" 'You don't get to decide who calls themselves Christians! Christianity isn't a trademark. It is what ever someone says it is to them.' That idea is a bunch of hogwash. Unforuntately, it seems to be publically-accepted hogwash, "
Fascinating, yet your objection is one more of indigence than logic. About the only thing that can be considered a universal characteristic of Christians is that they believe that Christ was the Messiah. Your desire to have "Christian" mean something specific--as dictated by you alone, apparently--is understandable but falls into the "if wishes were fishes" category rather than factual argument.
"Religion doesn't "praise blind faith over reason" in all situations.. Christians don't go out randomly believing anything... When something questions the basic assumptions of their faith, they stick to those assumptions, but in all other cases, they're not "anti-reason"."
Au contraire, it is this bit of blind faith schizophrenia that makes science and religion such a bad mix. "Oh, we only ignore reason some of the time!" is not an argument that Christians are behaving rationally. If I have a multiplication table and it is only completely wrong some of the time, say 20%, is it still a good tool to use to design a bridge? I'd say not. Saying that your views are only **randomly** peppered with irrationality does not make them logical or reliable.
I once briefly debated a "Creation 'Scientist'". He said he was Christian first and a Scientist second, so there were certain "basic assumptions of [his] faith" that were inviolable. For instance there was no test, no argument and no proof that could ever contradict his Christian belief that the earth was under 10,000 years old. Being a scientist means being open to new possibilities, being religious means the opposite. Most scientist are even open to the possibility that god exists, given unlikely event of their being enough scientific proof (which god could choose to give in spades), but Christians are not open to the possibility that God does not exist.
" 'It is designed to stay stagnant and never change no matter what we learn. ' Which is why mainstream Christians still believe that the earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth and that maggots generate spontaneously in rotten meat. Oh wait, they don't. "
Once again, you are using the argument that only some of your beliefs are irrational. The fact that many Christians believe in some blatantly proven scientific facts is not proof of their rationality. Christians generally believe that a woman who never had sex gave birth to God who sent himself to earth as his son to suffer for the sins of his own creation, that God died but was resurrected by himself, who, er never died, so that he could be by his own side in heaven. And that anyone who doesn't believe this entirely reasonable true story deserves eternal punishment. Yup, I can see that logic and rationality rule here. But, back to your point about stagnation. Christianity starts with the premise that you must believe certain tenants of Christianity against all proof to the contrary. That is stagnation. Religion prides its self in blind faith. Once you take pride in being illogical an irrational, you loose the ability to objectively evaluate the world because you give your religious beliefs a free pass.
"The comments made by this teacher were totally inappropriate and took advantage of his authority position. So why not call them that instead of using phrases like "anti-scientific" that imply a war between religion and science?"
Well, one reason is because there is. The teacher didn't just express his personal belief in Jesus as his personal savior and leave it at that, he actively mis-represented science in his efforts to bolster his religious beliefs to his students.
"Evolution is scientific. You assume that because you've been indoctrinated on that. Truly, the idea of evolution is based on faith. It takes more faith that something came from nothing than God created the earth. If there's nothing, it can't explode. No one ever recorded an explosion creating order. There had to be a being. Gravity -- that's not the creator."
There is no need to **imply** there's a "war between religion and science" because there is one.
Religions are at there core static and dogmatic.The proposes unchallengable views about how the universe works based entirely faith. Science is a way of studying how the universe works through constant testing. It is constantly changing and goes where the evidence takes it. Science proves its worth by making reliable predictions about how things work. It is through science and its ability to understand and predict how things work that we have all modern medicine and technology. There is no such thing as faith based Civil Engineering. These two ways of understanding the universe are not "nonoverlapping magisteria" but mutually exclusive.
"Teaching in public school is one of the hardest jobs I can think of for a christian.'
This isn't some case where a teacher mentioned his personal beliefs as an aside. This teacher was not only actively proselytizing his specific religion but he's not even competent to criticize, let alone teach, science.
"Evolution is scientific. You assume that because you've been indoctrinated on that. Truly, the idea of evolution is based on faith. It takes more faith that something came from nothing than God created the earth. If there's nothing, it can't explode. No one ever recorded an explosion creating order. There had to be a being. Gravity -- that's not the creator."
On top of that, when called to answer for his blatant proselytizing he called the student a liar by denying the allegations. Failing to take responsibility for his own actions and bearing false witness doesn't make it sound like he's a good person or a "good Christian" who deserves a lot of support or sympathy over this issue.
"Such people are as much Christians as are scientists who believe the world is flat. Please do not judge us Christians by the actions of these radicals."
You don't get to decide who calls themselves Christians! Christianity isn't a trademark. It is what ever someone says it is to them.
The idea that people will to hell if they don't accept christ as their personal savior is, to my understanding, fairly mainstream Christianity. It is very hard to try and prove that one person's irrational belief is ridiculous and radical whereas your irrational belief is completely reasonable. How do you prove a difference? Trying to claim that your religion is demonstrably "truer" or "more Christian" on rational grounds is going to be a bit of a stretch. I'd say that most Christians aren't very Christian in the sense of following the teaching of Christ which centered primarily around caring for the poor among us. By that standard, the idea of a rich "Christian" preacher is an oxymoron.
Also, your analogy is bunk. Science is a system which praises reason over bind faith. It adapts its theories as more information is learned and tested. It is a system of separating what appears to be true from what is true and it slowly changes and adapts. Religion is a system of irrationality which praises blind faith over reason. It is designed to stay stagnant and never change no matter what we learn. It starts out with an inalienable premise and praises people for sticking with it in spite of evidence against it. A person could not be a scientist and still believe in a flat earth because Science is about Empirical Evidence. A person can be Christian and disagree with the parent poster because Christianity isn't a system based on facts and there is no way to prove a person's Christian beliefs to be "right" or "wrong."
...this is really a censorship issue. CNN has also edited the written transcripts to reflect the new censored version as if Maher never mentioned Mehlman at all.
"Moreover, how is privacy violated by a mechanical record? "
Basic rule of privacy and security: The only way to guarantee that records aren't released into the wild is not to collect them in the first place.
"Who cares what some computer uses to process information, so long as it's just a computer observing the data?"
As long as the data exists it can be demanded by the government through National Security Letters and by corporations and individuals in lawsuits, including divorce suits. So, yes, the very existence of this data pool is a privacy risk. Or there could be a security breach like the AOL "anonymized" search data release or a hack. All data collections are potential risks. The more personalized the data, the greater the risk.
"Why should people be more wary of Google than they are of any other link in this chain?"
Why should we be less wary? The all have potential pitfalls. This thread happens to be about Google in specific.
Making a user's application data portable is nice. I'd much rather be able to take the secret data that Google has amassed on me away and toss it in the bin. Google doesn't just know everything you've searched for, they know what you click on and every site with google ads that you've visited. Plus they read your gmail and all the data from their on-line apps and keep that information forever.
Give the users some real power. Let them decide how Google uses their data.
PS, Yes, I do know that many SD readers use proxies and delete cookies and such but this does not make my point any less significant for most users. I'm not in the camp that thinks that users should have to be programers to have any privacy rights.
"Does a bus forfeit common-carrier status by refusing to carry passengers without shoes? They do not."
In this case, we are not talking about a dress code, we are talking about the content of **legal** but possibly controversial speech. A more accurate analogy is whether a bus company could discriminate base on the fact that you like to **talk** about not wearing shoes.
"but what would be really useful^H^H^H^H^H^H heavy and short on battery life "
Indeed you are right about reduced battery life. But for me, my laptop is a portable workstation. Battery life is not as critical as functionality.
However, the as someone pointed out, the flip out monitors would be inconveniently in the way and that, perhaps, a slide out monitor would be more practical.
The second, cell-phone-style screen on the outside is cute, but what would be really useful would be one or two additional laptop screens that would swing out like a two fold restaurant menu. While a triptych screen laptop might be a little heavier and need strong hinges, it would be great for video editing and such...
Child porn is just an excuse. If protecting children was really the point, the proposed law would limit all subpoenas of data retained under this law to child porn cases. The law doesn't do that, ergo they are lying through their teeth.
Oh please, think about it before gushing over Microsoft. Microsoft only does things out of self interest. There are at least two Machiavellian motives for Microsoft to want a National privacy law. One is to undermine tougher state laws. MS knows that Congress is in the pocket of industry and will pass a weak national privacy law not a strict one. The other motive is to shoot Google in the foot. Google collects detailed personal information on every every Google transaction from a record of every Google search every made to the contents of your gmail in and out boxes. Privacy laws could hurt Google and anything that hurts Google helps Microsoft.
I'm no fan of Google's use of private info, but I never, never trust Microsoft.
Hmmm...did Microsoft manipulate the news by funding the "think tank" that James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership speaks for?
Yes.
That is the whole point of the organization. To add the false imprimatur of impartiality to Microsoft's propaganda.
Corporations think if a lot of profit is good then way more is better, but they don't always do the regression analysis for the long term. An example is firing employees. Corporations will often do mass layoffs. Short term profits go up, so they have more layoffs since it worked 'so well' the first time. Long term studies have shown that many of these attempts to cut costs have backfired as the companies' productivity--and eventually profitability--goes down. Corporations can't get over the idea that more must be better.
I worked for a finance company that offered on-line banking. The on-line banking saved the company money by getting the customers to enter and process their own transactions an kept them out of expensive to staff branches. So, what did the company do? They **charged** extra!! That is just what the Music Companies are trying to do. They are trying to charge us extra for the privilege of saving them money. Appalling. Simply Appalling.
"I no longer have that computer that the IP address was on, that they say the music was downloaded onto, because it had developed a major -- a lot of major viruses, apparently, and was wiped out and taken by my ex-husband. He was going to try to get it fixed. And I guess he has it down in North Carolina right now."
Hmm...how convenient. The computer has been wiped and taken out of state by her ex, who presumably also lives out of state.
While I do hope the RIAA loses this case, Ms Santangelo may not be the poster woman for innocence we'd all like to have for the first RIAA trial.
"I'd have to disagree. While being caught card-counting isn't fun, it's the casino's right to not let you play if they think you're going to take money from them. "
And I'd have to disagree with you. The promise of gambling is that it is a fair game--fair in the sense that they won't cheat you. The game isn't fair if they will accept your money as long as you are loosing but kick you out if you win. That is cheating on the part of the Casino.
If it is possible to card count and win, then the game of blackjack is "broken" and the casino can fix it by using more decks or changing the rules of the game, but they know that players like games with fewer decks and better odds. So, instead of fixing the game they throw out good players. That is wrong. That is cheating.
The odd aren't just stacked in the casinos favor, they also throw out players who win too much.
Casinos use the surveillance systems and facial ID systems to detect and bar players who are card counters.
Card counters are not cheaters, they are people who are really good at math who carefully observe what cards have been played and place bets accordingly--just as expert poker players do consciously or unconsciously. Cardcounting can give these blackjack players an extremely small edge. But casinos don't like to lose even to legitimate players.
Rather than make adjustments to the game of blackjack, casinos throw winning cardcounters out and pass a blacklist of photos to other casinos around the country. This unethical practice of baring players merely for winning should be illegal, but the gambling influenced laws in places like Las Vegas fully support it. Casinos hold out the promise that you can win if you are good, but balk at actually letting you play if you are really good.
Using high tech security to bar non-cheating players for winning is unethical and should be banned. The article should be condemned for giving the false impression that casino security is only used to catch cheaters.
"They do have a right to scan books that they own, but they don't have a right to copy all of a libraries' book, nor do they have the right to distribute (AKA show to you) any pages from these books."
That is an interesting distinction, using the idea that you have a "fair use" right to change the format and/or copy a work you own for your own use, but it would leave open the possibility that it could scan a library's books on the library's behalf.
Next would come the question of if you can use copyrighted material for a commercial purpose, even if you don't show the text. You are allowed to use business techniques you read in a book, but in that case, teaching those techniques is the purpose of the book.
Charging people (or making them watch ads) for a search of copyrighted material you don't own copyright to is an interesting test of copyright. I hope Google succeeds, but I'm wary of Google's increasing control over how information is accessed. Also, I don't support the replacement of printed books with scans. Scans and OCR documents are a good supplement for the book, but a totally inadequate and volitle substitute.
Well, it seems as if there may need to be a separate copyright exemption for indexing rights! Of course, that might conflict with DMCA provisions that prevent circumventing copy protection.
Which means that either Google doesn't have the right to scan the web or it does have the right to scan books. Either way, both websites and books are copyright by the same laws and google downloads full copies to its servers to make them searchable for its commercial gain.
Perhaps it is the tremendous usefulness of Google that has kept it from dying underneath an avalanche of lawsuits for its downloading of websites, but whatever the case Google is a company that uses other people's copyrighted material for commercial gain.
Is it fair use? It is to me, but I think downloading the entirety of a commercial work on an opt out basis is not fair use under the historical legal of fair use in the US.
"It's pretty obvious, since MS started this patent craze after being sued over ridiculous overbroad patents, that they are just doing things like this to cover their butt. They've NEVER sued anyone over a patent. I highly doubt they ever will unless it's a blatent and public rebellion or something..."
Pay no attention to the giant army massing on your border...
The patent arsenal that MS is creating is both a defensive and an offensive one. MS is merciless in court. Heck, they sued a guy named Mike Rowe who had a site called MikeRoweSoft claiming it was confusingly similar to Microsoft. They'll sue anybody. A giant patent arsenal is just going to make them more aggressive--thinking otherwise is either naive or disingenuous.
It is not contradictory to believe that, generally speaking, information wants to be free and that your private life should be private.
The companies that gather information on your private life do so to sell that information for a profit and they won't let consumers see that information. Thus, the privacy invasion cartel is not "letting information be free."
Well, I like audio entertainment. So I consider radio and pre-recorded playback two sides of a coin just as a CD player in a car comes with an AM/FM radio. I don't think many people would opt for a CD only player in their car nor do I really want a portable player that doesn't have a radio. It is a personal preference, though, and I just wish Apple would give us the option--after all, the chip set in the shuffle has built in FM radio support (and screen support, and WMA support)!
PS, I'm not a big fan for WMA, but more options are better than fewer.
Yup, the shuffle is easier to pocket, but a display screen, nested folders, WMA playback and an FM tuner kick in features Apple is to elitist to include. (PS, I'm writing this missive on my Powerbook...but I do think Apple is elitist.)
Is it ethical of him to circumvent the protection for his covenience?
For me? Sure... For him? Absolutely not.
If you are for government enforced DRM you need to accept it, crappy or not. The crappy implementations come with the territory. DRM will always intrude on your fair use ability, especially your ability to play your paid for content on newer devices. He made his bed when he supported DRM, now he needs to lie in it.
Slashdot Mirror
" 'You don't get to decide who calls themselves Christians! Christianity isn't a trademark. It is what ever someone says it is to them.'
.. Christians don't go out randomly believing anything... When something questions the basic assumptions of their faith, they stick to those assumptions, but in all other cases, they're not "anti-reason"."
That idea is a bunch of hogwash. Unforuntately, it seems to be publically-accepted hogwash, "
Fascinating, yet your objection is one more of indigence than logic. About the only thing that can be considered a universal characteristic of Christians is that they believe that Christ was the Messiah. Your desire to have "Christian" mean something specific--as dictated by you alone, apparently--is understandable but falls into the "if wishes were fishes" category rather than factual argument.
"Religion doesn't "praise blind faith over reason" in all situations
Au contraire, it is this bit of blind faith schizophrenia that makes science and religion such a bad mix. "Oh, we only ignore reason some of the time!" is not an argument that Christians are behaving rationally. If I have a multiplication table and it is only completely wrong some of the time, say 20%, is it still a good tool to use to design a bridge? I'd say not. Saying that your views are only **randomly** peppered with irrationality does not make them logical or reliable.
I once briefly debated a "Creation 'Scientist'". He said he was Christian first and a Scientist second, so there were certain "basic assumptions of [his] faith" that were inviolable. For instance there was no test, no argument and no proof that could ever contradict his Christian belief that the earth was under 10,000 years old. Being a scientist means being open to new possibilities, being religious means the opposite. Most scientist are even open to the possibility that god exists, given unlikely event of their being enough scientific proof (which god could choose to give in spades), but Christians are not open to the possibility that God does not exist.
" 'It is designed to stay stagnant and never change no matter what we learn. '
Which is why mainstream Christians still believe that the earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth and that maggots generate spontaneously in rotten meat. Oh wait, they don't. "
Once again, you are using the argument that only some of your beliefs are irrational. The fact that many Christians believe in some blatantly proven scientific facts is not proof of their rationality. Christians generally believe that a woman who never had sex gave birth to God who sent himself to earth as his son to suffer for the sins of his own creation, that God died but was resurrected by himself, who, er never died, so that he could be by his own side in heaven. And that anyone who doesn't believe this entirely reasonable true story deserves eternal punishment. Yup, I can see that logic and rationality rule here. But, back to your point about stagnation. Christianity starts with the premise that you must believe certain tenants of Christianity against all proof to the contrary. That is stagnation. Religion prides its self in blind faith. Once you take pride in being illogical an irrational, you loose the ability to objectively evaluate the world because you give your religious beliefs a free pass.
"The comments made by this teacher were totally inappropriate and took advantage of his authority position. So why not call them that instead of using phrases like "anti-scientific" that imply a war between religion and science?"
Well, one reason is because there is. The teacher didn't just express his personal belief in Jesus as his personal savior and leave it at that, he actively mis-represented science in his efforts to bolster his religious beliefs to his students.
"Evolution is scientific. You assume that because you've been indoctrinated on that. Truly, the idea of evolution is based on faith. It takes more faith that something came from nothing than God created the earth. If there's nothing, it can't explode. No one ever recorded an explosion creating order. There had to be a being. Gravity -- that's not the creator."
There is no need to **imply** there's a "war between religion and science" because there is one.
Religions are at there core static and dogmatic.The proposes unchallengable views about how the universe works based entirely faith. Science is a way of studying how the universe works through constant testing. It is constantly changing and goes where the evidence takes it. Science proves its worth by making reliable predictions about how things work. It is through science and its ability to understand and predict how things work that we have all modern medicine and technology. There is no such thing as faith based Civil Engineering. These two ways of understanding the universe are not "nonoverlapping magisteria" but mutually exclusive.
"Teaching in public school is one of the hardest jobs I can think of for a christian.'
This isn't some case where a teacher mentioned his personal beliefs as an aside. This teacher was not only actively proselytizing his specific religion but he's not even competent to criticize, let alone teach, science.
"Evolution is scientific. You assume that because you've been indoctrinated on that. Truly, the idea of evolution is based on faith. It takes more faith that something came from nothing than God created the earth. If there's nothing, it can't explode. No one ever recorded an explosion creating order. There had to be a being. Gravity -- that's not the creator."
On top of that, when called to answer for his blatant proselytizing he called the student a liar by denying the allegations. Failing to take responsibility for his own actions and bearing false witness doesn't make it sound like he's a good person or a "good Christian" who deserves a lot of support or sympathy over this issue.
"Such people are as much Christians as are scientists who believe the world is flat. Please do not judge us Christians by the actions of these radicals."
You don't get to decide who calls themselves Christians! Christianity isn't a trademark. It is what ever someone says it is to them.
The idea that people will to hell if they don't accept christ as their personal savior is, to my understanding, fairly mainstream Christianity. It is very hard to try and prove that one person's irrational belief is ridiculous and radical whereas your irrational belief is completely reasonable. How do you prove a difference? Trying to claim that your religion is demonstrably "truer" or "more Christian" on rational grounds is going to be a bit of a stretch. I'd say that most Christians aren't very Christian in the sense of following the teaching of Christ which centered primarily around caring for the poor among us. By that standard, the idea of a rich "Christian" preacher is an oxymoron.
Also, your analogy is bunk. Science is a system which praises reason over bind faith. It adapts its theories as more information is learned and tested. It is a system of separating what appears to be true from what is true and it slowly changes and adapts. Religion is a system of irrationality which praises blind faith over reason. It is designed to stay stagnant and never change no matter what we learn. It starts out with an inalienable premise and praises people for sticking with it in spite of evidence against it. A person could not be a scientist and still believe in a flat earth because Science is about Empirical Evidence. A person can be Christian and disagree with the parent poster because Christianity isn't a system based on facts and there is no way to prove a person's Christian beliefs to be "right" or "wrong."
...this is really a censorship issue. CNN has also edited the written transcripts to reflect the new censored version as if Maher never mentioned Mehlman at all.
"Moreover, how is privacy violated by a mechanical record? "
Basic rule of privacy and security: The only way to guarantee that records aren't released into the wild is not to collect them in the first place.
"Who cares what some computer uses to process information, so long as it's just a computer observing the data?"
As long as the data exists it can be demanded by the government through National Security Letters and by corporations and individuals in lawsuits, including divorce suits. So, yes, the very existence of this data pool is a privacy risk. Or there could be a security breach like the AOL "anonymized" search data release or a hack. All data collections are potential risks. The more personalized the data, the greater the risk.
"Why should people be more wary of Google than they are of any other link in this chain?"
Why should we be less wary? The all have potential pitfalls. This thread happens to be about Google in specific.
Making a user's application data portable is nice. I'd much rather be able to take the secret data that Google has amassed on me away and toss it in the bin. Google doesn't just know everything you've searched for, they know what you click on and every site with google ads that you've visited. Plus they read your gmail and all the data from their on-line apps and keep that information forever.
Give the users some real power. Let them decide how Google uses their data.
PS,
Yes, I do know that many SD readers use proxies and delete cookies and such but this does not make my point any less significant for most users. I'm not in the camp that thinks that users should have to be programers to have any privacy rights.
"Does a bus forfeit common-carrier status by refusing to carry passengers without shoes? They do not." In this case, we are not talking about a dress code, we are talking about the content of **legal** but possibly controversial speech. A more accurate analogy is whether a bus company could discriminate base on the fact that you like to **talk** about not wearing shoes.
"but what would be really useful^H^H^H^H^H^H heavy and short on battery life " Indeed you are right about reduced battery life. But for me, my laptop is a portable workstation. Battery life is not as critical as functionality. However, the as someone pointed out, the flip out monitors would be inconveniently in the way and that, perhaps, a slide out monitor would be more practical.
The second, cell-phone-style screen on the outside is cute, but what would be really useful would be one or two additional laptop screens that would swing out like a two fold restaurant menu. While a triptych screen laptop might be a little heavier and need strong hinges, it would be great for video editing and such...
Child porn is just an excuse. If protecting children was really the point, the proposed law would limit all subpoenas of data retained under this law to child porn cases. The law doesn't do that, ergo they are lying through their teeth.
Oh please, think about it before gushing over Microsoft. Microsoft only does things out of self interest. There are at least two Machiavellian motives for Microsoft to want a National privacy law. One is to undermine tougher state laws. MS knows that Congress is in the pocket of industry and will pass a weak national privacy law not a strict one. The other motive is to shoot Google in the foot. Google collects detailed personal information on every every Google transaction from a record of every Google search every made to the contents of your gmail in and out boxes. Privacy laws could hurt Google and anything that hurts Google helps Microsoft.
I'm no fan of Google's use of private info, but I never, never trust Microsoft.
Hmmm...did Microsoft manipulate the news by funding the "think tank" that James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership speaks for?
Yes.
That is the whole point of the organization. To add the false imprimatur of impartiality to Microsoft's propaganda.
Corporations think if a lot of profit is good then way more is better, but they don't always do the regression analysis for the long term. An example is firing employees. Corporations will often do mass layoffs. Short term profits go up, so they have more layoffs since it worked 'so well' the first time. Long term studies have shown that many of these attempts to cut costs have backfired as the companies' productivity--and eventually profitability--goes down. Corporations can't get over the idea that more must be better.
I worked for a finance company that offered on-line banking. The on-line banking saved the company money by getting the customers to enter and process their own transactions an kept them out of expensive to staff branches. So, what did the company do? They **charged** extra!! That is just what the Music Companies are trying to do. They are trying to charge us extra for the privilege of saving them money. Appalling. Simply Appalling.
"I no longer have that computer that the IP address was on, that they say the music was downloaded onto, because it had developed a major -- a lot of major viruses, apparently, and was wiped out and taken by my ex-husband. He was going to try to get it fixed. And I guess he has it down in North Carolina right now."
Hmm...how convenient. The computer has been wiped and taken out of state by her ex, who presumably also lives out of state.
While I do hope the RIAA loses this case, Ms Santangelo may not be the poster woman for innocence we'd all like to have for the first RIAA trial.
"I'd have to disagree. While being caught card-counting isn't fun, it's the casino's right to not let you play if they think you're going to take money from them. "
And I'd have to disagree with you. The promise of gambling is that it is a fair game--fair in the sense that they won't cheat you. The game isn't fair if they will accept your money as long as you are loosing but kick you out if you win. That is cheating on the part of the Casino.
If it is possible to card count and win, then the game of blackjack is "broken" and the casino can fix it by using more decks or changing the rules of the game, but they know that players like games with fewer decks and better odds. So, instead of fixing the game they throw out good players. That is wrong. That is cheating.
The odd aren't just stacked in the casinos favor, they also throw out players who win too much. Casinos use the surveillance systems and facial ID systems to detect and bar players who are card counters. Card counters are not cheaters, they are people who are really good at math who carefully observe what cards have been played and place bets accordingly--just as expert poker players do consciously or unconsciously. Cardcounting can give these blackjack players an extremely small edge. But casinos don't like to lose even to legitimate players. Rather than make adjustments to the game of blackjack, casinos throw winning cardcounters out and pass a blacklist of photos to other casinos around the country. This unethical practice of baring players merely for winning should be illegal, but the gambling influenced laws in places like Las Vegas fully support it. Casinos hold out the promise that you can win if you are good, but balk at actually letting you play if you are really good. Using high tech security to bar non-cheating players for winning is unethical and should be banned. The article should be condemned for giving the false impression that casino security is only used to catch cheaters.
"They do have a right to scan books that they own, but they don't have a right to copy all of a libraries' book, nor do they have the right to distribute (AKA show to you) any pages from these books."
That is an interesting distinction, using the idea that you have a "fair use" right to change the format and/or copy a work you own for your own use, but it would leave open the possibility that it could scan a library's books on the library's behalf.
Next would come the question of if you can use copyrighted material for a commercial purpose, even if you don't show the text. You are allowed to use business techniques you read in a book, but in that case, teaching those techniques is the purpose of the book.
Charging people (or making them watch ads) for a search of copyrighted material you don't own copyright to is an interesting test of copyright. I hope Google succeeds, but I'm wary of Google's increasing control over how information is accessed. Also, I don't support the replacement of printed books with scans. Scans and OCR documents are a good supplement for the book, but a totally inadequate and volitle substitute.
Well, it seems as if there may need to be a separate copyright exemption for indexing rights! Of course, that might conflict with DMCA provisions that prevent circumventing copy protection.
Which means that either Google doesn't have the right to scan the web or it does have the right to scan books. Either way, both websites and books are copyright by the same laws and google downloads full copies to its servers to make them searchable for its commercial gain.
Perhaps it is the tremendous usefulness of Google that has kept it from dying underneath an avalanche of lawsuits for its downloading of websites, but whatever the case Google is a company that uses other people's copyrighted material for commercial gain.
Is it fair use? It is to me, but I think downloading the entirety of a commercial work on an opt out basis is not fair use under the historical legal of fair use in the US.
"It's pretty obvious, since MS started this patent craze after being sued over ridiculous overbroad patents, that they are just doing things like this to cover their butt. They've NEVER sued anyone over a patent. I highly doubt they ever will unless it's a blatent and public rebellion or something..."
Pay no attention to the giant army massing on your border...
The patent arsenal that MS is creating is both a defensive and an offensive one. MS is merciless in court. Heck, they sued a guy named Mike Rowe who had a site called MikeRoweSoft claiming it was confusingly similar to Microsoft. They'll sue anybody. A giant patent arsenal is just going to make them more aggressive--thinking otherwise is either naive or disingenuous.
It is not contradictory to believe that, generally speaking, information wants to be free and that your private life should be private.
The companies that gather information on your private life do so to sell that information for a profit and they won't let consumers see that information. Thus, the privacy invasion cartel is not "letting information be free."
Well, I like audio entertainment. So I consider radio and pre-recorded playback two sides of a coin just as a CD player in a car comes with an AM/FM radio. I don't think many people would opt for a CD only player in their car nor do I really want a portable player that doesn't have a radio. It is a personal preference, though, and I just wish Apple would give us the option--after all, the chip set in the shuffle has built in FM radio support (and screen support, and WMA support)!
PS, I'm not a big fan for WMA, but more options are better than fewer.
Yup, the shuffle is easier to pocket, but a display screen, nested folders, WMA playback and an FM tuner kick in features Apple is to elitist to include. (PS, I'm writing this missive on my Powerbook...but I do think Apple is elitist.)
Is it ethical of him to circumvent the protection for his covenience?
For me? Sure... For him? Absolutely not.
If you are for government enforced DRM you need to accept it, crappy or not. The crappy implementations come with the territory. DRM will always intrude on your fair use ability, especially your ability to play your paid for content on newer devices. He made his bed when he supported DRM, now he needs to lie in it.