You're claiming that this would -reduce- gun crime.
In practice, it might mean that those who kept their firearms might feel safer threatening those who hadn't. In addition, firearms usually provide one sort of means, not a motive; if you're killed by poison or knife, you're still just as dead.
Actually, that's not what we want, and it's not what the Founders wanted -- they had a horror of mobs, demogogues and unfettered democracy, which is precisely why they set up a heavily Federal system with a bicameral legislature in which the Senate consisted of appointees with six-year terms and why they set up checks and balances including a judiciary with jurisdiction over interpretations of the law and lacking the need to maintain public goodwill for their continued tenure.
We should elect politicians who have principles, intelligence and rationality, and the willingness to use the extensive resources of the government for the information gathering and analysis necessary for their jobs -- not spineless squid flailing about in whatever pathetic short-sighted emotion-driven direction is suggested by polls du jour of the voters who could tell you more about which actress wears what dresses from what designer than the international community's unfulfilled commitments regarding the south of Sudan, the finances of Amtrak, or the issues about whether Black-Scholes is a reasonable method for expensing the cost of stock options at the time of issuance.
Majorities -- especially majorities of people busy living their own lives rather than performing politician's jobs on the side, without their supporting staff, briefings and security clearances -- are not particularly reliable and are not a good substitute for experience, attention and judgement. Hence, we should elect people who'll dedicate attention to their jobs, intelligently seek out and assimilate relevant information, and make rational policy decisions with a view towards both reality (rather than ideal non-existent paradises) and the long term (rather than just the next election cycle).
If a technology is judged to have insignificant legal use, it's much more vulnerable to being regulated or prohibited outright with regards to possession or distribution, let alone use.
Quite a few jurisdictions prohibit such things as tinted windows that prevent LEOs from seeing into your car; the possession of any automatic firearms without specific permits, or perhaps at all; or so forth. It's currently illegal in the US to distribute software that's positioned as a tool for bypassing various electronic copy protection methods, c/o DMCA.
In some jurisdictions private citizens (not pharmacies) can even be barred from having large quantities of pseudophedrine and certain other ingredients on the grounds that while not illegal individually in small quantities, collecting them indicates that you're into drug manufacture even in the absence of proof that you've actually made any or intend to.
I suspect that this doctrine is questionable with regards to common practice. A true backup copy would be an -exact- replica, whereas unless both client and server have incredible bandwidth, any movie download would seem likely to have been recompressed or otherwise modified. Likewise if it has been de-CSSed -- it's no longer a true archival backup, but a different version and possibly a derivative work.
A cynic might suggest that rushing to do business in a single-party state reknowned for corruption, state-owned commerical enterprises, and the lack of an transparent and independent judiciary is questionable, regardless of the potential customer base.
It's perhaps less dangerous for mundane manufacturing, but I'd be careful about developing or transfering any valuable IP over there. If a sufficiently connected enterprise chooses to compete unfairly, you shouldn't really expect a fair hearing in their courts -- and you can't expect much assistance from your own country, either. What, are they going to offend 1.6 billion potential consumers or cheap laborers just because you -think- somebody stole your designs and passed them to a state-owned company, or you're being persecuted for failure to pay bribes?
Doing so would also prevent a small-time firm which has the patent from licensing it to a big-time firm which may have far better production, distributing and marketing arms.
If some inventor develops an interesting idea but doesn't have the production facilities or the investment capital and other prerequisites to build them, he's basically screwed.
Not that this matters very much; the poster's point was that a bozo was specifically seeking certification in a product that he admitted that he (the bozo) wasn't remotely familiar with, just to add another certification.
MoveOn is a PAC, not a 527 group. That means that they're subject to more reporting and fundraising limitations, but may explicitly support particular candidates outside the normal range of a mere "issue"-focused group.
SBVFT and America Coming Together, and IIRC the Progress for America group are all 527s.
They might use it to query with any or all of the three main credit-reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. An employer will use it to contact the IRS. All might notice if you give them an invalid number or somebody else's.
Lots of organizations ask it for use in identification, either internally or externally. Merchants that want to check your credit history ask for it. Employeers need it to report earnings and taxation to the IRS. Universities used to use 'em as identifiers.
Hell, even my local Blockbuster ask for your SSN to do a credit check before they'll let you rent. I could understand it if I were renting something expensive like a car, but... and they may be keeping the number on file instead of discarding it after the check is made.
...unless there's a separate channel that goes between the purchaser and the bank, and one from the bank to the merchant to confirm authentication of the purchaser. Both would need to be secure against replay attacks and spoofing, of course.
For a very slow-paced and not-often-used example, some banks will call you to verify anomalous purchases made with your credit card.
Actually, the problems facing Social Security have nothing to do with tax cuts, but instead with the facts that...
(A) Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program with a fundamental disconnect between inflow and outflow (benefits owed are not related to inflow). (B) There is not and never has been a "trust fund"; instead, the money was promptly borrowed and spent in lieu of additional general revenue. (C) The "baby boomers" are about to become extremely numerous retirees compared to the number of workers paying into the system.
(B)'s role is making it difficult to solve (A) and (C). By 2018, courtesy of (A) and (C) benefits owed under the present system are projected to exceed inflow, which means that general revenue will need to be used to replenish the "trust fund" that should be there, but never has been.
It's a pathologically absurd system in which those making more money pay in at a lower tax rate (due to the backwards system of capping taxable income rather than a floor of tax-exempt), outflows are not means-tested (will Gates need his SocSec? Will Buffett? Surely it makes sense to redirect the outflow constrained by limited inflow to those who need it!), and it's pretended that Social Security money is somehow separate when in fact it's been mingled with general revenue for years and will need to be replenished from it.
AAAAAAAAaagh. Good think I'm not drinking at the mmoment.
A credit card company will be more in your corner, because they're looking to collect the debt -- and they'll charge-back the merchant with penalties if they see fit, and even revoke the merchant's transaction privileges if too many charge-backs occur. The debit-card account, however, has already resulted in your money being gone -- which lowers the incentive for them to go after anybody else (except you, if you try to get your money back!).
In addition, courtesy of non-instant billing you usually have more time to contest a credit card transaction before such things as NSF fees start piling up.
The whole ChoicePoint shebang has been mentiond in both mainstream newspapers (the NYT, for instance) and television news programs (e.g. NBC mentioned it IIRC). Very high-profile mess. I understand their share price has even dropped something like 9% over this.
It wouldn't surprise me much if the compromise of Ms. Hilton's phone book, etc were also widely known at this point; it's only been joked about on late-night for instance...
Sounds like that would serve the same purpose as Citibank's "virtual credit card number" service; for an online transaction, it'll generate a one-time-only CC number with a user-specified transaction limit so that the Other Side (or whoever's listening) can't use it again or for more money than you're inclined to authorize.
That's a bit less likely. If you're the copyright holder AND you're the one who's making it available on a file-sharing network that doesn't even make an effort to, say, make a downloader agree to a license, it could certainly be argued that you're implicitly authorizing the download by willfully making it available without restriction. If it were found on somebody -else's- system and the sharer clearly did NOT have permission to redistribute, there's a stronger case.
I would question whether "digital technology is putting the ability to make films in anyones hands", as creativity and skill are both rather important.
For instance, buying a Canon 1Ds Mk II camera won't make one a good photographer. It -may- help a good photographer take pictures that he couldn't take as readily with inferior equipment, however. Even an expenditure of millions of dollars won't guarantee a good movie if the writing, directing, and so forth isn't there -- as numerous expensive crapfests such as the Matrix sequels, Catwoman, or Event Horizon could testify.
It might be objected that if -any- alterations have been done (such as further compression to make it fit on a single-layer DVD), that it's not really a copy. How often are full-size images redistributed?
Lighting, power, editing equipment, rent, other expenses aren't free. If the show doesn't -exist- because nobody fronts the money needed to make it happen, it won't exist.
Of course, if you'd rather all such art be reduced to the level of amateurs playing with HandyCams and primitive editing, well, maybe you'd be okay with that. I don't think Michaelangelo would have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel if he were too busy begging for scraps, however, and sculpting David might have been problematic unless he could steal the marble.
Hmmm. I've seen quite a few proxy voting statements on shareholder proposals aimed at enforcing good governance, tying compensation to performance, requiring shareholder approval for "golden parachutes", forcing disclosure of political contributions, avoidance of GM foods, that sort of thing.
And I've never, ever seen a Board recommend a 'yes' vote on anything like this; it's always 'no'. IMHO, shareholders are more likely to have the company's interest in mind, whereas board members and executives tend to be close and are likely to have each others' and their own interests in mind.
...or, rather, threads stall waiting for other transactions to relinquish locks. Regardless of how many cores you have, there are likely going to be limits on concurrency unless you have a strictly read-only database or you simply enjoy aborts and rollbacks.
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You're claiming that this would -reduce- gun crime.
In practice, it might mean that those who kept their firearms might feel safer threatening those who hadn't. In addition, firearms usually provide one sort of means, not a motive; if you're killed by poison or knife, you're still just as dead.
Actually, that's not what we want, and it's not what the Founders wanted -- they had a horror of mobs, demogogues and unfettered democracy, which is precisely why they set up a heavily Federal system with a bicameral legislature in which the Senate consisted of appointees with six-year terms and why they set up checks and balances including a judiciary with jurisdiction over interpretations of the law and lacking the need to maintain public goodwill for their continued tenure.
We should elect politicians who have principles, intelligence and rationality, and the willingness to use the extensive resources of the government for the information gathering and analysis necessary for their jobs -- not spineless squid flailing about in whatever pathetic short-sighted emotion-driven direction is suggested by polls du jour of the voters who could tell you more about which actress wears what dresses from what designer than the international community's unfulfilled commitments regarding the south of Sudan, the finances of Amtrak, or the issues about whether Black-Scholes is a reasonable method for expensing the cost of stock options at the time of issuance.
Majorities -- especially majorities of people busy living their own lives rather than performing politician's jobs on the side, without their supporting staff, briefings and security clearances -- are not particularly reliable and are not a good substitute for experience, attention and judgement. Hence, we should elect people who'll dedicate attention to their jobs, intelligently seek out and assimilate relevant information, and make rational policy decisions with a view towards both reality (rather than ideal non-existent paradises) and the long term (rather than just the next election cycle).
If a technology is judged to have insignificant legal use, it's much more vulnerable to being regulated or prohibited outright with regards to possession or distribution, let alone use.
Quite a few jurisdictions prohibit such things as tinted windows that prevent LEOs from seeing into your car; the possession of any automatic firearms without specific permits, or perhaps at all; or so forth. It's currently illegal in the US to distribute software that's positioned as a tool for bypassing various electronic copy protection methods, c/o DMCA.
In some jurisdictions private citizens (not pharmacies) can even be barred from having large quantities of pseudophedrine and certain other ingredients on the grounds that while not illegal individually in small quantities, collecting them indicates that you're into drug manufacture even in the absence of proof that you've actually made any or intend to.
I suspect that this doctrine is questionable with regards to common practice. A true backup copy would be an -exact- replica, whereas unless both client and server have incredible bandwidth, any movie download would seem likely to have been recompressed or otherwise modified. Likewise if it has been de-CSSed -- it's no longer a true archival backup, but a different version and possibly a derivative work.
Not under US law. Trademarks have to be enforced to be kept; patents, no.
A cynic might suggest that rushing to do business in a single-party state reknowned for corruption, state-owned commerical enterprises, and the lack of an transparent and independent judiciary is questionable, regardless of the potential customer base.
It's perhaps less dangerous for mundane manufacturing, but I'd be careful about developing or transfering any valuable IP over there. If a sufficiently connected enterprise chooses to compete unfairly, you shouldn't really expect a fair hearing in their courts -- and you can't expect much assistance from your own country, either. What, are they going to offend 1.6 billion potential consumers or cheap laborers just because you -think- somebody stole your designs and passed them to a state-owned company, or you're being persecuted for failure to pay bribes?
Doing so would also prevent a small-time firm which has the patent from licensing it to a big-time firm which may have far better production, distributing and marketing arms.
If some inventor develops an interesting idea but doesn't have the production facilities or the investment capital and other prerequisites to build them, he's basically screwed.
If memory serves, USPTO's policy is that it's not responsible for searching for prior art; that's for the litigators to do.
IBM's flagship database product.
Not that this matters very much; the poster's point was that a bozo was specifically seeking certification in a product that he admitted that he (the bozo) wasn't remotely familiar with, just to add another certification.
MoveOn is a PAC, not a 527 group. That means that they're subject to more reporting and fundraising limitations, but may explicitly support particular candidates outside the normal range of a mere "issue"-focused group.
SBVFT and America Coming Together, and IIRC the Progress for America group are all 527s.
Money is speech, and campaign finance regulations do restrict speech, as SCOTUS ruled in Buckley v. Vallejo.
They might use it to query with any or all of the three main credit-reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. An employer will use it to contact the IRS. All might notice if you give them an invalid number or somebody else's.
Lots of organizations ask it for use in identification, either internally or externally. Merchants that want to check your credit history ask for it. Employeers need it to report earnings and taxation to the IRS. Universities used to use 'em as identifiers.
Hell, even my local Blockbuster ask for your SSN to do a credit check before they'll let you rent. I could understand it if I were renting something expensive like a car, but... and they may be keeping the number on file instead of discarding it after the check is made.
...unless there's a separate channel that goes between the purchaser and the bank, and one from the bank to the merchant to confirm authentication of the purchaser. Both would need to be secure against replay attacks and spoofing, of course.
For a very slow-paced and not-often-used example, some banks will call you to verify anomalous purchases made with your credit card.
No.
Actually, the problems facing Social Security have nothing to do with tax cuts, but instead with the facts that...
(A) Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program with a fundamental disconnect between inflow and outflow (benefits owed are not related to inflow).
(B) There is not and never has been a "trust fund"; instead, the money was promptly borrowed and spent in lieu of additional general revenue.
(C) The "baby boomers" are about to become extremely numerous retirees compared to the number of workers paying into the system.
(B)'s role is making it difficult to solve (A) and (C). By 2018, courtesy of (A) and (C) benefits owed under the present system are projected to exceed inflow, which means that general revenue will need to be used to replenish the "trust fund" that should be there, but never has been.
It's a pathologically absurd system in which those making more money pay in at a lower tax rate (due to the backwards system of capping taxable income rather than a floor of tax-exempt), outflows are not means-tested (will Gates need his SocSec? Will Buffett? Surely it makes sense to redirect the outflow constrained by limited inflow to those who need it!), and it's pretended that Social Security money is somehow separate when in fact it's been mingled with general revenue for years and will need to be replenished from it.
Stay alert!
AAAAAAAAaagh. Good think I'm not drinking at the mmoment.
A credit card company will be more in your corner, because they're looking to collect the debt -- and they'll charge-back the merchant with penalties if they see fit, and even revoke the merchant's transaction privileges if too many charge-backs occur. The debit-card account, however, has already resulted in your money being gone -- which lowers the incentive for them to go after anybody else (except you, if you try to get your money back!).
In addition, courtesy of non-instant billing you usually have more time to contest a credit card transaction before such things as NSF fees start piling up.
The whole ChoicePoint shebang has been mentiond in both mainstream newspapers (the NYT, for instance) and television news programs (e.g. NBC mentioned it IIRC). Very high-profile mess. I understand their share price has even dropped something like 9% over this.
It wouldn't surprise me much if the compromise of Ms. Hilton's phone book, etc were also widely known at this point; it's only been joked about on late-night for instance...
Sounds like that would serve the same purpose as Citibank's "virtual credit card number" service; for an online transaction, it'll generate a one-time-only CC number with a user-specified transaction limit so that the Other Side (or whoever's listening) can't use it again or for more money than you're inclined to authorize.
That's a bit less likely. If you're the copyright holder AND you're the one who's making it available on a file-sharing network that doesn't even make an effort to, say, make a downloader agree to a license, it could certainly be argued that you're implicitly authorizing the download by willfully making it available without restriction. If it were found on somebody -else's- system and the sharer clearly did NOT have permission to redistribute, there's a stronger case.
I would question whether "digital technology is putting the ability to make films in anyones hands", as creativity and skill are both rather important.
For instance, buying a Canon 1Ds Mk II camera won't make one a good photographer. It -may- help a good photographer take pictures that he couldn't take as readily with inferior equipment, however. Even an expenditure of millions of dollars won't guarantee a good movie if the writing, directing, and so forth isn't there -- as numerous expensive crapfests such as the Matrix sequels, Catwoman, or Event Horizon could testify.
It might be objected that if -any- alterations have been done (such as further compression to make it fit on a single-layer DVD), that it's not really a copy. How often are full-size images redistributed?
Lighting, power, editing equipment, rent, other expenses aren't free. If the show doesn't -exist- because nobody fronts the money needed to make it happen, it won't exist.
Of course, if you'd rather all such art be reduced to the level of amateurs playing with HandyCams and primitive editing, well, maybe you'd be okay with that. I don't think Michaelangelo would have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel if he were too busy begging for scraps, however, and sculpting David might have been problematic unless he could steal the marble.
Hmmm. I've seen quite a few proxy voting statements on shareholder proposals aimed at enforcing good governance, tying compensation to performance, requiring shareholder approval for "golden parachutes", forcing disclosure of political contributions, avoidance of GM foods, that sort of thing.
And I've never, ever seen a Board recommend a 'yes' vote on anything like this; it's always 'no'. IMHO, shareholders are more likely to have the company's interest in mind, whereas board members and executives tend to be close and are likely to have each others' and their own interests in mind.
...or, rather, threads stall waiting for other transactions to relinquish locks. Regardless of how many cores you have, there are likely going to be limits on concurrency unless you have a strictly read-only database or you simply enjoy aborts and rollbacks.
Data cache misses are also a nontrivial issue.