They didn't define what services they are delivering, what quantities of these services or anything else.
Isn't it precisely the FCC's role to step in and say, "By being a telecom company offering a product labeled as Internet access, you must provide the following:..."
ATT couldn't get away with saying that calls to Montgomery county aren't included in phone service, Comcast shouldn't be able to get away with saying bit torrent isn't included in internet service.
While I certainly agree that the content producers are in the business of selling eyeballs to advertisers, rather than content to viewers, it is important to remember that the only way a content producer can produce a supply of eyeballs is by making something that causes the viewers to show up. If things like ad-riddled drm encumbered content, or an onslaught of insipid writer-strike driven reality tv alienates viewers to the point that it causes them to stop watching the content producers will find themselves suddenly without product to sell, and consequently without customers.
So while we viewers may only be lowly product, the content producers ought not to forget that it is our presence that lets them pay the bills.
I wouldn't call it the only negative part of the review.
My one sentence summary of the review: "It's a pretty neat devise that mostly does what you'd expect a music player to do, but there are some stupefying design decisions, and it doesn't really offer anything that will allow it to make significant inroads into the iPod dominated market."
I was a bit baffled as well from the summary, but it isn't really about HD content. According the the article the zune won't support digital content recorded using windows media center and a tv-tuner card.
I kind of expected book review type stuff was different, I was really wondering about more analytical stuff. What about something like a companion piece to Finnegans Wake? I believe this is still under copyright in the US, and given how elusive the prose in this work is I imagine that there have been at least as many sales of companion pieces as there have actual copies of the book.
So my question is, is it your opinion that these companion pieces in derivative works in violation of copyright, or is a companion piece somehow different from the Harry Potter encyclopedia?
Do you really think think that those providing the training are wholly truthful with their recruits when it comes to the limits the US will go to?
If the US is willing to waterboard prisoners I'd bet that the terrorist recruits are actually told that if they're captured they'll be subject to genital mutilation or starvation or some other medieval torture method.
Think about it, if you were training fanatics, you'd want them to think that the enemy was as heinous as possible in order to (a) make them hate our freedom more (that was sarcasm for those with defective sarcasm detectors) and (b) make them more willing to carry out their mission, even under threat of death, than submit to the US military.
Besides, all they have to do is watch CNN, and they'd know that the if captured it is possible but unlikely that they would be waterboarded, they can expect to be locked in cold extremely well lit cells with very little clothing, forced into stress positions, and subjected to any number of intimidation tactics (dogs, screaming, moderate physical blows).
I saw a documentary or something with Harrison Ford talking about how the original star wars budget precluded the use of functional toggle switches in the millennium falcon. Apparently, rather than splurge on good toggle switches, they somehow managed to buy discounted defective spring-less toggles. The effect was that they wouldn't stay where you put them, so during filming he'd click a couple of switches, and they'd just reset themselves to where they wanted to be.
"internet licenses" have been discussed ad nauseum, and fact always arises that any such implementation would simply be elitist and exclusionary.
Basically, an internet license is a bunch of computer guys telling the rest of the world that the internet is an infrastructure made for the geeks, by the geeks, and of the geeks. If you really want to join the club you can take a test so we can determine if you're suitable, but otherwise, you're unfit to participate.
Look, you're not going to kill anyone being a bumbling participant on the internet, they way you might in a car or with a gun. Yes, it is possible that you unwittingly might cause some economic impact to someone, but is that a flaw of the user or the system? I submit a banking system that lets an ignorant user leak his personal information which can then be used to ruin their credit is broken. I further submit that a system that lets a zombie computer join thousands of other computers in a criminal enterprise is broken.
The problem doesn't just exist between the keyboard and chair, but also in the policies, protocols, and systems that allow a new or ignorant user to fail so spectacularly.
We should be striving to increase internet penetration to the young, the old, and the impoverished, not locking out those who can't understand our poorly built toys.
the little cardboard cup holders (cardboard and glue . ..) used at Starbucks (and another local coffee shop when I looked at theirs) were protected by TWO patents
That's only because those bastards are skirting my patented two cup method, were two paper cups are stacked together in such a way as to leave a small air gap which provides modest thermal protection for the holder of the hot beverage.
If you have any conscious you'll join me in my boycott of all coffee establishments using the inferior cardboard sleeve, until they agree to pay the licensing fee for my method.
I know I'm feeding a troll, but it is hardly the universities job to enforce the law, anymore than it is my landlords responsibility to make sure I'm not doing illicit things in my apartment. Sure, my landlord can evict me if he discovers I'm doing something illegal (violating the terms of my lease), but he is under no obligation to keep an eye on me.
More to the point, the university has no more of an obligation to ban p2p than comcast does. Do you think that comcast should be breaking the internet by shutting down connections that it doesn't like? Do you think that any of these solutions are viable long term as protocols evolve to better cope with draconian filtering policies?
Obscenity laws are different in kind because (a) the work in question has to lack serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value - a test that would deem manhunt and hot coffee moded GTA not obscene as they contain artistic, political, and probably literary content, (b) the work has to depict, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions - a test that would deem manhunt not obscene, and (c) an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest - this one's a floater, in some jurisdictions these games wouldn't pass, in others they would, but that's all moot, because a work has to be obscene on all three measures. Again different in kind, because SCOTUS has ruled that obscene speech is not protected, but simply objectionable, and distasteful speech is. By all accounts none of the videogames in question are obscene by SCOTUS' standards.
Not only that, but the government couldn't take over ratings, because the entirety of their rating system would have to be obscene/not obscene - a power they already have. Anything in between is tantamount passing a statute that says you shouldn't read this, but we can't legally stop you. This would be so ineffectual that it would once again fall to the retailers and license granters to police themselves.
One time I was playing Mario 3, and just for kicks I taped a giant picture of a phallus to the TV screen. I was scared for life, and really feel that the Bureau for Consumer Protection should do something about this avenue for potential gross abuse.
Whoa there. SCOTUS will still uphold the first amendment. The problem here isn't government control, it is corporate control. The console makers won't license any games, and the stores won't carry them unless they receive less than an AO rating.
If the government did decide to take over ratings (once again, a move wrought with negative 1st amendment issues) they couldn't outright ban anything without a very fundamental shift in constitutional law. What would happen is the stores and console manufacturers would apply the government rating to censor themselves. To me, that's not very different than what we have now.
Remember, you don't have to submit a game to the ESRB for a rating or a movie to the MPAA. You just have a hard time selling it if you don't.
Well it depends, are they spending 6 of the dullest hours on TV there, all the while pimping another crappy event on the network that no one wants to watch?
Isn't that the point bruce is trying to make. People look out for suspicious things, like briefcases next to bridges anyway. What the "see something, say something" campaign is encouraging people to do is report their fears, not their founded suspicions. Now a accidentally misplaced cellphone in an airplane seat causes the FBI to be called in.
There's a link at the bottom of TFA talking about how someone couldn't get through security with a Improvised Electronics Device.
This tells me that the TSA agents are incredibly poorly trained. (No I'm not just now coming to this conclusion.) Whenever a TSA agent sees something suspicious, they absolutely have to investigate, but they need to know how to investigate. The first thing is they should have a list of things that could possibly damage an airplane. Bomb, wepon (gun, taser, etc.), maybe a transmitter aimed at disrupting cockpit communications or instruments. Then they should look at the suspicious device and determine if it has any of the critical parts for actually causing harm. Is there an explosive? No? Then it's not a bomb. Is there a large power supply? No? Then it isn't a transmitter capable of disrupting communications, or an electronic wepon.
Our first responders absolutely need the ability to tell the difference between a bomb and a moonite on a lightbrite. (Possibly by looking for an actual explosive.) That they can't speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the war on terror. Exposed wires should be a giant tip off that anything dangerous should also be in plain sight. No one is going to build a rats nest of wires and then carefully conceal the actual explosive behind a clever trap door. If "they" are going to disguise it, they are going to disguise all of it.
Well that's not quite right, because it wouldn't be in the concrete companies best interest to pay in order to build a freeway. It would be more like the local concrete business making certain campaign donations, and then being selected as the contractor for a freeway bypass even though their bid came in more than $1 million higher than an equally capable competitor.
Or if a local concrete business lowers their bid by embedding their advertisement in the concrete of a publicly owned road.
Or if a local concrete business, through campaign contributions, convinced someone to persuade the city engineer that all concrete related building projects must use the single approved concrete company.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it precisely the FCC's role to step in and say, "By being a telecom company offering a product labeled as Internet access, you must provide the following:..."
ATT couldn't get away with saying that calls to Montgomery county aren't included in phone service, Comcast shouldn't be able to get away with saying bit torrent isn't included in internet service.
While I certainly agree that the content producers are in the business of selling eyeballs to advertisers, rather than content to viewers, it is important to remember that the only way a content producer can produce a supply of eyeballs is by making something that causes the viewers to show up. If things like ad-riddled drm encumbered content, or an onslaught of insipid writer-strike driven reality tv alienates viewers to the point that it causes them to stop watching the content producers will find themselves suddenly without product to sell, and consequently without customers.
So while we viewers may only be lowly product, the content producers ought not to forget that it is our presence that lets them pay the bills.
I wouldn't call it the only negative part of the review.
My one sentence summary of the review: "It's a pretty neat devise that mostly does what you'd expect a music player to do, but there are some stupefying design decisions, and it doesn't really offer anything that will allow it to make significant inroads into the iPod dominated market."
I was a bit baffled as well from the summary, but it isn't really about HD content. According the the article the zune won't support digital content recorded using windows media center and a tv-tuner card.
Just curious, how does 118/139 W translate to 189/210 VA?
Wouldn't these devices simply measure voltage and current and multiply them to give watts?
I kind of expected book review type stuff was different, I was really wondering about more analytical stuff. What about something like a companion piece to Finnegans Wake? I believe this is still under copyright in the US, and given how elusive the prose in this work is I imagine that there have been at least as many sales of companion pieces as there have actual copies of the book.
So my question is, is it your opinion that these companion pieces in derivative works in violation of copyright, or is a companion piece somehow different from the Harry Potter encyclopedia?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but wouldn't this make every piece of literary criticism and analysis of a copyrighted work infringing?
What is the difference between this case and a doctoral student exploring the themes of e.g. a collection of poems by E.E. Cummings in a thesis?
Do you really think think that those providing the training are wholly truthful with their recruits when it comes to the limits the US will go to?
If the US is willing to waterboard prisoners I'd bet that the terrorist recruits are actually told that if they're captured they'll be subject to genital mutilation or starvation or some other medieval torture method.
Think about it, if you were training fanatics, you'd want them to think that the enemy was as heinous as possible in order to (a) make them hate our freedom more (that was sarcasm for those with defective sarcasm detectors) and (b) make them more willing to carry out their mission, even under threat of death, than submit to the US military.
Besides, all they have to do is watch CNN, and they'd know that the if captured it is possible but unlikely that they would be waterboarded, they can expect to be locked in cold extremely well lit cells with very little clothing, forced into stress positions, and subjected to any number of intimidation tactics (dogs, screaming, moderate physical blows).
Nah it's global war... err... climate change
I saw a documentary or something with Harrison Ford talking about how the original star wars budget precluded the use of functional toggle switches in the millennium falcon. Apparently, rather than splurge on good toggle switches, they somehow managed to buy discounted defective spring-less toggles. The effect was that they wouldn't stay where you put them, so during filming he'd click a couple of switches, and they'd just reset themselves to where they wanted to be.
"internet licenses" have been discussed ad nauseum, and fact always arises that any such implementation would simply be elitist and exclusionary.
Basically, an internet license is a bunch of computer guys telling the rest of the world that the internet is an infrastructure made for the geeks, by the geeks, and of the geeks. If you really want to join the club you can take a test so we can determine if you're suitable, but otherwise, you're unfit to participate.
Look, you're not going to kill anyone being a bumbling participant on the internet, they way you might in a car or with a gun. Yes, it is possible that you unwittingly might cause some economic impact to someone, but is that a flaw of the user or the system? I submit a banking system that lets an ignorant user leak his personal information which can then be used to ruin their credit is broken. I further submit that a system that lets a zombie computer join thousands of other computers in a criminal enterprise is broken.
The problem doesn't just exist between the keyboard and chair, but also in the policies, protocols, and systems that allow a new or ignorant user to fail so spectacularly.
We should be striving to increase internet penetration to the young, the old, and the impoverished, not locking out those who can't understand our poorly built toys.
That's only because those bastards are skirting my patented two cup method, were two paper cups are stacked together in such a way as to leave a small air gap which provides modest thermal protection for the holder of the hot beverage.
If you have any conscious you'll join me in my boycott of all coffee establishments using the inferior cardboard sleeve, until they agree to pay the licensing fee for my method.
legally correct > actually correct > technically correct
If NASA ever goes up into space without duct tape, I've lost all faith in the space program.
I'm pretty sure that the first transgenic mouse was created to study cancer (actually to get cancer so that we could study it.)
I read it as, we're not going to help you bully people, and here's a plausible legal explanation why not.
You forgot guests. The RIAA should also have to provide evidence that it is unlikely that someone else touched this locked down computer.
I know I'm feeding a troll, but it is hardly the universities job to enforce the law, anymore than it is my landlords responsibility to make sure I'm not doing illicit things in my apartment. Sure, my landlord can evict me if he discovers I'm doing something illegal (violating the terms of my lease), but he is under no obligation to keep an eye on me.
More to the point, the university has no more of an obligation to ban p2p than comcast does. Do you think that comcast should be breaking the internet by shutting down connections that it doesn't like? Do you think that any of these solutions are viable long term as protocols evolve to better cope with draconian filtering policies?
Obscenity laws are different in kind because (a) the work in question has to lack serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value - a test that would deem manhunt and hot coffee moded GTA not obscene as they contain artistic, political, and probably literary content, (b) the work has to depict, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions - a test that would deem manhunt not obscene, and (c) an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest - this one's a floater, in some jurisdictions these games wouldn't pass, in others they would, but that's all moot, because a work has to be obscene on all three measures. Again different in kind, because SCOTUS has ruled that obscene speech is not protected, but simply objectionable, and distasteful speech is. By all accounts none of the videogames in question are obscene by SCOTUS' standards.
Not only that, but the government couldn't take over ratings, because the entirety of their rating system would have to be obscene/not obscene - a power they already have. Anything in between is tantamount passing a statute that says you shouldn't read this, but we can't legally stop you. This would be so ineffectual that it would once again fall to the retailers and license granters to police themselves.
One time I was playing Mario 3, and just for kicks I taped a giant picture of a phallus to the TV screen. I was scared for life, and really feel that the Bureau for Consumer Protection should do something about this avenue for potential gross abuse.
Whoa there. SCOTUS will still uphold the first amendment. The problem here isn't government control, it is corporate control. The console makers won't license any games, and the stores won't carry them unless they receive less than an AO rating.
If the government did decide to take over ratings (once again, a move wrought with negative 1st amendment issues) they couldn't outright ban anything without a very fundamental shift in constitutional law. What would happen is the stores and console manufacturers would apply the government rating to censor themselves. To me, that's not very different than what we have now.
Remember, you don't have to submit a game to the ESRB for a rating or a movie to the MPAA. You just have a hard time selling it if you don't.
Well it depends, are they spending 6 of the dullest hours on TV there, all the while pimping another crappy event on the network that no one wants to watch?
Also, do they have an EMF detector?
Isn't that the point bruce is trying to make. People look out for suspicious things, like briefcases next to bridges anyway. What the "see something, say something" campaign is encouraging people to do is report their fears, not their founded suspicions. Now a accidentally misplaced cellphone in an airplane seat causes the FBI to be called in.
There's a link at the bottom of TFA talking about how someone couldn't get through security with a Improvised Electronics Device.
This tells me that the TSA agents are incredibly poorly trained. (No I'm not just now coming to this conclusion.) Whenever a TSA agent sees something suspicious, they absolutely have to investigate, but they need to know how to investigate. The first thing is they should have a list of things that could possibly damage an airplane. Bomb, wepon (gun, taser, etc.), maybe a transmitter aimed at disrupting cockpit communications or instruments. Then they should look at the suspicious device and determine if it has any of the critical parts for actually causing harm. Is there an explosive? No? Then it's not a bomb. Is there a large power supply? No? Then it isn't a transmitter capable of disrupting communications, or an electronic wepon.
Our first responders absolutely need the ability to tell the difference between a bomb and a moonite on a lightbrite. (Possibly by looking for an actual explosive.) That they can't speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the war on terror. Exposed wires should be a giant tip off that anything dangerous should also be in plain sight. No one is going to build a rats nest of wires and then carefully conceal the actual explosive behind a clever trap door. If "they" are going to disguise it, they are going to disguise all of it.
Well that's not quite right, because it wouldn't be in the concrete companies best interest to pay in order to build a freeway. It would be more like the local concrete business making certain campaign donations, and then being selected as the contractor for a freeway bypass even though their bid came in more than $1 million higher than an equally capable competitor.
Or if a local concrete business lowers their bid by embedding their advertisement in the concrete of a publicly owned road.
Or if a local concrete business, through campaign contributions, convinced someone to persuade the city engineer that all concrete related building projects must use the single approved concrete company.