What if we're not? What if SETI (the I stands for intelligence, remember) just filters out all incoming spam, on the basis that it's evidence of exactly the opposite of what they're looking for?
Yeah, and it took more than "the push of a button" to activate it, too! First thing you do, you have to blow up a border outpost so that there's even somebody to hide from when they come looking, and then you have to make sure to hit the "Temporary Malfunction" button from time to time so they know you're still in town.
It's complicated business, running a cloaking device.
When I was 21 and fresh out of college, I listed my income bracket as around $35,000 and my age correctly. Got nothing. Bumped up the salary and age, and I got a lot better response. Same picture, same profile data, and a more general "Consultant" rather than anything computer-related. See how it works for you.
The interesting thing is that I moved into an apartment when I had been working for a few months, and the model-gorgeous Italian girl who gave me a tour and did my credit check asked me out. So the key is to find a woman who is impressed with the income bracket you're really in - they're out there. (NOTE: things didn't work out because she thought I should spend what money I made on her, and she was wrong.:P)
I was going to mod you up, but I'm going to agree with you explicitly instead.
Settlement agreements are generally contracts that say "A gives B $X and B promises not to sue A for Y."
So if you accept the contract from Microsoft which says "Microsoft gives Joe $5 and Joe promises not to sue Microsoft for the loss of Joe's data," you can't sue them later for the loss of your data. But if you refuse the $5, you can.
The question is, however, whether the EULA includes a term saying that "If you lose your data, your only remedy is to accept a $5 settlement from Microsoft." And, if it does, would a court rule it unconscionable, meaning that it's so apalling and unfair that they will refuse to enforce that term of the agreement.
But yes, they are definitely apparently admitting some degree of responsibility for lost data, though, and that's step one.
I was thinking the same thing - I don't have time to investigate how it works, but if you created one that translated symbolically-represented phonemes (languages other than Germanic and Eastern probably know this concept as "spelling") you'd have a pretty good system going. From the article lead-in here on Slashdot, it sounds as if it will take the basic rules of a language and maybe some "seed" data, and from there learn by comparing text in language A and language B that have the same meaning.
Congress is an undeniable political body. The President is the same, and all executive branches stem from him as our unitary executive. Even though the agencies are administrative, they are subject to political control.
And money's influence on political decisions in no way detracts from their political nature.
The problem is that the WHO can clearly and objectively decide what constitutes a disease outbreak. How would that be handled with regulation of the Internet?
I agree that the UN is the wrong body for this, because the UN is an international political body, and control over any essential element of the Internet on a global scale should be as far removed from political control as possible.
Consider this analogy (like I've stated, I would hope no court would buy this, but the analogy has to be made): wireless internet access over your neighbor's router parallels access to the highway over your neighbor's private roadway. A prescriptive easement would protect your use of your neighbor's roadway for that purpose (although if it was necessary for you to use his road to get out of your own land, there may be an implied easement at play rather than a need for one by prescription), just as it could preserve your use of your neighbor's wireless router to access the internet.
It's a weak argument, and I hope it fails, but there are courts allowing crazier analogies than this to fly, and lawyers writing articles with more stretched analogies than this and scaring Slashdot into a frenzy.
See my reply to the up-modded sibling post. But on a side note, less jokingly, say that you did openly utilize someone's wifi for 20 years. With a sufficiently progressive court, there is an argument to be made here. (However, I personally sincerely hope there is no sufficiently progressive court for the argument to succeed.)
Don't take the moderators' inability to recognize a joke as any failure to understand the law on my part. I thought the parenthetical about not asking me what I was doing in a law school classroom would convince people I wasn't serious, but I guess I was wrong. Why is it that the one time I actually gun for the zero-karma Funny mod, I get the positive-karma In* mods?:P
Funny, and only slightly off-topic, story... When I lived in Arizona, I got a new wireless AP and couldn't think of an SSID. It was a D-Link so it was set to "default" by default. But I didn't want to interfere with my neighbor's "default" network, so I changed it to "eldefaulto".
That's the single best solution I've read on this entire thread, particularly if it is not a violation of your neighbor's ISP's terms of service. There's nothing that says you can't be neighborly in exchange for a return of the favor.
It's too bad empirical evidence points to his insightful, interesting, underrated, informative, and potentially funny comment being modded down despite fitting every positive moderator point the site offers.;)
DISCLAIMER: First off, know that I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on or off of TV. This comment is not legal advice or legal analysis, despite any evidence to the contrary, and any reliance you take on it is evidence of your own stupidity, and you assume the risk inherent in so doing.
But something I've heard about from law school professors (don't ask what I was doing in a law school classroom, I'm not a lawyer, remember?) is that we have a doctrine of adverse possession and its related cousin, prescriptive easement. Adverse possession lets you take ownership of land if you've been trespassing on it for 20 years if you have used it as if you were the legitimate owner for all that time. Prescriptive easements don't require exclusivity or possession - you just have to use property for a long time and then you get to keep using it in the same way forever. Also, the statutory period is often lower for prescriptive easements, like 5 or 10 years.
Enter the digital age. If you use your neighbor's wireless for 5 years straight, you could convince a (very gullible) court to grant you an easement that ensures your neighbor never gets rid of his wireless connection or tries to lock you out of it. And that burden would probably run with his apartment or home, so no future tenant or owner could lock you out of his wireless or cancel his Internet connection.
Yes, the non-lawyer in me definitely thinks this is a good idea.
I'm glad the gamma-ray bursts are directed into space.
As am I, but I fear that these bursts of gamma rays are the real reason nobody's made first contact with us yet. It's kind of like when you go around town looking for a restaurant, you generally avoid the restaurants that bullets fly out of when you're pulling into the parking lot, opting instead for a restaurant where you can get at least to the hostess or maybe even your table before anyone shoots at you.
It's the same thing at work, here. Aliens do not want to share their warp drive technology with a planet that blasts them with gamma rays every time they fly by.
Actually, I think this happened earlier this year, where the top story was a dupe of the top "older stuff" story. Truly sad. What do the subscribers think? Are either of you reading this? Would you pay for a newspaper that printed the exact same story two days in a row out of incompetence?
Slashdot Mirror
1. Save the children! The Supreme Court is out to kill children, so it's safe to assume that they're also out to make mistakes in their rulings.
2. Corporate lobbyists are always in the Supreme Court telling the justices how to rule, and the justices rule as the lobbyists tell them to.
3. The sky is green.
What if we're not? What if SETI (the I stands for intelligence, remember) just filters out all incoming spam, on the basis that it's evidence of exactly the opposite of what they're looking for?
Fycj tiym tiy fycjubg cybt!
Yeah, and it took more than "the push of a button" to activate it, too! First thing you do, you have to blow up a border outpost so that there's even somebody to hide from when they come looking, and then you have to make sure to hit the "Temporary Malfunction" button from time to time so they know you're still in town.
It's complicated business, running a cloaking device.
When I was 21 and fresh out of college, I listed my income bracket as around $35,000 and my age correctly. Got nothing. Bumped up the salary and age, and I got a lot better response. Same picture, same profile data, and a more general "Consultant" rather than anything computer-related. See how it works for you.
:P)
The interesting thing is that I moved into an apartment when I had been working for a few months, and the model-gorgeous Italian girl who gave me a tour and did my credit check asked me out. So the key is to find a woman who is impressed with the income bracket you're really in - they're out there. (NOTE: things didn't work out because she thought I should spend what money I made on her, and she was wrong.
I was going to mod you up, but I'm going to agree with you explicitly instead.
Settlement agreements are generally contracts that say "A gives B $X and B promises not to sue A for Y."
So if you accept the contract from Microsoft which says "Microsoft gives Joe $5 and Joe promises not to sue Microsoft for the loss of Joe's data," you can't sue them later for the loss of your data. But if you refuse the $5, you can.
The question is, however, whether the EULA includes a term saying that "If you lose your data, your only remedy is to accept a $5 settlement from Microsoft." And, if it does, would a court rule it unconscionable, meaning that it's so apalling and unfair that they will refuse to enforce that term of the agreement.
But yes, they are definitely apparently admitting some degree of responsibility for lost data, though, and that's step one.
I was thinking the same thing - I don't have time to investigate how it works, but if you created one that translated symbolically-represented phonemes (languages other than Germanic and Eastern probably know this concept as "spelling") you'd have a pretty good system going. From the article lead-in here on Slashdot, it sounds as if it will take the basic rules of a language and maybe some "seed" data, and from there learn by comparing text in language A and language B that have the same meaning.
Congress is an undeniable political body. The President is the same, and all executive branches stem from him as our unitary executive. Even though the agencies are administrative, they are subject to political control.
And money's influence on political decisions in no way detracts from their political nature.
Who appoints them?
The problem is that the WHO can clearly and objectively decide what constitutes a disease outbreak. How would that be handled with regulation of the Internet?
I agree that the UN is the wrong body for this, because the UN is an international political body, and control over any essential element of the Internet on a global scale should be as far removed from political control as possible.
Consider this analogy (like I've stated, I would hope no court would buy this, but the analogy has to be made): wireless internet access over your neighbor's router parallels access to the highway over your neighbor's private roadway. A prescriptive easement would protect your use of your neighbor's roadway for that purpose (although if it was necessary for you to use his road to get out of your own land, there may be an implied easement at play rather than a need for one by prescription), just as it could preserve your use of your neighbor's wireless router to access the internet.
It's a weak argument, and I hope it fails, but there are courts allowing crazier analogies than this to fly, and lawyers writing articles with more stretched analogies than this and scaring Slashdot into a frenzy.
Would my corporate wife get a tax deduction or just me?
Kids these days have absolutely zero god damn respect for other people's property or services.
;-D
Should I get the hell off your lawn, too?
(For the legal part, see my reply to the upmodded sibling comment.)
See my reply to the up-modded sibling post. But on a side note, less jokingly, say that you did openly utilize someone's wifi for 20 years. With a sufficiently progressive court, there is an argument to be made here. (However, I personally sincerely hope there is no sufficiently progressive court for the argument to succeed.)
Don't take the moderators' inability to recognize a joke as any failure to understand the law on my part. I thought the parenthetical about not asking me what I was doing in a law school classroom would convince people I wasn't serious, but I guess I was wrong. Why is it that the one time I actually gun for the zero-karma Funny mod, I get the positive-karma In* mods? :P
Funny, and only slightly off-topic, story... When I lived in Arizona, I got a new wireless AP and couldn't think of an SSID. It was a D-Link so it was set to "default" by default. But I didn't want to interfere with my neighbor's "default" network, so I changed it to "eldefaulto".
That's the single best solution I've read on this entire thread, particularly if it is not a violation of your neighbor's ISP's terms of service. There's nothing that says you can't be neighborly in exchange for a return of the favor.
Not to mention that your hand would get worn out even faster keying in Code than it does with broadband access. ;)
It's too bad empirical evidence points to his insightful, interesting, underrated, informative, and potentially funny comment being modded down despite fitting every positive moderator point the site offers. ;)
DISCLAIMER: First off, know that I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on or off of TV. This comment is not legal advice or legal analysis, despite any evidence to the contrary, and any reliance you take on it is evidence of your own stupidity, and you assume the risk inherent in so doing.
But something I've heard about from law school professors (don't ask what I was doing in a law school classroom, I'm not a lawyer, remember?) is that we have a doctrine of adverse possession and its related cousin, prescriptive easement. Adverse possession lets you take ownership of land if you've been trespassing on it for 20 years if you have used it as if you were the legitimate owner for all that time. Prescriptive easements don't require exclusivity or possession - you just have to use property for a long time and then you get to keep using it in the same way forever. Also, the statutory period is often lower for prescriptive easements, like 5 or 10 years.
Enter the digital age. If you use your neighbor's wireless for 5 years straight, you could convince a (very gullible) court to grant you an easement that ensures your neighbor never gets rid of his wireless connection or tries to lock you out of it. And that burden would probably run with his apartment or home, so no future tenant or owner could lock you out of his wireless or cancel his Internet connection.
Yes, the non-lawyer in me definitely thinks this is a good idea.
As am I, but I fear that these bursts of gamma rays are the real reason nobody's made first contact with us yet. It's kind of like when you go around town looking for a restaurant, you generally avoid the restaurants that bullets fly out of when you're pulling into the parking lot, opting instead for a restaurant where you can get at least to the hostess or maybe even your table before anyone shoots at you.
It's the same thing at work, here. Aliens do not want to share their warp drive technology with a planet that blasts them with gamma rays every time they fly by.
Hey, Tom Hanks - stop watching CNN Airport News!
Actually, I think this happened earlier this year, where the top story was a dupe of the top "older stuff" story. Truly sad. What do the subscribers think? Are either of you reading this? Would you pay for a newspaper that printed the exact same story two days in a row out of incompetence?
It's even better than that. You can emulate my P4 on your P4.