There's precedent with building codes. They're both law and copyrighted. And building codes aren't an obscure part of law - you essentially cannot get a permit to build anything without you (or your contractor) knowing the building code).
Exactly. If they advertised it as a 376kbit connection or 7x as fast as a modem (376kbit used 24/7 both ways comes out to a bit under 250 GB/31 days) then I wouldn't have any problem with it.
Then why were the penalties recently doubled? The part of the law governing statutory penalties is less than a decade old.
My opinion is that they (media companies) are looking out for number one, and they've paid enough bribes (ie., lobbying) to make sure that they get their way.
If you put warning labels on everything, then people won't take the warning labels seriously. I recently saw the labels in boxes of galvanized steel fasteners. Somehow I doubt that a chunk of steel and zinc is going to give me cancer if I come in contact with it.
Keep the warning labels for the real dangers such as cigarettes, asbestos, hydrochloric acid, lye, gasoline, and other truly dangerous items.
PS: The 'cover you ass' warnings placed on most consumer items cause the same problem. It might protect the company from lawsuits, but it also means that important warnings get ignored.
The same word in the same language probably lights up slightly different parts of the brain in different people. My understanding is that this method is only good for mind-reading the brain the computer has been trained on.
Going from 4% to 20% U235 is far easier than going from.7% to 4%. Not only are fewer processing machines needed for your train, but you're processing a far more concentrated stream, so the machines can be smaller. Going up to 90% is again even easier than the 4% to 20% step.
There's a reason why natural uranium resources (which are fairly abundant) don't need even minimal security while uranium stockpiles are (or should be) tightly guarded.
Normally I would agree, but in this case it's the sincerest form of hypocrisy. Whatever corporation runs the olympics is notorious for it's heavy-handed approach to IP, so one would expect them to respect others' IP to the letter. That they don't is being quite hypocritical.
A 100 HP gasoline engine needs about 400W of fuel flow to make 100W of extra electrical power. That comes out to about 1 gallon per 90 hours of operation.
While it might be essentially unmeasurable in your fuel bill, so is a single 100W bulb in your electric bill. It doesn't mean that it doesn't count.
How are we so sure that advances in computers will continue at such a rapid pace. Computer miniaturization is hitting against fundamental quantum-mechanical limits and it's crazy to expect 2008-2028 to have progress quit as rapid as 1988-2008.
Short of major breakthroughs on the software end, I don't expect AI to be able to pass a generalized Turing Test anytime soon, and I'm pretty certain the hardware end isn't going to advance enough to brute-force our way through.
Those subsidies are on the way out with the recent sustained rise in farm prices. Also, the areas put aside are generally the most marginal and erosion-prone land. Putting it into cultivation of row crops might not be the wisest use of it in the long term.
As far as food deprivation goes, it's already being felt around the world thanks to the markets. The prices of most foods has gone up. The effect personally has been quite negative (the extra amount spent on the ~40 gallons petrol equivalent of food I eat is much more than what I save on the 20-40 gallons of petrol I use as fuel each year (all of it indirectly)). If I'm feeling it here in the USA, I'm sure that people in poorer countries are feeling it a lot worse, and a decent number of people have been pushed from marginally fed to starving or adequately fed to marginally fed.
My understanding is that the creativity bar is so low that essentially everything passes it. I've seen nautical charts copied verbatim from the US government and with no aesthetic changes with a copyright mark on it. Databases are also routinely copyrighted.
The creativity part is best ignored. It's so restricted as to be essentially non-existant.
Listen to yourself. You just said that big business is protecting its interests. Big business is the epitome of the ruling class and it's interests are indeed class interests. Also, as is the case for anything worth fighting over, what benefits their class hurts my class.
And yes, it is part of a long running struggle that has been unfolding for centuries, with my class generally almost always being on the losing end, no matter what the system of government.
Airships will never be as efficient as sea vessels because of their enormous bulk/ton carried and their much higher speeds. The capacity of a large airship (Hindenburg sized) is on the order of 100 tons. A large cargo ship might carry 100,000 tons.
OTOH, airships, if powered at low speeds, could be more efficient than airplanes. I doubt they'll be practical for anything other than niche applications though, on account of their very high capital costs.
"Nearly all of Nintendo's AAA titles do not deal with violence," Nearly every Nintendo title deals with violence, as does nearly every video game. Mario has it. Zelda even has it. In both of those game series thousands of people (or anthropomorphic characters) die.
Perhaps the blood isn't there, but it would be a stretch to call Nintendo titles non-violent.
Those aren't serious allegations. These are run of the mill things. Who doesn't fudge budgets? Who doesn't use their position to advance themselves or their relatives (ie., nepotism)? Who doesn't spy on their employees (ie., read employee email or go hunting for personal webpages)? I'm not sure what the Open Meeting Act is, but if it's anything like the Freedom of Information Act, who follows that to the letter?
The thing is, unless these administrators are angels (and they're probably human, not angel), the allegations are probably true. These are things people of average moral character do on a normal basis. People of good moral character usually don't do this, but then again, I doubt they'd make it into a management position. Management usually goes to 'yes' people, not people with strong morals.
I'm outraged now that I know about it. I always assumed that the error margin was set by the number of significant digits. If a product said 1 lb (454g), I expected it to fall between 453.5g and 454.5g. Not having a balance to measure with, I have just taken this on faith.
A 20% error is outrageous. Even food packed by hand can be within 1% error with a little care.
If I can get my hands on a decent balance, I certainly intend to do some measuring.
Having noise levels not vary too much is a great help when listening in an environment where there is noise (like frequent airplanes or machinery) or you must minimize your own noise production (you are not single). If the noise varies greatly, you will either won't be able to hear the quiet parts or you will be disturbing people during the loud parts.
I've noticed this in a comparison between a cartoon (very little dynamic range) and Star Trek (substantial dynamic range, though less than a normal movie). I can find a setting for the cartoon where I hear everything yet get no complaints, while it is impossible to do so with Star Trek.
There also are benefits to a wide dynamic range, primarily in the quality of the entertainment, but it is far from one sided.
PS: In nature, we were not stacked up 20,000 to a square mile (NYC average). Also, in nature, we had to produce all of our sound manually, which meant we made a heck of a lot less noise pollution than there is in modern society.
I was talking about computer servers, where many tradeoffs can be done between software and hardware. Giving up a home server (massive energy hog for the services rendered) is a lot easier than giving up a primary PC. Likewise, it is much easier for a company to improve its software and buy less servers than to make do with fewer PCs.
PS: Probably the way with the least negative side effects to improve efficiency would be a blanket tax on all dirty, nonrenewable, or almost fully developed energy sources (in my opinion: coal, oil, natural gas, peat, bitumen, oil shale, geothermal, nuclear fission, hydropower). Minor energy users (such as computers) will be lightly taxed, while energy hogs (such as airlines, furnaces, autos, heavy industry, and ACs) will be heavily taxed.
Not having a computer is better in terms of energy demand than even having a very efficient computer. Same for the hybrid car. For this reason I find these tax breaks perverse.
Giving tax breaks for efficient items penalizes those who conserve the most by not even having the item or by using less. A business that invests money into writing more efficient software and using less servers should not be penalized vis-a-vis a business that invests the money into more efficient servers.
Those stolen CDs would be legally authorized copies. While it would be petty theft (or whatever theft of $1,000 is) and selling stolen goods, it would be perfectly okay from a copyright perspective.
Would you consider Key Lay a counterfeiter because he stole money from people?
Funny you mention it. Overall Americans are not a sharing people, and it extends to how we teach children. I've been witness to quite a number of situations where the parent(s) are more concerned about the kid losing her/his toy (often $1 or less) than them sharing it.
I'm not so sure about that. If the CC-license is anything like the GPL or BSD licenses, they claim that the issuer is not responsible for infringements of other rights and that it is up to the licensee to do determine if use of the material would be legal based on their local laws. Patents are the most common issue, but I don't see why model release would be any different.
There is a difference between saying "I copyleft my rights under copyright, including those restricting commercial usage of my work." and saying "I assert that the following content is commercial usable for all purposes." The former statement seems more logical, especially considering that CC-licenses deal with copyright.
In such a case, it is Virgin or their contractors that are at fault.
A 27 yacht that I know of gets almost 10 mpg using a 25+ year old auxiliary motor. Mpg is heavily dependant on the speed. If the boat is below the hull speed (perhaps 4 knots at that length?), a few horsepower is all that is needed and fuel consumption is far below 1 gallon/hour. Boats that are plowing or planing take far more fuel to power and require far greater engine power, despite the much lower weight of motor yachts vs. sailing yachts.
So going 4000 miles using 2000 gallons isn't much of an accomplishment in and of itself, though I must say the speed is impressive.
The problem is that there aren't a gazillion broadband providers to choose from. I have two: Verizon (digital subscriber line) and Time Warner (cable). In industries that are natural monopolies (or duopolies in this case), you need government regulation if not outright nationalization to prevent rampant gouging. Internet access is quickly moving from a luxury to a near necessity as more and more stuff is internet only, and when you have an unregulated monopoly on a necessity or basic luxury such as electricity in California, you get massive price hikes and deterioration of service.
In a monopoly environment, even the few people (like me) who do read the fine print have no recourse other than not to buy the service, which isn't a reasonable option since even at many times cost it's still better to have web-only internet service than to go without, especially as the government and employers put more and more on the internet.
Regulation (is net neutrality that?) is really badly needed.
Slashdot Mirror
There's precedent with building codes. They're both law and copyrighted. And building codes aren't an obscure part of law - you essentially cannot get a permit to build anything without you (or your contractor) knowing the building code).
Exactly. If they advertised it as a 376kbit connection or 7x as fast as a modem (376kbit used 24/7 both ways comes out to a bit under 250 GB/31 days) then I wouldn't have any problem with it.
Then why were the penalties recently doubled? The part of the law governing statutory penalties is less than a decade old.
My opinion is that they (media companies) are looking out for number one, and they've paid enough bribes (ie., lobbying) to make sure that they get their way.
If you put warning labels on everything, then people won't take the warning labels seriously. I recently saw the labels in boxes of galvanized steel fasteners. Somehow I doubt that a chunk of steel and zinc is going to give me cancer if I come in contact with it.
Keep the warning labels for the real dangers such as cigarettes, asbestos, hydrochloric acid, lye, gasoline, and other truly dangerous items.
PS: The 'cover you ass' warnings placed on most consumer items cause the same problem. It might protect the company from lawsuits, but it also means that important warnings get ignored.
The same word in the same language probably lights up slightly different parts of the brain in different people. My understanding is that this method is only good for mind-reading the brain the computer has been trained on.
It was sarcasm. In reality, people in power have the most to hide.
Going from 4% to 20% U235 is far easier than going from .7% to 4%. Not only are fewer processing machines needed for your train, but you're processing a far more concentrated stream, so the machines can be smaller. Going up to 90% is again even easier than the 4% to 20% step.
There's a reason why natural uranium resources (which are fairly abundant) don't need even minimal security while uranium stockpiles are (or should be) tightly guarded.
Normally I would agree, but in this case it's the sincerest form of hypocrisy. Whatever corporation runs the olympics is notorious for it's heavy-handed approach to IP, so one would expect them to respect others' IP to the letter. That they don't is being quite hypocritical.
A 100 HP gasoline engine needs about 400W of fuel flow to make 100W of extra electrical power. That comes out to about 1 gallon per 90 hours of operation.
While it might be essentially unmeasurable in your fuel bill, so is a single 100W bulb in your electric bill. It doesn't mean that it doesn't count.
How are we so sure that advances in computers will continue at such a rapid pace. Computer miniaturization is hitting against fundamental quantum-mechanical limits and it's crazy to expect 2008-2028 to have progress quit as rapid as 1988-2008.
Short of major breakthroughs on the software end, I don't expect AI to be able to pass a generalized Turing Test anytime soon, and I'm pretty certain the hardware end isn't going to advance enough to brute-force our way through.
Those subsidies are on the way out with the recent sustained rise in farm prices. Also, the areas put aside are generally the most marginal and erosion-prone land. Putting it into cultivation of row crops might not be the wisest use of it in the long term.
As far as food deprivation goes, it's already being felt around the world thanks to the markets. The prices of most foods has gone up. The effect personally has been quite negative (the extra amount spent on the ~40 gallons petrol equivalent of food I eat is much more than what I save on the 20-40 gallons of petrol I use as fuel each year (all of it indirectly)). If I'm feeling it here in the USA, I'm sure that people in poorer countries are feeling it a lot worse, and a decent number of people have been pushed from marginally fed to starving or adequately fed to marginally fed.
My understanding is that the creativity bar is so low that essentially everything passes it. I've seen nautical charts copied verbatim from the US government and with no aesthetic changes with a copyright mark on it. Databases are also routinely copyrighted.
The creativity part is best ignored. It's so restricted as to be essentially non-existant.
PS: IANAL, so do take this with a grain of salt.
Listen to yourself. You just said that big business is protecting its interests. Big business is the epitome of the ruling class and it's interests are indeed class interests. Also, as is the case for anything worth fighting over, what benefits their class hurts my class.
And yes, it is part of a long running struggle that has been unfolding for centuries, with my class generally almost always being on the losing end, no matter what the system of government.
Airships will never be as efficient as sea vessels because of their enormous bulk/ton carried and their much higher speeds. The capacity of a large airship (Hindenburg sized) is on the order of 100 tons. A large cargo ship might carry 100,000 tons.
OTOH, airships, if powered at low speeds, could be more efficient than airplanes. I doubt they'll be practical for anything other than niche applications though, on account of their very high capital costs.
"Nearly all of Nintendo's AAA titles do not deal with violence,"
Nearly every Nintendo title deals with violence, as does nearly every video game. Mario has it. Zelda even has it. In both of those game series thousands of people (or anthropomorphic characters) die.
Perhaps the blood isn't there, but it would be a stretch to call Nintendo titles non-violent.
Those aren't serious allegations. These are run of the mill things. Who doesn't fudge budgets? Who doesn't use their position to advance themselves or their relatives (ie., nepotism)? Who doesn't spy on their employees (ie., read employee email or go hunting for personal webpages)? I'm not sure what the Open Meeting Act is, but if it's anything like the Freedom of Information Act, who follows that to the letter?
The thing is, unless these administrators are angels (and they're probably human, not angel), the allegations are probably true. These are things people of average moral character do on a normal basis. People of good moral character usually don't do this, but then again, I doubt they'd make it into a management position. Management usually goes to 'yes' people, not people with strong morals.
I'm outraged now that I know about it. I always assumed that the error margin was set by the number of significant digits. If a product said 1 lb (454g), I expected it to fall between 453.5g and 454.5g. Not having a balance to measure with, I have just taken this on faith.
A 20% error is outrageous. Even food packed by hand can be within 1% error with a little care.
If I can get my hands on a decent balance, I certainly intend to do some measuring.
Having noise levels not vary too much is a great help when listening in an environment where there is noise (like frequent airplanes or machinery) or you must minimize your own noise production (you are not single). If the noise varies greatly, you will either won't be able to hear the quiet parts or you will be disturbing people during the loud parts.
I've noticed this in a comparison between a cartoon (very little dynamic range) and Star Trek (substantial dynamic range, though less than a normal movie). I can find a setting for the cartoon where I hear everything yet get no complaints, while it is impossible to do so with Star Trek.
There also are benefits to a wide dynamic range, primarily in the quality of the entertainment, but it is far from one sided.
PS: In nature, we were not stacked up 20,000 to a square mile (NYC average). Also, in nature, we had to produce all of our sound manually, which meant we made a heck of a lot less noise pollution than there is in modern society.
I was talking about computer servers, where many tradeoffs can be done between software and hardware. Giving up a home server (massive energy hog for the services rendered) is a lot easier than giving up a primary PC. Likewise, it is much easier for a company to improve its software and buy less servers than to make do with fewer PCs.
PS: Probably the way with the least negative side effects to improve efficiency would be a blanket tax on all dirty, nonrenewable, or almost fully developed energy sources (in my opinion: coal, oil, natural gas, peat, bitumen, oil shale, geothermal, nuclear fission, hydropower). Minor energy users (such as computers) will be lightly taxed, while energy hogs (such as airlines, furnaces, autos, heavy industry, and ACs) will be heavily taxed.
Not having a computer is better in terms of energy demand than even having a very efficient computer. Same for the hybrid car. For this reason I find these tax breaks perverse.
Giving tax breaks for efficient items penalizes those who conserve the most by not even having the item or by using less. A business that invests money into writing more efficient software and using less servers should not be penalized vis-a-vis a business that invests the money into more efficient servers.
Those stolen CDs would be legally authorized copies. While it would be petty theft (or whatever theft of $1,000 is) and selling stolen goods, it would be perfectly okay from a copyright perspective.
Would you consider Key Lay a counterfeiter because he stole money from people?
Funny you mention it. Overall Americans are not a sharing people, and it extends to how we teach children. I've been witness to quite a number of situations where the parent(s) are more concerned about the kid losing her/his toy (often $1 or less) than them sharing it.
I'm not so sure about that. If the CC-license is anything like the GPL or BSD licenses, they claim that the issuer is not responsible for infringements of other rights and that it is up to the licensee to do determine if use of the material would be legal based on their local laws. Patents are the most common issue, but I don't see why model release would be any different.
There is a difference between saying "I copyleft my rights under copyright, including those restricting commercial usage of my work." and saying "I assert that the following content is commercial usable for all purposes." The former statement seems more logical, especially considering that CC-licenses deal with copyright.
In such a case, it is Virgin or their contractors that are at fault.
A 27 yacht that I know of gets almost 10 mpg using a 25+ year old auxiliary motor. Mpg is heavily dependant on the speed. If the boat is below the hull speed (perhaps 4 knots at that length?), a few horsepower is all that is needed and fuel consumption is far below 1 gallon/hour. Boats that are plowing or planing take far more fuel to power and require far greater engine power, despite the much lower weight of motor yachts vs. sailing yachts.
So going 4000 miles using 2000 gallons isn't much of an accomplishment in and of itself, though I must say the speed is impressive.
The problem is that there aren't a gazillion broadband providers to choose from. I have two: Verizon (digital subscriber line) and Time Warner (cable). In industries that are natural monopolies (or duopolies in this case), you need government regulation if not outright nationalization to prevent rampant gouging. Internet access is quickly moving from a luxury to a near necessity as more and more stuff is internet only, and when you have an unregulated monopoly on a necessity or basic luxury such as electricity in California, you get massive price hikes and deterioration of service.
In a monopoly environment, even the few people (like me) who do read the fine print have no recourse other than not to buy the service, which isn't a reasonable option since even at many times cost it's still better to have web-only internet service than to go without, especially as the government and employers put more and more on the internet.
Regulation (is net neutrality that?) is really badly needed.