Slashdot Mirror


User: ari_j

ari_j's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
3,709
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 3,709

  1. Re:The hallmark of civil disobedience... on RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" · · Score: 1

    I'm with you on that. I'm a mere law student - the most I can aspire to is advocating for those brave souls when the long arm of the law does catch up with them. There are many laws that are just plain wrong, but I have to wait for the right client to do anything about it.

  2. Re:The hallmark of civil disobedience... on RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, I think I just had a moment of clarity over dinner. Perhaps the difference between mere protest and civil disobedience is the willingness to accept known consequences of your actions (as I originally said), however without any requirement that the consequences actually come to bear. Rosa Parks was subject to being kicked off the bus - she accepted that going in. Thoreau was subject to arrest for failure to pay taxes - he accepted that going in. The Boston Tea Party people were subject probably to being drawn and quartered that - they did not accept that. For some types of civil disobedience, no punishment exists. For others, one is available but left unused. But in all cases, the people taking part accept that the consequences may come to bear.

    Of course, file sharing is in most cases not even a means of protest. The Boston Tea Party did not occur so that people could get tax-free tea off a ship.

  3. Re:The hallmark of civil disobedience... on RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" · · Score: 1

    First off, I never said an unjust law should remain unchanged just because it is unenforced. It's simply that civil disobedience is irrelevant to bringing about such a change. Second, Thoreau is between the two cases I cited. He did not conceal his identity or the fact that he was breaking the law, so he put his own interests and those of the government at risk. I'd say that the Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience more because it was anonymous than because it harmed the purely-financial interests of others.

    Can you give an example of nonviolent disobedience has been effective when the people involved were never caught or otherwise detrimented?

  4. Next? on Michael Crichton on Why Gene Patents Are Bad · · Score: 1

    I enjoyed Next. Forget popular - he's a good author. Good authors survive the temporary whims of the mob.

  5. The hallmark of civil disobedience... on RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The hallmark of civil disobedience is willingness to accept the consequences of breaking the law as part of making your point. After all, if you escape punishment at any level then there is no need to change the law. The Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience - it was outright protest. There's a difference, and one way to look at it is this: the Boston Tea Party injured the government's revenues to tell the government that the taxes were unjust. Rosa Parks did not injure anyone's interests but her own.

  6. Re:Different types of black people? on Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband · · Score: 1

    No, I can't. But this chick that Stephen Colbert interviewed was saying that Barak Obama isn't black because he isn't descended from slaves. He's apparently "African African-American." She was entirely serious, and I am entirely serious that I will no longer tolerate any racial hatred directed toward me by not getting the precisely correct number of ethnic terms in the phrase when you describe my race. I'm "white caucasian WASP American Norwegian American Czech American Greek German American white white North Dakotan American born-here American American American." If you don't get that exactly right or you don't understand it in full, you are clearly a racist.

  7. Re:Slashdot fixed it! on Dell Laptop Burns House Down · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure that buying speakers from Dell is the best way to not pay premium prices.

  8. Re:I notice he didn't mention... on Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband · · Score: 1

    Police don't like people to have guns, because police like being the only people with guns and they don't care if the only people who give up their guns are law-abiding citizens: every person who doesn't have a gun is a step toward the police having all the firepower. When you give your police greater power than your average citizens, your police are no longer civilian police but paramilitary and you have set up a police state.

  9. Re:i'd like you to meet someone on Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure that I follow how your emphasis on having put two blacks in the Senate correlates to taking race out of the picture. That sounds like it's not too far off from the people who say that racial equality is directly related to how well people understand the different types of black people.

  10. Re:Wow on Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband · · Score: 2, Funny

    According to a black woman that Colbert interviewed, who authored a book entitled The End of Blackness (sorry, I forgot her name and don't watch such shows closely), Obama is not black. He's "African African-American." Apparently "black" isn't a color so much as a "had family who were slaves." From now on, you are a racist if you don't get the precisely correct number of Norses when you refer to the color my skin.

  11. Re:Pshaw! on Dell Laptop Burns House Down · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, it was just a regular bitchfest instead.

  12. Re:Well duh on Did Gates Fib About H1-B Salaries? · · Score: 1

    The real dangerous thing is having a resume that screams "specialist." HR people don't understand that anyone who has the skill known as "programming" can apply that skill to any language, and can learn any language between the time you call him in for an interview and the time he gets to the interview. I personally don't know COBOL, but if someone said I had an interview for a COBOL job next Thursday I'd learn it in time and so would any programmer here. HR people don't get that, and think that the only way to get a good COBOL programmer is to get someone with COBOL experience. It's not. Get someone with programming skills.

    The problem is that they don't hire people that know this tidbit, either, so it's a vicious cycle.

  13. Re:Well duh on Did Gates Fib About H1-B Salaries? · · Score: 1

    Never specialize. That's a lesson I learned early on and it's one that turned me out of IT and into a field where there is no need to specialize to go far. Specializing gets you pigeon-holed, and pigeon holes are eventually closed off for being obsolete.

  14. Re:Apples moves into VM on Microsoft Slugs Mac Users With Vista Tax · · Score: 2, Informative
    Check out the list of categories on that article:
    • NPOV disputes
    • Wikipedia articles needing factual verification
    • Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007
    • All articles with unsourced statements
    More importantly, read about Wikipedia's stance on legal advice. Finally, remember not to get legal advice from the internet. Not from Slashdot, and not from Wikipedia.
  15. Re:Apples moves into VM on Microsoft Slugs Mac Users With Vista Tax · · Score: 4, Informative

    The common law is the body of case law in a given jurisdiction. It originated in England, as compared to the civil law countries of the European continent (and Quebec and Louisiana, going back to their French roots). English colonies inherited the common law and, by and large, are still common law jurisdictions today. That includes every state in the US (other than Louisiana) that was added after independence.

    Now, as to the common law of contract, the statement is still not necessarily right. General rule of thumb: Don't get your legal advice from Slashdot, or anywhere else on the Internet.

  16. Re:If I find the bug, can I keep it? on Court Rules GPS Tracking Legal For Law Officers · · Score: 1

    That's really the point, though. I didn't mean to dispute your use of the word - just to point out that you're right. The car is not yours any more than the bug is, because nobody's actually abandoned ownership of it, just temporary possession.

  17. Re:If I find the bug, can I keep it? on Court Rules GPS Tracking Legal For Law Officers · · Score: 1

    "Abandon" is a word with both an English-dictionary meaning and a legal-dictionary meaning. Parking a car on someone's driveway is not abandoning it. See Wikipedia for some discussion, but in general you must intend not to have any future ownership of your property in order to abandon it. In neither the car-on-driveway case nor the GPS-bug-on-car case is there an intent to abandon. And, while it would be civil trespass for you to put a magnet on my car with the intent to take it back later, and I could sue you for trespass to my car, it probably isn't so easy to sue the police for trespass for the same behavior.

  18. Re:Proposed legislation on Dance Copyright Enforced by DMCA · · Score: 1

    Maybe there should be a state administrative agency created with authority, under this bill, to declare which songs and dances are on the Black Wedding List. There's no way the state legislatures can keep up with all the utter shit that gets produced and played at weddings every year.

  19. Proposed legislation on Dance Copyright Enforced by DMCA · · Score: 1

    Submit this to your state legislatures and save a baby seal!

    A BILL to deny any legal effect to any marriage ceremony which is preceded or followed by any event that involves the Electric Slide, either the song or its accompanying dance, in any form.

  20. Re:Banned from internet == banned from using phone on MySpace Worm Creator Sentenced · · Score: 1

    I didn't RTFA, but it seems from the various interpretations of the probation terms given here on Slashdot that the article didn't have the actual probation terms given as written by the court. If I'm wrong, ignore this comment; but if I'm right, then everyone ought to just be quiet about how to interpret terms that nobody here has read.

  21. Re:EULA vs copyright law on Install Vista Upgrade Without Preexisting XP · · Score: 1

    This depends a great deal on where you are and where you get sued, among other factors.

  22. Re:No, no, "men of genius" on Remote Exploit of Vista Speech Control · · Score: 1

    I do remember hearing the old ads, and Wikipedia agrees: Real Men of Genius. I actually like both titles equally, and I don't mind them changing the ads (whereas most things that are suddenly different in this post-9/11 world just get on my nerves).

  23. Re:This puts a grin on my face. on Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion · · Score: 1

    I don't think you understood my meaning. If you, through the democratic process, decorate my tree like that, then go right ahead. But the entire premise here is that the tree is there because people voted for it. I do congratulate you, however, on your appeal to shock and emotion after having read one sentence of discussion. At least you comprehended a portion of that one sentence.

  24. Re:This puts a grin on my face. on Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion · · Score: 1

    I forgot to mention your point about US v. Miller. I don't know who defines the "popular" reading of a case, but the literal reading has no reference whatsoever to states having the right to keep militias, although it does refer to the individual right. I think that we can probably agree on a couple of things. First, that Miller is best regarded as a poorly-written opinion worthy of being ignored, mostly because the only lawyer present for the argument was counsel for the United States and the crux of the argument is that the government can ban short-barrel shotguns because they don't have a military use, which is both a false premise and a strange argument that the Court actually bought. Second, that it really is too bad that the Supreme Court is afraid of the Second Amendment. For an issue that comes up so often, it is astonishing to have so little case law on the matter. Third, that the status quo might actually be better than an absolute rule in either direction because, when reasonable minds can disagree, letting the states experiment separately often results in resolution. At least there is some degree of choice available to a citizen as to which state he lives in and therefore which state's laws he subjects himself to.

  25. Re:Brits Only! on Become the Fifth Space Tourist · · Score: 1

    Sorry, life's a bitch. If you're on a game show and get to choose between a car and cash, take the cash. Also, as to the IRS not taking any of your winnings, if you're a US citizen and you reside in the UK and win, the IRS is going to come after you, anyhow.