The solution most similar to classifying the PhD thesis in question would be to cut the hands to every citizen of the US. No more fists, no more problems. Is that what you want?
You are not correct. Terrorism is much more random than car accidents. Car accidents kill 175000 people every year, give or take ten thousand. Terrorists, on the other hand, can kill up to 5000 people in a good year, while sometimes the death toll can be as low as 1000. The goal of terror is not to kill everyone. Its goal is to make a point. I mean, can you really get more media coverage and free publicity than Usama got after blowing (with the generous help of US government that decided to look elsewhere) Twin Towers? Would that make any sense to kill even 100000? I doubt that. Terrorism will never be a significant contribution to the death rate.
And the choice is simplier than you think. We can stop all car accidents, while at the same time saving the environment, decreasing costs, solving the overweight problem, reducing the dependancy on oil and (magic! magic!) reducing terrorism.
Alternatively we can stop some terrorism, while engaging ourselves in much more horrific acts of terror on the large scale, killing many time more innocent people, poisoning the environment and destroying economies. Not to mention skyrocketing "defence" spendings, more political instability, more terrorism and the little kitten also dies.:(
OK, I admit, I exaggerated a bit, but hopefully you see my point.
the Thai government acts only when facing real problem (not "Doom causes school shootings")
it introduce a partial limitations
it doesn't emphasise jailing people or suing them
it intends to evaluate the effectiveness of these particular measures after a few months.
Rhetorical question: in which country the government would probably attack an imaginary problem, ban computer games altogether, sue developers and jail players and make these measures permanent with only possible revision of making them stricter? Well, may be Greece and one more country that you all know...
Well, that's just excellent news, nothing "gloomy" about this. The results of this survey mean that manufacturers can easily increase (somewhat) their sales by taking out complicated words out of their ads and slightly changing their marketing approach.
But is it actually necessary that people understand tech terms? Many secretaries called the file-manager "blue screen" or "blue panel" (because Norton Commander and its many descendants, like Volkov, FAR, Midnight Commander, Windows Commander, etc. are blue by default). That didn't prevent them from using them, although cause some C:\-deleting accidents (what do you mean there wasn't a second copy on another side of the screen?).
Some people understand the jargon, some don't. So what?
I wasn't so much interested in Japanese language, but much of what I know about Japanese culture, I learned from hentai games.:) They also motivated me to travel to Japan and spend 3 weeks there.:) If I had to play these games in Japanese, I would definitely learn some.:)
Strategy/logic games like Slay are excellent for teaching arithmetics. Arithmetic (and math in general) is an extremely useful thing later (and early) in life and it's a pity that so many people cannot master its secrets. For example, my sister (she is not considered stupid) had difficulties calculating 1+1 (when that was a part of the problem) and guessed that 2/2*2 might be 0.:) One of the Russian Ministers thought that when you fire 50% of people and spend the same amount on salaries, average wage will increase by about 50%... And he said that live during his meeting with the President. O tempora! O mores!
Anyway, there are many games that need math skills as an integral part of the gameplay. And once basic skills are taught, children are ready for the theory, for formal problems, for algebra, for higher mathematics, for sets theory, for linear programming and after they know that, they can start learning mathematics.:)
Same with ecology. You can download a free game "Save the Leopard" (120Mb), created by professional game developer studio and financed by WWF Russia (don't know if there is English support). I never played it, but the reviews are pretty good. And in this game the ecology is the integral part of the game, not an annoying addition. You play ecology. That's it.
People's Translation of Harry Potter was done in Russia. First four books were translated and the quality was much better than the official translation. Of course, the local Russian publisher demanded that the translations are removed.
Fair use good, copyright bad, blah-blah-blah. Of course, I personally don't care about it much, because 1) Harry Potter books are crap and Rolling is a bitch. And Harry is a psychotic autistic antisocial dork. 2) Scanned English version was available on the eDonkey on the same day the book was released.:) So I happily wasted a small part on my life reading 700+ pages of that rubbish.
Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and
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Well, and I think everything should start with a piece of ochre and an empty cave wall. You claim that handwriting have some magic properties that are not reproduced in computers. I would really like to see some references to research on such properties, because as it is I am not in the very least convinced.
I think that you will learn about materials, structures and their mechanical strength better through some (of course) real-life experience, some books (e-books are just fine) and a liberal dose of Pontifex. How a pencil and a sheet of paper would help, I do not know, unless, of course, you want to learn the mechanical strength of wood and graphite and want to build structures from paper...
The original intent of Freenet might very well be benign. But if it becomes stable, relatively fast and user-friendly, while continuing to be secure and relatively anonymous, many P2P users will migrate to Freenet from other systems. Of course, this is far from certain, as existing file-trading P2Ps are likely to move in the direction of security and anonymity as well, but that's definitely a possibility.
If 4.5 million MP3-traders will join 0.5 million Chinese dissidents, 90% of the traffic (or more) can easily become "illegal", just like with Napster or Grokster.
Also, because Freenet is GPLed, it can be easily adapted for music, video and software distribution. And while it is slow and not very reliable today, it's traffic distribution features might actually make it fare quite well in distribution of a 0-day warez or divx.
Having MP3s on your HDD is not illegal and RIAA is not trying to make it so. Downloading MP3s might be somewhat illegal (that's not completely clear) and RIAA campaigns against it, but doesn't try to sue people doing it (similar organisations in other countries do - think Denmark). What they are trying to do (or at least threatening to do) is go after those SHARING MP3s, because that is very clearly a copyright violation - you have no distribution rights (but you have fair use rights, which might protect some filesharing).
So you don't have to prove that you bought the music that you have on your computer and are sharing to everyone over P2P. You have to prove that you also have distribution rights, which you obviously don't have (and RIAA knows that).
I would say that the pursuit of property is less of a right than Internet access. I believe you have more right to access information than to own a factory. Of course, everyone who disagrees with you and the One American Way is probably a dangerous terrorist.
The right does not become such because reemul or non-existing god decide so. Something becomes a right when people declare it to be a right. People in Estonia just happened to do so.
I don't want this to sound flamebait, but you really are paranoid.:) May be not a coward as another poster suggested, but definitely cautious.
You were sharing only legit files, right. Even if we believe you, there were much more people sharing copyrighted songs and movies (someone had to share all the stuff that I downloaded). If they were not afraid to do it then, they are unlikely to stop now. Furthermore, there are many people (hundreds of thousands at least) sharing child pornography, which was always a risky thing to do.
So you are not a very representative example, just an outlier.
According to Apple, half of the songs are bought as parts of complete albums. Of course, if you make bad music, you will suffer from the option to buy only one song, but if you make quality music, you will instead benefit from increased number of people buying single songs and from many people still buying full albums.
Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and
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Wi-Fi Woods
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How about teaching them how to make fire and how to skin a mammoth? PDA is a tool and they use the tools to learn about ecology.
Ten years ago everyone though that desktop computers and networks are unnecessary and kids should write with pencils and go to the library for information. Today we understand that it was stupid to think so, but some people now claim that PDAs and WiFi are useless.
I am sure that in 2015 another melted will grumble at children using their computer-to-brain interfaces and memory implants. That's progress, don't stand in its way.;)
Re:Technology can be a distraction.
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Wi-Fi Woods
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Of course it is a distraction. If I give you a Porche convertible to visit your grandma, what will you be more interested in - the car or the old woman?:) Of course, after the initial period of being excited with the technology only, people gradually become excited about its applications. People around me are constantly amazed with my Palm IIIxe (this even attracts the girls:] ), but for me it is just a useful tool. Same with these forest kids and their PDAs.
CG is not a cheap way, it is a cost effective way. If you are short on money, using CG is usually the most rational thing to do, because it is basically a fixed amount of $$$ per pixel.
The media plays several roles in the modern society. People in the US usually limit it to entertiment, sometimes mentioning informing citizens. But media can also motivate people. Don't you think that one of the reasons of Americans' apathy is their media? In China they understand that finding something positive and telling it to the people can be very helpful indeed.
And Falun Gong is a dangerous cult. The fact that they are also against the Chinese government doesn't change it. If the US government doesn't want to admit it, the reasons are the same as with the IRA - politics. Check any objective information (not FG's and not official) and you will probably realise that Falun Gong is a totalitarian sect, similar to Scientology and every other sect in existence.
There is an extremely simple solution, overlooked by everyone. If your site is relatively small and it is not economically viable to design alternative audio test, you probably don't have many blind visitors. Then you can do a very simple thing.
1) Add a link named "If you can't see the numbers, click here". 2) On that page ask the user to fill in the webform a simple explanation of why he can't see the numbers (he is using Lynx, he is blind, he is colour-blind, he surfs from the library and the filter blocks all images, he considers arabic numbers to be un-American, etc.). Just a few phrases would be OK. 3) When he submits this message, let him proceed with the registration. 4) If possible, you can delay the activation by ~12-24h until a human can check the message and endorse the registration. If it is not possible, just register the user (but you can limit the number of instant registrations using step 5). 5) You can set a hourly/daily limit of these "blind" registrations (or instant registrations). When it is reached, all new registrations are placed on hold.
Result: everybody can use the registration system. Automatic registrations are possible, but automatic mass registrations are not. A few minutes of employee time is required every day to check pending registrations.
Nice try. But there can be no justification really for breaking something that works in the first place. If skaters decide to use for their extreme sport a ramp that you had for the handicapped, it's generally not a reason to remove the ramp alltogether.
We are all humans! Why should we be so cruel and indifferent to each other when a little bit of attention would suffice? Is +0.1% on your next quarter P&L worth making lifes of many people more difficult? You can simply add a mailto: link to the registration page and ask for a short message (in a web-form) simply stating that the person can't pass automatic test. Then they can proceed with the registration and a human would check these registration every day to make sure no automatic registrations are done this way. You can also limit the number of such "blind" registrations per hour (per day, etc.). Is that SO difficult that you have to be so cruel?
I don't know what kind of noise was that, but I personally find it helpful to have information about green light in audio form, although I have pretty good sight. May be it's just a matter of choosing good sound that doesn't frighten people?
BTW, how would a blind person react to this scary sound if he doesn't know it's a light signal, not a car? Jump right into traffic may be?:)
Yeah, you're right. Sorry for personally attacking you.:(
Regarding the essence of the issue. 1) Hormel says "used or which are planned to be used", which obviously refers to the names of present and future (that are already planned or are being introduced) products of Hormel that this site is about. Hormel doesn't claim that any SPAM-related word is their trademark. 2) Claiming, as you suggest, that they planned to use something that they actually didn't will not work in court. They would have to prove it. 3) Actually they are on pretty safe grounds as far as meat products are concerned. If you start selling canned meat called SPAMINATOR, SPAMWHORE, or SPAMFORBRAINS, you will be instantly sued and any court will side with Hormel here. So the word SPAMWHORE (or SpamWhore, or SpamHo, etc.) is in fact owned (or, to be more precise, can by used as a name for meat-related product only) by Hormel. Regarding other areas (like in the case in question), situation is unclear and we'll have to wait for the court decision. However, I doubt that they will use SpamArrest or similar name on their site without selling a product with that name (see point 1).
So we have to conclude that besides a bit ambiguous wording, this Hormel's statement is valid and correct. Moreover, the fair use is not even remotedly related to this situation. Hormel was (as mentioned in this discussion alread) very tolerant to use of "spam" as a synonym of "junk mail" and doesn't try to prevent people or companies from using the word "spam" in names of their products or services (but doesn't want them to register such names).
So in fact they do understand the idea of fair use and support it through their actions. That unnecessary remark was the reason for my somewhat aggressive comment. Hope it's clear now.
Slashdot Mirror
The solution most similar to classifying the PhD thesis in question would be to cut the hands to every citizen of the US. No more fists, no more problems. Is that what you want?
You are not correct. Terrorism is much more random than car accidents. Car accidents kill 175000 people every year, give or take ten thousand. Terrorists, on the other hand, can kill up to 5000 people in a good year, while sometimes the death toll can be as low as 1000. The goal of terror is not to kill everyone. Its goal is to make a point. I mean, can you really get more media coverage and free publicity than Usama got after blowing (with the generous help of US government that decided to look elsewhere) Twin Towers? Would that make any sense to kill even 100000? I doubt that. Terrorism will never be a significant contribution to the death rate.
:(
And the choice is simplier than you think. We can stop all car accidents, while at the same time saving the environment, decreasing costs, solving the overweight problem, reducing the dependancy on oil and (magic! magic!) reducing terrorism.
Alternatively we can stop some terrorism, while engaging ourselves in much more horrific acts of terror on the large scale, killing many time more innocent people, poisoning the environment and destroying economies. Not to mention skyrocketing "defence" spendings, more political instability, more terrorism and the little kitten also dies.
OK, I admit, I exaggerated a bit, but hopefully you see my point.
A birth of a new acronym? WWBLD? or WWAQD? :)
Correct. And we should worry about terrorists about a hundred times less than about car accidents.
the Thai government acts only when facing real problem (not "Doom causes school shootings")
it introduce a partial limitations
it doesn't emphasise jailing people or suing them
it intends to evaluate the effectiveness of these particular measures after a few months.
Rhetorical question: in which country the government would probably attack an imaginary problem, ban computer games altogether, sue developers and jail players and make these measures permanent with only possible revision of making them stricter? Well, may be Greece and one more country that you all know...
Well, that's just excellent news, nothing "gloomy" about this. The results of this survey mean that manufacturers can easily increase (somewhat) their sales by taking out complicated words out of their ads and slightly changing their marketing approach.
But is it actually necessary that people understand tech terms? Many secretaries called the file-manager "blue screen" or "blue panel" (because Norton Commander and its many descendants, like Volkov, FAR, Midnight Commander, Windows Commander, etc. are blue by default). That didn't prevent them from using them, although cause some C:\-deleting accidents (what do you mean there wasn't a second copy on another side of the screen?).
Some people understand the jargon, some don't. So what?
If 65% of people play games, those who don't are anything but normal. :) So to hang out with "normal" people you need to hang out with gamers.
I wasn't so much interested in Japanese language, but much of what I know about Japanese culture, I learned from hentai games. :) They also motivated me to travel to Japan and spend 3 weeks there. :) If I had to play these games in Japanese, I would definitely learn some. :)
Strategy/logic games like Slay are excellent for teaching arithmetics. Arithmetic (and math in general) is an extremely useful thing later (and early) in life and it's a pity that so many people cannot master its secrets. For example, my sister (she is not considered stupid) had difficulties calculating 1+1 (when that was a part of the problem) and guessed that 2/2*2 might be 0. :) One of the Russian Ministers thought that when you fire 50% of people and spend the same amount on salaries, average wage will increase by about 50%... And he said that live during his meeting with the President. O tempora! O mores!
:)
Anyway, there are many games that need math skills as an integral part of the gameplay. And once basic skills are taught, children are ready for the theory, for formal problems, for algebra, for higher mathematics, for sets theory, for linear programming and after they know that, they can start learning mathematics.
Same with ecology. You can download a free game "Save the Leopard" (120Mb), created by professional game developer studio and financed by WWF Russia (don't know if there is English support). I never played it, but the reviews are pretty good. And in this game the ecology is the integral part of the game, not an annoying addition. You play ecology.
That's it.
People's Translation of Harry Potter was done in Russia. First four books were translated and the quality was much better than the official translation. Of course, the local Russian publisher demanded that the translations are removed.
:) So I happily wasted a small part on my life reading 700+ pages of that rubbish.
Fair use good, copyright bad, blah-blah-blah. Of course, I personally don't care about it much, because
1) Harry Potter books are crap and Rolling is a bitch. And Harry is a psychotic autistic antisocial dork.
2) Scanned English version was available on the eDonkey on the same day the book was released.
Well, and I think everything should start with a piece of ochre and an empty cave wall. You claim that handwriting have some magic properties that are not reproduced in computers. I would really like to see some references to research on such properties, because as it is I am not in the very least convinced.
I think that you will learn about materials, structures and their mechanical strength better through some (of course) real-life experience, some books (e-books are just fine) and a liberal dose of Pontifex. How a pencil and a sheet of paper would help, I do not know, unless, of course, you want to learn the mechanical strength of wood and graphite and want to build structures from paper...
The original intent of Freenet might very well be benign. But if it becomes stable, relatively fast and user-friendly, while continuing to be secure and relatively anonymous, many P2P users will migrate to Freenet from other systems. Of course, this is far from certain, as existing file-trading P2Ps are likely to move in the direction of security and anonymity as well, but that's definitely a possibility.
If 4.5 million MP3-traders will join 0.5 million Chinese dissidents, 90% of the traffic (or more) can easily become "illegal", just like with Napster or Grokster.
Also, because Freenet is GPLed, it can be easily adapted for music, video and software distribution. And while it is slow and not very reliable today, it's traffic distribution features might actually make it fare quite well in distribution of a 0-day warez or divx.
P.S. Not that all this would be a bad thing.
Having MP3s on your HDD is not illegal and RIAA is not trying to make it so. Downloading MP3s might be somewhat illegal (that's not completely clear) and RIAA campaigns against it, but doesn't try to sue people doing it (similar organisations in other countries do - think Denmark). What they are trying to do (or at least threatening to do) is go after those SHARING MP3s, because that is very clearly a copyright violation - you have no distribution rights (but you have fair use rights, which might protect some filesharing).
So you don't have to prove that you bought the music that you have on your computer and are sharing to everyone over P2P. You have to prove that you also have distribution rights, which you obviously don't have (and RIAA knows that).
I would say that the pursuit of property is less of a right than Internet access. I believe you have more right to access information than to own a factory. Of course, everyone who disagrees with you and the One American Way is probably a dangerous terrorist.
The right does not become such because reemul or non-existing god decide so. Something becomes a right when people declare it to be a right. People in Estonia just happened to do so.
I don't want this to sound flamebait, but you really are paranoid. :) May be not a coward as another poster suggested, but definitely cautious.
You were sharing only legit files, right. Even if we believe you, there were much more people sharing copyrighted songs and movies (someone had to share all the stuff that I downloaded). If they were not afraid to do it then, they are unlikely to stop now. Furthermore, there are many people (hundreds of thousands at least) sharing child pornography, which was always a risky thing to do.
So you are not a very representative example, just an outlier.
According to Apple, half of the songs are bought as parts of complete albums. Of course, if you make bad music, you will suffer from the option to buy only one song, but if you make quality music, you will instead benefit from increased number of people buying single songs and from many people still buying full albums.
How about teaching them how to make fire and how to skin a mammoth? PDA is a tool and they use the tools to learn about ecology.
;)
Ten years ago everyone though that desktop computers and networks are unnecessary and kids should write with pencils and go to the library for information. Today we understand that it was stupid to think so, but some people now claim that PDAs and WiFi are useless.
I am sure that in 2015 another melted will grumble at children using their computer-to-brain interfaces and memory implants. That's progress, don't stand in its way.
Of course it is a distraction. If I give you a Porche convertible to visit your grandma, what will you be more interested in - the car or the old woman? :) Of course, after the initial period of being excited with the technology only, people gradually become excited about its applications. People around me are constantly amazed with my Palm IIIxe (this even attracts the girls :] ), but for me it is just a useful tool. Same with these forest kids and their PDAs.
CG is not a cheap way, it is a cost effective way. If you are short on money, using CG is usually the most rational thing to do, because it is basically a fixed amount of $$$ per pixel.
Why don't you go and kill John Connor, Mr. Smarty-pants?
The media plays several roles in the modern society. People in the US usually limit it to entertiment, sometimes mentioning informing citizens. But media can also motivate people. Don't you think that one of the reasons of Americans' apathy is their media? In China they understand that finding something positive and telling it to the people can be very helpful indeed.
And Falun Gong is a dangerous cult. The fact that they are also against the Chinese government doesn't change it. If the US government doesn't want to admit it, the reasons are the same as with the IRA - politics. Check any objective information (not FG's and not official) and you will probably realise that Falun Gong is a totalitarian sect, similar to Scientology and every other sect in existence.
There is an extremely simple solution, overlooked by everyone. If your site is relatively small and it is not economically viable to design alternative audio test, you probably don't have many blind visitors. Then you can do a very simple thing.
1) Add a link named "If you can't see the numbers, click here".
2) On that page ask the user to fill in the webform a simple explanation of why he can't see the numbers (he is using Lynx, he is blind, he is colour-blind, he surfs from the library and the filter blocks all images, he considers arabic numbers to be un-American, etc.). Just a few phrases would be OK.
3) When he submits this message, let him proceed with the registration.
4) If possible, you can delay the activation by ~12-24h until a human can check the message and endorse the registration. If it is not possible, just register the user (but you can limit the number of instant registrations using step 5).
5) You can set a hourly/daily limit of these "blind" registrations (or instant registrations). When it is reached, all new registrations are placed on hold.
Result: everybody can use the registration system. Automatic registrations are possible, but automatic mass registrations are not. A few minutes of employee time is required every day to check pending registrations.
Is that so difficult?
Nice try. But there can be no justification really for breaking something that works in the first place. If skaters decide to use for their extreme sport a ramp that you had for the handicapped, it's generally not a reason to remove the ramp alltogether.
We are all humans! Why should we be so cruel and indifferent to each other when a little bit of attention would suffice? Is +0.1% on your next quarter P&L worth making lifes of many people more difficult? You can simply add a mailto: link to the registration page and ask for a short message (in a web-form) simply stating that the person can't pass automatic test. Then they can proceed with the registration and a human would check these registration every day to make sure no automatic registrations are done this way. You can also limit the number of such "blind" registrations per hour (per day, etc.). Is that SO difficult that you have to be so cruel?
I don't know what kind of noise was that, but I personally find it helpful to have information about green light in audio form, although I have pretty good sight. May be it's just a matter of choosing good sound that doesn't frighten people?
:)
BTW, how would a blind person react to this scary sound if he doesn't know it's a light signal, not a car? Jump right into traffic may be?
Yeah, you're right. Sorry for personally attacking you. :(
Regarding the essence of the issue.
1) Hormel says "used or which are planned to be used", which obviously refers to the names of present and future (that are already planned or are being introduced) products of Hormel that this site is about. Hormel doesn't claim that any SPAM-related word is their trademark.
2) Claiming, as you suggest, that they planned to use something that they actually didn't will not work in court. They would have to prove it.
3) Actually they are on pretty safe grounds as far as meat products are concerned. If you start selling canned meat called SPAMINATOR, SPAMWHORE, or SPAMFORBRAINS, you will be instantly sued and any court will side with Hormel here. So the word SPAMWHORE (or SpamWhore, or SpamHo, etc.) is in fact owned (or, to be more precise, can by used as a name for meat-related product only) by Hormel. Regarding other areas (like in the case in question), situation is unclear and we'll have to wait for the court decision. However, I doubt that they will use SpamArrest or similar name on their site without selling a product with that name (see point 1).
So we have to conclude that besides a bit ambiguous wording, this Hormel's statement is valid and correct. Moreover, the fair use is not even remotedly related to this situation. Hormel was (as mentioned in this discussion alread) very tolerant to use of "spam" as a synonym of "junk mail" and doesn't try to prevent people or companies from using the word "spam" in names of their products or services (but doesn't want them to register such names).
So in fact they do understand the idea of fair use and support it through their actions. That unnecessary remark was the reason for my somewhat aggressive comment. Hope it's clear now.