The early Hubble pictures suffered from optical distortion due to a miscalculation on what the shape of the mirror would be in obit
This isn't true. I know some of the guys that found the problem and corrected it. This had nothing to do with calculations.
<official public consumption version>
When the mirror was being polished to the right shape, the device used to test its curvature -- called a null corrector -- had been made to the wrong specifications. Thus, when the null corrector showed that the HST mirror was as close to perfect as it could be, it was actually ever so slightly the wrong shape.
This kind of error in making mirrors is called spherical aberration, and it is so well known that it appears in just about every introductory astronomy textbook. What it means is that the light being collected from across the mirror does not come to a focus at a single point as it is supposed to. Instead, light rays hitting the edge of the mirror focus to a point about one inch away from the where light rays from the mirror's center focus.
</official public consumption version>
<nuts and bolts what happened>
More specifically what happened is that when the mirror was ground, someone put a tapered spacer in backwards throwing the entire mirror off by about 1/4". In order for NASA to save about $30,000, they decided to not test the mirror on the ground since they felt it surely was correct and didn't need it. They were wrong. Learn the lesson, always check. Especially if it will cost many, many times what the test would cost to correct if it is bad. Nothing personal and they shouldn't get offended.
</nuts and bolts what happened>
Free market doesn't work when you have to depend on money grubbing humongous companies to come up with a standard. They insist that their standard be the standard so they make mega bucks. Force their competitors to pay them. Beta VS VHS, the DVD stuff, Digital tape, Blue ray... etc and so on. So of course the solution is to let a 3rd incompetent party (i.e. the Gubment) set the most inefficient standard. Then sometimes change it after it is deployed like they did with police radar frequencies and some cell phones. Then try to overstep your legal bounds and try to impose other stuff like DRM on everyone. Hey, DRM is for our own good. Why are you looking at me that way? HEY! Ouch!
The only thing I know about Maryland is that they have the worst speedtraps on I-95 when driving through on the way to DC, so it figures they'd also have confusing drunk driving laws...;)
Maryland is proud of their speedtraps. They also snag people for not wearing seatbelts ($25 fine), drugs, dead beat spouses and others at those stops. Of course we are a distant second to Washington DC. They have their red light cameras and speed cameras all over the place. They also have parking tickets down to a science, I think with Star Trek technology (beam the ticket writer to your car just moments before it expires), maybe it just seems that way.
25 years ago DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) was universal and you never heard of DUI. They didn't do much about it either, sort of like speeding. The serious penalties and enforcement is what has worked. I wish terminology was consistent across the states.
Did you RTFA? It is still self contained, needs no external hoses or wires and it is an underwater breating aparatus. So even though it doesn't use tanks, it is still a SCUBA setup. Jacques Cousteau would be proud! I bet he would even volunteer to try it if he were still around.
BTW you can go deep for long. You just have to watch how fast you come up. Didn't they teach you about the levels and time tables? They should have if they didn't. I have been known to dive with a just a bathing suit to 30 feet. Maybe you meant 30 meters? The deepest I know of is 313 meters but I know people that regularly dive up to 100 feet.
This new setup has a 1 KG battery. Should help with that raft they call a wetsuit! At least my wetsuits seems like a rafts, some more than others. I hope a BC can compensate in warmer waters.
For American audiences substitute 'Ford' for 'Fiat'.
I'm an American. I thought of putting Ford instead of Fiat when I realized nearly everyone would know about Fiat and I consider them worse than Ford. Fiat's need to be worked on more but Ford's seem to take pride in cutting whoever works on them. Lots of sharp edges to cut yourself on.
Adobe is the company I would like to get a few of their exec's in an office some day, one with only one exit and a rather large intimidating security guard by the door and explain the facts of life to them. As much of my money I have spent on their stuff and the support is crap. Best I get from them is a "I'm sorry." (after great effort to get their attention in the first place) Then - it is fixed in our next release, pay to upgrade when it comes out. I get better support out of Microsoft - and for those that don't know, that is saying a LOT.
I'd love to see them dump Mac and make Linux products. Especially for their video suite. After all, the Mac crowd has imovie and other stuff for that. I bet they would make a lot of money with a Linux port for many of their products. After all, there are more Linux machines out there than Apple now.
If you went to the page you referred me to, it says that DWI is LIKE DUI. They are not the same thing however. Used to be DWI was Driving While Intoxicated and DUI was Driving Under Influence. Somewhere along the line they have changed what they mean... all that driver's ed propaganda is no good anymore (darn lawyers!). In Maryland DWI now means "Driving while impaired" and DUI means "Driving while under the influence". DWI is evidence of a test result of.07 or more, but less than.08 while DUI is "proven by a test result of.08 or more or by evidence showing that the driver's normal coordination has been substantially impaired as a result of the consumption of alcohol." Linked from the site you sent me to here
Looking though a number of states, they all make a distinction and there is a difference between DWI and DUI. Did you find a state that blurs that into the same thing?
Of course the best thing is to not get charged in the first place.
I Don't remember. It was for the wife to replace a very overused workhorse Compaq laptop. That compaq is still in use today by my Son. Seems to me that it was around $2,000 at the time. They start on page here
I think I would start with the NP4750-V and go from there. I think my wife's machine has a 2400+ in it. It even runs XP fast. I had trouble with FC-1 64 bit (not as much stuff for it, some errors) so I loaded the 32 bit version and it worked fine. I haven't tried a later version yet. My wife uses it to the point I can't get it away from her for very long. The way I would get it, it is $2265 (64 3700+ woo hoo!). My desktop machines are lasting about 5 years now before I want to replace them.
The only thing I'm concerned about is the heat. Both in laptops and desktops. Make sure that if you do use a laptop on your lap, you are protected. It can start to cook what it rests on, and that may be a very sensitive part of you. I won't put mine on my lap directly. I have read that burns of this type really hurt. Like a good case of sunburn.
I'm thinking of getting a new system to replace my desktop and I'm seriously considering a laptop.
The LAST thing Apple needs to do is to piss off it's user base.
They are un-pissable. They will like Apple no matter what. They have been selling the idea they are somehow superior to everyone else because they use the Mac for 2 decades. It is like a Fiat owner finally admitting that Fiat's are a POS and buying something better. Not to say a Mac is anywhere as bad as a Fiat or anything mind you. Apple users are generally smart as well. They realize nothing is forever and you must migrate from time to time. Just pack up all your crap into tar files, migrate them to the new machine and never use the old stuff again like everyone else.
Laptops are still too slow compared to desktops, especially the hard drives.
Not really. I have a Sager AMD - 64 laptop with a 17" screen. I'm usually the envy of the plane whenever I take it out. I edit videos (even has firewire built in), it has a 60 Gig high speed ide disk so I can easily edit a 20 gig - 1 hour avi file. It cooks right along and will even run on my shoulder, in the car, etc.. Has a DVD burner built in. It beats my desktop even with an accelerator card for the graphics and 320 Meg/sec SCSI disk with adaptec raid. And I can take it anyplace, even lock it in an industrial/commercial (standard Mosler or Diebold) grade safe if security is an issue. I do wish I could get much larger drives though. I need around a TB on that machine so I can hold more video data longer. I'm sure that is coming soon. I'm thinking in another 10 years desktops will be a thing of the past. Sort of like mainframes are today.
Don't drink and drive. Its stupid, immature and kills people. people that DUI are selfish dumbass bastards that should have their license irrevokably taken away at once.
Keep in mind this is DUI and *NOT* DWI. DUI is very subjective and you can be charged with it for any trace amounts of alchohol in your system. You can get charged for taking cough medicine or some breath freshners. Besides, drinking is not illegal. Being intoxicated is. Why should I get hit with severe penalties (at least $8000 in just legal bills) when there isn't a problem? DUI was originally meant to take someone off the road that was clearly impared but didn't meet the threashold to be legally DWI ("just under the limit" they would say). Today it is often used at a check stop when there are no indications of intoxication but the breatholizer shows something. Breatholizers are notorious for being wrong. They even had a spoof on the Simpsons about it. How would you like it if *YOU* were driving home today and got stopped and it says you are DUI even though you have had NOTHING to drink? Cough syrup, breath freshner and so on.
I have a feeling if they disclose the code a lot of people will be outraged and the breatholyzer will no longer be accepted as evidence in court.
How about taking the drivers license of anyone caught smoking crack away - irrevokably taken away as you put it? After all, crack is illegal.
I don't think they have learned anything, they already knew it. That is why they dominate the Linux space. They are probably trying to teach the others the lessons they learned 10 years ago and make the linux space consistent across all the vendors. Teach people not to take things personally. People in the M$ world are very successful because people can take what they learn and move anyplace. Windows is windows is windows (is a pos). Sometimes choice is a bad thing. That is because if you put a choice out there you often get 50% one way and 50% the other. Then they get religious. We need less entrenched religion in the Linux space or it will die. Take all the wasted effort in KDE - Gnome. Pick one and go. That BS put us back years for no good reason.
You are probably thinking they made a mistake with making a paid supported product. A lot of people unfortunately thought RedHat went to an all paid product and totally missed Fedora. Free as in speech, not beer. People wanted free beer and got it for years. Enough is enough. They have bills to pay too. I used to buy their distribution though I usually only bought 1 copy, then when they offered a subscription for $35 I purchased that instead. Today I use both, the paid product and the free distribution. The paid product is very good, extreamely stable. The Suse paid product on the other hand isn't, not even close (though they were getting stable just before Novell bought them). Novell hasn't helped matters any, so far in spite of what their sales weasels (weasel == will say their stuff does anything you throw at them, and it doesn't) say.
I have seen a lot of people dump other distro's and go back to either the RH paid product or Fedora in the past 6 months.
The fact remains that the burden of proof is on "them". It makes me laugh to see all of these arm chair lawyers throwing in their knowledge of law from Law and Order, Perry Mason and Matlock.
There is no doubt a lot of arm chair lawyers out there giving their opinions. Some of it totally wrong and indeed contrary to a lot of case law. In this situation however there is good solid case law to the point some organizations use secretaries to answer lawsuit calls (i.e. you have been sued - call us to settle at 1-800-get-screwd). If they can ascertain who is using that IP address and show definitively that IP is relaying illegal content then they can sue and I think win. You would have to show your innocent. Keep in mind, they can sue anyone, anytime for any reason. Winning the case is another matter, however. Just defending yourself can be very costly, even if the case is frivilous. If you loose then you are liable for damages as well. I'm sure they will put a lot of money into making sure they win the first case.
Not up on my RICO laws but they may also be able to say there is a conspiracy and get Federal charges filed.
I use both CRTs and LCDs. I loved my LCD, until the frickin florescent tube blew after 3 years of use. The promise was that LCDs would be dirt cheap when they are mass produced - as they are now. They still aren't dirt cheap! Reminds me of the compact disk lie - they are now expensive but it was to "recover" cost of the equipment, distro, etc.. They never came down in price.
Replacing the florescent tube that blows in a lcd is more than a new one and more than a CRT. My CRTs run for a LONG darn time. The one I use most of the time at home is over a decade old (21" screen). Still works fine though I have a feeling it too will blow soon.
At least for the next 3 years. Reagan said back in '84 that the ISS would be a reality in 10 years. 20 years later it's only partially completed.
The Challenger blew up in 1985 and that put a halt to it. Then shortly after they resumed the shuttle program Bill Clinton got into office and unfortunately seemed to have other priorities. Made the US-Space Station an "international" space station then it all got messed up. Stupid things like worrying over connections because inserting one into the other could be seen as sexual (docking a spacecraft to the station, one American, one Russian - who screws whom?), then there is the Metric and American Standard measurements. There is also budget shortfalls in Europe and Russia on the ISS. We also had an incompetent NASA admin, he was an accountant and he would never think that sending the space shuttle would be worth the risk and expense. With the fighting in Congress, I'm surprised we get anything done. I think it has held us back decades, worrying over who gets brownie points.
The content of the transaction between the two IP's is encrypted. How would anyone know what exactly your getting?
Easy, look up a torrent for the latest star wars movie or say Satchmo's 1967 version of "What a wonderful world", start downloading. They would know who is relaying that stream. File suit.
Now the relay would be in the position of defending something that was used illegally. Sort of like allowing your house to be used to sell illegal drugs/guns/booze. Yes, your house could be used to host the local church ladies event but they would say there was an intent that stuff you knew wasn't legal would be done. Then you may join the ranks of other "wise guys."
Kind of sucks eh? You could be distributing copies of RedHat, Suse, SETI - or something very bad. If no records are kept, they could say you distributed anything (naked pictures of politicians... ahhhhh!). So who wants to step up and be the first case?
Now spammers will infiltrate blogs. You THINK you are looking for something ("we have proof Senator Cottonpicker does bad stuff" or "how to raise children", perhaps "social security benefits") and wham! Penis enlargement advertisement (or something else just as useless). Have erectile disfunction? Tough! No advertisement here. I'm sorry to suggest this but I'm sure they are already thinking it.
I do remember what happened to him and his company. Sent chills down my spine and threatened to chill the world's progress in computer science. DCMA passed in the Clinton Administration and we are still stuck with that turkey today. Seems to me that was a big payoff for Clinton's buddies in Hollywood.
Shows just how unfair the justice system can be, even in the US. I'm kind of surprised that the online community hasn't spoken up and demanded that the DCMA be repealed or at least the stupid portions taken out. Everyone seem to agree it is a turkey yet they don't do anything about it. While we are at it, get them to make copyrights only valid for 20 years max. And I mean max, no extending it, ever. Make it a constitutional amendment. Also put in other common sense things and eliminate the gray areas. Fix patents. You know, any patent owned by Microsoft or Amazon is automatically null and void, part of public domain. Stupid (obvious) patents are punishable by flogging. For patents that are by a corporation, floggins are applicable to the President all the way down to the one given credit on the patent. With one exception, for Amazon the offender(s) will be keel-hauled. That'll teach 'em.
So far the only bad thing I remember happening to Gates when he went to Europe is he got a pie in the face. I hope the guy got away with it... er rather I hope they caught the hooligan!
Those were backticks! A detail I missed.
(hangs head in shame, withdraws nerd card, backs away sheepishly)
Ok, I'll do it:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<speech>
<voice>Nelson Muntz</voice>
<voiceArtist>Nancy Cartwright</voiceArtist>
<text>Ha-Ha!</text>
<action>runs into tree while riding on bike</action>
<text>It was worth it.</text>
</speech>
Judges issue fines to encourage you to change your ways. If you don't do that, they will start doing other things, perhaps increase the fine or put people in jail. Bill may go to Europe to snatch an honory Knighthood and wham! In jail like a common thief! Ok, so he would probably get the really nice jail suite with no bars, cable and a servant.
Ok, go ahead and make standards like that after I get to name something. I think the next moon should be named Sat-uranus, in honor of saturn and the planet uranus.... In one of the rings.
Slashdot Mirror
Did she produce a new video about this yet? Oh wait, she is doing the Paris^2 video right now.
This isn't true. I know some of the guys that found the problem and corrected it. This had nothing to do with calculations.
<official public consumption version>
When the mirror was being polished to the right shape, the device used to test its curvature -- called a null corrector -- had been made to the wrong specifications. Thus, when the null corrector showed that the HST mirror was as close to perfect as it could be, it was actually ever so slightly the wrong shape.
This kind of error in making mirrors is called spherical aberration, and it is so well known that it appears in just about every introductory astronomy textbook. What it means is that the light being collected from across the mirror does not come to a focus at a single point as it is supposed to. Instead, light rays hitting the edge of the mirror focus to a point about one inch away from the where light rays from the mirror's center focus.
</official public consumption version>
<nuts and bolts what happened>
More specifically what happened is that when the mirror was ground, someone put a tapered spacer in backwards throwing the entire mirror off by about 1/4". In order for NASA to save about $30,000, they decided to not test the mirror on the ground since they felt it surely was correct and didn't need it. They were wrong. Learn the lesson, always check. Especially if it will cost many, many times what the test would cost to correct if it is bad. Nothing personal and they shouldn't get offended.
</nuts and bolts what happened>
Free market doesn't work when you have to depend on money grubbing humongous companies to come up with a standard. They insist that their standard be the standard so they make mega bucks. Force their competitors to pay them. Beta VS VHS, the DVD stuff, Digital tape, Blue ray... etc and so on. So of course the solution is to let a 3rd incompetent party (i.e. the Gubment) set the most inefficient standard. Then sometimes change it after it is deployed like they did with police radar frequencies and some cell phones. Then try to overstep your legal bounds and try to impose other stuff like DRM on everyone. Hey, DRM is for our own good. Why are you looking at me that way? HEY! Ouch!
Maryland is proud of their speedtraps. They also snag people for not wearing seatbelts ($25 fine), drugs, dead beat spouses and others at those stops. Of course we are a distant second to Washington DC. They have their red light cameras and speed cameras all over the place. They also have parking tickets down to a science, I think with Star Trek technology (beam the ticket writer to your car just moments before it expires), maybe it just seems that way.
25 years ago DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) was universal and you never heard of DUI. They didn't do much about it either, sort of like speeding. The serious penalties and enforcement is what has worked. I wish terminology was consistent across the states.
BTW you can go deep for long. You just have to watch how fast you come up. Didn't they teach you about the levels and time tables? They should have if they didn't. I have been known to dive with a just a bathing suit to 30 feet. Maybe you meant 30 meters? The deepest I know of is 313 meters but I know people that regularly dive up to 100 feet.
This new setup has a 1 KG battery. Should help with that raft they call a wetsuit! At least my wetsuits seems like a rafts, some more than others. I hope a BC can compensate in warmer waters.
I'm an American. I thought of putting Ford instead of Fiat when I realized nearly everyone would know about Fiat and I consider them worse than Ford. Fiat's need to be worked on more but Ford's seem to take pride in cutting whoever works on them. Lots of sharp edges to cut yourself on.
Adobe is the company I would like to get a few of their exec's in an office some day, one with only one exit and a rather large intimidating security guard by the door and explain the facts of life to them. As much of my money I have spent on their stuff and the support is crap. Best I get from them is a "I'm sorry." (after great effort to get their attention in the first place) Then - it is fixed in our next release, pay to upgrade when it comes out. I get better support out of Microsoft - and for those that don't know, that is saying a LOT.
I'd love to see them dump Mac and make Linux products. Especially for their video suite. After all, the Mac crowd has imovie and other stuff for that. I bet they would make a lot of money with a Linux port for many of their products. After all, there are more Linux machines out there than Apple now.
If you went to the page you referred me to, it says that DWI is LIKE DUI. They are not the same thing however. Used to be DWI was Driving While Intoxicated and DUI was Driving Under Influence. Somewhere along the line they have changed what they mean... all that driver's ed propaganda is no good anymore (darn lawyers!). In Maryland DWI now means "Driving while impaired" and DUI means "Driving while under the influence". DWI is evidence of a test result of .07 or more, but less than .08 while DUI is "proven by a test result of .08 or more or by evidence showing that the driver's normal coordination has been substantially impaired as a result of the consumption of alcohol." Linked from the site you sent me to here
Looking though a number of states, they all make a distinction and there is a difference between DWI and DUI. Did you find a state that blurs that into the same thing?
Of course the best thing is to not get charged in the first place.
I Don't remember. It was for the wife to replace a very overused workhorse Compaq laptop. That compaq is still in use today by my Son. Seems to me that it was around $2,000 at the time. They start on page here
I think I would start with the NP4750-V and go from there. I think my wife's machine has a 2400+ in it. It even runs XP fast. I had trouble with FC-1 64 bit (not as much stuff for it, some errors) so I loaded the 32 bit version and it worked fine. I haven't tried a later version yet. My wife uses it to the point I can't get it away from her for very long. The way I would get it, it is $2265 (64 3700+ woo hoo!). My desktop machines are lasting about 5 years now before I want to replace them.
The only thing I'm concerned about is the heat. Both in laptops and desktops. Make sure that if you do use a laptop on your lap, you are protected. It can start to cook what it rests on, and that may be a very sensitive part of you. I won't put mine on my lap directly. I have read that burns of this type really hurt. Like a good case of sunburn.
I'm thinking of getting a new system to replace my desktop and I'm seriously considering a laptop.
They are un-pissable. They will like Apple no matter what. They have been selling the idea they are somehow superior to everyone else because they use the Mac for 2 decades. It is like a Fiat owner finally admitting that Fiat's are a POS and buying something better. Not to say a Mac is anywhere as bad as a Fiat or anything mind you. Apple users are generally smart as well. They realize nothing is forever and you must migrate from time to time. Just pack up all your crap into tar files, migrate them to the new machine and never use the old stuff again like everyone else.
Not really. I have a Sager AMD - 64 laptop with a 17" screen. I'm usually the envy of the plane whenever I take it out. I edit videos (even has firewire built in), it has a 60 Gig high speed ide disk so I can easily edit a 20 gig - 1 hour avi file. It cooks right along and will even run on my shoulder, in the car, etc.. Has a DVD burner built in. It beats my desktop even with an accelerator card for the graphics and 320 Meg/sec SCSI disk with adaptec raid. And I can take it anyplace, even lock it in an industrial/commercial (standard Mosler or Diebold) grade safe if security is an issue. I do wish I could get much larger drives though. I need around a TB on that machine so I can hold more video data longer. I'm sure that is coming soon. I'm thinking in another 10 years desktops will be a thing of the past. Sort of like mainframes are today.
Keep in mind this is DUI and *NOT* DWI. DUI is very subjective and you can be charged with it for any trace amounts of alchohol in your system. You can get charged for taking cough medicine or some breath freshners. Besides, drinking is not illegal. Being intoxicated is. Why should I get hit with severe penalties (at least $8000 in just legal bills) when there isn't a problem? DUI was originally meant to take someone off the road that was clearly impared but didn't meet the threashold to be legally DWI ("just under the limit" they would say). Today it is often used at a check stop when there are no indications of intoxication but the breatholizer shows something. Breatholizers are notorious for being wrong. They even had a spoof on the Simpsons about it. How would you like it if *YOU* were driving home today and got stopped and it says you are DUI even though you have had NOTHING to drink? Cough syrup, breath freshner and so on.
I have a feeling if they disclose the code a lot of people will be outraged and the breatholyzer will no longer be accepted as evidence in court.
How about taking the drivers license of anyone caught smoking crack away - irrevokably taken away as you put it? After all, crack is illegal.
We have too many distro's out there now. We need a new distro like we need a new hole in the head.
You are probably thinking they made a mistake with making a paid supported product. A lot of people unfortunately thought RedHat went to an all paid product and totally missed Fedora. Free as in speech, not beer. People wanted free beer and got it for years. Enough is enough. They have bills to pay too. I used to buy their distribution though I usually only bought 1 copy, then when they offered a subscription for $35 I purchased that instead. Today I use both, the paid product and the free distribution. The paid product is very good, extreamely stable. The Suse paid product on the other hand isn't, not even close (though they were getting stable just before Novell bought them). Novell hasn't helped matters any, so far in spite of what their sales weasels (weasel == will say their stuff does anything you throw at them, and it doesn't) say.
I have seen a lot of people dump other distro's and go back to either the RH paid product or Fedora in the past 6 months.
Call it what it really is - a NEW TAX!
I don't see the obvious funny with microsoft.xxx. Get it? Maybe you have to know the old 1980s Bill Gates and microsoft jokes.
There is no doubt a lot of arm chair lawyers out there giving their opinions. Some of it totally wrong and indeed contrary to a lot of case law. In this situation however there is good solid case law to the point some organizations use secretaries to answer lawsuit calls (i.e. you have been sued - call us to settle at 1-800-get-screwd). If they can ascertain who is using that IP address and show definitively that IP is relaying illegal content then they can sue and I think win. You would have to show your innocent. Keep in mind, they can sue anyone, anytime for any reason. Winning the case is another matter, however. Just defending yourself can be very costly, even if the case is frivilous. If you loose then you are liable for damages as well. I'm sure they will put a lot of money into making sure they win the first case.
Not up on my RICO laws but they may also be able to say there is a conspiracy and get Federal charges filed.
Replacing the florescent tube that blows in a lcd is more than a new one and more than a CRT. My CRTs run for a LONG darn time. The one I use most of the time at home is over a decade old (21" screen). Still works fine though I have a feeling it too will blow soon.
The Challenger blew up in 1985 and that put a halt to it. Then shortly after they resumed the shuttle program Bill Clinton got into office and unfortunately seemed to have other priorities. Made the US-Space Station an "international" space station then it all got messed up. Stupid things like worrying over connections because inserting one into the other could be seen as sexual (docking a spacecraft to the station, one American, one Russian - who screws whom?), then there is the Metric and American Standard measurements. There is also budget shortfalls in Europe and Russia on the ISS. We also had an incompetent NASA admin, he was an accountant and he would never think that sending the space shuttle would be worth the risk and expense. With the fighting in Congress, I'm surprised we get anything done. I think it has held us back decades, worrying over who gets brownie points.
Easy, look up a torrent for the latest star wars movie or say Satchmo's 1967 version of "What a wonderful world", start downloading. They would know who is relaying that stream. File suit.
Now the relay would be in the position of defending something that was used illegally. Sort of like allowing your house to be used to sell illegal drugs/guns/booze. Yes, your house could be used to host the local church ladies event but they would say there was an intent that stuff you knew wasn't legal would be done. Then you may join the ranks of other "wise guys."
Kind of sucks eh? You could be distributing copies of RedHat, Suse, SETI - or something very bad. If no records are kept, they could say you distributed anything (naked pictures of politicians... ahhhhh!). So who wants to step up and be the first case?
Now spammers will infiltrate blogs. You THINK you are looking for something ("we have proof Senator Cottonpicker does bad stuff" or "how to raise children", perhaps "social security benefits") and wham! Penis enlargement advertisement (or something else just as useless). Have erectile disfunction? Tough! No advertisement here. I'm sorry to suggest this but I'm sure they are already thinking it.
I do remember what happened to him and his company. Sent chills down my spine and threatened to chill the world's progress in computer science. DCMA passed in the Clinton Administration and we are still stuck with that turkey today. Seems to me that was a big payoff for Clinton's buddies in Hollywood.
Shows just how unfair the justice system can be, even in the US. I'm kind of surprised that the online community hasn't spoken up and demanded that the DCMA be repealed or at least the stupid portions taken out. Everyone seem to agree it is a turkey yet they don't do anything about it. While we are at it, get them to make copyrights only valid for 20 years max. And I mean max, no extending it, ever. Make it a constitutional amendment. Also put in other common sense things and eliminate the gray areas. Fix patents. You know, any patent owned by Microsoft or Amazon is automatically null and void, part of public domain. Stupid (obvious) patents are punishable by flogging. For patents that are by a corporation, floggins are applicable to the President all the way down to the one given credit on the patent. With one exception, for Amazon the offender(s) will be keel-hauled. That'll teach 'em.
So far the only bad thing I remember happening to Gates when he went to Europe is he got a pie in the face. I hope the guy got away with it... er rather I hope they caught the hooligan!
(hangs head in shame, withdraws nerd card, backs away sheepishly)
Ok, I'll do it:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<speech>
<voice>Nelson Muntz</voice>
<voiceArtist>Nancy Cartwright</voiceArtist>
<text>Ha-Ha!</text>
<action>runs into tree while riding on bike</action>
<text>It was worth it.</text>
</speech>
Now you have been ha-ha'd.
Judges issue fines to encourage you to change your ways. If you don't do that, they will start doing other things, perhaps increase the fine or put people in jail. Bill may go to Europe to snatch an honory Knighthood and wham! In jail like a common thief! Ok, so he would probably get the really nice jail suite with no bars, cable and a servant.
Now you can get into that pissing contest with a race horse eh?
Ok, go ahead and make standards like that after I get to name something. I think the next moon should be named Sat-uranus, in honor of saturn and the planet uranus.... In one of the rings.