I (also a Mormon lawyer) agree with you. But I wonder if there wasn't some thought beforehand:
You'll note all the comments above and below about the "Streisand effect," wherein the fact of trying to suppress information causes many more people to become aware of that information. This really is a well known effect. Note also, as you mentioned, there really is nothing "damaging" in the handbook of instructions--on the contrary--the content of the book really shows that the Church is to be run spiritually, and it shows that our "secret handbook of instruction" doesn't have anything in it about crazy sex rituals and hidden wives and dancing naked in those "secret temples" throwing locks of hair into a bonfire. The "secret" information in the handbook makes it look like the Church's "secrets" are rather . . . well, uninteresting. (I'm not a bishop, but I've read much of this version of the handbook of instructions--it's been available on the internet for years and has a lot of useful information in it, but I don't imagine a non-Mormon would find it the least bit interesting, except for the fact that it's "secret")
So, perhaps some foolhardy young lawyer for the Church decided to make use of the Streisand effect to ease a lot of people's minds about the "secrets" of the Mormon church. I still don't think this would have been a good move, necessarily. "Gagging the internet" is obviously stupid, and clearly Wikileaks is never going to take the book down (as Wikileaks never takes anything down). But, perhaps it wasn't quite as bad of a move at it initially appears.
You might think--wouldn't it be a much better move to just open the book to everyone rather than making the Church look stupid by attempting to "gag the internet" to bring everyone's attention to the book? Probably you'd be right, but there are two other things to take into consideration here:
First, as you well know, most of the people who will come accross a reference to this article already think either that all religions (including the Mormon Church) are stupid, or that the Mormon Church is a crazy cult full of nuts. So there is no harm to the group seeing this article in making them think the Church is stupid as long as the benefit would soon follow in that all of those same people would see that the Church is harmless, and not crazy (but perhaps still stupid).
Second, if the Church just released the book then all the skeptics would just figure it's been altered. Or they'd assume that they've been allowed access to a redacted version, while the real version with all the "good stuff" (you know, the pay for sins with sex, and lock burning, and whatever else people think about us) is still in the bishop's drawer. A leaked version on the other hand holds an aire of legitimacy--"this is the real deal." But then it turns out to have nothing "good" in it. The idea being that the reader decides, then, that the Church really isn't hiding anything crazy.
So, my guess is that the take down notice was real. But at the same time, perhaps (just perhaps) this whole thing was on purpose.
I was under the impression that neutrinos, anti or otherwise are extremly difficult to detect... I think that is why this is news, and why this wasn't solved years ago. I don't think you'l find any links saying that neutrinos or antineutrinos are easy to detect. But for one suggesting that they are possible to detect after years of research and innovation, see the links in the summary, above.
The summary asserts that Canonical is a "traditional for-profit company," but the Wikipedia entry you point to paints a picture of a company that is not traditional. For example, it says the company was created for the purpose of promoting free software products. I don't really see anything traditional about that.
As for how they make their money, I think they primarily earn revenue by selling support for Ubuntu. You know, so, like, a business installs Ubuntu on its servers or on a bunch of desktops or something, they can purchase a support agreement for those computers from Canonical.
Just to let you know a bit more about how the courts work-- More than likely this opinion was written by a "judicial law clerk" who graduated from law school last June (likely toward the top of his class). Judges vary widely, some write their own opinions, some collaborate with their law clerks, and some let their clerks write the memos, glance through them and mail it out. Most judges fall somewhere between the last two. The prior decision (today's decision was a reconsideration of an earlier decision in the RIAA's favor) was dated last August, which means it is very possible it was written by last year's law clerk (once again, these things vary, but most clerkships are one year long and start sometime between Late July and early September. Just thought I'd let you think about that.
Popular, but incorrect usage. Sort of like saying "I bough a soda for my wife and I." It's used quite regularly, but it's still wrong (should be "I bought a soda for me and my wife."
Couldn't this problem be easily solved by telling all the patent examiners
"Memo: Hey, As of this morning we're going to raise the bar a bit as to what counts as 'novel.' So, clerk x, could you please deny the patent on your desk for Claratin E. Thanx, xoxo, your noble leader."
That would be great--except 90% of the students have laptops, and probably 90% of those use the internet at least on occasion (if not merely to double-check something the professor says).
Perhaps I should clarify--many students were reputably lazy, somewhat disruptive (this is law school, not high school, so no one was all that disruptive), and supposedly spent every night at the bar ended up transferring to better schools (meaning they must have done well). Whereas some students who spent most of every day at school and seemed like excellent students did not do as well (they were still at school with me and we talked about grades). That's all--we were just surprised at who was able to transfer, and who "made law review," stuff like that--it's easy to see who did well.
Sure, but those things are obvious to the professor without any mention from the students. The problem is that no one wants to say "Professor, Pedro is looking at porn."
The problem is that U of C is one of the most respected law schools in the nation. The administrators can do whatever they want--the school has, like, a 5% acceptance rate.
At my law school, students would sometimes view porn on their computers during class--this was very distracting in the tiered rooms, where about 15 students behind the "perpetrator" could see what was happening. It wasn't common but I sometimes heard complaints that "so-and-so would look at porn to try to distract everyone behind him." I imagine it didn't help his own scores either, though. Other students would sometimes send crazy stuff over email during class in order to embarass the person or distract him. Chatting, of course, was rampant during class--that may have been a bit distracting. For example, the teacher will have been silent, and there's nothing to take notes on at the moment, and you hear several people typing like crazy and snickering oblivious to their surroundings--more annoying when that person's right next to you.
Sadly, after the grades came out, it seemed that chatting and porn viewership had a low correlation with scores. (i.e. I actually took notes but was middle of the road for grades)
I don't think anyone would argue that these drugs are making anyone smarter (or dumber). I think the point lies in your statement that after taking these drugs you had "probably [your] most productive night of academia" ever. In other words, it gives these scientists the ability to work longer hours while remaining alert and maintaining the ability to pay attention while dealing with relatively boring data collection. Clearly these drugs have no effect on intelligence and it would take an entirely different category of drugs to enhance one's creativity (ahem...LSD).
I think they should just use the post office to conduct the census. They already go to everyone's house. They could just hire some more people for the census and expand the job of the mailperson for a few months.
I've always thought that it is more fun to say the date of Easter is "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox," rather than March 21st.
"The" torrent--I'd post a link for you, but there are, like, 50 different torrents depending on which one you're looking for. Just scroll down to the mirrors, and pick a local mirror. I had no problem using one of the US mirrors--the main downloads page wasn't working, but the mirror worked immediately.
I love the repository system! I think it works fabulously for the most part. One great advantage Linux should certainly exploit more is that all programs obtained via the repositories (notably this includes nearly every program an average user would need) are updated automatically. I just think Ubuntu should revise its policies to make better use of this wonderful resource. Not to mention--if I need a program that serves a particular purpose, I can just look in the repositories, click download and run the program. On windows finding some obscure program to meet my obscure need is much more difficult, costly (over the course of the many obscure programs I have found I need), and then I need to restart the computer to use it and watch for updates to the program manually.
Or perhaps you were just being sarcastic--because I just can't imagine why a centralized repository would suck. (note, however, that the repositories aren't really "centralized"--I can set up a server with a repository and people can add that to their software sources and automatically update any programs they receive from me via my repository. Which means--perhaps there's a better repository for me to use for my OOo)
I had tons of stability issues. This has been solved so far as I can tell by completely removing the version of 2.3 available in the repositories and installing the one available directly from OOo. It's sad, I know. In the OOo forums people said that Ubuntu (and perhaps other distributions?) don't like to integrate bug updates into the version Ubuntu uses until they are tested as stable in Ubuntu. In the meantime, Ubuntu is then left with a very unstable release of 2.3. I installed directly from Openoffice and have had none of the problems I had previously.
Perhaps there is a reposity out there that pulls directly from OOo so I don't have to update the program manually? Anyone know?
I don't think my instructions regarding my computer fit your model.
Here, I'll sum up my entire instructions. I left out some in my summary above. (1) "You can browse the internet or whatever in your down-time, but don't look at porn." (2) "Don't stream music--it uses too much bandwidth--but you're free to play music from the hard drive." (3) "Log out at night but leave the computer on so IT can access your computer remotely at night for updates, etc."
So, what does the "whatever" mean in instruction (1)? How much stuff does that "authorize"? Something was authorized there. But I can't say what.
And I am authorized to play music. But the computer didn't have a program that could play music. It seems, then, that I was impliedly authorized to install a music-playing program.
I was not given any information regarding who to go through to get software installs authorized.
So, I think the IT here needs clearer rules with regard to what is and is not authorized. OR--in your system--what IS authorized.
The computer could surely run XP, but, like many other businesses (if you call a government a business), it has chosen to remain with Windows 2000, even on new computers. The computer itself really isn't bad.
As for updates--they do updates by accessing the computer remotely during the night every so often (note: since they don't tell us when they'll be updating, I am required to leave my computer on every night; I just log out). Then, when I arrive at work there is a command console that says "we have an important update--press enter and don't close this window! The computer will shut itself down in 20 minutes." They've done this several times--I press enter, and forty minutes later I'm still doing nothing productive because I know my computer is about to shut down. Of course it never shuts itself down (I do shut the computer down about once per week). I spoke with my co-workers about this and ALL of them (there aren't many of us) said something like this: "it said not to close the window? I didn't know what that black window was when I logged in, so I just closed it."
So, although I don't know whether or not those updates do anything, given they didn't shut down like they were supposed to, even if they were supposed to do something, the person in my place prior to me more than likely didn't follow the instructions in "that black window" anyway. So maybe I am supposed to have a more up-to-date version of IE. And Acrobat--I'm using version 5 of that too. Can't update it.
And--to top it off, I've received no instruction with regard to who to contact for tech support for fixing these things. Am I going to go search out the answer? No--I never use IE anyway. My version of Acrobat works well enough. The computer was riddled with adware, spyware, and everything else when I first got it. I've heard rumors about IT accusing various computers around the courthouse of harboring/spreading viruses, but I scrubbed mine pretty thoroughly and haven't heard a word from IT. So I'm not going to contact them--especially not now that you guys tell me Opera is probably "unauthorized." Heck, even Spybot is unauthorized.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously haven't read the handbook of instructions yet. Wikileaks still has it available for download.
I (also a Mormon lawyer) agree with you. But I wonder if there wasn't some thought beforehand:
You'll note all the comments above and below about the "Streisand effect," wherein the fact of trying to suppress information causes many more people to become aware of that information. This really is a well known effect. Note also, as you mentioned, there really is nothing "damaging" in the handbook of instructions--on the contrary--the content of the book really shows that the Church is to be run spiritually, and it shows that our "secret handbook of instruction" doesn't have anything in it about crazy sex rituals and hidden wives and dancing naked in those "secret temples" throwing locks of hair into a bonfire. The "secret" information in the handbook makes it look like the Church's "secrets" are rather . . . well, uninteresting. (I'm not a bishop, but I've read much of this version of the handbook of instructions--it's been available on the internet for years and has a lot of useful information in it, but I don't imagine a non-Mormon would find it the least bit interesting, except for the fact that it's "secret")
So, perhaps some foolhardy young lawyer for the Church decided to make use of the Streisand effect to ease a lot of people's minds about the "secrets" of the Mormon church. I still don't think this would have been a good move, necessarily. "Gagging the internet" is obviously stupid, and clearly Wikileaks is never going to take the book down (as Wikileaks never takes anything down). But, perhaps it wasn't quite as bad of a move at it initially appears.
You might think--wouldn't it be a much better move to just open the book to everyone rather than making the Church look stupid by attempting to "gag the internet" to bring everyone's attention to the book? Probably you'd be right, but there are two other things to take into consideration here:
First, as you well know, most of the people who will come accross a reference to this article already think either that all religions (including the Mormon Church) are stupid, or that the Mormon Church is a crazy cult full of nuts. So there is no harm to the group seeing this article in making them think the Church is stupid as long as the benefit would soon follow in that all of those same people would see that the Church is harmless, and not crazy (but perhaps still stupid).
Second, if the Church just released the book then all the skeptics would just figure it's been altered. Or they'd assume that they've been allowed access to a redacted version, while the real version with all the "good stuff" (you know, the pay for sins with sex, and lock burning, and whatever else people think about us) is still in the bishop's drawer. A leaked version on the other hand holds an aire of legitimacy--"this is the real deal." But then it turns out to have nothing "good" in it. The idea being that the reader decides, then, that the Church really isn't hiding anything crazy.
So, my guess is that the take down notice was real. But at the same time, perhaps (just perhaps) this whole thing was on purpose.
In the great magnetic field
Where he traveled time
For the future of mankind I must be confused.
The summary asserts that Canonical is a "traditional for-profit company," but the Wikipedia entry you point to paints a picture of a company that is not traditional. For example, it says the company was created for the purpose of promoting free software products. I don't really see anything traditional about that.
As for how they make their money, I think they primarily earn revenue by selling support for Ubuntu. You know, so, like, a business installs Ubuntu on its servers or on a bunch of desktops or something, they can purchase a support agreement for those computers from Canonical.
Just to let you know a bit more about how the courts work--
More than likely this opinion was written by a "judicial law clerk" who graduated from law school last June (likely toward the top of his class). Judges vary widely, some write their own opinions, some collaborate with their law clerks, and some let their clerks write the memos, glance through them and mail it out. Most judges fall somewhere between the last two. The prior decision (today's decision was a reconsideration of an earlier decision in the RIAA's favor) was dated last August, which means it is very possible it was written by last year's law clerk (once again, these things vary, but most clerkships are one year long and start sometime between Late July and early September.
Just thought I'd let you think about that.
Popular, but incorrect usage. Sort of like saying "I bough a soda for my wife and I." It's used quite regularly, but it's still wrong (should be "I bought a soda for me and my wife."
Couldn't this problem be easily solved by telling all the patent examiners
"Memo: Hey, As of this morning we're going to raise the bar a bit as to what counts as 'novel.' So, clerk x, could you please deny the patent on your desk for Claratin E. Thanx, xoxo, your noble leader."
That would be great--except 90% of the students have laptops, and probably 90% of those use the internet at least on occasion (if not merely to double-check something the professor says).
What? You can't do that?
Perhaps I should clarify--many students were reputably lazy, somewhat disruptive (this is law school, not high school, so no one was all that disruptive), and supposedly spent every night at the bar ended up transferring to better schools (meaning they must have done well). Whereas some students who spent most of every day at school and seemed like excellent students did not do as well (they were still at school with me and we talked about grades). That's all--we were just surprised at who was able to transfer, and who "made law review," stuff like that--it's easy to see who did well.
Sure, but those things are obvious to the professor without any mention from the students. The problem is that no one wants to say "Professor, Pedro is looking at porn."
By the way, I just submitted this during class.
The problem is that U of C is one of the most respected law schools in the nation. The administrators can do whatever they want--the school has, like, a 5% acceptance rate.
At my law school, students would sometimes view porn on their computers during class--this was very distracting in the tiered rooms, where about 15 students behind the "perpetrator" could see what was happening. It wasn't common but I sometimes heard complaints that "so-and-so would look at porn to try to distract everyone behind him." I imagine it didn't help his own scores either, though. Other students would sometimes send crazy stuff over email during class in order to embarass the person or distract him. Chatting, of course, was rampant during class--that may have been a bit distracting. For example, the teacher will have been silent, and there's nothing to take notes on at the moment, and you hear several people typing like crazy and snickering oblivious to their surroundings--more annoying when that person's right next to you.
Sadly, after the grades came out, it seemed that chatting and porn viewership had a low correlation with scores. (i.e. I actually took notes but was middle of the road for grades)
I think one thing needs to be clarified.
I don't think anyone would argue that these drugs are making anyone smarter (or dumber). I think the point lies in your statement that after taking these drugs you had "probably [your] most productive night of academia" ever. In other words, it gives these scientists the ability to work longer hours while remaining alert and maintaining the ability to pay attention while dealing with relatively boring data collection. Clearly these drugs have no effect on intelligence and it would take an entirely different category of drugs to enhance one's creativity (ahem...LSD).
All I know is that I get endless teenage-esque kicks out of "mail woman."
I think they should just use the post office to conduct the census. They already go to everyone's house. They could just hire some more people for the census and expand the job of the mailperson for a few months.
I've always thought that it is more fun to say the date of Easter is "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox," rather than March 21st.
It sounds so much more Pagan my way.
Anyone notice that the summary closes with a quotation mark but doesn't have an opening quotation mark anywhere?
Otherwise, I enjoyed this summary more than most. Of course I've got 1984 (book on CD) in my car right now. Which reminds me--it's "Telescreen."
"The" torrent--I'd post a link for you, but there are, like, 50 different torrents depending on which one you're looking for. Just scroll down to the mirrors, and pick a local mirror. I had no problem using one of the US mirrors--the main downloads page wasn't working, but the mirror worked immediately.
I love the repository system! I think it works fabulously for the most part. One great advantage Linux should certainly exploit more is that all programs obtained via the repositories (notably this includes nearly every program an average user would need) are updated automatically. I just think Ubuntu should revise its policies to make better use of this wonderful resource. Not to mention--if I need a program that serves a particular purpose, I can just look in the repositories, click download and run the program. On windows finding some obscure program to meet my obscure need is much more difficult, costly (over the course of the many obscure programs I have found I need), and then I need to restart the computer to use it and watch for updates to the program manually.
Or perhaps you were just being sarcastic--because I just can't imagine why a centralized repository would suck. (note, however, that the repositories aren't really "centralized"--I can set up a server with a repository and people can add that to their software sources and automatically update any programs they receive from me via my repository. Which means--perhaps there's a better repository for me to use for my OOo)
I had tons of stability issues. This has been solved so far as I can tell by completely removing the version of 2.3 available in the repositories and installing the one available directly from OOo. It's sad, I know. In the OOo forums people said that Ubuntu (and perhaps other distributions?) don't like to integrate bug updates into the version Ubuntu uses until they are tested as stable in Ubuntu. In the meantime, Ubuntu is then left with a very unstable release of 2.3. I installed directly from Openoffice and have had none of the problems I had previously.
Perhaps there is a reposity out there that pulls directly from OOo so I don't have to update the program manually? Anyone know?
I don't think my instructions regarding my computer fit your model.
Here, I'll sum up my entire instructions. I left out some in my summary above.
(1) "You can browse the internet or whatever in your down-time, but don't look at porn."
(2) "Don't stream music--it uses too much bandwidth--but you're free to play music from the hard drive."
(3) "Log out at night but leave the computer on so IT can access your computer remotely at night for updates, etc."
So, what does the "whatever" mean in instruction (1)? How much stuff does that "authorize"? Something was authorized there. But I can't say what.
And I am authorized to play music. But the computer didn't have a program that could play music. It seems, then, that I was impliedly authorized to install a music-playing program.
I was not given any information regarding who to go through to get software installs authorized.
So, I think the IT here needs clearer rules with regard to what is and is not authorized. OR--in your system--what IS authorized.
The computer could surely run XP, but, like many other businesses (if you call a government a business), it has chosen to remain with Windows 2000, even on new computers. The computer itself really isn't bad.
As for updates--they do updates by accessing the computer remotely during the night every so often (note: since they don't tell us when they'll be updating, I am required to leave my computer on every night; I just log out). Then, when I arrive at work there is a command console that says "we have an important update--press enter and don't close this window! The computer will shut itself down in 20 minutes." They've done this several times--I press enter, and forty minutes later I'm still doing nothing productive because I know my computer is about to shut down. Of course it never shuts itself down (I do shut the computer down about once per week). I spoke with my co-workers about this and ALL of them (there aren't many of us) said something like this: "it said not to close the window? I didn't know what that black window was when I logged in, so I just closed it."
So, although I don't know whether or not those updates do anything, given they didn't shut down like they were supposed to, even if they were supposed to do something, the person in my place prior to me more than likely didn't follow the instructions in "that black window" anyway. So maybe I am supposed to have a more up-to-date version of IE. And Acrobat--I'm using version 5 of that too. Can't update it.
And--to top it off, I've received no instruction with regard to who to contact for tech support for fixing these things. Am I going to go search out the answer? No--I never use IE anyway. My version of Acrobat works well enough. The computer was riddled with adware, spyware, and everything else when I first got it. I've heard rumors about IT accusing various computers around the courthouse of harboring/spreading viruses, but I scrubbed mine pretty thoroughly and haven't heard a word from IT. So I'm not going to contact them--especially not now that you guys tell me Opera is probably "unauthorized." Heck, even Spybot is unauthorized.
I'm not too hopeful at the moment, myself. Here is a review of a Zap vehicle produced in China (actually, a Chinese vehicle with a Zap badge):
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/reviews/2008-zap-xebra-review/