Diesel can't be compared with gasoline MPG. One barrel of crude oil, when refined, produces about 19 gallons of finished motor gasoline, but only 10 gallons of diesel.
One barrel of crude oil can be refined into 19 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons of diesel. In addition to a bunch of other useful petroleum products. Its not like those 19 gallons of gasoline are somehow equivalent to 10 gallons of diesel.
"Movie stars are people. Corporations, such as Apple, are not people. They are businesses, at all times. Business practices and information are always in the public interest. Trade secret laws have been dubious from the get go. When information gets out from a company (whether in violation of an NDA or not) that information is almost always in the public interest."
(emphasis mine)
So which is it? Is Business information always, or just almost always in the public interest? I'm going to guess that you realized your first claim was absurd, and tried to correct it by adding "almost".
Here's a hypothetical (which nicely refutes your first claim, and makes pointless your second):
Company A is researching a product which will bring joy and happyness to millions, cures athletes foot, and will do your taxes. Intrepid blogger B induces one of company A's employees to break his NDA, and publishes details about the research. Company C who makes tax software and anti-fungal powder, reads said leak, and quickly buys and kills company A before their product can be completed.
In that (very hypothetical) case, public release of private business information has worked against the public interest, and the unhappy public must continue with itchy feet and sub-standard tax software.
More importantly, one could make the same case for the public viewing of personal information that you've made for business information. It is certainly in the public's interest to have it be widely known that your are a hopeless alcholic, and constantly default on loans. But I'm sure you wouldn't agree that private, personal information should be publicly available. Why so for people and not for corporations, who are, at their basic level, a group of people?
"But the contract is only enforced by laws passed by Congress. This enforcement cannot violate the First Amendment."
The contract is enforced post-tense. No one infringed upon the NDA-signer's right to speak. They just enforced the consequences afterwards. Thus no ones constitutional rights were violated.
And while papers like the NYT have more credibility than blogs in most peoples' eyes (I assume), there are always exceptions. Just because it's from a blog doesn't mean it's an uneducated opinion, and just because it's from a newspaper read around the world doesn't mean it's cold hard fact.
Exactly. The point of both the GP(mine) and the GGP was that "journalism" is identified by the act of performing "journalism". What Jason Blair did was not "journalism", and it's a shame that his "stories" were allowed to go to print. But to their credit the NYT eventually disavowed Blair and fired a his editors.
"There was a whole lot of public interest in what Think Secret published. Think Secret does not tend to publish things on its website that don't generate public interest. You don't gather readership by publishing things of little public interest. Why are you in denial?"
The details of movie stars' private lives seems to pique the public's interest. But that information is not "in the public interest." There is a big, big difference between "public interest" and "purient interest". "Public interest," as a concept, is that which affects the interests of the public at large. The small number of Apple investors, Apple customers, or Apple competitors does not "the public" make.
you cannot sign your first amendment rights away. (well, unless that signing has to do with revoking one's own citizenship, but that's neither here nor there.)
The First Ammendment applies only to Congress and its agents (the Executive and Judicial Branches, as well as the States via the 14th ammendment).
The NDA contract was not with any of the above agencies, so the signer could not have "signed [their] first ammendment rights away." The First Ammendment does not apply here.
"Newspapers do decide to publish information that is in violation of contracts and laws and that type of thing. Think about whistleblowers. Many of them would probably have a contractual obligation not to reveal information to the media, yet newspapers are able to treat them as confidential sources."
Sure, but in those cases, the whistleblowers were informing the public of corporate shennanigans, or an overwhelming public interest. (Distinct from whatever it is that interests the public.)
In this case, the only wrongdoing was on the part of the leaker, and under trade secret law, the part of the publisher. There was no public interest. And there's no way the New York Times would have published that story.
"Is the New York Times journalism? Yep. (usually at least;)
Is the Star paper that you can pick up in your supermaket journalism? No.
Both are on paper media. The media has nothing to do with it. It's all about the quality."
To add to you point:
I've seen many comments here and in TFAs to the effect of, "What if the New York Times had published those leaks? There'd be no lawsuit."
That's disinginous at best and stupid at worst. The New York Times would never had published the leak. An editor would have asked the reporter who their source was, and if it was an Apple insider, would have asked if the insider was covered by an NDA.
That's because the New York Times actually engages in journalism.
The battle scenes are good as well but this whole "shaky cam" thing gets annoying especially the quick zoom they do a lot.
The "shaky cam" thing gets better as the season progresses. The cameramen get a better feel for the "feel" of a given scene, and don't feel the need to do the "shaky cam" thing in scenes which don't warrant it. However, the "shaky cam" is a great cheap trick to inject a feeling of "excitement" and "energy" into a scene. (Which is precisely why it's so annoying in scenes which don't require it.)
"If I've done the calculations right, the energy released by one kilogram of matter interacting with one gram of antimatter"
Considering that one gram of antimatter interacts with one gram of matter, and that raising the matter to one kilogram has no effect at all, me thinks your calculations may be suspect:)
I noticed that after posting. I even previewed.:(
Nonetheless, the calculations were based on one gram each. One kilogram each resulted in 33 million elephants.
One gram each is also roughly equivalent to 40 million bowls of petunias dropped from 100 km. Yet only 1,600 blue whales.
"I'm somewhat partial to units involving elephants. Can I get this expressed in terms of the potential energy of x elephants dropped from an altitude of 100km?"
If I've done the calculations right, the energy released by one kilogram of matter interacting with one gram of antimatter is roughly equivalent to the potential energy of 33 thousand 6 ton elephants at a height of 100 kilometers.
"Well, imagine you're painter. You make a painting and you exhibit it in a shop. Lots of paintings are made without the intension of selling it, but this one is for sale and someone makes a high rez picture of it and makes all this cheap posters with that picture on it. Next he starts giving them away for free in the shop next to yours. What would you do ?"
This is a retarded example. If the guy next door sells no copies, no harm is done. However, if he sells boatloads... An original painting which has been reproduced and found popular will be highly sought after. I, as the painter, would probably be insanely happy that a) people thought my work was great enough to want in their living rooms, and b) that the attention brought by the reproductions allowed me to sell my original for much more than had it wallowed in obscurity.
According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We've got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000 population. China has the second-largest number of prisoners (1.51 million, for a rate of 117 per 100,000), and Russia has the second-highest rate (606 per 100,000, for a total of 865,000). Russia had the highest rate for years, but has released hundreds of thousands of prisoners since 1998; meanwhile the U.S. prison population has grown by even more. Rounding out the top ten, with rates from 554 to 437, are Belarus, Bermuda (UK), Kazakhstan, the Virgin Islands (U.S.), the Cayman Islands (UK), Turkmenistan, Belize, and Suriname, which you'll have to agree puts America in interesting company. South Africa, a longtime star performer on the list, has dropped to 15th place (402) since the dismantling of apartheid.... Another nation suspected to have a lot of prisoners is North Korea. The country isn't listed in ICPS statistics, but a recent NBC News investigation put the number of political prisoners alone at 200,000, or more than 900 per 100,000.... Great, you're thinking. The only countries that might put away more of their own people than we do are both notorious authoritarian states. No question: considering we're supposed to be the land of the free, we've got a huge number of folks locked up. Most countries, including almost all our industrialized peers, have imprisonment rates under 200. India, hardly an orderly utopia, has a rate of just 29.
We have the largest number of incarcerated citizens of any country in the world. The only country in the world with a higher incarceration rate is North Korea, and that is speculation at best.
I'd expect this, and even demand it. Why? Because first off, in many countries - namely certain European ones - violent even deadly criminals are not properly incarcerated due to financial contraints. Meaning, their average is low because they dont want to spend the money to do it right.
Oh yes, obviously it's because those damned European socialists are penny pinching tightwads, and not because they have principles. That must explain all those convicts escaping from improperly secured incarceration facilities. Obviously, it's Belarus, Bermuda, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Belize which have the financial wherewithal to prosecute the War on Crime.
Second, justice dictates that those who ignore the mandates of the many and their elected representatives be treated appropriately.
Buzz. Begging the question. Who said that by incarcerating them that they were being treated appropriately?
Third, justice dictates that the law be applied evenely and fairly. In so many countries, rampant corruption is so regular that it is part of every day life. In this country as well as others a corruption case is a big deal. A sheriff or jailer taking a bribe to release someone is virtually unheard of
Yes, it must be those corrupt sherrifs that explain why our incarceration rate is more than 350% higher than our industrialized peers.
While in this country, overzelous police and prosecution are equally unheard of. Oh wait...
You have no idea what you talking about. Do some research. Our criminal justice system is effective, and it is a hallmark of a fair and equitable country.
You, sir, are a hallmark of hypocracy, to say such a thing at the end of a post with no factual or logical points.
...and you think you wouldn't receive spam from 'legit' addresses? and that they wouldn't get new certs once they've spoilt their old ones(or are you proposing they wouldn't get)?
You would receive spam from 'legit' addresses. That's not the point. Any given piece of spam from a 'legit' address could be effectively and legally tied to its source.
you do remember that pro spammers have been the fastest to pick up senderid & others?
Even granting this very disputable piece of postulation as fact, so what? I'd hope that all spammers would start to use SPF; it'd really help with filtering and holding spammer-friendly ISPs accountable. You seem to be under the common misconception that SPF and this signature scheme is intended to be a silver bullet. SPF is intended to eliminate "joe jobs"; e-mails purporting to be from a fake address, or worse, an address which exists, but is not affiliated with the spammer.
and how is this decentralised or even free, as you're relying on someone else than yourself?
It's decentralized because it has no center, no overarching authority controlling all e-mail. It has many, many authorities, controlled by individual users. Good authorities (ones with reputations for cutting off spammers quickly, or for not handing out certs to spammers in the first place) will rise to the top. Bad authorities will fall off people's Trusted Authorities lists. It's free because there will always be free-beer signing authorities available, and at the same time, companies are free to charge for their services. It's the ultimate freedom.
If *everyone* would just get valid, signed certificates to authenticate themselves as a given entity with a given email address, then *everyone* could turn on a switch in their mail client that says "reject all mail that isn't signed with a cert which matches the sender's address and that's signed by an authority I trust". that wouldn't be free & decentralised anymore. if you want to have the ability to receive messages from total strangers, you have the ability to receive totally useless messages(spam) from them as well.
How you got modded up to +5, I'll never know. Instead of using my last mod point on you, I'll just demonstrate your wrongness instead.
Signed certs are precisely a solution to the "how do I trust someone I don't know?" problem. If you trust Thawte, then you can trust that an e-mail signed by a Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate comes from a legit address. If a given certified address abuses his signing authority's TOS (say, by spamming) then the SA can revoke the cert. If a SA refuses to revoke a spammers cert, you can remove the SA as one of your trusted authorities. Don't like Thawte's corprate nature? Add a free SA to your list of TAs.
Would you look at that! Free and decentralized! Who woulda thunk it?
As a test, I checked both with Cingular's online "My Minutes" page (which breaks down calls by time and number) and with the *MIN# feature. Both were correct, and both accounted for the last call I'd made/received (the day before).
Granted, this isn't proof of anything. But I'd guess their disclaimer is more CYOA than anything.
It's amazing. The mobile phone companies can sell you games, ringtones, wallpaper and text messages, but they can't^H^H^H^H^H *WON'T* tell you instantly how many minutes you've used this billing cycle. Hell, my Cingular phone doesn't even work in my living room
Perhaps you aren't trying hard enough? Either that or willfully ignorant. From Cingular's Customer Service page:
Check your minutes
Dial *MIN# (*646#) on your phone.
Hit the Send key.
Within seconds, the minutes you've used are delivered via text message to your phone screen. These minutes will be broken down by type.
Lets not kid ourselves, nobody is going to use this information to send these men fruitbaskets or singing telegrams.
This is only a valid argument if you think delegates should only be exposed to arguments and ideas they already agree with. Insulating your representatives from contrary opinions is not a founding principle of democracy.
Why on earth do we have sales tax anyway? Either tax it when I get it (income tax) or tax it when I spend it (sales tax), but why the hell do they get to tax every friggin dollar I get *twice*???
It's even worse than that! After you've paid for your widget, the Widget Company declares that dollar as income, and pays taxes on it. Then it uses the remainder to pay its Widget Employees and they're taxed on it. Then they take their income and buy a doohickey and are charged sales tax. Then the Doohickey company declares income and... well, you get the picture.
IANAC (Chemist), but shouldn't there be a way to bind Hydrogen with Carbon-Dioxide to form a more stable and transportable fuel? I.e. make our own gasoline/oil?
I'm sure this would add some inefficiencies to the system, but maybe lack of losses while storing and transporting pure hydrogen would make up for it.
Actually, the sun dumps 100,627 tons of energy on the earth. (Assuming half of the photons are reflected, and that the earth is a disc exactly 1 'earth' in diameter, 1 AU from the sun. <grin>)
This recipe is a clear violation of the DMCA, in that the end device is capable of copying copyrighted materials (newspapers) and defeating their protection mechanisms (if they've been printed backwards).
Slashdot Mirror
Diesel can't be compared with gasoline MPG. One barrel of crude oil, when refined, produces about 19 gallons of finished motor gasoline, but only 10 gallons of diesel.
One barrel of crude oil can be refined into 19 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons of diesel. In addition to a bunch of other useful petroleum products. Its not like those 19 gallons of gasoline are somehow equivalent to 10 gallons of diesel.
"Movie stars are people. Corporations, such as Apple, are not people. They are businesses, at all times. Business practices and information are always in the public interest. Trade secret laws have been dubious from the get go. When information gets out from a company (whether in violation of an NDA or not) that information is almost always in the public interest."
(emphasis mine)
So which is it? Is Business information always, or just almost always in the public interest? I'm going to guess that you realized your first claim was absurd, and tried to correct it by adding "almost".
Here's a hypothetical (which nicely refutes your first claim, and makes pointless your second):
Company A is researching a product which will bring joy and happyness to millions, cures athletes foot, and will do your taxes. Intrepid blogger B induces one of company A's employees to break his NDA, and publishes details about the research. Company C who makes tax software and anti-fungal powder, reads said leak, and quickly buys and kills company A before their product can be completed.
In that (very hypothetical) case, public release of private business information has worked against the public interest, and the unhappy public must continue with itchy feet and sub-standard tax software.
More importantly, one could make the same case for the public viewing of personal information that you've made for business information. It is certainly in the public's interest to have it be widely known that your are a hopeless alcholic, and constantly default on loans. But I'm sure you wouldn't agree that private, personal information should be publicly available. Why so for people and not for corporations, who are, at their basic level, a group of people?
"But the contract is only enforced by laws passed by Congress. This enforcement cannot violate the First Amendment."
The contract is enforced post-tense. No one infringed upon the NDA-signer's right to speak. They just enforced the consequences afterwards. Thus no ones constitutional rights were violated.
And while papers like the NYT have more credibility than blogs in most peoples' eyes (I assume), there are always exceptions. Just because it's from a blog doesn't mean it's an uneducated opinion, and just because it's from a newspaper read around the world doesn't mean it's cold hard fact.
Exactly. The point of both the GP(mine) and the GGP was that "journalism" is identified by the act of performing "journalism". What Jason Blair did was not "journalism", and it's a shame that his "stories" were allowed to go to print. But to their credit the NYT eventually disavowed Blair and fired a his editors.
"There was a whole lot of public interest in what Think Secret published. Think Secret does not tend to publish things on its website that don't generate public interest. You don't gather readership by publishing things of little public interest. Why are you in denial?"
The details of movie stars' private lives seems to pique the public's interest. But that information is not "in the public interest." There is a big, big difference between "public interest" and "purient interest". "Public interest," as a concept, is that which affects the interests of the public at large. The small number of Apple investors, Apple customers, or Apple competitors does not "the public" make.
you cannot sign your first amendment rights away. (well, unless that signing has to do with revoking one's own citizenship, but that's neither here nor there.)
The First Ammendment applies only to Congress and its agents (the Executive and Judicial Branches, as well as the States via the 14th ammendment).
The NDA contract was not with any of the above agencies, so the signer could not have "signed [their] first ammendment rights away." The First Ammendment does not apply here.
"Newspapers do decide to publish information that is in violation of contracts and laws and that type of thing. Think about whistleblowers. Many of them would probably have a contractual obligation not to reveal information to the media, yet newspapers are able to treat them as confidential sources."
Sure, but in those cases, the whistleblowers were informing the public of corporate shennanigans, or an overwhelming public interest. (Distinct from whatever it is that interests the public.)
In this case, the only wrongdoing was on the part of the leaker, and under trade secret law, the part of the publisher. There was no public interest. And there's no way the New York Times would have published that story.
"Is the New York Times journalism? Yep. (usually at least ;)
Is the Star paper that you can pick up in your supermaket journalism? No.
Both are on paper media. The media has nothing to do with it. It's all about the quality."
To add to you point:
I've seen many comments here and in TFAs to the effect of, "What if the New York Times had published those leaks? There'd be no lawsuit."
That's disinginous at best and stupid at worst. The New York Times would never had published the leak. An editor would have asked the reporter who their source was, and if it was an Apple insider, would have asked if the insider was covered by an NDA.
That's because the New York Times actually engages in journalism.
The battle scenes are good as well but this whole "shaky cam" thing gets annoying especially the quick zoom they do a lot.
The "shaky cam" thing gets better as the season progresses. The cameramen get a better feel for the "feel" of a given scene, and don't feel the need to do the "shaky cam" thing in scenes which don't warrant it. However, the "shaky cam" is a great cheap trick to inject a feeling of "excitement" and "energy" into a scene. (Which is precisely why it's so annoying in scenes which don't require it.)
Adding to the above poster: you, sir, have yet to say anything which disabuses the notion that you are a flaming retard.
iTunes does not convert mp3s to another format unless you explicitly ask it to.
Considering that one gram of antimatter interacts with one gram of matter, and that raising the matter to one kilogram has no effect at all, me thinks your calculations may be suspect
I noticed that after posting. I even previewed.
Nonetheless, the calculations were based on one gram each. One kilogram each resulted in 33 million elephants.
One gram each is also roughly equivalent to 40 million bowls of petunias dropped from 100 km. Yet only 1,600
blue whales.
"I'm somewhat partial to units involving elephants. Can I get this expressed in terms of the potential energy of x elephants dropped from an altitude of 100km?"
If I've done the calculations right, the energy released by one kilogram of matter interacting with one gram of antimatter is roughly equivalent to the potential energy of 33 thousand 6 ton elephants at a height of 100 kilometers.
"Well, imagine you're painter. You make a painting and you exhibit it in a shop. Lots of paintings are made without the intension of selling it, but this one is for sale and someone makes a high rez picture of it and makes all this cheap posters with that picture on it.
Next he starts giving them away for free in the shop next to yours.
What would you do ?"
This is a retarded example. If the guy next door sells no copies, no harm is done. However, if he sells boatloads... An original painting which has been reproduced and found popular will be highly sought after. I, as the painter, would probably be insanely happy that a) people thought my work was great enough to want in their living rooms, and b) that the attention brought by the reproductions allowed me to sell my original for much more than had it wallowed in obscurity.
From Straight Dope:
We have the largest number of incarcerated citizens of any country in the world. The only country in the world with a higher incarceration rate is North Korea, and that is speculation at best.
I'd expect this, and even demand it. Why? Because first off, in many countries - namely certain European ones - violent even deadly criminals are not properly incarcerated due to financial contraints. Meaning, their average is low because they dont want to spend the money to do it right.
Oh yes, obviously it's because those damned European socialists are penny pinching tightwads, and not because they have principles. That must explain all those convicts escaping from improperly secured incarceration facilities. Obviously, it's Belarus, Bermuda, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Belize which have the financial wherewithal to prosecute the War on Crime.
Second, justice dictates that those who ignore the mandates of the many and their elected representatives be treated appropriately.
Buzz. Begging the question. Who said that by incarcerating them that they were being treated appropriately?
Third, justice dictates that the law be applied evenely and fairly. In so many countries, rampant corruption is so regular that it is part of every day life. In this country as well as others a corruption case is a big deal. A sheriff or jailer taking a bribe to release someone is virtually unheard of
Yes, it must be those corrupt sherrifs that explain why our incarceration rate is more than 350% higher than our industrialized peers.
While in this country, overzelous police and prosecution are equally unheard of. Oh wait...
You have no idea what you talking about. Do some research. Our criminal justice system is effective, and it is a hallmark of a fair and equitable country.
You, sir, are a hallmark of hypocracy, to say such a thing at the end of a post with no factual or logical points.
...and you think you wouldn't receive spam from 'legit' addresses? and that they wouldn't get new certs once they've spoilt their old ones(or are you proposing they wouldn't get)?
You would receive spam from 'legit' addresses. That's not the point. Any given piece of spam from a 'legit' address could be effectively and legally tied to its source.
you do remember that pro spammers have been the fastest to pick up senderid & others?
Even granting this very disputable piece of postulation as fact, so what? I'd hope that all spammers would start to use SPF; it'd really help with filtering and holding spammer-friendly ISPs accountable. You seem to be under the common misconception that SPF and this signature scheme is intended to be a silver bullet. SPF is intended to eliminate "joe jobs"; e-mails purporting to be from a fake address, or worse, an address which exists, but is not affiliated with the spammer.
and how is this decentralised or even free, as you're relying on someone else than yourself?
It's decentralized because it has no center, no overarching authority controlling all e-mail. It has many, many authorities, controlled by individual users. Good authorities (ones with reputations for cutting off spammers quickly, or for not handing out certs to spammers in the first place) will rise to the top. Bad authorities will fall off people's Trusted Authorities lists. It's free because there will always be free-beer signing authorities available, and at the same time, companies are free to charge for their services. It's the ultimate freedom.
How you got modded up to +5, I'll never know. Instead of using my last mod point on you, I'll just demonstrate your wrongness instead.
Signed certs are precisely a solution to the "how do I trust someone I don't know?" problem. If you trust Thawte, then you can trust that an e-mail signed by a Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate comes from a legit address. If a given certified address abuses his signing authority's TOS (say, by spamming) then the SA can revoke the cert. If a SA refuses to revoke a spammers cert, you can remove the SA as one of your trusted authorities. Don't like Thawte's corprate nature? Add a free SA to your list of TAs.
Would you look at that! Free and decentralized! Who woulda thunk it?
Instant, but not current.
As a test, I checked both with Cingular's online "My Minutes" page (which breaks down calls by time and number) and with the *MIN# feature. Both were correct, and both accounted for the last call I'd made/received (the day before).
Granted, this isn't proof of anything. But I'd guess their disclaimer is more CYOA than anything.
-Jer
Perhaps you aren't trying hard enough? Either that or willfully ignorant. From Cingular's Customer Service page:
Lets not kid ourselves, nobody is going to use this information to send these men fruitbaskets or singing telegrams.
This is only a valid argument if you think delegates should only be exposed to arguments and ideas they already agree with. Insulating your representatives from contrary opinions is not a founding principle of democracy.
Speaking of GTA3:
"Let's make the Earth a free place to live...without war...and traffic accidents..."
-From "Gamara vs. Guiron", MST3k
Gamara is really neat!
He is made of turtle meat!
Gamara! Gamara!
Why on earth do we have sales tax anyway? Either tax it when I get it (income tax) or tax it when I spend it (sales tax), but why the hell do they get to tax every friggin dollar I get *twice*???
It's even worse than that! After you've paid for your widget, the Widget Company declares that dollar as income, and pays taxes on it. Then it uses the remainder to pay its Widget Employees and they're taxed on it. Then they take their income and buy a doohickey and are charged sales tax. Then the Doohickey company declares income and... well, you get the picture.
IANAC (Chemist), but shouldn't there be a way to bind Hydrogen with Carbon-Dioxide to form a more stable and transportable fuel? I.e. make our own gasoline/oil?
I'm sure this would add some inefficiencies to the system, but maybe lack of losses while storing and transporting pure hydrogen would make up for it.
The sun pumps in tons of energy to the earth.
Actually, the sun dumps 100,627 tons of energy on the earth. (Assuming half of the photons are reflected, and that the earth is a disc exactly 1 'earth' in diameter, 1 AU from the sun. <grin>)
-Jer
This recipe is a clear violation of the DMCA, in that the end device is capable of copying copyrighted materials (newspapers) and defeating their protection mechanisms (if they've been printed backwards).
"...I agree 110%..."
...The above figure has a margin of error of 11%...
Today just isn't a good math day for you, is it?