Sure pirates are crooks. Most of them probably cost the distribution companies (not the creators) a couple hundred dollars a year. The worst of them might cost them a thousand or two. The RIAA on the other hand are crooks of a different sort, and they cost people and the government (and by extension everyone) hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So, I ask you, who's the bigger criminal here, the pirates that all told cost the media companies maybe a hundred thousand dollars, or the media companies that cost everyone hundreds of thousands of dollars, and ruin the lives of people seemingly at random whether they're guilty of piracy or not?
Our copyright and patent system is broken. It's been abused, and stretched to the point of breaking by greedy big media trying to prop up flagging business models rather than innovate and change with progress. We need to reform our copyright and patent systems, destroy the media conglomerates, and then worry about trying to curb piracy. I have a feeling however that they'll find once copyright has been reduced back to what it was originally intended, and media companies are once again innovating instead of trying to enforce, that piracy won't be much of a problem at all.
You know what's going on, you just don't know that you know.
It's marketing at work. If you buy the $60, no-feature phone, how are they going to entice you to use the $75, get-your-picture cable (which costs about $0.57 to make).
The same way they do when I buy the feature encrusted phone, they don't. If they want me to buy the cable they better price it at $1 or $2, then I'll pick it up. Until then they can sit on it and spin for all I care.
On related note, someone suggested using bluetooth to transfer the photos, but it looks like I'm out of luck there. I can connect a bluetooth headset, or use the phone as a dialup modem through bluetooh, but it won't let me transfer anything to/from the phone using bluetooth.
Because the people we're trying to educate will be dead by then. Those that grow up with this stuff will already know it. It's the difference between trying to pound it into peoples heads, and them picking it up from being submerged in it culturally. Sure there will always be a select few that aren't going to get it, but there's always going to be a few that don't get something in any group. It doesn't matter if you're talking about computers, cars, or how to change a lightbulb.
Yes, Verizon is the kind of the walled garden, and they'll charge you through the nose for every single little feature. It's death by a thousand papercuts. They draw people in by advertising lower rates than everyone else, but by the time you add up the cost of enabling all the features they've artificially disabled (and that most providers already give you) you end up paying a whole lot more.
Not really. Generally when you go to get a phone it falls in one of three categories. The first category is the free ones that come with your plan and have god knows what tacked on to them, 90% you neither want nor care about. The second group is the ones that have exactly what you want, none of the extra garbage, but aren't covered by your plan and thus are going to cost you $150.00 (as opposed to the $350.00 retail they're asking for the latest feature infested phone that they'll give to you for free with a signed contract for your soul for the next two years), even though they rightly should retail for something closer to $60.00. Then lastly you've got the group of "budget" phones that don't really have any features to speak of, cost next to nothing, but are assembled by the lowest bidder, guaranteed to fall apart within the first 6 months, and which you won't be able to sign up for any of the normal extras (like caller ID, voicemail, SMS [god help us]) even though the phone is more than capable of it. I honestly can't figure out the point of it all, clearly someone has an interest in pushing garbage features on the public, but I'm at a loss to figure out who.
Then there's the other end of this carrot/stick combo which is the gotchas they attach to everything, like having to shell out $75 for a fucking cable just so you can download/upload photos/contacts/whatever to your phone without having to pay $1.25 (per item) to transfer the data across their damn network.
Honestly, I've found occasion from time to time to use the camera on my phone, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $75 for a cable, or pay $1.25 a photo just to get the photos off my phone. I know my phone has a web browser, and all kinds of other features, but I also know the minute I use the damn things I'm going to be charged an arm in a leg somewhere along the line.
The DRM on consoles isn't like the DRM people are up in arms over on PCs. If you had a console game that you bought at the store, had to connect online whenever you played it, required you to install a piece of it to the hard drive, and only allowed you to uninstall/reinstall it 3 times before it would refuse to run, people would be talking about boycotting it as well. As it is, the downloadable content on some systems (*cough*Wii*cough*) being tied to a particular console already caused a bit of a ruckus, but at least once you downloaded it that was it, no more mucking about with DRM needed. There's DRM, and then there's DRM, and depending on exactly what flavor your talking about people have various levels of tolerance. We all know it largely doesn't work, but the more benign forms of it at least don't feel like a smack in the face combined with a pair of manacles, unlike the stuff coming out of EA these days. Someone already pointed out Stardock, and their excellent game Sins of a Solar Empire, and I'll just second that recommendation. I actually bought the game prior to finding out about their take on DRM, and I have to say I've been nothing but pleased with the game, and what little DRM it has in it, is the sort of thing all companies should be using (if they must use something).
Interesting, although perhaps not applicable in this case. From reading the article it sounds like the signal to noise ration of these things is pretty low, so although as you point out they could detect really massive gravitational waves there mostly useless for general detection. Were the system put in orbit I imagine its accuracy would improve somewhat although I'm mostly just speculating. This also doesn't detect the theoretical graviton, although from a practical standpoint the difference between a graviton and a gravitational wave is much like debating the difference between a laser and a photon.
At any rate, we're still left back at square one where we don't have anything that could realistically measure the gravitational waves being emitted (if that is in fact what's happening in this case) by something beyond the edge of our universe.
Gravity falls off with distance, and we have yet to create a graviton (if they even exist) detector. For all we know, the gravitons (or whatever) have reached us, we just don't have any way to detect it. There's other ways of explaining this as well, some hinted at in the article (such as whatever it is perturbing space time).
The theories being put forth to explain this are predicate on "B" being something that pre-dates the big bang, and is outside the formation of our light cone. Essentially, it's sitting at negative time, so even though we can see all the way back to 0 time we cannot see what existed prior to that. As it exists outside the expanding bubble of space time we exist within, it's really a complete wild card, no telling if anything outside our space time bubble even follows the same or similar physical rules. For all we know when our space time bubble collides with some of this pre-big bang "matter", it instantly gets converted into a equivalent quantity of gravitons within our space time. It's really all wild speculation, but since we have no way to observe anything that existed prior to the big bang, and cannot observe directly anything outside our light cone, it's doubtful this will ever be solved short of some amazing physics breakthrough like the grand unified field theory (or maybe warp drive/wormholes).
The article mentions various theories concerning objects in existence prior to the big bang and how these theories could be used to explain this effect. In theory postulates that there are other universe "bubbles" created similar to our own and this effect is attributable to one of them brushing up against our own. Another possibility is that some form of matter existed prior to the big bang, and was pushed out of the way by the initial expansion of our universe and this effect could be caused by a group of this initial matter influencing matter within our universe. Of course, at this points it's all just arm waving and what if scenarios, you might as well pick up a random sci-fi book, the explanations will be about as well founded as most of the ones being tossed around right now.
That's because the bogons they emit react destructively with our cluons. I believe this is the process by which otherwise promising programmers become middle management potential. Prolonged exposure to PHBs and lusers causes cluon destruction and eventual bogon poisoning. It is truly a vicious cycle.
And frankly they shouldn't have to be. I have no idea why developers seem to think they should/are. Fail safe and log it so someone who does understand what's happening can make an alternative choice.
Queue floods of calls to the helpdesk of "My computer locked up again and told me to call you."
There are ways of fixing the situation of course, but not without having to create a new operating system, and then getting everybody to agree to use it (including have all code not written for said operating system abandoned). In short, in two or three generations when all the people who don't know basic computer security and operation have died, and not being able to spot a phishing scam will be looked upon much the same way that being illiterate is now, then the problem will have fixed itself.
Well, you know what they say, make something idiot proof, and they'll build a better idiot. It doesn't matter how blatantly stupid doing something is, you'll still find some subset of the population that does it anyway. That's essentially the underlying principle behind the darwin awards. For more examples of things that make you go "WTF?" there's the IT oriented thedailywtf.com, and the retail oriented notalwaysright.com, in either case it will make you weep for the future of humanity.
From the summary: A federal judge has ruled that a school district didn't violate a student's free speech rights when it suspended her for a parody MySpace page she created calling her principal a sex addict who "hits on students".
The act in question may have occurred off campus property - however, it is within jurisdiction of the school since it targets the principal within his official capacity, and is likely provided to other members within the campus. Also, accusations like that are extremely damaging to the institution, and as a result they may take necessary steps to prevent said damage (see laws concerning slander/libel in the appropriate state for more information.)
The summary also mentions that it's a "parody Myspace" page. Depending on how it's done (e.g. an earlier version of http://weeklyradioaddress.com/, which copied the layout of the original site), it may appear to be directly from the principal or campus. In those cases, it's automatically their jurisdiction since it's pretends to be campus-related.
By the way - did you see the MySpace page in question? It didn't appear linked on a quick glance, and as such there's a lot of context missing.
Just because it was about the principle of their school, and identified him as such, doesn't make it school business. You're also taking my comment out of context as I was addressing the original statement saying that this was similar to students breaking a school "code of conduct". You are also correct that there's a lot of context missing, so it's unclear on whether this represents a case of libel or not. If it does, then it's the responsibility of the principle to take the student to court for libel and let the court decide if it constitutes libel or not. If it isn't then the student is within her rights under the first amendment. In either case the school has no part to play in this.
A page like that is evidence of libel - it shows the act of libel itself. Unless the student has something that wasn't published, it's also done without intent of checking accuracy - possibly out of malice. Given the few first paragraphs of the article, it appears the student was claiming it was "off-campus" rather than it not happening or that it was someone else.
First, as you admit, the page isn't linked so everything must be based on the snippets available in the article. Second, the snippets provided are evidence that there might be libel, but a lot of that hinges on whether or not the page was setup in such a way that a reasonable person would believe it had actually been written by the person in question. Based on the limited snippets and the description as a parody page (parody is explicitly exempted from libel laws) it doesn't seem likely anyone would mistake the page in question for a non-parody page.
So do adults. In this case, the principal has the right not to be cruelly and unusually punished when knee-jerk reactionists throw him in jail and put him on a sex-offender list. There's already more than enough stories where students accuse principals for shits and giggles, while remaining immune to any real punishment, and neither the campus nor the principal want another story added to the growing list.
You're correct, but in the first instance it's the knee-jerk reactionists that are in the wrong, and the proper thing is to punish people for making knee-jerk reactions, and in the second instance that's an entirely different situation. There's a major difference between creating a parody page in which you make fun of your principle, and accusing him in court or to police of molesting yourself or other children. It's apples and oranges. One is potentially libel, and the other is making false accusations. It's the difference between making jokes about OJ Simpson getting off with murder, and calling the police to claim you have a video of him doing it (not that it matters in this case as even if you did he's already been found innocent).
Experience is different than knowledge, although generally if one is at least reasonably intelligent the two have some relation to one another. If you actually care about why people vote, and that they vote intelligently, then make them take an intelligence test before being allowed to vote. Artificially defining some age as an age at which a person is capable of making an intelligent choice isn't the way to ensure people are voting intelligently.
If you want to make some generalizations concerning being able to act in an intelligent manner, then we're going about it all wrong. The rule should be, anyone under the age of lets call it 8, and anyone between the ages of 13 and 21, everyone else should be able to make clear headed semi-reasonable decisions (or at least as reasonable as everyone over the age of 21). Incidentally if the legal drinking age were lowered the second age gap would shrink as well. Generally once someone hits the legal drinking age they've already had their share of drinking experience and it losses a lot of the appeal.
At this point this whole thing is terribly off topic so lets see if we can bring it back to the subject at hand. Lets assume for the moment I take your supposition that minors are not afforded the same rights as the rest of us. Based on that, then it's perfectly legal to murder or kidnap a minor as they aren't protected by the rights we enjoy. The logic just doesn't work right. Yes they are exempted from some rights, and have more rights in other areas, but none of the rights applicable in this case have any provision in them concerning age. Let me clarify that, if the right, bill, law, or whatever it is doesn't have any specific requirement concerning the age of the person, then being a minor has no bearing on whether the right/law/whatever affects them. You cannot simply claim that constitutional rights do not apply to minors just because some of them make exemptions. Almost no one has exactly the same legal rights when you take all of our legal framework in mind, or else we could all file the exact same tax returns each year. Different laws make different exemptions, some of them based on age, others on income or marital status, and still more on physical handicaps and such, but we don't go around declaring that married people or the handicaped don't have the same rights as the rest of us.
Seriously, would you want voters that chose a candidate because "like, Muffy said that Candidate A was like, a total douchebag, because he like TOTALLY ignored her email about her cat, Fluffy...."
Unfortunately some of the ones who can legally vote base their vote on reasons even dumber than that. I also doubt minors would bother to vote in most cases, or if they did they would most likely vote for whoever their parents told them to vote for. I've met quite a few minors who I thought were far more capable of casting an intelligent and well thought out vote than someone three or four times their age. I'm constantly amazed by the general attitude people seem to have that all children are morons. Children are not morons, they are merely ignorant, something that is easily curable by the application of a little knowledge combined with an inquisitive spirit, something children are known for possessing.
As to your other points:
a minor can pay bills (assuming they have the money, and actually owe anyone money)
a minor can not drink, but many non-minors can not drink as well (minor in this case being defined as someone under the age of 18).
a minor does pay taxes, although not all the same taxes as the rest of us. Every time a minor buys something they pay sales tax, the same as the rest of us.
They can enter contractual agreements, although not in all states, and the limits of what can and cannot be enforced by said contract are greatly limited. A minor can sign a contract, but generally speaking from an enforcement and legal standpoint said contract is more or less useless. Some states will also allow someone over the age of 13 to enter into contractual agreements.
Of all your examples, voting is the most compelling. Perhaps it's time to allow minors to vote, they certainly can't do any worse then the legions of adults that are already doing so, and who knows, maybe a generation raised going to the polls every year might be more inclined to keep up the practice after they reach adulthood.
Libel and slander is not protected under free speech.
People still have the right to control speech in non-public areas, such as school grounds, private property, etc. The only really interesting thing in this particular example is that it was off-school speech that was disciplined.
However, the discipline was very small. Is it censorship, since there was no government order to remove the speech? Is this any different than students abiding by a code of conduct, even when off campus? Compare the small punishment to what could have happened if the principle decided to sue for slander instead?
The student was also a minor, and minors do not have full constitutional rights. Schools are similar to prisons in this regard, in that they must handle a population which has limited rights and which tends to need extensive supervision.
First, students cannot be punished for failing to abide by any "code of conduct" while off campus. If the student is in a extra-curricular activity, which although tied to the school, is not strictly speaking part of the school, then they can be prevented from participating in that activity, but that can be done for any number of reasons and is different from any sort of in school punishment.
Second, it's not clear whether there was sufficient evidence of libel in this case or not, and even if there was, being a minor the punishment would probably not be particularly severe.
Third, minors do have full constitutional rights, but it's apparently a common (and very sad) mistake that people seem to not understand this. Minors have all rights any other citizen of the united states has, however they are afforded special treatment under many laws and regulations (if anything, they have more rights than the rest of us). Being a minor is no excuse to strip someone of their civil rights.
Actually it doesn't sound like he's trying to go easy on her, although he may justify it as that. Based on the description of the page (which I haven't seen so all I can go on is the description) it sounds like he would have been hard pressed to win a libel suit. In addition to the dubiousness of actually winning the suit he would have to fork out the cash to hire a lawyer and file charges, as well as waste his and her time in court. Obviously, given the nature of the page, the odds of winning the case, and the hassle and cost involved he decided it wouldn't be worth the effort to bring it to court. Had he been someone else, say a firefighter, or maybe a middle manager in some mega-corp that would have been the end of it. However, because he's a principle he had a third option open to him that wouldn't cost him anything, and relatively little time or effort which was to have her punished through the school. This also had the effect that he didn't need to worry as much about whether he could prove libel (as this ruling clearly shows) because students are generally treated as guilty until proven innocent, and in general are afforded only a small subset of the rights the general populace has. Just because he viewed it as doing her a (possible) favor by not costing her (and himself) court fees and the slight chance she might face some sort of charges for libel (which remember, being underage would be expunged when she turned 18), he opted for the easy and relatively guaranteed route of punishing her through a channel he controlled.
You're thinking of someone else or replying to the wrong message. I don't troll. I do sometimes flame back accordingly.
I just looked back through the archives and you're correct, I was thinking of someone else, I'm sorry I falsely accused you of trolling. I was confused because the post you made was very similar to the one the person I was thinking of posted. The post he made in and of itself was not what makes me say he was trolling though, it was the 40 some odd posts he made after that where he was calling all the mods idiots and then saying how he was being "proven right" whenever one of those posts got modded down. Not that that matters in this context.
I'm posting this with my Karma bonus so that if anyone comes back through they'll be more likely to see my retraction of my previous accusation.
It'll finally be useful when I can rate moderators. Perhaps not even with their name attached, but just to say "Whoever rated this a troll, give their mods 0 weight in the future - whoever modded it... give their mods 50% more weight."
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that's part of what the meta-moderation system is for. If someone continually has their moderations reversed by meta-moderators it decreases their chances of receiving mod points in the future.
I do somewhat agree on the point about not being able to comment when you moderate and vice versa, but it's there to keep people from moderating anyone who agrees or disagrees with their posts up or down purely on said agreement. Of course, they can always just moderate whoever makes a point similar to the point they would have made, but it seems to me in most cases that's really what the system is designed for anyway. Ultimately yes it does come down to opinion (collectively) in many cases of course, but that's the nature of discourse.
You also miss the point somewhat, it isn't just that it elicits a negative response, it's that it's something specifically designed to do so. It's being annoying specifically to annoy. If you post something with the intent of actually contributing to the discussion then there should be no way for it to be rated Troll (although in the context of the greater discussion it might be offtopic). I've received plenty of moderations that I felt were "unfair" or left me wondering what the mod was thinking, but on the whole the "fair" mods outweigh the "unfair" ones. I've never had a post I consider good moderated down to -1 before, and I doubt many others here that are capable of putting together a well thought out and logical post have either. Worst case scenario most of the time, is that no ones bothers to moderate the post at all.
So I'm at a loss how this thread ends up in the realm of being unable to change laws or claiming that the actions of a Government official trumps law.
Ok, I'll walk you through it.
The OP made a point concerning people claiming racism, putting particular emphasis on illegal aliens being illegal. In and of itself the post was right, although the emphasis on illegal was misplaced and seems to have lead to confusion.
There was a response stating that just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. In essence saying something is illegal serves no purpose within this context. At no point was the original conclusion of the OP contradicted, and in fact the logical conclusion is that if you have an issue with immigration law you should attempt to get the law changed, but the the illegal aliens being here illegally has no impact on whether the law should be changed or not. The post then goes on to point out that by definition, if the government allows something (that is passes a law to legalize something) it is, by definition not illegal.
The previous post was then responded to with one saying essentially "Ok, so if the government does it, it's all right then?" and essentially implying that as long as a government agent does something whether it's legal or not, it's ok (which is different than the implied argument given previously concerning the government passing or amending laws).
At no point in time was it ever claimed that a government official gets to ignore the laws. At the same time, the confusion over government taking action (I.E. changing laws) versus government agents taking action (I.E. breaking laws) is what lead to the implication that laws once passed become immutable (because if the government can't change them then they by definition cannot be changed).
I think the whole thing can be summarized by the following:
1) Complaining about illegal immigrants does not constitute racism, so long as the complaint isn't directed at any particular race or nationality.
2) If you have a problem with a law, then you should attempt to have the law changed.
3) The government by definition can change laws, therefor the legality of something isn't an intrinsic property and thus cannot be used as an argument against making something legal.
4) An agent of the government is still subject to the laws of the government even if the government as a whole posses the ability of amend those laws.
It allows them or a nefarious party to track all of your posts, every story you read. No offense, but I don't EVER need a post tracked down to my real person. Innocous or not, there is no benefit. No benefit means the only possible affect is negative. Slashdot is MySpace, in essense.
Well, I don't know about no benefit. I find it much simpler to follow responses to messages I've posted, not to mention my good karma allows me to bump posts up a bit if I want to emphasis a point. You also earn the privilege of moderating if you're registered. I also don't see slashdot having any real need to advertise their "registered user" count, as that's more for sites looking for investors, or to be bought out by someone. Slashdot is well beyond that point already, what with their corporate overlords in OSTG and as such has no need to advertise something as pointless as subscribed users (not to mention page views is a much better metric and impresses more).
As for the comparison to MySpace, sure some of the comments are probably on par, but at least viewing/. doesn't make you want to claw your eyes out like MySpace does (the Idle section excepted).
"[A]llowing illegal aliens into this country" indeed. Hint: if the government "allow[s]" them in, it's not illegal.
I see how this works. So if the Government decides to tap phones without a warrant, that's legal. If the Government decides to confiscate property at a whim, it's now legal. If a Government official takes a sizable payment in turn for passing a law, well then... it's legal!
Nonsense indeed.
It is if they pass a law allowing them to do all that. The only time one law trumps another law is when it comes from a higher court (or document), otherwise as long as a law gives someone the right to do something then it's legal. The original poster is correct in that something being illegal is no argument against an amendment to a law, otherwise it would be impossible to amend any laws (as by definition if it needs amendment it's to allow something previously disallowed by said law). A law may always be overturned or amended, as has happened many times to even our most sacred laws (the constitution).
Now, whether an action is justifiable or not, that's an entirely different question, one in which the legality of the action has very little bearing.
It is just like calling people 'cowards' that don't aid the economic well being of Slashdot by registering.
How exactly does registering aid the economic well being of Slashdot? I know subscribing earns them money, but registering just means you have a persistent karma to follow you around, as well as the ability to choose which sections you see and how you want the various moderations weighted.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure pirates are crooks. Most of them probably cost the distribution companies (not the creators) a couple hundred dollars a year. The worst of them might cost them a thousand or two. The RIAA on the other hand are crooks of a different sort, and they cost people and the government (and by extension everyone) hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So, I ask you, who's the bigger criminal here, the pirates that all told cost the media companies maybe a hundred thousand dollars, or the media companies that cost everyone hundreds of thousands of dollars, and ruin the lives of people seemingly at random whether they're guilty of piracy or not?
Our copyright and patent system is broken. It's been abused, and stretched to the point of breaking by greedy big media trying to prop up flagging business models rather than innovate and change with progress. We need to reform our copyright and patent systems, destroy the media conglomerates, and then worry about trying to curb piracy. I have a feeling however that they'll find once copyright has been reduced back to what it was originally intended, and media companies are once again innovating instead of trying to enforce, that piracy won't be much of a problem at all.
You know what's going on, you just don't know that you know.
It's marketing at work. If you buy the $60, no-feature phone, how are they going to entice you to use the $75, get-your-picture cable (which costs about $0.57 to make).
The same way they do when I buy the feature encrusted phone, they don't. If they want me to buy the cable they better price it at $1 or $2, then I'll pick it up. Until then they can sit on it and spin for all I care.
On related note, someone suggested using bluetooth to transfer the photos, but it looks like I'm out of luck there. I can connect a bluetooth headset, or use the phone as a dialup modem through bluetooh, but it won't let me transfer anything to/from the phone using bluetooth.
Because the people we're trying to educate will be dead by then. Those that grow up with this stuff will already know it. It's the difference between trying to pound it into peoples heads, and them picking it up from being submerged in it culturally. Sure there will always be a select few that aren't going to get it, but there's always going to be a few that don't get something in any group. It doesn't matter if you're talking about computers, cars, or how to change a lightbulb.
doh, s/kind/king/
Yes, Verizon is the kind of the walled garden, and they'll charge you through the nose for every single little feature. It's death by a thousand papercuts. They draw people in by advertising lower rates than everyone else, but by the time you add up the cost of enabling all the features they've artificially disabled (and that most providers already give you) you end up paying a whole lot more.
Not really. Generally when you go to get a phone it falls in one of three categories. The first category is the free ones that come with your plan and have god knows what tacked on to them, 90% you neither want nor care about. The second group is the ones that have exactly what you want, none of the extra garbage, but aren't covered by your plan and thus are going to cost you $150.00 (as opposed to the $350.00 retail they're asking for the latest feature infested phone that they'll give to you for free with a signed contract for your soul for the next two years), even though they rightly should retail for something closer to $60.00. Then lastly you've got the group of "budget" phones that don't really have any features to speak of, cost next to nothing, but are assembled by the lowest bidder, guaranteed to fall apart within the first 6 months, and which you won't be able to sign up for any of the normal extras (like caller ID, voicemail, SMS [god help us]) even though the phone is more than capable of it. I honestly can't figure out the point of it all, clearly someone has an interest in pushing garbage features on the public, but I'm at a loss to figure out who.
Then there's the other end of this carrot/stick combo which is the gotchas they attach to everything, like having to shell out $75 for a fucking cable just so you can download/upload photos/contacts/whatever to your phone without having to pay $1.25 (per item) to transfer the data across their damn network.
Honestly, I've found occasion from time to time to use the camera on my phone, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $75 for a cable, or pay $1.25 a photo just to get the photos off my phone. I know my phone has a web browser, and all kinds of other features, but I also know the minute I use the damn things I'm going to be charged an arm in a leg somewhere along the line.
The DRM on consoles isn't like the DRM people are up in arms over on PCs. If you had a console game that you bought at the store, had to connect online whenever you played it, required you to install a piece of it to the hard drive, and only allowed you to uninstall/reinstall it 3 times before it would refuse to run, people would be talking about boycotting it as well. As it is, the downloadable content on some systems (*cough*Wii*cough*) being tied to a particular console already caused a bit of a ruckus, but at least once you downloaded it that was it, no more mucking about with DRM needed. There's DRM, and then there's DRM, and depending on exactly what flavor your talking about people have various levels of tolerance. We all know it largely doesn't work, but the more benign forms of it at least don't feel like a smack in the face combined with a pair of manacles, unlike the stuff coming out of EA these days. Someone already pointed out Stardock, and their excellent game Sins of a Solar Empire, and I'll just second that recommendation. I actually bought the game prior to finding out about their take on DRM, and I have to say I've been nothing but pleased with the game, and what little DRM it has in it, is the sort of thing all companies should be using (if they must use something).
Interesting, although perhaps not applicable in this case. From reading the article it sounds like the signal to noise ration of these things is pretty low, so although as you point out they could detect really massive gravitational waves there mostly useless for general detection. Were the system put in orbit I imagine its accuracy would improve somewhat although I'm mostly just speculating. This also doesn't detect the theoretical graviton, although from a practical standpoint the difference between a graviton and a gravitational wave is much like debating the difference between a laser and a photon.
At any rate, we're still left back at square one where we don't have anything that could realistically measure the gravitational waves being emitted (if that is in fact what's happening in this case) by something beyond the edge of our universe.
Gravity falls off with distance, and we have yet to create a graviton (if they even exist) detector. For all we know, the gravitons (or whatever) have reached us, we just don't have any way to detect it. There's other ways of explaining this as well, some hinted at in the article (such as whatever it is perturbing space time).
The theories being put forth to explain this are predicate on "B" being something that pre-dates the big bang, and is outside the formation of our light cone. Essentially, it's sitting at negative time, so even though we can see all the way back to 0 time we cannot see what existed prior to that. As it exists outside the expanding bubble of space time we exist within, it's really a complete wild card, no telling if anything outside our space time bubble even follows the same or similar physical rules. For all we know when our space time bubble collides with some of this pre-big bang "matter", it instantly gets converted into a equivalent quantity of gravitons within our space time. It's really all wild speculation, but since we have no way to observe anything that existed prior to the big bang, and cannot observe directly anything outside our light cone, it's doubtful this will ever be solved short of some amazing physics breakthrough like the grand unified field theory (or maybe warp drive/wormholes).
The article mentions various theories concerning objects in existence prior to the big bang and how these theories could be used to explain this effect. In theory postulates that there are other universe "bubbles" created similar to our own and this effect is attributable to one of them brushing up against our own. Another possibility is that some form of matter existed prior to the big bang, and was pushed out of the way by the initial expansion of our universe and this effect could be caused by a group of this initial matter influencing matter within our universe. Of course, at this points it's all just arm waving and what if scenarios, you might as well pick up a random sci-fi book, the explanations will be about as well founded as most of the ones being tossed around right now.
That's because the bogons they emit react destructively with our cluons. I believe this is the process by which otherwise promising programmers become middle management potential. Prolonged exposure to PHBs and lusers causes cluon destruction and eventual bogon poisoning. It is truly a vicious cycle.
And frankly they shouldn't have to be. I have no idea why developers seem to think they should/are. Fail safe and log it so someone who does understand what's happening can make an alternative choice.
Queue floods of calls to the helpdesk of "My computer locked up again and told me to call you."
There are ways of fixing the situation of course, but not without having to create a new operating system, and then getting everybody to agree to use it (including have all code not written for said operating system abandoned). In short, in two or three generations when all the people who don't know basic computer security and operation have died, and not being able to spot a phishing scam will be looked upon much the same way that being illiterate is now, then the problem will have fixed itself.
Well, you know what they say, make something idiot proof, and they'll build a better idiot. It doesn't matter how blatantly stupid doing something is, you'll still find some subset of the population that does it anyway. That's essentially the underlying principle behind the darwin awards. For more examples of things that make you go "WTF?" there's the IT oriented thedailywtf.com, and the retail oriented notalwaysright.com, in either case it will make you weep for the future of humanity.
From the summary: A federal judge has ruled that a school district didn't violate a student's free speech rights when it suspended her for a parody MySpace page she created calling her principal a sex addict who "hits on students".
The act in question may have occurred off campus property - however, it is within jurisdiction of the school since it targets the principal within his official capacity, and is likely provided to other members within the campus. Also, accusations like that are extremely damaging to the institution, and as a result they may take necessary steps to prevent said damage (see laws concerning slander/libel in the appropriate state for more information.)
The summary also mentions that it's a "parody Myspace" page. Depending on how it's done (e.g. an earlier version of http://weeklyradioaddress.com/, which copied the layout of the original site), it may appear to be directly from the principal or campus. In those cases, it's automatically their jurisdiction since it's pretends to be campus-related.
By the way - did you see the MySpace page in question? It didn't appear linked on a quick glance, and as such there's a lot of context missing.
Just because it was about the principle of their school, and identified him as such, doesn't make it school business. You're also taking my comment out of context as I was addressing the original statement saying that this was similar to students breaking a school "code of conduct". You are also correct that there's a lot of context missing, so it's unclear on whether this represents a case of libel or not. If it does, then it's the responsibility of the principle to take the student to court for libel and let the court decide if it constitutes libel or not. If it isn't then the student is within her rights under the first amendment. In either case the school has no part to play in this.
A page like that is evidence of libel - it shows the act of libel itself. Unless the student has something that wasn't published, it's also done without intent of checking accuracy - possibly out of malice. Given the few first paragraphs of the article, it appears the student was claiming it was "off-campus" rather than it not happening or that it was someone else.
First, as you admit, the page isn't linked so everything must be based on the snippets available in the article. Second, the snippets provided are evidence that there might be libel, but a lot of that hinges on whether or not the page was setup in such a way that a reasonable person would believe it had actually been written by the person in question. Based on the limited snippets and the description as a parody page (parody is explicitly exempted from libel laws) it doesn't seem likely anyone would mistake the page in question for a non-parody page.
So do adults. In this case, the principal has the right not to be cruelly and unusually punished when knee-jerk reactionists throw him in jail and put him on a sex-offender list. There's already more than enough stories where students accuse principals for shits and giggles, while remaining immune to any real punishment, and neither the campus nor the principal want another story added to the growing list.
You're correct, but in the first instance it's the knee-jerk reactionists that are in the wrong, and the proper thing is to punish people for making knee-jerk reactions, and in the second instance that's an entirely different situation. There's a major difference between creating a parody page in which you make fun of your principle, and accusing him in court or to police of molesting yourself or other children. It's apples and oranges. One is potentially libel, and the other is making false accusations. It's the difference between making jokes about OJ Simpson getting off with murder, and calling the police to claim you have a video of him doing it (not that it matters in this case as even if you did he's already been found innocent).
Experience is different than knowledge, although generally if one is at least reasonably intelligent the two have some relation to one another. If you actually care about why people vote, and that they vote intelligently, then make them take an intelligence test before being allowed to vote. Artificially defining some age as an age at which a person is capable of making an intelligent choice isn't the way to ensure people are voting intelligently.
If you want to make some generalizations concerning being able to act in an intelligent manner, then we're going about it all wrong. The rule should be, anyone under the age of lets call it 8, and anyone between the ages of 13 and 21, everyone else should be able to make clear headed semi-reasonable decisions (or at least as reasonable as everyone over the age of 21). Incidentally if the legal drinking age were lowered the second age gap would shrink as well. Generally once someone hits the legal drinking age they've already had their share of drinking experience and it losses a lot of the appeal.
At this point this whole thing is terribly off topic so lets see if we can bring it back to the subject at hand. Lets assume for the moment I take your supposition that minors are not afforded the same rights as the rest of us. Based on that, then it's perfectly legal to murder or kidnap a minor as they aren't protected by the rights we enjoy. The logic just doesn't work right. Yes they are exempted from some rights, and have more rights in other areas, but none of the rights applicable in this case have any provision in them concerning age. Let me clarify that, if the right, bill, law, or whatever it is doesn't have any specific requirement concerning the age of the person, then being a minor has no bearing on whether the right/law/whatever affects them. You cannot simply claim that constitutional rights do not apply to minors just because some of them make exemptions. Almost no one has exactly the same legal rights when you take all of our legal framework in mind, or else we could all file the exact same tax returns each year. Different laws make different exemptions, some of them based on age, others on income or marital status, and still more on physical handicaps and such, but we don't go around declaring that married people or the handicaped don't have the same rights as the rest of us.
Seriously, would you want voters that chose a candidate because "like, Muffy said that Candidate A was like, a total douchebag, because he like TOTALLY ignored her email about her cat, Fluffy...."
Unfortunately some of the ones who can legally vote base their vote on reasons even dumber than that. I also doubt minors would bother to vote in most cases, or if they did they would most likely vote for whoever their parents told them to vote for. I've met quite a few minors who I thought were far more capable of casting an intelligent and well thought out vote than someone three or four times their age. I'm constantly amazed by the general attitude people seem to have that all children are morons. Children are not morons, they are merely ignorant, something that is easily curable by the application of a little knowledge combined with an inquisitive spirit, something children are known for possessing.
As to your other points:
Libel and slander is not protected under free speech.
People still have the right to control speech in non-public areas, such as school grounds, private property, etc. The only really interesting thing in this particular example is that it was off-school speech that was disciplined.
However, the discipline was very small. Is it censorship, since there was no government order to remove the speech? Is this any different than students abiding by a code of conduct, even when off campus? Compare the small punishment to what could have happened if the principle decided to sue for slander instead?
The student was also a minor, and minors do not have full constitutional rights. Schools are similar to prisons in this regard, in that they must handle a population which has limited rights and which tends to need extensive supervision.
First, students cannot be punished for failing to abide by any "code of conduct" while off campus. If the student is in a extra-curricular activity, which although tied to the school, is not strictly speaking part of the school, then they can be prevented from participating in that activity, but that can be done for any number of reasons and is different from any sort of in school punishment.
Second, it's not clear whether there was sufficient evidence of libel in this case or not, and even if there was, being a minor the punishment would probably not be particularly severe.
Third, minors do have full constitutional rights, but it's apparently a common (and very sad) mistake that people seem to not understand this. Minors have all rights any other citizen of the united states has, however they are afforded special treatment under many laws and regulations (if anything, they have more rights than the rest of us). Being a minor is no excuse to strip someone of their civil rights.
Actually it doesn't sound like he's trying to go easy on her, although he may justify it as that. Based on the description of the page (which I haven't seen so all I can go on is the description) it sounds like he would have been hard pressed to win a libel suit. In addition to the dubiousness of actually winning the suit he would have to fork out the cash to hire a lawyer and file charges, as well as waste his and her time in court. Obviously, given the nature of the page, the odds of winning the case, and the hassle and cost involved he decided it wouldn't be worth the effort to bring it to court. Had he been someone else, say a firefighter, or maybe a middle manager in some mega-corp that would have been the end of it. However, because he's a principle he had a third option open to him that wouldn't cost him anything, and relatively little time or effort which was to have her punished through the school. This also had the effect that he didn't need to worry as much about whether he could prove libel (as this ruling clearly shows) because students are generally treated as guilty until proven innocent, and in general are afforded only a small subset of the rights the general populace has. Just because he viewed it as doing her a (possible) favor by not costing her (and himself) court fees and the slight chance she might face some sort of charges for libel (which remember, being underage would be expunged when she turned 18), he opted for the easy and relatively guaranteed route of punishing her through a channel he controlled.
You're thinking of someone else or replying to the wrong message. I don't troll. I do sometimes flame back accordingly.
I just looked back through the archives and you're correct, I was thinking of someone else, I'm sorry I falsely accused you of trolling. I was confused because the post you made was very similar to the one the person I was thinking of posted. The post he made in and of itself was not what makes me say he was trolling though, it was the 40 some odd posts he made after that where he was calling all the mods idiots and then saying how he was being "proven right" whenever one of those posts got modded down. Not that that matters in this context.
I'm posting this with my Karma bonus so that if anyone comes back through they'll be more likely to see my retraction of my previous accusation.
It'll finally be useful when I can rate moderators. Perhaps not even with their name attached, but just to say "Whoever rated this a troll, give their mods 0 weight in the future - whoever modded it ... give their mods 50% more weight."
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that's part of what the meta-moderation system is for. If someone continually has their moderations reversed by meta-moderators it decreases their chances of receiving mod points in the future.
I do somewhat agree on the point about not being able to comment when you moderate and vice versa, but it's there to keep people from moderating anyone who agrees or disagrees with their posts up or down purely on said agreement. Of course, they can always just moderate whoever makes a point similar to the point they would have made, but it seems to me in most cases that's really what the system is designed for anyway. Ultimately yes it does come down to opinion (collectively) in many cases of course, but that's the nature of discourse.
You also miss the point somewhat, it isn't just that it elicits a negative response, it's that it's something specifically designed to do so. It's being annoying specifically to annoy. If you post something with the intent of actually contributing to the discussion then there should be no way for it to be rated Troll (although in the context of the greater discussion it might be offtopic). I've received plenty of moderations that I felt were "unfair" or left me wondering what the mod was thinking, but on the whole the "fair" mods outweigh the "unfair" ones. I've never had a post I consider good moderated down to -1 before, and I doubt many others here that are capable of putting together a well thought out and logical post have either. Worst case scenario most of the time, is that no ones bothers to moderate the post at all.
So I'm at a loss how this thread ends up in the realm of being unable to change laws or claiming that the actions of a Government official trumps law.
Ok, I'll walk you through it.
The OP made a point concerning people claiming racism, putting particular emphasis on illegal aliens being illegal. In and of itself the post was right, although the emphasis on illegal was misplaced and seems to have lead to confusion.
There was a response stating that just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. In essence saying something is illegal serves no purpose within this context. At no point was the original conclusion of the OP contradicted, and in fact the logical conclusion is that if you have an issue with immigration law you should attempt to get the law changed, but the the illegal aliens being here illegally has no impact on whether the law should be changed or not. The post then goes on to point out that by definition, if the government allows something (that is passes a law to legalize something) it is, by definition not illegal.
The previous post was then responded to with one saying essentially "Ok, so if the government does it, it's all right then?" and essentially implying that as long as a government agent does something whether it's legal or not, it's ok (which is different than the implied argument given previously concerning the government passing or amending laws). At no point in time was it ever claimed that a government official gets to ignore the laws. At the same time, the confusion over government taking action (I.E. changing laws) versus government agents taking action (I.E. breaking laws) is what lead to the implication that laws once passed become immutable (because if the government can't change them then they by definition cannot be changed).
I think the whole thing can be summarized by the following:
1) Complaining about illegal immigrants does not constitute racism, so long as the complaint isn't directed at any particular race or nationality.
2) If you have a problem with a law, then you should attempt to have the law changed.
3) The government by definition can change laws, therefor the legality of something isn't an intrinsic property and thus cannot be used as an argument against making something legal.
4) An agent of the government is still subject to the laws of the government even if the government as a whole posses the ability of amend those laws.
It allows them or a nefarious party to track all of your posts, every story you read. No offense, but I don't EVER need a post tracked down to my real person. Innocous or not, there is no benefit. No benefit means the only possible affect is negative. Slashdot is MySpace, in essense.
Well, I don't know about no benefit. I find it much simpler to follow responses to messages I've posted, not to mention my good karma allows me to bump posts up a bit if I want to emphasis a point. You also earn the privilege of moderating if you're registered. I also don't see slashdot having any real need to advertise their "registered user" count, as that's more for sites looking for investors, or to be bought out by someone. Slashdot is well beyond that point already, what with their corporate overlords in OSTG and as such has no need to advertise something as pointless as subscribed users (not to mention page views is a much better metric and impresses more).
/. doesn't make you want to claw your eyes out like MySpace does (the Idle section excepted).
As for the comparison to MySpace, sure some of the comments are probably on par, but at least viewing
"[A]llowing illegal aliens into this country" indeed. Hint: if the government "allow[s]" them in, it's not illegal.
I see how this works. So if the Government decides to tap phones without a warrant, that's legal. If the Government decides to confiscate property at a whim, it's now legal. If a Government official takes a sizable payment in turn for passing a law, well then... it's legal!
Nonsense indeed.
It is if they pass a law allowing them to do all that. The only time one law trumps another law is when it comes from a higher court (or document), otherwise as long as a law gives someone the right to do something then it's legal. The original poster is correct in that something being illegal is no argument against an amendment to a law, otherwise it would be impossible to amend any laws (as by definition if it needs amendment it's to allow something previously disallowed by said law). A law may always be overturned or amended, as has happened many times to even our most sacred laws (the constitution).
Now, whether an action is justifiable or not, that's an entirely different question, one in which the legality of the action has very little bearing.
It is just like calling people 'cowards' that don't aid the economic well being of Slashdot by registering.
How exactly does registering aid the economic well being of Slashdot? I know subscribing earns them money, but registering just means you have a persistent karma to follow you around, as well as the ability to choose which sections you see and how you want the various moderations weighted.