Wake up. I'm not usually this blunt, since I do believe in certain theories about society that some would call naive, but I prefer to call the long term view. A supreme court as an idea is good, but it's current implementation and system of appointment is _bad_. The SCOTUS has been a tool of politics and political manipulation almost since the beginning. It is usually a more subtle tool in the eyes of the public, this is why it is thought of as less political, but that's not really true. It is just the tactical weaponry of the political arsenal. Life time appointment is completely negated by the fact that they are party appointments.
Looking at the past verdicts of the court, they have been ruling in complete disregard of the american constitution and serving political interests. There are a lot of examples proving that in the past 50 years, just to limit our scope to more recent times.
A solution to decontaminate the SCOTUS would be to require a 2/3rd majority in the House or Senate to appoint SCOTUS members. That would ensure that only politically neutral people get elected. (Although this leads us back to the evils of the two party system, but that's another problem we'll address in another session with your friendly foreigner "how to fix your country in a few easy steps" guy.)
I am still boggled by the fact that Microsoft didn't fix the deep problems here ten years ago.
The simple solution would be to provide a damn package manager, with public repositories and trustworthy install mechanism. People need to be educated out of grabbing any software from third party sources, unless they can't find it in the repository and they really need it and verified that it's a legitimate copy from a legitimate source.
What I'm getting at is that the average temperature of Earth is in the ballpark of 300K. We had an increase of 1K in a whole bloody century. That's the whole Global Warming. That's an increase of 0.3% or so. Plugging it back into the StefanBoltzmann law, we need an increase of only 1.003^4=1.01205 times in solar output to _fully_ explain it. That's 1.2% btw.
You are incorrect. Black body radiation alone only explains an average global temperature of 254K or -19C. The difference between that and the current 14C or 287K global average temperature is the greenhouse effect. That's 33K difference.
You're theoretically correct about that a small variance in solar output would result in global warming. But it doesn't happen. Yes, climate scientists checked. Yes, they have checked accurately. They determined that taking the worst case scenario, only 1/3rd of the current global warming we're seeing could be explained by solar variance.
You're allowed to question science, that's how it works. But you better be familiar with the observations, theories and basically the problems of the field, otherwise all you achieve is demonstrating ignorance.
Copyright as originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" is arguably beneficial to society
Copyright, if it worked as it is theoretically supposed to would be somewhat beneficial to society. The problem is that it seems that noone has shown that copyright is a viable theory of economy/sociology.
And it, of course, shows a stunning lack of understanding of geography or other countries. The UK has no enshrined right to free speech, the right to assembly has been slowly curtailed since the 1980s, starting with laws to stop raves, and then to stop political demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament) and cutting off a personal internet account doesn't stop journalists reporting.
I had written a long post which was eaten by a NVIDIA binary blob crash that brought down X.org. One of the best posts that I have written since I've been on slashdot. I've got no energy to rewrite it, however I'd still like to hilight a few things. Articles 10 & 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights guarantee you the freedoms you've mentioned above. These rights are enforced by The European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions are legally binding. Both were created in 1950 by the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom is a founding member. So your assertion that these rights are not enshrined, is false.
As to blocking protests in front of parliament, that looks like a violation of Article 11, but I haven't seen a case in front of the court about this (at least according to their online database. The Court can enforce your rights, but only if people bring these cases to the European Court. Sadly, I think simply not knowing is the biggest enemy of people's rights.
I would never say someone is guilty just based on a confession. There is ample evidence that confessions have quite a high false positive rate. However, taken in conjunction with evidence, it is as 'sure' as it gets.
After the first reports in the case, I was pretty unconvinced that he did it. What changed my mind earlier was two things: the way he hid the car, hosed it off and removed the front seat and the fact that he suddently felt an urge to drive to a mountainous region. The police found Nina Reiser's blood in the car. I wouldn't have convicted him based on this, because it wasn't established beyond reasonable doubt that he did it, but I thought he did it. The jury took a gamble to convict him because he gave the impression of being guilty and trying to cover something up.
In Virginia, we found him guilty because he "manufactured child porn"
Well done. I wonder though, that maybe in the future we could have special representatives from a given community to ensure that mere technicalities do not stand in the way of common sense. I don't know, maybe we could call them a "jury of our peers", or something. It'be great, because while the current system can convict based on a strict interpretation of the law, even when it doesn't make sense and does not resonate with the deeper reasoning behind the law, a so called jury would see, that for example in this case manufacturing child pornography means the punishment of behaviour that involves kids in sexual scenarios, that you cannot manufacture child pornography without actual children involved.
Congratulations, another case when people can't make difference between "ewww, that's gross" and "that is/should be illegal".
Except of course in the last couple of elections in the USA, where the exit polls utterly failed, especially in districts that had new shiny e-voting machines with no paper trail.
Yeah, weird thing. Exit poll doesn't match election results in Ukraine: the verdict is election fraud.
Exit poll doesn't match election results in the USA: oh, the exit poll must be wrong!
1. Verify that you're using electronic voting machines.
2. You cannot verify the voting machine itself.
3. Elections are fraudulent without transparency.
I maintain that the whole concept of electronic voting machines is so idiotic that anyone who doesn't realise what using one means, is in effect giving up his/her right to vote.
She has no clue online what is safe to download and what is not.
Then I am showing her how to use Adept Manger to download software. I am going to tell her if it is not in the Adept Manager, then it is not possible to run it.
This is exactly the good attitude. I'm mostly behaving like that myself. Even though I'm in IT and I can tell in most circumstances where things don't seem legit, that is not something I like to rely on. This is why I use aptitude for installing software. If it's not in the repo, then you better have a good reason as to why should I install the software from a third party source.
One of Microsoft's big fault concerning operating systems is not having proper package management.
Under BSD, you're free to make software. Under GPL, you're free to make free software. Under BSD, you're saying: "Do whatever you want with my code, I don't care". Under GPL, you're saying: "Here is this software I've written, you can use and modify it all you want, but if you distribute it, you need to guarantee the same level of freedom to those who receive the software that you have received". BSD thinks in gratis code, GPL thinks in a free software ecosystem.
Users want to develop on the code aswell. Users can be companies, experienced software developers and even regular old Joe, who just wants to have an annoying bug fixed in his favorite software package. The nonexistent distinction between users and developers is exactly the reason why BSD is less free than GPL.
Your definition of freedom is curious. By that definition, you value the particular freedom "to take away people's freedom" the most. Sure, you're less free in some twisted sense without that, but I think freedom is only freedom if it is inalienable, thus if you have the right to take away other's freedom, then you're not free anyway, even though more is allowed.
A free software environment that significantly restricts other people from making it less free, that's all is what GPLv2 or v3 is all about. You've missed the point.
I happen to live in a country where Firefox usage broke 45% months ago and is the most popular browser, overtaking IE by 5-6%.
I honestly don't care about marketshare after the point of no return has passed where web developers are forced to use the standard in order to make it work on multiple browsers.
There is a small snippet about how "this game is going to be different". The article doesn't even bother expanding on _how_ it's going to be different! This is not news at all!
The teenager refused to back down, quoting a 1984 high court ruling from Mr Justice Latey, in which he described the Church of Scientology as a "cult" which was "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
This action hereby has the Duke Nukem seal of approval.
Slashdot Mirror
Wake up. I'm not usually this blunt, since I do believe in certain theories about society that some would call naive, but I prefer to call the long term view. A supreme court as an idea is good, but it's current implementation and system of appointment is _bad_. The SCOTUS has been a tool of politics and political manipulation almost since the beginning. It is usually a more subtle tool in the eyes of the public, this is why it is thought of as less political, but that's not really true. It is just the tactical weaponry of the political arsenal. Life time appointment is completely negated by the fact that they are party appointments.
Looking at the past verdicts of the court, they have been ruling in complete disregard of the american constitution and serving political interests. There are a lot of examples proving that in the past 50 years, just to limit our scope to more recent times.
A solution to decontaminate the SCOTUS would be to require a 2/3rd majority in the House or Senate to appoint SCOTUS members. That would ensure that only politically neutral people get elected. (Although this leads us back to the evils of the two party system, but that's another problem we'll address in another session with your friendly foreigner "how to fix your country in a few easy steps" guy.)
Is that you, Monica?
The Miller "test" is just a codification of hypocrisy. There is no such thing as an average person when it comes to taste.
Just be careful not to milk this joke for too long...
...a judge will actually be an expert in the specialty area the case deals with.
We just have to invent the forcefield.
You're theoretically correct about that a small variance in solar output would result in global warming. But it doesn't happen. Yes, climate scientists checked. Yes, they have checked accurately. They determined that taking the worst case scenario, only 1/3rd of the current global warming we're seeing could be explained by solar variance.
You're allowed to question science, that's how it works. But you better be familiar with the observations, theories and basically the problems of the field, otherwise all you achieve is demonstrating ignorance.
As to blocking protests in front of parliament, that looks like a violation of Article 11, but I haven't seen a case in front of the court about this (at least according to their online database. The Court can enforce your rights, but only if people bring these cases to the European Court. Sadly, I think simply not knowing is the biggest enemy of people's rights.
I would never say someone is guilty just based on a confession. There is ample evidence that confessions have quite a high false positive rate. However, taken in conjunction with evidence, it is as 'sure' as it gets.
After the first reports in the case, I was pretty unconvinced that he did it. What changed my mind earlier was two things: the way he hid the car, hosed it off and removed the front seat and the fact that he suddently felt an urge to drive to a mountainous region. The police found Nina Reiser's blood in the car. I wouldn't have convicted him based on this, because it wasn't established beyond reasonable doubt that he did it, but I thought he did it. The jury took a gamble to convict him because he gave the impression of being guilty and trying to cover something up.
Now that he confessed, I'm sure he's guilty.
Congratulations, another case when people can't make difference between "ewww, that's gross" and "that is/should be illegal".
Exit poll doesn't match election results in the USA: oh, the exit poll must be wrong!
1. Verify that you're using electronic voting machines.
2. You cannot verify the voting machine itself.
3. Elections are fraudulent without transparency.
I maintain that the whole concept of electronic voting machines is so idiotic that anyone who doesn't realise what using one means, is in effect giving up his/her right to vote.
What arguments are you supporting your proposition with?
One of Microsoft's big fault concerning operating systems is not having proper package management.
Users want to develop on the code aswell. Users can be companies, experienced software developers and even regular old Joe, who just wants to have an annoying bug fixed in his favorite software package. The nonexistent distinction between users and developers is exactly the reason why BSD is less free than GPL.
Your definition of freedom is curious. By that definition, you value the particular freedom "to take away people's freedom" the most. Sure, you're less free in some twisted sense without that, but I think freedom is only freedom if it is inalienable, thus if you have the right to take away other's freedom, then you're not free anyway, even though more is allowed.
A free software environment that significantly restricts other people from making it less free, that's all is what GPLv2 or v3 is all about. You've missed the point.
You're right.
I happen to live in a country where Firefox usage broke 45% months ago and is the most popular browser, overtaking IE by 5-6%.
I honestly don't care about marketshare after the point of no return has passed where web developers are forced to use the standard in order to make it work on multiple browsers.
F/OSS developers aren't working for free, unless you think that nothing apart from money has value.
There is a small snippet about how "this game is going to be different". The article doesn't even bother expanding on _how_ it's going to be different! This is not news at all!
..of Human Rights.. I'm pretty sure the law is in violation of Articles 10 and/or 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights..
This court actually works and has authority to rule in these cases. Might have to exhaust the legal avenues in the UK first though.