to make sure their totals match that of the paper.
Funny, my local cable company have allocated large swaths of their bandwidth (which could otherwise be used for net and phone traffic) for crap like the YES network. Maybe I can force them to allocate the bandwidth to net traffic?
Some people are willing to pay $50+ for a new game, only because they know when they finish they can turn around and sell it for $30+.
If they could not "get back" that money, they would buy fewer new games. More casual gamers like myself wait, find out what is good and what sucks, and buy the good used games six months or a year or so after release.
Think of what the car market would be like if you could not sell your used (excuse me, "pre-owned") car.
Movie studios used to charge $100 dollars for a movie (on video tape!). Only rental stores bought them, for the most part. Then they learned that the magic point was $15-20. Sure, they make less profit per sale, but they make so many more sales, it is well worth it. Perhaps video game producers should learn the same lesson?
Make 'em USB drives. Like Portable Firefox who, I see, is now part of a whole Portable Apps movement, very similar to your concept.
Dude! There is your mistake right there, you praised her virtues. You don't want to remind a girl she is supposed to be being virtuous. Instead, you should let her know in explicit terms what you are looking for.
Next time, tell her you want to manipulate her peicewise smooth manifold.
I would hypothesize that individuals who are really good at finding happiness are not very good at passing on their genes. If you find something that makes you happier than reproduction, why would you reproduce?