Cheques, e-cheques (my bank enables me to do paypal-like monetary exchange with anyone I want), money order, bitcoin, stored value cards, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards/codes, barter, etc....
There are many alternatives, and this is just a small list of ones that don't duplicate the Paypal business/service model (there are many of those, but they all have the same problems as Paypal so I won't mention them).
I have serious doubts that any agreement which lessens a parties status in law can stand up to the Federal Courts system. In essence your rights are your rights even when you don't want them to be. The notion that some people might be limited in relation to redress of a grievance in a court of law offends our constitution.
Your rights include the right to make binding contracts. Any case that stays in civil court abides by contract law, which is why the AT&T case was upheld. If Paypal was charged/found to be in violation of criminal law, the government would step in, and a class action would not be needed. Thus, the window for where someone could argue that a class action suit is their right is extremely limited, especially for small claims (which is where class actions are effective).
In the case of Paypal, a lawyer would do much better to pursue interstate commerce infractions, banking regulations, or outright fraud laws than to attempt a class action contract suit.
Then again, IANAL, and this view obviously holds no water in many countries (especially those where class action suits aren't legal in the first place).
Raises a good point though... Facebook was hosting/linking to child porn for an extended period, and letting people comment on it. Facebook is located in the US.
Can we just check to see if the virtual machine drivers are already installed in this universe?
I find that having a good understanding of computers and technology really helps when trying to understanding the universe. There's a lot of comparisons to be made and metaphors to facilitate understanding.
For instance, say the universe was was a car...
That's ridiculous... everyone knows the universe is a cdr....
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's plant life being kept in a greenhouse on board a spacecraft.
Heh... except for the fact that Canada had both U-Boats in the St. Lawrence and Japanese off of Vancouver Island... and took hits on both shores. The PTO was part of WWII, but not one Canada was really fighting in... after all, Canada wasn't being threatened in any way by Japan until after Pearl Harbour -- and by that point the US was already in full swing and needed no help. Of course, Canadian scientists were still busy helping the US with weapons, intel, perimiter defense, etc -- but since this isn't troops, it doesn't tend to make the history books.
I think you'll find Canada's demographics have changed significantly in the past 6 years. But it doesn't really matter... we don't agree with the US "melting pot" theory of society in Canada; we go for the "ethnic mosaic" model, which means that while the people themselves may be mostly european, the culture and society reflects cultures from around the world.
Of course, the city and non-city populations are significantly different with respect to both culture and ethnic origin....
Indeed... I find that having iTunes accounts in multiple countries helps there, now that the DRM's gone. I tend to get most of the rest by listening to stuff off of youtube....
Easy: Dotcom makes his money taking payments from people to promote certain artists on the site... he than runs his own promotional gig ensuring those artists show up more often in people's searches, and provides them with kickbacks/extra tools to promote themselves on youtube/facebook/etc.
Seems like it might actually work, although it'll eventually end up in the same situation as the present cartel, just with new owners.
Libertarian would need reps in the ridings to vote for... I've never seen one.
Vote Green; same caveat the parent gave, but hey... they actually got a seat last time!
In Canada, in order to fix things, we need people who aren't interested in Politics getting fed up enough to run, and gather enough support to win, and then have enough morals to stick to their platform, even if it means getting voted out in the next round.
15 years ago I was just starting to play around with smart card chips, which the banks were going to adopt "any day now" -- in some areas, there seems to have been a 15-year void, where things are just starting to pick up from where they left off back then.
That said, I can remember life before the Microwave oven, and when only rich people had color TVs.... Transistor radios were still called that, and "digital wristwatches" had red LED displays. Back when "papers please" was being bandied around as showing how evil the Soviet Union was, and people were stockpiling gasoline and ammo because of the stock market crash and upcoming oil shortage....
Oh, and Minicomputers were just catching on... paystubs could be calculated in Hours instead of Days!
Yeah; I think 15 years will show us some "fringe" science becoming commonplace, some technology that's right on the horizon now being looked at yet again in a way that may actually be usable, and efficiency will be the big financial mover. Oh, and China, India and Brazil will be global financial powerhouses, and pushing the boundaries of science.
Well apparently your shower knows who you are, your clock radio knows if you're awake, a security gate knows what your neural pathways react like at a distance..... But your computer has no idea and needs a card. And worse, your house locks by RFID!
If you'd go back to 2007 and ask people whether a financial crysis is imminent, they would laugh in your face. And all that happened in a 5-year span.
Depends on the people I guess... in 2007 around here, we were predicting financial issues in the US by 2009. It smelled too much like the dot-com bubble, but with housing and banking.
Next financial crisis? Probably sometime around 2019, and involving the stock market, futures and international currency trading....
No, piracy was, at the very least, well into adolescence.
Not sure when the "infancy" was, but it was way further back than Napster. Requesting the Sysop to put a disc online so you could grab copies of Norton Utilities and Turbo Pascal? Nah, still too advanced. Swapping Apple II games on 5 1/4 floppy, and then bypassing the copy protection with "Locksmith"? Nah, still too advanced.
Hell, Bill Gates used to throw hissy fits back in the day about copies of Microsoft Basic being traded around on paper tape without licensing fees being paid.
Napster was nowhere NEAR the infancy of digital piracy.
Digital Piracy... didn't that start with the folks from Bletchley Park pirating something from the Germans?
This misses another point too... if we've got all these changes in only 15 years... won't the US finally have joined the rest of the world and gone metric? There's no way I'd call 108 degree water "pleasant"....
Another study concluded that 3-year-olds make excellent bureaucrats -- If you have one in your household, expect recruiters to come knocking at your door to hire them -- they'll be retired by the time they're 33 with fat pensions. Of course, they'll probably have you in jail within a few weeks.
C'mon, I took my first television set apart by 3. Sissies! Keep them away from strong magnets, Tesla coils, acids and bases. Some realistic adults should take control here, please.
OK: you took your first set apart by 3: I took my first set apart before I was 1.
How long was it before you were able to reassemble a functional TV set after taking it apart?
In more serious news: I don't think the TV itself is so much of an issue as the amount of time under-3's spend exposed to it, and the lack of doing whatever they would have otherwise been doing. My own sample size of 2 indicates that kids under 3 aren't really all that interested in TV by tiself, and prefer to socialize while it is on in the background. They also appear to readily absorb things from TV that the 3-and-above crowd often misses. So having a TV on shouldn't be an issue, whereas using the TV as a babysitter should be avoided at all costs.
I guess the Founding Fathers were all motorcycle riders then.
I think we can safely assume that most of them rode carts and wagons instead of ponies. Much like most people today prefer the freedom from the elements and the freedom to bring a bag or two.
In the past, there were motorbikes that offered freedom - you could drive them on paths where no car could go. Modern motorbikes, however, tend to demand more of the pavement than cars do.
By all means, I can see reasons why some people want a motorbike, but freedom is not one of them, no matter how often repeated.
Which surprised me - you could say hypercard sent to a remote display is MUCH prior art.
And Disney... they worked on Squeak (in 1993, but the technology belonged to others before them) which had the same capabilities... and any patents would have expired long ago.
Slashdot Mirror
What are the alternatives?
Cheques, e-cheques (my bank enables me to do paypal-like monetary exchange with anyone I want), money order, bitcoin, stored value cards, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards/codes, barter, etc....
There are many alternatives, and this is just a small list of ones that don't duplicate the Paypal business/service model (there are many of those, but they all have the same problems as Paypal so I won't mention them).
I have serious doubts that any agreement which lessens a parties status in law can stand up to the Federal Courts system. In essence your rights are your rights even when you don't want them to be. The notion that some people might be limited in relation to redress of a grievance in a court of law offends our constitution.
Your rights include the right to make binding contracts. Any case that stays in civil court abides by contract law, which is why the AT&T case was upheld. If Paypal was charged/found to be in violation of criminal law, the government would step in, and a class action would not be needed. Thus, the window for where someone could argue that a class action suit is their right is extremely limited, especially for small claims (which is where class actions are effective).
In the case of Paypal, a lawyer would do much better to pursue interstate commerce infractions, banking regulations, or outright fraud laws than to attempt a class action contract suit.
Then again, IANAL, and this view obviously holds no water in many countries (especially those where class action suits aren't legal in the first place).
Raises a good point though... Facebook was hosting/linking to child porn for an extended period, and letting people comment on it. Facebook is located in the US.
Can we just check to see if the virtual machine drivers are already installed in this universe?
I find that having a good understanding of computers and technology really helps when trying to understanding the universe. There's a lot of comparisons to be made and metaphors to facilitate understanding.
For instance, say the universe was was a car...
That's ridiculous... everyone knows the universe is a cdr....
They also don't understand the meaning of communism.
Or liter... which makes me think he's not an American at all....
Silent Running
I have a "gut" instinct that as long as humans are alive (yes, if we find a way to leave our bodies behind this isn't true), flora will survive....
Obviously, samzenpus is trying to prove that copying is fair use by copying Timothy's front page article....
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/10/11/1452205/court-finds-in-favor-of-libraries-in-google-books-affair
Come on -- there are only 14 articles separating them; they're both on the front page!
Heh... except for the fact that Canada had both U-Boats in the St. Lawrence and Japanese off of Vancouver Island... and took hits on both shores. The PTO was part of WWII, but not one Canada was really fighting in... after all, Canada wasn't being threatened in any way by Japan until after Pearl Harbour -- and by that point the US was already in full swing and needed no help. Of course, Canadian scientists were still busy helping the US with weapons, intel, perimiter defense, etc -- but since this isn't troops, it doesn't tend to make the history books.
Can we all agree that the penis measuring game that is military worship is played out and out dated for 2012?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxDDcTc64c
I think you'll find Canada's demographics have changed significantly in the past 6 years. But it doesn't really matter... we don't agree with the US "melting pot" theory of society in Canada; we go for the "ethnic mosaic" model, which means that while the people themselves may be mostly european, the culture and society reflects cultures from around the world.
Of course, the city and non-city populations are significantly different with respect to both culture and ethnic origin....
Shh! Canada is the land of ice and snow, where we have to melt our way out of the front door each morning to get to our dogsleds!
Do you really want MORE foreigners realising Canada is the place to be???
Think of the black flies....
Indeed... I find that having iTunes accounts in multiple countries helps there, now that the DRM's gone. I tend to get most of the rest by listening to stuff off of youtube....
Easy: Dotcom makes his money taking payments from people to promote certain artists on the site... he than runs his own promotional gig ensuring those artists show up more often in people's searches, and provides them with kickbacks/extra tools to promote themselves on youtube/facebook/etc.
Seems like it might actually work, although it'll eventually end up in the same situation as the present cartel, just with new owners.
Libertarian would need reps in the ridings to vote for... I've never seen one.
Vote Green; same caveat the parent gave, but hey... they actually got a seat last time!
In Canada, in order to fix things, we need people who aren't interested in Politics getting fed up enough to run, and gather enough support to win, and then have enough morals to stick to their platform, even if it means getting voted out in the next round.
15 years ago I was just starting to play around with smart card chips, which the banks were going to adopt "any day now" -- in some areas, there seems to have been a 15-year void, where things are just starting to pick up from where they left off back then.
That said, I can remember life before the Microwave oven, and when only rich people had color TVs.... Transistor radios were still called that, and "digital wristwatches" had red LED displays. Back when "papers please" was being bandied around as showing how evil the Soviet Union was, and people were stockpiling gasoline and ammo because of the stock market crash and upcoming oil shortage....
Oh, and Minicomputers were just catching on... paystubs could be calculated in Hours instead of Days!
Yeah; I think 15 years will show us some "fringe" science becoming commonplace, some technology that's right on the horizon now being looked at yet again in a way that may actually be usable, and efficiency will be the big financial mover. Oh, and China, India and Brazil will be global financial powerhouses, and pushing the boundaries of science.
Well apparently your shower knows who you are, your clock radio knows if you're awake, a security gate knows what your neural pathways react like at a distance..... But your computer has no idea and needs a card. And worse, your house locks by RFID!
Can't I just have one authentication device?
My name is my password. What could go wrong?
If you'd go back to 2007 and ask people whether a financial crysis is imminent, they would laugh in your face. And all that happened in a 5-year span.
Depends on the people I guess... in 2007 around here, we were predicting financial issues in the US by 2009. It smelled too much like the dot-com bubble, but with housing and banking.
Next financial crisis? Probably sometime around 2019, and involving the stock market, futures and international currency trading....
The Metric System is one of may reforms from the French Revolution. Can't have people in the U.S. adopt anything from France, now, can we?
Ha!
Time to return the Statue of Liberty I guess.... and half the English language.
It'd also be nice if the US used SI units.
No, piracy was, at the very least, well into adolescence.
Not sure when the "infancy" was, but it was way further back than Napster. Requesting the Sysop to put a disc online so you could grab copies of Norton Utilities and Turbo Pascal? Nah, still too advanced. Swapping Apple II games on 5 1/4 floppy, and then bypassing the copy protection with "Locksmith"? Nah, still too advanced.
Hell, Bill Gates used to throw hissy fits back in the day about copies of Microsoft Basic being traded around on paper tape without licensing fees being paid.
Napster was nowhere NEAR the infancy of digital piracy.
Digital Piracy... didn't that start with the folks from Bletchley Park pirating something from the Germans?
This misses another point too... if we've got all these changes in only 15 years... won't the US finally have joined the rest of the world and gone metric? There's no way I'd call 108 degree water "pleasant"....
Another study concluded that 3-year-olds make excellent bureaucrats -- If you have one in your household, expect recruiters to come knocking at your door to hire them -- they'll be retired by the time they're 33 with fat pensions. Of course, they'll probably have you in jail within a few weeks.
C'mon, I took my first television set apart by 3. Sissies!
Keep them away from strong magnets, Tesla coils, acids and bases.
Some realistic adults should take control here, please.
OK: you took your first set apart by 3: I took my first set apart before I was 1.
How long was it before you were able to reassemble a functional TV set after taking it apart?
In more serious news: I don't think the TV itself is so much of an issue as the amount of time under-3's spend exposed to it, and the lack of doing whatever they would have otherwise been doing. My own sample size of 2 indicates that kids under 3 aren't really all that interested in TV by tiself, and prefer to socialize while it is on in the background. They also appear to readily absorb things from TV that the 3-and-above crowd often misses. So having a TV on shouldn't be an issue, whereas using the TV as a babysitter should be avoided at all costs.
I guess the Founding Fathers were all motorcycle riders then.
I think we can safely assume that most of them rode carts and wagons instead of ponies.
Much like most people today prefer the freedom from the elements and the freedom to bring a bag or two.
In the past, there were motorbikes that offered freedom - you could drive them on paths where no car could go. Modern motorbikes, however, tend to demand more of the pavement than cars do.
By all means, I can see reasons why some people want a motorbike, but freedom is not one of them, no matter how often repeated.
Get a horse!
Which surprised me - you could say hypercard sent to a remote display is MUCH prior art.
And Disney... they worked on Squeak (in 1993, but the technology belonged to others before them) which had the same capabilities... and any patents would have expired long ago.