If we dropped some of the stigma around the Constitution, it could be _changed_ and actually be a living document that helps the US develop into the future.
If we dropped some of the stigma around the Constitution, it could be _changed_, and become yet another plaything for the short-term, short-sighted, bigoted political agendas of the moment.
Furthermore, it's not the "the Constitution from 225 years ago". The Amendments from 1804 (12th, electoral college), 1865-1870 (13th-15th ending slavery and granting equal protection), 1913 (16th, allowing income tax), and 1920 (19th, women's right to vote) were all quite deep rooted changes-- the 1860's ones altering almost the fundamental character of the constuitution. When an issue creates sufficient public awareness that there may be a fundamental flaw in the basic working principles represented by the constitution, someone invariably suggests we amend it. It's probably a good thing this usually just results in brief sound and fury as with the 1920's child labor amendment (legislation largely fixed it) and the 1970's ERA (regarded by many as redundant due to the Article 14 "persons" equality), and often does not even get so far as going to the states for ratification, given some of the stupid things that people want enshrined in the constitution, I'm just as glad.
When we're fairly sure a change will be an improvement, we change it (although
we've been wrong before). If we're not sure it's broke, we don't try to fix it. It's not a perfect system, but it's not bad.
"Caution is the eldest child of wisdom." --Victor Hugo.
I can't believe Blackhats would to set the poll to 293027571%. 16777216% or 33554432% sure; I could even see 16777215% or 33554431%. But 293027571% is obviously an attempt to frame the black hats.
Not if, as I specified, they're trying to send a political message, instead of pointing out a security flaw.
You are correct. In my defense, I plead two hours of sleep in the last 24, and sixteen years since I was last working at this math. From what I can make out of my then-as-now excrably handwritten notes (yes, I do have all of my high school math notes readily accessible, and yes, that makes me a freak, STFU&HAND), that's the student-T deviation, which for large N approaches a gaussian curve, so about an 84% confidence interval that the level isn't further than 1 sigma in worst direction, 68% within 1 sigma in either direction.
And I'm still short of sleep, and it's still sixteen years since I was actually in that class, so anyone who mods me insightful at this point deserves to have their mod points taken away. Is their a statistician in the house?
How can markets continue to exist, if their highs and lows can be predicted?
See "Timescape", Benford. Also, time value of money, although the article neglects the inherent disutility of delayed gratification.
I think that the very act of prediction will change the outcome... basically making this impossible to practically achieve.
"The Psychohistorians", Asimov, from "Foundation", book one of the Foundation Trilogy. I'd agree with that offhand, but it would be nice to see a proof. (For a nasty view of why, read "In the Country of the Blind" by Flynn.)
Black hats are not known for subtlety when trying to send a political message. If they had been tampering, the poll would have shown that of 100 experts sampled, 293027571% thought it was insecure.
since they only interviewed 100 experts to the 2,933 everyjoes,
Error bars on statistical samples IIR are (N^0.5); thus, percentages have error bars of (N^-0.5). Thus, the 83% expert opinion on 100 experts is +/- 10%; the 19% opinion on 2933 everyjoes has an error of about 1.8%. So, even worst case, the experts are more than three times as likely to distrust the computer voting.
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house." --Heinlein
But they aren't the ones sending the lawyers after Katie Jones. Katie Tarbox, the author, is sending the lawayers after the other Katie.
The matter may not be so simple and clear cut. I believe I saw off one of the many links in the discussion something from Ms. Tarbox saying this wasn't her idea-- although that perhaps only refered to the title, not the after-the-fact "hand it over" attempt. Lawyers are ethically obligated to act in their client's percieved best interest. The fault may lie in Ms. Aftab being short-sighted in her lawyerly perceptions, and taking action she believes is best for her client-- try and intimidate the domain out of the client, and if that doesn't work, go on to other projects.
The sad part is that Ms. Aftab protrays herself as a specialist in cyberlaw and privacy. Physician, heal thyself. (Or lawyer, go sue yourself?)
The main arguement for Yucca mountain is that it is a more "secure" place to put all this stuff, and is far away from a major population. But to GET it there, it will be made incredibly vulnerable to attack, and we'll be driving it through cities. Instead of spending all this money on one site whose solution is worse than our current problem, we should be spending it to make sure the sites we have are made more secure.
The problem is, you misunderstand the meaning of "secure" in this context. Not to mention the long-term nature of the problem. This is material whose release into the environment cannot be permitted for about the next 10000 years. You appear to be talking about keeping the material secure from terrorists; this is merely an incidental (albeit necessary) side effect, not the purpose, of Yucca Mountain's design. The purpose is to secure the envronment from the materials.
So, leave aside the difficulty and expense of trying to secure the material against terrorists in the present locations. Leave aside the fact that these facilities are at or beyond capacity already. Leave aside the security advantages to putting all the (bad) eggs in one basket, and REALLY guarding that basket. Fact: IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO SECURE PRESENT STORAGE FACILITIES ON THE TIMESCALE REQUIRED AGAINST THE RELEVANT THREATS. Even God might find it a challenge. Such threats include not only the threat of terrorists, but natural disasters, and the inexorable passage of time. Furthemore, the threats must be dealt with without the assurance of human intervention to mitigate them!
From my time as an engineering student, and from my sister's work on the 10000 year hydrology model while she was at the NRC, I am far more familiar with the project than the average layman. I am familiar with most of the objections raised by opponents, including the transportation risks, internal security questions, auditability, questions about geologic and hydrologic instability, and the issue of whether even 10000 years is long enough. I even agree with many of them.
To each of them, I respond: the current "solution" is a greater and far more immediate danger, and for the forseeable (~100 year) future THERE IS NO BETTER SOLUTION POSSIBLE (... unless you propose the United States annex Australia; there's a very nice deserted section of the Outback that has better long term geology and hydrology, but the Aussies are understandably not too keen on that).
Yucca mountain may be a flawed plan. In fact, you can even say it sucks in many respects. In fact, I'll do it for you: "The Yucca Mountain plan sucks in many respects."
However, I've never heard anyone who objected to it who could seriously present a better, safer, and more "secure" one. Most suggestions consist of saying "These folks made the waste, they should solve the problem; not my problem, and certainly Not In My Back Yard!" While such insistance provides a good method (leaving aside the "all power corrupts but we need the electricity" problem) for shutting down further nuclear construction and thereby eliminating new nuclear waste, it does not solve the problem that already extant wastes represent to all of us. If you have a suggestion for improvement, fine; but if it's not an improvement, you've made a stupid suggestion.
So, what's your plan for preventing waste release for the next 10000 years?
When mod points get assigned, users are given six at a time (instead of the current five). Mode Points then may be used in one of two ways.
A "moderation" link, much like "meta-moderation". You're given 10 posts to look at; mod as many of them as you see fit, up to the number of mod points you have at the moment, or until they expire. If a post doesn't stands out as good or evil, you can mod it "normal" for free, and not see it again on your "moderation" page.
The current moderation interface... with a catch. If *you* pick the item you see while browsing as worth moderating, it takes three points. This diminishes the moderation importance of things seen because other people already thought it was interesting/insightful/funny/whatnot.
I'd also suggest increasing the "wretched" range from only -1 to go down as far as -3 in this event-- some of what's out there really ought be lower than -1. And of course there's the suggestion implied from my sig...
ALL domain names ending in.com need resolution according to Virginian(?) law
True, so far as it goes; however, Ms. Jones might not need to start her suit there, since she already has her possession-is-nine-tenths. For suit over damages to that conceptual propery, she might also need to use Virginia's legal system. Perhaps a suit even over the bandwidth might have to end up there.
But I don't know if all roads lead to Virgina (since there is no Rome in Virginia). It seems she is a legal resident of the UK, so if UK law supports such, she might be able file suit over the emotional distress issue (which someone else suggested) on her home turf. However, IANAL.
...Just their brand of bas, which is automagically "fair" to their way of thinking. ...
It's a rare person who will struggle constantly to actually seek out extremely differing viewpoints from their own.
OK, maybe it's just that I hang out with weirdos. However, most of the liberals I hang out with will oft breifly tune in to FoxNews to see what the conservatives are frothing about, and a right wing nut job who routinely checks the editorials page of the NYTimes web site for further proof of how stupid the biased liberal media is (are?).
It seems to me that, while they don't usually put in great effort to seek it out regularly, most people LIKE encountering the occaisional wildly opposite opinion, so as to confirm their bias that people who don't agree with them are "a load of useless bloody loonies!" Which means, that a news search site that occaisionally provide such a story in with any others, will have happier people and thus retain more traffic.
Last week, I applied for a trademark on the terms "slashdot", "slashdot.org" and "slashdot.com" and these have been granted.
Partially true, but on June 20, 2000, and not to you. Good luck registering slashdot.com and slashdot.org; the owner of the extant trademark should be able to sue them out of you with only a few hours in a courtroom. Have a nice day.
Obviously I didn`t RTFA, but have they made a cash offer for the domain or are they just being threatening?
(Sigh.) Obviously not, indeed. It's rather worse: the lawyer for KatieT contacted the owner of Katie.com, and suggested that Ms. Jones simply donate the name to them to solve her problems. Quoth Ms. Jones,
"OK so not only do I get walked all over, my life invaded by this book, treated badly by the publisher/author who refuse to acknowledge that they've done the wrong thing, but then I get to hand it over to them on a silver plate and I not only have suffered all this aggravation but ultimately have lost the thing that I care about. Exactly HOW does this resolve anything other than give them the thing they want which they have done everything to hijack without any care and consideration for what is right and just?
She also mentions that she has turned down substantial offers for the domain in the past, which makes the suggestion of the donation mindbogglingly obtuse. Methinks she needs to hire an aggressive pirhana of a lawyer... oh, and that you should RTFineA before burbling in the future. =|
So, can the current owner of Katie.com sue Putnam for the damages done to her (EG, increased bandwidth costs, having to redesign her site around an irrelevant topic, etc.) as a result of their choice of title?
I'll ignore the above point on LLCs, as I am not qualified for an opinion. However...
I did my own WHOIS on both domain names, and it turns out that www.123copydvd.com is registered in the US to www.123copydvd.com. The hosting service is NetworkSolutions. http://www.booyakasha.biz/ is registered in Gibraltar to an unknown individual in that country, and the hosting service is also NetworkSolutions.
...while it's true that the registrants are different (Bling Software Limited, versus Updates International Limited), each gives someone named Brenda Avellano as the administrative contact (with, admittedly, two different e-mail addresses)-- IE, the person "authorized to interact with Network Solutions on behalf of the domain name registrant." Or to grossly oversimplify, when a domain pisses you off, this is an easy-to-find human to poke with a pointy stick and/or a subpoena-wielding lawyer. And the single name there might be a coinkidink a Judge might consider enough bait to let lawyers go fishing.
So, is Ms. Avellano someone who works for Network Solutions dealing with details for fly-by-nights, making me way off my rocker? Two non-NetSolns emails suggest otherwise about the first part at least... =)
Or, is Ms. Avellano a lawyer for each company, behind the attorney-client privilege shield, or perhaps just an employee or officer, with posterior bare to legal barbs, jabs, and pokes? If they used a lawyer, they MIGHT have a chance.. but the shield of attorney-client priviledge can be breached under some conditions.
This again is besides the point: 123 Copy DVD is not selling a product which violates copy protection. But it can be modified to do so.
,,,and, if what The Register's article implies is correct, the seller is giving away the tool needed as well. "Hey, let me sell you this legal semi-automatic. Oh, and I've got a pile of illegal Full-Auto conversion kits by the back of my garage, help yourself."
Of course, by separating the tools, they might make a case for an injunction against distribution only applying to the plug-in, but the concept of "contributory negligence" makes that less likely to fly.
What 321 Studios has effectively done is known as "asset protection", where they branch off a company into a separate Corporation or Limited-liability corporation (LLC) that is untouchable if the prior company is sued and run out of business.
IAmNotALawyer, but I believe there are some circumstances such protection can be breached. Of course, since it doesn't look like 321 studios had major liabilites when they were shut down (since the MPAA mainly sought the injunction, not damages), they may be able to get away with it.
If you wish to see how damn clever they are, they do not actually include de-cryption software in the product. They do however link directly to a "3rd Party Plugin" site which features a downloadable plug-in which works exclusively with 123 copy DVD.
Not so damn clever; more like damn careless. As was mentioned a while back on The Register, this "3rd party" site lists in its whois records that it is administered by a person of the same name as the whois administrative contact for the 123copydvd.com records. "Gee, whaddacoiinkidink, Boss!" IAmNotAJudge, but if I was, I'd probably consider that prima facia evidence to support a major fishing expidition during discovery.
Of course, the point is moot in the long run, if DVD Shrink works the way I've heard it does. The MPAA is showing massive shortsightedness here. 321 at least made some efforts to put some warnings in, added a screen indicating that what was there was a copy, and would not support copy-of-a-copy making. I've been told DVDShrink has none of these limits.(Anyone using it care to correct me?) So, after you sue the people making money off trying to be legal out of business, how do you deal with the people who are giving the stuff a way and don't care whether it's legal or not?
Most "features" of a laptop don't really consume extra power if not utilized.
Note that wireless cards consume a decent chunk of power even if you aren't actively doing things with TCP/IP. Removing PCMCIA or USB adapters, or (for those that support such) switching off an internal wireless adapter when not in use will increase battery life by a decent fraction.
All that remains is for Bush to claim himself Emporer, and Chaney to learn the secrets of the Dark Side and become horribly disfigured in some sort of Volcano-related accident.
Are you sure you don't have the roles for the two switched?
...It's only a matter of time till flash memory gets cheap enough for cell phones and similar devices become an alternative at least to the iPod mini class of devices.
Current iPod-mini price: $229 (education)
Current iPod-mini Capacity: 4GB
Current Largest Pen Drive Capacity: 2GB
Size ratio: 2
Current 2GB Pen Drive Price: ~$300 (pricewatch fly-by-night)
Current price ratio: 1.31
Total Ratio: 2.62
Log-2 of Ratio: 1.39
Standard "moore's law" period: 1.5 yr
Expected time to price point: 2.1 years
...which, given the imprecision of "moore's law" type forecasts, means you should be suprised to see such a phone before Xmas 2005, but the current iPod-mini will probably be under some pressure by summer 2007.
Such as "403 : Forbidden" or "400 : Bad Request", although I'm curious as to what would happen with "405 : Method Not Allowed", "411 : Length Required" and "305 : Use Proxy"
...
101: Switching Protocols -- when she's changed sexual orientation to avoid having to date you
300: Multiple Choices -- for one one Doug Winger's Furry perversions
303: See Other -- when you're not her type
413: Request Entity Too Large -- for when she wants to say no, while feeding his ego
402: Payment Required -- um, 'nuf said.
Slashdot Mirror
Suddenly, the number of people who are Bill Gates is larger than the size of his fortune....
Furthermore, it's not the "the Constitution from 225 years ago". The Amendments from 1804 (12th, electoral college), 1865-1870 (13th-15th ending slavery and granting equal protection), 1913 (16th, allowing income tax), and 1920 (19th, women's right to vote) were all quite deep rooted changes-- the 1860's ones altering almost the fundamental character of the constuitution. When an issue creates sufficient public awareness that there may be a fundamental flaw in the basic working principles represented by the constitution, someone invariably suggests we amend it. It's probably a good thing this usually just results in brief sound and fury as with the 1920's child labor amendment (legislation largely fixed it) and the 1970's ERA (regarded by many as redundant due to the Article 14 "persons" equality), and often does not even get so far as going to the states for ratification, given some of the stupid things that people want enshrined in the constitution, I'm just as glad.
When we're fairly sure a change will be an improvement, we change it (although we've been wrong before). If we're not sure it's broke, we don't try to fix it. It's not a perfect system, but it's not bad.
"Caution is the eldest child of wisdom." --Victor Hugo.
Not if, as I specified, they're trying to send a political message, instead of pointing out a security flaw.
And I'm still short of sleep, and it's still sixteen years since I was actually in that class, so anyone who mods me insightful at this point deserves to have their mod points taken away. Is their a statistician in the house?
See "Timescape", Benford. Also, time value of money, although the article neglects the inherent disutility of delayed gratification.
I think that the very act of prediction will change the outcome... basically making this impossible to practically achieve.
"The Psychohistorians", Asimov, from "Foundation", book one of the Foundation Trilogy. I'd agree with that offhand, but it would be nice to see a proof. (For a nasty view of why, read "In the Country of the Blind" by Flynn.)
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house." --Heinlein
The sad part is that Ms. Aftab protrays herself as a specialist in cyberlaw and privacy. Physician, heal thyself. (Or lawyer, go sue yourself?)
So, leave aside the difficulty and expense of trying to secure the material against terrorists in the present locations. Leave aside the fact that these facilities are at or beyond capacity already. Leave aside the security advantages to putting all the (bad) eggs in one basket, and REALLY guarding that basket. Fact: IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO SECURE PRESENT STORAGE FACILITIES ON THE TIMESCALE REQUIRED AGAINST THE RELEVANT THREATS. Even God might find it a challenge. Such threats include not only the threat of terrorists, but natural disasters, and the inexorable passage of time. Furthemore, the threats must be dealt with without the assurance of human intervention to mitigate them!
From my time as an engineering student, and from my sister's work on the 10000 year hydrology model while she was at the NRC, I am far more familiar with the project than the average layman. I am familiar with most of the objections raised by opponents, including the transportation risks, internal security questions, auditability, questions about geologic and hydrologic instability, and the issue of whether even 10000 years is long enough. I even agree with many of them.
To each of them, I respond: the current "solution" is a greater and far more immediate danger, and for the forseeable (~100 year) future THERE IS NO BETTER SOLUTION POSSIBLE (... unless you propose the United States annex Australia; there's a very nice deserted section of the Outback that has better long term geology and hydrology, but the Aussies are understandably not too keen on that).
Yucca mountain may be a flawed plan. In fact, you can even say it sucks in many respects. In fact, I'll do it for you: "The Yucca Mountain plan sucks in many respects." However, I've never heard anyone who objected to it who could seriously present a better, safer, and more "secure" one. Most suggestions consist of saying "These folks made the waste, they should solve the problem; not my problem, and certainly Not In My Back Yard!" While such insistance provides a good method (leaving aside the "all power corrupts but we need the electricity" problem) for shutting down further nuclear construction and thereby eliminating new nuclear waste, it does not solve the problem that already extant wastes represent to all of us. If you have a suggestion for improvement, fine; but if it's not an improvement, you've made a stupid suggestion.
So, what's your plan for preventing waste release for the next 10000 years?
When mod points get assigned, users are given six at a time (instead of the current five). Mode Points then may be used in one of two ways.
I'd also suggest increasing the "wretched" range from only -1 to go down as far as -3 in this event-- some of what's out there really ought be lower than -1. And of course there's the suggestion implied from my sig...
True, so far as it goes; however, Ms. Jones might not need to start her suit there, since she already has her possession-is-nine-tenths. For suit over damages to that conceptual propery, she might also need to use Virginia's legal system. Perhaps a suit even over the bandwidth might have to end up there.
But I don't know if all roads lead to Virgina (since there is no Rome in Virginia). It seems she is a legal resident of the UK, so if UK law supports such, she might be able file suit over the emotional distress issue (which someone else suggested) on her home turf. However, IANAL.
...
It's a rare person who will struggle constantly to actually seek out extremely differing viewpoints from their own.
OK, maybe it's just that I hang out with weirdos. However, most of the liberals I hang out with will oft breifly tune in to FoxNews to see what the conservatives are frothing about, and a right wing nut job who routinely checks the editorials page of the NYTimes web site for further proof of how stupid the biased liberal media is (are?).
It seems to me that, while they don't usually put in great effort to seek it out regularly, most people LIKE encountering the occaisional wildly opposite opinion, so as to confirm their bias that people who don't agree with them are "a load of useless bloody loonies!" Which means, that a news search site that occaisionally provide such a story in with any others, will have happier people and thus retain more traffic.
Of course, I am a loonie, so what do I know.
(Sigh.) Obviously not, indeed. It's rather worse: the lawyer for KatieT contacted the owner of Katie.com, and suggested that Ms. Jones simply donate the name to them to solve her problems. Quoth Ms. Jones,
She also mentions that she has turned down substantial offers for the domain in the past, which makes the suggestion of the donation mindbogglingly obtuse. Methinks she needs to hire an aggressive pirhana of a lawyer... oh, and that you should RTFineA before burbling in the future. =|I did my own WHOIS on both domain names, and it turns out that www.123copydvd.com is registered in the US to www.123copydvd.com. The hosting service is NetworkSolutions. http://www.booyakasha.biz/ is registered in Gibraltar to an unknown individual in that country, and the hosting service is also NetworkSolutions.
So, is Ms. Avellano someone who works for Network Solutions dealing with details for fly-by-nights, making me way off my rocker? Two non-NetSolns emails suggest otherwise about the first part at least... =)
Or, is Ms. Avellano a lawyer for each company, behind the attorney-client privilege shield, or perhaps just an employee or officer, with posterior bare to legal barbs, jabs, and pokes? If they used a lawyer, they MIGHT have a chance.. but the shield of attorney-client priviledge can be breached under some conditions.
This again is besides the point: 123 Copy DVD is not selling a product which violates copy protection. But it can be modified to do so.
Of course, by separating the tools, they might make a case for an injunction against distribution only applying to the plug-in, but the concept of "contributory negligence" makes that less likely to fly.
Of course, the point is moot in the long run, if DVD Shrink works the way I've heard it does. The MPAA is showing massive shortsightedness here. 321 at least made some efforts to put some warnings in, added a screen indicating that what was there was a copy, and would not support copy-of-a-copy making. I've been told DVDShrink has none of these limits.(Anyone using it care to correct me?) So, after you sue the people making money off trying to be legal out of business, how do you deal with the people who are giving the stuff a way and don't care whether it's legal or not?
Current iPod-mini price: $229 (education)
Current iPod-mini Capacity: 4GB
Current Largest Pen Drive Capacity: 2GB
Size ratio: 2
Current 2GB Pen Drive Price: ~$300 (pricewatch fly-by-night)
Current price ratio: 1.31
Total Ratio: 2.62
Log-2 of Ratio: 1.39
Standard "moore's law" period: 1.5 yr
Expected time to price point: 2.1 years
Such as "403 : Forbidden" or "400 : Bad Request", although I'm curious as to what would happen with "405 : Method Not Allowed", "411 : Length Required" and "305 : Use Proxy"
101: Switching Protocols -- when she's changed sexual orientation to avoid having to date you
300: Multiple Choices -- for one one Doug Winger's Furry perversions
303: See Other -- when you're not her type
413: Request Entity Too Large -- for when she wants to say no, while feeding his ego
402: Payment Required -- um, 'nuf said.