Midland, Texas has three grids. The downtown area is based on true north. There's a little patch aligned with the railroads, and the rest is roughly aligned with I-20. The neighborhoods within the major grids are all squiggly.
The analogue to someone pirating music is not that person saying: "hey, I like Lady GaGa's new song. Let's also rent a studio, arrange the musicians, record it and mix it". And you must know this.
I don't know, several cover bands do get shut down if they don't pay the ASCAP protection racket. That seems pretty analogous to a chef at a restaurant cooking the same recipe he saw on Iron Chef, only to have Bobby Flay's henchman threaten to break his kneecaps.
I'm reminded of "Be Kind, Rewind" or whatever that Jack Black movie was called. Jack Black has to "remake" several movies with a very minimal cast and zero budget. But the MPAA knocks down their door and takes all their shit. I know it's fiction, but it probably would happen like that if you and your buddies tried to swede a version of Star Wars.
I think that's exactly why we went for such a long time where recordings and performances of music weren't copyrighted or were copyrighted differently. Performance of music used to be viewed as more of a service, akin to hairdressing and cooking. Several families had pianos around which they would sing and entertain themselves with the latest folk or art music. Now music's a consumable more like newspapers or books. I don't know much about cinema history, but I imagine movies were never seen as a service.
Bullshit. "You know and I know" that anybody out there who wants to put a movie on their iPod or make a backup pretty much has to use this "pirate tool." I have a 3 year old. He likes to watch mommy's iPod on long car rides. His DVD collection is full of encrypted Bob the Builder, Dora, Pixar, etc. ad nauseum. There's no other free way to get them onto the iPod. And Apple can bite me if they think I'm going to pay more than about $2 for the "convenience" of getting a movie through iTunes.
Further, you're stupid or lazy (or just wealthy enough that you don't care) if you don't make a backup copy of your (or your kids') favorite movies. One good scratch and you're down $5 - $25. And before you tell me how hard it is to scratch a DVD, remember that TSA rifling through a travel pouch of DVDs can do a lot of damage.
Once DVDs become impossible to find, I will switch to BluRay, but only because I know this decryption tool is available. Your version of "a simple fact" seems more like "an unsupported opinion that I call a fact since I can't actually prove it."
Since the effective motion would be so fast, did you guys try to emulate any relativistic effects? Or is it just Newtonian motion? Getting to see things like length contraction (well, Terrell rotation, anyway) and the Doppler effect would be pretty cool, even if they were just artistic renditions.
You're exactly right. I sometimes make stereographs of mountains by taking two photographs from an airplane going over the mountain. To get the best effect, you don't take two pictures at the same time just a few inches apart. Instead you take one picture, then wait a few seconds as you fly partially over, and then take a second picture. The end effect is similar to looking at a small 3D model of a mountain, which I find more helpful.
I wouldn't call it artistic license so much as useful manipulation of data. But I guess to the scientists, that's the same thing. They already have to fake the colorization, so what's the problem with exaggerating the relief by taking the pictures a few years apart, right?
The kiwis certainly don't "let every one in." They have a points system. It helps to be an English-speaking, highly-skilled professional. But even then you're not guaranteed permanent residence. Granted, something like 20% of their population is immigrants, but they don't let everybody in.
Exactly! It's all about proper use of the rules of logic and the burden of proof. I seem to be ranting about the whole "burden of proof" thing a lot lately, but it seems like people must have stopped taking logic in schools or something. I don't know about you guys, but I had to do proofs in 8th through 10th grade math. Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn.
A friend of mine grew up the son of a Baptist minister. His family was (surprisingly) big on Santa Claus. When my friend got old enough to learn the truth about Santa he said to his parents, "So I guess you guys made up all that Jesus stuff, too, right?" He is still religious, but Santa's not real big in his household.
Me personally, I still believe there's a big fat guy in a red suit that travels at relativistic speeds delivering cool stuff to people who believe in him. The more of you who don't believe in him the better. It means more cool stuff for me!!
You're claiming that the belief that there is no God is different from a belief that a God exists if and only if there is sufficient evidence that one exists. There are two distinct cases to examine.
First, if we assume that the null hypothesis is "God does not exist," then agnostics (since they don't believe in God) are just assuming the null hypothesis. That hardly seems like it's even worth a label. Non-agnostics must have some minimum evidence that led them to their beliefs. They are (or were) Xtifr agnostics that have been made believers, by definition.
If the null hypothesis is "God does exist" (as several religious people think it should be), then agnostics are not being logical regarding their burden of proof. Non-agnostics are simply assuming the null hypothesis in the lack of evidence. In this case, all agnostics are the same as Xtifr agnostics in practice.
In summary, all current agnostics are the same as Xtifr agnostics with one exception. If a non-Xtifer agnostic were ever presented with irrefutable evidence that God exists, they would still believe that God doesn't exist. At that point, disbelief in God becomes the religion, and belief becomes science.
The real kicker is that a lot of the protesters that get beaten up by cops are frequently charged with assaulting a police officer.
Duh! It's illegal to hit a cop in the fist with your face. What are you? Some kind of anarchist who thinks you should just be able to walk up to a cop and pummel his knee with your groin? I bet you're one of those sick bastards who likes to attack nightsticks with your kidneys!
Muslims threaten violence at the drop of a hat, and they just don't want to be a target.
Surely you didn't mean "All Muslims threaten violence at the drop of a hat." You should be a little more careful. Some Muslims threaten violence, but so do some Christians and Hindus. I don't know of any Jews in recent times who have, but I heard of this one guy who got killed at the hand of some Jews a couple thousand years ago. People are often violent. People are often religious. People are often violent and religious. It is not the religion that causes the violence, but it is sometimes used as an excuse. This has been going on for millennia.
The reason Viacom censors the depictions of Mohammad is that Muslims find this not just offensive, but obscene. So really it is more like them censoring the seven dirty words and depictions of genitalia. I don't know of any Catholics that would put priests with leashed slave boys in the same category as graphic depictions of sex acts. Yeah it's rude, tasteless, and offensive, but it's not obscene. To be perfectly honest, though, I don't know any Muslims who have a real issue with depicting Mohammad.
As a side note, the only word I find obscene (inexplicably, I admit) is the n-word, which has been getting a lot of air time (un-bleeped) recently. Thanks a lot, Jon Stewart and Dr. Laura.
You know what you should do if you don't like copyright? You should create content and give it away for free and if you're right and copyright is a blight on society and only holds back the advancement of the arts and science, then you'll become very successful in your model. Then you might have a case for advocating for the elimination or major reform of existing copyright law. But as long as the people bitching about copyright are 99.99% non-creators, all anybody hears is "gimme gimme gimme... i want free shit..."
We're all "content creators" now. You just created content. I just "consumed" it for free. So your argument that 99.99% of the complainers are non-contributors is not quite viable. By making a complaint on a blog or the like, they are actually creating content.
I'll go one further: I am an engineer who happens to compose music on the side. I give my music away for free to anybody who wants to perform it. I don't make a dime off of it, yet I still make about one piece a year. I also have quite a few pictures on flickr that are CC-BY-SA. These photos have been used on several blogs, including some big professional ones. I have no beef with that. I've even had people offer to pay me a nominal fee for the use even though they don't have to. You'll find several e-book authors who give away their stuff, too. Granted it's mostly crap (no doubt my music and photos are as well), but so is most of the stuff we pay for.
You miss the point. You (or some other AC) said "If you can show that the US patent is not being used in x-264 then I will concede your point." Pharmboy's point is that the burden of proof is always on the person saying something is being done. It's nearly impossible to prove the negative.
I'll give you an example: if you prove that you didn't rape and murder a little girl in 1997, I'll concede that you didn't rape and murder a little girl in 1997. You see? The burden should actually be on me to prove that you did. To pose the statement the other way is not logical.
On to another of your points. I do not know of any "personal use" exception to patent infringement. You might be thinking of copyrights, which do have a fair use defense. There are several research groups that are trying to get Congress to pass a patent fair use exception, though.
To say that you need a business license to use your free speech rights if that earns you a dollar is just absurd.
Why is that absurd? In many jurisdictions, you have to pay a fee to use your right to bear arms. If you want to protest in the streets, your city might ask you to pay a fee to exercise your right to peaceably assemble. If you contest a ticket, you have to pay a fee to use your right to a jury trial. You have to pay liquor taxes despite the repeal of prohibition. I guess the only amendment that guarantees a right without a tax is XXIV (no poll tax). So what is so absurd about this? Hell, if we had a stout tax on inventing a religion, maybe L. Ron wouldn't have bothered starting up his cult.
I'm impressed that they've come up with such a great way to improve voter turn-out. This will certainly get the baby-boomers voting again, and if they can figure out how to get Halo or WoW on there, think of all the 18-25 year old men who will show up. How cool would it be if you could vote by blowing the head off of the NPC that looks like Sarah Palin?
So how would you notate something if you wanted the student to calculate one sum first and then add another number to it? Seems like a perfectly reasonable task to ask students to do. And using funny parenthesis or a box or an underscore, or some other non-standard notation might be a good way of expressing that.
I was never a big fan of the whole "write the number in the box" thing growing up. The teachers wanted us to guess and check, I wanted to subtract. It came easier to me, but then again so did a lot of math. Imagine my surprise all those years later when they taught us algebra, and I found out you really are supposed to subtract.
They really should just start with algebra as they teach the arithmetic behind it. In other words, as soon as the teach addition and subtraction, start teaching algebra for addition problems. When they've taught multiplication and division, teach algebra for multiplication problems. If they would teach the skills as they go along, it wouldn't be such a challenge come junior high.
If sex is the second most overrated thing, what's the most overrated thing, then? Continuation of the human race? Life in general? Love? Food? Shelter? Education?
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You will probably never realize this, but you validated all me points (and there are only 2 "l"s in physically;)).
But there is a 'y' in 'my,' unless you're a leprechaun hawking breakfast cereal.
Midland, Texas has three grids. The downtown area is based on true north. There's a little patch aligned with the railroads, and the rest is roughly aligned with I-20. The neighborhoods within the major grids are all squiggly.
The analogue to someone pirating music is not that person saying: "hey, I like Lady GaGa's new song. Let's also rent a studio, arrange the musicians, record it and mix it". And you must know this.
I don't know, several cover bands do get shut down if they don't pay the ASCAP protection racket. That seems pretty analogous to a chef at a restaurant cooking the same recipe he saw on Iron Chef, only to have Bobby Flay's henchman threaten to break his kneecaps.
I'm reminded of "Be Kind, Rewind" or whatever that Jack Black movie was called. Jack Black has to "remake" several movies with a very minimal cast and zero budget. But the MPAA knocks down their door and takes all their shit. I know it's fiction, but it probably would happen like that if you and your buddies tried to swede a version of Star Wars.
I think that's exactly why we went for such a long time where recordings and performances of music weren't copyrighted or were copyrighted differently. Performance of music used to be viewed as more of a service, akin to hairdressing and cooking. Several families had pianos around which they would sing and entertain themselves with the latest folk or art music. Now music's a consumable more like newspapers or books. I don't know much about cinema history, but I imagine movies were never seen as a service.
Bullshit. "You know and I know" that anybody out there who wants to put a movie on their iPod or make a backup pretty much has to use this "pirate tool." I have a 3 year old. He likes to watch mommy's iPod on long car rides. His DVD collection is full of encrypted Bob the Builder, Dora, Pixar, etc. ad nauseum. There's no other free way to get them onto the iPod. And Apple can bite me if they think I'm going to pay more than about $2 for the "convenience" of getting a movie through iTunes.
Further, you're stupid or lazy (or just wealthy enough that you don't care) if you don't make a backup copy of your (or your kids') favorite movies. One good scratch and you're down $5 - $25. And before you tell me how hard it is to scratch a DVD, remember that TSA rifling through a travel pouch of DVDs can do a lot of damage.
Once DVDs become impossible to find, I will switch to BluRay, but only because I know this decryption tool is available. Your version of "a simple fact" seems more like "an unsupported opinion that I call a fact since I can't actually prove it."
Since the effective motion would be so fast, did you guys try to emulate any relativistic effects? Or is it just Newtonian motion? Getting to see things like length contraction (well, Terrell rotation, anyway) and the Doppler effect would be pretty cool, even if they were just artistic renditions.
I still have my 3D glasses from Starship Titanic! I'm so glad to finally have another use for them.
You're exactly right. I sometimes make stereographs of mountains by taking two photographs from an airplane going over the mountain. To get the best effect, you don't take two pictures at the same time just a few inches apart. Instead you take one picture, then wait a few seconds as you fly partially over, and then take a second picture. The end effect is similar to looking at a small 3D model of a mountain, which I find more helpful.
I wouldn't call it artistic license so much as useful manipulation of data. But I guess to the scientists, that's the same thing. They already have to fake the colorization, so what's the problem with exaggerating the relief by taking the pictures a few years apart, right?
The kiwis certainly don't "let every one in." They have a points system. It helps to be an English-speaking, highly-skilled professional. But even then you're not guaranteed permanent residence. Granted, something like 20% of their population is immigrants, but they don't let everybody in.
Exactly! It's all about proper use of the rules of logic and the burden of proof. I seem to be ranting about the whole "burden of proof" thing a lot lately, but it seems like people must have stopped taking logic in schools or something. I don't know about you guys, but I had to do proofs in 8th through 10th grade math. Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn.
A friend of mine grew up the son of a Baptist minister. His family was (surprisingly) big on Santa Claus. When my friend got old enough to learn the truth about Santa he said to his parents, "So I guess you guys made up all that Jesus stuff, too, right?" He is still religious, but Santa's not real big in his household.
Me personally, I still believe there's a big fat guy in a red suit that travels at relativistic speeds delivering cool stuff to people who believe in him. The more of you who don't believe in him the better. It means more cool stuff for me!!
You're claiming that the belief that there is no God is different from a belief that a God exists if and only if there is sufficient evidence that one exists. There are two distinct cases to examine.
First, if we assume that the null hypothesis is "God does not exist," then agnostics (since they don't believe in God) are just assuming the null hypothesis. That hardly seems like it's even worth a label. Non-agnostics must have some minimum evidence that led them to their beliefs. They are (or were) Xtifr agnostics that have been made believers, by definition.
If the null hypothesis is "God does exist" (as several religious people think it should be), then agnostics are not being logical regarding their burden of proof. Non-agnostics are simply assuming the null hypothesis in the lack of evidence. In this case, all agnostics are the same as Xtifr agnostics in practice.
In summary, all current agnostics are the same as Xtifr agnostics with one exception. If a non-Xtifer agnostic were ever presented with irrefutable evidence that God exists, they would still believe that God doesn't exist. At that point, disbelief in God becomes the religion, and belief becomes science.
You think that's bad? In Austin, TX it's illegal to carry wire cutters in your pocket.
The Bible also says insects have four legs. I must have been counting wrong all these years.
The real kicker is that a lot of the protesters that get beaten up by cops are frequently charged with assaulting a police officer.
Duh! It's illegal to hit a cop in the fist with your face. What are you? Some kind of anarchist who thinks you should just be able to walk up to a cop and pummel his knee with your groin? I bet you're one of those sick bastards who likes to attack nightsticks with your kidneys!
Also real tolerance would be on the part of Muslims says "Ya knock yourselves out. Retards," and just ignoring the whole thing.
But then they'd be pissing off Sarah Palin by using the r-word!!!
Muslims threaten violence at the drop of a hat, and they just don't want to be a target.
Surely you didn't mean "All Muslims threaten violence at the drop of a hat." You should be a little more careful. Some Muslims threaten violence, but so do some Christians and Hindus. I don't know of any Jews in recent times who have, but I heard of this one guy who got killed at the hand of some Jews a couple thousand years ago. People are often violent. People are often religious. People are often violent and religious. It is not the religion that causes the violence, but it is sometimes used as an excuse. This has been going on for millennia.
The reason Viacom censors the depictions of Mohammad is that Muslims find this not just offensive, but obscene. So really it is more like them censoring the seven dirty words and depictions of genitalia. I don't know of any Catholics that would put priests with leashed slave boys in the same category as graphic depictions of sex acts. Yeah it's rude, tasteless, and offensive, but it's not obscene. To be perfectly honest, though, I don't know any Muslims who have a real issue with depicting Mohammad.
As a side note, the only word I find obscene (inexplicably, I admit) is the n-word, which has been getting a lot of air time (un-bleeped) recently. Thanks a lot, Jon Stewart and Dr. Laura.
You know what you should do if you don't like copyright? You should create content and give it away for free and if you're right and copyright is a blight on society and only holds back the advancement of the arts and science, then you'll become very successful in your model. Then you might have a case for advocating for the elimination or major reform of existing copyright law. But as long as the people bitching about copyright are 99.99% non-creators, all anybody hears is "gimme gimme gimme... i want free shit..."
We're all "content creators" now. You just created content. I just "consumed" it for free. So your argument that 99.99% of the complainers are non-contributors is not quite viable. By making a complaint on a blog or the like, they are actually creating content.
I'll go one further: I am an engineer who happens to compose music on the side. I give my music away for free to anybody who wants to perform it. I don't make a dime off of it, yet I still make about one piece a year. I also have quite a few pictures on flickr that are CC-BY-SA. These photos have been used on several blogs, including some big professional ones. I have no beef with that. I've even had people offer to pay me a nominal fee for the use even though they don't have to. You'll find several e-book authors who give away their stuff, too. Granted it's mostly crap (no doubt my music and photos are as well), but so is most of the stuff we pay for.
You miss the point. You (or some other AC) said "If you can show that the US patent is not being used in x-264 then I will concede your point." Pharmboy's point is that the burden of proof is always on the person saying something is being done. It's nearly impossible to prove the negative.
I'll give you an example: if you prove that you didn't rape and murder a little girl in 1997, I'll concede that you didn't rape and murder a little girl in 1997. You see? The burden should actually be on me to prove that you did. To pose the statement the other way is not logical.
On to another of your points. I do not know of any "personal use" exception to patent infringement. You might be thinking of copyrights, which do have a fair use defense. There are several research groups that are trying to get Congress to pass a patent fair use exception, though.
Or JediBook. It will be an epic battle of the 'bergs to see who gets to take you to court first!
To say that you need a business license to use your free speech rights if that earns you a dollar is just absurd.
Why is that absurd? In many jurisdictions, you have to pay a fee to use your right to bear arms. If you want to protest in the streets, your city might ask you to pay a fee to exercise your right to peaceably assemble. If you contest a ticket, you have to pay a fee to use your right to a jury trial. You have to pay liquor taxes despite the repeal of prohibition. I guess the only amendment that guarantees a right without a tax is XXIV (no poll tax). So what is so absurd about this? Hell, if we had a stout tax on inventing a religion, maybe L. Ron wouldn't have bothered starting up his cult.
I'm impressed that they've come up with such a great way to improve voter turn-out. This will certainly get the baby-boomers voting again, and if they can figure out how to get Halo or WoW on there, think of all the 18-25 year old men who will show up. How cool would it be if you could vote by blowing the head off of the NPC that looks like Sarah Palin?
So how would you notate something if you wanted the student to calculate one sum first and then add another number to it? Seems like a perfectly reasonable task to ask students to do. And using funny parenthesis or a box or an underscore, or some other non-standard notation might be a good way of expressing that.
I was never a big fan of the whole "write the number in the box" thing growing up. The teachers wanted us to guess and check, I wanted to subtract. It came easier to me, but then again so did a lot of math. Imagine my surprise all those years later when they taught us algebra, and I found out you really are supposed to subtract.
They really should just start with algebra as they teach the arithmetic behind it. In other words, as soon as the teach addition and subtraction, start teaching algebra for addition problems. When they've taught multiplication and division, teach algebra for multiplication problems. If they would teach the skills as they go along, it wouldn't be such a challenge come junior high.
Most people just call them all British.
Just don't call a Scot "English," or you'll likely start a fight.
If sex is the second most overrated thing, what's the most overrated thing, then? Continuation of the human race? Life in general? Love? Food? Shelter? Education?