Actually, I hate to go off topic like this, but the key isn't the amount of time spent with relatives or close friends. It's trust. Time is only a factor. But if a child sees a parent in a good relationship with a stranger, even if for only a few times, the child is automatically going to trust that person a little more. The inverse is also true.
And unfortunately, there's very little to be done about that.
Mod chips are not copyrighted content (their design is, but I'm pretty sure these people weren't violating that copyright). Mod chips are anti-circumvention devices.
"Grand theft" would never have stuck. Grand theft refers to tangible items. What did he actually steal? Nor "computer crime," given that the offense itself didn't involve the use of a computer. "Trafficking in counterfeit products" would be selling copies of pirated items, but not the selling of the mod chip itself.
Unless this guy was selling the copies he was making, this is everyone's favorite law, the DMCA, at work.
And to the idiots who decided this was an operation worthy of taxpayer's money, thanks for making me feel safer at night. With a few more arrests, I might even be able to leave my front door open at night, secure in the knowledge that there will be no one out there to steal my IP from me.
Funny how you can make such an assumption knowing absolutely nothing about anyone else here.
I know what it feels like to live in a police state. It doesn't feel much different from how I'm living now, actually. The only people who think otherwise are exactly the people you're talking about. This romanticized 1984 version of a police state is great for driving the propaganda machine--one that promotes even greater oppression. But it's simply untrue.
I'm not a fan of police states. In fact, I'm resisting the erosion of my freedoms, and clinging desperately onto what's left of them. But both irrational fear and blind denial of the police state that's rising will only lead to worse things happening.
If Google puts flash ads into their search results, more people will download firefox, get flashblock, and continue using Google to search. I find people switching search engines highly unlikely, especially since the major alternatives are just as bad, if not worse. Though perhaps there will be an initial fall of queries when people try out MSN or Yahoo for the first time.
This might not be such an evil thing overall. But then, the presence of the flash ad option itself may be past the line for some.
But what did you expect from doubleclick's (mother of all evil) acquisition?
Maybe you should think of the video, and think just how much more the plane can take before the wings explode. Imagine the angle of a bird's wing during takeoff or landing. That's sort of how far your plane's wings will have to bend. I'd worry about losing lift and hence control before I worry about losing the wings.
And the only thing I can think of that might have the energy to cause this kind of bend would be your plane doing a barrel roll several meters from the ground. At which time you'll have more pressing matters, like the plane being so close to the ground, and in the process of doing a barrel roll for that matter.
Don't forget that if I fight back against a gang member that's about to do me bodily harm, I'm acting in self defense. If I do the same against a police officer, I'm committing a half-dozen felonies, and more than likely going to be shot and likely killed (fittingly, the ones who do manage to get charged with things like "resisting arrest" and "assaulting an officer of the law" are the ones who did nothing of the sort).
In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter for what reason I'm fighting back against a police officer. The only thing that matters is that I am. Not that it matters at the end of the day; I'll be dead, and the officer alive.
Yes, not all police are the same. Many are reasonable, many are even helpful. So is it unreasonable to make this generalization? I don't think so. This is an example of the worst that can happen, and if such a situation where justice can be so perverted and so skewed is even possible (and right now, quite probably), then it's absolutely unacceptable. Anything might encourage such a situation to come to pass is even more unacceptable.
Some of that stuff the CIA did during the cold war. In fact, the CIA is doing all of that now. That the government agencies in the US are divided into various three-letter organizations as opposed to one four-letter organization doesn't make a damn difference.
You have no right to take the moral high ground.
Besides, how about addressing the issue at hand, instead of going off on an off-topic nit-pick?
Actually, there was a research article about scrambling words a long time ago. The jist of the research was that there's a very small difference in reading speed if you scrambled all the letters in a word except the first and last, or something along those lines. However, if you completely reversed the order of the letters, it would take a lot longer to read.
I don't know which K you're using, but in my world, there are 1000 bits per Kb, 8 bits per byte, and 1024 bytes per KB.
Which means 384 billion bits is 48 billion bytes, which is only 44.7GB.
HDD manufacturers want 1000 bytes per KB, but I don't buy that at all. It no different from the ram manufacturers rounding up 536866816 to 512MB when 512MB is actually 536870912.
The military has egg on their face but no-one was put in danger.
Unless said plane had crashed into a dense suburban neighborhood. Then the presence of radiactive materials on the plane would no longer be a mere inconvenience.
They might also be getting ready to compete with similar touch-screen offerings from Samsung and Nokia that we all know will be sold at a lower price point with a plan, and will have unlocked offerings to boot.
Let's take this to its logical conclusion.
1. Wearing nothing at all sends a religious message, namely, I am a Jain.
2. Wearing anything at all sends a religious message, namely, I am not a Jain.
There is a flaw in your logic. Expressions (religious symbols, in this case) affirm. The lack of expression neither affirms nor denies. The best you can conclude is that someone may possibly be acting against the codes of their religion (for legal purposes). But that's not logic anymore.
Furthermore, the law in question targets overt affirmation. Denial isn't covered by this particular law, unless denial involves the negation of an overt affirmation. Your particular case is the perfect example of denial without said negation.
What about 50 years? 70? The girl's 15. I'd expect her life expectancy to be around 85 if she had no need of a transplant. If she makes it to the 10 year mark, she'll be 25, and likely at her prime. What's the mortality rate for 20 years? I don't imagine it to be very high, even for children.
Granted, given her situation, she might have been dead in a year without a transplant, and 10 or 15 years is better than one. But transplants shouldn't be the final answer. Transplants should be more like asprin: a stopgap measure to continue functioning normally until the body finishes healing itself. Unfortunately, transplants are pretty final these days, and no healing can occur afterwards...
Actually, ISP's blocking BT traffic might not be a P2P issue. More likely, it's a matter of money, i.e. they don't want to support your (or their other customers' who use BT) high bandwidth use. So they use the P2P angle as an excuse for blocking a huge percentage of the packets going through their pipes. After all, P2P has such a bad rap these days among the official types that if you say anything that might be taken to support its use, you're automatically presumed to have a desire to infringe on someone's copyrights, resulting in your arguments being marginalized. Heck, you live in Canada; that's already true for when you buy storage media.
People in general respond negatively to advertising.
This is only true in the online world, where ads can become particularly intrusive. The technology is new, and advertisers are indeed experimenting with new methods of delivering ads, sometimes experimenting on the customer base.
In the rest of the media world, advertising is duly accepted, sometimes wanted, and even can be a useful device. If done well, it is a short in and of itself, not unlike what you might see on youtube. I reference the Geico cave men for example. Geico sucks (and I would never buy insurance from them), but their ads can be as entertaining as the show I'm watching.
Who would want to fast-forward Superbowl ads? Why would anyone want to do that? A good number of the people who watch the Superbowl watch it for the ads, not for the game...
And then there are print ads. I remember when people bought magazines just to collect the Absolut advertisements on the back cover. There are perfume/cologne ads with the flaps that let you sample the product, or at least make the magazine smell nice (or not so nice). Print ads can be interesting graphical works in and of themselves.
Whereas more established forms of advertising tend to focus on appealing to the masses through gratification nowadays, and subsequently treat the advertised product more as an afterthought, online ads seem to provide little to no value outside of showcasing the product. And hence, the more intrusive they get, the more annoying they become.
"Do you sirs believe that the Constitution of the United States of America is the most important and meaningful piece of literature on how this nation is to be governed? Do you sirs believe in our judicial system as written in the Constitution? Do you believe in the fairness of our judicial system, in its reliability to protect the innocents and uncover the guilty? Do you believe that we should determine the innocence or guilt of a person according to evidence presented in a court of law? Do you believe that the only evidence permissible to be considered is evidence treated appropriately according to the standard procedures and protocols put in place to ensure a fair trial?
Then why do you not believe in the scientific method, which serves as the method by which we as the jury gather and analyze evidence, and contains procedures and protocols to ensure fairness, and by which we have determined evolution to be the manner in which we come into existence as a species?
And if you do not believe that the presence of overwhelming evidence--evidence which is readily available online for anyone to examine and determine for themselves--is sufficient to determine the validity and viability of evolution, then are you implying that our judicial system shares the same flaw, and should no longer be based on evidence?"
The long sentences might start confusing the candidates and the audience though...
Maybe that isn't so much of a problem. Hopefully, these are the same people who won't breed without marriage first, since as Jesus is coming back, he'll actually get to see the bastards firsthand...
People who reject evolutionary theory are either ignorant of that theory... or have a serious issue with reality.
Back in the day, they admitted the latter to the funny farms. If it's any indication of the direction we're headed in, the insane asylums are getting more selective. Soon, potential candidates might even need to start writing essays...
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that. We know that familiarity can make even the most horrible thing seem good, or at least tolerable. Why do you think the chorus is usually the first part of a song you can sing? Which means that if they keep wiping out our memories of the songs we know, we'll just keep thinking the music sucks and move on.
Also, quite a bit of our appreciation of popular music comes from the context in which we hear them. Wiping out the music bits of those memories is equally as destructive to our acceptance of the horrible sounds they're passing for music nowadays.
But knowing the RIAA, they'd still try to do it, and then they'll blame their decreasing sales to piracy.
But if Linux does NOT violate Microsoft's patents... then Novell is marketing something that is not needed by their customers.... And if Novell is so noble, why did they immediately start pushing their "protection" as something NEEDED by Linux users and ONLY available from Novell?
I'm not Novell but I'd hazard a guess that this was a marketing ploy. Having the perception of extra value for the same price, even it doesn't come out to being of any real value, always sells, if not to customers, then to shareholders. Novell is a business out to make money. Their means and methods may be different, even better, than other businesses that are out there. But they're still out to make money. There's nothing wrong with trying to make money in and of itself, and I don't think they should be ostracized for that alone.
That seems contradictory to me. Why sign a deal with Microsoft if there isn't any violation?
Why not simply state that Novell offers "indemnification" for any and all violations of their products? Because Novell believes Linux is clean and Free. No deal needed with Microsoft.
Would you rather get something like this done and over with, or risk the long and tedious process of litigation? Microsoft can sue, regardless of whether they have a leg to stand on or not. Look at what SCO did. Imagine being able to completely eliminate the possibility of having to go through the trouble of litigation by signing a piece of paper. Isn't that easier? Litigation, even in defense, takes time, energy, effort, and money--resources that could be better spent developing new products and improving existing ones. And what types of products does Novell make? Oh right, open sources ones. Again, I reference the SCO case. How long did it last? How painful was it to go through? And Microsoft probably has more and better lawyers. And just imagine if the case so happens to be assigned a judge who's clueless about technology, who somehow ends up ruling in favor of Microsoft.
Idealism is great, but not always practical. Idealism requires no compromises. But that's never possible. The inability to compromise only sets the stage for larger conflicts, until the only option is the ultimate annihilation of one side or the other. Need I reference SCO again?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I hate to go off topic like this, but the key isn't the amount of time spent with relatives or close friends. It's trust. Time is only a factor. But if a child sees a parent in a good relationship with a stranger, even if for only a few times, the child is automatically going to trust that person a little more. The inverse is also true.
And unfortunately, there's very little to be done about that.
Mod chips are not copyrighted content (their design is, but I'm pretty sure these people weren't violating that copyright). Mod chips are anti-circumvention devices.
"Grand theft" would never have stuck. Grand theft refers to tangible items. What did he actually steal? Nor "computer crime," given that the offense itself didn't involve the use of a computer. "Trafficking in counterfeit products" would be selling copies of pirated items, but not the selling of the mod chip itself.
Unless this guy was selling the copies he was making, this is everyone's favorite law, the DMCA, at work.
And to the idiots who decided this was an operation worthy of taxpayer's money, thanks for making me feel safer at night. With a few more arrests, I might even be able to leave my front door open at night, secure in the knowledge that there will be no one out there to steal my IP from me.
Continue
Funny how you can make such an assumption knowing absolutely nothing about anyone else here.
I know what it feels like to live in a police state. It doesn't feel much different from how I'm living now, actually. The only people who think otherwise are exactly the people you're talking about. This romanticized 1984 version of a police state is great for driving the propaganda machine--one that promotes even greater oppression. But it's simply untrue.
I'm not a fan of police states. In fact, I'm resisting the erosion of my freedoms, and clinging desperately onto what's left of them. But both irrational fear and blind denial of the police state that's rising will only lead to worse things happening.
If Google puts flash ads into their search results, more people will download firefox, get flashblock, and continue using Google to search. I find people switching search engines highly unlikely, especially since the major alternatives are just as bad, if not worse. Though perhaps there will be an initial fall of queries when people try out MSN or Yahoo for the first time.
This might not be such an evil thing overall. But then, the presence of the flash ad option itself may be past the line for some.
But what did you expect from doubleclick's (mother of all evil) acquisition?
Maybe you should think of the video, and think just how much more the plane can take before the wings explode. Imagine the angle of a bird's wing during takeoff or landing. That's sort of how far your plane's wings will have to bend. I'd worry about losing lift and hence control before I worry about losing the wings.
And the only thing I can think of that might have the energy to cause this kind of bend would be your plane doing a barrel roll several meters from the ground. At which time you'll have more pressing matters, like the plane being so close to the ground, and in the process of doing a barrel roll for that matter.
Don't forget that if I fight back against a gang member that's about to do me bodily harm, I'm acting in self defense. If I do the same against a police officer, I'm committing a half-dozen felonies, and more than likely going to be shot and likely killed (fittingly, the ones who do manage to get charged with things like "resisting arrest" and "assaulting an officer of the law" are the ones who did nothing of the sort).
In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter for what reason I'm fighting back against a police officer. The only thing that matters is that I am. Not that it matters at the end of the day; I'll be dead, and the officer alive.
Yes, not all police are the same. Many are reasonable, many are even helpful. So is it unreasonable to make this generalization? I don't think so. This is an example of the worst that can happen, and if such a situation where justice can be so perverted and so skewed is even possible (and right now, quite probably), then it's absolutely unacceptable. Anything might encourage such a situation to come to pass is even more unacceptable.
And let's not forget Murphy's Law.
Some of that stuff the CIA did during the cold war. In fact, the CIA is doing all of that now. That the government agencies in the US are divided into various three-letter organizations as opposed to one four-letter organization doesn't make a damn difference.
You have no right to take the moral high ground.
Besides, how about addressing the issue at hand, instead of going off on an off-topic nit-pick?
Actually, there was a research article about scrambling words a long time ago. The jist of the research was that there's a very small difference in reading speed if you scrambled all the letters in a word except the first and last, or something along those lines. However, if you completely reversed the order of the letters, it would take a lot longer to read.
This is an interesting followup to that research.
I don't know which K you're using, but in my world, there are 1000 bits per Kb, 8 bits per byte, and 1024 bytes per KB.
Which means 384 billion bits is 48 billion bytes, which is only 44.7GB.
HDD manufacturers want 1000 bytes per KB, but I don't buy that at all. It no different from the ram manufacturers rounding up 536866816 to 512MB when 512MB is actually 536870912.
The military has egg on their face but no-one was put in danger.
Unless said plane had crashed into a dense suburban neighborhood. Then the presence of radiactive materials on the plane would no longer be a mere inconvenience.
They might also be getting ready to compete with similar touch-screen offerings from Samsung and Nokia that we all know will be sold at a lower price point with a plan, and will have unlocked offerings to boot.
Let's take this to its logical conclusion.
1. Wearing nothing at all sends a religious message, namely, I am a Jain.
2. Wearing anything at all sends a religious message, namely, I am not a Jain.
There is a flaw in your logic. Expressions (religious symbols, in this case) affirm. The lack of expression neither affirms nor denies. The best you can conclude is that someone may possibly be acting against the codes of their religion (for legal purposes). But that's not logic anymore.
Furthermore, the law in question targets overt affirmation. Denial isn't covered by this particular law, unless denial involves the negation of an overt affirmation. Your particular case is the perfect example of denial without said negation.
What about 50 years? 70? The girl's 15. I'd expect her life expectancy to be around 85 if she had no need of a transplant. If she makes it to the 10 year mark, she'll be 25, and likely at her prime. What's the mortality rate for 20 years? I don't imagine it to be very high, even for children.
Granted, given her situation, she might have been dead in a year without a transplant, and 10 or 15 years is better than one. But transplants shouldn't be the final answer. Transplants should be more like asprin: a stopgap measure to continue functioning normally until the body finishes healing itself. Unfortunately, transplants are pretty final these days, and no healing can occur afterwards...
Actually, ISP's blocking BT traffic might not be a P2P issue. More likely, it's a matter of money, i.e. they don't want to support your (or their other customers' who use BT) high bandwidth use. So they use the P2P angle as an excuse for blocking a huge percentage of the packets going through their pipes. After all, P2P has such a bad rap these days among the official types that if you say anything that might be taken to support its use, you're automatically presumed to have a desire to infringe on someone's copyrights, resulting in your arguments being marginalized. Heck, you live in Canada; that's already true for when you buy storage media.
People in general respond negatively to advertising.
This is only true in the online world, where ads can become particularly intrusive. The technology is new, and advertisers are indeed experimenting with new methods of delivering ads, sometimes experimenting on the customer base.
In the rest of the media world, advertising is duly accepted, sometimes wanted, and even can be a useful device. If done well, it is a short in and of itself, not unlike what you might see on youtube. I reference the Geico cave men for example. Geico sucks (and I would never buy insurance from them), but their ads can be as entertaining as the show I'm watching.
Who would want to fast-forward Superbowl ads? Why would anyone want to do that? A good number of the people who watch the Superbowl watch it for the ads, not for the game...
And then there are print ads. I remember when people bought magazines just to collect the Absolut advertisements on the back cover. There are perfume/cologne ads with the flaps that let you sample the product, or at least make the magazine smell nice (or not so nice). Print ads can be interesting graphical works in and of themselves.
Whereas more established forms of advertising tend to focus on appealing to the masses through gratification nowadays, and subsequently treat the advertised product more as an afterthought, online ads seem to provide little to no value outside of showcasing the product. And hence, the more intrusive they get, the more annoying they become.
"Do you sirs believe that the Constitution of the United States of America is the most important and meaningful piece of literature on how this nation is to be governed? Do you sirs believe in our judicial system as written in the Constitution? Do you believe in the fairness of our judicial system, in its reliability to protect the innocents and uncover the guilty? Do you believe that we should determine the innocence or guilt of a person according to evidence presented in a court of law? Do you believe that the only evidence permissible to be considered is evidence treated appropriately according to the standard procedures and protocols put in place to ensure a fair trial?
Then why do you not believe in the scientific method, which serves as the method by which we as the jury gather and analyze evidence, and contains procedures and protocols to ensure fairness, and by which we have determined evolution to be the manner in which we come into existence as a species?
And if you do not believe that the presence of overwhelming evidence--evidence which is readily available online for anyone to examine and determine for themselves--is sufficient to determine the validity and viability of evolution, then are you implying that our judicial system shares the same flaw, and should no longer be based on evidence?"
The long sentences might start confusing the candidates and the audience though...
Wikipedia.
If you have a big bushy mustache, that's *two* things you have in common with Stalin.
And here I was, chanting "Godwin, Godwin" from reading the first half of that sentence.
Maybe that isn't so much of a problem. Hopefully, these are the same people who won't breed without marriage first, since as Jesus is coming back, he'll actually get to see the bastards firsthand...
who knows what other wacky shit he goes to bed with comfortably at night?
Like the presence of WMD's in Iraq for example.
People who reject evolutionary theory are either ignorant of that theory ... or have a serious issue with reality.
Back in the day, they admitted the latter to the funny farms. If it's any indication of the direction we're headed in, the insane asylums are getting more selective. Soon, potential candidates might even need to start writing essays...
The Bible is thousands of years of evidence
There, fixed it for you.
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that. We know that familiarity can make even the most horrible thing seem good, or at least tolerable. Why do you think the chorus is usually the first part of a song you can sing? Which means that if they keep wiping out our memories of the songs we know, we'll just keep thinking the music sucks and move on.
Also, quite a bit of our appreciation of popular music comes from the context in which we hear them. Wiping out the music bits of those memories is equally as destructive to our acceptance of the horrible sounds they're passing for music nowadays.
But knowing the RIAA, they'd still try to do it, and then they'll blame their decreasing sales to piracy.
Why are you modded +5 insightful?
... then Novell is marketing something that is not needed by their customers. ...
But if Linux does NOT violate Microsoft's patents
And if Novell is so noble, why did they immediately start pushing their "protection" as something NEEDED by Linux users and ONLY available from Novell?
I'm not Novell but I'd hazard a guess that this was a marketing ploy. Having the perception of extra value for the same price, even it doesn't come out to being of any real value, always sells, if not to customers, then to shareholders. Novell is a business out to make money. Their means and methods may be different, even better, than other businesses that are out there. But they're still out to make money. There's nothing wrong with trying to make money in and of itself, and I don't think they should be ostracized for that alone.
That seems contradictory to me. Why sign a deal with Microsoft if there isn't any violation?
Why not simply state that Novell offers "indemnification" for any and all violations of their products? Because Novell believes Linux is clean and Free. No deal needed with Microsoft.
Would you rather get something like this done and over with, or risk the long and tedious process of litigation? Microsoft can sue, regardless of whether they have a leg to stand on or not. Look at what SCO did. Imagine being able to completely eliminate the possibility of having to go through the trouble of litigation by signing a piece of paper. Isn't that easier? Litigation, even in defense, takes time, energy, effort, and money--resources that could be better spent developing new products and improving existing ones. And what types of products does Novell make? Oh right, open sources ones. Again, I reference the SCO case. How long did it last? How painful was it to go through? And Microsoft probably has more and better lawyers. And just imagine if the case so happens to be assigned a judge who's clueless about technology, who somehow ends up ruling in favor of Microsoft.
Idealism is great, but not always practical. Idealism requires no compromises. But that's never possible. The inability to compromise only sets the stage for larger conflicts, until the only option is the ultimate annihilation of one side or the other. Need I reference SCO again?