Also worthy of note is that patents and copyrights are quite distinct matters, and the Berne Convention deals only with the latter; it is the Paris Convention that deals with patents and similar industrial protections.
Some background reading on U.S. copyright: the major laws were passed in 1790, 1831, 1909, 1976, 1988, and finally in 1998 with the Sonny Bono Act and DMCA.
The problem with the Berne Convention is that it is neither fair nor reasonable, from the U.S. perspective of copyright. You call it "fair" because it normalizes copyright across countries; I call it unfair because it only benefits those who produce media, to the detriment of those who consume it. You call it "reasonable" because it provides creators with a multi-generational rent-seeking scheme to keep their and their descendants' pockets lined; I call it unreasonable because it locks away knowledge and wealth and deprives successive generations of the benefits. International copyright law (which does indeed originate in Europe) is only "intelligent" if you consider global racketeering to be a sound government goal. I have no qualm with the idea of incentivizing creativity, but what we have created is a monster.
Again displaying their infinite law-and-order wisdom, the US Supreme Court has ruled that anyone arrested for any offense, however innocuous, can be strip-searched, even if there's no suspicion that they are concealing contraband.
He wasn't convicted.
Florence... was arrested when his wife was pulled over for speeding (he was a passenger, and his son was in the back seat), and a check of his record showed an unpaid fine for an earlier offense. That record-check was wrong – the fine had been paid – but Florence spent a week in jail anyway, where he underwent the two strip searches.
He didn't commit any crime.
The ABA also notes that Albert Florence, who brought the original suit, was stripped-searched twice, once in private when "the supervising officer inspected Mr. Florence's mouth, tongue, armpits, buttocks, and genitals," and a second time when "he was forced to strip off his clothes in a shower area with a group of four other prisoners, all of whom were required to open their mouths, lift their genitals, and 'squat and cough' in plain sight of one another."
He was publicly humiliated.
Stop apologizing for the complete and total gutting of our rights.
David Maurice House, an MIT researcher and Bradley Manning supporter, was granted the right to pursue a case against the government on Wednesday after a federal judge denied the government's motion to dismiss.
The administration was against allowing the lawsuit. The courts thought otherwise. We have multiple branches of government, and they're not all run by the President.
The problem arises when the fact that an executed person's organs can be harvested plays into the calculus of the judge or jury who decides to sentence a person to death. Put another way, if every executed prisoner is a potential source of organs, then you've created a very perverse incentive to execute more prisoners. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, but you have to be mindful of unintended consequences.
My Maryland insurance card specifically states "IF YOU HAVE AN ACCIDENT - NOTIFY POLICE IMMEDIATELY" and has at least since 2004 (when I started driving). Failure to notify may be used against you.
This is the greatest example of legal semantic pedantry. There is no serious dispute that the original intent of the Eighth Amendment was to protect against cruel and unusual treatment. However, the Founders chose the word "punishment" because the only opportunity they saw where the government could possibly treat you in a cruel and inhuman way was in punishing you. That was, of course, a major oversight on their part, since the Whiskey Rebellion occurred concurrently to the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, saying that the government can be cruel and unusual as long as the action is not punitive is clearly undermining the intent (and effect) of the Eighth Amendment.
If you wish to play semantics, then yes, at a sufficiently macro level, all usage can be viewed as bandwidth. Conversely, at a sufficiently micro level, all bandwidth can be viewed as usage, since a channel may at any moment be "in use" or not.
It is only practically useful for the user to measure bandwidth as "3GB/month" (=1.2 KB/second) if the phone is continuously active for the entire month. In reality, phone users have brief moments of high activity (download an app, view a web page, etc.) interspersed within long periods of inactivity. For those periods, the instantaneous transfer rate is usually in the hundreds of KB/second, if not whole MB/second. Then, after the cumulative "bandwidth" (integral of instantaneous rate with respect to time) reaches 3GB, that instantaneous rate is artificially limited to a much lower amount (although, I would assume, still more than 1.2KB/second).
Also, AT&T does not bill you every decade for your average monthly rate; they bill you every month for the total amount of data you have transferred in that month. Thus, each month is best viewed as an independent problem, wherein the usage counter begins at 0 on midnight of the first day and accumulates thereafter. At 11:59:59 on the last day of the month, the total usage is calculated, no further bandwidth is considered for that month, and a bill is sent out. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Bandwidth is the maximum capacity a transport (network link, etc.) can handle.... Throughput is the rate at which bits are transferred.
I appreciate the distinction between the maximum rate and the instantaneous rate, but in my experience, both "bandwidth" and "throughput" are overloaded to have both meanings in practice (with bandwidth being the more common term). However, the technical literature may enforce a distinction between the two, and if so, I would gladly embrace it for the sake of clarity.
Thus, with AT&T the situation is this: after reaching an aggregate total of 3GBytes of traffic within a month, you will begin to be billed at a rate of US$10 per gigabyte of traffic (in excess). I see no mention of rate-limiting (read: throttling throughput) in their explanation, but I do see other people here on/. claiming they do rate-limit after you exceed the 3GByte limit.
As I understand it, AT&T has two 3GB limit plans: one is called "tiered" where any usage over the limit is billed separately, and the other is called "unlimited" where any usage over the limit is throttled. I don't think they're selling "unlimited" plans any more, though.
If the police did not have to presume innocence, then they could arrest anyone at any time without cause. They too must presume innocence, but their standard of evidence is different. Law enforcement officers have reasonable suspicion and probable cause standards of evidence, whereas a jury has a reasonable doubt standard of evidence. Essentially, the presumption of innocence applies to all officers of the state and courts, but the strength of the standard of evidence for a particular enforcement action is proportional to the inconvenience it imposes upon the suspect.
Vehicle stops and citations, being minor inconveniences, only require "reasonable suspicion" on the part of the enforcing officer that you may be violating the regulations of the road and endangering other motorists.
Arrests and searches, being temporary deprivations of liberty, require a higher standard of evidence: that an officer has "probable cause" to believe you have committed, are committing, or will imminently commit, a crime.
Finally, sentences of imprisonment or execution, being potentially permanent deprivations of liberty, require the highest standard of evidence: that a jury of your peers is convinced beyond a "reasonable doubt" of your guilt.
1. Big-name PC games used to be $50 (and some still are). Now most are $60, but there's no justification for the increase.
2. PC games used to be better than their console ports. Now, the consoles are the main platforms and the PC is the after-thought port.
3. DRM schemes have become progressively more annoying and intrusive (first you had to have a CD, then you had to activate online, then you could only activate a limited number of times, now you have to be online all the time).
4. DRM only impacts the legitimate, paying customer. There's no DRM that can't be cut out with some disassembly and a hex editor (or spoofed in some other way), so pirates don't have to deal with it.
5. Steam is the platform of choice for distributing PC games electronically nowadays, yet many primarily console-oriented producers refuse to embrace it.
I've been using and administering Windows since the 3.0 days, and not only do I leave UAC on, but I turn it up to the highest level (7 has variable levels, where the highest level corresponds to the only one available on Vista). I agree it can be a nuisance, and 95% of the time I just click through it (knowing what I did beforehand to trigger it). But every once in a while, it pops up when I know it shouldn't, and that tells me right away that something is doing something it's not supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I can decline to allow it to continue, which to me is UAC's most useful property: the ability to say no. Then it's much easier to locate the problem and remove it. I practice safe browsing and safe e-mail reading as much as possible, and I have a router with a drop-all-unknown-packets (ghost? stealth?) firewall, but I know that I'm not perfect--and neither are the other people who use the computers. YMMV but I've found it to be one of the best improvements over Windows XP.
Actually, one of the greatest forces for transparency in government is on the television: C-SPAN. If only we could the same level of coverage in the Executive Office of the President and the Supreme Court. That nobody watches C-SPAN is an entirely different issue.
the creationists and theocrats [...] don't even pretend to have science on their side
Then you obviously haven't talked to one lately. Some of them will profusely insist that evolution (and the modern science that has followed it) is in fact a misinterpretation (or worse, a deliberate falsification--depending on whether they view Darwin as misguided or intentionally heretical) of the data, and that therefore creationists are the "true" scientists. I have had discussions that have literally devolved into debating the fundamentals of argumentation and reasoning because of an inability to reach basic consensus on the veracity and meaning of scientific observations and experiments.
Heh, not really. Although I don't know of a whole lot of rest homes for swinging gay seniors... In all seriousness, though, the life expectancy for someone born in the UK in 1912 is around 52, so making it to 66 and then contracting AIDS would still put a person well ahead of the curve.
I know you're a troll, but let's do a simple takedown of some of your "points" shall we?
He should have waited for AIDS to come around.
He died in 1954 at the age of 41. AIDS was first discovered ca. 1979, so he would've been 66. Do you know a lot of 66-year-olds who have lots of sex? Especially with multiple partners? Neither do I.
AIDS = the Anally Injected Death Sentence!
Not anymore. Most people with AIDS in the first world live nearly as long as their counterparts without AIDS. Sure, it's still likely to do you in at some point, but when that point is at 70 vs 75 without AIDS, it's not such a huge setback. Nevertheless, the disease can still be deadly at a young age, and having a weakened immune system makes even minor infections much more serious.
Fact: anal sex transmits this virus more effectively than other forms of sex because the anus tends to get torn and bleed much more than the naturally self-lubricating vagina or mouth.
The mouth does not naturally lubricate per se; saliva is a digestive aid. However, there is nothing particularly heterosexual about the mouth nor particularly homosexual about the anus.
Other fact: gay men tend to have A LOT MORE partners than anyone else what with no female inhibitions to put the brakes on things.
Perhaps, although my straight friends seem to have a lot more sex than I do. Do you know Alan Turing's sexual history? If not, then tendencies are meaningless to the evaluation of the life of one man.
Being a gay man is a disease. AIDS is an advanced form.
There are far more heterosexuals with AIDS than there are homosexuals in total.
He was a fag. Stop making it normal. It's not. No matter how hard you try.
In one sense, you're right: homosexuals account for 2–5% of the population. In another sense, though, you are wrong: homosexuality occurs with enough frequency that it is not outside the range of normal variation, and it occurs in other species as well (to a much more limited extend). Also, there are plenty of things that (presently) aren't normal under the same criteria, like having a PhD, being a mathematical genius, and fundamentally defining the elements of an entirely new discipline. Are those also bad?
I bet he was afraid to approach a woman anyway.
Could be, but of what relevance is that? If he wasn't interested in women, then being afraid to approach them is largely irrelevant, especially at a time when women were virtually nonexistent in math and science.
They can be manipulative by nature you know.
Funnily enough again, the most manipulative people I know are straight. Although I've certainly known manipulative homosexuals, they do not seem over-represented vis-á-vis heterosexuals. Hard statistics, of course, would be preferable.
Unless you're enough of a man to win their trust.
What, you mean like an anonymous coward?
Fags aren't.
See, once again I find myself in the strange position where most of my friends consider me the most trustworthy person they know. It's a shame you never bothered to actually meet some real gay people.
They can be substitute "girlfriends" to women.
Some are, to be sure. I have one straight female friend, and we usually do "guy" things together. The rest of my friends are straight males, none of whom are particularly lacking for masculinity, I might add.
They definitely can't close the deal.
A gay man can have sex with a woman just as well as a straight man. In fact, he might even enjoy it (physically). It will never, however, be what he primarily desires nor what he finds as expressive of a lasting emotional connection. Thus, gay men tend to avoid sex with women, since it leads to false promises, mistrust, and broken hearts.
And if ISO 9660 file system images are so "read-only", then how does packet writing work on an actual CD?
Using either the multi-session extension to the ISO format (which allows only additional data to be appended in the previously free space) or using the UDF file system, which is completely different. ISO 9660 is premastered, so you cannot dynamically update the file system in most conventional ways without remastering the entire thing. With single-session ISO, you have to wipe the media and rewrite the entire file system to make even the slightest change.
The only true read-only container is a digitally signed one.
There is no "true" read-only container, as long as the underlying medium is read-write. Digital signing is no more perfect than an ISO image, because they are both vulnerable to carefully constructed attacks.
You know not only can you pin it to your Start Menu (which you've been able to do since Windows XP), but you can also pin it to the freakin' taskbar! Right click on the icon, click "Pin to Taskbar", and voila it will always be on your taskbar, even when it's not open.
The law provides its own definitions of the terms "second," "foot," "mile," and "hour" (actually, the definition is made by NIST/BIPM, and adopted into the law, but the effect is the same). Thus, when the law says you are limited to 55 miles per hour, it is specifying a quantitative limit that is independent of the chosen units. You may convert that value into whatever measurements you choose, but the limit does not change even if its numerical value in a particular system of measurement does.
You are not obligated to accept the government's definitions for your own purposes, but you are obligated to obey the law as it is written; if the law does not permit you to substitute your own definition of "foot" and "second" then you may not do so (and still have a legal defense, anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
Also worthy of note is that patents and copyrights are quite distinct matters, and the Berne Convention deals only with the latter; it is the Paris Convention that deals with patents and similar industrial protections.
Some background reading on U.S. copyright: the major laws were passed in 1790, 1831, 1909, 1976, 1988, and finally in 1998 with the Sonny Bono Act and DMCA.
The problem with the Berne Convention is that it is neither fair nor reasonable, from the U.S. perspective of copyright. You call it "fair" because it normalizes copyright across countries; I call it unfair because it only benefits those who produce media, to the detriment of those who consume it. You call it "reasonable" because it provides creators with a multi-generational rent-seeking scheme to keep their and their descendants' pockets lined; I call it unreasonable because it locks away knowledge and wealth and deprives successive generations of the benefits. International copyright law (which does indeed originate in Europe) is only "intelligent" if you consider global racketeering to be a sound government goal. I have no qualm with the idea of incentivizing creativity, but what we have created is a monster.
RTFA:
Again displaying their infinite law-and-order wisdom, the US Supreme Court has ruled that anyone arrested for any offense, however innocuous, can be strip-searched, even if there's no suspicion that they are concealing contraband.
He wasn't convicted.
Florence ... was arrested when his wife was pulled over for speeding (he was a passenger, and his son was in the back seat), and a check of his record showed an unpaid fine for an earlier offense. That record-check was wrong – the fine had been paid – but Florence spent a week in jail anyway, where he underwent the two strip searches.
He didn't commit any crime.
The ABA also notes that Albert Florence, who brought the original suit, was stripped-searched twice, once in private when "the supervising officer inspected Mr. Florence's mouth, tongue, armpits, buttocks, and genitals," and a second time when "he was forced to strip off his clothes in a shower area with a group of four other prisoners, all of whom were required to open their mouths, lift their genitals, and 'squat and cough' in plain sight of one another."
He was publicly humiliated.
Stop apologizing for the complete and total gutting of our rights.
From TFS:
David Maurice House, an MIT researcher and Bradley Manning supporter, was granted the right to pursue a case against the government on Wednesday after a federal judge denied the government's motion to dismiss.
The administration was against allowing the lawsuit. The courts thought otherwise. We have multiple branches of government, and they're not all run by the President.
The problem arises when the fact that an executed person's organs can be harvested plays into the calculus of the judge or jury who decides to sentence a person to death. Put another way, if every executed prisoner is a potential source of organs, then you've created a very perverse incentive to execute more prisoners. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, but you have to be mindful of unintended consequences.
My Maryland insurance card specifically states "IF YOU HAVE AN ACCIDENT - NOTIFY POLICE IMMEDIATELY" and has at least since 2004 (when I started driving). Failure to notify may be used against you.
This is the greatest example of legal semantic pedantry. There is no serious dispute that the original intent of the Eighth Amendment was to protect against cruel and unusual treatment. However, the Founders chose the word "punishment" because the only opportunity they saw where the government could possibly treat you in a cruel and inhuman way was in punishing you. That was, of course, a major oversight on their part, since the Whiskey Rebellion occurred concurrently to the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, saying that the government can be cruel and unusual as long as the action is not punitive is clearly undermining the intent (and effect) of the Eighth Amendment.
English has a word with the same meaning: truce.
If you wish to play semantics, then yes, at a sufficiently macro level, all usage can be viewed as bandwidth. Conversely, at a sufficiently micro level, all bandwidth can be viewed as usage, since a channel may at any moment be "in use" or not.
It is only practically useful for the user to measure bandwidth as "3GB/month" (=1.2 KB/second) if the phone is continuously active for the entire month. In reality, phone users have brief moments of high activity (download an app, view a web page, etc.) interspersed within long periods of inactivity. For those periods, the instantaneous transfer rate is usually in the hundreds of KB/second, if not whole MB/second. Then, after the cumulative "bandwidth" (integral of instantaneous rate with respect to time) reaches 3GB, that instantaneous rate is artificially limited to a much lower amount (although, I would assume, still more than 1.2KB/second).
Also, AT&T does not bill you every decade for your average monthly rate; they bill you every month for the total amount of data you have transferred in that month. Thus, each month is best viewed as an independent problem, wherein the usage counter begins at 0 on midnight of the first day and accumulates thereafter. At 11:59:59 on the last day of the month, the total usage is calculated, no further bandwidth is considered for that month, and a bill is sent out. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Bandwidth is the maximum capacity a transport (network link, etc.) can handle. ... Throughput is the rate at which bits are transferred.
I appreciate the distinction between the maximum rate and the instantaneous rate, but in my experience, both "bandwidth" and "throughput" are overloaded to have both meanings in practice (with bandwidth being the more common term). However, the technical literature may enforce a distinction between the two, and if so, I would gladly embrace it for the sake of clarity.
Thus, with AT&T the situation is this: after reaching an aggregate total of 3GBytes of traffic within a month, you will begin to be billed at a rate of US$10 per gigabyte of traffic (in excess). I see no mention of rate-limiting (read: throttling throughput) in their explanation, but I do see other people here on /. claiming they do rate-limit after you exceed the 3GByte limit.
As I understand it, AT&T has two 3GB limit plans: one is called "tiered" where any usage over the limit is billed separately, and the other is called "unlimited" where any usage over the limit is throttled. I don't think they're selling "unlimited" plans any more, though.
The magic number is 3GB, which conveniently happens to be the maximum amount of tiered bandwidth AT&T will sell you.
BANDWIDTH is the RATE at which bits are transferred.
USAGE is the AMOUNT of data that has been transferred.
After 3GB of USAGE, AT&T will limit your BANDWIDTH.
I'd expect this kind of confusion on CNN, but Slashdot?
If the police did not have to presume innocence, then they could arrest anyone at any time without cause. They too must presume innocence, but their standard of evidence is different. Law enforcement officers have reasonable suspicion and probable cause standards of evidence, whereas a jury has a reasonable doubt standard of evidence. Essentially, the presumption of innocence applies to all officers of the state and courts, but the strength of the standard of evidence for a particular enforcement action is proportional to the inconvenience it imposes upon the suspect.
Vehicle stops and citations, being minor inconveniences, only require "reasonable suspicion" on the part of the enforcing officer that you may be violating the regulations of the road and endangering other motorists.
Arrests and searches, being temporary deprivations of liberty, require a higher standard of evidence: that an officer has "probable cause" to believe you have committed, are committing, or will imminently commit, a crime.
Finally, sentences of imprisonment or execution, being potentially permanent deprivations of liberty, require the highest standard of evidence: that a jury of your peers is convinced beyond a "reasonable doubt" of your guilt.
If there's ever successful nation-wide restrictions on abortion, those restrictions will be made possible by the Commerce Clause.
There are (2003), and they were (2007).
1. Big-name PC games used to be $50 (and some still are). Now most are $60, but there's no justification for the increase.
2. PC games used to be better than their console ports. Now, the consoles are the main platforms and the PC is the after-thought port.
3. DRM schemes have become progressively more annoying and intrusive (first you had to have a CD, then you had to activate online, then you could only activate a limited number of times, now you have to be online all the time).
4. DRM only impacts the legitimate, paying customer. There's no DRM that can't be cut out with some disassembly and a hex editor (or spoofed in some other way), so pirates don't have to deal with it.
5. Steam is the platform of choice for distributing PC games electronically nowadays, yet many primarily console-oriented producers refuse to embrace it.
I wonder why games get pirated?
Dammit, meant to reply to post above.
I've been using and administering Windows since the 3.0 days, and not only do I leave UAC on, but I turn it up to the highest level (7 has variable levels, where the highest level corresponds to the only one available on Vista). I agree it can be a nuisance, and 95% of the time I just click through it (knowing what I did beforehand to trigger it). But every once in a while, it pops up when I know it shouldn't, and that tells me right away that something is doing something it's not supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I can decline to allow it to continue, which to me is UAC's most useful property: the ability to say no. Then it's much easier to locate the problem and remove it. I practice safe browsing and safe e-mail reading as much as possible, and I have a router with a drop-all-unknown-packets (ghost? stealth?) firewall, but I know that I'm not perfect--and neither are the other people who use the computers. YMMV but I've found it to be one of the best improvements over Windows XP.
Actually, one of the greatest forces for transparency in government is on the television: C-SPAN. If only we could the same level of coverage in the Executive Office of the President and the Supreme Court. That nobody watches C-SPAN is an entirely different issue.
the creationists and theocrats [...] don't even pretend to have science on their side
Then you obviously haven't talked to one lately. Some of them will profusely insist that evolution (and the modern science that has followed it) is in fact a misinterpretation (or worse, a deliberate falsification--depending on whether they view Darwin as misguided or intentionally heretical) of the data, and that therefore creationists are the "true" scientists. I have had discussions that have literally devolved into debating the fundamentals of argumentation and reasoning because of an inability to reach basic consensus on the veracity and meaning of scientific observations and experiments.
Heh, not really. Although I don't know of a whole lot of rest homes for swinging gay seniors... In all seriousness, though, the life expectancy for someone born in the UK in 1912 is around 52, so making it to 66 and then contracting AIDS would still put a person well ahead of the curve.
They are designing the game to hook the player in by putting monetary gain as the primary motivation of design
"Please insert coin(s)"
Or are you too young for the arcade days?
not playability or making the game fun for the players
If people are playing it, then it must be enjoyable to them. I find most of them crap, and I'm sure you do too, but we're not the target market.
I know you're a troll, but let's do a simple takedown of some of your "points" shall we?
He should have waited for AIDS to come around.
He died in 1954 at the age of 41. AIDS was first discovered ca. 1979, so he would've been 66. Do you know a lot of 66-year-olds who have lots of sex? Especially with multiple partners? Neither do I.
AIDS = the Anally Injected Death Sentence!
Not anymore. Most people with AIDS in the first world live nearly as long as their counterparts without AIDS. Sure, it's still likely to do you in at some point, but when that point is at 70 vs 75 without AIDS, it's not such a huge setback. Nevertheless, the disease can still be deadly at a young age, and having a weakened immune system makes even minor infections much more serious.
Fact: anal sex transmits this virus more effectively than other forms of sex because the anus tends to get torn and bleed much more than the naturally self-lubricating vagina or mouth.
The mouth does not naturally lubricate per se; saliva is a digestive aid. However, there is nothing particularly heterosexual about the mouth nor particularly homosexual about the anus.
Other fact: gay men tend to have A LOT MORE partners than anyone else what with no female inhibitions to put the brakes on things.
Perhaps, although my straight friends seem to have a lot more sex than I do. Do you know Alan Turing's sexual history? If not, then tendencies are meaningless to the evaluation of the life of one man.
Being a gay man is a disease. AIDS is an advanced form.
There are far more heterosexuals with AIDS than there are homosexuals in total.
He was a fag. Stop making it normal. It's not. No matter how hard you try.
In one sense, you're right: homosexuals account for 2–5% of the population. In another sense, though, you are wrong: homosexuality occurs with enough frequency that it is not outside the range of normal variation, and it occurs in other species as well (to a much more limited extend). Also, there are plenty of things that (presently) aren't normal under the same criteria, like having a PhD, being a mathematical genius, and fundamentally defining the elements of an entirely new discipline. Are those also bad?
I bet he was afraid to approach a woman anyway.
Could be, but of what relevance is that? If he wasn't interested in women, then being afraid to approach them is largely irrelevant, especially at a time when women were virtually nonexistent in math and science.
They can be manipulative by nature you know.
Funnily enough again, the most manipulative people I know are straight. Although I've certainly known manipulative homosexuals, they do not seem over-represented vis-á-vis heterosexuals. Hard statistics, of course, would be preferable.
Unless you're enough of a man to win their trust.
What, you mean like an anonymous coward?
Fags aren't.
See, once again I find myself in the strange position where most of my friends consider me the most trustworthy person they know. It's a shame you never bothered to actually meet some real gay people.
They can be substitute "girlfriends" to women.
Some are, to be sure. I have one straight female friend, and we usually do "guy" things together. The rest of my friends are straight males, none of whom are particularly lacking for masculinity, I might add.
They definitely can't close the deal.
A gay man can have sex with a woman just as well as a straight man. In fact, he might even enjoy it (physically). It will never, however, be what he primarily desires nor what he finds as expressive of a lasting emotional connection. Thus, gay men tend to avoid sex with women, since it leads to false promises, mistrust, and broken hearts.
They're fags.
That's a tautology.
+1 for using an eggcorn I've never seen before.
(commiserate = sympathize; commensurate = corresponding)
And if ISO 9660 file system images are so "read-only", then how does packet writing work on an actual CD?
Using either the multi-session extension to the ISO format (which allows only additional data to be appended in the previously free space) or using the UDF file system, which is completely different. ISO 9660 is premastered, so you cannot dynamically update the file system in most conventional ways without remastering the entire thing. With single-session ISO, you have to wipe the media and rewrite the entire file system to make even the slightest change.
The only true read-only container is a digitally signed one.
There is no "true" read-only container, as long as the underlying medium is read-write. Digital signing is no more perfect than an ISO image, because they are both vulnerable to carefully constructed attacks.
You know not only can you pin it to your Start Menu (which you've been able to do since Windows XP), but you can also pin it to the freakin' taskbar! Right click on the icon, click "Pin to Taskbar", and voila it will always be on your taskbar, even when it's not open.
No, you are not within the law.
The law provides its own definitions of the terms "second," "foot," "mile," and "hour" (actually, the definition is made by NIST/BIPM, and adopted into the law, but the effect is the same). Thus, when the law says you are limited to 55 miles per hour, it is specifying a quantitative limit that is independent of the chosen units. You may convert that value into whatever measurements you choose, but the limit does not change even if its numerical value in a particular system of measurement does.
You are not obligated to accept the government's definitions for your own purposes, but you are obligated to obey the law as it is written; if the law does not permit you to substitute your own definition of "foot" and "second" then you may not do so (and still have a legal defense, anyway).