If you don't think text messages are worth 15 or 20 cents each, then don't use them. (Yes, you can get your cell carrier to disable texting to your phone, you just have to yell at them for a while until they give you to a supervisor who can actually do it.)
I don't mind that the market will bear such high prices; what I mind is that there seems to be no competition on the part of the cell companies. Why would the price of SMS go UP when the cost of everything else related to cellphones has gone down? Compared to a few years ago, you can get more minutes, more features, better phones, etc. for the same or better prices... except SMS. Hell, I have unlimited web browsing on my cellphone, and it's $6 a month; unlimited SMS is $15 a month.
People trying to fool these machines will likely have lighters. With some experimentation you could figure out the distance behind the picture to hold the lighter so that it's the right temperature.
...for the.con TLD, which will confuse legions of Internet users into clicking on evil links, and has the added bonus of being poetically appropriate for that use:)
The other formats aren't "incorrect", they're just not as useful. MM/DD/YYYY isn't incorrect, it's just counterintuitive (however we silly Americans all learn it from birth...).
I always use YYYY-MM-DD for everything, for the exact reason you state (easy sorting), as well as inambiguity (I've seen DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY, but never YYYY-DD-MM, so if you see a 4-2-2 date, you know it's ISO 8601).
...and as was noted in the comments of the linked/. article, there are many other reactor designs that do not depend on that company to produce the reactor vessel.
All joking aside, can we put the "Slashdotters never get girls" meme out to pasture? I've been married for six years (and reading Slashdot for ten) and have two kids, and there's plenty others like me. The joke was kinda funny the first eleventy billion times it was made, but it's old and busted now. It's not that I'm offended by it (I'm not), it's that it's just... tired.
had it been a "war for oil" we would have more oil
You're misunderstanding what's meant by "a war for oil". The idea is that Bush (and cronies) ginned up the intel to justify invading Iraq so as to secure access to Iraq's oil for the benefit of their friends at oil companies, not for the benefit of the US as a whole.
I'm not saying whether I think that's true, but no one who's claiming it was a war for oil is claiming that the intention was to get the US plenty of cheap oil so that we common citizens would pay less at the pump. The oil companies are giddy as shit that the price of oil has gone way up. Whether or not the price went up because of the invasion of Iraq -- and if it did, whether or not that was BushCo's intention -- is beyond the scope of this post.
What happened here was not right in the sense that there should not be criminal copyright law; copyright law should have remained a civil matter. The fact that there *are* criminal penalties for copyright infringement is (so far) constitutional, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Yes, this guy was tried and found guilty according to the correct procedures of the law (...I'm assuming), but my point is that it's a bad idea to have copyright be a criminal matter.
You say "He took an intangible right" as if the owner was entirely deprived of it. This is incorrect. Here's a couple of ways in which real property rights are not analogous to the rights secured by copyright:
1. If I take your car and blow it up, your car is permanently gone, and there's no way to get it back. If I distribute copies of your copyrighted work, once you stop me from doing so, your rights have been fully restored.
2. If I take your car, you cannot use it while I have it. If I make unauthorized copies of your copyrighted work, you can continue making your own copies while I do so.
Now, because I can tell you're the kind of person who will think that the above means I think that copyright infringement is acceptable, I'm going to try to emphasize that THIS IS NOT THE CASE. I'm merely pointing out that copyright infringement is NOT theft (aka larceny), not by any legal definition and not by common usage. They are different beasts, which is why we have entirely separate bodies of law covering them.
Or are you saying that stealing engineering blueprints is OK because if you just photocopied it, gave the originals back and gave the finger to the contractor (not paid for work done), that is OK because it is only "infringement" not theft of their time and expertise? I'm guessing most slashdot would say yes, screw the engineer, based on current moderation.
Is there something wrong with your reading comprehension? The GP pointed out that this was a case of copyright infringement, not larceny. He said nothing about whether it was okay to do so.
The real problem is fools who think that it's a good idea to equate copyright infringement with larceny. They're not the same thing, and for good reason.
Copyright infringement is not equivalent to larceny, according to statute. Copyright infringement may be morally and legally wrong, but calling it "theft" shows that you're ignorant.
...no, wait, what I meant was, fuck you for siging that legislation, and fuck all the politicians and legislators who are fooled by the media companies into thinking we need draconian copyright laws. Copyright should have forever remained a civil matter, never criminal.
Further proof that even politicians you like (I voted for Clinton in 1996, the first presidential election I was old enough to vote for) can do foolish things.
I'm not arguing that copyright law is literally unconstitutional, only that it's incompatible with the principle of free speech.
That may be true, depending on how you define "free speech", but it's not incompatible with the way free speech is codified in the First Amendment. "Free speech" is not used by any kind of authority to mean "the right to say anything you want, ever, no matter what." Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, fighting words, incitement to riot, etc.
One could argue, however, that "the exclusive Right to [one's] Writings" doesn't include veto power over other people's speech. It could be defined as the exclusive right to profit from the distribution or performance, for example.
It pretty much is defined as that. We need to make sure we're not conflating "speech" (what comes out of your mouth when you vibrate your vocal cords) with "speech" (expression in general). The circumstances under which you can legally suppress my verbal speech based on copyright law are very slim: pretty much only public performances of a copyrighted work. If I'm walking down the street with my friends and we recite a scene from "Star Wars" to each other, it's conceivable that George Lucas might have some legal recourse to enjoin us from doing so (since what we're doing probably wouldn't fall under fair use), but it'd be a tough sell, since we're just talking to each other and not intending to perform the work publicly (we only happen to be in public).
this is the same Court that decided "limited Times" allows for retroactive extensions, even when it means copyright terms are effectively unlimited.
Well, to be fair, it was really Larry Lessig's fault that he argued the wrong point of the Clause. He argued that all these repeated extensions didn't count as "limited times"; SCOTUS (logically) disagreed, saying that even if they keep extending it, it's still finite, since at what point is it too long to be considered "limited"? What Lessig should have attacked was the "promote the Progress" part of the Clause; retroactive extensions do not promote such progress, and times beyond a certain length also do not promote such progress. (In fact, according to Wikipedia at least, "Lessig would later regret basing his defence on legal arguments based on precedent, rather than attempting to demonstrate that the weakening of the public domain would cause harm to the economic health of the country," Eldred v. Ashcroft).
When words are coming out of my mouth, that's my speech. It doesn't matter whether those words also came out of someone else's mouth a few years earlier.
Ignoring the fact that regular spoken words aren't copyrightable (a work must be fixed in a medium in order to be copyrighted), yes, it does matter:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
U.S. Constitution, Article I Section 8. Go argue with the Supreme Court that Amendment I trumps the Progress Clause in all cases; you'll lose.
I work for a subsidiary of MTV Networks, and if you tell management you're leaving, you retain all your access until you leave. (If you're fired for cause, we revoke access immediately, of course.) What you do during your last few weeks (two weeks is not standard, but it is the usual minimum; we've had people give notice two months before they left) is up to you and your supervisor.
You might expect that MTVN, being part of Viacom, would act like any other giant evil corporation, but as far as HR policies go they're not bad. What problems our HR has are entirely due to, shall we say, mistakes, not malice.
The problem with radio, television, movies, and music today is that they've been feeding us crap since the early 90s, and no one but a select handful of zombies and drones wants to throw their good, hard-earned money at it.
I was with you up until this point.:) The idea that things have been crap since the early 90s but were better before is false. There has always been a more or less consistent level of pabulum and crap coming out of the media companies, all the way back to the beginning. The only reason it seems worse lately (and it always does) is that the crap is fresh in our memories, but nobody remembers most of the worthless shit that was released in 1975, only the good ones.
There are statistical blips, of course; the late 1960s through the mid-1970s was a good time for cinema. But there was still a lot of worthless crap.
The issue isn't that MySpace or whatever have similar functionality to the old-school dialup BBSes; the issue is that the term "BBS" has a very strong connotation of "independently-run messaging (and usually gaming) system accessible via POTS", referring to the BBSes of the late 80s and early 90s (WWIV and the like). Most people seeing the term "BBS" will think of that, so you've got an uphill battle if you want to use the term to refer to any similar system that runs on the Internet, and you're not doing yourself any favors by scoffing at people who say that MySpace isn't a BBS. MySpace ISN'T a BBS, according to the most common usage of the term "BBS".
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't think text messages are worth 15 or 20 cents each, then don't use them. (Yes, you can get your cell carrier to disable texting to your phone, you just have to yell at them for a while until they give you to a supervisor who can actually do it.)
I don't mind that the market will bear such high prices; what I mind is that there seems to be no competition on the part of the cell companies. Why would the price of SMS go UP when the cost of everything else related to cellphones has gone down? Compared to a few years ago, you can get more minutes, more features, better phones, etc. for the same or better prices... except SMS. Hell, I have unlimited web browsing on my cellphone, and it's $6 a month; unlimited SMS is $15 a month.
The issue isn't that this law is unconstitutional, it's that this law is frickin' retarded.
People trying to fool these machines will likely have lighters. With some experimentation you could figure out the distance behind the picture to hold the lighter so that it's the right temperature.
...for the .con TLD, which will confuse legions of Internet users into clicking on evil links, and has the added bonus of being poetically appropriate for that use :)
The other formats aren't "incorrect", they're just not as useful. MM/DD/YYYY isn't incorrect, it's just counterintuitive (however we silly Americans all learn it from birth...).
I always use YYYY-MM-DD for everything, for the exact reason you state (easy sorting), as well as inambiguity (I've seen DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY, but never YYYY-DD-MM, so if you see a 4-2-2 date, you know it's ISO 8601).
http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed850
HTH, HAND.
...and as was noted in the comments of the linked /. article, there are many other reactor designs that do not depend on that company to produce the reactor vessel.
All joking aside, can we put the "Slashdotters never get girls" meme out to pasture? I've been married for six years (and reading Slashdot for ten) and have two kids, and there's plenty others like me. The joke was kinda funny the first eleventy billion times it was made, but it's old and busted now. It's not that I'm offended by it (I'm not), it's that it's just... tired.
CHA!
I'm not saying whether I think that's true, but no one who's claiming it was a war for oil is claiming that the intention was to get the US plenty of cheap oil so that we common citizens would pay less at the pump. The oil companies are giddy as shit that the price of oil has gone way up. Whether or not the price went up because of the invasion of Iraq -- and if it did, whether or not that was BushCo's intention -- is beyond the scope of this post.
Well, this is Slashdot. ;)
What happened here was not right in the sense that there should not be criminal copyright law; copyright law should have remained a civil matter. The fact that there *are* criminal penalties for copyright infringement is (so far) constitutional, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Yes, this guy was tried and found guilty according to the correct procedures of the law (...I'm assuming), but my point is that it's a bad idea to have copyright be a criminal matter.
You say "He took an intangible right" as if the owner was entirely deprived of it. This is incorrect. Here's a couple of ways in which real property rights are not analogous to the rights secured by copyright:
1. If I take your car and blow it up, your car is permanently gone, and there's no way to get it back. If I distribute copies of your copyrighted work, once you stop me from doing so, your rights have been fully restored.
2. If I take your car, you cannot use it while I have it. If I make unauthorized copies of your copyrighted work, you can continue making your own copies while I do so.
Now, because I can tell you're the kind of person who will think that the above means I think that copyright infringement is acceptable, I'm going to try to emphasize that THIS IS NOT THE CASE. I'm merely pointing out that copyright infringement is NOT theft (aka larceny), not by any legal definition and not by common usage. They are different beasts, which is why we have entirely separate bodies of law covering them.
Copyright infringement is not equivalent to larceny, according to statute. Copyright infringement may be morally and legally wrong, but calling it "theft" shows that you're ignorant.
Thanks, Bill Clinton!
...no, wait, what I meant was, fuck you for siging that legislation, and fuck all the politicians and legislators who are fooled by the media companies into thinking we need draconian copyright laws. Copyright should have forever remained a civil matter, never criminal.
Further proof that even politicians you like (I voted for Clinton in 1996, the first presidential election I was old enough to vote for) can do foolish things.
I work for a subsidiary of MTV Networks, and if you tell management you're leaving, you retain all your access until you leave. (If you're fired for cause, we revoke access immediately, of course.) What you do during your last few weeks (two weeks is not standard, but it is the usual minimum; we've had people give notice two months before they left) is up to you and your supervisor.
You might expect that MTVN, being part of Viacom, would act like any other giant evil corporation, but as far as HR policies go they're not bad. What problems our HR has are entirely due to, shall we say, mistakes, not malice.
There are statistical blips, of course; the late 1960s through the mid-1970s was a good time for cinema. But there was still a lot of worthless crap.
The issue isn't that MySpace or whatever have similar functionality to the old-school dialup BBSes; the issue is that the term "BBS" has a very strong connotation of "independently-run messaging (and usually gaming) system accessible via POTS", referring to the BBSes of the late 80s and early 90s (WWIV and the like). Most people seeing the term "BBS" will think of that, so you've got an uphill battle if you want to use the term to refer to any similar system that runs on the Internet, and you're not doing yourself any favors by scoffing at people who say that MySpace isn't a BBS. MySpace ISN'T a BBS, according to the most common usage of the term "BBS".
FTP over TLS is a decent and simple way.
No, if you're lucky, they'll include a key. If you're not, they'll include a hacksaw.