While I might agree that plant's "grow" at a slower rate in more intense sunlight, I don't believe it's proper to say that sunlight inhibits growth. What happens is that when a plant is in sufficient sunlight, it can devote its nutrients to growing heartier rather than "bigger." Plants in sufficient sunlight tend to be short, but also have thicker stalks and fuller (though fewer) leaves. Plants in low light grow taller and lankier, because they are a) trying to maximize their surface area to most efficiently absorb as much sunlight as possible, both through sheer size and by producing more leaves, and b) potentially grow taller than whatever is obstructing their ability to get to the light (think of a bunch of plants all in close proximity on the ground. The taller the plant, the less likely it is to be oovered up by another plant. So if a plant is not getting enough sunlight, it's possibly because all the other plants around it are taller than it. Therefore the best response is to get even taller still).
I don't have any studies, but I believe I've seen plants that shifted significantly after a change in the direction of the source of light (such as if you turn the plant 180 degrees after being in front of a window), a shift that occurred much too quickly to be explained away by the speed at which different sides of the plant grew.
Some crackhead gets busted for theft - sure - I'll convict in a heartbeat if the evidence supports it. But I'm not sending him to the state sponsored school for criminals for a $20 rock.
I will concede that the laws relating to crack rock are unfair, especially when compared to laws relating to powder cocaine. However, a "personal policy of "no guilty verdict" in any drug case" is irresponsible. Would you refuse to find guilty a seller who is accused of getting dozens or hundreds of children hooked, or pimping out women as compensation for feeding their habit? Fighting bad laws is one thing, but you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
You're mixing up criminal with civil, which have two very different standards for how much evidence is "enough." What would you define the word "probably" as, in terms of a percentage of likeliness? One of the definitions of "probable" is "having more evidence for than against, or evidence that inclines the mind to belief but leaves some room for doubt." Does that sound like at least 51% likely? If so, then it has met the civil burden of proof, which is what the RIAA needs.
The issue is that handed-in work - i.e. papers, exercises, and so forth, written alone and submitted later on - have become easy to cheat with. This was always true, and always will be true, and yes, the internet does make this far easier. But this has always existed.
And if the tools for cheating have improved, then by the same methods, and by necessity, the tools for cheating detection should necessarily improve. The internet doesn't change the arms race. It's technology, and is playing the role that technology always has played in these sorts of games.
When teachers have open book tests anymore (assuming these are timed, in class tests), it's because they realize that there is so much material that if someone really goes in thinking "I don't need to study because I can have all the resources I need," they are likely to do poorly because they spend so much time looking for the answers, they don't have time to actually answer the questions.
But it doesn't really matter if it costs them 20% of sales "over there" if it doesn't cost them that much in other markets (such as the US), assuming that if they priced it at 200 Euros, they would feel compelled to also price it at USD$200. If, as a result of the increased price and bundling, they lose over 20% of the European market, but worldwide still lose less than 20%, they still make more money in the end.
Do you think Nintendo is going to lose 20% of its potential market from their decision to make the price $50 more than expected? Because that's what it would take for their decision to break even, let alone actually start to hurt them.
Imagine you were Nintendo, and not sure about how region locking actually affects sales because there is no hard data on that. Would you consider collecting the data yourself? As in, have two lackeys make contradictory announcements, and watch the customer responses?
No, because the people who have a propensity to respond to such announcements likely do not accurately represent the whole set of people who are interested in buying the product. A) they are much more tech savvy and care about all these day-to-day announcements (as opposed to the person who just tries to buy it once it's out, or pre-orders it and forgets all else). B) people who respond tend to be those people who oppose whatever it is they are responding to, whereas people who don't care one way or the other tend not to respond. And I'm sure there's other reasons why. In any case, any "data" they might collect would be pretty much worthless in terms of determining the market effect of their decision, whatever that decision turns out to be.
Odd, I'm finding the opposite. Scrolling through your messages requires the site to load any message that you can't currently see, so even though I may have it set to load 100 messages per page, I can only effectively see about 25 on the page before I have to use the scroll bar (and that's only if I have their preview pane turned off). If I want to see the other 75 below, and I use the scroll bar or the scroll wheel, it just feels so slow and labored because it's trying to load those other messagees *now* rather than when I loaded the page in the first place. This is also quite different from gmail, whose loading time for most things seems to be reduced by the fact that many of its functions use javascript rather than requiring a full reload of the page.
The Outlook feel, with drag and drop messages to folders and whatnot, I don't mind. Yahoo's old appearance was getting a bit tired. But this slowness when trying to scroll through messages, that's just not worth the switch.
This particular phenomenon is the biggest argument for tort reform in recent memory. The American legal system is set up in such a way that, if you are sued, you are financially penalized win or lose. In other jurisdictions (I'm thinking of the UK in particular) the plaintiff is obligated to pay for the defendant's legal fees if the plaintiff loses the suit. This has the effect of curtailing suits that are filed simply to harass defendants, or to promote failing business models as the only choice available to the consumer, lest they be bankrupted in court.
There are ways in the American legal system to do the same thing (i.e. if you can show in court that the lawsuit was frivolous or meritless, you can potentially get the court to rule that the plaintiff must pay the defendant's court costs, attorney's fees, and possibly even get punitive damages). It's just not that easy to do.
So all you need is an accusation? Then why couldn't companies just keep accusing people over and over just by making things up and bankrupt them, what's to protect people from that?
That's where the "good faith basis" comes in. There are ways of accusing lawyers of filing lawsuits frivolously or lawsuits without merit, or for accusing the plaintiff/plaintiff's lawyer of unjustly causing harm to a defendant for filing frivolous or meritless suits. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you feel), "good faith" is extremely ambiguous, and it's very difficult to prove that a lawsuit was filed frivolously.
Actully I think you mean shouldn't they have evidence before they file a lawsuit...
In which case the answer is no. The RIAA should have a good faith basis for suing, but part of the legal process is that once the suit is initiated, there is a phase called "discovery" where both sides attempt to obtain evidence that supports their position, exchanges that evidence, requests access to certain things (e.g. the defendant's harddrive), and essentially tries to collect everything necessary to put on a case. Then there's the opportunity to file a Motion for Summary Judgment, if the evidence appears to show that the facts are undisputed (or fails to show anything of relevance). Then there's the trial. Obviously this is a highly simplified explanation, which leaves out other potential steps (or mis-steps) that are not currently relevant to my short summary as it pertains to this case, but that's the gist of it.
+1 on that. It used to be like pulling teeth to get them to add a feature to the core, even if many people wanted that feature and it seemed like something that would have a positive impact on the day-to-day browsing experience while using Firefox. Now there's talk of "features" like Skype tie-ins? Sounds like bloat to me.
If they could just fix up their RSS support so that quotation marks, question marks, and ampersands showed up properly rather than in html code in my/. RSS bookmark, I'd be happy.
Are you trying to argue that in receiving the information, you (via your computer) not complicit in the copying? Your computer is shouldering absolutely no part of the grunt work?
Not to mention the fact that when dealing with downloading music, I think it's harder for people to claim that they "didn't know" the music was ill-gotten. In the case of a burned DVD/CD being sold by a vendor, it can be more or less obvious that the DVD/CD is burned depending on how good their reproduction of the disc, label, packaging, etc are, and where they are selling it (e.g. in a store vs on the street). But have you ever seen those people give those discs away for free? Yet you can get music files online for free. If the music was being distributed legitimately, would you really expect them to just be giving it away by the thousands? (I'm setting aside for a second artists giving away single or limited quantity "promos" to advertise a new album. The sheer quantity of music available through torrents and download programs exceeds that kind of innocent giveaway scenario)
Yeah, it breaks down like this: okay, it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a music or video store, it's legal to sell it. It's illegal to seed it, but, but - but that doesn't matter 'cause -- get a load of this, alright -- if you get stopped by a lawsuit, you can just claim it was someone else using your IP address.
"Yeah," she agrees, "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking has an Apple."
Well, here's the problem. What she really meant was "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking and has an online banking problem that causes them to come in here and complain has an Apple."
In which case, the group she's talking about is a non-representative sample, because it's oversampling Apple users and undersampling Windows users.
Serving and Court Order are not the same thing. His sentence was clear. The article refers to a court order, the poster refers to a court order. I can only assume he meant what he typed unless he says otherwise.
What if she had done this before the court order though?
The court order was to sanction here *after* she destroyed the evidence. Once you are made aware that you have been sued in court (i.e. served), you *cannot* destroy evidence that is pertinent to that suit. If the other side finds out you have done this, they can file for sanctions. No court order needs to tell you that this is so, because these are the standing rules of the court (of course different from place to place depending on where you have been sued).
Slashdot Mirror
While I might agree that plant's "grow" at a slower rate in more intense sunlight, I don't believe it's proper to say that sunlight inhibits growth. What happens is that when a plant is in sufficient sunlight, it can devote its nutrients to growing heartier rather than "bigger." Plants in sufficient sunlight tend to be short, but also have thicker stalks and fuller (though fewer) leaves. Plants in low light grow taller and lankier, because they are a) trying to maximize their surface area to most efficiently absorb as much sunlight as possible, both through sheer size and by producing more leaves, and b) potentially grow taller than whatever is obstructing their ability to get to the light (think of a bunch of plants all in close proximity on the ground. The taller the plant, the less likely it is to be oovered up by another plant. So if a plant is not getting enough sunlight, it's possibly because all the other plants around it are taller than it. Therefore the best response is to get even taller still).
I don't have any studies, but I believe I've seen plants that shifted significantly after a change in the direction of the source of light (such as if you turn the plant 180 degrees after being in front of a window), a shift that occurred much too quickly to be explained away by the speed at which different sides of the plant grew.
Some crackhead gets busted for theft - sure - I'll convict in a heartbeat if the evidence supports it.
But I'm not sending him to the state sponsored school for criminals for a $20 rock.
I will concede that the laws relating to crack rock are unfair, especially when compared to laws relating to powder cocaine. However, a "personal policy of "no guilty verdict" in any drug case" is irresponsible. Would you refuse to find guilty a seller who is accused of getting dozens or hundreds of children hooked, or pimping out women as compensation for feeding their habit? Fighting bad laws is one thing, but you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
...on what grounds could he be struck?
On the grounds that a jury is useless if the decisions of its members are etched in stone even before the opening statements.
Even if I did not have a personal policy of "no guilty verdict" in any drug case...
I'm surprised you weren't struck for cause. How exactly did you make it on the jury panel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmW_4R81jVU
You're mixing up criminal with civil, which have two very different standards for how much evidence is "enough." What would you define the word "probably" as, in terms of a percentage of likeliness? One of the definitions of "probable" is "having more evidence for than against, or evidence that inclines the mind to belief but leaves some room for doubt." Does that sound like at least 51% likely? If so, then it has met the civil burden of proof, which is what the RIAA needs.
So what kinds of phones do you buy? Rotary? Or have you upgraded to the ones with the pretty buttons yet?
The issue is that handed-in work - i.e. papers, exercises, and so forth, written alone and submitted later on - have become easy to cheat with. This was always true, and always will be true, and yes, the internet does make this far easier. But this has always existed.
And if the tools for cheating have improved, then by the same methods, and by necessity, the tools for cheating detection should necessarily improve. The internet doesn't change the arms race. It's technology, and is playing the role that technology always has played in these sorts of games.
When teachers have open book tests anymore (assuming these are timed, in class tests), it's because they realize that there is so much material that if someone really goes in thinking "I don't need to study because I can have all the resources I need," they are likely to do poorly because they spend so much time looking for the answers, they don't have time to actually answer the questions.
But it doesn't really matter if it costs them 20% of sales "over there" if it doesn't cost them that much in other markets (such as the US), assuming that if they priced it at 200 Euros, they would feel compelled to also price it at USD$200. If, as a result of the increased price and bundling, they lose over 20% of the European market, but worldwide still lose less than 20%, they still make more money in the end.
Do you think Nintendo is going to lose 20% of its potential market from their decision to make the price $50 more than expected? Because that's what it would take for their decision to break even, let alone actually start to hurt them.
Imagine you were Nintendo, and not sure about how region locking actually affects sales because there is no hard data on that. Would you consider collecting the data yourself? As in, have two lackeys make contradictory announcements, and watch the customer responses?
No, because the people who have a propensity to respond to such announcements likely do not accurately represent the whole set of people who are interested in buying the product. A) they are much more tech savvy and care about all these day-to-day announcements (as opposed to the person who just tries to buy it once it's out, or pre-orders it and forgets all else). B) people who respond tend to be those people who oppose whatever it is they are responding to, whereas people who don't care one way or the other tend not to respond. And I'm sure there's other reasons why. In any case, any "data" they might collect would be pretty much worthless in terms of determining the market effect of their decision, whatever that decision turns out to be.
Odd, I'm finding the opposite. Scrolling through your messages requires the site to load any message that you can't currently see, so even though I may have it set to load 100 messages per page, I can only effectively see about 25 on the page before I have to use the scroll bar (and that's only if I have their preview pane turned off). If I want to see the other 75 below, and I use the scroll bar or the scroll wheel, it just feels so slow and labored because it's trying to load those other messagees *now* rather than when I loaded the page in the first place. This is also quite different from gmail, whose loading time for most things seems to be reduced by the fact that many of its functions use javascript rather than requiring a full reload of the page.
The Outlook feel, with drag and drop messages to folders and whatnot, I don't mind. Yahoo's old appearance was getting a bit tired. But this slowness when trying to scroll through messages, that's just not worth the switch.
i don't eat either.
I would think that would be obvious from your handle. Vegans don't get their pudding *or* their meat.
Ditto that. I had to get a new skin for my phone because the GF...
/. then?
Ok, you had me up until that point, but girlfriend? Please. What are you doing on
This particular phenomenon is the biggest argument for tort reform in recent memory. The American legal system is set up in such a way that, if you are sued, you are financially penalized win or lose. In other jurisdictions (I'm thinking of the UK in particular) the plaintiff is obligated to pay for the defendant's legal fees if the plaintiff loses the suit. This has the effect of curtailing suits that are filed simply to harass defendants, or to promote failing business models as the only choice available to the consumer, lest they be bankrupted in court.
There are ways in the American legal system to do the same thing (i.e. if you can show in court that the lawsuit was frivolous or meritless, you can potentially get the court to rule that the plaintiff must pay the defendant's court costs, attorney's fees, and possibly even get punitive damages). It's just not that easy to do.
So all you need is an accusation? Then why couldn't companies just keep accusing people over and over just by making things up and bankrupt them, what's to protect people from that?
That's where the "good faith basis" comes in. There are ways of accusing lawyers of filing lawsuits frivolously or lawsuits without merit, or for accusing the plaintiff/plaintiff's lawyer of unjustly causing harm to a defendant for filing frivolous or meritless suits. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you feel), "good faith" is extremely ambiguous, and it's very difficult to prove that a lawsuit was filed frivolously.
Actully I think you mean shouldn't they have evidence before they file a lawsuit...
In which case the answer is no. The RIAA should have a good faith basis for suing, but part of the legal process is that once the suit is initiated, there is a phase called "discovery" where both sides attempt to obtain evidence that supports their position, exchanges that evidence, requests access to certain things (e.g. the defendant's harddrive), and essentially tries to collect everything necessary to put on a case. Then there's the opportunity to file a Motion for Summary Judgment, if the evidence appears to show that the facts are undisputed (or fails to show anything of relevance). Then there's the trial. Obviously this is a highly simplified explanation, which leaves out other potential steps (or mis-steps) that are not currently relevant to my short summary as it pertains to this case, but that's the gist of it.
+1 on that. It used to be like pulling teeth to get them to add a feature to the core, even if many people wanted that feature and it seemed like something that would have a positive impact on the day-to-day browsing experience while using Firefox. Now there's talk of "features" like Skype tie-ins? Sounds like bloat to me.
/. RSS bookmark, I'd be happy.
If they could just fix up their RSS support so that quotation marks, question marks, and ampersands showed up properly rather than in html code in my
Are you trying to argue that in receiving the information, you (via your computer) not complicit in the copying? Your computer is shouldering absolutely no part of the grunt work?
Not to mention the fact that when dealing with downloading music, I think it's harder for people to claim that they "didn't know" the music was ill-gotten. In the case of a burned DVD/CD being sold by a vendor, it can be more or less obvious that the DVD/CD is burned depending on how good their reproduction of the disc, label, packaging, etc are, and where they are selling it (e.g. in a store vs on the street). But have you ever seen those people give those discs away for free? Yet you can get music files online for free. If the music was being distributed legitimately, would you really expect them to just be giving it away by the thousands? (I'm setting aside for a second artists giving away single or limited quantity "promos" to advertise a new album. The sheer quantity of music available through torrents and download programs exceeds that kind of innocent giveaway scenario)
Yeah, it breaks down like this: okay, it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a music or video store, it's legal to sell it. It's illegal to seed it, but, but - but that doesn't matter 'cause -- get a load of this, alright -- if you get stopped by a lawsuit, you can just claim it was someone else using your IP address.
The real one is "AOL"
Which makes me wonder... is "AOL Keyword: AOL" recursive? Having never had, used, or even breathed on an AOL browser, I wouldn't know.
"Yeah," she agrees, "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking has an Apple."
Well, here's the problem. What she really meant was "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking and has an online banking problem that causes them to come in here and complain has an Apple."
In which case, the group she's talking about is a non-representative sample, because it's oversampling Apple users and undersampling Windows users.
Serving and Court Order are not the same thing. His sentence was clear. The article refers to a court order, the poster refers to a court order. I can only assume he meant what he typed unless he says otherwise.
What if she had done this before the court order though?
;)
The court order was to sanction here *after* she destroyed the evidence. Once you are made aware that you have been sued in court (i.e. served), you *cannot* destroy evidence that is pertinent to that suit. If the other side finds out you have done this, they can file for sanctions. No court order needs to tell you that this is so, because these are the standing rules of the court (of course different from place to place depending on where you have been sued).
But IANAL