Easy. Leviticus is Old Testament. Christianity is New Testament. The Old Testament (covenant, i.e. how the relationship with God works) was a covenant of Law and punishment for sin (cf God's word to Adam: "If you sin you will die"). The New Testament is a covenant of grace where punishment is deferred until Judgement Day in favour of repentance and forgiveness (these were also available in the OT but the focus of the OT is more on living by Law) and can probably be simplified to "When you sin, repent and you will be forgiven".
So the GP was correct; anyone who claims to be a Christian (New Testament) and [lives in Old Testament ways] is at best confused. Hating people and killing those who won't repent is not part of Christianity and cannot be justified from the New Testament.
Anyone who claims to be a Christian should take Jesus' lead. When presented with a woman caught in adultery (John's gospel, chapter 3), for which the Old Testament judgement was being stoned to death, Jesus stated "Whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone" - nobody did, and when the crowd had dispersed Jesus concluded with "Has nobody condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin." Personally I can't find anything that justifies Christians for killing homosexuals (or anyone, for that matter).
> how you can...follow the Christian bible is a mystery to me
Understanding the differences between Old and New Testaments is a major step in demystifying the whole thing. Many Christians, myself included, find everything we need in the New Testament, with the Old primarily useful for historical context - Jesus was a Jew so understanding the Jewish mindset helps clarify some of the more cryptic stuff he said.
If you want to understand Christianity try reading Luke's gospel; this was written by a doctor and is quite detailed (his methodical and thorough approach should resonate with most slashdotters). A modern translation such as the NIV (New International Version) is a good choice; this dispenses with the meaningless "yea verily sayeth I unto thee" nonsense in favour of more modern language (to be fair, the King James version (KJV) wasn't meaningless when it was written 5 gazillion years ago, but the English language has moved on since then. A translation into English you don't understand is as useful as the ancient Latin translations). If you don't want to buy one, read it online at biblegateway.com.
> it's not supposed to be subject to rational thought - you take it on faith, unquestioning
Possibly for some, but I don't. I find questioning everything is critical to remaining on track. Faith is important, but it doesn't mean you switch your brain off and go into sheep mode. It's perfectly possible to be a Christian and to be rational; there are a few axioms you take on faith ("God exists", "God desires relationship with us", for example, although I still question these from time to time) but there is no requirement to be dumb. God gave us brains and logical, rational thought to use, not to discard. 1 John 4:1 "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."
> Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded.
Well, to be hon...buffering. est, I usu...buffering. ally wait unt...buffering. il the fi...buffering. le has comp...buffering. letely downl...buffering. oaded before I st...buffering. art to watc...buffering. h it anywa...buffering. y, otherwise it j...buffering. ust gets frus...buffering.
Presumably the photos on the site are in some sort of order - order of taking, or order of upload perhaps? This might be wrong of course.
But what strikes me is that there are photos that are obviously his both before and after the "thief's" photos. So either it's a hoax, or Flickr for some reason inserts your latest photos halfway down the list. Or he got his phone back. Any other options?
Fair enough. The principle source doc I use is the bible. I don't expect you to consider it inerrant, but I would ask you to apply the same standards to the historic record in the bible as you would to any other historic document and thus not automatically consider everything in the bible 100% errant without at least a bit of checking, because that would lead you to an equally circular argument ("it says so in the bible; the bible is totally wrong on everything, therefore the truth must be anything other than what is actually written" is just as invalid as the position you are concerned I have).
Dating, cross referencing manuscripts with both church and non-church lit, other useful stuff like the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on (see part one of an Alpha course for the full list) all suggest that the bible we have today is a close approximation to what was originally written and that what was written was open to sufficient peer review for any obvious mistakes (like "no, he didn't claim he was God", or "no you're not a simple fisherman, you're someone smart enough to have a cleverly thought out agenda") to be pointed out.
But Christianity is not about faith in the bible. It's not called Bible-ianity for a reason (other than that there would be a less lame word for it). Christianity is about faith in God because of what Christ did, and that the problem that initially separated us from God, namely disobedience, is now resolved and the opportunity to restore the relationship with our creator is now open to everyone.
> for some reason you let the the first three options slide without each needing affirmative supporting evidence.
Yeah, I suppose that's a fair point. But I'm not about to dump the contents of an Alpha course into a Slashdot text box; all I'll say is that that's where you can find the answers to those questions. There's more to Alpha than just the facts; there's also free food, and if you just turned up for that it wouldn't be the first time; ok, TANSTAAFL, but on the other hand it's not a high pressure timeshare big sell - a properly run Alpha course should present Christianity and give you the choice to leave at any time saying thanks but no thanks.
Also I'm not an ancient lit geek, I'm a computer geek. It's enough for me to know that stuff is out there. If after listening to Alpha part 1 you want to go and look at the documents themselves feel free.
> Whether you actually are can only be decided from whether your actions are in keeping with that organisation's goals.
Which is precisely why Muslims worldwide need to consistently condemn those who carry out the attacks in the name of Islam. That they don't implies Muslims support or are at least sympathetic to the terrorists, and until they do the term "Islamic/Muslim terrorist" will remain justified in the minds of many.
For direct comparison when were the IRA last, if ever, known as "Catholic terrorists"?
OK, if that's non sequitur then how about your own logic: If you question the word of God, your religion does not worth a calfskin the book is written on.
If you are questioning the word of Allah (which you imply you are with the question "Why do you assume I am not questioning"), then by your own logic you are declaring your own faith to be "not worth a calfskin the book is written on".
But I differ from your position, although with a reservation (this is the reason I'm posting). If you are questioning in the sense of saying "Sorry God but I think you're wrong here and I think I should be able to commit murder" then of course you are correct (although I would personally call this "contradicting" rather than "questioning"). But if you are questioning from a position of seeking clarity (e.g. "Why did those people blow up my friends") then this is not anti-faith but in fact reinforces your relationship with God in that you are (a) seeking him for help and (b) recognising that he is in a position to be able and willing to help you.
Jesus worship is only idolatry if Jesus isn't God; John clarified this relationship at the start: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and dwelt with us".
Jesus was crucified for his claims to be God; on trial, the high priest tore his robes (apparently that's how they passed judgement; this must have been before they discovered banging a hammer on the table was a lot cheaper) and said something along the lines of "what more do we need, we have heard the blasphemy from his own mouth". He clearly communicated to the Jews that he was God; they were (and probably still are) strictly monotheistic and held that only God could forgive sin; he forgave sin therefore claiming in their eyes to be God, not to mention the "before Abraham was, I am" which is fairly nonsensical to us but crystal clear in its meaning back then. So if he wasn't God he was guilty of serious (and fatal) miscommunication, and having been brought up a Jew it's unlikely he wouldn't have known what impact such statements would have had.
So CS Lewis's analysis remains: Jesus is a liar (claiming to be God and knowing he isn't), or a lunatic (claiming to be God and not knowing he isn't) or he is God. There is no other option.
Equally though I'll probably now get the old "or he didn't claim to be God in the first place", most likely without explanation of why he was crucified, or even just the assertion (probably without supporting evidence) that the bible account doesn't tally with what actually happened.
Something that's intrigued me since I noticed it, relating to hypersphere volumes. In 1D it's 2r, in 2D it's pi.r^2. 3D is 4/3 pi.r^3. The sequence continues: const.pi^2.r^4, const.pi^2.r^5, const.pi^3.r^6, const.pi^3.r^7 (can't remember offhand what the consts are but they can easily be found).
Obviously you're going to get an extra r with each dimension, buy why do you only get another pi every other dimension?
While I'm at it, on a related subject it seems to me there are two possible ways of constructing a 4D hypersphere. Both are similar to two different approaches for constructing a 2D hypersphere (aka circle): (a) take a short line, increase its length to the midpoint, then decrease its length (a bit like integration?); (b) take a straight line from (-r,0) to (+r,0) and spin it 180 degrees around (0,0). The first is somewhat similar to blowing up a balloon then letting it down again, if you take time as the fourth dimension (which I know you can't and all that, but IF you did purely as a mental exercise rather than a rigorous mathematical proof), and the resulting cross section would be a single sphere. The second takes two spheres and spins them round 180 degrees to form a sort of torus whose cross section would of course be two spheres. Which is correct and why?
IANAM, obviously. Got A-level maths in 1986 though.
You're reading too much into my point, which is simply this: what are THEY suing HIM for?
THEY is defined as the RIAA, and HIM is defined as the guy in the article whose kids are now apparently getting sued. That's all. I'm not asking what the RIAA are suing hundreds of other people for; I'm sure there's a good chance your hunch is correct and that it's the same thing, but a hunch is not an answer to the question.
Nor am I saying it's ok for them to be doing anything, just that I had some sort of idea that if you have responsibilities during life, then some of those responsibilities transfer at your death to your estate. Maybe it's only assets that transfer, but if that's the case why do loans need death cover. As I said, I'm not a lawyer.
It's also a dig at the journos for missing this rather obvious fact. Unless the RIAA have only ever sued any entity in their entire existence over file sharing, it's not immediately obvious that them suing someone is necessarily over file sharing (this is simple logic, I'm surprised I have to explain this to someone whose nick suggests they are a lawyer).
"What did he actually do" is a question, not an unwarranted assumption.
"The RIAA bases its suits on the same thing" sounds like an unwarranted assumption to me. Are you sure that's what they're suing this particular individual for? Never mind what they usually sue for.
"The lawyer has every right to substitute the estate representative". Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry if I didn't use exactly the correct legal terminology; IANAFL.
But what did he actually do (allegedly)? There's nothing in the linked article on what they were actually suing for in the first place. If he has gained from his activities at their expense, then his estate has also gained. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that their claim moves from him to the executors of his estate on his death.
But of course "RIAA sues dead man's kids" makes for better headlines and therefore more sales than "RIAA has a valid point".
> Read the damn article yourself...If I was the child's parent, I'd be writing to...national newspapers
Good advice, particularly the bit about reading the article. By the way, you do know that the Daily Mail *is* a national newspaper in the UK don't you? Good, just checking.
There is substantial feedback in the Daily Mail website just below the article, none of it in support of the police.
What I wonder though is why the article failed to show a picture of the tree. The kids were accused of stripping every branch off it; if this is true then the damage should be obvious to everyone and the response may in fact have been appropriate. Not that I'd accuse the Great British Press of having a Political Agenda, oh no.
"In both this article and the one about standing vs. sitting at work, I see endless well-intentioned posts from people saying, "this is how you fix your problem." Almost always, it means (and often actually says) "this is how I fixed my problem, so you should do it to.""
The tone of your post suggests you believe this to be a problem and that people who have had this problem and solved it shouldn't answer. Are you therefore proposing that answers should only come from (a) people who have no experience resolving this kind of problem and (b) people who have 100% understanding of this individual's specific circumstances and absolute certainty as to the cause of their problem?
Personally I'd consider answers from the first group to have less relevance than answers from the people to which you object, and I'm pretty sure the second group is non-existent.
> If you have a "loser pays" technique, then the larger companies are just going to drown the small man into debt.
Only if you implement it in the most retarded way possible: big company determines what loser pays. Why do Americans always assume that's the only way to implement it?
In the UK we have loser pays and the courts recognise drowning someone in debt is not the solution, so the judge determines what the loser pays based on the loser's means. This can mean the winner scores a legal victory but still loses out financially, which is an incentive for the big company to settle out of court, which is no bad thing.
Doesn't tally with my experience
on
Spam from Taiwan
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· Score: 1
They must be good at identifying USA email addresses then. The vast majority of spam I get is from the USA. But then I'm in the UK, so perhaps Taiwan doesn't spam me as much as they spam Americans. Hey, perhaps this is another form of terrorism, is Taiwan on the Axis Of Evil?
Read the law. You would need to prove substantial loss to yourself caused by Joe Blow copying your CD to his iPod. Since there is no loss to yourself in this situation (since you don't sell iPods loaded with your music, or music in iPod-only format), you have effectively no case. If you managed to squeeze a judgement out of the system and expected compensation, you would be compensated for your actual loss, which is nothing. Joe is technically in the wrong, but there's nowt you can do about it. If your music is that precious, don't play it to anyone and don't sell CDs.
Why do people always seem to assume that "loser pays" is implemented in the most retarded way possible: loser pays all costs incurred by winner regardless of personal ability and winner's invention? In the UK the loser pays, but the judge decides what the loser pays. If you sue Microsoft and lose, and they claim their lawyer cost them a googolplex pounds and you've got a sub-poverty income, the judge will order you to pay a minimal amount, court costs perhaps; the amount will be appropriately punitive. You will *NOT* be reduced to permanent debt to the winner.
Yes, that does mean the winner can lose out overall. That is what keeps the system relatively sane and provides a good incentive to BOTH sides to settle out of court.
Not fair on winners, who haven't done anything wrong and therefore shouldn't lose anything? Maybe. Is it as retarded as US "justice"? No way. Can you buy a favourable outcome if you stump up enough cash, even if you're in the wrong? Definitely not. Personally I prefer our system; it's not flawless by any means but overall I think it does a reasonable job.
and I've been very happy with it. It's fairly basic as projectors go, but it does the job well enough for me, and although I can see the rainbow effect it doesn't bother me.
Best way to demo the rainbow effect is to get a small patch of light colour surrounded by a lot of dark. Then you can look rapidly left to right and as your eyes move you'll get the different R,G and B parts of that light spot. The effects are similar to mouse trails.
I think whether or not the rainbow effect bothers you could depend on the way you watch films (and you won't know that until you think about it next time you're watching one). If your eyes are constantly darting around the screen picking up detail from all over, then it could be a problem. OTOH, if you just stare at the middle of the screen and pick up other stuff with peripheral vision then it probably won't be. It isn't a problem for me at all and I'm in the latter category.
FWIW, the X2 is plugged into a Media Centre PC with the sound wired into a standard hifi. Surround sound is something I plan to get eventually (a friend brought a surround system round for the Ringathon I hosted) but it's low priority in my life at the moment.
On the projector front though, the only thing I'd do differently is to get a 16/9 projector instead of a 4/3. It's mainly for watching films, and the horizontal stripes are more annoying than the vertical stripes I'd get with a 4/3 show on a 16/9.
Speed and efficiency. I demonstrated the difference in editors at a course once (I was a student), we had this poxy slow text editor which was probably fine for what it was designed for, but as a fast efficient editor it was completely useless. As an example I showed the behaviour of each doing a global search and replace of spaces to dots (at the time it was relevant for some reason). The course editor did a highlight - wait - swap - highlight - wait - swap cycle, probably replacing 1-2 spaces a second, very pretty, but extremely boring after the first few and certainly not something you'd want to do regularly or on large files. vi (not actually vim of course) took an admittedly cryptic something like:1$s//./g (I use emacs these days (Altxrepl s Enter.Enter) so my vi's a bit rusty) - done in subsecond time. vi is cryptic when you see the commands written out like that but it's not really that much more cryptic than AltER Tab.Enter (Windows notepad), the only difference with the latter is that the commands are drawn out on the screen taking up valuable screen space away from code instead of the vi commands which are on that quick reference card stuck to the side of the monitor.
IMHO xxx isn't a good TLD; it should be a 2LD at most because different countries have different obscenity laws. So a xxx.us might have pictures of, say, a briefly uncovered boob at a superbowl, but where countries are much more relaxed about that sort of thing, say Germany, xxx.de wouldn't be necessary for anything below serious hard core stuff. Regulations that apply to the US do not necessarily apply to the rest of the world.
It ignores gameplay. Apart from the ability to shoot the monster, is Quake 2 (haven't tried 3 or 4) really any more playable than 3D Monster Maze? T.Rex got me regularly, and I still remember jumping out of my skin as I accidentally strolled past him and having to push the 7 key REALLY HARD on the grounds that the key was pressure sensitive and would let you run faster if you only pressed hard enough, which for some reason I could never do. (OK, I was only 14 at the time so perhaps that had something to do with it.)
Slashdot Mirror
> how does this square with Leviticus
Easy. Leviticus is Old Testament. Christianity is New Testament. The Old Testament (covenant, i.e. how the relationship with God works) was a covenant of Law and punishment for sin (cf God's word to Adam: "If you sin you will die"). The New Testament is a covenant of grace where punishment is deferred until Judgement Day in favour of repentance and forgiveness (these were also available in the OT but the focus of the OT is more on living by Law) and can probably be simplified to "When you sin, repent and you will be forgiven".
So the GP was correct; anyone who claims to be a Christian (New Testament) and [lives in Old Testament ways] is at best confused. Hating people and killing those who won't repent is not part of Christianity and cannot be justified from the New Testament.
Anyone who claims to be a Christian should take Jesus' lead. When presented with a woman caught in adultery (John's gospel, chapter 3), for which the Old Testament judgement was being stoned to death, Jesus stated "Whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone" - nobody did, and when the crowd had dispersed Jesus concluded with "Has nobody condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin." Personally I can't find anything that justifies Christians for killing homosexuals (or anyone, for that matter).
> how you can...follow the Christian bible is a mystery to me
Understanding the differences between Old and New Testaments is a major step in demystifying the whole thing. Many Christians, myself included, find everything we need in the New Testament, with the Old primarily useful for historical context - Jesus was a Jew so understanding the Jewish mindset helps clarify some of the more cryptic stuff he said.
If you want to understand Christianity try reading Luke's gospel; this was written by a doctor and is quite detailed (his methodical and thorough approach should resonate with most slashdotters). A modern translation such as the NIV (New International Version) is a good choice; this dispenses with the meaningless "yea verily sayeth I unto thee" nonsense in favour of more modern language (to be fair, the King James version (KJV) wasn't meaningless when it was written 5 gazillion years ago, but the English language has moved on since then. A translation into English you don't understand is as useful as the ancient Latin translations). If you don't want to buy one, read it online at biblegateway.com.
> it's not supposed to be subject to rational thought - you take it on faith, unquestioning
Possibly for some, but I don't. I find questioning everything is critical to remaining on track. Faith is important, but it doesn't mean you switch your brain off and go into sheep mode. It's perfectly possible to be a Christian and to be rational; there are a few axioms you take on faith ("God exists", "God desires relationship with us", for example, although I still question these from time to time) but there is no requirement to be dumb. God gave us brains and logical, rational thought to use, not to discard. 1 John 4:1 "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."
> Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded.
Well, to be hon...buffering.
est, I usu...buffering.
ally wait unt...buffering.
il the fi...buffering.
le has comp...buffering.
letely downl...buffering.
oaded before I st...buffering.
art to watc...buffering.
h it anywa...buffering.
y, otherwise it j...buffering.
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oh sod this, I'll go and do something else.
Presumably the photos on the site are in some sort of order - order of taking, or order of upload perhaps? This might be wrong of course.
But what strikes me is that there are photos that are obviously his both before and after the "thief's" photos. So either it's a hoax, or Flickr for some reason inserts your latest photos halfway down the list. Or he got his phone back. Any other options?
Fair enough. The principle source doc I use is the bible. I don't expect you to consider it inerrant, but I would ask you to apply the same standards to the historic record in the bible as you would to any other historic document and thus not automatically consider everything in the bible 100% errant without at least a bit of checking, because that would lead you to an equally circular argument ("it says so in the bible; the bible is totally wrong on everything, therefore the truth must be anything other than what is actually written" is just as invalid as the position you are concerned I have).
Dating, cross referencing manuscripts with both church and non-church lit, other useful stuff like the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on (see part one of an Alpha course for the full list) all suggest that the bible we have today is a close approximation to what was originally written and that what was written was open to sufficient peer review for any obvious mistakes (like "no, he didn't claim he was God", or "no you're not a simple fisherman, you're someone smart enough to have a cleverly thought out agenda") to be pointed out.
But Christianity is not about faith in the bible. It's not called Bible-ianity for a reason (other than that there would be a less lame word for it). Christianity is about faith in God because of what Christ did, and that the problem that initially separated us from God, namely disobedience, is now resolved and the opportunity to restore the relationship with our creator is now open to everyone.
> for some reason you let the the first three options slide without each needing affirmative supporting evidence.
Yeah, I suppose that's a fair point. But I'm not about to dump the contents of an Alpha course into a Slashdot text box; all I'll say is that that's where you can find the answers to those questions. There's more to Alpha than just the facts; there's also free food, and if you just turned up for that it wouldn't be the first time; ok, TANSTAAFL, but on the other hand it's not a high pressure timeshare big sell - a properly run Alpha course should present Christianity and give you the choice to leave at any time saying thanks but no thanks.
Also I'm not an ancient lit geek, I'm a computer geek. It's enough for me to know that stuff is out there. If after listening to Alpha part 1 you want to go and look at the documents themselves feel free.
> Whether you actually are can only be decided from whether your actions are in keeping with that organisation's goals.
Which is precisely why Muslims worldwide need to consistently condemn those who carry out the attacks in the name of Islam. That they don't implies Muslims support or are at least sympathetic to the terrorists, and until they do the term "Islamic/Muslim terrorist" will remain justified in the minds of many.
For direct comparison when were the IRA last, if ever, known as "Catholic terrorists"?
OK, if that's non sequitur then how about your own logic: If you question the word of God, your religion does not worth a calfskin the book is written on.
If you are questioning the word of Allah (which you imply you are with the question "Why do you assume I am not questioning"), then by your own logic you are declaring your own faith to be "not worth a calfskin the book is written on".
But I differ from your position, although with a reservation (this is the reason I'm posting). If you are questioning in the sense of saying "Sorry God but I think you're wrong here and I think I should be able to commit murder" then of course you are correct (although I would personally call this "contradicting" rather than "questioning"). But if you are questioning from a position of seeking clarity (e.g. "Why did those people blow up my friends") then this is not anti-faith but in fact reinforces your relationship with God in that you are (a) seeking him for help and (b) recognising that he is in a position to be able and willing to help you.
Jesus worship is only idolatry if Jesus isn't God; John clarified this relationship at the start: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and dwelt with us".
Jesus was crucified for his claims to be God; on trial, the high priest tore his robes (apparently that's how they passed judgement; this must have been before they discovered banging a hammer on the table was a lot cheaper) and said something along the lines of "what more do we need, we have heard the blasphemy from his own mouth". He clearly communicated to the Jews that he was God; they were (and probably still are) strictly monotheistic and held that only God could forgive sin; he forgave sin therefore claiming in their eyes to be God, not to mention the "before Abraham was, I am" which is fairly nonsensical to us but crystal clear in its meaning back then. So if he wasn't God he was guilty of serious (and fatal) miscommunication, and having been brought up a Jew it's unlikely he wouldn't have known what impact such statements would have had.
So CS Lewis's analysis remains: Jesus is a liar (claiming to be God and knowing he isn't), or a lunatic (claiming to be God and not knowing he isn't) or he is God. There is no other option.
Equally though I'll probably now get the old "or he didn't claim to be God in the first place", most likely without explanation of why he was crucified, or even just the assertion (probably without supporting evidence) that the bible account doesn't tally with what actually happened.
Something that's intrigued me since I noticed it, relating to hypersphere volumes. In 1D it's 2r, in 2D it's pi.r^2. 3D is 4/3 pi.r^3. The sequence continues: const.pi^2.r^4, const.pi^2.r^5, const.pi^3.r^6, const.pi^3.r^7 (can't remember offhand what the consts are but they can easily be found).
Obviously you're going to get an extra r with each dimension, buy why do you only get another pi every other dimension?
While I'm at it, on a related subject it seems to me there are two possible ways of constructing a 4D hypersphere. Both are similar to two different approaches for constructing a 2D hypersphere (aka circle): (a) take a short line, increase its length to the midpoint, then decrease its length (a bit like integration?); (b) take a straight line from (-r,0) to (+r,0) and spin it 180 degrees around (0,0). The first is somewhat similar to blowing up a balloon then letting it down again, if you take time as the fourth dimension (which I know you can't and all that, but IF you did purely as a mental exercise rather than a rigorous mathematical proof), and the resulting cross section would be a single sphere. The second takes two spheres and spins them round 180 degrees to form a sort of torus whose cross section would of course be two spheres. Which is correct and why?
IANAM, obviously. Got A-level maths in 1986 though.
You're reading too much into my point, which is simply this: what are THEY suing HIM for?
THEY is defined as the RIAA, and HIM is defined as the guy in the article whose kids are now apparently getting sued. That's all. I'm not asking what the RIAA are suing hundreds of other people for; I'm sure there's a good chance your hunch is correct and that it's the same thing, but a hunch is not an answer to the question.
Nor am I saying it's ok for them to be doing anything, just that I had some sort of idea that if you have responsibilities during life, then some of those responsibilities transfer at your death to your estate. Maybe it's only assets that transfer, but if that's the case why do loans need death cover. As I said, I'm not a lawyer.
It's also a dig at the journos for missing this rather obvious fact. Unless the RIAA have only ever sued any entity in their entire existence over file sharing, it's not immediately obvious that them suing someone is necessarily over file sharing (this is simple logic, I'm surprised I have to explain this to someone whose nick suggests they are a lawyer).
"What did he actually do" is a question, not an unwarranted assumption.
"The RIAA bases its suits on the same thing" sounds like an unwarranted assumption to me. Are you sure that's what they're suing this particular individual for? Never mind what they usually sue for.
"The lawyer has every right to substitute the estate representative". Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry if I didn't use exactly the correct legal terminology; IANAFL.
But what did he actually do (allegedly)? There's nothing in the linked article on what they were actually suing for in the first place. If he has gained from his activities at their expense, then his estate has also gained. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that their claim moves from him to the executors of his estate on his death.
But of course "RIAA sues dead man's kids" makes for better headlines and therefore more sales than "RIAA has a valid point".
> Read the damn article yourself...If I was the child's parent, I'd be writing to...national newspapers
Good advice, particularly the bit about reading the article. By the way, you do know that the Daily Mail *is* a national newspaper in the UK don't you? Good, just checking.
There is substantial feedback in the Daily Mail website just below the article, none of it in support of the police.
What I wonder though is why the article failed to show a picture of the tree. The kids were accused of stripping every branch off it; if this is true then the damage should be obvious to everyone and the response may in fact have been appropriate. Not that I'd accuse the Great British Press of having a Political Agenda, oh no.
"In both this article and the one about standing vs. sitting at work, I see endless well-intentioned posts from people saying, "this is how you fix your problem." Almost always, it means (and often actually says) "this is how I fixed my problem, so you should do it to.""
The tone of your post suggests you believe this to be a problem and that people who have had this problem and solved it shouldn't answer. Are you therefore proposing that answers should only come from (a) people who have no experience resolving this kind of problem and (b) people who have 100% understanding of this individual's specific circumstances and absolute certainty as to the cause of their problem?
Personally I'd consider answers from the first group to have less relevance than answers from the people to which you object, and I'm pretty sure the second group is non-existent.
> If you have a "loser pays" technique, then the larger companies are just going to drown the small man into debt.
Only if you implement it in the most retarded way possible: big company determines what loser pays. Why do Americans always assume that's the only way to implement it?
In the UK we have loser pays and the courts recognise drowning someone in debt is not the solution, so the judge determines what the loser pays based on the loser's means. This can mean the winner scores a legal victory but still loses out financially, which is an incentive for the big company to settle out of court, which is no bad thing.
They must be good at identifying USA email addresses then. The vast majority of spam I get is from the USA. But then I'm in the UK, so perhaps Taiwan doesn't spam me as much as they spam Americans. Hey, perhaps this is another form of terrorism, is Taiwan on the Axis Of Evil?
Read the law. You would need to prove substantial loss to yourself caused by Joe Blow copying your CD to his iPod. Since there is no loss to yourself in this situation (since you don't sell iPods loaded with your music, or music in iPod-only format), you have effectively no case. If you managed to squeeze a judgement out of the system and expected compensation, you would be compensated for your actual loss, which is nothing. Joe is technically in the wrong, but there's nowt you can do about it. If your music is that precious, don't play it to anyone and don't sell CDs.
Why do people always seem to assume that "loser pays" is implemented in the most retarded way possible: loser pays all costs incurred by winner regardless of personal ability and winner's invention? In the UK the loser pays, but the judge decides what the loser pays. If you sue Microsoft and lose, and they claim their lawyer cost them a googolplex pounds and you've got a sub-poverty income, the judge will order you to pay a minimal amount, court costs perhaps; the amount will be appropriately punitive. You will *NOT* be reduced to permanent debt to the winner.
Yes, that does mean the winner can lose out overall. That is what keeps the system relatively sane and provides a good incentive to BOTH sides to settle out of court.
Not fair on winners, who haven't done anything wrong and therefore shouldn't lose anything? Maybe. Is it as retarded as US "justice"? No way. Can you buy a favourable outcome if you stump up enough cash, even if you're in the wrong? Definitely not. Personally I prefer our system; it's not flawless by any means but overall I think it does a reasonable job.
and I've been very happy with it. It's fairly basic as projectors go, but it does the job well enough for me, and although I can see the rainbow effect it doesn't bother me.
Best way to demo the rainbow effect is to get a small patch of light colour surrounded by a lot of dark. Then you can look rapidly left to right and as your eyes move you'll get the different R,G and B parts of that light spot. The effects are similar to mouse trails.
I think whether or not the rainbow effect bothers you could depend on the way you watch films (and you won't know that until you think about it next time you're watching one). If your eyes are constantly darting around the screen picking up detail from all over, then it could be a problem. OTOH, if you just stare at the middle of the screen and pick up other stuff with peripheral vision then it probably won't be. It isn't a problem for me at all and I'm in the latter category.
FWIW, the X2 is plugged into a Media Centre PC with the sound wired into a standard hifi. Surround sound is something I plan to get eventually (a friend brought a surround system round for the Ringathon I hosted) but it's low priority in my life at the moment.
On the projector front though, the only thing I'd do differently is to get a 16/9 projector instead of a 4/3. It's mainly for watching films, and the horizontal stripes are more annoying than the vertical stripes I'd get with a 4/3 show on a 16/9.
Speed and efficiency. I demonstrated the difference in editors at a course once (I was a student), we had this poxy slow text editor which was probably fine for what it was designed for, but as a fast efficient editor it was completely useless. As an example I showed the behaviour of each doing a global search and replace of spaces to dots (at the time it was relevant for some reason). The course editor did a highlight - wait - swap - highlight - wait - swap cycle, probably replacing 1-2 spaces a second, very pretty, but extremely boring after the first few and certainly not something you'd want to do regularly or on large files. vi (not actually vim of course) took an admittedly cryptic something like :1$s/ /./g (I use emacs these days (Altxrepl s Enter.Enter) so my vi's a bit rusty) - done in subsecond time. vi is cryptic when you see the commands written out like that but it's not really that much more cryptic than AltER Tab.Enter (Windows notepad), the only difference with the latter is that the commands are drawn out on the screen taking up valuable screen space away from code instead of the vi commands which are on that quick reference card stuck to the side of the monitor.
> Surround it in tin foil
This has the added advantage that aliens, the FBI or whoever, can't listen to your music.
There's some interesting stuff up at icr.org, see for exampleo n=view&ID=1842
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&acti
"Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old."
- in other words, "video recorder" plus "with a computer".
phthrrrt. Adjust number of r's as required.
IMHO xxx isn't a good TLD; it should be a 2LD at most because different countries have different obscenity laws. So a xxx.us might have pictures of, say, a briefly uncovered boob at a superbowl, but where countries are much more relaxed about that sort of thing, say Germany, xxx.de wouldn't be necessary for anything below serious hard core stuff. Regulations that apply to the US do not necessarily apply to the rest of the world.
It ignores gameplay. Apart from the ability to shoot the monster, is Quake 2 (haven't tried 3 or 4) really any more playable than 3D Monster Maze? T.Rex got me regularly, and I still remember jumping out of my skin as I accidentally strolled past him and having to push the 7 key REALLY HARD on the grounds that the key was pressure sensitive and would let you run faster if you only pressed hard enough, which for some reason I could never do. (OK, I was only 14 at the time so perhaps that had something to do with it.)