You lost me just after BJ (of course). I'm of the Fowler school of thought that the proscription on ending sentences with prepositions is a "superstition." You are obviously a jargon junky - I'm impressed. In legal and some technical jargon, though, the aim is for precision and accuracy more than excluding others - that is just a nice side benefit. The more centuries of use a word gets in the law, the more rigid its definition becomes and the harder it is to be screwed over for using it. That's why legal jargon is so slow to change - you don't want to get sued for malpractice for saying "below" when you mean "[i]infra[/i]." And it happens.
Alright, I get the first one, but not the other two. To be fair, I did the Slashdot thing and only read the first part of the comment before responding to it. At least the moderators were also all taken and moderated me up.;)
I didn't know that, thanks. Irony is still questionable, but at least he's picking up the intentional meaning of the word, aka sarcasm. (Compare with most Slashdot moderators.;) (Moderators: That was a sarcastic joke, as well.)
Even if every person who downloaded music from the Internet did so after paying for the music, such as through iTunes (I don't know if this hack involves circumventing the payment system or only the DRM attached to paid-for songs; I presume that it is the latter, because if it were the former then Apple and others would have a case against Jon for contributory copyright infringement and would have filed that suit already), your store would be suffering just the same.
Your problem is a business model that is becoming increasingly obsolete. Your solution is not to blacklist pirates, but rather to adapt to a market where people legally buy and download music from the Internet rather than purchasing it at physical record stores. If you can't compete in that market, then it's nobody's fault but your own that your business fails as a result.
Failed businesses are nothing to be ashamed of. But you need to do a cost-benefit analysis of each option in front of you. Among them are continuing as you are, adapting to the new marketplace, pursuing your blacklisting system (which only affects pirates, not lawful downloaders), and bailing out.
Nah...the ABA wants to simplify things as much as possible. ATLA might ostracize you, but only because they tend to use words and phrases that are battle-proven in court so as to not lose cases because their complaints said "previously" instead of "hereinbefore" and some English common law case from 1370 they have never heard about but the defense counsel manages to find distinguished the two words. Law is mostly a cover-your-ass profession, and we're language nerds of a different type. (Believe me, I prefer your type, and am, too, prone to long parenthetical digressions (and sub-digressions (and occasionally sub-sub-digressions)) that really confuse readers because few of them program in a functional language (such as Lisp)). (I also like to combine my emoticons with my closing parentheses, where possible.;)
A. Do not bow to my superior knowledge. If it were truly superior, I'd be teaching law school instead of attending it. Also, I could afford a better hangout than Slashdot.;)
2. You are, indeed, over-thinking it. The dictionary says that illegal and unlawful are synonyms. Usage of either is mostly a matter of personal preference. "John illegally breached his contract with me." and "John unlawfully breached his contract with me." are equivalent, although "John breached his contract with me." leads to less confusion and is equally correct. I think most lawyers use the words interchangeably, at least in my limited experience. But lawyers also use words like "hereinbefore" and "wherefore" with no reference to Romeo's whereabouts whatsoever, so don't take their word for it. Just rest assured that you are technically correct ("the best kind of correct" - Bureaucrat 1.0, Futurama, "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back").:)
I go even further, and prefer to say something is "criminal" if it is covered by a criminal statute and "unlawful" if it is a civil wrong, but it isn't technically incorrect to say "illegal" in either case.
It depends on your definition of "illegal." Merriam-Webster gives "not according to or authorized by law," and violation of a contract is not authorized by law*. Just because it is not a criminally-punishable offense does not make a given behavior legal.
* - some exceptions apply, such as contracts to perform illegal acts
I think the key is that pet-keeping is strong evidence of intelligence, but not per se proof of the trait. Just like seeing a red house is strong evidence that it was painted red, it isn't proof on its own that the house actually is painted red because the lighting might be chromatic, you may be viewing it through a filter, your definition of "red" might not be correct, or any number of other causes may interfere with your ability to ascertain the truth of the statement "That house is painted red."
Keeping a pet is evidence of intelligence, but it takes more to prove the trait, including proof that keeping a pet is an activity undertaken only by intelligent beings. The science fiction story referred to by the ancestor comment only says that the superior race opened lines of communication after witnessing the evidence of human intelligence in the form of keeping a pet mouse. Surely the communication itself eventually would prove or disprove that intelligence.
By the same token, the inability to spell "intelligence" and "gorilla" or to appropriately capitalize the latter and punctuate a sentence suggesting that the former is a trait of the latter is itself only evidence of unintelligence. It would take more to prove it.
Fortunately, I have the previous-generation Powerbook, so I am not tempted enough by the implied possibility to look into it. But I did enable two-finger scrolling. That's cool. And it also opens up the prospect of a conversation with any attractive women I meet with the same generation Powerbook or iBook as I have regarding how "everything is better when you use two fingers."
At least you caught that (a) it is a joke and (b) it's from Adams' work. Contrast with the other responses to my comment, who all deserve the '-1: Whoosh!' mod.
Nope. The ultimate answer is 42. Only in Jeopardy, a hopelessly backwards game show popular only on one insignificant planet in the backwoords of the galaxy, would the ultimate question also be the ultimate answer.;)
Google Map scrolling with my PowerBook feels like flying in an aiprlane over the terrain. I must say you have to try this in real life to appreciate the experience
You obviously need to try the flying thing in real life sometime, because you are really not appreciating the experience of flight if you think tilting your powerbook to scroll a map is anything like it. Maybe you should just throw yourself at the ground and try to miss a few dozen times.
I think that the experience would be more like playing one of those old wooden labyrinth games.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
it'll probably get destroyed just 5 minutes before it completes running a program that will give us the ultimate answer
You mean before it completes running the program that will give us the ultimate question, don't you? Do you need to repeat a grade?;)
(On Slashdot, this will either be moderated as Flamebait or Informative. Crazy, but true. Of course, this parenthetical will either get Troll or Insightful mods, too.)
Audio books and "Learn in your car" are both good for commutes. The language programs are great because they are typically 20 minutes per lesson, so you can do one lesson per leg of your commute.
As a UND Computer Science graduate, I just figured it was my prerogative to make a joke at the expense of all prospective aviators.:P But you'd have to fly a very ritzy corporate jet to have Internet access from the cockpit, I'd think.
C:\Documents and Settings\Marton>tracert www.slashdot.org
Man, I thought he was leet until I saw that. What a shame.
That said, I really don't think this is cost-justified for most people. $30 for the flight to slowly read e-mail and such, things that you can just as easily (and more quickly) do on the ground before or after the flight. There certainly exist situations in which this is worth the money, but the cool factor alone doesn't cover it, at least not for me.
Won't work. Article submitters are blind to what other submissions are in the queue, and it can take a few days for a submission to be posted or rejected. Only the editors are able to know whether something has already been submitted or not. Article submitters can only check against already-approved articles.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was "You Have Been Taken." Oops. I fail it! ;)
You lost me just after BJ (of course). I'm of the Fowler school of thought that the proscription on ending sentences with prepositions is a "superstition." You are obviously a jargon junky - I'm impressed. In legal and some technical jargon, though, the aim is for precision and accuracy more than excluding others - that is just a nice side benefit. The more centuries of use a word gets in the law, the more rigid its definition becomes and the harder it is to be screwed over for using it. That's why legal jargon is so slow to change - you don't want to get sued for malpractice for saying "below" when you mean "[i]infra[/i]." And it happens.
Alright, I get the first one, but not the other two. To be fair, I did the Slashdot thing and only read the first part of the comment before responding to it. At least the moderators were also all taken and moderated me up. ;)
I didn't know that, thanks. Irony is still questionable, but at least he's picking up the intentional meaning of the word, aka sarcasm. (Compare with most Slashdot moderators. ;) (Moderators: That was a sarcastic joke, as well.)
Even if every person who downloaded music from the Internet did so after paying for the music, such as through iTunes (I don't know if this hack involves circumventing the payment system or only the DRM attached to paid-for songs; I presume that it is the latter, because if it were the former then Apple and others would have a case against Jon for contributory copyright infringement and would have filed that suit already), your store would be suffering just the same.
Your problem is a business model that is becoming increasingly obsolete. Your solution is not to blacklist pirates, but rather to adapt to a market where people legally buy and download music from the Internet rather than purchasing it at physical record stores. If you can't compete in that market, then it's nobody's fault but your own that your business fails as a result.
Failed businesses are nothing to be ashamed of. But you need to do a cost-benefit analysis of each option in front of you. Among them are continuing as you are, adapting to the new marketplace, pursuing your blacklisting system (which only affects pirates, not lawful downloaders), and bailing out.
And remember: Shit happens.
No, Alanis, that's belligerent. Irony is another animal altogether, see here for details.
Nah...the ABA wants to simplify things as much as possible. ATLA might ostracize you, but only because they tend to use words and phrases that are battle-proven in court so as to not lose cases because their complaints said "previously" instead of "hereinbefore" and some English common law case from 1370 they have never heard about but the defense counsel manages to find distinguished the two words. Law is mostly a cover-your-ass profession, and we're language nerds of a different type. (Believe me, I prefer your type, and am, too, prone to long parenthetical digressions (and sub-digressions (and occasionally sub-sub-digressions)) that really confuse readers because few of them program in a functional language (such as Lisp)). (I also like to combine my emoticons with my closing parentheses, where possible. ;)
A. Do not bow to my superior knowledge. If it were truly superior, I'd be teaching law school instead of attending it. Also, I could afford a better hangout than Slashdot. ;)
:)
2. You are, indeed, over-thinking it. The dictionary says that illegal and unlawful are synonyms. Usage of either is mostly a matter of personal preference. "John illegally breached his contract with me." and "John unlawfully breached his contract with me." are equivalent, although "John breached his contract with me." leads to less confusion and is equally correct. I think most lawyers use the words interchangeably, at least in my limited experience. But lawyers also use words like "hereinbefore" and "wherefore" with no reference to Romeo's whereabouts whatsoever, so don't take their word for it. Just rest assured that you are technically correct ("the best kind of correct" - Bureaucrat 1.0, Futurama, "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back").
I go even further, and prefer to say something is "criminal" if it is covered by a criminal statute and "unlawful" if it is a civil wrong, but it isn't technically incorrect to say "illegal" in either case.
It depends on your definition of "illegal." Merriam-Webster gives "not according to or authorized by law," and violation of a contract is not authorized by law*. Just because it is not a criminally-punishable offense does not make a given behavior legal.
* - some exceptions apply, such as contracts to perform illegal acts
I think the key is that pet-keeping is strong evidence of intelligence, but not per se proof of the trait. Just like seeing a red house is strong evidence that it was painted red, it isn't proof on its own that the house actually is painted red because the lighting might be chromatic, you may be viewing it through a filter, your definition of "red" might not be correct, or any number of other causes may interfere with your ability to ascertain the truth of the statement "That house is painted red."
Keeping a pet is evidence of intelligence, but it takes more to prove the trait, including proof that keeping a pet is an activity undertaken only by intelligent beings. The science fiction story referred to by the ancestor comment only says that the superior race opened lines of communication after witnessing the evidence of human intelligence in the form of keeping a pet mouse. Surely the communication itself eventually would prove or disprove that intelligence.
By the same token, the inability to spell "intelligence" and "gorilla" or to appropriately capitalize the latter and punctuate a sentence suggesting that the former is a trait of the latter is itself only evidence of unintelligence. It would take more to prove it.
Fortunately, I have the previous-generation Powerbook, so I am not tempted enough by the implied possibility to look into it. But I did enable two-finger scrolling. That's cool. And it also opens up the prospect of a conversation with any attractive women I meet with the same generation Powerbook or iBook as I have regarding how "everything is better when you use two fingers."
Zapp Brannigan: Kif, clear my schedule.
Kif turns the Etch-a-Sketch upside-down and shakes it.
At least you caught that (a) it is a joke and (b) it's from Adams' work. Contrast with the other responses to my comment, who all deserve the '-1: Whoosh!' mod.
Nope. The ultimate answer is 42. Only in Jeopardy, a hopelessly backwards game show popular only on one insignificant planet in the backwoords of the galaxy, would the ultimate question also be the ultimate answer. ;)
Google Map scrolling with my PowerBook feels like flying in an aiprlane over the terrain. I must say you have to try this in real life to appreciate the experience
You obviously need to try the flying thing in real life sometime, because you are really not appreciating the experience of flight if you think tilting your powerbook to scroll a map is anything like it. Maybe you should just throw yourself at the ground and try to miss a few dozen times.
I think that the experience would be more like playing one of those old wooden labyrinth games.
Population: 0
it'll probably get destroyed just 5 minutes before it completes running a program that will give us the ultimate answer
;)
You mean before it completes running the program that will give us the ultimate question, don't you? Do you need to repeat a grade?
(On Slashdot, this will either be moderated as Flamebait or Informative. Crazy, but true. Of course, this parenthetical will either get Troll or Insightful mods, too.)
Audio books and "Learn in your car" are both good for commutes. The language programs are great because they are typically 20 minutes per lesson, so you can do one lesson per leg of your commute.
As a UND Computer Science graduate, I just figured it was my prerogative to make a joke at the expense of all prospective aviators. :P But you'd have to fly a very ritzy corporate jet to have Internet access from the cockpit, I'd think.
Yes, they should have Internet access from the cockpit by 2035. ;)
C:\Documents and Settings\Marton>tracert www.slashdot.org
Man, I thought he was leet until I saw that. What a shame.
That said, I really don't think this is cost-justified for most people. $30 for the flight to slowly read e-mail and such, things that you can just as easily (and more quickly) do on the ground before or after the flight. There certainly exist situations in which this is worth the money, but the cool factor alone doesn't cover it, at least not for me.
And if you do like it, then FUCK OFF!
Right. As a general rule, the less literate you are, the more likely your submission is to make the front page.
Won't work. Article submitters are blind to what other submissions are in the queue, and it can take a few days for a submission to be posted or rejected. Only the editors are able to know whether something has already been submitted or not. Article submitters can only check against already-approved articles.