If anyone ever comes up with a smart gun system that's 99.8% accurate, that will, no doubt, be good enough.
Except the debate we are having today would repeat itself.
The people responding here aren't looking at what can actually achieved today, or achieved in the future. Its just knee jerk rejection.
. Especially if you think that somebody is going to replace a critical piece of equipment with a - as you note - 99.8% success rate with one that is, at best, an order of magnitude lower
The glock 17 is an exceptionally reliable piece. There are other rock solid pieces out there too. But many are less reliable. And more complex weapons can be an order of magnitude less so. Many of the cheap pocket pistols are not well regarded; and there is a whole cottage industry of "reliability upgrades" for the 1911.
Yet people put their "life on the line" with them.
) It's rare to see any biometric ID system exceed 80% in real world conditions.
80% of what? The only metric that matters to the "life on the the line crowd" on a smart gun is the false reject rate. That is what percentage of the time is it going to falsely reject an authorized fingerprint? That's the number that has to be super low, so they can still get that 99.8% reliability.
Now you can dial the looseness of the fingerprint matching down as far as you like. The loose it gets the less likely that it will reject an authorized fingerprint, and the more likely that it accepts an unauthorized one.
Most biometric systems are dialed in the other way; where its far far more important that it reject an unauthorized user, and its ok if an authorized user has to swipe 3 or 4 times and occasionally even do a manual override.
But you could dial it out the other way, and make it loose enough that it practically never falsely rejects you. Sure by doing so it might let 30% of unauthorized users fire the gun.. but think on that for a second, even if the false accept rate was THAT colossally bad, it would still prevent 70% of unauthorized firings.
Many accidents would still be prevented.
That's the big question, if you dial the false reject rate to loose enough that you get 99.8% reliability; how bad is the false positive rate going to be? Even a terrible false positive is still potentially a big improvement to gun safety,
For all you know, our high costs are due to the fact that Americans are far more unhealthy/unfit than the rest of the world and therefore more expensive
Its appropriate that this is in the 97% of climate science papers agree thread. Because this argument here, is exactly the same kind of nonsense that climate science faces.
Plenty of studies show that healthcare costs more in the states even when broken down by procedure or otherwise controlling for such theories. (Not to mention the lack of healthcare is one of the reasons people get sicker in the first place, and end up needing emergency care for things that would be taken care of earlier in other countries.)
Bull. The free market exists in utilities
You listed off a set of heavily regulated oligopolies as examples of the free market ideal? Are you for real?
Simply not true. My mother had brain surgery to have a tumor removed. The surgery date was scheduled nearly 3 months out from the discovery of the actual tumor. Even in many reasonably dire situations, you're frequently delayed a fair length of time before an actual remedy is applied.
Missing the point again. 3 hours or 3 months isn't the issue. She is not in a position to negotiate. That is the antithesis of the free market. She needs what they are selling in a way that makes rational cost analysis impossible. How much is your life worth to you?
And those are the cases that insurance should be for (the exact way _all_ other insurance works).
Nope its different from the way all other insurance works in that society feels no obligation to replace your car if it breaks down on you, or you drive it into a pole.
But we aren't going to leave you in a ditch with a broken leg no matter what.
That difference is everything. Its why 'insurance' doesn't work. Society isn't going to leave you broken in a ditch even if you don't have broken in a ditch insurance. So we're going to cover you anyway and that means healthcare is mandatory, and if you can't cover the cost of all possible healthcare scenarios then insurance is effectively mandatory too.
If its mandatory its not a free market, and we should stop trying to contort to pretend that it is or can be.
Yet neither property insurance or car insurance are socialized and seem to work just fine in not wiping out the middle class.
What is your car worth? That's an easy number. What is your house worth? That's another easy number. This is worth X$, therefore I need insurance for X$. And the cost of the insurance is proportional to the value of the asset. If I can afford the asset I can generally afford the insurance. If not, I can sell the asset and buy something within my means.
What is the value of your life? Not an easy number. And the insurance you will require has no relation whatsoever to what you might write down on a balance sheet of your net worth either.
The Glock 17 9mm regularly used by police forces is rated at having less than 20 malfunctions in the first 10,000 rounds; that's 1/500... which is 99.8%
So, you are correct that 99% isn't good enough, but 99.8% is.
Thus if someone were to release a smart gun tech that kept its false negative rate (preventing legitimate fire rate) low enough that the gun retains its 99.8% effectiveness rating, then it would be good enough.
Police unions, representing working cops on the streets will be unalterably opposed to it, because even 99% isn't good enough when your life is on the line.
This old chestnut. "your life is on the line". Its life or death, and we have to do everything we can possibly do to ensure a positive outcome.
That's why police have an annual proficiency review. Remember their life is on the line. A few hours once a year is good enough to ensure they are in top shape, right?
And what's more that proficiency test has the very high standard of 70% to get a pass. Remember their life is on the line, or the life of their partner... or perhaps even your life. You want to know the gun he's holding is going to fire when he pulls the trigger right? That's paramount right? That he's proficient with the firearm, well, 70% is "pretty good" right?
Funny how 99% isn't good enough for the gun, but 70% is good enough for the guy holding it.
After all, if it's easy to change the prints, it's still easy to steal and use the weapon.
Its easy to defeat bike locks too. But locking your bike stops casual impulse / opportunity thefts from everyone not wandering the streets with a bolt cutter.
In this case, the gun will not fire when your kids have the neighbors kids over and they pick it up and do something stupid like pull the trigger while pointing it at your kid, or their own leg, or whatever.
The difficulty of changing the prints, even if its pretty easy, will be a high enough threshold to ensure that accident never happens.
There are plenty of perfectly legitimate complaints about smart guns without resorting to nonsensical arguments. The fact that someone dedicated enough will be able to change the prints is pretty much irrelevant. It would clearly be useful to stop plenty of other scenarios.
I'll never understand how that's relevant or how you seem to think that's the government's doing.
I doesn't matter whose doing it it is, the reality stands as evidence that socialized healthcare can be cheaper than the american system.
We have one of the least "free market" healthcare systems in the world: consumers have little freedoms, competitiveness is non-existant, costs aren't determined by actual market forces but instead by some secret negotiating coalition of "government cronies in medicare", "insurance cronies in the private sector", and "a chargemaster hospital crony in the service industry".
That's what the "free market" does; it coalesces into oligopolies.
We desperately need free market mechanics introduced into our healthcare system.
The free market can't exist in healthcare. It has all the characteristics of a public utility -- everyone needs it to some degree, much of the infrastructure is fabulously expensive, some people need a lot of it (due to there genes, or due to an accident). In many cases you can't do without it.
And to top it off it its often purchased under duress. "I see you've had a heart attack, you probably won't make it to the next hospital... so lets discuss what surviving the day is worth to you?" Yes, that's an exaggeration, but the point stands -- health care isn't something you are necessarily in a position to make a "rational, informed cost analysis" of; frequently your "purchasing products or services" while doubled over with pain, nausea, vomiting, cramps, bleeding, delirium, or your facing something terminal... they might as well literally have a gun to your head for the amount of 'freedom' the consumer has.
Moreover the free market, even when it works, is about the efficient allocation of resources from the sellers to the buyers. Its about efficiency. It isn't efficient to cure a poor person who can't even cover the cost of their procedure, never mind allow the seller turn a profit on it. The free market abhors that situation.
But that's what society wants. Society doesn't want the poor turned away at the hospital to die in the streets. Society doesn't want its middle class wiped out by car accidents and skiing accidents. Society wants socialized health care.
No idea who you are referring to but I disagree that I made any mistake at all.
the harry potter book was being read in the background while someone explained the narrative devices being used, commented on quality, explained the subtext, etc
then the work is not attempting to copy/imitate the original, it's providing something else entirely.
a) Something else entirely? Its entirely a derivative work that not only uses all the content of the original, but also which could not exist without the original.
b) That's why movies don't have to license the songs they use for the soundtrack, right? Because the movies not even about the song. Its something else entirely, and any song could be used in the background; its not even dependant on that particular song because its just, you know, playing the background. Oh wait, they do actually have to license them, even then.
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch,
Why would someone you met at a conference send you a picture of their lunch?
The tradeoff with facebook is not what you think it is. It's not about making the content you consume from others less obtrusive, it removes the burden to them of figuring out who to share things with.
In other words, I'm saying life is not better when someone posts every piece of crap online without thinking and relies on their "friends" to sort out what they want to see.
To me, anyone who does, is saying they are too lazy to even think about who they want to communicate with.
That interesting person from the conference, if he was required to think about it, would never decide to send you photos of his lunch in the first place. So the burden of deciding whether or not to see it has been shifted off him entirely and onto you.
They want to know how "ClassicGamingFan34" plays Super Mario Brothers 3. You really can't compare creating a movie from a book to creating a gameplay video because the primary merit of the book or movie is to reveal the plot.
And? I want to see how Peter Jackson directs the hobbit, and how Ian McKellan brings Gandalf to life... I'm not interested in an Uwe Boll production of the same thing starring your grandpa.
To suggest that the director, cast, and crew of a film production bring nothing to the table except to "reveal the plot" is absurd.
If the official video makes just as much money via ads as the fan created videos then they can rightly claim that the fans added nothing of value to the game content.
Nobody disputes that the fan productions add real value. But so what? They still need permission.
They had a search warrant for financial data regarding one former employee, and they took tens of millions of medical records too, which they weren't entitled to.
So they took a hard drive that contained that employees information along with some other database and didn't remove and leave behind the ceramic platter that contained the other database?
. They stepped over the line, despite being warned. How is this confusing to you?
The question is really what did they actually take? Did they haul out all the filing cabinets on 2 floors full of printed records? Or did they take a single file server that contained what they were looking for, and which also had some other stuff on it too.
I assume they will be passing that money to affected Americans?
Suing the government for massive amounts of money, in terms of society as a whole, is about as productive as sending yourself a wire transfer. A bunch of fees and no net gain.
Any money the IRS would pay out, would simply have to be collected back from the people.
"I created a video of how I played X game and narrated it" is very very different than "I made a movie based on your book"
In that making a movie requires a LOT more original work to accomplish? You have to write a screenplay, direct actors, each of whom delivers an original interpretation of the part, then theres lighting, sound, sound effects, soundtrack, CGI, props, sets, costumes.
Your right that's a lot more work than pointing a camera at a TV and playing a video game while you jabber on about it.
The act of playing a game is unique to each player,
Yes, and reading a book into a microphone is a unique performance as well, (maybe you do silly voices, maybe you read fast then slow, then fast again...) but you can't read the harry potter books onto youtube and expect the author to have no say in the matter.
To me it's fairly clear that 29.21 applies - especially "the use of, or the authorization to disseminate, the new work or other subject-matter does not have a substantial adverse effect, financial or otherwise, on the exploitation or potential exploitation of the existing work or other subject-matter"
Yes it applies, but that's not enough. For profit uses are more likely to be ruled infringing than non-profit uses - if you sold your walkthroughs as game guides that'd even more likely to be reuled infringing, but non-profit uses can still infringe. Its just a factor taken into consideration. Moreover, these youtube videos were generating advertising revenue... so there was a profit result whether that was the primary purpose or not.
And Nintendo's move was just to claim the ad revenue. Which at the end of the day seems like a reasonable move.
Nintendo would have no right to that revenue because a) the medium is different b) how a game is played by a particular user is an original work c) any additional content (audio explaining stuff about the game) is more than likely original. The only thing is that they would have to make sure to credit Nintendo but no more than that.
That's why in Canada you don't need film rights to make a movie out of a book, because
a) the medium is different b) how the film is shot by a particular director is an original work c) any additional content (audio soundtrack) is more than likely original.
You just have to give the author credit.
No.. wait... that's all completely wrong... even in Canada.
I don't know where you got your information, but its seems entirely wrong. I honestly don't know what a game playthrough would be ruled as in Canada, but its definitely a derivative work. Whether it falls under Fair Dealing or not I couldn't say. Its one thing to include some screenshots or animation as part of a review... but a complete play-through from start to finish really is something else entirely.
You do realize medicare/medicaide is more expensive than private insurance, don't you?
Are you living under a rock?
Canada, UK, and other 'socialized medicine countries" pay less per capita for healthcare than American's do.
Sure, you may not pay for it up front when visiting the doctor or paying for your drugs, but you do pay for it in taxes, along with everyone else.
Yes, and it still costs less.
American's pay more per capita and more as a percentage of GDP, than any country with socialized medicine.
It baffles me that anyone would argue for privatized health care. Unless you are the 1% private healthcare its not "better" healthcare. Its not cheaper healthcare for society as a whole.
I really don't object to the 1% wanting to spend their money on private health care (because they aren't really buying "insurance" they are just buying the healthcare they need directly, as needed, when needed -- they are "self insured"). I can see why they want that, and if I was in their position I'd want it to. Its their money, and they can decide how little or how much of it they want to spend on their healthcare.
But I can't figure out why the other 99% wants private for profit insurance companies managing their healthcare, when it just costs them more and provides them less. Its counter to their own interests.
The problem with that logic is that with sufficient effort you could show that any problem can be reduced to math.
Not true.
The question is not can something be reduced to math, but is it math itself.
Same difference. If it can be reduced to math, then it is math.
For example: geometry is a mathematical field, but not everything created using geometry is math.
Yes it is. A bridge is not geometry. No amount of geometry will let you drive a car over a river. You are going to need some concrete and steel.
Another example: every video on Youtube. Every one of them is reduced to mathematics before being displayed (and quite often when it is made), but arguing that the video itself is math or a mathematical algorithm is patently ridiculous.
A video is just a finite integer, a "number". The representation of that number as video is just a mathematical transformation.
The construction or selection of the number itself, and the transformation is an artistic endeavor. And we as a society have effectively enabled the copy protection of sufficiently large sufficiently interesting numbers. But that is a separate (albeit interesting) issue.
Oh, and also the burden of proof isn't on him to prove the statement isn't math, it's on people who claim it is math to prove it is.
In another comment I wrote out some simplified set operations recognizable to anyone as 'pure math' that perform the hello world program logic. A formal proof using a turing construct would be more effort but no less doable.
But in general, anything that can be programmed on a computer is a provable subset of what can be programmed on an abstract turing machine. Therefore all software is math.
Proper (e.g. patentable) Inventions however are not math. They may be describable with math, even physics to describe the operation of the motor, chemistry to describe the burning of fuel etc. But chemical equations are not chemicals. And phsyics equations are not motors. No amount of math is going to get you from point a to point b the way a honda civic will.
"[...] and coming to a different conclusion [...]"
That's sort of my point when I say "not properly tested", in that we still don't really know what's going to happen.
There's also...
United States v. Wise (9th Cir. 1977) MAI Sys. Corp. v. Peak Computer (9th Cir. 1993) Triad Sys. Corp. v. Southeastern Express Co. (9th Cir. 1995) Wall Data v. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. (9th Cir. 2006)
And when ruling on Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc., 2009, the district court found the precedents cited above to be in "direct, irreconcilable conflict".
The supreme court denied hearing the case in 2011. So yeah, happy days.
Then there's also MDY v Blizzard, and UMG vs Augusto
Pretty much this. Its gotten to the point that I don't even look at new releases. I'll wait 6-8 months until all the obviously pre-planned DLC is out and then I'll buy it on sale at steam bundled with all the DLC, usually includes the "pre-order DLC" too if applicable.
I used to buy games and then x-pacs, but the money grubbing has reached the point that realease day is really just the beginning of a staggered launch.
I can wait 3-6 months and get the whole thing bundled together.
I don't think a court has tested whether presenting part of the game content as a free bonus for the first sale is actually a breach of resale rules.
Courts haven't even really properly tested whether the shrinkwrap license that says they didn't sell you anything but a license to use the software on the disk. A license that may or may not be transferrable or revokable. All you bought is a disk you may or may not be allowed to use.
Nor have they tested Steam's business model either. It looks like its a game is offered for sale, walks like a sale, quacks like sale... but its secretly a "perpetual subscription for a one time payment".
I should try selling my car like that. No, no its not really your car...yes, yes, you paid me $46,000 and I gave you the keys... so I can see how you thought you bought it, but you didn't. Your just renting, read the fine print! Now, you can't resell it, can't lend it to a friend, your wife and kids can't drive it either or I might just take it back.
(That's just wrong, and i say that as someone who generally likes steam's service... )
Of course its plausible. It happens all the time and yes it usually just requires a polite letter to fix the issue.
That's PRECISELY the point. This companies entire business model is to go after people who make the same sort of slip they themselves made and threaten them with giant extortion style lawsuits with settlement offers to extract a payment.
Yet, when its pointed out that they have made the very same of slip up on their own website, suddenly an "oops somebody else did it, we didn't know, we'll take it down" is supposed to be ok?
Do you think they accept that sort of response when they sue someone else for exactly the same thing?
Not only are they "the villain" but they appear to be a pretty hypocritical one too.
During WWI, you were convicted of sedition if you criticized the US's entry into the war. Apparently that is OK, because it was the law.
The difference here is that there is genuine science measuring the result. 0.08 is pretty dramatically impaired and has a marked effect on reaction times. 0.07999 is not at all "safe".
0.05 is unreasonable. It is de facto prohibition, and unconstitutional.
Prohibition? You are prohibited from drinking and then operating a two ton machine on our public road network. Boo fucking hoo.
Drink your brains out and get a buddy to drive you. Prohibition my ass.
Irrelevant straw man. The bill of rights was not intended to exhaustively enumerate the rights of the citizenry, which I take to include self-defense.
The 2nd amendment is relevant, because it is the legal framework which you are using to protect your right to have and carry a gun.
Without the 2nd amendment all you have is the "default assumption that you have the freedom to do so, barring a law prohibiting it".
As your "right to self defense" is not enumerated in the bill of rights or the constitution, it can be fairly easily be legislated away or watered down if you elect a government inclined to do so.
But any attempt to legislate anything even peripherally related to guns is challenged by people pointing at the 2nd amendment.
However the 2nd amendment is as much about letting you shoot at felons as the first is about letting you yell fire in a crowded theatre, and its an abuse of the amendment that it gets used to shield the desire to carry your guns to shoot at criminals.
I can assure you, on a real road, people tend to stay a bit more alert after consuming a few drinks.
I've personally been rear ended by a driver on a real road where people are more alert after consuming a few drinks who blew 0.07. He was definitely impaired. Not stumbling and slurring, but his reactions were off, and he drove straight into the back of a nearly stopped car at 50km/h without hitting the brakes. I was decelerating and pulling to the left side of the lane to make a left turn on a single lane road, and was nearly stopped at the time of impact; we got knocked into the oncoming lane and had a low speed head on collision as well (the oncoming guy at least hit his brakes).
Slashdot Mirror
If anyone ever comes up with a smart gun system that's 99.8% accurate, that will, no doubt, be good enough.
Except the debate we are having today would repeat itself.
The people responding here aren't looking at what can actually achieved today, or achieved in the future. Its just knee jerk rejection.
. Especially if you think that somebody is going to replace a critical piece of equipment with a - as you note - 99.8% success rate with one that is, at best, an order of magnitude lower
The glock 17 is an exceptionally reliable piece. There are other rock solid pieces out there too. But many are less reliable. And more complex weapons can be an order of magnitude less so. Many of the cheap pocket pistols are not well regarded; and there is a whole cottage industry of "reliability upgrades" for the 1911.
Yet people put their "life on the line" with them.
) It's rare to see any biometric ID system exceed 80% in real world conditions.
80% of what? The only metric that matters to the "life on the the line crowd" on a smart gun is the false reject rate. That is what percentage of the time is it going to falsely reject an authorized fingerprint? That's the number that has to be super low, so they can still get that 99.8% reliability.
Now you can dial the looseness of the fingerprint matching down as far as you like. The loose it gets the less likely that it will reject an authorized fingerprint, and the more likely that it accepts an unauthorized one.
Most biometric systems are dialed in the other way; where its far far more important that it reject an unauthorized user, and its ok if an authorized user has to swipe 3 or 4 times and occasionally even do a manual override.
But you could dial it out the other way, and make it loose enough that it practically never falsely rejects you. Sure by doing so it might let 30% of unauthorized users fire the gun.. but think on that for a second, even if the false accept rate was THAT colossally bad, it would still prevent 70% of unauthorized firings.
Many accidents would still be prevented.
That's the big question, if you dial the false reject rate to loose enough that you get 99.8% reliability; how bad is the false positive rate going to be? Even a terrible false positive is still potentially a big improvement to gun safety,
For all you know, our high costs are due to the fact that Americans are far more unhealthy/unfit than the rest of the world and therefore more expensive
Its appropriate that this is in the 97% of climate science papers agree thread. Because this argument here, is exactly the same kind of nonsense that climate science faces.
Plenty of studies show that healthcare costs more in the states even when broken down by procedure or otherwise controlling for such theories. (Not to mention the lack of healthcare is one of the reasons people get sicker in the first place, and end up needing emergency care for things that would be taken care of earlier in other countries.)
Bull. The free market exists in utilities
You listed off a set of heavily regulated oligopolies as examples of the free market ideal? Are you for real?
Simply not true. My mother had brain surgery to have a tumor removed. The surgery date was scheduled nearly 3 months out from the discovery of the actual tumor. Even in many reasonably dire situations, you're frequently delayed a fair length of time before an actual remedy is applied.
Missing the point again. 3 hours or 3 months isn't the issue. She is not in a position to negotiate. That is the antithesis of the free market. She needs what they are selling in a way that makes rational cost analysis impossible. How much is your life worth to you?
And those are the cases that insurance should be for (the exact way _all_ other insurance works).
Nope its different from the way all other insurance works in that society feels no obligation to replace your car if it breaks down on you, or you drive it into a pole.
But we aren't going to leave you in a ditch with a broken leg no matter what.
That difference is everything. Its why 'insurance' doesn't work. Society isn't going to leave you broken in a ditch even if you don't have broken in a ditch insurance. So we're going to cover you anyway and that means healthcare is mandatory, and if you can't cover the cost of all possible healthcare scenarios then insurance is effectively mandatory too.
If its mandatory its not a free market, and we should stop trying to contort to pretend that it is or can be.
Yet neither property insurance or car insurance are socialized and seem to work just fine in not wiping out the middle class.
What is your car worth? That's an easy number. What is your house worth? That's another easy number. This is worth X$, therefore I need insurance for X$. And the cost of the insurance is proportional to the value of the asset. If I can afford the asset I can generally afford the insurance. If not, I can sell the asset and buy something within my means.
What is the value of your life? Not an easy number. And the insurance you will require has no relation whatsoever to what you might write down on a balance sheet of your net worth either.
because even 99% isn't good enough
The Glock 17 9mm regularly used by police forces is rated at having less than 20 malfunctions in the first 10,000 rounds; that's 1/500... which is 99.8%
So, you are correct that 99% isn't good enough, but 99.8% is.
Thus if someone were to release a smart gun tech that kept its false negative rate (preventing legitimate fire rate) low enough that the gun retains its 99.8% effectiveness rating, then it would be good enough.
Police unions, representing working cops on the streets will be unalterably opposed to it, because even 99% isn't good enough when your life is on the line.
This old chestnut. "your life is on the line". Its life or death, and we have to do everything we can possibly do to ensure a positive outcome.
That's why police have an annual proficiency review. Remember their life is on the line. A few hours once a year is good enough to ensure they are in top shape, right?
And what's more that proficiency test has the very high standard of 70% to get a pass. Remember their life is on the line, or the life of their partner... or perhaps even your life. You want to know the gun he's holding is going to fire when he pulls the trigger right? That's paramount right? That he's proficient with the firearm, well, 70% is "pretty good" right?
Funny how 99% isn't good enough for the gun, but 70% is good enough for the guy holding it.
After all, if it's easy to change the prints, it's still easy to steal and use the weapon.
Its easy to defeat bike locks too. But locking your bike stops casual impulse / opportunity thefts from everyone not wandering the streets with a bolt cutter.
In this case, the gun will not fire when your kids have the neighbors kids over and they pick it up and do something stupid like pull the trigger while pointing it at your kid, or their own leg, or whatever.
The difficulty of changing the prints, even if its pretty easy, will be a high enough threshold to ensure that accident never happens.
There are plenty of perfectly legitimate complaints about smart guns without resorting to nonsensical arguments. The fact that someone dedicated enough will be able to change the prints is pretty much irrelevant. It would clearly be useful to stop plenty of other scenarios.
I'll never understand how that's relevant or how you seem to think that's the government's doing.
I doesn't matter whose doing it it is, the reality stands as evidence that socialized healthcare can be cheaper than the american system.
We have one of the least "free market" healthcare systems in the world: consumers have little freedoms, competitiveness is non-existant, costs aren't determined by actual market forces but instead by some secret negotiating coalition of "government cronies in medicare", "insurance cronies in the private sector", and "a chargemaster hospital crony in the service industry".
That's what the "free market" does; it coalesces into oligopolies.
We desperately need free market mechanics introduced into our healthcare system.
The free market can't exist in healthcare. It has all the characteristics of a public utility -- everyone needs it to some degree, much of the infrastructure is fabulously expensive, some people need a lot of it (due to there genes, or due to an accident). In many cases you can't do without it.
And to top it off it its often purchased under duress. "I see you've had a heart attack, you probably won't make it to the next hospital... so lets discuss what surviving the day is worth to you?" Yes, that's an exaggeration, but the point stands -- health care isn't something you are necessarily in a position to make a "rational, informed cost analysis" of; frequently your "purchasing products or services" while doubled over with pain, nausea, vomiting, cramps, bleeding, delirium, or your facing something terminal ... they might as well literally have a gun to your head for the amount of 'freedom' the consumer has.
Moreover the free market, even when it works, is about the efficient allocation of resources from the sellers to the buyers. Its about efficiency. It isn't efficient to cure a poor person who can't even cover the cost of their procedure, never mind allow the seller turn a profit on it. The free market abhors that situation.
But that's what society wants. Society doesn't want the poor turned away at the hospital to die in the streets. Society doesn't want its middle class wiped out by car accidents and skiing accidents. Society wants socialized health care.
The US just can't admit that to itself.
You make the same mistake as another commenter.
No idea who you are referring to but I disagree that I made any mistake at all.
the harry potter book was being read in the background while someone explained the narrative devices being used, commented on quality, explained the subtext, etc
then the work is not attempting to copy/imitate the original, it's providing something else entirely.
a) Something else entirely? Its entirely a derivative work that not only uses all the content of the original, but also which could not exist without the original.
b) That's why movies don't have to license the songs they use for the soundtrack, right? Because the movies not even about the song. Its something else entirely, and any song could be used in the background; its not even dependant on that particular song because its just, you know, playing the background. Oh wait, they do actually have to license them, even then.
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch,
Why would someone you met at a conference send you a picture of their lunch?
The tradeoff with facebook is not what you think it is. It's not about making the content you consume from others less obtrusive, it removes the burden to them of figuring out who to share things with.
In other words, I'm saying life is not better when someone posts every piece of crap online without thinking and relies on their "friends" to sort out what they want to see.
To me, anyone who does, is saying they are too lazy to even think about who they want to communicate with.
That interesting person from the conference, if he was required to think about it, would never decide to send you photos of his lunch in the first place. So the burden of deciding whether or not to see it has been shifted off him entirely and onto you.
They want to know how "ClassicGamingFan34" plays Super Mario Brothers 3. You really can't compare creating a movie from a book to creating a gameplay video because the primary merit of the book or movie is to reveal the plot.
And? I want to see how Peter Jackson directs the hobbit, and how Ian McKellan brings Gandalf to life... I'm not interested in an Uwe Boll production of the same thing starring your grandpa.
To suggest that the director, cast, and crew of a film production bring nothing to the table except to "reveal the plot" is absurd.
If the official video makes just as much money via ads as the fan created videos then they can rightly claim that the fans added nothing of value to the game content.
Nobody disputes that the fan productions add real value. But so what? They still need permission.
They had a search warrant for financial data regarding one former employee, and they took tens of millions of medical records too, which they weren't entitled to.
So they took a hard drive that contained that employees information along with some other database and didn't remove and leave behind the ceramic platter that contained the other database?
. They stepped over the line, despite being warned. How is this confusing to you?
The question is really what did they actually take? Did they haul out all the filing cabinets on 2 floors full of printed records? Or did they take a single file server that contained what they were looking for, and which also had some other stuff on it too.
I assume they will be passing that money to affected Americans?
Suing the government for massive amounts of money, in terms of society as a whole, is about as productive as sending yourself a wire transfer. A bunch of fees and no net gain.
Any money the IRS would pay out, would simply have to be collected back from the people.
"I created a video of how I played X game and narrated it" is very very different than "I made a movie based on your book"
In that making a movie requires a LOT more original work to accomplish? You have to write a screenplay, direct actors, each of whom delivers an original interpretation of the part, then theres lighting, sound, sound effects, soundtrack, CGI, props, sets, costumes.
Your right that's a lot more work than pointing a camera at a TV and playing a video game while you jabber on about it.
The act of playing a game is unique to each player,
Yes, and reading a book into a microphone is a unique performance as well, (maybe you do silly voices, maybe you read fast then slow, then fast again...) but you can't read the harry potter books onto youtube and expect the author to have no say in the matter.
To me it's fairly clear that 29.21 applies - especially "the use of, or the authorization to disseminate, the new work or other subject-matter does not have a substantial adverse effect, financial or otherwise, on the exploitation or potential exploitation of the existing work or other subject-matter"
Yes it applies, but that's not enough. For profit uses are more likely to be ruled infringing than non-profit uses - if you sold your walkthroughs as game guides that'd even more likely to be reuled infringing, but non-profit uses can still infringe. Its just a factor taken into consideration. Moreover, these youtube videos were generating advertising revenue... so there was a profit result whether that was the primary purpose or not.
And Nintendo's move was just to claim the ad revenue. Which at the end of the day seems like a reasonable move.
Nintendo would have no right to that revenue because a) the medium is different b) how a game is played by a particular user is an original work c) any additional content (audio explaining stuff about the game) is more than likely original. The only thing is that they would have to make sure to credit Nintendo but no more than that.
That's why in Canada you don't need film rights to make a movie out of a book, because
a) the medium is different
b) how the film is shot by a particular director is an original work
c) any additional content (audio soundtrack) is more than likely original.
You just have to give the author credit.
No.. wait... that's all completely wrong... even in Canada.
I don't know where you got your information, but its seems entirely wrong. I honestly don't know what a game playthrough would be ruled as in Canada, but its definitely a derivative work. Whether it falls under Fair Dealing or not I couldn't say. Its one thing to include some screenshots or animation as part of a review... but a complete play-through from start to finish really is something else entirely.
You do realize medicare/medicaide is more expensive than private insurance, don't you?
Are you living under a rock?
Canada, UK, and other 'socialized medicine countries" pay less per capita for healthcare than American's do.
Sure, you may not pay for it up front when visiting the doctor or paying for your drugs, but you do pay for it in taxes, along with everyone else.
Yes, and it still costs less.
American's pay more per capita and more as a percentage of GDP, than any country with socialized medicine.
It baffles me that anyone would argue for privatized health care. Unless you are the 1% private healthcare its not "better" healthcare. Its not cheaper healthcare for society as a whole.
I really don't object to the 1% wanting to spend their money on private health care (because they aren't really buying "insurance" they are just buying the healthcare they need directly, as needed, when needed -- they are "self insured"). I can see why they want that, and if I was in their position I'd want it to. Its their money, and they can decide how little or how much of it they want to spend on their healthcare.
But I can't figure out why the other 99% wants private for profit insurance companies managing their healthcare, when it just costs them more and provides them less. Its counter to their own interests.
The problem with that logic is that with sufficient effort you could show that any problem can be reduced to math.
Not true.
The question is not can something be reduced to math, but is it math itself.
Same difference. If it can be reduced to math, then it is math.
For example: geometry is a mathematical field, but not everything created using geometry is math.
Yes it is. A bridge is not geometry. No amount of geometry will let you drive a car over a river. You are going to need some concrete and steel.
Another example: every video on Youtube. Every one of them is reduced to mathematics before being displayed (and quite often when it is made), but arguing that the video itself is math or a mathematical algorithm is patently ridiculous.
A video is just a finite integer, a "number". The representation of that number as video is just a mathematical transformation.
The construction or selection of the number itself, and the transformation is an artistic endeavor. And we as a society have effectively enabled the copy protection of sufficiently large sufficiently interesting numbers. But that is a separate (albeit interesting) issue.
Oh, and also the burden of proof isn't on him to prove the statement isn't math, it's on people who claim it is math to prove it is.
In another comment I wrote out some simplified set operations recognizable to anyone as 'pure math' that perform the hello world program logic. A formal proof using a turing construct would be more effort but no less doable.
But in general, anything that can be programmed on a computer is a provable subset of what can be programmed on an abstract turing machine. Therefore all software is math.
Proper (e.g. patentable) Inventions however are not math. They may be describable with math, even physics to describe the operation of the motor, chemistry to describe the burning of fuel etc. But chemical equations are not chemicals. And phsyics equations are not motors. No amount of math is going to get you from point a to point b the way a honda civic will.
"[...] and coming to a different conclusion [...]"
That's sort of my point when I say "not properly tested", in that we still don't really know what's going to happen.
There's also...
United States v. Wise (9th Cir. 1977)
MAI Sys. Corp. v. Peak Computer (9th Cir. 1993)
Triad Sys. Corp. v. Southeastern Express Co. (9th Cir. 1995)
Wall Data v. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. (9th Cir. 2006)
And when ruling on Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc., 2009, the district court found the precedents cited above to be in "direct, irreconcilable conflict".
The supreme court denied hearing the case in 2011. So yeah, happy days.
Then there's also MDY v Blizzard, and UMG vs Augusto
Pretty much this. Its gotten to the point that I don't even look at new releases. I'll wait 6-8 months until all the obviously pre-planned DLC is out and then I'll buy it on sale at steam bundled with all the DLC, usually includes the "pre-order DLC" too if applicable.
I used to buy games and then x-pacs, but the money grubbing has reached the point that realease day is really just the beginning of a staggered launch.
I can wait 3-6 months and get the whole thing bundled together.
I don't think a court has tested whether presenting part of the game content as a free bonus for the first sale is actually a breach of resale rules.
Courts haven't even really properly tested whether the shrinkwrap license that says they didn't sell you anything but a license to use the software on the disk. A license that may or may not be transferrable or revokable. All you bought is a disk you may or may not be allowed to use.
Nor have they tested Steam's business model either. It looks like its a game is offered for sale, walks like a sale, quacks like sale... but its secretly a "perpetual subscription for a one time payment".
I should try selling my car like that. No, no its not really your car...yes, yes, you paid me $46,000 and I gave you the keys... so I can see how you thought you bought it, but you didn't. Your just renting, read the fine print! Now, you can't resell it, can't lend it to a friend, your wife and kids can't drive it either or I might just take it back.
(That's just wrong, and i say that as someone who generally likes steam's service... )
That program amounts to:
S and O are ordered sets of elements from the ASCII set.
set S = {"H","e","l","l","o"," ","W","o","r","l","d","!","\n"}
set O = {}
let O = O U S
Of course its plausible. It happens all the time and yes it usually just requires a polite letter to fix the issue.
That's PRECISELY the point. This companies entire business model is to go after people who make the same sort of slip they themselves made and threaten them with giant extortion style lawsuits with settlement offers to extract a payment.
Yet, when its pointed out that they have made the very same of slip up on their own website, suddenly an "oops somebody else did it, we didn't know, we'll take it down" is supposed to be ok?
Do you think they accept that sort of response when they sue someone else for exactly the same thing?
Not only are they "the villain" but they appear to be a pretty hypocritical one too.
How are they intercepting private communications?
This is the same as your ISP running your mail through an antivirus / antispam / antiphishing tool.
You think that's illegal and requires a warrant?
During WWI, you were convicted of sedition if you criticized the US's entry into the war. Apparently that is OK, because it was the law.
The difference here is that there is genuine science measuring the result. 0.08 is pretty dramatically impaired and has a marked effect on reaction times. 0.07999 is not at all "safe".
0.05 is unreasonable. It is de facto prohibition, and unconstitutional.
Prohibition? You are prohibited from drinking and then operating a two ton machine on our public road network. Boo fucking hoo.
Drink your brains out and get a buddy to drive you. Prohibition my ass.
One more reason not to use Bing.
Because google is any different?
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-klingon
Its just a matter of time before they add klingon to their translate service.
Irrelevant straw man. The bill of rights was not intended to exhaustively enumerate the rights of the citizenry, which I take to include self-defense.
The 2nd amendment is relevant, because it is the legal framework which you are using to protect your right to have and carry a gun.
Without the 2nd amendment all you have is the "default assumption that you have the freedom to do so, barring a law prohibiting it".
As your "right to self defense" is not enumerated in the bill of rights or the constitution, it can be fairly easily be legislated away or watered down if you elect a government inclined to do so.
But any attempt to legislate anything even peripherally related to guns is challenged by people pointing at the 2nd amendment.
However the 2nd amendment is as much about letting you shoot at felons as the first is about letting you yell fire in a crowded theatre, and its an abuse of the amendment that it gets used to shield the desire to carry your guns to shoot at criminals.
I can assure you, on a real road, people tend to stay a bit more alert after consuming a few drinks.
I've personally been rear ended by a driver on a real road where people are more alert after consuming a few drinks who blew 0.07. He was definitely impaired. Not stumbling and slurring, but his reactions were off, and he drove straight into the back of a nearly stopped car at 50km/h without hitting the brakes. I was decelerating and pulling to the left side of the lane to make a left turn on a single lane road, and was nearly stopped at the time of impact; we got knocked into the oncoming lane and had a low speed head on collision as well (the oncoming guy at least hit his brakes).
He was convicted of DUI. The limit here is 0.05.
Every state that has enacted a concealed carry law in the US has exeperienced a reduced rate in violent crime. EVERY TIME.
The US as a whole has experienced a steady reduction in the rate of violent crime.
There has been no real correlation shown with conceal carry laws reducing crime on their own merit relative to states that didn't pass them.