>They are inventing a new right, apparently out of whole cloth, but certainly not based on copyright law.
The Right of Publicity has been around for a while, the lawyers aren't just making this one up. It's defined at the state level (as opposed to trademarks which are at the federal level) and, not suprisingly given its population of celebrities, California's laws offer the strongest protections of this right.
I'm not arguing one way or the other whether this is a valid "right," just that this isn't something new that the lawyers cooked up for the Tolkien estate.
You can read a little bit more about the Right of Publicity here, where its discussed in the context of rapper Rick Ross being sued by the real life drug dealer Ricky Ross --> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1150
I would hardly call a procedure that involves exposure to increased amounts of radiation and a recorded virtual strip search performed by an agency that has no accountability to the public "non-invasive," but maybe that's just me.
Aside from that, though, why do we even need to "hope that something won't happen?" Unless I've missed something, no plane has ever been blown up flying over U.S. soil in the history of commercial aviation. Furthermore, there has never been an explosive that has gone off on a flight that originated from the U.S. There isn't a single example of any airplane related attack in the U.S. that's been succesfully averted by the increase in airport security since 9/11. The shoe bomber and the underpants bomber were both spotted and subdued by passengers, not security, and they didn't even board their flights in the U.S. anyway. We don't need to hope that something won't happen, because in all likelihood it's not going to happen and even if it did it's not going to be prevented by these half-assed security measures.
And I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think it's clear that "what offends people here is the invasive nature of the screening." Just as offensive is how much of our taxes are being wasted on this ineffective and, yes, invasive, security theater.
He made the point that in addition to the copyright traps, some of the errors are a result of maps including "paper streets," streets that were planned but never actually built. And some errors are just pranks. From the article:
"Of course, when it comes to map errors, you can't overlook the possibility of a little good-natured sabotage. Monmonier mentions two prank towns appearing in an official map of Michigan, the edge of which showed portions of the neighboring state of Ohio. Some diehard Wolverine fan in the mapmaking department decided that would be a good place to put the nonexistent towns of "goblu" (Go Blue, get it?) and "beatosu," referring to the University of Michigan's traditional rival Ohio State. If you had to spend all day staring at squiggly lines and benday dots, you'd need some way to let off steam, too."
"Accenture (formerly known as Anderson Consulting) did the same after Enron."
FYI, Accenture's name change from Andersen Consulting was made official in January 2001. The Enron scandal didn't become public until October 2001, and that involved Arthur Andersen not Andersen Consulting (Arthur Andersen handled Enron's accounting, Andersen Consulting had split off from them in 1989). The relationship between Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen was actually rather acrimonious despite (or perhaps because of) their similar origins.
Full disclosure: I worked for Avanade, a division of Andersen Consulting/Accenture, in 2000 right before the name change.
Perhaps a better approach to my original question would be:
If one were to argue that there is an infinite amount of stars/matter in the universe, would the light distortions caused by this Axis of Evil be a valid explanation for why the night sky is not filled with an infinite amount of light?
I must confess that I haven't read enough on the Big Bang or any other theory of the universe's creation to have an informed opinion on the matter, so this question may be akin to asking about possible explanations for why ships don't fall off the edge of a flat earth.
where exactly did you get the idea that there were an infinite number of stars?
It's one of the basic assumptions of Olbers' paradox, a.k.a. the dark night sky paradox. I suppose that assumption does not work well with the Big Bang model, however.
The actual distortion is similar to the ripples of light you see on the bottom of a swimming pool due to ripples in the surface of the water. So, instead of even lighting across the bottom of the pool, you see a pattern of light and dark areas.
I'll admit up front that my knowledge of astronomy is severely limited, so please excuse in advance what may be a stupid question. But could this distortion be part of the reason why the night sky is dark rather than filled with light from the infinite amount of stars that exist?
The Straight Dope tackled this question a few years ago here, with the response that "there just aren't enough stars in the observable universe to fill up the night sky," but I'm wondering if this discovery changes things at all.
Meaning that if you're a record exec who doesn't know how to adapt to the evolving music scene, you're going to be out of a job soon. So update your resume (LinkedIn page) and start buying cheaper food (Ramen) because you're going to need to save up some money while you're unemployed.
Just as a warning to anyone else who's at work and is curious about scroogle, do not try going directly to scroogle.com! Not safe for work, to say the least.
"If it carries on, we'll have electronics small enough that sheets of paper will start being compatible with specific printers..."
Actually, that technology is almost here, at least if you believe the press releases. A company called Zink claims that it will soon start selling paper that contains "ink" already in it. So it would only work with specific printers (the printers themselves don't contain any ink, they just apply heat to the paper).
Ron got 50.7 percent of the popular vote, which is nothing compared to the landslide champs: LBJ in 1964 (61.0 percent), FDR in 1936 (60.8 percent), and Nixon in 1972 (60.7 percent).
Since only 53.9 percent of the voting-age population actually voted in 1980 (the lowest percentage since 1948), Ron got a scant 27.3 percent of the eligible vote, which is pretty terrible. Of the 40 elections held since 1824 (popular vote totals prior to that time are unavailable), Ron comes in 34th in percentage of eligible vote received, beating out only Carter, Nixon (in 1968), Truman, Coolidge, Wilson, and John Quincy Adams (who had an unbelievably crappy 8.2 percent in 1824
>they'll have to open source a lot of stuff since they'll be distributing it
Not necessarily. Google sells licenses for their "corporate search" software, and that is not open sourced. When you pay for for the license - which, as of four years ago, was going for about $40,000 for a two year license - you also get a google server with the software already installed on it.
We used it a few years ago to set up a customized search for our website, and we never had any performance issues with it. I question whether the return on investment was worth it, however.
The Straight Dope had a discussion on this topic. Their answer as to why humans aren't comfortable at temperatures that are close to your body temperature:
"Your body is a little fuel-burning engine, and like all engines generates waste heat. That heat has to go somewhere, lest you pop a gasket. The easiest place to put it is someplace cooler, such as the air around you. However, if the ambient air temperature is the same as your body temperature, you have to go to great lengths to shove the waste heat out into it, e.g., sweating like a pig or going out to K mart to buy an air conditioner." (link)
While I'm linking to the Straight Dope, I might as well include this one as well:
In Michael Lewis' book NEXT, he has a section discussing the development of Tivo. In the prototype model, there was a button that allowed you to skip over all commercials. Apparently to gain more support from the major tv networks, they dropped this feature from Tivo before they began selling it.
Any idea if this would work with TIVO? I don't have a landline, just cellular, so its a pain to find a landline every two weeks to dial into the service.
MSN Search returns flamebait in the third link (Reasons Why Bill Gates Is the Anti-Christ).
Google doesn't return a similar result until the fifth link (A discussion of Bill Gates' assassination).
I'll leave it up to you guys to decide whether this makes MSN search better or worse.
I could be way off base with this, but I read that last line as a joke from the editor. Perhaps it would have been clearer if the sentence read:
"Will the graphics be indistinguishable from Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2? That's the question that will decide whether or not thats a good thing for the PS3."
The ultimate goal of the mmorpg is to help rebuild the Temple Mount (in real life) and bring about the apocalypse.
From the article:
"Players navigate the narrow streets and bustling marketplaces trying to uncover and decipher Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptural clues relating to the end-times. They can choose to kill each other, but they won't be able to move to the next level if they do. The goal is to unlock the secret that will induce the coming of a messiah - whether players believe he will turn out to be the Christian Jesus, the Jewish Moshiach, or the Muslim Mahdi."
Although that article you linked to claimed that it was running games, another site says that the console was never plugged in during CES. Link to Article here
The article does mention that the Phantom was part of a display for Windows Embedded Devices, which I guess means someone at Microsoft has seen this thing running, but it still seems a little suspicious to me.
During the Cold War there was a lot of Civil Defense-related research for their crisis relocation program that came to the conclusion that it was impossible to fully evacuate any of the major American cities. The infrastructure does not exist to accomplish an evacuation in time. I don't think things have changed enough since the end of the Cold War for the situation to be any different today.
Slashdot Mirror
>They are inventing a new right, apparently out of whole cloth, but certainly not based on copyright law.
The Right of Publicity has been around for a while, the lawyers aren't just making this one up. It's defined at the state level (as opposed to trademarks which are at the federal level) and, not suprisingly given its population of celebrities, California's laws offer the strongest protections of this right.
I'm not arguing one way or the other whether this is a valid "right," just that this isn't something new that the lawyers cooked up for the Tolkien estate.
You can read a little bit more about the Right of Publicity here, where its discussed in the context of rapper Rick Ross being sued by the real life drug dealer Ricky Ross --> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1150
I would hardly call a procedure that involves exposure to increased amounts of radiation and a recorded virtual strip search performed by an agency that has no accountability to the public "non-invasive," but maybe that's just me.
Aside from that, though, why do we even need to "hope that something won't happen?" Unless I've missed something, no plane has ever been blown up flying over U.S. soil in the history of commercial aviation. Furthermore, there has never been an explosive that has gone off on a flight that originated from the U.S. There isn't a single example of any airplane related attack in the U.S. that's been succesfully averted by the increase in airport security since 9/11. The shoe bomber and the underpants bomber were both spotted and subdued by passengers, not security, and they didn't even board their flights in the U.S. anyway. We don't need to hope that something won't happen, because in all likelihood it's not going to happen and even if it did it's not going to be prevented by these half-assed security measures.
And I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think it's clear that "what offends people here is the invasive nature of the screening." Just as offensive is how much of our taxes are being wasted on this ineffective and, yes, invasive, security theater.
Obviously.
Tangentially related: I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
Just as a followup to your point, The Straight Dope had a good article about the "copyright traps" that map makers use:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-copyright-traps-to-permit-detection-of-unauthorized-copies
He made the point that in addition to the copyright traps, some of the errors are a result of maps including "paper streets," streets that were planned but never actually built. And some errors are just pranks. From the article:
"Of course, when it comes to map errors, you can't overlook the possibility of a little good-natured sabotage. Monmonier mentions two prank towns appearing in an official map of Michigan, the edge of which showed portions of the neighboring state of Ohio. Some diehard Wolverine fan in the mapmaking department decided that would be a good place to put the nonexistent towns of "goblu" (Go Blue, get it?) and "beatosu," referring to the University of Michigan's traditional rival Ohio State. If you had to spend all day staring at squiggly lines and benday dots, you'd need some way to let off steam, too."
"Accenture (formerly known as Anderson Consulting) did the same after Enron."
FYI, Accenture's name change from Andersen Consulting was made official in January 2001. The Enron scandal didn't become public until October 2001, and that involved Arthur Andersen not Andersen Consulting (Arthur Andersen handled Enron's accounting, Andersen Consulting had split off from them in 1989). The relationship between Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen was actually rather acrimonious despite (or perhaps because of) their similar origins.
Full disclosure: I worked for Avanade, a division of Andersen Consulting/Accenture, in 2000 right before the name change.
Perhaps a better approach to my original question would be:
If one were to argue that there is an infinite amount of stars/matter in the universe, would the light distortions caused by this Axis of Evil be a valid explanation for why the night sky is not filled with an infinite amount of light?
I must confess that I haven't read enough on the Big Bang or any other theory of the universe's creation to have an informed opinion on the matter, so this question may be akin to asking about possible explanations for why ships don't fall off the edge of a flat earth.
It's one of the basic assumptions of Olbers' paradox, a.k.a. the dark night sky paradox. I suppose that assumption does not work well with the Big Bang model, however.
I'll admit up front that my knowledge of astronomy is severely limited, so please excuse in advance what may be a stupid question. But could this distortion be part of the reason why the night sky is dark rather than filled with light from the infinite amount of stars that exist?
The Straight Dope tackled this question a few years ago here, with the response that "there just aren't enough stars in the observable universe to fill up the night sky," but I'm wondering if this discovery changes things at all.
Meaning that if you're a record exec who doesn't know how to adapt to the evolving music scene, you're going to be out of a job soon. So update your resume (LinkedIn page) and start buying cheaper food (Ramen) because you're going to need to save up some money while you're unemployed.
Or something like that.
Just as a warning to anyone else who's at work and is curious about scroogle, do not try going directly to scroogle.com! Not safe for work, to say the least.
"If it carries on, we'll have electronics small enough that sheets of paper will start being compatible with specific printers..."
Actually, that technology is almost here, at least if you believe the press releases. A company called Zink claims that it will soon start selling paper that contains "ink" already in it. So it would only work with specific printers (the printers themselves don't contain any ink, they just apply heat to the paper).
Here's a writeup on it: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9682333-1.html
Just to add on to your comments about Reagan's "landslide" victory, The Straight Dope had an interesting discussion on that subject. From that article:
>they'll have to open source a lot of stuff since they'll be distributing it
Not necessarily. Google sells licenses for their "corporate search" software, and that is not open sourced. When you pay for for the license - which, as of four years ago, was going for about $40,000 for a two year license - you also get a google server with the software already installed on it. We used it a few years ago to set up a customized search for our website, and we never had any performance issues with it. I question whether the return on investment was worth it, however.
You seem to have mistaken a lame joke for improper use of English.
DisagreE-MAIL, get it?
The Straight Dope had a discussion on this topic. Their answer as to why humans aren't comfortable at temperatures that are close to your body temperature:
"Your body is a little fuel-burning engine, and like all engines generates waste heat. That heat has to go somewhere, lest you pop a gasket. The easiest place to put it is someplace cooler, such as the air around you. However, if the ambient air temperature is the same as your body temperature, you have to go to great lengths to shove the waste heat out into it, e.g., sweating like a pig or going out to K mart to buy an air conditioner." (link)
While I'm linking to the Straight Dope, I might as well include this one as well:
Why do we have so many temperature scales?
I believe the correct spelling is actually "dejanews.com"
In Michael Lewis' book NEXT, he has a section discussing the development of Tivo. In the prototype model, there was a button that allowed you to skip over all commercials. Apparently to gain more support from the major tv networks, they dropped this feature from Tivo before they began selling it.
Any idea if this would work with TIVO? I don't have a landline, just cellular, so its a pain to find a landline every two weeks to dial into the service.
I did a search on "Bill Gates":
MSN Search returns flamebait in the third link (Reasons Why Bill Gates Is the Anti-Christ).
Google doesn't return a similar result until the fifth link (A discussion of Bill Gates' assassination).
I'll leave it up to you guys to decide whether this makes MSN search better or worse.
I could be way off base with this, but I read that last line as a joke from the editor. Perhaps it would have been clearer if the sentence read:
"Will the graphics be indistinguishable from Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2? That's the question that will decide whether or not thats a good thing for the PS3."
Maybe this is what you're looking for: Holy Land MMORPG.
The ultimate goal of the mmorpg is to help rebuild the Temple Mount (in real life) and bring about the apocalypse.
From the article:
"Players navigate the narrow streets and bustling marketplaces trying to uncover and decipher Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptural clues relating to the end-times. They can choose to kill each other, but they won't be able to move to the next level if they do. The goal is to unlock the secret that will induce the coming of a messiah - whether players believe he will turn out to be the Christian Jesus, the Jewish Moshiach, or the Muslim Mahdi."
Although that article you linked to claimed that it was running games, another site says that the console was never plugged in during CES. Link to Article here
The article does mention that the Phantom was part of a display for Windows Embedded Devices, which I guess means someone at Microsoft has seen this thing running, but it still seems a little suspicious to me.
During the Cold War there was a lot of Civil Defense-related research for their crisis relocation program that came to the conclusion that it was impossible to fully evacuate any of the major American cities. The infrastructure does not exist to accomplish an evacuation in time. I don't think things have changed enough since the end of the Cold War for the situation to be any different today.
p ?t=293790/
Link to a discussion on evacuating NYC in the event of a mega-tsunami: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.ph
You can see some pictures of La Palma and the projected dissemination of the potential La Palma mega tsunami here: http://www.benfieldhrc.org/SiteRoot/tsunamis/la_pa lma_images.htm/
Looks like it would take about 6 hours for the tsunami to hit the East Coasts of North and South America.