- It provides monitary incentives to commit or arrange acts of terrorism or other political acts. We could see corporations become (even more) involved in overthrowing foreign governments to increase their profits.
- It provides an easy method for actual terrorists to misdirect intelligence agencies by creating false likelihoods of certain events or making the events they're planning less likely.
- You analogies don't apply because those futures are natural disasters and can't be affected by those "betting" on the market. There is no ability to provide artifical feedback or perturbations in the creation of natural disasters, but there is in this so-called "policy analysis market".
Wouldn't it be more of a way to create -- and then catch -- terrorists? Would they actually have commited the act they bet on if they hadn't bet on it in the first place?
Sounds like a typical U.S. government ploy: create the conditions for havoc to occur, catch those performing the havoc, and claim that they are doing better at pretecting everyone since they are catching more people.
While this is certainly off topic, that's the biggest load of crap I've heard in a long time. If gays should be banned from marriage because "Marriage is intended for the procreation of children", then all couples incapable of procreating should be banned in law. This includes infertile men and women, women beyond menopause, men with vasectomies, and women with tubal ligations. It should also be illegal to marry with the intent to not have children, if indeed that is the purpose of marriage as you say.
By the way, the "rest of the world" is becoming more liberal, not less. Gay marriages are becoming far more common outside the U.S. For example, they are now completely legal in Ontario as of a few months ago, and the Canadian government is drafting law to make it legal throughout Canada.
1. I might agree with you if the tech simply said "Check that the cable is properly connected" as a first check. But he wasn't asking to check the connection, he was suggesting the cable was the wrong type/quality for the application. And it wasn't a first step, it was after noting that only odd transponders were being received after a lost signal from a storm. Given these symptoms, his database suggested it was a cabling problem.
2. Checking cabling on a satellite system is certainly not the "easiest" fix. I'd have to pull out a 200+ lb cabinet from the wall and climb in behind. Outside I'd have to unscrew the tip and pull it out to check the connection. Harder, if the dish location required a ladder. Checking the setup transponder setup I found takes about 30 seconds top, if you know it's there. It would be much faster.
By that argument, it should be even cheaper if they don't hire any tech support at all, which is about as useful.
True that their database was the biggest problem, but that still doesn't excuse the tech from not understanding the simple idea that bad cables are not likely to allow some channels through perfectly and others not at all.
And yes, occasionally the "impossible" cause can be the correct one, but is should be last on the list, not first.
The answer is yes. Right now you have two levels of idiots -- those who need tech support and those who provide tech support. It's a case right now of the blind leading the blind. An actual geek who knows what they're doing could put the current tech support shops out of business.
From an actual call from my wife and later me (both engineers):
Wife: Our channels went out during a storm and we're only getting about half of them now.
Tech: Turn off your receiver, pull out the SmartCard, wait 10 seconds, reinsert it and turn it on.
Wife: I already did that, it didn't work.
Tech: It's probably the cabling.
Wife: How? We're getting half the channels perfectly clear. In fact, it's only the even transponder channels that aren't working.
Tech: According to my database, it's probably the cables. Do you know if you have RG6 cables?
Wife: I don't know, my husband installed it.
Tech: Have your husband call us back when he gets home.
When I got home, I called. While on hold for about 15 minutes, I surfed through the onscreen setup and came to a page that listed satellite and transponders. Everything was X'ed out except one satellite was listed "Transponders: Odd". I ran the "Check Switch" option and it updated with two satellites and both odd and even transponders. Everything worked fine.
What kind of moron, or database, thinks the cables are the problem when half the channels are perfect? Dumbasses! They don't even know their own system setup or even basic electronics debugging.
Although I found the responses generally good, I did find some flaws in reasoning and proof of paradoxes within the law.
1. In #1 he refers to a small (10 person) company who's software was "pirated" and available online, and stated "anyone thinks that piracy does not affect everyday people trying to succeed in business, they need look no further". Hidden here was an assumption that the pirated copies hurt their business, without proof. Perhaps many people found their software, tried it, and bought it (or future versions) for personal or business use. I did this with Matlab (learned on a pirated version years ago, became dependent and skilled at it, taught it to others at my company, and convinced my company to buy 3-4 licenses earning Mathworks $10K-$20).
2. Answers #3 and #7 provide proof of a paradox within the law, and confirm a common complaint. There are at least two legal uses of copying, or circumventing copy-protection for the sake of copying: fair use or expired copyright. However, in #3 he points out that "trafficking" tools that can circumvent copy-protection is illegal, period. But in #7 he also states it is not a violation of these rights to create uncopyable material.
This leads to the paradox that you are allowed to circumvent copy-protection in some cases, but no tools can be made available to do so. Hence merely creating copy-protected material is a de facto removal of our rights because, while you are allowed to circumvent them in the above instances, the tools to circumvent them are illegal.
In other words, by what method can one circumvent the copy-protection for fair use or expired copyright? Does everybody have to write their own tools from scratch (and thus avoiding the "trafficking" part)?
In this context, he seems to be talking about Fair Use as a legal defense for copying, not a right that can be exercised.
I occasionally use WMA, reluctantly. I have a Nomad II which only supports MP3 and WMA. If I want more songs on the card (64 MB), I use WMA since it does sound better than MP3 at lower bitrates.
Got my fingers crossed for Ogg Vorbis support sometime soon though.
> You cannot have a "little" freedom, you either have it or you don't.
Huh? Rights and freedoms are rarely absolutes. The right to free speech is restricted in many cases, such as hate speech, or yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre, or joking about bombs at an airport. The question is whether the restrictions are reasonable or not. In the case of buymusic.com, most would say they're too restrictive. In the case of iTMS, many seem to think they're reasonable. Apparently, you think they are still to restrictive, and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.
You forgot to mention the canal, the greenbelt, the recreational pathways everywhere, and the world's longest skating rink.
I live in the middle of the city and from my house I could bike or in-line skate for 30 minutes to university (in the city core) all the way through the woods on a paved pathway without a car in sight (except for occasional street crossings). Now I bike 30 minutes the other way to an industrial park in the suburbs (north Kanata) and I still take a pathway through the woods with no cars in sight. Not too many cities you can do that in.
Slashdot Mirror
- It provides monitary incentives to commit or arrange acts of terrorism or other political acts. We could see corporations become (even more) involved in overthrowing foreign governments to increase their profits.
- It provides an easy method for actual terrorists to misdirect intelligence agencies by creating false likelihoods of certain events or making the events they're planning less likely.
- You analogies don't apply because those futures are natural disasters and can't be affected by those "betting" on the market. There is no ability to provide artifical feedback or perturbations in the creation of natural disasters, but there is in this so-called "policy analysis market".
Sounds like a typical U.S. government ploy: create the conditions for havoc to occur, catch those performing the havoc, and claim that they are doing better at pretecting everyone since they are catching more people.
By the way, the "rest of the world" is becoming more liberal, not less. Gay marriages are becoming far more common outside the U.S. For example, they are now completely legal in Ontario as of a few months ago, and the Canadian government is drafting law to make it legal throughout Canada.
1. I might agree with you if the tech simply said "Check that the cable is properly connected" as a first check. But he wasn't asking to check the connection, he was suggesting the cable was the wrong type/quality for the application. And it wasn't a first step, it was after noting that only odd transponders were being received after a lost signal from a storm. Given these symptoms, his database suggested it was a cabling problem.
2. Checking cabling on a satellite system is certainly not the "easiest" fix. I'd have to pull out a 200+ lb cabinet from the wall and climb in behind. Outside I'd have to unscrew the tip and pull it out to check the connection. Harder, if the dish location required a ladder. Checking the setup transponder setup I found takes about 30 seconds top, if you know it's there. It would be much faster.
True that their database was the biggest problem, but that still doesn't excuse the tech from not understanding the simple idea that bad cables are not likely to allow some channels through perfectly and others not at all.
And yes, occasionally the "impossible" cause can be the correct one, but is should be last on the list, not first.
From an actual call from my wife and later me (both engineers):
Wife: Our channels went out during a storm and we're only getting about half of them now.
Tech: Turn off your receiver, pull out the SmartCard, wait 10 seconds, reinsert it and turn it on.
Wife: I already did that, it didn't work.
Tech: It's probably the cabling.
Wife: How? We're getting half the channels perfectly clear. In fact, it's only the even transponder channels that aren't working.
Tech: According to my database, it's probably the cables. Do you know if you have RG6 cables?
Wife: I don't know, my husband installed it.
Tech: Have your husband call us back when he gets home.
When I got home, I called. While on hold for about 15 minutes, I surfed through the onscreen setup and came to a page that listed satellite and transponders. Everything was X'ed out except one satellite was listed "Transponders: Odd". I ran the "Check Switch" option and it updated with two satellites and both odd and even transponders. Everything worked fine.
What kind of moron, or database, thinks the cables are the problem when half the channels are perfect? Dumbasses! They don't even know their own system setup or even basic electronics debugging.
1. In #1 he refers to a small (10 person) company who's software was "pirated" and available online, and stated "anyone thinks that piracy does not affect everyday people trying to succeed in business, they need look no further". Hidden here was an assumption that the pirated copies hurt their business, without proof. Perhaps many people found their software, tried it, and bought it (or future versions) for personal or business use. I did this with Matlab (learned on a pirated version years ago, became dependent and skilled at it, taught it to others at my company, and convinced my company to buy 3-4 licenses earning Mathworks $10K-$20).
2. Answers #3 and #7 provide proof of a paradox within the law, and confirm a common complaint. There are at least two legal uses of copying, or circumventing copy-protection for the sake of copying: fair use or expired copyright. However, in #3 he points out that "trafficking" tools that can circumvent copy-protection is illegal, period. But in #7 he also states it is not a violation of these rights to create uncopyable material.
This leads to the paradox that you are allowed to circumvent copy-protection in some cases, but no tools can be made available to do so. Hence merely creating copy-protected material is a de facto removal of our rights because, while you are allowed to circumvent them in the above instances, the tools to circumvent them are illegal.
In other words, by what method can one circumvent the copy-protection for fair use or expired copyright? Does everybody have to write their own tools from scratch (and thus avoiding the "trafficking" part)?
In this context, he seems to be talking about Fair Use as a legal defense for copying, not a right that can be exercised.
Got my fingers crossed for Ogg Vorbis support sometime soon though.
> You cannot have a "little" freedom, you either have it or you don't. Huh? Rights and freedoms are rarely absolutes. The right to free speech is restricted in many cases, such as hate speech, or yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre, or joking about bombs at an airport. The question is whether the restrictions are reasonable or not. In the case of buymusic.com, most would say they're too restrictive. In the case of iTMS, many seem to think they're reasonable. Apparently, you think they are still to restrictive, and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.
You forgot to mention the canal, the greenbelt, the recreational pathways everywhere, and the world's longest skating rink. I live in the middle of the city and from my house I could bike or in-line skate for 30 minutes to university (in the city core) all the way through the woods on a paved pathway without a car in sight (except for occasional street crossings). Now I bike 30 minutes the other way to an industrial park in the suburbs (north Kanata) and I still take a pathway through the woods with no cars in sight. Not too many cities you can do that in.