And employers are legally obligated to let you leave the office to go vote any time you choose throughout the day.
But they aren't legally obligated to pay you for that time. In a country where the net savings rate is negative, that's a significant barrier to voting.
Can you cite a law to the effect of "508.c4.232 section 6 statute 5b states that no man shall place lesbian jokes on another man's webpage" ?
That wouldn't cover this situation. What he really needs to cite is one that says "no man shall place lesbian jokes on his own website, if somebody important is leeching off him." I suspect that would be even harder to find.
Hold on a minute. There's a difference between morality and value (in the sense of "utility").
Morality is a function of society, by which one is dissuaded from doing something which would be good for him but bad for society. For example, adultery: obviously it would be personally enjoyable (because otherwise it wouldn't be considered in the first place, and morals would never enter into it) and it is biologically advantageous (spreading one's genes more widely, etc.). Therefore, from the individual perspective, it's a good thing. However, society is structured around marriage, so from its perspective adultery is a bad thing.
In contrast, "value" is absolute. For example, having food is good and not having food is bad.
On a desert island, morality is irrelevant because there's no society around to be part of. Stuff like adultery, murder, or theft are moot because there's nobody to cheat with, kill, or steal from. Drinking (which, in society, is considered immoral because of its influence on one's actions, which affect others) is moral because one's actions can't affect anybody else.
The point of my post is that your simple heuristic ("either it's educational or it's porn") turned out to be insufficient, indicating that this is a much more complicated problem than you're giving it credit for.
Sometimes, people get stupid and take a picture of their child in the bathtub when the "child" is 12!
What, you're saying that that is porn? It's still just a person in a tub, you know. I'd go so far to say that pictures of anybody in a bathtub, regardless of age, aren't porn unless there's something else going on too.
Sites like Crush-photo, Met-Art, and even Playboy are done artistically, but I think they easily qualify as porn.
And yet, I'm sure other sites exist that are more artistic and less "pornish" than those. What about them? (Or what about this? (Link NSFW???))
I don't think you would find too many that would argue with that and deciding what is porn and what is not is not really that hard to do.
Unless I'm mistaken, in some places a picture of a woman that shows her face would be considered "porn!" Once again, I think you're vastly underestimating the difficulty of classifying this on a global scale.
Uh huh, I can totally see every porn site on the Internet, including those operating overseas, giving up their.com domain names. And the bureaucracy needed to enforce that kind of thing wouldn't be the least bit burdensome, no sirree! And violating civil rights? How positively ludicrous to think that might have a chance of happening!
Yep, blocking porn from.com (and all the associated baggage) is the best idea ever! How could those dumbasses at ICANN even think of voting it down, let alone doing so twice?!
How about "if it shows nudity for non-educational purposes."
Is a family photo album site, which happens to contain pictures of a kid taking a bath, "educational?" Is artistic photography "educational?" I'd say "no" and "no." But neither of them are "porn," either!
That said, I think you are flat out wrong. It is not greed to;
1) want to make a fair return on your costs/investments
What investments? The public paid for the telephone infrastructure, not Verizon!
2) want to be paid for use of your infrastructure
The public's infrastructure, you mean.
3) want to make enough profits to repay investors, fund research, etc.
Bell Labs isn't run by the Bells anymore.
4) want to compete on a level playing field.
Are you kidding? Using patents and regulation to block competition is the opposite of a "level playing field!"
Lastly, you need to get over this idea that all that matters is what benefits you^H^H^H the Customer.
The only purpose of patents are "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." In other words, patents exist for the benefit of the public as a whole. Therefore, because Verizon is trying to use the patent against the interest of the public, Verizon does not deserve to have the patent anymore. QED.
Just last week I had to instruct a person with a PhD in his title along with the position of "Chief Technology Officer" on how to read an e-mail header.
The "PhD" indicates that he has enough research skills that he could figure out how to read the e-mail header himself. The "Chief... Officer" indicates that he knows better than to waste his time doing so, when it's more efficient just to ask you instead.
I think the attitude is that college degrees have unnecessarily become a "basic education" credential where the absence of carries with it a certain stigma. And I can certainly understand why people would be upset about that.
Those people should be glad they're not civil engineers, then -- within the next few years, the ASCE is planning on making a Master's degree the minimum required to become a licensed professional engineer!
the guy has a law degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. Supposedly you cannot get much better than that.
From what I've heard, the only hard thing about most "ivy league" schools is getting in in the first place. Bush had connections, so that would have been easy (even discounting that he likely went to some grade-inflating "prep school").
And yet, you won't be able to find an EE job. I have three friends in the electrical engineering field; two with engineering degrees from Tech and one with an "engineering technology" degree from DeVry. The DeVry guy is doing on-site electrical stuff for Siemens, but the other two have jobs coding Java or something. Weird, eh?
DRM-free files or CDs cost less than DVD movies (around $5 US would be just fine for an album)
I don't disagree with your other points, but do you realize that CD albums actually have a good reason to cost more than DVD movies because they have more value (i.e., movies get watched a few times but music gets played over and over)?
You can't "leak" something to the Public Domain; only the copyright holder can release it (by explicitly stating so). Even if a third party publishes it, it's still copyrighted.
OpenOffice is a derivative of Star Office, and IBM Workplace is a derivative of OpenOffice (I don't think any of them are technically "forks" because they're continuing to share code). Otherwise, all the other things have entirely separate code bases.
You insensitive clod! Why would you assume I'm not?
...
(Okay, so you're right... but that's beside the point! I do have a girlfriend, and I wouldn't hesitate to grab her computer and upgrade from one Windows version to another.)
(Actualy I haven't tried, but I would think it at least would fail an audit.) It is legal to put on Ubuntu. It might not be legal to transfer Windows 2000 from the IBM Thinkpad to the Dell laptop.
Bah! You've been brainwashed into believing Microsoft's bullshit! If you have a copy, then you have a copy -- and neither Microsoft nor anybody else can tell you what computer you're "allowed" to install your property on!
I have never purchased a retail version of Windows 2000, so I do not have a copy.
Retail and OEM are both valid, legal versions. The only things stopping you from using the OEM on the other computer are technical reasons, not legal ones.
Slashdot Mirror
But they aren't legally obligated to pay you for that time. In a country where the net savings rate is negative, that's a significant barrier to voting.
That wouldn't cover this situation. What he really needs to cite is one that says "no man shall place lesbian jokes on his own website, if somebody important is leeching off him." I suspect that would be even harder to find.
Hold on a minute. There's a difference between morality and value (in the sense of "utility").
Morality is a function of society, by which one is dissuaded from doing something which would be good for him but bad for society. For example, adultery: obviously it would be personally enjoyable (because otherwise it wouldn't be considered in the first place, and morals would never enter into it) and it is biologically advantageous (spreading one's genes more widely, etc.). Therefore, from the individual perspective, it's a good thing. However, society is structured around marriage, so from its perspective adultery is a bad thing.
In contrast, "value" is absolute. For example, having food is good and not having food is bad.
On a desert island, morality is irrelevant because there's no society around to be part of. Stuff like adultery, murder, or theft are moot because there's nobody to cheat with, kill, or steal from. Drinking (which, in society, is considered immoral because of its influence on one's actions, which affect others) is moral because one's actions can't affect anybody else.
That's not true for Firefox 2.0.0.2 on OS X... on my iMac it just says "this image cannot be displayed because it contains errors."
Are you sure you don't mean DS Lite and Gameboy Micro?
Bullshit. The onus is on them to prove that the brake work killed the air conditioning, not on you to prove that it didn't.
Newsflash: Sony is a record label, and a member of the RIAA. It already sues people for not buying its stuff!
The point of my post is that your simple heuristic ("either it's educational or it's porn") turned out to be insufficient, indicating that this is a much more complicated problem than you're giving it credit for.
What, you're saying that that is porn? It's still just a person in a tub, you know. I'd go so far to say that pictures of anybody in a bathtub, regardless of age, aren't porn unless there's something else going on too.
And yet, I'm sure other sites exist that are more artistic and less "pornish" than those. What about them? (Or what about this? (Link NSFW???))
Unless I'm mistaken, in some places a picture of a woman that shows her face would be considered "porn!" Once again, I think you're vastly underestimating the difficulty of classifying this on a global scale.
Speaking of a "modest proposal," where would eating babies fall in? With the deceased gay donkeys, or with the neocons?
Uh huh, I can totally see every porn site on the Internet, including those operating overseas, giving up their .com domain names. And the bureaucracy needed to enforce that kind of thing wouldn't be the least bit burdensome, no sirree! And violating civil rights? How positively ludicrous to think that might have a chance of happening!
Yep, blocking porn from .com (and all the associated baggage) is the best idea ever! How could those dumbasses at ICANN even think of voting it down, let alone doing so twice?!
Is a family photo album site, which happens to contain pictures of a kid taking a bath, "educational?" Is artistic photography "educational?" I'd say "no" and "no." But neither of them are "porn," either!
What investments? The public paid for the telephone infrastructure, not Verizon!
The public's infrastructure, you mean.
Bell Labs isn't run by the Bells anymore.
Are you kidding? Using patents and regulation to block competition is the opposite of a "level playing field!"
The only purpose of patents are "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." In other words, patents exist for the benefit of the public as a whole. Therefore, because Verizon is trying to use the patent against the interest of the public, Verizon does not deserve to have the patent anymore. QED.
You were thinking of Hover!
(Aside: "landmark in home computer development?!" The Wikipedia article was written either by a shill or an idiot.)
The "PhD" indicates that he has enough research skills that he could figure out how to read the e-mail header himself. The "Chief ... Officer" indicates that he knows better than to waste his time doing so, when it's more efficient just to ask you instead.
Those people should be glad they're not civil engineers, then -- within the next few years, the ASCE is planning on making a Master's degree the minimum required to become a licensed professional engineer!
From what I've heard, the only hard thing about most "ivy league" schools is getting in in the first place. Bush had connections, so that would have been easy (even discounting that he likely went to some grade-inflating "prep school").
And yet, you won't be able to find an EE job. I have three friends in the electrical engineering field; two with engineering degrees from Tech and one with an "engineering technology" degree from DeVry. The DeVry guy is doing on-site electrical stuff for Siemens, but the other two have jobs coding Java or something. Weird, eh?
BASIC.
(Okay, so it's an interpreter -- close enough! Besides, some versions of QBASIC could compile to stand-alone .EXEs.)
False. MSFanBoi2 wrote:
No you're not, if you care about the DMCA. DVDs contain DRM, making it illegal to rip them.
I don't disagree with your other points, but do you realize that CD albums actually have a good reason to cost more than DVD movies because they have more value (i.e., movies get watched a few times but music gets played over and over)?
You can't "leak" something to the Public Domain; only the copyright holder can release it (by explicitly stating so). Even if a third party publishes it, it's still copyrighted.
OpenOffice is a derivative of Star Office, and IBM Workplace is a derivative of OpenOffice (I don't think any of them are technically "forks" because they're continuing to share code). Otherwise, all the other things have entirely separate code bases.
You insensitive clod! Why would you assume I'm not?
...
(Okay, so you're right... but that's beside the point! I do have a girlfriend, and I wouldn't hesitate to grab her computer and upgrade from one Windows version to another.)
Bah! You've been brainwashed into believing Microsoft's bullshit! If you have a copy, then you have a copy -- and neither Microsoft nor anybody else can tell you what computer you're "allowed" to install your property on!
Retail and OEM are both valid, legal versions. The only things stopping you from using the OEM on the other computer are technical reasons, not legal ones.
Except that the obviousness of this is beside the point -- the real problem is that algorithms aren't [supposed to be] patentable to begin with!