We're going to add a second strip, and listen up baby bird, because the second strip lathers. That's right, it f*cking lathers. Welcome to the U. S. of this-is-how-we-make-propellers-now A.
Without reading the whole thread, I do know that the next step is formulating a coherent statement of what is wrong and why it is, in fact, wrong. The third step is proposing a solution that will not introduce more problems than it solves. The fourth is convincing enough of the right people that your solution has sufficient merit to be implemented.
One problem that the USA does not have that China does is that the above steps are impossible for a Chinese subject (I hesitate to use the word citizen) to complete. You normally don't make it past the first step before the government comes to explain why there isn't actually a problem to be solved.
I also end up using Word for most of my real writing, although I would prefer LaTeX. There are a couple of reasons for this, one of them being interoperability with others but the other being that it is next to impossible without spending (read: wasting) weeks of my time setting up templates and styles in order to format legal documents and citation styles. It's really rather tragic.
Hold on a second. Where is it written that the Attorney General is in charge of "ensur[ing] oversight of the branches of government?" The original, and still an important, purpose of the Attorney General is to represent the United States when it is a party to a case before the Supreme Court.
Or maybe you are looking at precedent, and thinking that the authorization by former US Attorneys General to lay siege against Americans makes that part of the office's duties. But even then, I don't know where you get this duty to "ensure oversight of the branches of government," since the Attorney General is and always has been a member of the Cabinet and thus an integral part of the Executive Branch.
Is Wal Mart actually editing the songs? I didn't realize that they were. Here, I just thought that they told music distributors that they would only carry music that is edited to remove offensive words. Is that different from Joe's Bar and Grill telling its beef supplier that it will only carry USDA Choice beef? If you want crappy beef, you can go next door. If you want unedited music, Wal Mart has competitors who will gladly sell it to you.
What sound is being sent to the card when the track is paused? It sounds like a scheduler issue, probably combined with an issue in the media player being used that grabs the CPU even when paused. Unless I'm missing something and "pause" really means "tell the sound card to play 44.1kHz 16-bit silence" instead of "stop sending audio to the sound card until I tell you otherwise."
I got bored and read some WaMu junk mail a few weeks back, and they had a legitimate opt-out provision. But still, it's worthless if you are the only one who opts out, and since nobody even knows about the arbitration clause there's certainly nobody looking for the opt-out clause. I'm sure that you also have to opt out by means of telegram, carrier pigeon, or in-person visit between the hours of 1 and 2 on February the 29 any year that it has fallen on a Tuesday for more than three consecutive years. But they did have one.
I actually saw a credit card agreement that gave you a chance to opt out of that provision. The only problem is that everyone has to opt out of it in order to gain any real advantage. I do disagree with the blurb's choice of terminology. This is not a "small" clause. It's the clause that lets the company get away with screwing each customer over for a few dollars a year.
That's also true. It depends a lot on your jurisdiction and the nature of your case. Cases at equity are not entitled to juries at all, for instance. Thanks for adding this clarification.:)
There were other swings and misses in both that comment and elsewhere in this thread. I haven't read any other comment threads attached to this story but I rest assured they are mostly as bad.
What law are judges presiding over the RIAA cases supposedly making? What precedents are they ignoring or going against? Can anyone articulate these things or are we just jumping on a "judicial activism is bad and every judge is a judicial activist" bandwagon lately?
As to summary judgment and interpreting the laws - these are orthogonal concepts. Summary judgment is simply the judge deciding that the case must come down a certain way according to the law, because there is no material fact in good-faith dispute. A material fact is one that actually matters to the case. For instance, if I have to prove that you sold me a car in order to win, it is immaterial whether the car was made in Japan.
The idea that judges "interpret" the laws is mostly a creature of high school civics classes. Judges apply the laws to disputes between parties. The judge may do some interpreting in the process, but that is neither the judge's whole job or is it solely the judge's job.
The criminal vs. civil issue will be dealt with in 30 other comments to this story. I'm not overly concerned about covering it here, as a result.
The judge vs. jury divide is worth discussing. Juries decide issues of fact. That's their only real job. When a judge denies a motion for summary judgment, he is essentially saying that there is enough of a factual dispute to send the case to a jury. It won't go to a jury immediately, of course, but it hasn't lost that possibility in the future. That's what happened here.
I'm not sure about the PDP-11 era, but as early as the mid-80's it was common to use.doc to indicate that something was a general document as opposed to a.ltr,.mem, or the like. The word processor used was irrelevant. (We used XyWrite at the time.) MS Word commandeering.doc is a relatively new phenomenon - the.doc extension itself is not.
Note that most of the things listed in this thread are not crimes as indicated. For instance, conversion is a tort and encompasses more than just theft. Theft is also known as larceny and is a crime. Libel and slander are both forms of defamation and are generally not criminal but rather just civil torts. Etc.
I guess I don't follow how a police officer being there takes away the opportunity. If he watches you commit the crime, then the likelihood of punishment is nearly 100%. If you are truly not deterred by punishment at all, then in what way are you deterred by the presence of a cop?
Crime is best prevented by the fear of getting caught and punished. If police increase their presence in areas and at times where and when crimes are likely to occur, there will be a deterrent effect. However, that is only the unavoidable side effect. Cops aren't trying to prevent crimes - they are trying to better focus their resources to catch criminals. It just so happens that the former is a pleasant result of the latter.
You have conflated availability with price. IP addresses are only worth cash, as you put it, if you are willing to part with them for some price. So either they aren't worth cash and the companies are holding onto them for some other reason, or they are worth cash and the companies are only holding onto them until someone makes a cash offer they are willing to accept. In the latter case, the addresses are absolutely available - just not for free.
I strongly believe that we need to replace IPv4 and get it done within the next 5 years; and I only give 5 years because it's a major hassle no matter how you slice it. IPv6 has the primary advantage of being 'done' - if we scrap it and come up with a new standard that actually avoids IPv6's pitfalls, we have to go back to the drawing board to do it and that means more years of bureaucracy before we can deploy it.
What bothers me is that the blurb (RTFA? never!) doesn't tell us exactly how loose the tolerances for aiming this one are. I don't care that it's more efficient if it requires me to put my house on a turntable and add a tilting roof.
Read the order and find out. I'll give you a hint: It (surprisingly, I'm sure, to many slashdotters) does cite one. Whether it's legit or not is up for debate, though.
Yes, and it also says that a random number MUST be "sufficiently random" and then gives rolling a die as a canonical example. But the RFC then goes on to say that a random number MAY be more than "sufficiently random" if it comes from an appropriately random source with a larger range than the roll of a die.
Slashdot Mirror
We're going to add a second strip, and listen up baby bird, because the second strip lathers. That's right, it f*cking lathers. Welcome to the U. S. of this-is-how-we-make-propellers-now A.
That is the coolest thing I have read all day.
Without reading the whole thread, I do know that the next step is formulating a coherent statement of what is wrong and why it is, in fact, wrong. The third step is proposing a solution that will not introduce more problems than it solves. The fourth is convincing enough of the right people that your solution has sufficient merit to be implemented.
One problem that the USA does not have that China does is that the above steps are impossible for a Chinese subject (I hesitate to use the word citizen) to complete. You normally don't make it past the first step before the government comes to explain why there isn't actually a problem to be solved.
I also end up using Word for most of my real writing, although I would prefer LaTeX. There are a couple of reasons for this, one of them being interoperability with others but the other being that it is next to impossible without spending (read: wasting) weeks of my time setting up templates and styles in order to format legal documents and citation styles. It's really rather tragic.
Hold on a second. Where is it written that the Attorney General is in charge of "ensur[ing] oversight of the branches of government?" The original, and still an important, purpose of the Attorney General is to represent the United States when it is a party to a case before the Supreme Court.
Or maybe you are looking at precedent, and thinking that the authorization by former US Attorneys General to lay siege against Americans makes that part of the office's duties. But even then, I don't know where you get this duty to "ensure oversight of the branches of government," since the Attorney General is and always has been a member of the Cabinet and thus an integral part of the Executive Branch.
School boards are elected. Shut up and vote.
Do you have a proposed diplomatic solution?
Is Wal Mart actually editing the songs? I didn't realize that they were. Here, I just thought that they told music distributors that they would only carry music that is edited to remove offensive words. Is that different from Joe's Bar and Grill telling its beef supplier that it will only carry USDA Choice beef? If you want crappy beef, you can go next door. If you want unedited music, Wal Mart has competitors who will gladly sell it to you.
What sound is being sent to the card when the track is paused? It sounds like a scheduler issue, probably combined with an issue in the media player being used that grabs the CPU even when paused. Unless I'm missing something and "pause" really means "tell the sound card to play 44.1kHz 16-bit silence" instead of "stop sending audio to the sound card until I tell you otherwise."
I got bored and read some WaMu junk mail a few weeks back, and they had a legitimate opt-out provision. But still, it's worthless if you are the only one who opts out, and since nobody even knows about the arbitration clause there's certainly nobody looking for the opt-out clause. I'm sure that you also have to opt out by means of telegram, carrier pigeon, or in-person visit between the hours of 1 and 2 on February the 29 any year that it has fallen on a Tuesday for more than three consecutive years. But they did have one.
I actually saw a credit card agreement that gave you a chance to opt out of that provision. The only problem is that everyone has to opt out of it in order to gain any real advantage. I do disagree with the blurb's choice of terminology. This is not a "small" clause. It's the clause that lets the company get away with screwing each customer over for a few dollars a year.
That's also true. It depends a lot on your jurisdiction and the nature of your case. Cases at equity are not entitled to juries at all, for instance. Thanks for adding this clarification. :)
There were other swings and misses in both that comment and elsewhere in this thread. I haven't read any other comment threads attached to this story but I rest assured they are mostly as bad.
What law are judges presiding over the RIAA cases supposedly making? What precedents are they ignoring or going against? Can anyone articulate these things or are we just jumping on a "judicial activism is bad and every judge is a judicial activist" bandwagon lately?
As to summary judgment and interpreting the laws - these are orthogonal concepts. Summary judgment is simply the judge deciding that the case must come down a certain way according to the law, because there is no material fact in good-faith dispute. A material fact is one that actually matters to the case. For instance, if I have to prove that you sold me a car in order to win, it is immaterial whether the car was made in Japan.
The idea that judges "interpret" the laws is mostly a creature of high school civics classes. Judges apply the laws to disputes between parties. The judge may do some interpreting in the process, but that is neither the judge's whole job or is it solely the judge's job.
The criminal vs. civil issue will be dealt with in 30 other comments to this story. I'm not overly concerned about covering it here, as a result.
The judge vs. jury divide is worth discussing. Juries decide issues of fact. That's their only real job. When a judge denies a motion for summary judgment, he is essentially saying that there is enough of a factual dispute to send the case to a jury. It won't go to a jury immediately, of course, but it hasn't lost that possibility in the future. That's what happened here.
I'm not sure about the PDP-11 era, but as early as the mid-80's it was common to use .doc to indicate that something was a general document as opposed to a .ltr, .mem, or the like. The word processor used was irrelevant. (We used XyWrite at the time.) MS Word commandeering .doc is a relatively new phenomenon - the .doc extension itself is not.
Note that most of the things listed in this thread are not crimes as indicated. For instance, conversion is a tort and encompasses more than just theft. Theft is also known as larceny and is a crime. Libel and slander are both forms of defamation and are generally not criminal but rather just civil torts. Etc.
I guess I don't follow how a police officer being there takes away the opportunity. If he watches you commit the crime, then the likelihood of punishment is nearly 100%. If you are truly not deterred by punishment at all, then in what way are you deterred by the presence of a cop?
Crime is best prevented by the fear of getting caught and punished. If police increase their presence in areas and at times where and when crimes are likely to occur, there will be a deterrent effect. However, that is only the unavoidable side effect. Cops aren't trying to prevent crimes - they are trying to better focus their resources to catch criminals. It just so happens that the former is a pleasant result of the latter.
You have conflated availability with price. IP addresses are only worth cash, as you put it, if you are willing to part with them for some price. So either they aren't worth cash and the companies are holding onto them for some other reason, or they are worth cash and the companies are only holding onto them until someone makes a cash offer they are willing to accept. In the latter case, the addresses are absolutely available - just not for free.
I strongly believe that we need to replace IPv4 and get it done within the next 5 years; and I only give 5 years because it's a major hassle no matter how you slice it. IPv6 has the primary advantage of being 'done' - if we scrap it and come up with a new standard that actually avoids IPv6's pitfalls, we have to go back to the drawing board to do it and that means more years of bureaucracy before we can deploy it.
What bothers me is that the blurb (RTFA? never!) doesn't tell us exactly how loose the tolerances for aiming this one are. I don't care that it's more efficient if it requires me to put my house on a turntable and add a tilting roof.
At least Welshie can yodel.
Is there still anywhere in the world where commercial airline flights are not non-smoking by law?
Regarding the National Geographic comment: Who watches the watchers? As it turns out, the watched have it covered.
Dude, you spelled Homer Sapiens wrong.
Read the order and find out. I'll give you a hint: It (surprisingly, I'm sure, to many slashdotters) does cite one. Whether it's legit or not is up for debate, though.
Yes, and it also says that a random number MUST be "sufficiently random" and then gives rolling a die as a canonical example. But the RFC then goes on to say that a random number MAY be more than "sufficiently random" if it comes from an appropriately random source with a larger range than the roll of a die.