It's only theft if you accept the idea that selling the book to you was also theft (i.e. you accept the infringement of intellectual property rights = theft) and if you do, then you were, ispo facto, in possession of stolen property and have no claim over it.
If you don't accept that the orginal sale was theft, (i.e. you believe it was simply copy right infringement) then at most the deletion of the book could be would be a violation of the license agreement you made with Amazon. In this case, given that Amazon did not have the permission necessary to enter into that agreement with you and also refunded your money, you aren't going to have much ground to stand on in terms of 'damages'. Amazon did not steal anything. They removed data which they discovered they didn't have a right to provide you.
But in neither case would it be Amazon's job to "right" the situation, either by stealing back the stolen goods or retroactively and unilaterally revoking an agreement entered into by two parties. This would be the job of the justice system, or through mutual agreement of the two parties. Amazon took a more vigilante approach. That's frowned on in polite society.
If you eat a balanced diet, it doesn't matter if the carbs are "good" carbs or "bad" carbs unless you fall into one of a relatively small group of people with special health issues (such as someone with diabetes).
You're not quite in the clear if you're not diabetic. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (called "Adult Onset" back when we learned the four food groups) comes from wearing out the pancreas*. Eat too many carbs, especially ones that get to the blood quicker, and the pancreas has to pump out more insulin more quickly to convert the energy to usable/storable form. Do this all the time, and your muscles develop resistance to the insulin. So the pancreas must make even more insulin to get the job done, and you've got positive feedback the accelerates the stress on it till one day you're insulin dependent.
You were probably implying not to do that when you said "If you eat a balanced diet", but it does appear that some carbs will unbalance your diet faster than others.
*I don't think this had been definitively proven, but it's become more accepted by physicians.
Recently I was forced to live without a refrigerator. I bought a few heads of lettuce from the local supermarket; and I bought a few from the local organic farmers' market. Stored under my bed, 80 degree temperatures. Supermarket lasted one day before it was mush; local+organic, nearly a full week.
When I got up this morning, the last thing I expected to read about was someone storing lettuce under his bed. Guess I can get to work now.
The digestive track of a cow has evolved to extract caloric value from plant cellulose, ours is not. It is not as simple as saying a cow gets 10% of the energy from the sun via grass and we get 10% of that energy therefore we should just eat grass. No matter how much grass we eat our digestive tracks will not be able to cope -- wasting resources in the process.
All well and good if you've got plenty of grass and water. Seeing as how we're clearing forests to raise cattle and cattle feed, that may not be the case. We'd probably be OK if we reduced the number of people, but there aren't nearly enough volunteers.
I've posted about this before, so just ignore if I repeat myself.
Last winter I read a book by Gary Taubes called Good Calories, Bad Calories. His reading of the research indicates that the simpler the carbohydrate is, the more it tends to trigger fat storage by causing insulin secretion. This is similar to, but not quite the same as a food's glycemic index. E.g., ice cream has much more refined carbs than its GI would suggest. Sugars, whether conjugated or not, tend to cause the "worst" response, with simple carbs like white flour just about as bad. The flour is easily broken down into sugars early in the digestive process. Carbs that require more processing, like whole-grain flour -- since it's stuck to other substances in the seed -- are "better". He makes a particular point about white flour and white rice, since both grains have had most of their protein, fat, fiber and vitamins/minerals removed in processing. This processing was initially done to make these products easier to prepare, keep longer and resist being eaten by pests (remember the "lesser of two weevils" joke?).
The book is worth a read whether you buy-into or even care about the dietary implications. It's also contains a fascinating history of food processing, diet and nutrition research.
p.s. I am not a nutritionist, and I'm only relating Taubes' book as I read and understood it. If you hate low-carb diets or dieters, it is not my fault.
The problem with McDonald's food is not primarily the fat. It's the flavour enhancer.
Would you expand on that, please? From your spelling "flavour" I assume you are outside the US, and I know that McDonalds menus vary by country and that even similar items are prepared somewhat differently. Is the food doped with artificial flavorings, or "umami" agents (MSG or modified yeast, etc) to make up for the quality of the beef? For that matter, it's been a few years since I've darkened their door here. Thanks.
Punko apparently made the mistake of assuming that Americans know as much about American policy as Canadians.
I did just that. As an American, I am aware of Canada's claim. I was not familiar with the Manhattan voyage. But neither of these is related to the Fraternity story, except tangentially for the sea-ice "angle," since it's taking place in a different part of the world. I think Punko's mistake was assuming that the proposed route was through the Northwest Passage. According to TFA, it is not.
The Artic Archipeligo is Canada's. Ask permission first. Despite what the American government may think, there is no international waterway through the Artic Archipeligo.
The Canadian claim doesn't extend all the way to the Northern coast of Siberia and Russia, does it? TFA specifically says they're not using the "Northwest Passage". And WTF would the US Government care about a territorial dispute involving Germany, Russia and Canada anyway? Especially since there's no mention in TFA (or TFB) about Canada at all.
Beluga Fraternity? My Russian is so rusty I might just be typing the measurements of the playmate of the month, but wouldn't that portmanteau mean "White Brotherhood"? They've gotta mean something other that that, right?
True claim or not, the landlord may figure that using lawyers to intimidate their tenant into silence might be worth a try. What good is the truth if you cannot afford a lawyer of your own to defend yourself against liars?
Something tells me the landlord figured wrong here.
So, I'm expecting at least another 5 to 10 decades of Gantt charts.
OK, I think I can fix it. I've scheduled everybody to work on the Gantt chart project for the next 50 years. Now let me just scootch the due date a dozen years to the left and voila, we'll be done in just 38!
"But how will we measure progress?"
Simple, each day we increment the progress bar by one day.
A programmer's work is vastly different from a manager's, or anyone's where a certain amount of time gets you a predictable level of output. Hear what I'm saying?
And yet we continue to see project after project scheduled in Gantt charts as if tasks like programming and engineering were no different than milling or smelting.
No one's talking about being unable to write. What's happening is the death of script.
To my parents, born before and during the great depression, 'writing' meant script. To produce, by hand, text in block letters was 'printing' to them, and was entirely distinct from proper 'writing'. As a child, I said to them "You mean cursive," which was met with blank expressions. To many people over a certain age, 'writing' will mean what you describe as 'cursive writing".
To say we "Pollute" is entirely subjective. There is no Gaia entity that is crying over all the bits of discarded plastic floating in the oceans. The only people who care are US. So, to fantasise about humanity killing itself off to "save" the universe from being ruined is ludicrous, as if we weren't here there would be no-one to even care. The Earth has no perfect state save for any we would project onto it, born from our own sensibilites.
That is an interesting philosophical argument, that "if a styrofoam cup is dropped in the forest and no one cares, is it bad?" That is a rather human-centric view of things, but also myopic. "Ruining" the universe (or at least our universe) isn't just an aesthetic concern. Even if we are the only entities that can put a value on things, we depend on nature to provide us a lot of useful stuff. Degrading its ability to provide us with stuff could also result in a lower standard of living for us. Perhaps not substantially in our lifetimes, though.
Sticking with the assumption that we are the only entities with value judgment, different individuals could 'project' a different perfect state on the universe than you or me. So we're back where we started. There may be no prefect state save what we project, but we are all projecting our own perfect states. These values aren't all mutually compatible. Thus you and I and Fox News and Greenpeace and everyone else can and do argue over what a perfect world should look like. It may be an abstraction in the grand scheme of things, but that makes it no less important to us and no less debatable.
Maybe you are joking but there is a sizeable facebook group (or which I am a member) dedicated to finding out how to make a bagpipe hero. The controllers are several hundred dollars right now and the software is not yet written, but there are lots of us out here.
I love guitar hero, but would love bagpipe hero a whole lot better!
I'd start with a Yamaha WX-5, a tea cozy and about 5 yards of tartan ribbon. And some really thick socks.
The 9/11 and 7/7 attacks etc were instigated by self proclaimed Muslims. There's no "alleged" about it, it's just a fact. Note that I don't believe that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all terrorists are Muslim, that's just stupid. But the most widely publicised and recent terrorist attacks have been strongly linked with Islam. That doesn't mean that Islam "harbours" terrorists, a lot of Muslims don't agree with these violent attacks. But it's pretty safe to say that the majority of attempted terrorist attacks within the next few years are likely to be instigated by Muslim fanatic groups who are pissed off about the whole invasion situation in Aghanistan/Iraq/Iran. The 7/7 attacks here in the UK were "carried out by 4 British Muslim men who were motivated by Britain's involvement in the Iraq War" according to Wikipedia.
If you define "terrorist attack" as "something spectacular with a body count of at least a half dozen perpetrated by people identified as Muslim or Middle Eastern", then yes, the majority of those will probably be instigated by Muslim fanatic groups.
If you were to expand the definition to include vandalism, sabotage and assassination (but only one at a time), then we might find that "terrorists" are more diverse than that. Of course, we could always say that those guys were lone wolves, acting alone, in a total vacuum, certainly not egged on by mass media accusations that their targets are mass murderers. And definitely not endorsed by any organization, certainly not by any organization that also insists they not be called "terrorists". Those would fall under the category of "isolated incidents involving deranged individuals".
If I buy $150 worth of groceries and throw in a $1 lottery ticket on top of it, the effective cost to me is zero. I'm never going to notice that dollar being gone. Not having that dollar is going to make no difference to my life. But in the (exceedingly unlikely, yes) event that I win a $100 million jackpot, the payoff is damn near infinite. Having that kind of money can't really be compared to, say, getting a raise, or seeing your stocks go up in the market. It's just on a whole different scale.
So in short: infinity - (0 * 10^-9) = infinity. Don't assume that everyone who buys a lottery ticket is ignorant. Actually, I suspect most people who buy lottery tickets are making this kind of calculation, even if they're not doing the numbers quite as explicitly.
I don't think I could have illustrated this any better.
If you think people who buy lottery tickets are idiots, then you should probably conclude that people who buy insurance for rare events are idiots.
I didn't call people who buy lottery tickets anything. Rather, you are reading something into my comment that I didn't say. A person who makes a bad decision is not necessarily mentally challenged. For that matter, a person who makes a good decision isn't necessarily a genius.
As to the case of Lottery vs. Insurance, lottery tickets are a completely voluntary purchase. Insurance is less so. Homeowners insurance is mandated by the bank that finances one's mortgage. Car insurance is mandated by the government and by one's financier (if bought on time). Most health insurance (in the US) is provided by one's job, and doesn't just pay out in case of emergency but also qualifies the holder for reduced rates for services and greatly increases the odds of hospital admission when needed. It's considerably more difficult to get medical care without it, even if one has the means to self-pay. Employers don't usually allow employees to opt-out of insurance, and they almost never comp the optee for the unused benefit.
He talks about "taking down a sound system". For 17 people? Ridiculous. He talks of hiring a generator and a marquee. He says he spend £800 on the event. £50 per person for a barbeque? Ridiculous.
If the cops showed up at your birthday party and told you you had to shut it down, you'd shoot them if you had a gun? Seriously? And you think that's a good thing?
Slashdot Mirror
It's only theft if you accept the idea that selling the book to you was also theft (i.e. you accept the infringement of intellectual property rights = theft) and if you do, then you were, ispo facto, in possession of stolen property and have no claim over it.
If you don't accept that the orginal sale was theft, (i.e. you believe it was simply copy right infringement) then at most the deletion of the book could be would be a violation of the license agreement you made with Amazon. In this case, given that Amazon did not have the permission necessary to enter into that agreement with you and also refunded your money, you aren't going to have much ground to stand on in terms of 'damages'. Amazon did not steal anything. They removed data which they discovered they didn't have a right to provide you.
But in neither case would it be Amazon's job to "right" the situation, either by stealing back the stolen goods or retroactively and unilaterally revoking an agreement entered into by two parties. This would be the job of the justice system, or through mutual agreement of the two parties. Amazon took a more vigilante approach. That's frowned on in polite society.
If you eat a balanced diet, it doesn't matter if the carbs are "good" carbs or "bad" carbs unless you fall into one of a relatively small group of people with special health issues (such as someone with diabetes).
You're not quite in the clear if you're not diabetic. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (called "Adult Onset" back when we learned the four food groups) comes from wearing out the pancreas*. Eat too many carbs, especially ones that get to the blood quicker, and the pancreas has to pump out more insulin more quickly to convert the energy to usable/storable form. Do this all the time, and your muscles develop resistance to the insulin. So the pancreas must make even more insulin to get the job done, and you've got positive feedback the accelerates the stress on it till one day you're insulin dependent.
You were probably implying not to do that when you said "If you eat a balanced diet", but it does appear that some carbs will unbalance your diet faster than others.
*I don't think this had been definitively proven, but it's become more accepted by physicians.
Recently I was forced to live without a refrigerator. I bought a few heads of lettuce from the local supermarket; and I bought a few from the local organic farmers' market. Stored under my bed, 80 degree temperatures. Supermarket lasted one day before it was mush; local+organic, nearly a full week.
When I got up this morning, the last thing I expected to read about was someone storing lettuce under his bed. Guess I can get to work now.
The digestive track of a cow has evolved to extract caloric value from plant cellulose, ours is not. It is not as simple as saying a cow gets 10% of the energy from the sun via grass and we get 10% of that energy therefore we should just eat grass. No matter how much grass we eat our digestive tracks will not be able to cope -- wasting resources in the process.
All well and good if you've got plenty of grass and water. Seeing as how we're clearing forests to raise cattle and cattle feed, that may not be the case. We'd probably be OK if we reduced the number of people, but there aren't nearly enough volunteers.
I've posted about this before, so just ignore if I repeat myself.
Last winter I read a book by Gary Taubes called Good Calories, Bad Calories. His reading of the research indicates that the simpler the carbohydrate is, the more it tends to trigger fat storage by causing insulin secretion. This is similar to, but not quite the same as a food's glycemic index. E.g., ice cream has much more refined carbs than its GI would suggest. Sugars, whether conjugated or not, tend to cause the "worst" response, with simple carbs like white flour just about as bad. The flour is easily broken down into sugars early in the digestive process. Carbs that require more processing, like whole-grain flour -- since it's stuck to other substances in the seed -- are "better". He makes a particular point about white flour and white rice, since both grains have had most of their protein, fat, fiber and vitamins/minerals removed in processing. This processing was initially done to make these products easier to prepare, keep longer and resist being eaten by pests (remember the "lesser of two weevils" joke?).
The book is worth a read whether you buy-into or even care about the dietary implications. It's also contains a fascinating history of food processing, diet and nutrition research.
p.s. I am not a nutritionist, and I'm only relating Taubes' book as I read and understood it. If you hate low-carb diets or dieters, it is not my fault.
The problem with McDonald's food is not primarily the fat. It's the flavour enhancer.
Would you expand on that, please? From your spelling "flavour" I assume you are outside the US, and I know that McDonalds menus vary by country and that even similar items are prepared somewhat differently. Is the food doped with artificial flavorings, or "umami" agents (MSG or modified yeast, etc) to make up for the quality of the beef? For that matter, it's been a few years since I've darkened their door here. Thanks.
>
So while it may appear unrelated to non-Canucks, to us it's a natural train of thought and an apropos thing to say in the context of TFA.
Given the Manhattan experience the US deserves mention as well for similar reasons.
So, it's like yelling "Castro" in a Cuban restaurant in Miami?
If jailbroken iPhones can hurt cell towers, then it's already too late, because there are already jailbroken iPhones.
If jailbroken iPhones can hurt towers, so can un-jailbroken (incarcerated?) ones. All it takes is a bug . . .
Google "ss manhattan northwest passage".
Punko apparently made the mistake of assuming that Americans know as much about American policy as Canadians.
I did just that. As an American, I am aware of Canada's claim. I was not familiar with the Manhattan voyage. But neither of these is related to the Fraternity story, except tangentially for the sea-ice "angle," since it's taking place in a different part of the world. I think Punko's mistake was assuming that the proposed route was through the Northwest Passage. According to TFA, it is not.
The Artic Archipeligo is Canada's. Ask permission first. Despite what the American government may think, there is no international waterway through the Artic Archipeligo.
The Canadian claim doesn't extend all the way to the Northern coast of Siberia and Russia, does it? TFA specifically says they're not using the "Northwest Passage". And WTF would the US Government care about a territorial dispute involving Germany, Russia and Canada anyway? Especially since there's no mention in TFA (or TFB) about Canada at all.
Beluga Fraternity? My Russian is so rusty I might just be typing the measurements of the playmate of the month, but wouldn't that portmanteau mean "White Brotherhood"? They've gotta mean something other that that, right?
I'd need to be pretty damn convinced before I willingly had myself turned a light blue.
You'd definitely want to avoid running at dusk and getting hit by a car . . .
"How is he?"
"It looks like he's dead."
True claim or not, the landlord may figure that using lawyers to intimidate their tenant into silence might be worth a try. What good is the truth if you cannot afford a lawyer of your own to defend yourself against liars?
Something tells me the landlord figured wrong here.
So, I'm expecting at least another 5 to 10 decades of Gantt charts.
OK, I think I can fix it. I've scheduled everybody to work on the Gantt chart project for the next 50 years. Now let me just scootch the due date a dozen years to the left and voila, we'll be done in just 38!
"But how will we measure progress?"
Simple, each day we increment the progress bar by one day.
A programmer's work is vastly different from a manager's, or anyone's where a certain amount of time gets you a predictable level of output. Hear what I'm saying?
And yet we continue to see project after project scheduled in Gantt charts as if tasks like programming and engineering were no different than milling or smelting.
e) Meetings need to have rules forbidding the adding-on of endless afterthoughts and sidenotes.
No one's talking about being unable to write. What's happening is the death of script.
To my parents, born before and during the great depression, 'writing' meant script. To produce, by hand, text in block letters was 'printing' to them, and was entirely distinct from proper 'writing'. As a child, I said to them "You mean cursive," which was met with blank expressions. To many people over a certain age, 'writing' will mean what you describe as 'cursive writing".
To say we "Pollute" is entirely subjective. There is no Gaia entity that is crying over all the bits of discarded plastic floating in the oceans. The only people who care are US. So, to fantasise about humanity killing itself off to "save" the universe from being ruined is ludicrous, as if we weren't here there would be no-one to even care. The Earth has no perfect state save for any we would project onto it, born from our own sensibilites.
That is an interesting philosophical argument, that "if a styrofoam cup is dropped in the forest and no one cares, is it bad?" That is a rather human-centric view of things, but also myopic. "Ruining" the universe (or at least our universe) isn't just an aesthetic concern. Even if we are the only entities that can put a value on things, we depend on nature to provide us a lot of useful stuff. Degrading its ability to provide us with stuff could also result in a lower standard of living for us. Perhaps not substantially in our lifetimes, though.
Sticking with the assumption that we are the only entities with value judgment, different individuals could 'project' a different perfect state on the universe than you or me. So we're back where we started. There may be no prefect state save what we project, but we are all projecting our own perfect states. These values aren't all mutually compatible. Thus you and I and Fox News and Greenpeace and everyone else can and do argue over what a perfect world should look like. It may be an abstraction in the grand scheme of things, but that makes it no less important to us and no less debatable.
Maybe you are joking but there is a sizeable facebook group (or which I am a member) dedicated to finding out how to make a bagpipe hero. The controllers are several hundred dollars right now and the software is not yet written, but there are lots of us out here.
I love guitar hero, but would love bagpipe hero a whole lot better!
I'd start with a Yamaha WX-5, a tea cozy and about 5 yards of tartan ribbon. And some really thick socks.
The 9/11 and 7/7 attacks etc were instigated by self proclaimed Muslims. There's no "alleged" about it, it's just a fact. Note that I don't believe that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all terrorists are Muslim, that's just stupid. But the most widely publicised and recent terrorist attacks have been strongly linked with Islam. That doesn't mean that Islam "harbours" terrorists, a lot of Muslims don't agree with these violent attacks. But it's pretty safe to say that the majority of attempted terrorist attacks within the next few years are likely to be instigated by Muslim fanatic groups who are pissed off about the whole invasion situation in Aghanistan/Iraq/Iran. The 7/7 attacks here in the UK were "carried out by 4 British Muslim men who were motivated by Britain's involvement in the Iraq War" according to Wikipedia.
If you define "terrorist attack" as "something spectacular with a body count of at least a half dozen perpetrated by people identified as Muslim or Middle Eastern", then yes, the majority of those will probably be instigated by Muslim fanatic groups.
If you were to expand the definition to include vandalism, sabotage and assassination (but only one at a time), then we might find that "terrorists" are more diverse than that. Of course, we could always say that those guys were lone wolves, acting alone, in a total vacuum, certainly not egged on by mass media accusations that their targets are mass murderers. And definitely not endorsed by any organization, certainly not by any organization that also insists they not be called "terrorists". Those would fall under the category of "isolated incidents involving deranged individuals".
If I buy $150 worth of groceries and throw in a $1 lottery ticket on top of it, the effective cost to me is zero. I'm never going to notice that dollar being gone. Not having that dollar is going to make no difference to my life. But in the (exceedingly unlikely, yes) event that I win a $100 million jackpot, the payoff is damn near infinite. Having that kind of money can't really be compared to, say, getting a raise, or seeing your stocks go up in the market. It's just on a whole different scale.
So in short: infinity - (0 * 10^-9) = infinity. Don't assume that everyone who buys a lottery ticket is ignorant. Actually, I suspect most people who buy lottery tickets are making this kind of calculation, even if they're not doing the numbers quite as explicitly.
I don't think I could have illustrated this any better.
If you think people who buy lottery tickets are idiots, then you should probably conclude that people who buy insurance for rare events are idiots.
I didn't call people who buy lottery tickets anything. Rather, you are reading something into my comment that I didn't say. A person who makes a bad decision is not necessarily mentally challenged. For that matter, a person who makes a good decision isn't necessarily a genius.
As to the case of Lottery vs. Insurance, lottery tickets are a completely voluntary purchase. Insurance is less so. Homeowners insurance is mandated by the bank that finances one's mortgage. Car insurance is mandated by the government and by one's financier (if bought on time). Most health insurance (in the US) is provided by one's job, and doesn't just pay out in case of emergency but also qualifies the holder for reduced rates for services and greatly increases the odds of hospital admission when needed. It's considerably more difficult to get medical care without it, even if one has the means to self-pay. Employers don't usually allow employees to opt-out of insurance, and they almost never comp the optee for the unused benefit.
As to which one's the "idot" -- I've got no idea.
How can this counter-intuitive fact be communicated effectively to people unschooled in statistics?
You'll know when your people are ready for statistics. . . don't even bother trying until state-run lotteries go broke for lack of players.
He talks about "taking down a sound system". For 17 people? Ridiculous. He talks of hiring a generator and a marquee. He says he spend £800 on the event. £50 per person for a barbeque? Ridiculous.
You are very naive.
You only turn 30 once, you insensitive clod!
If the cops showed up at your birthday party and told you you had to shut it down, you'd shoot them if you had a gun? Seriously? And you think that's a good thing?
Depends on how good they are at not being seen.