> The technology exists to make thousands of other unsafe inventions [...], but manufacturers don't due to legal pressure. Why is this a problem?
Because companies should not be liable for unsafe use of the technology. Reading a book while driving is unsafe. If you do so and it results in an accident, do you sue the author, the publisher, or the book shop?
> Do people have an inherent right to obviously unsafe inventions?
Yes! There are very few inherently "unsafe" inventions. The problem is "unsafe" people.
> Would there be something better about allowing them to be manufactured, but arresting anyone who uses them?
Almost, but not quite. Arrest only those that use them in a way that endangers others.
> Aren't you in favor of safe cars?
You forgot to mention "think of the children" and "the terrorists will win".
> Exactly! The airwaves ARE limited. Thus, radio cannot play everything. > Thus, the question is: Who decides what gets played? > > You seem to be under the impression that the government should start a new > bureaucracy to make that decision. > > I happen to think the owner of the radio station should. > > BTW, EVERYTHING is limited. If limited resources is the critera for > government control, then we might as well throw out the entire concept of > property rights right now!
"Intellectual Property" is essentially an unlimited resource.
> I find it unfortunate that Universities usually use "professional" > languages like Java or (before that) C++ rather than a language specifically > designed to be clear to new programmers.
Pascal was created to teach "correct" structured programming. When the prevalent paradigm shifted to OOP, it became outdated.
It seems that in the race to support more formats and features, quality is forgotten. A lot of my friends that bought players that play DivX, XviD and other permutations complain that their playback quality of regular MPEG-2 DVDs is lower than their older players.
Let's hope that the upcoming players based on the Sigma Designs' new EM8620L chip will be better than the current bunch.
> I am spending my Slashdot Karma just to be able to voice my anger at this administration. > > They have made a pigs breakfast at everything from The economy, environment, egual rights, Civil Liberties. > > Not one fucking thing have they managed to succed in. Not ONE.
Let's look at the moderation:
I agree: FUCK Bush and Ashcroft on the 2'nd by bstadil (Score:5) Starting Score: 1 point Moderation +4
30% Informative
30% Underrated
20% Offtopic
Conclusion: 30% of the moderators cannot distingush facts from opinions.
> I took many photos - which are not online at the moment - but will gladly send you some should you request them and prove me you're not working for any government.
What would you consider a sufficient proof?
And while we're at it, would you mind proving that you "are not working for any government"?
> Really? I wasn't aware of any country in the world that was a democracy. Is everything put to a plebescite(sic)?
Here's a relevant quote:
By strict high school government class definition, the citizens of a "democracy" exercise power directly, whereas the citizens of a "republic" delegate power to elected representatives. This, of course, is easily the stupidest thing that we were taught in high school. They've taken a perfectly fine word like democracy and defined it so narrowly that it applies to absolutely no working government whatsoever. All they've left us is the word republic, which they've defined so broadly that it encompasses such diverse nations as the US, France, China and Iran -- and yet is still too narrow to include constitutional monarchies like Japan and Sweden.
The definition of the word "democracy" from the time of old Greece up to now has not been constant. In contemporary usage, the term "democracy" refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it be direct or representative.
> The earlier in the process the easier it is to have an influence on the legislative language resulting from it.
We should at least wait until we have better information sources than a newspaper article. The bill text will be nice.
> Its obvious, for example, that this legislation should be separate from the human trafficing legislation regardless of the merits of either.
I agree, in principle, that "riders" are abhorrible but in this specific case I would wait for hard facts before going off half cocked.
> what principle is used to select which "identifiable groups" are protected and which are not protected from "hate propaganda".
The article says: "Section 318(4) of the Criminal Code defines an "identifiable group" as any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion or ethnic origin." The amendment (Bill C-250, Assented to 29th April, 2004) changes the definition of "identifiable group" thus: "In this section, "identifiable group" means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." (so if you like iguanas, for example, you're protected.)
What when people start saying, "Kill all the lawyers."?
They've been saying that for over 400 years. In fact, that should be the first thing we do.
The operative words here are "preparing to introduce". So far it is a declaration of intent by the minister, no such legislation has been introduced yet (as you can find out on the Canadian Parliament site.) Don't panic just yet.
Meanwhile, you can check the existing legislation on "Hate propaganda". There is a good article explaining the issues, an overview of the applicable law, the relevant statutes and regulations of the criminal code and a recent amendment.
Currently the page says: > Estimated cost of clean up to prevent further toxic leakage is millions of euros.
Millions of euros is small change.
However, the actual article says: Strand said it will take billions of dollars (euros) to clean up. Since the source is ABC news, I assume that they use the American billion (10^9).
Now that is a whole different story, considering the fact that the projected revenue for the Russian Y2005 budget is only ~92 billion Euros.
A conservative assumption of single digit "billions" results in something like 10% of the total budget revenue.
Just for comparison, this would be akin to the US spending 200 billion dollars on a similar task.
Free speech does not prevent anyone else to excercise their free speech rights as well. If you say something, your opponent can say the same, or the oposite, or something completely unrelated.
However, when you register a domain name with your opponent's name in it, you are preventing them from using it.
So, while the contents of the site fall under the definition of political mud-slinging propaganda, er, free speech, the act of registering the domains does not.
> I'm not sure this is a fair test. Under the DMCA, the ISP must take down the > material within (I think) 72 hours to maintain immunity. The site owner can respond > in 10 days to deny the charges and the ISP can put it back up with immunity.
Ignoring for the moment that the DMCA is a US law...
When you send a DMCA takedown notice, you swear, under penalty of perjury, that you are either the copyright owner or authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
If you try to send a fake DMCA takedown notice, you may find yourself in deep dren.
> do you even have any idea what you are talking about? clearly not I think you'll > find the horrific death toll of the Holocaust to be between 5-6 million Jews and > a similar number of non-Jewish victims, (the gypsies and the homosexuals for example) > a quite horrific enough figure without being misrepresented as 10s of millions.
Slashdot Mirror
> The technology exists to make thousands of other unsafe inventions [...], but manufacturers don't due to legal pressure. Why is this a problem?
Because companies should not be liable for unsafe use of the technology.
Reading a book while driving is unsafe.
If you do so and it results in an accident, do you sue the author, the publisher, or the book shop?
> Do people have an inherent right to obviously unsafe inventions?
Yes!
There are very few inherently "unsafe" inventions. The problem is "unsafe" people.
> Would there be something better about allowing them to be manufactured, but arresting anyone who uses them?
Almost, but not quite.
Arrest only those that use them in a way that endangers others.
> Aren't you in favor of safe cars?
You forgot to mention "think of the children" and "the terrorists will win".
Go read this.
We need a modern day analogy to Godwin's law concerning the mention of terrorism.
movies based on computer games always turn out to be masterpieces.
> PLEASE take anything you read on that site with a grain of salt.
s/that/any
On second thought, also:
s/site/media
> They offer significant ascetic advantages which are important to a lot of people.
The word you were looking for is "aesthetic".
> Exactly! The airwaves ARE limited. Thus, radio cannot play everything.
> Thus, the question is: Who decides what gets played?
>
> You seem to be under the impression that the government should start a new
> bureaucracy to make that decision.
>
> I happen to think the owner of the radio station should.
>
> BTW, EVERYTHING is limited. If limited resources is the critera for
> government control, then we might as well throw out the entire concept of
> property rights right now!
"Intellectual Property" is essentially an unlimited resource.
> What about Borland's Delphi (nee Object Pascal)?
That was never meant to be a teaching language.
Modula-3 was but it never took off.
Personally, I think that smalltalk is the right language to teach OO concepts.
> I find it unfortunate that Universities usually use "professional"
> languages like Java or (before that) C++ rather than a language specifically
> designed to be clear to new programmers.
Pascal was created to teach "correct" structured programming.
When the prevalent paradigm shifted to OOP, it became outdated.
It seems that in the race to support more formats and features, quality is forgotten. A lot of my friends that bought players that play DivX, XviD and other permutations complain that their playback quality of regular MPEG-2 DVDs is lower than their older players.
Let's hope that the upcoming players based on the Sigma Designs' new EM8620L chip will be better than the current bunch.
> I am spending my Slashdot Karma just to be able to voice my anger at this administration.
>
> They have made a pigs breakfast at everything from The economy, environment, egual rights, Civil Liberties.
>
> Not one fucking thing have they managed to succed in. Not ONE.
Let's look at the moderation:Conclusion: 30% of the moderators cannot distingush facts from opinions.
> I took many photos - which are not online at the moment - but will gladly send you some should you request them and prove me you're not working for any government.
What would you consider a sufficient proof?
And while we're at it, would you mind proving that you "are not working for any government"?
> Really? I wasn't aware of any country in the world that was a democracy. Is everything put to a plebescite (sic)?
Here's a relevant quote:Here's what wikipedia says on "Democracy" versus "republic":Also see the pages on varieties of democracy, representative democracy and republic.
Easy:
Why should Tat get all the fun?
> The earlier in the process the easier it is to have an influence on the legislative language resulting from it.
We should at least wait until we have better information sources than a newspaper article. The bill text will be nice.
> Its obvious, for example, that this legislation should be separate from the human trafficing legislation regardless of the merits of either.
I agree, in principle, that "riders" are abhorrible but in this specific case I would wait for hard facts before going off half cocked.
> what principle is used to select which "identifiable groups" are protected and which are not protected from "hate propaganda".
The article says: "Section 318(4) of the Criminal Code defines an "identifiable group" as any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion or ethnic origin."
The amendment (Bill C-250, Assented to 29th April, 2004) changes the definition of "identifiable group" thus: "In this section, "identifiable group" means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." (so if you like iguanas, for example, you're protected.)
What when people start saying, "Kill all the lawyers."?
They've been saying that for over 400 years. In fact, that should be the first thing we do.
The operative words here are "preparing to introduce". So far it is a declaration of intent by the minister, no such legislation has been introduced yet (as you can find out on the Canadian Parliament site.) Don't panic just yet.
Meanwhile, you can check the existing legislation on "Hate propaganda".
There is a good article explaining the issues, an overview of the applicable law, the relevant statutes and regulations of the criminal code and a recent amendment.
Also see the Internet Content-Related Liability Study on the applicability of the existing legislation to the internet.
Currently the page says:
> Estimated cost of clean up to prevent further toxic leakage is millions of euros.
Millions of euros is small change.
However, the actual article says: Strand said it will take billions of dollars (euros) to clean up.
Since the source is ABC news, I assume that they use the American billion (10^9).
Now that is a whole different story, considering the fact that the projected revenue for the Russian Y2005 budget is only ~92 billion Euros.
A conservative assumption of single digit "billions" results in something like 10% of the total budget revenue.
Just for comparison, this would be akin to the US spending 200 billion dollars on a similar task.
Free speech does not prevent anyone else to excercise their free speech rights as well.
If you say something, your opponent can say the same, or the oposite, or something completely unrelated.
However, when you register a domain name with your opponent's name in it, you are preventing them from using it.
So, while the contents of the site fall under the definition of political mud-slinging propaganda, er, free speech, the act of registering the domains does not.
> I'm not sure this is a fair test. Under the DMCA, the ISP must take down the
> material within (I think) 72 hours to maintain immunity. The site owner can respond
> in 10 days to deny the charges and the ISP can put it back up with immunity.
Ignoring for the moment that the DMCA is a US law...
When you send a DMCA takedown notice, you swear, under penalty of perjury, that you are either the copyright owner or authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
If you try to send a fake DMCA takedown notice, you may find yourself in deep dren.
> If synthetic diamonds could change anything, they would be illegal!
Voting, when used intelligently, can change lots of thing and it is still legal (probably because most people don't).
I am still waiting for synthetic diamonds to break De Beers' cartel.
getting a printer that uses chip-less cartridges.
I believe that Canon printers are good in that respect.
> Ashke-Nazi Jews? So, what the heck is that?
Could be a troll but I'll bite anyway.
GMail is great, I'm switching to it right now!
Oops, no can do, not invited to this exclusive party.
Oh well...
> do you even have any idea what you are talking about? clearly not I think you'll
> find the horrific death toll of the Holocaust to be between 5-6 million Jews and
> a similar number of non-Jewish victims, (the gypsies and the homosexuals for example)
> a quite horrific enough figure without being misrepresented as 10s of millions.
10s of millions sounds about right.