"As for quantifying the listeners, the data from individuals isn't all that precise as it is*: it's self-reported recollection by random survey, like asking "What station do you listen to most, and for how many hours a week?" not some detailed listening-journal kept by the person. I've been asked to fill out these surveys or respond by phone a few times myself."
Actually, I've taken part in one of those surveys, you get a booklet for the next week with a 2-page spread for each day and spaces to fill in what you listened to and when accurate to 1/4 hour (or it may even have been accurate to 5 minutes). The problem is that when you hear the radio out & about in a waiting room for a few minutes you have to make a point of listening for a jingle so you know what station it is, or you can't really fill the booklet in.
well, there's no advertising if it's a BBC station, and frankly; unless it's Radio 2, it's not worth listening to.
Though, if it is an ad-supported station, those people listening in workplaces and waiting rooms are going to be hard to quantify, and that makes them hard to add to your listener figures, which need to be high and fairly accurate if you're going to point to them the justify charging 20% more per unit time of advertising airtime than everyone else.
I'm not aware that Blizzard offered a free CD-Key validation service to the BNetD project, so that argument is invalidated.
Why is it that anyone who stands up for something worth standing up for (like the right to run a multiplayer game on your own terms) gets called stupid here when they get stamped on?
What were the BNetD team supposed to do? Roll over and throw away hundreds of man-hours of painstaking work when the bullies came along to try and sweep the flaws in their copy-protection scheme under the carpet? No, they stood up for the right to reverse engineer, for your right to enjoy your games how you choose, for the right to get on with their tinkering without interference from corporate bullies. A bunch of bad laws and incompetent judges later and they've lost the case though in defiance of all reason and common sense.
And what do you have to say for it? that they're stupid for fighting the battle. It's not just 'fun to villify' Blizzard for this - they deserve far worse than villification - they've abused the courts to wreck other people's hard work because it exposed the obvious flaw in their copy-protection system, but for a game which was already old enough that it was past the best of its cash-cow days anyway - StarCraft and BroodWar were already in the budget section by the time Blizzard kicked up a fuss, and as for D1 and WarII... there was no legitimate moral reason to object to the project, there was no meaningful business reason, the entire action was, in my opinion, pure spite.
When someone comes along to hurt you out of spite, you don't just cower and crawl away so they'll leave you alone, you stand up to them and you won't be stupid for doing it. That they lost when they stood up is to the eternal shame and humiliation of the whole system of 'justice' which has let down the BNetD team, and every person who thought that it could, just once, find correctly.
"I am sure, of course, that Comcast wouldn't tap into this for any reason, nor let the authorities tap into this to watch inside your home in real time without a warrant or anything."
If Comcast can't guarantee that they won't let the authorities watch inside your home in real time even WITH a warrant they must:
Not implement this technology
Destroy all the research
Seriously, the ability to look into anyone's home through a common device that most homes will have and at whim will only end badly. This is very much like destroying all the terminator research, privacy cannot be protected if this device exists, so it must be destroyed before anyone gets any dangerous ideas. (And it must be done now whilst it's still a prototype, rather than trying to do it in 10 years time when there's one in every home and the research is too widely disseminated to destroy.)
If someone was on the verge of developing a more virulent strain of smallpox, would you let them? Even if they promised that they'd never let it out of their lab without putting it in the care of a 'responsible' person or agency?
If it was you, would you continue your research?
Exactly.
not a physicist, but nearly as clever:
Stanford algorithms expert, Donald Knuth(pdf) doesn't like nasty closed-up journals either. As he said when I asked him about it; "Who are you? How did you get in my house?".
"Is it the best place to go if you're not a mathematician but would like a little background into combinatorics"
No. I've never read a maths article on wikipedia that wasn't written without regard to the ability of the average reader to understand it. Any time I try to read one I see an enormous chunk of long words, pages and pages of meaningless symbols and precious little explanation - whatever level they're written for, it's above me - and I have a degree in theoretical physics!
sounds like fun if the relevant cop can be identified - that's begging for arrest-at-the-airport if they go on holiday to the US having hacked into a computer there.
/. ID's don't have to be integers anymore? When did this happen? Do the numbers have to be rational?
If they don't I call dibs on 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679...
We have an old Trinitron, which we acquired as a result of an elderly relative passing away. We don't have the instruction book. It's model number is KV-2092-UB. The Sony website knows nothing about such a model. What I want to know is; is it new enough for s-video to work over its SCART connection? Asking here because I obviously don't trust Sony enough to give them my personal details which is a requirement for asking them. Anyone know?
We regret to inform you that you have failed in your attempt to become a Chartered Lonely Geek. It's spelled "T'Pol".
We hope that you will try again in the next exam period.
-The Society of Desperate, Geeks, Dorks, Nerds and Associated Persons Desperate Enough to Have the Hots for a Fictional Character (TSDGDNAPDEHHFC)
but there was no-one on the other side telling him that it WAS true. If you're waiting for input before making a decision where the input is going to be 90% chance of 1 and 10% chance of 0, the waiting for input times out and the decision has to be made, you don't have a choice but to assume data, and you're going to assume 1. Now, imagine that you have a input of 1 (90%), 0(0%) or -1(10%); you get no input; do you assume 1, 0 or -1? Clearly, you should still assume 1 - whilst 0 might be the middle value, it's not actually a valid input because it could never happen (0%) and 1 is still the most likely.
uh, yeah, if it's been sent back for repairs with the promise that the case WON'T be damaged and your Mexican repair shop can't handle that request, you damn well do it yourselves. When you screw up, the fact that you screwed up because it was company policy to screw up really counts for a sum total of sod all.
the judge is absolutely guilty of the most shocking and dangerous negligence. The fact that it's his job to be negligent doesn't enter into it. If he can't be bothered to do even the most rudimentary checking that the basis of his decision to exercise his powers in factually correct, he should bear the full burden of the consequences of those actions.
Does it make even the slightest bit of sense that someone can swan into a court, demand action be taken that will harm a third party, and not actually have to back it up with ANYTHING for such action to take place as long as the third party doesn't oppose it? In any other situation where one side makes demands and doesn't back it up the default is that nothing happens, not the the demands are met on the sole basis of the existence of the demands. (When I say 'back it up', I refer to the point that if the judge doesn't check for himself that what is being said to him is a true, any pile of not-entirely-false garbage can be dumped on him, which he will assume to be true with no questions.)
The purpose of the judge is to sit impartially between the two parties and make a just decision - the judge should be responsible if he makes an unjust decision.
Making a decision by default is little better than giving the go-ahead to vigilante justice (I say 'little better', I mean 'worse') - the judge should ALWAYS assume that the defendant opposes any accusation and any proposed action that would harm them - they deserve that protection given that, as the 'defendant', they stand at best to break-even as a result of this litigation.
and our number system: called arabic, which was where we got it, but they got it from India. In particular the use of a specific zero character and (iirc) using base10 representation rather than the bizarre stacking system the romans used (though some quick wikipediaing suggests that the greeks had a sort of a base 10 system earlier).
have they been seizeing this stuff from the people selling it, or wherever they can find it (including tearing the guts out of working networks)? If it's the latter then; why? Shouldn't they be trying to work so that the victims of this don't get battered any more over it and can get the bad hardware out of their systems tidily.
I'm sorry, I was under the impression (mostly from reading here, which was probably my mistake) that in certain circumstances bankruptcy would clear a court judgment
There's nothing unpatriotic about leaving when your country has turned it's back on you (which is what allowing a judgment of that size over a few copied song is tantamount to). I was always taught not to fight bullies on their own ground but to walk away from them, if there's a path to walk down, take it, particularly if last time you tried to stand up to them, you lost, and lost big time.
Well, yes, I am from the UK, but in just about any country there is someone (government or not) that you can throw yourself on to.
So maybe it's bankruptcy if that will work or leave the country. Aren't we always saying 'you can obey the law, or leave'? This is exactly the situation where 'leave' is the rational option.
Just be glad that you're not in the EU where the local courts will enforce civil judgments from foreign courts without consideration of the effect, sanity, validity or jurisdiction of the judgment. (ref: British couple who bought land in northern (Turkish) cyprus, sued by original Greek Cypriot owners of land in southern Cypriot court, judgment clearly not enforceable since Greek Cypriot courts have no jurisdiction in northern Cyprus, original owners get British court to enforce against British couple's British assets.), but then Britain has been selling it's own people out to foreign authorities for years.
Well, the theory behind that is the very production of the materials is as a result of harm being done to someone, so by posessing the materials you're, in some part, doing the harm.
This works on the theory that possession of the materials is likely to induce you, or someone else, to do harm to another.
The thought process behind this seems to be:
We hate terrorists
We need something to pin them with
Only terrorists would have 'terrorist materials'
Make 'terrorist materials' illegal
Whereas, for child porn:
We had paedos
Paedos make child porn
Make child porn illegal.
In the former, the belief is that the person intends to or wants to commit the crime, and this is evidence of it so we can get them before they blow anyone up; in the latter the belief is that the crime has already been committed and this is someone we can punish for it.
It's not an exactly analagous situation.
Slashdot Mirror
"As for quantifying the listeners, the data from individuals isn't all that precise as it is*: it's self-reported recollection by random survey, like asking "What station do you listen to most, and for how many hours a week?" not some detailed listening-journal kept by the person. I've been asked to fill out these surveys or respond by phone a few times myself."
Actually, I've taken part in one of those surveys, you get a booklet for the next week with a 2-page spread for each day and spaces to fill in what you listened to and when accurate to 1/4 hour (or it may even have been accurate to 5 minutes). The problem is that when you hear the radio out & about in a waiting room for a few minutes you have to make a point of listening for a jingle so you know what station it is, or you can't really fill the booklet in.
well, there's no advertising if it's a BBC station, and frankly; unless it's Radio 2, it's not worth listening to.
Though, if it is an ad-supported station, those people listening in workplaces and waiting rooms are going to be hard to quantify, and that makes them hard to add to your listener figures, which need to be high and fairly accurate if you're going to point to them the justify charging 20% more per unit time of advertising airtime than everyone else.
I'm not aware that Blizzard offered a free CD-Key validation service to the BNetD project, so that argument is invalidated.
Why is it that anyone who stands up for something worth standing up for (like the right to run a multiplayer game on your own terms) gets called stupid here when they get stamped on?
What were the BNetD team supposed to do? Roll over and throw away hundreds of man-hours of painstaking work when the bullies came along to try and sweep the flaws in their copy-protection scheme under the carpet? No, they stood up for the right to reverse engineer, for your right to enjoy your games how you choose, for the right to get on with their tinkering without interference from corporate bullies. A bunch of bad laws and incompetent judges later and they've lost the case though in defiance of all reason and common sense.
And what do you have to say for it? that they're stupid for fighting the battle. It's not just 'fun to villify' Blizzard for this - they deserve far worse than villification - they've abused the courts to wreck other people's hard work because it exposed the obvious flaw in their copy-protection system, but for a game which was already old enough that it was past the best of its cash-cow days anyway - StarCraft and BroodWar were already in the budget section by the time Blizzard kicked up a fuss, and as for D1 and WarII... there was no legitimate moral reason to object to the project, there was no meaningful business reason, the entire action was, in my opinion, pure spite.
When someone comes along to hurt you out of spite, you don't just cower and crawl away so they'll leave you alone, you stand up to them and you won't be stupid for doing it. That they lost when they stood up is to the eternal shame and humiliation of the whole system of 'justice' which has let down the BNetD team, and every person who thought that it could, just once, find correctly.
If Comcast can't guarantee that they won't let the authorities watch inside your home in real time even WITH a warrant they must:
- Not implement this technology
- Destroy all the research
Seriously, the ability to look into anyone's home through a common device that most homes will have and at whim will only end badly. This is very much like destroying all the terminator research, privacy cannot be protected if this device exists, so it must be destroyed before anyone gets any dangerous ideas. (And it must be done now whilst it's still a prototype, rather than trying to do it in 10 years time when there's one in every home and the research is too widely disseminated to destroy.)If someone was on the verge of developing a more virulent strain of smallpox, would you let them? Even if they promised that they'd never let it out of their lab without putting it in the care of a 'responsible' person or agency?
If it was you, would you continue your research?
Exactly.
ouch, still using f77.
Fortran90\95:
if (x == 1) then
*stuff*
end if
not a physicist, but nearly as clever:
Stanford algorithms expert, Donald Knuth(pdf) doesn't like nasty closed-up journals either. As he said when I asked him about it; "Who are you? How did you get in my house?".
"Populate it with people who would be valuable assets there but redundant and a drain on your resources back home."
people like telephone sanitizers?
"Is it the best place to go if you're not a mathematician but would like a little background into combinatorics"
No. I've never read a maths article on wikipedia that wasn't written without regard to the ability of the average reader to understand it. Any time I try to read one I see an enormous chunk of long words, pages and pages of meaningless symbols and precious little explanation - whatever level they're written for, it's above me - and I have a degree in theoretical physics!
*shrug* they did it during the cuban missile crisis and nothing happened - there was the means for Cuba to take retaliatory action then as well.
geek
0
sounds like fun if the relevant cop can be identified - that's begging for arrest-at-the-airport if they go on holiday to the US having hacked into a computer there.
/. ID's don't have to be integers anymore? When did this happen? Do the numbers have to be rational?
If they don't I call dibs on 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679...
of which the first one is for a potentiometer, most are for replacement remote controls, and the 19th is my own post asking this question!
We have an old Trinitron, which we acquired as a result of an elderly relative passing away. We don't have the instruction book. It's model number is KV-2092-UB. The Sony website knows nothing about such a model. What I want to know is; is it new enough for s-video to work over its SCART connection? Asking here because I obviously don't trust Sony enough to give them my personal details which is a requirement for asking them. Anyone know?
We regret to inform you that you have failed in your attempt to become a Chartered Lonely Geek. It's spelled "T'Pol". We hope that you will try again in the next exam period. -The Society of Desperate, Geeks, Dorks, Nerds and Associated Persons Desperate Enough to Have the Hots for a Fictional Character (TSDGDNAPDEHHFC)
but there was no-one on the other side telling him that it WAS true. If you're waiting for input before making a decision where the input is going to be 90% chance of 1 and 10% chance of 0, the waiting for input times out and the decision has to be made, you don't have a choice but to assume data, and you're going to assume 1. Now, imagine that you have a input of 1 (90%), 0(0%) or -1(10%); you get no input; do you assume 1, 0 or -1? Clearly, you should still assume 1 - whilst 0 might be the middle value, it's not actually a valid input because it could never happen (0%) and 1 is still the most likely.
uh, yeah, if it's been sent back for repairs with the promise that the case WON'T be damaged and your Mexican repair shop can't handle that request, you damn well do it yourselves. When you screw up, the fact that you screwed up because it was company policy to screw up really counts for a sum total of sod all.
the judge is absolutely guilty of the most shocking and dangerous negligence. The fact that it's his job to be negligent doesn't enter into it. If he can't be bothered to do even the most rudimentary checking that the basis of his decision to exercise his powers in factually correct, he should bear the full burden of the consequences of those actions.
Does it make even the slightest bit of sense that someone can swan into a court, demand action be taken that will harm a third party, and not actually have to back it up with ANYTHING for such action to take place as long as the third party doesn't oppose it? In any other situation where one side makes demands and doesn't back it up the default is that nothing happens, not the the demands are met on the sole basis of the existence of the demands. (When I say 'back it up', I refer to the point that if the judge doesn't check for himself that what is being said to him is a true, any pile of not-entirely-false garbage can be dumped on him, which he will assume to be true with no questions.)
The purpose of the judge is to sit impartially between the two parties and make a just decision - the judge should be responsible if he makes an unjust decision.
Making a decision by default is little better than giving the go-ahead to vigilante justice (I say 'little better', I mean 'worse') - the judge should ALWAYS assume that the defendant opposes any accusation and any proposed action that would harm them - they deserve that protection given that, as the 'defendant', they stand at best to break-even as a result of this litigation.
and our number system: called arabic, which was where we got it, but they got it from India. In particular the use of a specific zero character and (iirc) using base10 representation rather than the bizarre stacking system the romans used (though some quick wikipediaing suggests that the greeks had a sort of a base 10 system earlier).
have they been seizeing this stuff from the people selling it, or wherever they can find it (including tearing the guts out of working networks)? If it's the latter then; why? Shouldn't they be trying to work so that the victims of this don't get battered any more over it and can get the bad hardware out of their systems tidily.
and duke nukem forever will run on it...
I'm sorry, I was under the impression (mostly from reading here, which was probably my mistake) that in certain circumstances bankruptcy would clear a court judgment
There's nothing unpatriotic about leaving when your country has turned it's back on you (which is what allowing a judgment of that size over a few copied song is tantamount to). I was always taught not to fight bullies on their own ground but to walk away from them, if there's a path to walk down, take it, particularly if last time you tried to stand up to them, you lost, and lost big time.
Well, yes, I am from the UK, but in just about any country there is someone (government or not) that you can throw yourself on to.
So maybe it's bankruptcy if that will work or leave the country. Aren't we always saying 'you can obey the law, or leave'? This is exactly the situation where 'leave' is the rational option.
Just be glad that you're not in the EU where the local courts will enforce civil judgments from foreign courts without consideration of the effect, sanity, validity or jurisdiction of the judgment. (ref: British couple who bought land in northern (Turkish) cyprus, sued by original Greek Cypriot owners of land in southern Cypriot court, judgment clearly not enforceable since Greek Cypriot courts have no jurisdiction in northern Cyprus, original owners get British court to enforce against British couple's British assets.), but then Britain has been selling it's own people out to foreign authorities for years.
- Declare bankrupcy (no debt)
- Leave the country (debt not collectable)
- Live off social services my entire life (no income to collect from)
Pick any one, and that's ignoring the obvious 'go on a rampage with a shotgun'.- We hate terrorists
- We need something to pin them with
- Only terrorists would have 'terrorist materials'
- Make 'terrorist materials' illegal
Whereas, for child porn:- We had paedos
- Paedos make child porn
- Make child porn illegal.
In the former, the belief is that the person intends to or wants to commit the crime, and this is evidence of it so we can get them before they blow anyone up; in the latter the belief is that the crime has already been committed and this is someone we can punish for it. It's not an exactly analagous situation.