This doesn't set any kind of precedent at all for the college students, unfortunately for them. All the judge said was that the companies putting out the file sharing programs can't be sued because their product was being used for illegal purposes. The college students themselves were themselves making the files available, or downloading the files. Though the maker of the medium they were using to distribute files can't be sued, that's not to say that the individual users can't be.
The students were doing 2 things, in general. They'd written and were hosting a site which indexed all available files on the campus network, and they'd put files in publicly available directories on their servers.
The decision here reflects on the first, but not the second, count. The first count is merely an indexing service which would stand somewhere between this decision and napster. That is to say, they control the site and traffic but they have no safeguards for restricting usage.
They're still screwed on the second count, though. They were sharing files they did not have the copyright on, and thus were commiting copyright infringement.
The media company has entered into an agreement with the station to air the song, it's a form of advertising. If 10 people hear the song and don't buy the cd, it's an unsuccessful attempt. If ten people download an illegal copy it's piracy. What's the difference? Control of property. Illegal copies potentially deprive companies of making a living
The media companies actually pay a lot of money to get their songs played on the radio (like $100K per song!). So, if they treated MP3 distribution as radio and let the songs go around the P2P netoworks, the music would get similar exposure at a much lower cost.
But you're still missing the core point. The media companies don't want their songs to get exposure, they want specific songs to get exposure. Allowing them all to float around gives them an equal chance to be exposed, so they've lost control. It isn't about just making money, its about control. They think they can make more money if they can control the market.
That would be a very scary world. I walk into a café and they have the latest pop song on - I'm all of a sudden a "customer" of the record industry, owing them something. When I read that taxi drivers in Finland need to pay royalties for the music their clients hear in the car, it scares me.
In the US, you are indeed a "customer", and you have been for a long time. That cafe, in order to have the radio playing where customers can hear it, is supposed to pay an ASCAP fee. If they don't pay up, they get a visit from ASCAP thugs for their protection money. This is even though the music has already theoretically been paid for by the broadcasting station.
So yes, the fact that you're listening to that song in the cafe has been accounted for and paid for by what amounts to a site license.
I lived in Illinois once, for a couple years, and WiFi would be great in the part of the state I was in. Few trees to speak of, and the land was so flat the overpass was called a "hill". Try visiting upstate NY sometime, where most of the rural dwellers can't see their neighbors because a big hill's in the way. Likewise for most of the rest of the east coast, and the west coast too. WiFi is great on a large scale if you're in a city, or a rural area with wide open flat spaces. Where people are spread out and mountains interfere, WiFi's useless.
From your link: Steal:
"To take (the property of another) without right or permission."
From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=property
1. "c. Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks."
Whether this is the same as the crime is one thing, and whether it SHOULD be is another, but your argument is incorrect. By the definition of the word, it IS stealing.
Oh, the original poster is quite correct. Two problems exist with your counter, first, you're both using non-legal definitions. Second, you've tried to strike down the wrong concept within the phrase. I'm perfectly happy to grand that a copyright or trademark is property, within the context of this discussion.
To steal, however, is to take something. Taking something implies that the original owner no longer has it. If you really want, look at that site's definition of take. 1, 10, 27, and 28 of v. tr., 1 of v. intr. While there are a couple of definitions that might be used to indicate the original still exists, these definitions indicate that the original has been derived from, not that the original has been duplicated. (16, 17, 18, v. tr.)
To copy a copyrighted work without permission is to commit the crime of copyright infringement, not to commit theft. The two are substantially different crimes. See United States Code, Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 501(a):
Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the
copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 121 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a)... is
an infringer of the copyright or right of the author
As you can see, the crime is clearly defined and is not in any way a subset of larceny (theft).
author as provided in section 106A(a)...
According to Wired, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, the music industry trade group, has proposed "new levies to be applied to any device that can store music, such as removable hard drives, recordable DVDs, Compact Flash memory cards and MP3 players."
The aforementioned Canadian collective has yet to distribute to its members even one tax dollar of the tens of millions it inexplicably hoards.
Well, since the industry has proposed these new levies, and they havent been implemented, it makes a fair bit of sense that nobody's recieved money from it yet.
Just from the first page of a quick google search, I see on this page, about the levy...
In 2000 a levy was introduced on blank media in Canada to compensate music artists for lost royalties due to the copying of music by individuals. The levy is paid by the Manufacturers and Importers of Blank media in Canada to the CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Collective). The CPCC then distributes the monies collected (minus administration fees) to registered artists. The Copyright Board sets the rates, but does not collect them. They issued a FAQ in 1999 about the Levy.
The CPCC has proposed substantially higher rates for the levy in 2003 and asked it be applied to a larger range of media (see chart below)
Therefore (as I expected) there is already a levy in place that has yet to get money to its members, even though money has been collected for at least 2 years now. This is the lack of distribution mentioned, and the poor precedent set.
It would seem to me that if you use multiple directional antennae and adequate signal processing, you can filter out the reflections and other sources of interference. That was the point I got from the original article.
That's where I'd tend to agree. Take 3 antennas with some good distance between them (which I won't define as it would have to do with the wavelength your targeting). Point them all at the same place. Multiply signal A by signal B by signal C. The signal that comes out strongest is the signal you're looking for, as it'll be cubed while the others won't, and will probably get multiplied by 0. Of course, there's still the possibility that all 3 antennas will receive a similar bounce, but I'm thinking it may be impossible to prevent it all the time in all situations.
So, what makes the item a computer? If someone goes into a different store to buy each part and assembles a computer, which store do they get charged the extra $13 at? The one they bought the cpu at? Well, that could be an upgrade. So could a new motherboard. In fact, the only thing I think they could use their tenuous logic to justify would be a hard drive. In that case, what if I build a computer with two drives?
Aside from the logic problem of defining what part should be taxed as the computer, this ignores, for example, servers. Do people installing servers at an ISP get to ask for their $13 back for every box they build to serve, say, the billing system or internal database? Who tracks that?
Finally, I find the article's mention of precedent interesting. The article mentions that none of the money collected to date in Canada has yet to get to the members its supposed to go to.
While the article has a decided tilt and is certainly not unbiased reporting, I find the collective sum to be appalling, and hope the measure gets a sound thrashing, along with whoever proposed it.
Re:Been there, done that...
on
Back to the Trees
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The biggest problem, however, is that there is no market for underground houses, because Muggles/Sleepers/Luddites don't understand the concept... the best real-estate appraisal we can get is about $100K, because we can't get the house un-registered as a "basement house"... never mind the fact that it's got marble, custom stone work throughout, can withstand most any natural/unnatural disaster, etc. We've sunk way more money into the house than we're ever going to get out of it.
Obviously, your target market is not Muggles/Sleepers/Luddites then. If you want to sell it, put it up for what you think it should be worth and advertise it where people of a like mind will see the advertisement. That's not the sort of house that will attract the average Joe, but the real target audience will know the benefits of the home and how much it would cost to build.
In fact, treat the appraisal as a tax-treat. Obviously, the taxes will be less. The only problem I can see is insuring for the actual cost of reconstruction in case of disaster.
The reason scientists want to use embryonic stem cells is that they are easier to study, not to use.
From what I've seen, embryonic stem cells were what we started working with because we couldn't isolate stem cells in adults. Since we had the opportunity to work with pure concentrations of them from embryos, we've managed to figure out how to isolate them.
Thus, embryonic stem cell research was essential and is probably waning in necessity as we can now isolate quantities of stem cells from adults and children.
So if I throw a dead cat (that died yesterday) in a well and it caves in you know the rock on top of the cat is younger than the cat. Or if I throw it in a cave and the cave collapses the cat is younger than the rock of the cave? Are you serious?
Yes, actually, and he would be correct. If I pull a rock from a hole and throw it somewhere else on the ground, then the new sediment, being the rock, is younger than the ground under it. The component of that sediment, the rock, may be very old, but the sediment layer as a whole was just laid down. Do not confuse the components of the sediment layer with the layer as a whole.
In your argument the rocks that collapsed onto the cat make up, collectively, a layer of sediment just formed. Thus the rocks may be ancient but they shifted and created a new layer of sediment.
Thanks for demonstrating my point. "Evolutionists" *don't* know that the rock above something is younger. In fact it's always the case when you bury something that what's buried is SIGNIFICANTLY (on the order of millions of years) younger than the dirt piled on top.
You shouldn't thank someone for proving you positive when an argument is ongoing. It tends to imply that your mind is either childlike or closed to the oppositions arguments regardless of validity.
As for the remainder of the statement, scientists have no need of knowing the age of the dirt piled on top. Rather, they need to know how long ago it was placed there. The two are entirely unrelated questions, and confusion between the two seems to be what's fueling your argument.
On a related note, I'll place a straw man argument designed to be the strongest form of your reasoning up. Say I, using some as-yet-uninvented tool, carved out a block of earth without disturbing the sediment layers within, and lifted it out of the ground. The block of earth goes to a layer of sediment precisely 5,000 years old, for the sake of the argument. Into the hole created by this I place a cat, recently deceased, and returned the block of earth to its original place. How then would the scientist handle this problem?
While I'm by no means an expert in the field, I'd surmise that the presence of an animal that shouldn't have existed at the time the layer should have been deposited would alert the scientist to a problem. The scientist would examine the cat, probably carbon dating it, and determine its modern origin. At length, overwhelming evidence (radiocarbon, known species origins, decomposition, lay in the ground, etc) would support the cat's modern origin and the one dissenting piece of evidence, the sediment, would be discounted.
Thus, it would be the case that were you truly to create a situation in which the sediment layer were indistinguishable from a 5,000 year old layer, in most (though I'll grant, not all) cases sufficient evidence would cause the bad data point to be examined and discarded as inconsistent.
In the worst case, the whole discovery would probably be shelved since inconsistent evidence invalidates the discovery. A scientist would rather say they can't figure out what's going on than conclusively give an answer without sufficient data.
Please, do as the previous poster suggests, read up on archaeology, geology, and other related fields if you want to argue about them. They're established fields of study with detailed reasoning and experience behind them. It really isn't difficult to tell a recently filled in hole from an old build-up of sediment.
Like the world was ending and instead of going out and saving the world, one character decides to screw the son of the guy she loves. WTF?
Just a side-note, since that's a bit off-topic. To put that in perspective, Cordelia just spent several episodes preparing and releasing Angelus into the world. My wife noted she's been acting wierd ever since she returned from wherever it was she went. So, is it really her? If it is, what changed? The episode where she released Angelus threw a real wrench into the audience's assumptions, and suddenly her recent actions are thrown into disarray until we find out why she did that.
Personally, I'd have to say that's the first interesting turn the show's taken in several seasons. I generally only find out what's going on because my wife watches it, I'd pretty much given up on the series seasons ago.
I'm astonished that this is the sort of thing trained astronauts are doing out there on their expensive vacations. Gregory Benford, the SF writer and an advisor to NASA, wrote a very interesting column a while ago deploring the quality of NASA's "experiments" and the vast amount of funding for the ISS and the shuttle program (a reusable vehicle that costs $0.5B permission?!) that could be better spent on more promising projects.
Oh, please tell me you're joking. These people spend months at a time with no more than a handful of companions floating in space and working nearly every waking hour. This was done on this guy's day off. On his days off he plays and was going to make bubbles, but got playing with pure water instead. NASA didn't spend any money on any grand experiment here, he would've been relaxing some other way anyways. He just thought it was cool and worth sharing.
Are you telling me you'd work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day with nothing but breaks for food and bathroom for 6 months at a time? I couldn't do that, and I don't know anyone who can.
I've heard of another project that uses semi-processed waste water to make snow. The process of making snow, in which the water is mixed with some other stuff ("chemicals", they are called, I think ?), then sprayed under very high pressure. As the water emerges from the spray nozzel, the sudden depressurization causes the cells of any living organizims (say , germs, or bacteria) to burst, effectively disinfecting the water on a microscopic level.
The process of snowmaking itself has been used lately in many areas of the US that make supplementary snow for skiing. Basically, the process of snowmaking is to pressurize the water and shoot it out of a nozzle with a cavity that causes the water to go from high pressure to small particles very quickly (like, milliseconds). The process, as a side effect, causes any cellular structures to be rapidly crushed and expanded, destroying the cell walls. So, it won't remove toxic minerals but it will eliminate the problems posed by human waste.
It sounds like the extra work they're going through is either overstated, overkill, or to remove those extra chemicals that the depressurization doesn't handle.
If you or RPI is spending a few million dollars a year with IBM and aren't getting your batteries replaced, someone needs to lean on IBM.
Ah, but that's the catch... RPI is buying spending millions on the thinkpads per year, but the laptops are effectively sold to the students as part of the first year's tuition. Thus, RPI is acting in the same capacity that, say Best Buy or Circuit City would be acting. They have no incentive to offer an extended warranty on the battery, and they're not responsible for repairing the machines during their servicable life since they don't own them any more! They've effectively made an extra $200/year expense for every single student.
Of course, it might be advisable to get all of the students who've had these problems together to file a class action lawsuit. Since its a large quantity of individuals all concentrated in one area with good communication systems (and the Polytechnic would probably be interested in printing articles about it), you're very likely to get somewhere. I'd actually sue for an increased warranty period, such as 2 or 3 years as well as replacements of existing batteries with less than 50% capacity or so.
Personally, as an aside, I'd say that any laptop battery that can't hold 50% charge 2 years after purchase was designed by the manufacturer to fail early.
It is exactly like those automated speeding ticket cameras, just tell them someone else was driving
Uh, no. In most places, if you lend someone your car, and they get a ticket, you're responsible. You should carefully consider who you're lending you're car to.
IANAL, but, in my experience, there are two kinds of tickets. There are tickets for your car doing something wrong (parking tickets for example), and for the driver doing something wrong (speeding).
For the first kind, the ticket always goes to the owner, and I've never heard of an owner being able to claim someone else did it. An automated ticket, of course, only refers to the second kind. A traditional driver at fault ticket happens when a police officer pulls the driver over, identifies who's driving, and gives the driver a ticket. In the current automated systems, a photo of the car is taken. Then, later, if the driver wants to say my lead-footed friend borrowed the car, he'll have to tell them the lead-footed friend's name so they can serve the ticket to him instead. There's photo-proof that the owner wasn't driving, in that case, but they'll probably hold the owner liable until the driver at the time is located.
I don't see how that's possible. That means 25 songs an hour, which is like a song every two minutes. Assuming you've got a broadband connection with the bandwidth to download a song in 2 minutes, how do you go about finding someone else willing to serve it at that rate, every two minutes?... snip...
His machine was the server, not the client. Put a machine with a few popular songs on any sharing network and you're likely to saturate your outgoing bandwith constantly. So yes, he could've shared 600 songs in a day, by uploading them. Of course, whether he actually uploaded 600 songs in one day isn't necessary here, since they might only be claiming he made 600 songs available over the course of one day. Thus, if he'd ripped 50 cds he owned and put them up on a network, suddenly one could argue that he's sharing 600 songs.
Of course, if I were his lawyer, I'd ask to see the copies they downloaded of each song to verify that the songs were really the song the filename said it was. After all, if they didn't check, how do they know the songs weren't garbage. (Aside from the fact that they hired the artists and know first-hand that the music was garbage.)
Seriously, though, as usual the slashdot article was just a little off. It should've read he served or uploaded 600 files in a single day.
Verizon was trying to stand up for one of their customers! The fact that they stood up to the RIAA is respectable itself. I'd rather boycott the ISPs which say "here's the info you requested, Ms Rosen."
They only sort-of tried to stand up for one of their customers. They really tried to stand up for their checkbook, which will take a big hit if the RIAA can suddenly subpoena thousands of IP #'s every week. The fact that this caused them to stand up for one of their customers was really only a side effect. Trust me, I live in one of their service areas, and they're not known as a great company. Then again, I don't know any phone company anyone actually *likes*.
The recording industry asked Verizon last summer to reveal the name of a customer believed to have downloaded more than 600 songs in one day, but Verizon refused
(Emph mine.) So just based on the fact that the customer might have downloaded [any number] of songs, they have convinced the federal government to step in and force Verizon to release information to a group of record companies? This is revolting.
They use "believed to have downloaded" because the subject must be presumed innocent until they go to court and prove it. Granted, everyone assumes he's guilty, but if the documents don't make some pretense of "innocent until proven guilty", the guys lawyers can have a field day.
Not to say they should be doing this or anything, just a side note. The "believed to" part isn't the issue.
Why did San Francisco move to ban it? The Segway looks pretty gay to me, and it'll make the people 'riding' them look even gayer.
Precisely why they needed to ban them. The Haight-Ashbury area wouldn't have room for the people who wanted to walk once they're crawling with these things.
Seriously, though, most CA cities tend to ban anything but feet from the sidewalks. Most of them ban skateboards and bicycles already, and probably those little razor scooters. This is just one more device to ban from the sidewalk, plus its motorized, an extra strike against it.
Or, it could all be futile. New
analyses
indicate that the martian atmosphere came and went in spurts. Not only was there never a long term atmosphere, there wasn't a long term body of water. That is to say, occasionally there were impacts large enough to transform the planet into an atmosphered planet with liquid water, they lasted no more than a few (hundred) years at a time.
So what about TW's RoadRunner broadband customers? Do we get access as well? I've used RR for years now and I'm happy with the service.
That's my question as well... I'm subscribed to TW's RR and TW's cable service. Then again, I don't think I've hit any of the places TW wants to make AOL only... um... ever. So I guess it shouldn't be a big deal to me, just another company shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, if I ever do have to, I'll call up RR and be the "clueless user". ("But I already pay you guys for internet access on a cable modem, why would I need AOL? I mean, its not like I need dialup.")
In the case of medical marijuana, the Constitution is clearly on the side of California. Your implication that strong federal law trumps weak state law does not have a basis in the Constution (though the federal government would like you to believe it does.)
Oh, I heartily agree. Unfortunately, until the US Supreme Court has an opportunity to review a case, people will continue to be thrown in prison for these violations. I've always had issues with the federal government imposing laws against posession and sales. The only law I can see having any teeth would be a prohibition on the transport of certain drugs across state and international borders. Recall that for the prohibition of liquor to have any teeth, it was necessary to write an amendment to the constitution.
They want the new Federal law, which would only forbid sending mail with forged headers but not other noxious practices like opt-out only lists- to superceed strong state laws.
State laws could remain stronger. Federal law would only trump state law if for some reason the state law was more lenient than the federal. The CA medical marijuana case is a prime example of a state attempting to create a law that effectively legalizes activities federal law prohibits. Likewise states often enact laws that are more "severe", for lack of a better word, than their federal counterparts. Again drugs are a good example. Someone accused of, say, cocaine possession or distribution would likely do better in federal court than in many state jurisdictions. See Clinton, Roger, who served less than two years for a crime often netting 20 plus years in the crusader Arkansas state courts of the 1980s.
But I'm not a lawyer so your mileage may vary...
I have put "effectively" above in bold, because that's really the crux of the issue. The law legalising medical marijuana in California is not an effective one, because the federal government still cracks down on the medical marijuana industry. People believe that they now have the right to grow quantities of marijuana to sell to the authorised sellers, and they regularly get raided and arrested on federal charges, and have property seized.
Thus, I'd argue that the law is hardly "effective" at this time, since the federal government needs to alter its regulations as well to allow state governments to make the choice about what drugs are acceptable.
It takes me 10 minutes to download a 3 minute song... that means if it was broadcast I would have to listen to it at 1/3 speed.
I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I should laugh at a joke or just wince...
You know, the webcasting streams typically don't broadcast at 128 or 160 kbps, like the music you'd typically download. Most webcasting offers 64kbps, and some have options of 48 or lower and 128 and higher streams. For a voice station 32kbps is just fine (at least on ogg), and some codecs can handle music pretty well at low bitrates. Of course, its kind of like AM radio versus FM, but if its the only place you can listen to what you like, it can be worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
The students were doing 2 things, in general. They'd written and were hosting a site which indexed all available files on the campus network, and they'd put files in publicly available directories on their servers.
The decision here reflects on the first, but not the second, count. The first count is merely an indexing service which would stand somewhere between this decision and napster. That is to say, they control the site and traffic but they have no safeguards for restricting usage.
They're still screwed on the second count, though. They were sharing files they did not have the copyright on, and thus were commiting copyright infringement.
But you're still missing the core point. The media companies don't want their songs to get exposure, they want specific songs to get exposure. Allowing them all to float around gives them an equal chance to be exposed, so they've lost control. It isn't about just making money, its about control. They think they can make more money if they can control the market.
In the US, you are indeed a "customer", and you have been for a long time. That cafe, in order to have the radio playing where customers can hear it, is supposed to pay an ASCAP fee. If they don't pay up, they get a visit from ASCAP thugs for their protection money. This is even though the music has already theoretically been paid for by the broadcasting station.
So yes, the fact that you're listening to that song in the cafe has been accounted for and paid for by what amounts to a site license.
I lived in Illinois once, for a couple years, and WiFi would be great in the part of the state I was in. Few trees to speak of, and the land was so flat the overpass was called a "hill". Try visiting upstate NY sometime, where most of the rural dwellers can't see their neighbors because a big hill's in the way. Likewise for most of the rest of the east coast, and the west coast too. WiFi is great on a large scale if you're in a city, or a rural area with wide open flat spaces. Where people are spread out and mountains interfere, WiFi's useless.
Oh, the original poster is quite correct. Two problems exist with your counter, first, you're both using non-legal definitions. Second, you've tried to strike down the wrong concept within the phrase. I'm perfectly happy to grand that a copyright or trademark is property, within the context of this discussion.
To steal, however, is to take something. Taking something implies that the original owner no longer has it. If you really want, look at that site's definition of take. 1, 10, 27, and 28 of v. tr., 1 of v. intr. While there are a couple of definitions that might be used to indicate the original still exists, these definitions indicate that the original has been derived from, not that the original has been duplicated. (16, 17, 18, v. tr.)
To copy a copyrighted work without permission is to commit the crime of copyright infringement, not to commit theft. The two are substantially different crimes. See United States Code, Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 501(a):
As you can see, the crime is clearly defined and is not in any way a subset of larceny (theft). author as provided in section 106A(a) ...
Therefore (as I expected) there is already a levy in place that has yet to get money to its members, even though money has been collected for at least 2 years now. This is the lack of distribution mentioned, and the poor precedent set.
That's where I'd tend to agree. Take 3 antennas with some good distance between them (which I won't define as it would have to do with the wavelength your targeting). Point them all at the same place. Multiply signal A by signal B by signal C. The signal that comes out strongest is the signal you're looking for, as it'll be cubed while the others won't, and will probably get multiplied by 0. Of course, there's still the possibility that all 3 antennas will receive a similar bounce, but I'm thinking it may be impossible to prevent it all the time in all situations.
So, what makes the item a computer? If someone goes into a different store to buy each part and assembles a computer, which store do they get charged the extra $13 at? The one they bought the cpu at? Well, that could be an upgrade. So could a new motherboard. In fact, the only thing I think they could use their tenuous logic to justify would be a hard drive. In that case, what if I build a computer with two drives?
Aside from the logic problem of defining what part should be taxed as the computer, this ignores, for example, servers. Do people installing servers at an ISP get to ask for their $13 back for every box they build to serve, say, the billing system or internal database? Who tracks that?
Finally, I find the article's mention of precedent interesting. The article mentions that none of the money collected to date in Canada has yet to get to the members its supposed to go to.
While the article has a decided tilt and is certainly not unbiased reporting, I find the collective sum to be appalling, and hope the measure gets a sound thrashing, along with whoever proposed it.
Obviously, your target market is not Muggles/Sleepers/Luddites then. If you want to sell it, put it up for what you think it should be worth and advertise it where people of a like mind will see the advertisement. That's not the sort of house that will attract the average Joe, but the real target audience will know the benefits of the home and how much it would cost to build.
In fact, treat the appraisal as a tax-treat. Obviously, the taxes will be less. The only problem I can see is insuring for the actual cost of reconstruction in case of disaster.
From what I've seen, embryonic stem cells were what we started working with because we couldn't isolate stem cells in adults. Since we had the opportunity to work with pure concentrations of them from embryos, we've managed to figure out how to isolate them.
Thus, embryonic stem cell research was essential and is probably waning in necessity as we can now isolate quantities of stem cells from adults and children.
Yes, actually, and he would be correct. If I pull a rock from a hole and throw it somewhere else on the ground, then the new sediment, being the rock, is younger than the ground under it. The component of that sediment, the rock, may be very old, but the sediment layer as a whole was just laid down. Do not confuse the components of the sediment layer with the layer as a whole.
In your argument the rocks that collapsed onto the cat make up, collectively, a layer of sediment just formed. Thus the rocks may be ancient but they shifted and created a new layer of sediment.
You shouldn't thank someone for proving you positive when an argument is ongoing. It tends to imply that your mind is either childlike or closed to the oppositions arguments regardless of validity.
As for the remainder of the statement, scientists have no need of knowing the age of the dirt piled on top. Rather, they need to know how long ago it was placed there. The two are entirely unrelated questions, and confusion between the two seems to be what's fueling your argument.
On a related note, I'll place a straw man argument designed to be the strongest form of your reasoning up. Say I, using some as-yet-uninvented tool, carved out a block of earth without disturbing the sediment layers within, and lifted it out of the ground. The block of earth goes to a layer of sediment precisely 5,000 years old, for the sake of the argument. Into the hole created by this I place a cat, recently deceased, and returned the block of earth to its original place. How then would the scientist handle this problem?
While I'm by no means an expert in the field, I'd surmise that the presence of an animal that shouldn't have existed at the time the layer should have been deposited would alert the scientist to a problem. The scientist would examine the cat, probably carbon dating it, and determine its modern origin. At length, overwhelming evidence (radiocarbon, known species origins, decomposition, lay in the ground, etc) would support the cat's modern origin and the one dissenting piece of evidence, the sediment, would be discounted.
Thus, it would be the case that were you truly to create a situation in which the sediment layer were indistinguishable from a 5,000 year old layer, in most (though I'll grant, not all) cases sufficient evidence would cause the bad data point to be examined and discarded as inconsistent.
In the worst case, the whole discovery would probably be shelved since inconsistent evidence invalidates the discovery. A scientist would rather say they can't figure out what's going on than conclusively give an answer without sufficient data.
Please, do as the previous poster suggests, read up on archaeology, geology, and other related fields if you want to argue about them. They're established fields of study with detailed reasoning and experience behind them. It really isn't difficult to tell a recently filled in hole from an old build-up of sediment.
Just a side-note, since that's a bit off-topic. To put that in perspective, Cordelia just spent several episodes preparing and releasing Angelus into the world. My wife noted she's been acting wierd ever since she returned from wherever it was she went. So, is it really her? If it is, what changed? The episode where she released Angelus threw a real wrench into the audience's assumptions, and suddenly her recent actions are thrown into disarray until we find out why she did that.
Personally, I'd have to say that's the first interesting turn the show's taken in several seasons. I generally only find out what's going on because my wife watches it, I'd pretty much given up on the series seasons ago.
Oh, please tell me you're joking. These people spend months at a time with no more than a handful of companions floating in space and working nearly every waking hour. This was done on this guy's day off. On his days off he plays and was going to make bubbles, but got playing with pure water instead. NASA didn't spend any money on any grand experiment here, he would've been relaxing some other way anyways. He just thought it was cool and worth sharing.
Are you telling me you'd work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day with nothing but breaks for food and bathroom for 6 months at a time? I couldn't do that, and I don't know anyone who can.
Get a grip.
The process of snowmaking itself has been used lately in many areas of the US that make supplementary snow for skiing. Basically, the process of snowmaking is to pressurize the water and shoot it out of a nozzle with a cavity that causes the water to go from high pressure to small particles very quickly (like, milliseconds). The process, as a side effect, causes any cellular structures to be rapidly crushed and expanded, destroying the cell walls. So, it won't remove toxic minerals but it will eliminate the problems posed by human waste.
It sounds like the extra work they're going through is either overstated, overkill, or to remove those extra chemicals that the depressurization doesn't handle.
Ah, but that's the catch... RPI is buying spending millions on the thinkpads per year, but the laptops are effectively sold to the students as part of the first year's tuition. Thus, RPI is acting in the same capacity that, say Best Buy or Circuit City would be acting. They have no incentive to offer an extended warranty on the battery, and they're not responsible for repairing the machines during their servicable life since they don't own them any more! They've effectively made an extra $200/year expense for every single student.
Of course, it might be advisable to get all of the students who've had these problems together to file a class action lawsuit. Since its a large quantity of individuals all concentrated in one area with good communication systems (and the Polytechnic would probably be interested in printing articles about it), you're very likely to get somewhere. I'd actually sue for an increased warranty period, such as 2 or 3 years as well as replacements of existing batteries with less than 50% capacity or so.
Personally, as an aside, I'd say that any laptop battery that can't hold 50% charge 2 years after purchase was designed by the manufacturer to fail early.
For the first kind, the ticket always goes to the owner, and I've never heard of an owner being able to claim someone else did it. An automated ticket, of course, only refers to the second kind. A traditional driver at fault ticket happens when a police officer pulls the driver over, identifies who's driving, and gives the driver a ticket. In the current automated systems, a photo of the car is taken. Then, later, if the driver wants to say my lead-footed friend borrowed the car, he'll have to tell them the lead-footed friend's name so they can serve the ticket to him instead. There's photo-proof that the owner wasn't driving, in that case, but they'll probably hold the owner liable until the driver at the time is located.
His machine was the server, not the client. Put a machine with a few popular songs on any sharing network and you're likely to saturate your outgoing bandwith constantly. So yes, he could've shared 600 songs in a day, by uploading them. Of course, whether he actually uploaded 600 songs in one day isn't necessary here, since they might only be claiming he made 600 songs available over the course of one day. Thus, if he'd ripped 50 cds he owned and put them up on a network, suddenly one could argue that he's sharing 600 songs.
Of course, if I were his lawyer, I'd ask to see the copies they downloaded of each song to verify that the songs were really the song the filename said it was. After all, if they didn't check, how do they know the songs weren't garbage. (Aside from the fact that they hired the artists and know first-hand that the music was garbage.)
Seriously, though, as usual the slashdot article was just a little off. It should've read he served or uploaded 600 files in a single day.
They only sort-of tried to stand up for one of their customers. They really tried to stand up for their checkbook, which will take a big hit if the RIAA can suddenly subpoena thousands of IP #'s every week. The fact that this caused them to stand up for one of their customers was really only a side effect. Trust me, I live in one of their service areas, and they're not known as a great company. Then again, I don't know any phone company anyone actually *likes*.
They use "believed to have downloaded" because the subject must be presumed innocent until they go to court and prove it. Granted, everyone assumes he's guilty, but if the documents don't make some pretense of "innocent until proven guilty", the guys lawyers can have a field day.
Not to say they should be doing this or anything, just a side note. The "believed to" part isn't the issue.
Precisely why they needed to ban them. The Haight-Ashbury area wouldn't have room for the people who wanted to walk once they're crawling with these things.
Seriously, though, most CA cities tend to ban anything but feet from the sidewalks. Most of them ban skateboards and bicycles already, and probably those little razor scooters. This is just one more device to ban from the sidewalk, plus its motorized, an extra strike against it.
Or, it could all be futile. New analyses indicate that the martian atmosphere came and went in spurts. Not only was there never a long term atmosphere, there wasn't a long term body of water. That is to say, occasionally there were impacts large enough to transform the planet into an atmosphered planet with liquid water, they lasted no more than a few (hundred) years at a time.
That's my question as well... I'm subscribed to TW's RR and TW's cable service. Then again, I don't think I've hit any of the places TW wants to make AOL only... um... ever. So I guess it shouldn't be a big deal to me, just another company shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, if I ever do have to, I'll call up RR and be the "clueless user". ("But I already pay you guys for internet access on a cable modem, why would I need AOL? I mean, its not like I need dialup.")
Oh, I heartily agree. Unfortunately, until the US Supreme Court has an opportunity to review a case, people will continue to be thrown in prison for these violations. I've always had issues with the federal government imposing laws against posession and sales. The only law I can see having any teeth would be a prohibition on the transport of certain drugs across state and international borders. Recall that for the prohibition of liquor to have any teeth, it was necessary to write an amendment to the constitution.
I have put "effectively" above in bold, because that's really the crux of the issue. The law legalising medical marijuana in California is not an effective one, because the federal government still cracks down on the medical marijuana industry. People believe that they now have the right to grow quantities of marijuana to sell to the authorised sellers, and they regularly get raided and arrested on federal charges, and have property seized. Thus, I'd argue that the law is hardly "effective" at this time, since the federal government needs to alter its regulations as well to allow state governments to make the choice about what drugs are acceptable.
I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I should laugh at a joke or just wince...
You know, the webcasting streams typically don't broadcast at 128 or 160 kbps, like the music you'd typically download. Most webcasting offers 64kbps, and some have options of 48 or lower and 128 and higher streams. For a voice station 32kbps is just fine (at least on ogg), and some codecs can handle music pretty well at low bitrates. Of course, its kind of like AM radio versus FM, but if its the only place you can listen to what you like, it can be worth it.