"As long as juries can be educated that they can agree that they can declare laws unjust and kill the mess.
"
If you can get a someone on the jury that actually knows about jury nullifaction/veto, past the RIAA lawyers. And for that matter past the Judge. Have you noticed how Judges tell the jury how they should view the evidence or how part of testimony should be disregarded? In my own recent experience as a juror, the judge did everything short of directly instructing us on how to find the case.
Why is it then, that when you see most Americans on the phone in a public place, they are usually shouting?
I attribute that to the disposable nature of our mobile phones. If you have a crappy mic or a crappy speaker you feel the need to shout. If a company were to market a phone on it's superior audio properties, and the phone sold well then we might see a change in this behaviour. But phones are marketed on their slick new look and fancy new options, and the phone companies are all too happy to attribute all of the call quality the "network". This keeps people with the same provider but buying new phones every two years.
If you can't come to an agreement about which freaking shows go on the DVR, then you probably shouldn't be married to each other.
Second that, but for a slightly different reason. I'm unmarried, but have had roommates in the past, and had to share the DVR. If the DVR can record 60 hours, and there are 2 people, you each get 28 hours worth of shows, with the extra left for last minute stuff that must be accounted for ASAP. Once your amount of time is full you must delete old shows if you want to record new shows. It's just like any other kind of budgeting, if your mate can't budget DVR time they probably can't budget much else and you might not want to tie your finances with them in the bonds of matrimony.
Some pervert off'ed himself? Why the fuck should I care?
Yes, the guy was a pervert. He had problems and needed help. He probably knew that he needed help, that's why he didn't show up at the sting. The thing is "pervert" was just one facet of the man. He still had family and friends and a successful career. But once the cameras showed up "pervert" was all that he would ever be again, it the public eye. It wouldn't matter if he got the help he needed. It wouldn't matter if he went overseas and got himself castrated to control his unacceptable urges. (Illegal in the US even at the patients request) He had been publicly declared a "pervert" and instantly became a sub-human monster. No trial, no getting speak up for himself, just condemnation. Pedophilia is no where near the national problem that Alcoholism is in terms of total damage to lives and property, but alcoholics aren't required to be on a national list, or live a certain distance from schools (or bars), and are rarely run out of town or refused housing. The only reason that it is OK to write this guy off as being less than human is because his particular failing is taboo.
It seems faintly dangerous to treat a female co-worker even one iota different from a male co-worker.
Actually you have to treat them very differently. I can make off-color jokes with my male co-workers. I can make physical contact with my male co-workers. I can go to a bar after work with my male co-workers. If I were the type of guy to treat people like shit, I could do so, with my male underling co-workers.
Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.
Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men--the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls--but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto- 20070622-000002.xml
Speaking of "Entrap a Predator" and to give you an idea of what passes for journalistic ethics at NBC:
NEW YORK - The sister of a man who was suspected of being a sexual predator and killed himself as the cameras of "Dateline NBC" closed in on him sued NBC Universal Inc. on Monday for $105 million, accusing it of taking over police duties and then failing to protect her brother...She said in the lawsuit NBC "steam-rolled" police to arrest her brother, also known as Bill, after telling police he failed to show up at a sting operation 35 miles away.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/23/ap394307 9.html
Ratings are more important than real news, truth, or helping someone with an obvious problem. I love how when a TV station is selling ad space they market the ablity to influence the public, but when they air programs that serve to lower the ethical or intellectual standings of America, tehy claim "We just give the people what they want." Which is it? Does the public control the TV or does the TV control the public?
if the military couldnt do the job of holding the country it had taken over?
If we had truely taken Iraq,as in made it into a territory, and we were willing to play the role of conquerers, then our Army would be doing just fine. But to play the role of conquerer, we would need to subjigate the whole country holding all Iraqis responsible for the crimes of any insurgents. We would also have gone in with the intention of staying and ruling. The governing force would have been an American Vice-Roy from day one. The levels of totalitarian violence would have been on par with Saddam's rule, at least for the first few years. Armies can take over a country, but they cannot make the Iraqi people into a cohesive, democratic culture. Only the Iraqi people can do that, and it will probably take a long bloody civil war to do that. There war, that they need to fight for their country.
Just more proof that the modern army is defective on basic no-man's land tactics that their grandfathers would have been familiar with.
The army is plenty familiar with how to make a no-man's land, it's the press, and consiquentially the American People that will not allow those kind of tactics. This war is going the same way Vietnam went, because it has about the same support from the people that Vietnam had. War is terrible and ugly, the people don't want terrible and ugly, because they don't really believe in the cause. So the Army is asked to fight the Disney version of War. In DisneyWar only bad guys die, the oppressed welcome us as heroes, and all the soldiers come home in time for Christmas. The problem being of course DisneyWar doesn't really exist.
Armies are for killing the enemy, not for making new friends, not for keeping peace.
The day they don't let me in because my cell phone has a camera is the day I stop going to movies.
The day bootleggers start selling a movie that was recorded with a cameraphone, is the death of bootleg video. Any decent bootleg is recorded straight from a digital source, a movie recorded from the back of a theatre, even with a tripod, isn't worth the $5 the street hawker would charge.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 1
To people who grew up with computers, these "challenges" are about as daunting as the "challenges" one faces when going fishing or camping or riding a bike. None of the skills you need are all that difficult to learn, if you do it once or twice you've got it.
Maybe then "packet shaping" will encounter any opponent with enough clout to make politicians see it for the problem that it is.
Re:Bad arguments and bad reasoning
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The question is not just have they been broken? But, by what percentage of the populace are they regularly broken? I'm thinking of things like: speed limits, marijuana laws, jaywalking, (in it's day) prohibition, etc. If the people choose to ignore the law, then why is it a law? There are countless laws on the books, left there to be tools for the police or local government to use to control the citizens. Is there any doubt that parking or most speeding tickets are nothing more than revenue for the local government? Do marijuana laws do anything other than create a source of funding for organized crime? DRM does it's job just fine, it criminalizes people, which gives other people the leverage to control them.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The Average Joe doesn't need to be able to crack it himself. He just needs to get ahold of a cracked copy. Which he can.
"unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce."
I thought the whole point of FairUse is that it isn't commerce. No money trades hands, so it's not protected as an act of commerce. This would be an unfair or deceptive act that affects personal use.
But couldn't the threat of being sued for more than you are likely to make in your lifetime a form of "financial violence". Yes the term sounds like a stretch, but when you consider the potential for life altering harm and combine it with the outcome of suit being more influenced by who can afford what lawyers over who is right, well it resembles violence in every way in which violence is used to threaten and subdue. Perhaps it should be illegal for corperations to threaten legal action when no law has been broken.
And what happens if someone slips through the radar, gets hired, and conducts IBM business dressed as a flying phallus?
Then couldn't they be fired for conducting IBM business through a non-company avatar? Sidenote: Does the company you work for have a written policy against flashing clients?
if one cloaks data by encrypting it, exactly what incriminating evidence does that provide?
As private citizens we arent allowed to hide anything from the government.
So I'm guessing innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to a person's data, just a person. So if any information(data) hidden from government view in incriminating, then does that give "probable cause" to anything not already in plain sight? This would seem to be the death blow to already suffering 4th Amendment- "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Either NASA is deliberately playing down a more serious issue, or we have some very incompetent saboteurs.
Yeah, I can't see the possible value in the act other than to a) marr NASA's image b) start a fire. Option "b" makes more sense to me in terms of having a greater potential effect. Option "a" would only work if it were part of an ongoing program of sabotage.
unlike today where even the stock market gains don't keep up with the TRUE cost of inflation.
By true cost of inflation do you mean the cost of living? Average rental prices in NYC are up 20% in the last four years, I'm guessing most everyone didn't get %5 annual raises every year. Even if the stock price did keep up.
And what about this "hard wired vs soft wired" stuff?
I get so annoyed when people talk about "hardwired" like we have some kind of genetic memory. We have great genetic potential to learn languages when comared to other animals, but we don't come with linguistic firmware. Watching a baby "discover" that they are moving their arms and hands around makes me think we may have no firmware at all. Just lots of potential, and the spark of conciousness.
increased CO2 emissions from coal burning that would mandate radical restructuring of global energy technology
As we are all aware, the whole global warming problem presented by rising levels of CO2 is that more energy is trapped here on Earth. So how is trapping more energy from the sun and sending more energy to Earth going to help the problem? Maybe the solar collector will be directly between the Sun and Earth, thus removing as much incoming solar energy as it is beaming down to our power station. But which countries are going to volunteer to give up much of their sunlight? Perhaps thousands of little collectors evenly distributed in the Earth bound Sunshine would solve the politics by giving an even reduction of sunlight globally, but if we can do that, why are we so worried about CO2 levels, just reflect the nessecary amount of incoming solar energy to counteract our increased atmospheric insulation. Don't even bother with the energy collection, we have an excess of Earth bound energy as it is.
Well the NEA only got about $150 million. Why? cause that's how much they need. It costs alot to get to Mars, so alot was spent. Not many other groups wanted to chip in to defray the costs. NSF doesn't bear the burden of all math,physics,chemistry research alone, there are many other groups that contribute, so the budget is lower. Starving artists work for damn close to nothing, and there are many other contributing groups, so the NEA budget is lower still. It's not a question of useable returns, but what it costs to get the job done. Why would a government that runs as our kind of deficit care about getting return on money spent? They just make/take more.
Why can't the world's greatest military power, using the best trained soldiers and the most expensive weapons, not beat an enemy using simple weapons?
Because great big organizations are slow. We aren't going to even decide if The Surge is working until Septmeber. Then there will be discussions and debates on what to do. Meanwhile we are trying to fight against an enemy that makes a plan in the morning and executes it that afternoon. We can't go after anything stationary like their supply lines because that happens to be the same as the infrastructure of the country we are trying to "free". It's like you are boxing a smaller weaker opponent, but you are blindfolded and you get verbal instructions from someone watching on a video delayed monitor.
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"As long as juries can be educated that they can agree that they can declare laws unjust and kill the mess. "
If you can get a someone on the jury that actually knows about jury nullifaction/veto, past the RIAA lawyers. And for that matter past the Judge. Have you noticed how Judges tell the jury how they should view the evidence or how part of testimony should be disregarded? In my own recent experience as a juror, the judge did everything short of directly instructing us on how to find the case.
Why is it then, that when you see most Americans on the phone in a public place, they are usually shouting?
I attribute that to the disposable nature of our mobile phones. If you have a crappy mic or a crappy speaker you feel the need to shout. If a company were to market a phone on it's superior audio properties, and the phone sold well then we might see a change in this behaviour. But phones are marketed on their slick new look and fancy new options, and the phone companies are all too happy to attribute all of the call quality the "network". This keeps people with the same provider but buying new phones every two years.
If you can't come to an agreement about which freaking shows go on the DVR, then you probably shouldn't be married to each other.
Second that, but for a slightly different reason. I'm unmarried, but have had roommates in the past, and had to share the DVR. If the DVR can record 60 hours, and there are 2 people, you each get 28 hours worth of shows, with the extra left for last minute stuff that must be accounted for ASAP. Once your amount of time is full you must delete old shows if you want to record new shows. It's just like any other kind of budgeting, if your mate can't budget DVR time they probably can't budget much else and you might not want to tie your finances with them in the bonds of matrimony.
Some pervert off'ed himself? Why the fuck should I care?
Yes, the guy was a pervert. He had problems and needed help. He probably knew that he needed help, that's why he didn't show up at the sting. The thing is "pervert" was just one facet of the man. He still had family and friends and a successful career. But once the cameras showed up "pervert" was all that he would ever be again, it the public eye. It wouldn't matter if he got the help he needed. It wouldn't matter if he went overseas and got himself castrated to control his unacceptable urges. (Illegal in the US even at the patients request) He had been publicly declared a "pervert" and instantly became a sub-human monster. No trial, no getting speak up for himself, just condemnation. Pedophilia is no where near the national problem that Alcoholism is in terms of total damage to lives and property, but alcoholics aren't required to be on a national list, or live a certain distance from schools (or bars), and are rarely run out of town or refused housing. The only reason that it is OK to write this guy off as being less than human is because his particular failing is taboo.
Actually you have to treat them very differently. I can make off-color jokes with my male co-workers. I can make physical contact with my male co-workers. I can go to a bar after work with my male co-workers. If I were the type of guy to treat people like shit, I could do so, with my male underling co-workers.
why are we really looking at this?
Hey, I always see things I want to study in greater detail when I'm hanging out "looking for wobble".
Ratings are more important than real news, truth, or helping someone with an obvious problem. I love how when a TV station is selling ad space they market the ablity to influence the public, but when they air programs that serve to lower the ethical or intellectual standings of America, tehy claim "We just give the people what they want." Which is it? Does the public control the TV or does the TV control the public?
if the military couldnt do the job of holding the country it had taken over?
If we had truely taken Iraq,as in made it into a territory, and we were willing to play the role of conquerers, then our Army would be doing just fine. But to play the role of conquerer, we would need to subjigate the whole country holding all Iraqis responsible for the crimes of any insurgents. We would also have gone in with the intention of staying and ruling. The governing force would have been an American Vice-Roy from day one. The levels of totalitarian violence would have been on par with Saddam's rule, at least for the first few years. Armies can take over a country, but they cannot make the Iraqi people into a cohesive, democratic culture. Only the Iraqi people can do that, and it will probably take a long bloody civil war to do that. There war, that they need to fight for their country.
Just more proof that the modern army is defective on basic no-man's land tactics that their grandfathers would have been familiar with.
The army is plenty familiar with how to make a no-man's land, it's the press, and consiquentially the American People that will not allow those kind of tactics. This war is going the same way Vietnam went, because it has about the same support from the people that Vietnam had. War is terrible and ugly, the people don't want terrible and ugly, because they don't really believe in the cause. So the Army is asked to fight the Disney version of War. In DisneyWar only bad guys die, the oppressed welcome us as heroes, and all the soldiers come home in time for Christmas. The problem being of course DisneyWar doesn't really exist.
Armies are for killing the enemy, not for making new friends, not for keeping peace.
The day they don't let me in because my cell phone has a camera is the day I stop going to movies.
The day bootleggers start selling a movie that was recorded with a cameraphone, is the death of bootleg video. Any decent bootleg is recorded straight from a digital source, a movie recorded from the back of a theatre, even with a tripod, isn't worth the $5 the street hawker would charge.
To people who grew up with computers, these "challenges" are about as daunting as the "challenges" one faces when going fishing or camping or riding a bike. None of the skills you need are all that difficult to learn, if you do it once or twice you've got it.
like crippling access to the backbones
Maybe then "packet shaping" will encounter any opponent with enough clout to make politicians see it for the problem that it is.
The question is not just have they been broken? But, by what percentage of the populace are they regularly broken? I'm thinking of things like: speed limits, marijuana laws, jaywalking, (in it's day) prohibition, etc. If the people choose to ignore the law, then why is it a law? There are countless laws on the books, left there to be tools for the police or local government to use to control the citizens. Is there any doubt that parking or most speeding tickets are nothing more than revenue for the local government? Do marijuana laws do anything other than create a source of funding for organized crime? DRM does it's job just fine, it criminalizes people, which gives other people the leverage to control them.
The Average Joe doesn't need to be able to crack it himself. He just needs to get ahold of a cracked copy. Which he can.
"unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce."
I thought the whole point of FairUse is that it isn't commerce. No money trades hands, so it's not protected as an act of commerce. This would be an unfair or deceptive act that affects personal use.
"or even to threaten (other than with violence)."
But couldn't the threat of being sued for more than you are likely to make in your lifetime a form of "financial violence". Yes the term sounds like a stretch, but when you consider the potential for life altering harm and combine it with the outcome of suit being more influenced by who can afford what lawyers over who is right, well it resembles violence in every way in which violence is used to threaten and subdue. Perhaps it should be illegal for corperations to threaten legal action when no law has been broken.
And what happens if someone slips through the radar, gets hired, and conducts IBM business dressed as a flying phallus?
Then couldn't they be fired for conducting IBM business through a non-company avatar? Sidenote: Does the company you work for have a written policy against flashing clients?
if one cloaks data by encrypting it, exactly what incriminating evidence does that provide?
As private citizens we arent allowed to hide anything from the government.
So I'm guessing innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to a person's data, just a person. So if any information(data) hidden from government view in incriminating, then does that give "probable cause" to anything not already in plain sight? This would seem to be the death blow to already suffering 4th Amendment- "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Either NASA is deliberately playing down a more serious issue, or we have some very incompetent saboteurs.
Yeah, I can't see the possible value in the act other than to a) marr NASA's image b) start a fire. Option "b" makes more sense to me in terms of having a greater potential effect. Option "a" would only work if it were part of an ongoing program of sabotage.
unlike today where even the stock market gains don't keep up with the TRUE cost of inflation.
By true cost of inflation do you mean the cost of living? Average rental prices in NYC are up 20% in the last four years, I'm guessing most everyone didn't get %5 annual raises every year. Even if the stock price did keep up.
And what about this "hard wired vs soft wired" stuff?
I get so annoyed when people talk about "hardwired" like we have some kind of genetic memory. We have great genetic potential to learn languages when comared to other animals, but we don't come with linguistic firmware. Watching a baby "discover" that they are moving their arms and hands around makes me think we may have no firmware at all. Just lots of potential, and the spark of conciousness.
increased CO2 emissions from coal burning that would mandate radical restructuring of global energy technology
As we are all aware, the whole global warming problem presented by rising levels of CO2 is that more energy is trapped here on Earth. So how is trapping more energy from the sun and sending more energy to Earth going to help the problem? Maybe the solar collector will be directly between the Sun and Earth, thus removing as much incoming solar energy as it is beaming down to our power station. But which countries are going to volunteer to give up much of their sunlight? Perhaps thousands of little collectors evenly distributed in the Earth bound Sunshine would solve the politics by giving an even reduction of sunlight globally, but if we can do that, why are we so worried about CO2 levels, just reflect the nessecary amount of incoming solar energy to counteract our increased atmospheric insulation. Don't even bother with the energy collection, we have an excess of Earth bound energy as it is.
Well the NEA only got about $150 million. Why? cause that's how much they need. It costs alot to get to Mars, so alot was spent. Not many other groups wanted to chip in to defray the costs. NSF doesn't bear the burden of all math,physics,chemistry research alone, there are many other groups that contribute, so the budget is lower. Starving artists work for damn close to nothing, and there are many other contributing groups, so the NEA budget is lower still. It's not a question of useable returns, but what it costs to get the job done. Why would a government that runs as our kind of deficit care about getting return on money spent? They just make/take more.
Way too much metal to carry around to feed it.
That's why it's getting a laser. Kinda what the whole article was about: lasers on trucks. You should read it some time.
Why can't the world's greatest military power, using the best trained soldiers and the most expensive weapons, not beat an enemy using simple weapons?
Because great big organizations are slow. We aren't going to even decide if The Surge is working until Septmeber. Then there will be discussions and debates on what to do. Meanwhile we are trying to fight against an enemy that makes a plan in the morning and executes it that afternoon. We can't go after anything stationary like their supply lines because that happens to be the same as the infrastructure of the country we are trying to "free". It's like you are boxing a smaller weaker opponent, but you are blindfolded and you get verbal instructions from someone watching on a video delayed monitor.