There aren't many, but I think that Silence of the Lambs was both a faithful adaptation of the book and a good movie in its own right. It isn't nearly as difficult to handle or as long as the Lord of the Ring trilogy, but it was done well. There may be smaller compromises in it, but I don't think there were major ones.
I don't disagree with you - this is more my $0.02 than anything else.
5) You have to licence all of your previous work to the teacher or he/she won't promote the album he's/she's legally required to. 6) Some copier in Georgia (not the state, the country) will be making hundreds and thousands of copies and your teacher will send them a letter asking them to "please stop", which they will temporarily (until they pick themselves off of the floor from laughing so hard).
There's probably some more, but...
Remeber, there's a lesson here for all of us - only those who have lots of money and lots of lawyers are fully equipped to teach morals in the classroom. The lesson is a little more ironic considering the conduct of those paying for the lesson.
Sources:
5) (people who knew a Columbus band said this - don't have a reliable source) 6) Wired - about a year ago
Law is the basis for much of our society. The problem remains that when law and justice are divorced from one another, both are hurt. The laws become less meaningful, and have less power for those for whom they were effective (those who would only do the right thing in the absence of law); the lack of power of law over those people corrodes the moral framework and then others break the law as well, because the underlying morals have been irreparably altered. When justice is illegal, people are forced to choose between society and right, and become cut off from a great deal of what makes it possible for them to evaluate the rightness of their actions and those of others.
Drug laws have not been effective at stopping the flow or demand for drugs. They may have lowered the demand (Prohibition decreased alcohol consumption for a long time in the US) but at a large cost to noncombatants and at very little cost to those who actually sell and make the stuff. The buyers pay a larger cost than they probably should, and the ends of the laws aren't achieved. What is the point? To sacrifice a few to change the behavior of many might be OK (it seems to be a general crim. justice policy), but to sacrifice many for a policy which is failing does no one any good.
The RIAA's enforcement of copyright violation is disproportionate to the crime. People don't want crippled content. The standard responses don't seem to work (loss of sales justifies further draconian suits and DRM to preserve content). Reasonable standards of justice are not applicable here, and given the choice between the content-protection laws and what conditions people feel are just, laws will lose, either legally (repeal or modification of the laws) or illegally (large-scale copyright violation, cracking of content, etc.). Since copyright is important to our society, and the large-scale violations make both bad and good copyright harder to enforce, it seems to make sense to distinguish between controls that most people will support while preserving the right of content providers and ones that people don't support and will disobey; otherwise, the corrosive effective of the resultanat lawlessness will make all copyrights harder to enforce, to everyone's detriment.
Laws that do not conform to the sense of justice of many will be disobeyed, weakening the effects of the law on others. Bad laws ultimately will engender bad behavior, and a diminishment of the harm that law can inhibit. Making lots of criminals for a purpose a large number of people disagree with is not a formula for success, unless anarchy is "success".
In "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand) one of the important exchanges is about the use of law to control behavior. Bad laws decouple people's moral sense and intellect from analyzing their actions - they know that if they do what their mind tells them they will be criminals and enforce guilt upon themselves. Eventually when enough of what they feel they should do is illegal, they either decouple themselves from law and accede to their own wills or thet accede their wills to the state. While I disagree with much of the book, this seems like a sound concept. Civilization is an act of will. If laws force many to give up their will to the state, the state loses its life's blood. If the people ignore the laws, the state goes away. Laws that force this situation are bad and ultimately worse than fruitless - not only won't they work, but they will make it harder for reasonable laws to work. Making people criminals is a last resort to reason, not a first resort.
I think that content providers must have delusions of grandeur - they think that because they deign to make music and to pay to have it played on the radio that they have a divine right of profit. The oft-repeated (on slashdot) Heinlein quotation that businesses do not have the right to have the clock of history turned back or halted for their benefit is relevant here. The RIAA and MPAA don't understand that customers want to be able to use the material they pay for in a variety of ways and are unwilling to pay exorbitantly to do so. People don't want crippled content, not when it involves giving away their rights and guarantees only more expensive crippled content.
I think the RIAA hopes that this concession will make people believe in their reasonability and that it will allow them to return to a moral high ground they never had. The RIAA wants to institute further copyright control, and their insistence upon raising prices while decreasing the usability of their products infuriates their customers and makes them unwilling to support such measures. I think they believe that people will be only to happy to trade (temporarily) cheaper prices for usable content, when in fact I believe this is not a deal most people are willing to make.
As long as content providers and their trade organizations such the RIAA treat their customers as the enemy while trying to extract more money for less usable content from them, they will continue to lose money either to copying or to people refusing to buy their product. Admitting that they need to attract customers to stay alive requires an acknowledgement of lack of control as well as an acceptance of responsibility for their inability to sell crap as gold. It would presume that they are actually concerned with the needs of the consumers rather than their own desire for control and profit. I don't think the RIAA or its members are capable of that kind of acceptance of responsibility. It's much easier to blame someone else for your failures and go on forcing your will on your customers than to admit that your long-cherished desires are unattainable.
While you are correct, the police aren't out enforcing speed traps at $50,000 per ticket. Justice requires that the penalties be just, not just that the act being punished be wrong. Part of justice is proprtionality (the penalty for committing a crime should be in line with the consequences of the act). The violations that the RIAA is threatening to prosecute are unlikely to have cost them anywhere near the amounts they are suing for or attempting to extort from their targets. This doesn't meet proprtionality in any meaningful way.
Of course there are lots of other (legitimate) reasons for anger at the RIAA (reasons other than "they're taking my free music away") such as their unilateral rewriting of copyright law (and nearly unilateral modification of law with the DMCA), the intentional targeting of people by ability to pay rather than by damage to the record companies, and a business model which can be summarized as "Play music endlessly until your customers have no choice but to like it, sue a few so they don't copy your stuff, then restrict playability of your product and raise its prices and sue some more if your profits don't increase". What reasonable points the RIAA has in arguments over the control and use of their copyrighted material are lost in the tactics the RIAA has chosen to enforce those rights and the overly broad rights that the implementation gives the RIAA.
actually, it's more like blackmail (I don't think that it's the same as extortion) "We know you shared our files, so give us $50,000 or we'll make you live a miserable hell.." The people who posted files for sharing (probably) committed an illegal act, and so the RIAA uses the threat of prosecution to gain money. It has remarkable similarities to barratry as well - they might be able to argue that the prosecution isn't malicious but just in nature, but the "shock and awe" statement might put that into question.
As long as the RIAA has decided that they can unilaterally rewrite copyright law (along with software companies such as MS via DRM), they may as well figure that they can rewrite other parts of the civil and criminal code...oh wait, they already did that with the DMCA...or maybe even act as a private government without that pesky democracy thing or oversight, the fantasy of dinosaurs of all stripes. As long as the record companies and movie studios (the companies that tell the RIAA and MPAA what to do) can write legislation to their liking and help get it passed, suing their customers will continue to be a profitable business model for the RIAA and MPAA.
I like some of the music I hear on my (homogenized) radio station (my fault), but I find it harder to justify spending money on a CD if it's going into the pockets of record companies and their paid attack dogs. If the record companies shock their customers into submission, people might also remember that the record companies need their money more than they need the record companies. If I have to be intimidated to spend money on CDs, perhaps that isn't something I really need to spend my money on.
Actually, um, no, the statement wasn't changed for PC. The original statement is in the Declaration of Independence which (obviously) predated the Constitution.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness...
(from www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html)
I think your overall point (that the Constitution protects property rights) is correct, just not the last parenthetical phrase.
This specifically doesn't apply to trade secrets - trade secrets are kept for unlimited time unless someone spills the beans, in which case they're null and void. Also, the point of this article (of the Constitution) is to ensure that the author gets protection for his/her works in return for allowing others to use them AND build from them (science can't be advanced easily with an object that is a black box - if the mechanism of output isn't known, what the output means is unknown, even when the output is useful). Trade secrets thus don't seem to be covered by this article - only things like patent, trademark, and the like.
Please note though - IANACS (Constitutional scholar).
I think his major source is the large blue bunny rabbit that sits on his shoulder during crucial negotiations (or after large doses of whatever his illegal intoxicant of the day is). An alternative source not involving illegal drugs would be whatever he finds in the toilet after lunch. Miss Cleo after all would tell Darl what he wanted to hear, a probably coherent but wishful message, rather than what he has been spouting, which sounds like the ravings of someone receiving coded transmissions from the plate in his head.
I don't mind OSU, as I live near there and my girlfriend will be going there. However, the notion that OSU tuition will be close to free is not reasonable - considering the tuition caps got yanked and so increases on the order of 15-20% for frosh and 10% overall have occurred the last two years. I love OH state gov't.:( If you can get scholarships, the tuition increases will be easier to swallow. On the other hand, yearly costs are $14,000-$17,000 at OSU and $30-40K at MIT so....
I don't know how good OSU's CS program is; the engineering program requires special admisssion (which shouldn't be a problem if the other schools on your list are accessible but...) MIT CS programs were good but highly competitive in the early 1990's (when I went there) - they curved but the curves were centered lower in CS/EE than in other majors. This can be taken with a grain of salt - I didn't take CS classes (knowledge of them is 2nd/3rd hand) It was a neat place though.
Sorry - I didn't mean to imply the reason for opposition to gay marriage is bigotry. I believe that it is an attempt to gauge support for homosexuals - it correlates with societal nonacceptance for gays, but holding the opinion that gay marriage is wrong does not make one a bigot. Sorry if I implied so. I do not agree with the desire to force acceptance, but I think that it is part of the concept.
The last point is not completely accurate. Just because some people would choose the rights and duties of marriage remain as previous does not mean that women's rights don't contribute to the evolution of marriage. At minimum, the presence of those rights means that more people ask for things they previously would not have and the rules governing marriage change as a result.
What is "the natural state of affairs"? Both the original poster and you cite this as a justification for the state of marriage, yet presumably homosexuality came about by some natural process as well. What makes the historical institution of marriage a unique determinant of social health and future prosperity? (there must be data somewhere, but I don't know what it is or what its general acceptance is) This has the potential to be a feedback loop - social health and prosperity both depend to a significant degree on social mores, so using them as a justification for social mores could be flawed without hard evidence.
Ultimately, love is at best a necessary but not sufficient condition for a successful relationship. This is true for anyone. I don't think that desiring a homosexual marriage presupposes that love or physical attraction are the causes for the relationship, just as desiring marriage does not for heterosexuals. Banning homosexual marriage won't get rid of bad reasons to get married.
You mean, as opposed to the detrimental consequences now?
The significant (30-50% of marriages) number of divorces indicate that whatever the social idea of marriage is, it is not completely congruent with the legal definition of marriage. When most of the conceptual rules of the institution as well as the relevant laws for marriage were made, women did not have the power to determine rules and laws for marriage; only recently (100 yrs) have they had rights at all. The institution of marriage has been weakened more by negating the rights of a large portion of its participants than any other factor. The recent changes to marriage are partly a response to the newfound rights of women. There have been a variety of other significant changes over the history of marriage (divorce, dowry, age of consent) - marriage was able to change to accommodate the society in which it is established. If society wants the institution changed then it will do so; if not, then it won't. If there is popular support for gay marriage, then the institution, like lots of others, will change or become irrelevant to many.
If gay marriage is a social engineering project, I think that its purpose is to attempt to induce/compel tolerance for gay people by showing that they can live within a similar framework of law and culture. I don't think it can work that way, but support for gay marriage is certainly an indicator that society is willing to look at gay people without active hatred. I don't think the purpose of gay marriage is to change gay behavior, but to change heterosexual behavior towards gay people.
I believe that marriage should cover only certain types of relationships (long-term, monogamous ones or, at minimum, stable relationships with reasonable abilities to care for young), because of the likely cost to society and the moderate fit to historical standards, but I have a hard time believing that the concept of gay marriage (particularly in long-term monogomous relationships) will do any more violence to the concept of marriage than has already been done in recent history.
I wonder when the MPAA will require a 1-week NDA for viewers of first-run movies - instead of making a movie people want to see, you get a few suckers XXXXXXX consumers to view your movie and then let the money roll in until the NDA's expire.
begin{sarcasm} Yeah, that'll work. end{sarcasm}
Media companies insist on business plans designed to manage, optimize, and shovel crap when making a good movie would be easier - with good content, instead of managing response, your customers work at managing it for your benefit. Instead, the music and movie industries treat their paying customers as the enemy and are surprised when their customers are "disloyal".
Both the music and movie industries need to change or die. At this point, I don't care which.
Courtesy is a two-way street. If you want people to act reasonably towards you, then you must do the same. Sending hundreds, thousands, or more unrequested messages for products that are likely to be useless at best is not a reasonable act. The USPS made chain letters illegal because the letters cost resources (paid for in part by other users) that could instead be used for more constructive purposes; spam has the same effect, but on individuals, rather than a single entity. It costs people money and time to deal with material that does no one but spammers any good.
Since spammers insist on depriving legitimate users of their rights, and governments can't do much, why are spammers indignant about vigilantes? Spammers use the impunity of the absence of law to protect themselves, but then claim the presence of law to protect them when they get tagged. Spammers can't have it both ways. If the law doesn't apply to spammers, and they can use other people's email and personal data without their permission, then they are fair game to receive the same treatment. If there are rules and protections for spammers, then they have to play within those rules. You can't have it both ways. I don't want anyone to be hurt, but I can understand a good deal of the anger of people here, particularly since Slashdot has many of the people who have to spend their time protecting against, cleaning up after, and being victimized by spammers. You really shouldn't expect people to feel any differently.
If I went around to bars knocking over people's beers and yelling propaganda at them, eventually I would be arrested. If no police existed to do so, eventually I would probably get my butt kicked, and I wouldn't be suprised if some the patrons ganged up on me and showed me the errors of my ways. Why do you expect spammers (who operate in similar ways) not to be subject to the same rules of cause and effect in human behavior?
I can understand your opinion and appreciate your service to the homeless; however, without a committment to act to mitigate homelessness, this is just a bad idea. States don't have enough money already (nor do local gov'ts), and the federal gov't seems to have no desire to do anything substantive to better the state of homeless people (Clinton's "welfare reform" doesn't seem like a helpful act in that regard, and those before or after didn't do much either). If the welfare of the homeless is not a priority, then it's hard to believe that a system with significant potential for abuse is being instituted to advance that cause. If someone changes from an uncaring or cruel parent to a doting one when his/her child becomes famous, one is likely to doubt the motives for their change of heart.
Bottom line: this is reasonable in the presence of a committment to help homeless people, but in the absence of such a committment, the negative consequences are likely to outweigh the positive ones. If I indulge my cynical side, I would even say that the negative consequences (homeless people leaving the system and not receiving shelter or aid) might be the point of the tracking system; at minimum, the welfare of homeless people is probably not why this idea is being suggested or implemented.
Dear Darl,
Apparently you missed history. Didn't Abraham Lincoln say that it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt? I guess the silent majority that you're hoping exists is smarter than you are...or maybe they are just not smart enough to have figured out the complexity of the spoken word. If this is your legal team's best effort I'd advise hiring houseplants instead - at least they look nice, create oxygen, and occasionally make sense. Oh, BTW - it'd be a good idea for you to get some new undergarments so that when IBM crushes you like a bug, at least your mom can say you died with clean underwear on.
Interesting. Looks like senior VP Broughton is cashing out in a big way (30,000 shares sold in four transactions over two days). Also JF Hunsacker (don't think my spelling is correct) is listed as an employee and as a VP in different transactions on the same day - ?
A legitimate question to ask is if the SCO execs' sales patterns and granted options are consistent with previous behavior both at SCO and at other companies with similar stock runups. I don't know, but it's something to ask.
P.S. I have a fantasy video for SCO's new song, "FUD in an Elevator". It starts with an elevator handler saying "Hello, Mr. McBride. Going...down?" followed by maniacal laughter from the elevator walls and a look of wide-eyed fear in the grey-suited executive's face. Just wondering if this will be happening for real soon.
Spamming doesn't require multiple degrees - just a computer, some knowledge, and the lack of the above attributes. Besides, if he could have been a lawyer, he probably wouldn't be spamming; judging from other threads offtopic (SCO, etc.) law is becoming a growth industry - kind of like a tumor, but a profitable one.
Concur. There was also a case in VA (discussed in the 1st of the John Douglas non-fiction books) where a Latino man confessed to one (of at least 4 or 5) rape-murders. He didn't fit the profile, and was claimed to have an accomplice. Ultimately,another man (Timothy Spencer, I believe) was found guilty for the crimes and executed, while the original man was freed and given $119,000 by either VA or the local authorities.
People plead guilty or confess to crimes they haven't done. I don't know why, but it happens. That doesn't mean it did or didn't happen here (I didn't RTA) but it should be considered, particularly in a case where unusual (read unconstitutional) pressures are used to elicit a plea.
I assume that he's a spammer not because his dad was Jewish, but because he lost all credibility as a neo-Nazi when his fellow travelers found him out. Once that happened, he needed a job in which integrity, humanity, and credibility are not required attributes. Hence...he became a spammer.
The comment is more of an insult to neo-Nazis than Jewish people...how can anyone claim that the neo-Nazis are the cream of the gene pool (as they claim) if all that unemployed neo-Nazis can do is disperse spam? The comment should be taken not as an insult to Jews but as an insult to single-celled life everywhere.
In SCO's opinion, "don't trust open source software". I'm supposed to trust that from a company who has complained about "illegal" code but won't reveal the source of the complaint because the code might get fixed? I'm supposed to trust closed source from SCO because I can get a vendor who claims specious IP rights that I can't verify unless I give them money (and sign an NDA) and has a model based on extortion and stock manipulation? Am I supposed to trust software more from SCO's model or RMS's? SCO keeps making arguments about closed source, just not the ones they intended.
I had Sprint about 3-4 years ago. I live in Columbus, and couldn't get any signal with a StarTac. (It dropped 70-90% of my calls.) Sprint was unhelpful and said that it was a moderate coverage area (I think I know what low coverage is). Eventually, I bought a Samsung, and got good coverage everywhere. I droppeed Sprint because I didn't use it enough and because their prices per minute were high. In addition, the only way to get help from them (when I had them) was to call and say you were activating a new phone. I called for help two different times and was placed on an endless loop; other times it took 30-45 min. to get an actual person.
I have Verizon now and they're OK.
Just my two cents.
Slashdot Mirror
There aren't many, but I think that Silence of the Lambs was both a faithful adaptation of the book and a good movie in its own right. It isn't nearly as difficult to handle or as long as the Lord of the Ring trilogy, but it was done well. There may be smaller compromises in it, but I don't think there were major ones.
I don't disagree with you - this is more my $0.02 than anything else.
Do you see that blinking red light, Mr. McBride? That's your career dissipation light, and it's going full blast.
How about:
5) You have to licence all of your previous work to the teacher or he/she won't promote the album he's/she's legally required to.
6) Some copier in Georgia (not the state, the country) will be making hundreds and thousands of copies and your teacher will send them a letter asking them to "please stop", which they will temporarily (until they pick themselves off of the floor from laughing so hard).
There's probably some more, but...
Remeber, there's a lesson here for all of us - only those who have lots of money and lots of lawyers are fully equipped to teach morals in the classroom. The lesson is a little more ironic considering the conduct of those paying for the lesson.
Sources:
5) (people who knew a Columbus band said this - don't have a reliable source)
6) Wired - about a year ago
Law is the basis for much of our society. The problem remains that when law and justice are divorced from one another, both are hurt. The laws become less meaningful, and have less power for those for whom they were effective (those who would only do the right thing in the absence of law); the lack of power of law over those people corrodes the moral framework and then others break the law as well, because the underlying morals have been irreparably altered. When justice is illegal, people are forced to choose between society and right, and become cut off from a great deal of what makes it possible for them to evaluate the rightness of their actions and those of others.
Drug laws have not been effective at stopping the flow or demand for drugs. They may have lowered the demand (Prohibition decreased alcohol consumption for a long time in the US) but at a large cost to noncombatants and at very little cost to those who actually sell and make the stuff. The buyers pay a larger cost than they probably should, and the ends of the laws aren't achieved. What is the point? To sacrifice a few to change the behavior of many might be OK (it seems to be a general crim. justice policy), but to sacrifice many for a policy which is failing does no one any good.
The RIAA's enforcement of copyright violation is disproportionate to the crime. People don't want crippled content. The standard responses don't seem to work (loss of sales justifies further draconian suits and DRM to preserve content). Reasonable standards of justice are not applicable here, and given the choice between the content-protection laws and what conditions people feel are just, laws will lose, either legally (repeal or modification of the laws) or illegally (large-scale copyright violation, cracking of content, etc.). Since copyright is important to our society, and the large-scale violations make both bad and good copyright harder to enforce, it seems to make sense to distinguish between controls that most people will support while preserving the right of content providers and ones that people don't support and will disobey; otherwise, the corrosive effective of the resultanat lawlessness will make all copyrights harder to enforce, to everyone's detriment.
Laws that do not conform to the sense of justice of many will be disobeyed, weakening the effects of the law on others. Bad laws ultimately will engender bad behavior, and a diminishment of the harm that law can inhibit. Making lots of criminals for a purpose a large number of people disagree with is not a formula for success, unless anarchy is "success".
In "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand) one of the important exchanges is about the use of law to control behavior. Bad laws decouple people's moral sense and intellect from analyzing their actions - they know that if they do what their mind tells them they will be criminals and enforce guilt upon themselves. Eventually when enough of what they feel they should do is illegal, they either decouple themselves from law and accede to their own wills or thet accede their wills to the state. While I disagree with much of the book, this seems like a sound concept. Civilization is an act of will. If laws force many to give up their will to the state, the state loses its life's blood. If the people ignore the laws, the state goes away. Laws that force this situation are bad and ultimately worse than fruitless - not only won't they work, but they will make it harder for reasonable laws to work. Making people criminals is a last resort to reason, not a first resort.
I think that content providers must have delusions of grandeur - they think that because they deign to make music and to pay to have it played on the radio that they have a divine right of profit. The oft-repeated (on slashdot) Heinlein quotation that businesses do not have the right to have the clock of history turned back or halted for their benefit is relevant here. The RIAA and MPAA don't understand that customers want to be able to use the material they pay for in a variety of ways and are unwilling to pay exorbitantly to do so. People don't want crippled content, not when it involves giving away their rights and guarantees only more expensive crippled content.
I think the RIAA hopes that this concession will make people believe in their reasonability and that it will allow them to return to a moral high ground they never had. The RIAA wants to institute further copyright control, and their insistence upon raising prices while decreasing the usability of their products infuriates their customers and makes them unwilling to support such measures. I think they believe that people will be only to happy to trade (temporarily) cheaper prices for usable content, when in fact I believe this is not a deal most people are willing to make.
As long as content providers and their trade organizations such the RIAA treat their customers as the enemy while trying to extract more money for less usable content from them, they will continue to lose money either to copying or to people refusing to buy their product. Admitting that they need to attract customers to stay alive requires an acknowledgement of lack of control as well as an acceptance of responsibility for their inability to sell crap as gold. It would presume that they are actually concerned with the needs of the consumers rather than their own desire for control and profit. I don't think the RIAA or its members are capable of that kind of acceptance of responsibility. It's much easier to blame someone else for your failures and go on forcing your will on your customers than to admit that your long-cherished desires are unattainable.
While you are correct, the police aren't out enforcing speed traps at $50,000 per ticket. Justice requires that the penalties be just, not just that the act being punished be wrong. Part of justice is proprtionality (the penalty for committing a crime should be in line with the consequences of the act). The violations that the RIAA is threatening to prosecute are unlikely to have cost them anywhere near the amounts they are suing for or attempting to extort from their targets. This doesn't meet proprtionality in any meaningful way.
Of course there are lots of other (legitimate) reasons for anger at the RIAA (reasons other than "they're taking my free music away") such as their unilateral rewriting of copyright law (and nearly unilateral modification of law with the DMCA), the intentional targeting of people by ability to pay rather than by damage to the record companies, and a business model which can be summarized as "Play music endlessly until your customers have no choice but to like it, sue a few so they don't copy your stuff, then restrict playability of your product and raise its prices and sue some more if your profits don't increase". What reasonable points the RIAA has in arguments over the control and use of their copyrighted material are lost in the tactics the RIAA has chosen to enforce those rights and the overly broad rights that the implementation gives the RIAA.
actually, it's more like blackmail (I don't think that it's the same as extortion) "We know you shared our files, so give us $50,000 or we'll make you live a miserable hell.." The people who posted files for sharing (probably) committed an illegal act, and so the RIAA uses the threat of prosecution to gain money. It has remarkable similarities to barratry as well - they might be able to argue that the prosecution isn't malicious but just in nature, but the "shock and awe" statement might put that into question.
As long as the RIAA has decided that they can unilaterally rewrite copyright law (along with software companies such as MS via DRM), they may as well figure that they can rewrite other parts of the civil and criminal code...oh wait, they already did that with the DMCA...or maybe even act as a private government without that pesky democracy thing or oversight, the fantasy of dinosaurs of all stripes. As long as the record companies and movie studios (the companies that tell the RIAA and MPAA what to do) can write legislation to their liking and help get it passed, suing their customers will continue to be a profitable business model for the RIAA and MPAA.
I like some of the music I hear on my (homogenized) radio station (my fault), but I find it harder to justify spending money on a CD if it's going into the pockets of record companies and their paid attack dogs. If the record companies shock their customers into submission, people might also remember that the record companies need their money more than they need the record companies. If I have to be intimidated to spend money on CDs, perhaps that isn't something I really need to spend my money on.
Actually, um, no, the statement wasn't changed for PC. The original statement is in the Declaration of Independence which (obviously) predated the Constitution.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness...
(from www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html)
I think your overall point (that the Constitution protects property rights) is correct, just not the last parenthetical phrase.
This specifically doesn't apply to trade secrets - trade secrets are kept for unlimited time unless someone spills the beans, in which case they're null and void. Also, the point of this article (of the Constitution) is to ensure that the author gets protection for his/her works in return for allowing others to use them AND build from them (science can't be advanced easily with an object that is a black box - if the mechanism of output isn't known, what the output means is unknown, even when the output is useful). Trade secrets thus don't seem to be covered by this article - only things like patent, trademark, and the like.
Please note though - IANACS (Constitutional scholar).
I think his major source is the large blue bunny rabbit that sits on his shoulder during crucial negotiations (or after large doses of whatever his illegal intoxicant of the day is). An alternative source not involving illegal drugs would be whatever he finds in the toilet after lunch. Miss Cleo after all would tell Darl what he wanted to hear, a probably coherent but wishful message, rather than what he has been spouting, which sounds like the ravings of someone receiving coded transmissions from the plate in his head.
I don't mind OSU, as I live near there and my girlfriend will be going there. However, the notion that OSU tuition will be close to free is not reasonable - considering the tuition caps got yanked and so increases on the order of 15-20% for frosh and 10% overall have occurred the last two years. I love OH state gov't. :( If you can get scholarships, the tuition increases will be easier to swallow. On the other hand, yearly costs are $14,000-$17,000 at OSU and $30-40K at MIT so....
I don't know how good OSU's CS program is; the engineering program requires special admisssion (which shouldn't be a problem if the other schools on your list are accessible but...) MIT CS programs were good but highly competitive in the early 1990's (when I went there) - they curved but the curves were centered lower in CS/EE than in other majors. This can be taken with a grain of salt - I didn't take CS classes (knowledge of them is 2nd/3rd hand) It was a neat place though.
Sorry - I should have left it out or left the attribution open - initially I thought that it was Benjamin Franklin so....
sorry. I haven't used it a long time. Of course, that means I shouldn't have used it at all but...
Sorry - I didn't mean to imply the reason for opposition to gay marriage is bigotry. I believe that it is an attempt to gauge support for homosexuals - it correlates with societal nonacceptance for gays, but holding the opinion that gay marriage is wrong does not make one a bigot. Sorry if I implied so. I do not agree with the desire to force acceptance, but I think that it is part of the concept.
The last point is not completely accurate. Just because some people would choose the rights and duties of marriage remain as previous does not mean that women's rights don't contribute to the evolution of marriage. At minimum, the presence of those rights means that more people ask for things they previously would not have and the rules governing marriage change as a result.
What is "the natural state of affairs"? Both the original poster and you cite this as a justification for the state of marriage, yet presumably homosexuality came about by some natural process as well. What makes the historical institution of marriage a unique determinant of social health and future prosperity? (there must be data somewhere, but I don't know what it is or what its general acceptance is) This has the potential to be a feedback loop - social health and prosperity both depend to a significant degree on social mores, so using them as a justification for social mores could be flawed without hard evidence.
Ultimately, love is at best a necessary but not sufficient condition for a successful relationship. This is true for anyone. I don't think that desiring a homosexual marriage presupposes that love or physical attraction are the causes for the relationship, just as desiring marriage does not for heterosexuals. Banning homosexual marriage won't get rid of bad reasons to get married.
You mean, as opposed to the detrimental consequences now?
The significant (30-50% of marriages) number of divorces indicate that whatever the social idea of marriage is, it is not completely congruent with the legal definition of marriage. When most of the conceptual rules of the institution as well as the relevant laws for marriage were made, women did not have the power to determine rules and laws for marriage; only recently (100 yrs) have they had rights at all. The institution of marriage has been weakened more by negating the rights of a large portion of its participants than any other factor. The recent changes to marriage are partly a response to the newfound rights of women. There have been a variety of other significant changes over the history of marriage (divorce, dowry, age of consent) - marriage was able to change to accommodate the society in which it is established. If society wants the institution changed then it will do so; if not, then it won't. If there is popular support for gay marriage, then the institution, like lots of others, will change or become irrelevant to many.
If gay marriage is a social engineering project, I think that its purpose is to attempt to induce/compel tolerance for gay people by showing that they can live within a similar framework of law and culture. I don't think it can work that way, but support for gay marriage is certainly an indicator that society is willing to look at gay people without active hatred. I don't think the purpose of gay marriage is to change gay behavior, but to change heterosexual behavior towards gay people.
I believe that marriage should cover only certain types of relationships (long-term, monogamous ones or, at minimum, stable relationships with reasonable abilities to care for young), because of the likely cost to society and the moderate fit to historical standards, but I have a hard time believing that the concept of gay marriage (particularly in long-term monogomous relationships) will do any more violence to the concept of marriage than has already been done in recent history.
I wonder when the MPAA will require a 1-week NDA for viewers of first-run movies - instead of making a movie people want to see, you get a few suckers XXXXXXX consumers to view your movie and then let the money roll in until the NDA's expire.
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Yeah, that'll work.
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Media companies insist on business plans designed to manage, optimize, and shovel crap when making a good movie would be easier - with good content, instead of managing response, your customers work at managing it for your benefit. Instead, the music and movie industries treat their paying customers as the enemy and are surprised when their customers are "disloyal".
Both the music and movie industries need to change or die. At this point, I don't care which.
Courtesy is a two-way street. If you want people to act reasonably towards you, then you must do the same. Sending hundreds, thousands, or more unrequested messages for products that are likely to be useless at best is not a reasonable act. The USPS made chain letters illegal because the letters cost resources (paid for in part by other users) that could instead be used for more constructive purposes; spam has the same effect, but on individuals, rather than a single entity. It costs people money and time to deal with material that does no one but spammers any good.
Since spammers insist on depriving legitimate users of their rights, and governments can't do much, why are spammers indignant about vigilantes? Spammers use the impunity of the absence of law to protect themselves, but then claim the presence of law to protect them when they get tagged. Spammers can't have it both ways. If the law doesn't apply to spammers, and they can use other people's email and personal data without their permission, then they are fair game to receive the same treatment. If there are rules and protections for spammers, then they have to play within those rules. You can't have it both ways. I don't want anyone to be hurt, but I can understand a good deal of the anger of people here, particularly since Slashdot has many of the people who have to spend their time protecting against, cleaning up after, and being victimized by spammers. You really shouldn't expect people to feel any differently.
If I went around to bars knocking over people's beers and yelling propaganda at them, eventually I would be arrested. If no police existed to do so, eventually I would probably get my butt kicked, and I wouldn't be suprised if some the patrons ganged up on me and showed me the errors of my ways. Why do you expect spammers (who operate in similar ways) not to be subject to the same rules of cause and effect in human behavior?
I can understand your opinion and appreciate your service to the homeless; however, without a committment to act to mitigate homelessness, this is just a bad idea. States don't have enough money already (nor do local gov'ts), and the federal gov't seems to have no desire to do anything substantive to better the state of homeless people (Clinton's "welfare reform" doesn't seem like a helpful act in that regard, and those before or after didn't do much either). If the welfare of the homeless is not a priority, then it's hard to believe that a system with significant potential for abuse is being instituted to advance that cause. If someone changes from an uncaring or cruel parent to a doting one when his/her child becomes famous, one is likely to doubt the motives for their change of heart.
Bottom line: this is reasonable in the presence of a committment to help homeless people, but in the absence of such a committment, the negative consequences are likely to outweigh the positive ones. If I indulge my cynical side, I would even say that the negative consequences (homeless people leaving the system and not receiving shelter or aid) might be the point of the tracking system; at minimum, the welfare of homeless people is probably not why this idea is being suggested or implemented.
Dear Darl, Apparently you missed history. Didn't Abraham Lincoln say that it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt? I guess the silent majority that you're hoping exists is smarter than you are...or maybe they are just not smart enough to have figured out the complexity of the spoken word. If this is your legal team's best effort I'd advise hiring houseplants instead - at least they look nice, create oxygen, and occasionally make sense. Oh, BTW - it'd be a good idea for you to get some new undergarments so that when IBM crushes you like a bug, at least your mom can say you died with clean underwear on.
Interesting. Looks like senior VP Broughton is cashing out in a big way (30,000 shares sold in four transactions over two days). Also JF Hunsacker (don't think my spelling is correct) is listed as an employee and as a VP in different transactions on the same day - ?
A legitimate question to ask is if the SCO execs' sales patterns and granted options are consistent with previous behavior both at SCO and at other companies with similar stock runups. I don't know, but it's something to ask.
P.S. I have a fantasy video for SCO's new song, "FUD in an Elevator". It starts with an elevator handler saying "Hello, Mr. McBride. Going...down?" followed by maniacal laughter from the elevator walls and a look of wide-eyed fear in the grey-suited executive's face. Just wondering if this will be happening for real soon.
Spamming doesn't require multiple degrees - just a computer, some knowledge, and the lack of the above attributes. Besides, if he could have been a lawyer, he probably wouldn't be spamming; judging from other threads offtopic (SCO, etc.) law is becoming a growth industry - kind of like a tumor, but a profitable one.
Concur. There was also a case in VA (discussed in the 1st of the John Douglas non-fiction books) where a Latino man confessed to one (of at least 4 or 5) rape-murders. He didn't fit the profile, and was claimed to have an accomplice. Ultimately,another man (Timothy Spencer, I believe) was found guilty for the crimes and executed, while the original man was freed and given $119,000 by either VA or the local authorities.
People plead guilty or confess to crimes they haven't done. I don't know why, but it happens. That doesn't mean it did or didn't happen here (I didn't RTA) but it should be considered, particularly in a case where unusual (read unconstitutional) pressures are used to elicit a plea.
I assume that he's a spammer not because his dad was Jewish, but because he lost all credibility as a neo-Nazi when his fellow travelers found him out. Once that happened, he needed a job in which integrity, humanity, and credibility are not required attributes. Hence...he became a spammer. The comment is more of an insult to neo-Nazis than Jewish people...how can anyone claim that the neo-Nazis are the cream of the gene pool (as they claim) if all that unemployed neo-Nazis can do is disperse spam? The comment should be taken not as an insult to Jews but as an insult to single-celled life everywhere.
In SCO's opinion, "don't trust open source software". I'm supposed to trust that from a company who has complained about "illegal" code but won't reveal the source of the complaint because the code might get fixed? I'm supposed to trust closed source from SCO because I can get a vendor who claims specious IP rights that I can't verify unless I give them money (and sign an NDA) and has a model based on extortion and stock manipulation? Am I supposed to trust software more from SCO's model or RMS's? SCO keeps making arguments about closed source, just not the ones they intended.
I had Sprint about 3-4 years ago. I live in Columbus, and couldn't get any signal with a StarTac. (It dropped 70-90% of my calls.) Sprint was unhelpful and said that it was a moderate coverage area (I think I know what low coverage is). Eventually, I bought a Samsung, and got good coverage everywhere. I droppeed Sprint because I didn't use it enough and because their prices per minute were high. In addition, the only way to get help from them (when I had them) was to call and say you were activating a new phone. I called for help two different times and was placed on an endless loop; other times it took 30-45 min. to get an actual person. I have Verizon now and they're OK. Just my two cents.