hat's funny, but this naturally and frequently arises in casual conversations because most people do watch TV and many TV watchers insist on making this a prime topic of discussion.
Except that's not what happened here. Nobody was talking to him. Nobody asked him anything. Indeed, he could have simply clicked the back button in his browser and read the next slashdot story.
But instead, he had to take the time out to tell someone who had never approached him personally that he didn't have cable.
I've never watched an episode of "Seinfeld" but people have mentioned it to me innumerable times.
Understood. But if you hear two people "having a conversation at the watercooler" about Seinfeld do you sidle up, get their attention, look down your nose and say "I don't watch that show."? Because THAT is what people find annoying.
IMO, the reason people get annoyed when you tell them that you don't own or watch TV is that on some level, they also realize that it's wasting their time and polluting their brain.
For my part, I don't watch reality TV, and refuse to watch it out of principle. If someone engages me in conversation about a reality show I can either deflect it as something I didn't watch, or I can do the whole "I don't watch garbage like that routine." depending on whether I want to simply politely change the subject or whether I want to make the point that I think its stupid and that watching it is stupid. With my mother in law, for example, I tend to be the diplomat; "Oh, no, I haven't seen that." with others I'll take the shot.
In my experience few people are offended unless I take the effort to at least imply that I think the show they are talking about is not worth my time, or anyone else's.
But suddenly your interest in the text evaporates when I point out the inconvenient (for you) definition of the word "fine."
Lets back up for a moment. The entire notion of damages is compensation for harm. I have caused this $much$ harm to you, and I must pay that $much$ in damages as restitution.
There is theoretically no such thing as "excessive damages" because damages are in direct proportion to the harm. If I cause you a billion dollars in damage, then I've caused you a billion dollars in damage.
"Excessive damages" would then be what exactly? Damages that are a lot more than the Damages? That's a non-sequitur. The damages are the damages.
"Statutory minimum damages" however, do not pass the smell test here. They are not proportional to harm. They do not represent the damages. They are set by statute.
This reminds me of Obama-care, where despite calling them anything-but-a-tax, they were ruled as constitutional by virtue of being in fact, a tax. Evidently the supremes are more interested in how things are really working rather than what label is attached to them.
Same thing applies here, these statutory damages are not proportional to harm, and calling them damages is misleading. The way they are being applied, particularly in taking a single defendent and multiplying each file by amounts in the statute is effectively punitive not restorative.
Are we, for some reason, more interested in the definition of "excessive" than of "fine"?
Statutory damages that bear no relation to actual harm are a fine. A rose by any other name...
The party the amount is paid to is not the differentiator between damages and fines. You can be assessed damages to state property and required to pay them and it is not a fine. Similarly your homeowners strata corporation can penalize you for a strata bylaw infraction and it is a "fine" not "damages".
Your trick is to make it sound like you committed only one infringement by sharing your library, but in fact you committed (again, by my math) 30,000 violations.
I did one action involving ~30,000 separate works. (Around 1,800 CDs). Its not a "trick".
Why on earth do you think it is reasonable charge me with 30,000 separate counts of copyright infringement for one act of sharing a library?
I could steal everything in an actual library and I wouldn't be charged with 30,000 counts of theft. I'd be charged with one count of grand theft (theft over a $1000.) That's it. It doesn't matter how many individual books I took.
I might face some other charges relating to possession of stolen property, fencing charges, conspiracy charges if I had help, etc, etc. But again, one charge of each... not 1 charge of conspiracy for each book we took. Not one 1 charge of possession of stolen property for each book in my possession.
The very notion of breaking something as trivial as sharing a single folder on a PC into 30,000 separate violations is itself ridiculous to the point of being unconstitutional.
To be honest the statutory minimum penalty for copyright infringement at 750$ itself isn't the abuse, its the separation of each file into its own separate violation that is the abuse.
If I share 30,000 track library, then $750 for the first track and 5 or 10 cents a track on top of that is fine. But it an abuse of the legal system and of common sense to divide the single action into 30,000 separate actions simply to allow you to multiply the minimum by 30,000.
You might think that $22.5 million sounds ridiculous for 30,000 copyright violations, but I don't.
I think counting it as 30,000 separate copyright violations is ridiculous. Just as I'd consider charging a an actual theif with a separate violation for each m&m in a bag of stolen m&ms to be ridiculous. That you don't is... sad. How do you rationalize it?
I don't understand the attraction of those old IBMish keyboards. You wore out your fingers with all the pressure they take to type on, and you feel self conscious typing on them because they're so noisy. What really is the attraction?
Well, they were built like tanks which is good. And the keyboard typing doesn't have a "mushy" feel to it, which is also good.
But beyond that I agree with you. They are too noisy and heavy for my taste. I guess they appeal to the guy who drives around an old 1970s small block chevy, despite it being loud, heavy, ugly, and not particularly comfortable. But it too will last forever.
That's probably only the silver lining in the always-on client server model games. With all the cities stored on the server, and some of the game logic on the server, their really is not going to be significant piracy... if any. Its like a pirated copy of WorldOfWarcraft.
So if the sales are lackluster then blaming it on piracy looks not merely hollow scapegoating, but full on ridiculous.
I suggest you do a little research and find some examples of what counts as "excessive" in the constitutional sense
If I were to simply share my music library via any of the various programs available for that, and then simply plead guilty to do so, my minimum statutory penalty would be roughly 22.5 million dollars.
If I get pulled over and handed a $500 speeding ticket,[...] I think it's clear that you'd have to establish something more than that
Really? 22.5 million not reaching the threshold of excessive yet?
I've heard a lot of good arguments that the statutory penalties are too high, but never a good argument that they're actually unconstitutional
Huh? Doesn't "too high" by definition mean "excessive"?
The 8th amendment is pretty short: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
If you agree the fines being levied against individuals for non-commercial copyright infringement are "too high", then they are "excessive", then they are unconstitutional.
The nominally hard part of the argument is establishing that the the statutory fines are "too high". But if you've already accepted the validity of the arguments for "too high", there is really nothing left to defend their constitutionality. Being "too high" IS the criteria by on which they fail to be constitutional.
...but sometimes you just have to Get. Shit. Done.
The ends justifies the means. Uh. No.
Not that i disagree with you, with respect to using OSX or Windows when it makes sense to do so. But I don't think using either is particularly "evil".
But if I thought Apple killed children and unicorns then I wouldn't use OSX, even if it was the best tool for a job.
And the fact that a blender can't be used at the beach is a valid criticism of a washer/dryer.
Don't be an idiot.
The Tesla roadster is essentially an electric Elise. It sells to the same people who would buy an Elise and they would use it for the same things a person buying an Elise would.
This is the reason I don't use Google+ I have active pages with more than a million users in facebook,..
Wait... facebook?! The other massive site with the real name policy? The one showing people their friends profiles and asking "Is that their real name?"
That is the site you prefer to use?
"Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you're connecting with." http://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576/
Being banned for any reason (I really never should be, never had any problems in facebook for example, but you never know)
Yeah, you never know, i mean you are just violating their Real Name policy. I'm sure I can't think of a reason you would ever be banned. Nobody has ever been banned from facebook for being in violation of the real name policy there.
I mean, they only banned famous (infamous?) author Salman Rushdie for registering as Salman Rushdie. Clearly that's not his real name so, they banned him, and when he complained they reinstated him as Ahmed Rushdie, since his passport says his first name is Ahmed. It took a bit of a media frenzy on the event for facebook to buckle and let him be Salman Rushdie on facebook.
But hey, Google is the company that had a real name policy and banned people over it, and then caved and dropped it, while facebook is the company that HAS a real name policy, recently fought a court case in Germany to keep it, and bans people who violate it... and so therefore:
You stuck with facebook, and will never touch G+ again.
Mod up. That is how I end up on the code project and stack over flow. My most recent task is:
How do I send a client certificate with a POST request from c#? First time I've had to do any of that.
So I use some basic google-fu turn that into a sensible keyword search and you get a few examples from forums, including stackoverflow.com, support.microsoft.com, forums.asp.net, c-sharpcorner.com, etc.
Its not until about halfway down page 2 of googles search that I get ANYTHING from MSDN. And when I do its an article on
ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate Property of System.ServiceMode.Description, which is at least tangentially relevant but not at all directly useful.
But after reading a few forum articles on it, I know that I'm going to be using HttpWebRequest, and I'm going to use its ClientCertificates collection, and I'm going to need an instance of an X509Certificate object. (Or X509Certificate2)
If I need more information on those classes then I'll head over to the official documentation. Or not. If the article example and discussion was sufficient for my needs then I might not need to go further.
API documentation can't be improved, I don't think, becuase it documents the API. I often don't really need much API documentation, I need the "tasks to relevant classes" mapping.
I have the same problem with linux to be honest. Man pages are great but I'm usually stuck where I don't even know what command I need to use for the task I want to accomplish.
For a trivial example: How do I rename a folder in linux?
Lets look at the resuts:
top results, various forums and FAQs and basic information that amounts to:
hey its really easy: mv old-folder-name new-folder-name
I don't see a man page until page 2 of the results. And ugh, its a man page for rename(3), the C function, which is not what im looking for.
I don't actually seen the man page for mv in the top 5 pages (I didn't check further). I'm not surprised. Sure the Description in the man page for mv is:
Rename SOURCE to DEST, or move SOURCE(s) to DIRECTORY.
And the rest of the page is documentation of syntax and switches, like -S to override the usual backup suffix, or -u to move only when the SOURCE is newer then then destination or the destination file is missing... etc etc etc.
There is nothing wrong with the man page but its no wonder we don't see it ranked higher than countless forum and FAQ articles on basic linux file operations.
My assertion was already backed by news articles. If you wish to refute it, fine, provide your own citation. Don't pretend I'm the one not supporting my assertions. That would be you.
the "public need to know" is not an absolute defense for "whistleblowing", as you've tried to use it.
I didn't say that. Show me where you think I tried to use it as an absolute defense for whistleblowing.
That you don't consider wikileaks to be an "enemy" is irrelevant.
It is relevant, because it goes to intent. Taking something to the New York Times or Wikileaks is not evidence of intent in the same way that selling it to the Chinese or Iranians would be. Pretending they are equivalent is dishonest.
Citation requested.
There is no publically available evidence of harm or intent to harm. Google it for yourself.
And as for theories involving "secret evidence of harm"? What would be the point? The enemy already knows what it did with any information that was released, so what possible need for secrecy can there be for keeping what the enemy did secret from the public? That's just idiotic.
Same goes for evidence of intent. If they have a money shot of Manning talking about how he's releasing the documents so that Iran will be able to fight back better then fine, show us the evidence and charge him with espionage. Otherwise, forget it.
As for "out for blood", I'm just arguing for the status quo, where Manning gets a court martial to find if he is guilty of espionage.
Read the statute. He needs intent.
Releasing classified documents in and of itself is NOT evidence of intent to harm the united states. Its equally valid as evidence that he wanted to correct a wrong, inform the public, and make the united states a better place. So unless there is something beyond the fact of the action itself, then no, he shouldn't even be charged with espionage.
The show portrayed the car begin pushed, as i if it actually had.
Yes, staged for dramatic effect. We know.
but it sure as shit is a misleading, asshole move.
It was making a point.
The car, fully charged, will get you over 300 miles, as I understand it, though less so at very high speeds
Yes, like my 911. I think its rated around 300+ miles on a tank of gas. Nothing wrong with the Tesla's range.
though less so at very high speeds
Yes, again, like my 911. I drop to 3-4mpg on a track. And its only a 3.6 liter... the big V-12s they get down to 1-2mpg. Nobody is criticising the Tesla for burning through the juice faster on a track. We get it.
It can fast charge in an hour or so to 80%, which isn't so bad, even long distance. In a pinch you can charge it off a regular power outlet, though that takes a lot longer.
The nearest track to me is an hours drive. So I drive to the track, fill up at the gas station outside, and then pull into the park. What do you do in a Tesla? Drive to the track, and now your already down to 70% charge. You get 5-10 laps in, and then if you don't have some where to charge at the race park you need to the rest to get back home.
The point being that unless you're trying very hard and ignoring the car's very clear warnings, it will not leave you stranded any more than a gas car will.
Sure you didn't run out of juice, but say it with me now: Worst track day ever.
Now sure that assumes there is nowhere to recharge at the track. The track I use sure doesn't have a rapid charger. It doesn't have a gas station either onsite. But the race park is next to a gas station so I can fill the car and be back on the waiting grid within 5-10 minutes of pulling out.
But they don't have a rapid charger for electric cars. The race park isn't exactly in the middle of town either, its out in 'farm country' where most people drive trucks. Its not exactly in Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt country. I don't know where the nearest one is. But even best case, you are proposing driving to the track from home, doing 20 laps, then driving to town and back and spending an hour there. So 2 hrs offsite for an 80% charge that will get you another 30 - 40 minutes of track time before you have to go recharge again. When you get back from that you'll either call it a day, or get out on the track one more time... but if you go back out on the track you'll need to recharge again before you go home.
I assure you many of The Sun reading muppets who watch the show will have gone out the next morning and gobbed off to their friends about how the car ran out of electricity and sure
The point isn't really whether it did or did not run out of electricity in the particular scene where they pushed it back to the garage. That was staged for dramatic effect, but its not the point.
The point is that the car does not have enough of a charge to last a day at the track. A lot of people who buy the Lotus Elise and Exige buy it, in part, for track days. The fact that the Tesla incarnation of that car will make it less than half a day before needing a lengthy battery re-charge is a valid criticism of the car.
And the best case assumes you show up at the track fully charged, as opposed to driving it to the track and using up a good chunk of its battery just showing up. And we haven't even talked about getting home again afterwards.
In a regular car, you fill up just before you pull into the track; and if you need to fill up during the day, its a 5 minute task, and if you are low at the end of the day you fill up before heading home.
To get a good track day out of a Tesla you'd have to bring it in and take it home on a trailer, and you'd still have a tough time getting a full day out of it, even if you could manage to plug it in while you weren't actually on the track.
Make no mistake, this was Clarkson pursuing his anti-green agenda and nothing else...
Listen to yourself sometime, you sound like a conspiracy theorist crackpot. He doesn't have an 'anti-green' agenda. Sure he likes big noisy powerful v12 engines, but that's not an anti-green "agenda".
I like Porsches, I find them far far more reliable, drivable, and practical than Ferraris. If I were reviewing a Ferrari I'd probably mention the relative maintenance and day to day practicality... but that's not an anti-ferrari "agenda". I'm not in league with my good friends the Germans to perpetrate some sort of anti-Italian conviction. Nor am I a 'cowardly person' seeking to use any opportunity to spread misinformation about Ferrari. That's just ridiculous nonsense.
And at worst anyone interested in actually buying a Ferrari who hears me talk about maintenance will do their own research into what the maintenance will be like. Odds are if you are looking at a Ferrari, the maintenance isn't likely a huge concern and it wasn't going to be your daily driver anyway.
Now watch the Tesla episode again. They liked the car. The only real complaint was that the battery technology is still a significant drawback. The range is only modest (but no worse than a typical sports car), but the recharge time is measured in hours not minutes.
More recently they reviewed a Nissan Leaf; and they were really upbeat about that car too, except for the recharge issue. In that episode they ended up pushing them around too. Was the battery really empty for the scene? I don't know. Does it really matter? No. The point they were making is again, that you have to pay a lot more attention when planning a trip to ensure that you don't run out of juice, and that recharging the battery takes a long time.
The ONLY thing I didn't like about the Nissan Leaf segment is that while they remarked that it would take 12+ hrs to fully recharge it, they didn't talk about the time to reach a 50%/ / 75% / 90% charge. These numbers are typically much lower, and while still too long to be at all convenient, at least don't require a hotel.
. Quote source material, or recognize that you don't actually have the evidence to show that "gov't believed many were outright innocent."
If you are going to challenge the fact widely reported by the news then its on you to demonstrate they the information is false.
But it illustrates the TRUTH that there is information that the public does not NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW.
I never stated otherwise.
I say no, he was not qualified.
I don't expect a whistleblower type to be "qualified". That's an absurd criteria to demand. They must follow their conscience.
You seem to have trouble differentiating between a vulnerability and an actual compromise.
Would you treat Manning any differently if wikileaks simply deleted the data? Remember Manning didn't give the information to "the enemy" he gave it to wikileaks. Wikileaks ultimately released it in the form it was released. Manning created a vulnerability by making it possible for wikileaks to release it to the pubic.
The key part here is harm
Really? So what is the problem then?
The government reports on that very subject is that Manning didn't really cause any harm. So what are you on about out for blood for exactly? There was no significant harm.
Morally, those who are innocent should be released; but a media conclusion of "innocent" is not in of itself proof of innocence.
Its hard to found legally innocent or guilty except in the media if they leave you in prison for 12 years without a trial. The Manning leak indicated that even the government believed many were outright innocent. Why is someone in prison for a decade if even the prosecution thinks they are innocent?
Bin Laden is hiding before we actually attack him?
Is that what was released? No. Not even close. You can throw the book at imaginary villains who do imaginary things all you like. But that isn't what Manning did so why treat it as if he did?
Does the public need to know where Bin Laden is hiding before we actually attack him?
That Petraeus had the affair..
Merely having the affair compromised himself and the US military. YOU were the one who argued that whether or not the enemy took advantage of that is irrelevant, and that whether or not he intended them to is irrelevant. That was your argument. Why the double standard?
Would you like to point out what Manning has disclosed that indicates illegal actions by the US?
The Guantanamo bay inmate assessment files show the imprisonment of detainees for years without trials. Inmates that even the US internal assessments classified as innocent, or very low level. 5 to 10 years in prison without trial for individuals that aren't even really suspected of being guilty?
Do you accept that as moral, legal, and on top of that something that the public shouldn't even be aware of?
And yes, in that case he'd deserve to get the book thrown at him because he's a freakin' general with access to highly classified information, and whose actions affect thousands of soldiers.
And yes, in that case he'd deserve to get the book thrown at him because he's a freakin' general with access to highly classified information, and whose actions affect thousands of soldiers.
Your comparing letting the temporary Bush tax cuts expire to the maximum tax rate of the 1950s? How many blows to the head does it take before your brain accepts that as a logical argument?
You can only trade games you haven't 'redeemed' onto your account. So it mostly only comes up if you buy a bundle that includes a game you already have... in some (but not all) cases you can gift the extra copy to someone else.
If you buy something as a gift for later, it also goes into that same owned, but not redeemed state, and while its in that state you can gift. But there's not generally much point in deliberately buying a game you don't want to trade for a game you do.
Once a title is in your games library, whether or not you've installed it, you can't trade it / gift it.
Frankly I wouldn't mind if steam allowed games to be traded even if they took a little fee for the process or limited how often you could do it to prevent abuse. That would eliminate one of my big gripes about the product.
I don't like this automatic control because there are some games, like RAGE and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which have problems with their respective latest patches that don't exist in former ones.
The fact that it makes keeping everyone in sync version-wise trivial for multiplayer, is a godsend, that more than offsets the regression-bug argument I think.
Avoiding a few regression bugs is certainly not worth the effort of manually downloading and manually patching every game one wants to play.
People seem to enjoy trading convenience for control. I understand why, but I don't agree that the increased benefit of giving the vendor more control is the direction we want to take things.
That's fair, and finer end user controls over things like that would be cool. Perhaps the ability to select patch level to play a game at for example. I'm not sure it would really be worth the effort to develop something like that though just to have that level of control.
Its not easier then using another package manager with a repo. Its as easy. But that is a lot easier than visiting various game websites downloading things, downloading updaters, etc etc etc
Slashdot Mirror
hat's funny, but this naturally and frequently arises in casual conversations because most people do watch TV and many TV watchers insist on making this a prime topic of discussion.
Except that's not what happened here. Nobody was talking to him. Nobody asked him anything. Indeed, he could have simply clicked the back button in his browser and read the next slashdot story.
But instead, he had to take the time out to tell someone who had never approached him personally that he didn't have cable.
I've never watched an episode of "Seinfeld" but people have mentioned it to me innumerable times.
Understood. But if you hear two people "having a conversation at the watercooler" about Seinfeld do you sidle up, get their attention, look down your nose and say "I don't watch that show."? Because THAT is what people find annoying.
IMO, the reason people get annoyed when you tell them that you don't own or watch TV is that on some level, they also realize that it's wasting their time and polluting their brain.
For my part, I don't watch reality TV, and refuse to watch it out of principle. If someone engages me in conversation about a reality show I can either deflect it as something I didn't watch, or I can do the whole "I don't watch garbage like that routine." depending on whether I want to simply politely change the subject or whether I want to make the point that I think its stupid and that watching it is stupid. With my mother in law, for example, I tend to be the diplomat; "Oh, no, I haven't seen that." with others I'll take the shot.
In my experience few people are offended unless I take the effort to at least imply that I think the show they are talking about is not worth my time, or anyone else's.
But suddenly your interest in the text evaporates when I point out the inconvenient (for you) definition of the word "fine."
Lets back up for a moment. The entire notion of damages is compensation for harm. I have caused this $much$ harm to you, and I must pay that $much$ in damages as restitution.
There is theoretically no such thing as "excessive damages" because damages are in direct proportion to the harm. If I cause you a billion dollars in damage, then I've caused you a billion dollars in damage.
"Excessive damages" would then be what exactly? Damages that are a lot more than the Damages? That's a non-sequitur. The damages are the damages.
"Statutory minimum damages" however, do not pass the smell test here. They are not proportional to harm. They do not represent the damages. They are set by statute.
This reminds me of Obama-care, where despite calling them anything-but-a-tax, they were ruled as constitutional by virtue of being in fact, a tax. Evidently the supremes are more interested in how things are really working rather than what label is attached to them.
Same thing applies here, these statutory damages are not proportional to harm, and calling them damages is misleading. The way they are being applied, particularly in taking a single defendent and multiplying each file by amounts in the statute is effectively punitive not restorative.
Are we, for some reason, more interested in the definition of "excessive" than of "fine"?
Statutory damages that bear no relation to actual harm are a fine. A rose by any other name...
The party the amount is paid to is not the differentiator between damages and fines. You can be assessed damages to state property and required to pay them and it is not a fine. Similarly your homeowners strata corporation can penalize you for a strata bylaw infraction and it is a "fine" not "damages".
Your trick is to make it sound like you committed only one infringement by sharing your library, but in fact you committed (again, by my math) 30,000 violations.
I did one action involving ~30,000 separate works. (Around 1,800 CDs). Its not a "trick".
Why on earth do you think it is reasonable charge me with 30,000 separate counts of copyright infringement for one act of sharing a library?
I could steal everything in an actual library and I wouldn't be charged with 30,000 counts of theft. I'd be charged with one count of grand theft (theft over a $1000.) That's it. It doesn't matter how many individual books I took.
I might face some other charges relating to possession of stolen property, fencing charges, conspiracy charges if I had help, etc, etc. But again, one charge of each... not 1 charge of conspiracy for each book we took. Not one 1 charge of possession of stolen property for each book in my possession.
The very notion of breaking something as trivial as sharing a single folder on a PC into 30,000 separate violations is itself ridiculous to the point of being unconstitutional.
To be honest the statutory minimum penalty for copyright infringement at 750$ itself isn't the abuse, its the separation of each file into its own separate violation that is the abuse.
If I share 30,000 track library, then $750 for the first track and 5 or 10 cents a track on top of that is fine. But it an abuse of the legal system and of common sense to divide the single action into 30,000 separate actions simply to allow you to multiply the minimum by 30,000.
You might think that $22.5 million sounds ridiculous for 30,000 copyright violations, but I don't.
I think counting it as 30,000 separate copyright violations is ridiculous. Just as I'd consider charging a an actual theif with a separate violation for each m&m in a bag of stolen m&ms to be ridiculous. That you don't is ... sad. How do you rationalize it?
I think it just sounds too high.
Yes. It is excessive.
I don't understand the attraction of those old IBMish keyboards. You wore out your fingers with all the pressure they take to type on, and you feel self conscious typing on them because they're so noisy. What really is the attraction?
Well, they were built like tanks which is good. And the keyboard typing doesn't have a "mushy" feel to it, which is also good.
But beyond that I agree with you. They are too noisy and heavy for my taste. I guess they appeal to the guy who drives around an old 1970s small block chevy, despite it being loud, heavy, ugly, and not particularly comfortable. But it too will last forever.
That's probably only the silver lining in the always-on client server model games. With all the cities stored on the server, and some of the game logic on the server, their really is not going to be significant piracy... if any. Its like a pirated copy of WorldOfWarcraft.
So if the sales are lackluster then blaming it on piracy looks not merely hollow scapegoating, but full on ridiculous.
Also, by the way, statutory damages in a civil suit are not a "fine" since the money goes to the plaintiff and not the government.
Ah well, carry on then.
Right?
I suggest you do a little research and find some examples of what counts as "excessive" in the constitutional sense
If I were to simply share my music library via any of the various programs available for that, and then simply plead guilty to do so, my minimum statutory penalty would be roughly 22.5 million dollars.
If I get pulled over and handed a $500 speeding ticket,[...] I think it's clear that you'd have to establish something more than that
Really? 22.5 million not reaching the threshold of excessive yet?
People have funny ideas about how the justice system works.
In that they simply would like to see justice?
I've heard a lot of good arguments that the statutory penalties are too high, but never a good argument that they're actually unconstitutional
Huh? Doesn't "too high" by definition mean "excessive"?
The 8th amendment is pretty short:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
If you agree the fines being levied against individuals for non-commercial copyright infringement are "too high", then they are "excessive", then they are unconstitutional.
The nominally hard part of the argument is establishing that the the statutory fines are "too high". But if you've already accepted the validity of the arguments for "too high", there is really nothing left to defend their constitutionality. Being "too high" IS the criteria by on which they fail to be constitutional.
The ends justifies the means. Uh. No.
Not that i disagree with you, with respect to using OSX or Windows when it makes sense to do so. But I don't think using either is particularly "evil".
But if I thought Apple killed children and unicorns then I wouldn't use OSX, even if it was the best tool for a job.
Dr. Seuss seems like a bad example. It seems, even from the article you quoted that he made a legitimate effort to overcome it.
And Seuss is criticized as having a 'moral blind spot' there; while OSC is rabidly unapologetic in his views.
And the fact that a blender can't be used at the beach is a valid criticism of a washer/dryer.
Don't be an idiot.
The Tesla roadster is essentially an electric Elise. It sells to the same people who would buy an Elise and they would use it for the same things a person buying an Elise would.
This is the reason I don't use Google+ I have active pages with more than a million users in facebook,..
Wait... facebook?! The other massive site with the real name policy? The one showing people their friends profiles and asking "Is that their real name?"
That is the site you prefer to use?
"Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you're connecting with."
http://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576/
Being banned for any reason (I really never should be, never had any problems in facebook for example, but you never know)
Yeah, you never know, i mean you are just violating their Real Name policy. I'm sure I can't think of a reason you would ever be banned. Nobody has ever been banned from facebook for being in violation of the real name policy there.
I mean, they only banned famous (infamous?) author Salman Rushdie for registering as Salman Rushdie. Clearly that's not his real name so, they banned him, and when he complained they reinstated him as Ahmed Rushdie, since his passport says his first name is Ahmed. It took a bit of a media frenzy on the event for facebook to buckle and let him be Salman Rushdie on facebook.
But hey, Google is the company that had a real name policy and banned people over it, and then caved and dropped it, while facebook is the company that HAS a real name policy, recently fought a court case in Germany to keep it, and bans people who violate it... and so therefore:
You stuck with facebook, and will never touch G+ again.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Mod up. That is how I end up on the code project and stack over flow. My most recent task is:
How do I send a client certificate with a POST request from c#? First time I've had to do any of that.
So I use some basic google-fu turn that into a sensible keyword search and you get a few examples from forums, including stackoverflow.com, support.microsoft.com, forums.asp.net, c-sharpcorner.com, etc.
Its not until about halfway down page 2 of googles search that I get ANYTHING from MSDN. And when I do its an article on
ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate Property of System.ServiceMode.Description, which is at least tangentially relevant but not at all directly useful.
But after reading a few forum articles on it, I know that I'm going to be using HttpWebRequest, and I'm going to use its ClientCertificates collection, and I'm going to need an instance of an X509Certificate object. (Or X509Certificate2)
If I need more information on those classes then I'll head over to the official documentation. Or not. If the article example and discussion was sufficient for my needs then I might not need to go further.
API documentation can't be improved, I don't think, becuase it documents the API. I often don't really need much API documentation, I need the "tasks to relevant classes" mapping.
I have the same problem with linux to be honest. Man pages are great but I'm usually stuck where I don't even know what command I need to use for the task I want to accomplish.
For a trivial example: How do I rename a folder in linux?
Lets look at the resuts:
top results, various forums and FAQs and basic information that amounts to:
hey its really easy:
mv old-folder-name new-folder-name
I don't see a man page until page 2 of the results. And ugh, its a man page for rename(3), the C function, which is not what im looking for.
I don't actually seen the man page for mv in the top 5 pages (I didn't check further). I'm not surprised. Sure the Description in the man page for mv is:
Rename SOURCE to DEST, or move SOURCE(s) to DIRECTORY.
And the rest of the page is documentation of syntax and switches, like -S to override the usual backup suffix, or -u to move only when the SOURCE is newer then then destination or the destination file is missing... etc etc etc.
There is nothing wrong with the man page but its no wonder we don't see it ranked higher than countless forum and FAQ articles on basic linux file operations.
So you don't care to support your own assertion?
My assertion was already backed by news articles. If you wish to refute it, fine, provide your own citation. Don't pretend I'm the one not supporting my assertions. That would be you.
the "public need to know" is not an absolute defense for "whistleblowing", as you've tried to use it.
I didn't say that. Show me where you think I tried to use it as an absolute defense for whistleblowing.
That you don't consider wikileaks to be an "enemy" is irrelevant.
It is relevant, because it goes to intent. Taking something to the New York Times or Wikileaks is not evidence of intent in the same way that selling it to the Chinese or Iranians would be. Pretending they are equivalent is dishonest.
Citation requested.
There is no publically available evidence of harm or intent to harm. Google it for yourself.
And as for theories involving "secret evidence of harm"? What would be the point? The enemy already knows what it did with any information that was released, so what possible need for secrecy can there be for keeping what the enemy did secret from the public? That's just idiotic.
Same goes for evidence of intent. If they have a money shot of Manning talking about how he's releasing the documents so that Iran will be able to fight back better then fine, show us the evidence and charge him with espionage. Otherwise, forget it.
As for "out for blood", I'm just arguing for the status quo, where Manning gets a court martial to find if he is guilty of espionage.
Read the statute. He needs intent.
Releasing classified documents in and of itself is NOT evidence of intent to harm the united states. Its equally valid as evidence that he wanted to correct a wrong, inform the public, and make the united states a better place. So unless there is something beyond the fact of the action itself, then no, he shouldn't even be charged with espionage.
They didn't have a valid point.
They did have a valid point.
The car did not run out of power.
The truth of that fact is beside the point.
The show portrayed the car begin pushed, as i if it actually had.
Yes, staged for dramatic effect. We know.
but it sure as shit is a misleading, asshole move.
It was making a point.
The car, fully charged, will get you over 300 miles, as I understand it, though less so at very high speeds
Yes, like my 911. I think its rated around 300+ miles on a tank of gas. Nothing wrong with the Tesla's range.
though less so at very high speeds
Yes, again, like my 911. I drop to 3-4mpg on a track. And its only a 3.6 liter... the big V-12s they get down to 1-2mpg. Nobody is criticising the Tesla for burning through the juice faster on a track. We get it.
It can fast charge in an hour or so to 80%, which isn't so bad, even long distance. In a pinch you can charge it off a regular power outlet, though that takes a lot longer.
The nearest track to me is an hours drive. So I drive to the track, fill up at the gas station outside, and then pull into the park. What do you do in a Tesla? Drive to the track, and now your already down to 70% charge. You get 5-10 laps in, and then if you don't have some where to charge at the race park you need to the rest to get back home.
The point being that unless you're trying very hard and ignoring the car's very clear warnings, it will not leave you stranded any more than a gas car will.
Sure you didn't run out of juice, but say it with me now: Worst track day ever.
Now sure that assumes there is nowhere to recharge at the track. The track I use sure doesn't have a rapid charger. It doesn't have a gas station either onsite. But the race park is next to a gas station so I can fill the car and be back on the waiting grid within 5-10 minutes of pulling out.
But they don't have a rapid charger for electric cars. The race park isn't exactly in the middle of town either, its out in 'farm country' where most people drive trucks. Its not exactly in Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt country. I don't know where the nearest one is. But even best case, you are proposing driving to the track from home, doing 20 laps, then driving to town and back and spending an hour there. So 2 hrs offsite for an 80% charge that will get you another 30 - 40 minutes of track time before you have to go recharge again. When you get back from that you'll either call it a day, or get out on the track one more time... but if you go back out on the track you'll need to recharge again before you go home.
No you won't get "stranded". But it still SUCKS.
I assure you many of The Sun reading muppets who watch the show will have gone out the next morning and gobbed off to their friends about how the car ran out of electricity and sure
The point isn't really whether it did or did not run out of electricity in the particular scene where they pushed it back to the garage. That was staged for dramatic effect, but its not the point.
The point is that the car does not have enough of a charge to last a day at the track. A lot of people who buy the Lotus Elise and Exige buy it, in part, for track days. The fact that the Tesla incarnation of that car will make it less than half a day before needing a lengthy battery re-charge is a valid criticism of the car.
And the best case assumes you show up at the track fully charged, as opposed to driving it to the track and using up a good chunk of its battery just showing up. And we haven't even talked about getting home again afterwards.
In a regular car, you fill up just before you pull into the track; and if you need to fill up during the day, its a 5 minute task, and if you are low at the end of the day you fill up before heading home.
To get a good track day out of a Tesla you'd have to bring it in and take it home on a trailer, and you'd still have a tough time getting a full day out of it, even if you could manage to plug it in while you weren't actually on the track.
Make no mistake, this was Clarkson pursuing his anti-green agenda and nothing else...
Listen to yourself sometime, you sound like a conspiracy theorist crackpot. He doesn't have an 'anti-green' agenda. Sure he likes big noisy powerful v12 engines, but that's not an anti-green "agenda".
I like Porsches, I find them far far more reliable, drivable, and practical than Ferraris. If I were reviewing a Ferrari I'd probably mention the relative maintenance and day to day practicality... but that's not an anti-ferrari "agenda". I'm not in league with my good friends the Germans to perpetrate some sort of anti-Italian conviction. Nor am I a 'cowardly person' seeking to use any opportunity to spread misinformation about Ferrari. That's just ridiculous nonsense.
And at worst anyone interested in actually buying a Ferrari who hears me talk about maintenance will do their own research into what the maintenance will be like. Odds are if you are looking at a Ferrari, the maintenance isn't likely a huge concern and it wasn't going to be your daily driver anyway.
Now watch the Tesla episode again. They liked the car. The only real complaint was that the battery technology is still a significant drawback. The range is only modest (but no worse than a typical sports car), but the recharge time is measured in hours not minutes.
More recently they reviewed a Nissan Leaf; and they were really upbeat about that car too, except for the recharge issue. In that episode they ended up pushing them around too. Was the battery really empty for the scene? I don't know. Does it really matter? No. The point they were making is again, that you have to pay a lot more attention when planning a trip to ensure that you don't run out of juice, and that recharging the battery takes a long time.
The ONLY thing I didn't like about the Nissan Leaf segment is that while they remarked that it would take 12+ hrs to fully recharge it, they didn't talk about the time to reach a 50%/ / 75% / 90% charge. These numbers are typically much lower, and while still too long to be at all convenient, at least don't require a hotel.
. Quote source material, or recognize that you don't actually have the evidence to show that "gov't believed many were outright innocent."
If you are going to challenge the fact widely reported by the news then its on you to demonstrate they the information is false.
But it illustrates the TRUTH that there is information that the public does not NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW.
I never stated otherwise.
I say no, he was not qualified.
I don't expect a whistleblower type to be "qualified". That's an absurd criteria to demand. They must follow their conscience.
You seem to have trouble differentiating between a vulnerability and an actual compromise.
Would you treat Manning any differently if wikileaks simply deleted the data? Remember Manning didn't give the information to "the enemy" he gave it to wikileaks. Wikileaks ultimately released it in the form it was released. Manning created a vulnerability by making it possible for wikileaks to release it to the pubic.
The key part here is harm
Really? So what is the problem then?
The government reports on that very subject is that Manning didn't really cause any harm. So what are you on about out for blood for exactly? There was no significant harm.
Morally, those who are innocent should be released; but a media conclusion of "innocent" is not in of itself proof of innocence.
Its hard to found legally innocent or guilty except in the media if they leave you in prison for 12 years without a trial. The Manning leak indicated that even the government believed many were outright innocent. Why is someone in prison for a decade if even the prosecution thinks they are innocent?
Bin Laden is hiding before we actually attack him?
Is that what was released? No. Not even close. You can throw the book at imaginary villains who do imaginary things all you like. But that isn't what Manning did so why treat it as if he did?
Does the public need to know where Bin Laden is hiding before we actually attack him?
That Petraeus had the affair..
Merely having the affair compromised himself and the US military. YOU were the one who argued that whether or not the enemy took advantage of that is irrelevant, and that whether or not he intended them to is irrelevant. That was your argument. Why the double standard?
The "temporary Bush Tax Cuts" were in place for longer than the rates they replaced.
It depends on what income bracket you were in. The top marginal tax rate for 80% of america hadn't changed much since around '83.
The top rate for the top 1% has been more volatile to be sure.
Would you like to point out what Manning has disclosed that indicates illegal actions by the US?
The Guantanamo bay inmate assessment files show the imprisonment of detainees for years without trials. Inmates that even the US internal assessments classified as innocent, or very low level. 5 to 10 years in prison without trial for individuals that aren't even really suspected of being guilty?
Do you accept that as moral, legal, and on top of that something that the public shouldn't even be aware of?
And yes, in that case he'd deserve to get the book thrown at him because he's a freakin' general with access to highly classified information, and whose actions affect thousands of soldiers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9673124/David-Petraeus-Paula-Broadwell-had-classified-documents-on-computer.html
And yes, in that case he'd deserve to get the book thrown at him because he's a freakin' general with access to highly classified information, and whose actions affect thousands of soldiers.
And yet here we are.
Your comparing letting the temporary Bush tax cuts expire to the maximum tax rate of the 1950s? How many blows to the head does it take before your brain accepts that as a logical argument?
You can only trade games you haven't 'redeemed' onto your account. So it mostly only comes up if you buy a bundle that includes a game you already have... in some (but not all) cases you can gift the extra copy to someone else.
If you buy something as a gift for later, it also goes into that same owned, but not redeemed state, and while its in that state you can gift. But there's not generally much point in deliberately buying a game you don't want to trade for a game you do.
Once a title is in your games library, whether or not you've installed it, you can't trade it / gift it.
Frankly I wouldn't mind if steam allowed games to be traded even if they took a little fee for the process or limited how often you could do it to prevent abuse. That would eliminate one of my big gripes about the product.
I don't like this automatic control because there are some games, like RAGE and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which have problems with their respective latest patches that don't exist in former ones.
The fact that it makes keeping everyone in sync version-wise trivial for multiplayer, is a godsend, that more than offsets the regression-bug argument I think.
Avoiding a few regression bugs is certainly not worth the effort of manually downloading and manually patching every game one wants to play.
People seem to enjoy trading convenience for control. I understand why, but I don't agree that the increased benefit of giving the vendor more control is the direction we want to take things.
That's fair, and finer end user controls over things like that would be cool. Perhaps the ability to select patch level to play a game at for example. I'm not sure it would really be worth the effort to develop something like that though just to have that level of control.
Its not easier then using another package manager with a repo. Its as easy. But that is a lot easier than visiting various game websites downloading things, downloading updaters, etc etc etc