FTFY. Most "currency" in circulation these days is just numbers in bank accounts. Which arrived there as deposits paid from loans or credit cards. Backed by the bank's asset ledger, which includes a significant percentage of housing loans...
No, you didn't fix that for me. You broke it with your utterly incorrect conception of how a currency works. Banks do not create a currency or even back it. Banks take in currency and loan currency. The only assets a bank has are property that it has bought in exchange for currency -- by buying the asset directly or by assuming ownership of the asset because the currency that it already lent was not repaid.
People who use "FTFY' more often then not need to be bitch-slapped. Prove that it was broken first, numbnuts.
Modern currencies typically aren't backed by anything. They only have value because people trust they have value. This works just fine for established currencies and we've already seen it works surprisingly well even for extremely tiny currencies like bitcoin.
You're wrong.
Modern currencies are backed by the governments which issue them. More bluntly, modern currencies are backed by modern government's ability to tax the labor of their citizens and imprison them if they do not pay. You trust that the currency is worth something in part because of the trust that everyone places in the currency itself (the prices that people set for goods), but also because the government buys services and goods (labor and goods), sells rights and services (user fees, police service, defense), and transacts in that currency (meaning that citizens of that government pretty much need to transact in that currency, at least in part, as well).
BitCoin cannot imprison me if I do not pay it in bitcoins. BitCoin does not inconvenience me in the least if I refuse to accept it. BitCoin only marginally inconveniences me if I decide not to pay for goods using it. BitCoin is not "backed by anything" tangible, such as gold, or practical, such as a need to use it. There's your substantial contact with reality.
There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system.
Merely that pesky First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech") as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)) and a host of Supreme Court precedent stating that prior restraints to speech must serve a compelling governmental interest, be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest, and be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.
The closest analog to this situation is likely found in the imminent lawless action test. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969). Before you interpret that phrase too broadly, consider that the Supreme Court stated that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
"Because July protests against BART police shootings had turned violent, BART officials took the unusual step to protect public safety, they said." Source: Christian Science Monitor. That doesn't sound like evidence that anyone was advocating imminent violence. That doesn't even sound like evidence that violence was likely to occur last week. Instead, that sounds like an official decided that potential violence was a good hook and shut down the BART cell phone repeater system based on the likely content of the calls (calls organizing a protest) rather than any substantial likelihood of violence.
The demonstrators are a bunch of loonies who want to be part of an Anonymous based action and have no right to even be on BART's private property for that purpose.
First, Anonymous wasn't involved last week's demonstration. Second, BART is a governmental organization that is incapable of owning "private property." Third, even in the sense that the government can exclude the general public from public property, there's this pesky problem:
The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied. -- Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 U.S. 496 (1939)
Subways and their stations are merely another iteration of a public street, and while they merit tighter regulations due to the environment (confined spaces, dangerous areas, etc), that last "but" does not completely go away. Public transit, like it or not, is required to deal reasonably with public speech and protest.
If BART directors actually had a spine that wasn't broken down by too much bending down to Political Correctness they wouldn't have these issues. This is something to be sorted out in the courts...
It will. Merely not in the sense that you intended. Peaceful protestors* will defend against charges filed against them in court (that pesky Brandenburg didn't like his criminal conviction), the ACLU or some other entity will drag BART into court if they use that tactic again.
not on the streets - unless you really want to become Egypt.
Too late. BART in general faces an even more riled up and motivated opposition as a result of this action. Besides, the courts are not there to resolve political problems. Politics exists to resolve political problems. Politics is sometimes diplomatic, sometimes backroom, and sometimes made on the streets. Get used to it.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
If you draw a paycheck, you'll notice that it has much more than just one number on it. Your failure to read those numbers does not mean tha they are obfuscated.
If you don't draw a paycheck, then you are making estimated tax payments at least every quarter, and cutting a check each time. That's four times a frequently as you recommend. While the instructions may be obscenely difficult to read and follow, the cutting of the check is not obfuscated at all.
Why does 'our nation' have to put a gun to my head and force me to fund the intellectual curiosity of others?
As republican as I tend to be, the "all money is fungible" meme needs to die a quick, very ugly death. The modern republican party needs to get its act together and stop with this nonsense -- I can and have voted for 'the lesser of two evils' where the lesser evil was a democrat and the greater idiot was an ultraconservative, evangelical zealot.
You are not forced to fund the intellectual curiosity of others. You are forced to pay taxes to a government which represents a pluralistic society that is reasonably evenly split politically, and quite fractured philosophically.
That government engages in compromise. Nobody get everything they want, some causes that you oppose get something because a good fraction of the population wants it, and some worthy causes get nothing because of insufficient support.
Grow up. Deal with it.
Why don't one of you smarmy assholes head over to Compton and take a poll on how many people in this part of 'the nation' give a flying fuck about landing on an asteroid.
Because Compton is not the entire nation. Why don't you head over to the Cape or Houston or Seattle and ask them? How big a group do you have to be to get a veto? How does anything get done if it only takes 15% of the population to veto something? Make that the standard, and I guarantee that the people of Compton won't be getting anything from the government either.
You should not be able to buy and sell this protection. If you didn't invent it, you shouldn't be able to enforce a patent on it even if you paid $4.5 billion for that "right." Also, If someone patents something, they have to do something with it themselves or they forfeit their patent.
No. You're so far off you're not even wrong.
Your opinion has no chance of becoming the law.
Property that cannot be bought and sold is effectively not property at all. "People who innovate" will not be able to sell their idea, obtain financing using their idea as collateral, or invest their idea as capital in a business. Only corporations could exploit the idea using their own resources, but because inventions are developed by employees and 'sold' to their employer, not even the employer could enforce a patent.
Thank you very little -- don't bother trying again.
Wrong. There are a great many deaths that may be attributed to the Fukushima mess. Your mistake is in not counting them because the have not happened yet. Every one of them was preventable.
Now apply the same standard to coal, gas, and oil-fired power, not to mention solar (nasty chemicals in the fabrication process), wind (tower deaths), hydro (failure or entrapment)...
Copyright law already protects your photo, whether the copyright notice has been cropped or not. This is a stupidly broad application of "copyright management information".
How so? Do you believe that copyright law 'already' protects "copyright management information" (absent the DMCA and this interpretation)? Or do you believe that removing "copyright management information" like this is not a bad act and does not create any additional harm? I hope neither, because on both counts you're wrong.
Pre-DMCA copyright law wouldn't provide any additional protection or penalty if someone removed a byline, photographer's attribution, copyright notice, or the like. At best, you might spend an inordinate amount of time and money arguing for additional damages under a tort theory like slander of title. Meanwhile, the work, stripped of any indication of source and/or copyright, would have essentially been turned into an "orphaned work." People who obtained copies of the work couldn't determine who the original owner was in order to obtain permission to legally redistribute or modify the work, or worse yet could assume that the work was released into the public domain. That's assuming that the person who stripped the information didn't have the gall to claim that it is their own -- as if that never happens.
This application is exactly what Congress intended:
Sec. 1202. Integrity of copyright management information (a) False Copyright Management Information. No person shall knowingly and with the intent to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal infringement
(1) provide copyright management information that is false, or
(2) distribute or import for distribution copyright management information that is false.
(b) Removal or Alteration of Copyright Management Information. â" No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law â"
(1) intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information,
(2) distribute or import for distribution copyright management information knowing that the copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law, or
(3) distribute, import for distribution, or publicly perform works, copies of works, or phonorecords, knowing that copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law,
knowing, or, with respect to civil remedies under section 1203, having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under this title.
(c) Definition -- As used in this section, the term "copyright management information" means any of the following information conveyed in connection with copies or phonorecords of a work or performances or displays of a work, including in digital form, except that such term does not include any personally identifying information about a user of a work or of a copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of a work:
(1) The title and other information identifying the work, including the information set forth on a notice of copyright.
(2) The name of, and other identifying information about, the author of a work.
(3) The name of, and other identifying information about, the copyright owner of the work, including the information set forth in a notice of copyright.
(4) With the exception of public performances of works by radio and television broadcast stations, the name of, and other identifying information about, a performer whose performance is fixed in a work other than an audiovisual work.
(5) With the exception of public performances of works by radio and television broadcast stations, in the case of an audiovisual work, the name of, and other identifying information about, a writer, performer, or director who is credited in the audiovisual work.
(6) Terms and conditions for use of the work.
Re:Compare to BMI or iCopyright
on
Righthaven Loses
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I am sure that the newspapers will just grant full copyright to RightHaven, for a right to share in the spoils of the lawsuits.
Or another variation: sell Righthaven the exclusive right to sublicense articles to other web sites. This would make Righthaven more like a copyright clearance agency such as BMI or iCopyright.
There's a reason why Righthaven is attempting to avoid doing that. That makes the copyright an asset that can be reached by defendants who are awarded sanctions. When Righthaven receives a settlement, you can reasonably assume that the money is not sitting in a bank in Righthaven's name. Instead, it is disbursed to offset "expenses," "salaries," payments by the LLC to its members, etc. One of the significant reasons for forming an LLC for a venture is to limit liability -- with rare and expensive-to-litigate exceptions, losses would be limited to the present value of the members' investment in the LLC.
If Righthaven is subject to significant sanctions, for example, in this case, the members could decide to pay the sanctions to keep the entity afloat, or declare the entity insolvent. In the latter case, the defendent is merely an unsecured creditor who had better hope that the bankruptcy trusteee chooses to be agressive in pursuing recourse from the LLC members.
If Righthaven owns the copyright, suddenly there is the specter of a defendant gaining control of the copyright, including the right to sue for infringement. All related litigation against other defendants could be rendered moot, and the defendent holding the copyright could potentially have a field day. A ticked off defendant holding a right to create and distribute derivative works is not an appetizing prospect.
One of the basic principles of the scientific method is the ability for peers to independently reproduce results. If this is not the case, then this is not science.
You presume that the critics have attempted to independently reproduce the results. They have not. They are merely identifying potential sources of false positives. While the original team would be wise to explain how these potential sources of error were already addressed, and if necessary to run additional experiments addressing lapses or unconsidered factors, hypothetical arguments as to why an experiment cannot have worked do not prove that the results cannot be reproduced and/or are actually caused by other mechanisms.
"The exchange does not put forth new data on the matter, but centers on the original experiments in which Wolfe-Simon isolated bacteria from arsenic-laden Mono Lake, California, and then tried to grow them in cultures with large amounts of arsenic and no phosphorus, which is typically required for growth."
Nobody has tried to reproduce the result.
"University of British Columbia microbiologist Rosie Redfield, the blogger most critical of Wolfe-Simon both personally and professionally, asserts in one of the Technical Comments that Wolfe-Simon did not go far enough in purifying DNA from GFAJ-1 before testing it for its arsenic components."
Valid criticism, but not proof of irreproducability or alternate mechanism.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. On the other hand, scientists claiming that things are impossible have routinely been proven wrong. Unless something is shown to violate well established laws, hypothetical criticism is usually far less valuable than actual experimentation and reproducible alternate explanation.
What if you had a beowulf clusters or stacks of machines running folding or other, arguably, more useful applications. High energy usage or a sudden spike in power consumption shouldn't be probable cause in and of itself.
Why not? It's a "probable cause" standard, not a virtual certainty standard. You're envisioning corner cases and then saying that the corner cases must be addressed by something other than a search.* What proportion of people who have high and consistent electricity usage, particularly as a result of a sustained spike, are going to be running a beowulf cluster or a folding farm? What proportion of those people are going to be growing DEMON WEED?
Leaving aside the war on drugs debate, you can't seriously argue that the computer geeks outnumber or even equal the potheads. Correlation is, in fact, cause for investigation in both science and the law.
*Note: The search must be directed toward what is suspected, it cannot become a fishing expedition and remain valid. That being said I'll freely admit that the "plain view" exception, even though logical, is often abused.
WordPerfect deserved to win and Microsoft Word did not get it's dominant position through innovation or a superior product. It's more like closing the barn door after a competing farmer stole all your cows and torched your barn ten years ago, so you had to sell the farm.
Having lived through the WordPerfect 5.x - Microsoft Word for Windows ("WfW") era and made the transition myself, all I can say is "bollocks." WordPerfect was far more difficult to use than WfW for the entry level user, lacked much in the way of WYSIWYG compsing, and utterly bungled the transition into a GUI with WordPerfect for Windows (5.1-7).
Ami Pro pulled it off in not one but TWO operating systems (Windows and OS/2) despite Microsoft's involvement in both operating systems. They didn't survive, but then again they were building from a minimal base whereas WordPerfect admits it was the leader at the time.
Very few who have read reviews of word processor software from the early 90s would objectively agree with your opinion. "MakeItFit" does not make up for the awkward mess than was WordPerfect for Windows 5.1 and 5.2, much less the disaster of WordPerfect 7.
FTA: "experts estimate insurance losses at up to $5 billion"
Traditionally, when you use those pesky quotation marks, you do not change the text within the quotation marks without indicating that you have done so. You also do not quote so as to change context.
"Catastrophe risk modeling company EQECAT said that with initial reports of nearly 10,000 destroyed buildings, property insurance losses were expected to range from $2 to $5 Billion."
Destroyed buildings is a reasonable substitute for damage. Property insurance losses refers to the loss of insured property by the "people without homes" (residences, vehicles, commercial buildings), not the insurance company's bottom line. And nevermind that the 11 preceding paragraphs focus on deaths, missing persons, and general damage.
You'll forgive me for thinking that you're just as low, if not worse, for turning "the people without homes" into mere prop for your personal hatred of insurance companies.
Liquid nitrogen is less effective than water at extracting heat. I ran through the calcs a few weeks ago...
TEPCO will not use liquid nitrogen to cool the reactor (other than incidentally). TEPCO will use liquid nitrogen because that is the form in which one manufactures and ships large quantities of nitrogen gas. They will still use water for primary cooling, and use nitrogen to dilute any hydrogen that is accumulating inside the containment.
Hydrogen has a wide explosive range of 4%-75% at STP in an otherwise normal atmospheric mix. By introducing appropriate amounts of nitrogen into an enclosed space, TEPCO can dilute the hydrogen in the escaping gas to a point where it cannot explode
Very simplified example: Escaping gas is 4% H2 and 96% N2. Air is about 20% O2. Now consider a mix of: 4 parts H2, 96 parts N2, 25 parts O2. Merely adding the oxygen necessary to bring levels up to those found in air creates mixture that is about 3.2% H2, 76.8% N2, and 20% O2. The hydrogen drops below its LEL. There's more flexibility in real life since the atmosphere is a 78/21/other mixture, but then there's safety factors and other complications as well.
If only there were a machine capable of storing all of that tax data.
"That tax data" includes rates which vary by municipality (hint: zip codes do not conform to municipal boundaries), rates which vary by class of good (cookies not taxable, candy taxable), rates which vary in time (temporary tax rates, 'permanent' tax rate changes) and the occasional 'tax holiday.'
If I have a B&M store in particular municipality, I tax according to that municipality. It may be moderately difficult to implement the regulations, but I don't have to care if you're from that municipality, the next one over, or the next state -- you're getting taxed at the rate where I am.
If I have an internet store subject to local tax rates, I in theory have to implement 7,000+ tax schemes, because suddenly it matters where the customer is rather than where I am.
Amazon's reported objection is not to collecting sales tax, but to doing so according to 7000+ sets of rules. They've been nominally supportive of a simplified taxation scheme where states enact uniform sales taxes, and Congress authorizes the tax liability through its interstate commerce powers. Something like that is going to be inevitable, because (1) Congress is not going to force companies to follow 7000+ sets of rules (2) B&M stores are screaming bloody murder about the advantage internet-only stores gain by not collecting sales taxes (3) states need money, badly and (4) customers just don't pay the sales taxes due (in the form of 'use taxes') in all but rare circumstances.
That's why I never go outside. And when I stay inside, I insist on strobe lighting.
Out into the big room, with the green carpet, and blue ceiling? Never!
I like the green carpet and blue ceiling. It's the crazy big light bulb that I dislike.
Bah! The crazy big lightbulb is regular as clockwork and generally provides good illumination. It's the crazy HVAC system which sporadically tries to kill you that I dislike.
Here.
Of course it's not a refinery, we don't know if it'll be decades, and it's not quite thousands of square kilometers unless you count the massive drinking water contamination associated with pouring sludge into a freshwater river, but then, you haven't exactly proven that the Japanese incident is going to require a decades long evacuation of thousands of square kilometers either.
I predict that there will be a lot of fair comments in this thread modded down as flamebait, and I guess this will be one of them.
I predict that many people will falsely claim persecution rather than recognize and address the fundamental flaws in their own arguments.
My personal experience of Google: I do photographs for newspapers. Google have used several of my photographs as part of Google News without permission or payment. I sent them an invoice, and a long time later they contacted me to say that they weren't going to pay AND would only take down the photos if I filed a DMCA complaint.
Do you obtain the permission of the people who you photograph? Do you pay them for using their image or likeness in a commercial product? Have you immediately destoryed every photograph that you've taken where the subject has objected?
You don't -- do you. You'd ague that you don't need to because publicity rights, etc. have broad exceptions for news gathering and reporting.
Ditto 35 USC 107.
Even if you disregard the (valid) parasite claims in the Daily Mail article, I would say that Google simply doesn't respect copyright.
Document an instance where your work was infringed and clearly not covered by a 107 exception. Discuss the ruling in the Perfect 10 case and how it does not apply to your photographs as they allegedly appear in Google News. The fact that Google doesn't respect your interpretation of your rights does not mean that Google doesn't respect copyright.
Until Google says its closed, or refuses to release at some point down the road, its open. That's reality. Again, you're purposely conflating closed development with closed source. They are two completely different things. The fact you're purposely attempting to conflate validates you're an idiot.
Once object code is being distributed to end users who are not developers, and source code is not being distributed to those same end users, then it is closed source.
Nobody is purposefully conflating closed development with closed source. You are purposefully saying that development may continue until whatever arbitrary point Google declares to be the 'end' of development, and we are saying, despite Google's propensity for perpetual betas, that Motorola Xoom purchasers are neither developers nor beta users, ergo the development stage is complete. Google's choice to further develop the software does not alter that fact.
[Uh... Exactly HOW can they "throw out"...] the Judge's decision. I thought only an Appeals Court can do that, not an AGENCY of the Administration.
Because there is a mile of difference between an administrative law judge and an Article III Federal judge. One is an employee of the agency involved, essentially an "Article I" judge that is a member of the Executive branch. The other is a member of the Judicial branch. One is used within an agency to determine the agency's position on an issue. The other has the power to review agency decisions and to overturn them. The linked article is describing an internal appeal process within the agency prior to the agency developing a 'final' agency position.
Saying that it's a parenting problem does not absolve Apple of a practical need to deal with it.
Yes, my child purchasing things without asking due to a poorly designed authentication mechanism (use case analysis, anyone) is proximately my problem. I must solve that problem.
I can solve that problem in many ways:
1. I can manually toggle in app purchasing, and hope that I never forget
2. I can teach my child to never ever push a button when they see that funny $ without talking to a parent, and hope that they perfectly comply
3. I can call Apple out on its bonehead use case analysis. The trite 'he who has the gold makes the rules' also applies to collections of customers. Make customers happy, make money. Make customers unhappy, make less money.
4. etc.
Most importantly, I can engage in defense in depth by pursuing solutions at the same time. Trolls bleat "sounds like a parenting problem," and parents demanding that a braindead authentication mechanism change get ridiculed because these self-aggrandizing paragons of foresight cannot conceive a world in which others would do anything other than 'blame Apple.' An attempt to get Apple to improve the product couldn't possibly be made by people who believe that it's ultimately their responsibility to deal with the problem. After all, everybody except for you and the rest of the Illuminati are "sheeple."
House fire? Sounds like a homeowner problem to me. House fire caused by an Easy Bake oven? Yeah, that's a homeowner problem too. You should have been handcuffed to your kid at all times, or else taken the lightbulb out. After all, nobody making an Easy Bake over could foresee that a child would leave something in it for hours, and even if they could, we simply don't care about the manufacturer's ability to fix the risk for $2/unit. Don't complain about the fire risk (fix it yourself), don't call the fire department (put it our yourself), and for heaven's sake don't create a moral hazard by allowing people to take insurance out against fire (enablers, every one).
Your ultra-libertarian utopia is nothing more than a warmed over Hobbesian distopia. I'll do you one better: Adam Smith's utopia. If the value of the effort required for Apple to mitigate this in-game purchase problem is substantially less than the value of all of parents' collective efforts to control their kiddies' in-game purchases, then Apple will (as it has) volunteer some 'responsibility'. Why? Because they can generate greater value, gain sales, and make money doing it. They know that because parents have complained and they can see the value proposition. Make the product that your customers want, solve the problems that your customers have, and keep your customer happy. And that last part most definitely "sounds like an Apple problem."
The question, sir, is whether it is reasonable for this particular act to be illegal in the first place. "Reasonable" here means "benefits We the People by working towards a stronger, more prosperous, more free nation" which tends to be the opposite of "helps a few bureaucrats to save face by providing a scapegoat".
Yes, it is. Reasonable also does not mean that there cannot be a difference in opinion. If you dislike the law, change it. Violate it at your peril.
This law is wrong and so are those who wish to enforce it.
Says you. Investigating who participated in a leak of classified information is perfectly reasonable. If Manning is guilty, then those who aided and abetted or solicited his activity are legitimate subjects of investigation, and anyone who is subject to U.S. jurisdiction may be compelled to disclose information related to that investigation.
You're skipping directly from having to disclose information to conviction and punishment. It's not even clear that the Swedish MP and/or Assange are criminally liable. However, if they've left information in the hands of U.S. entities, there's certainly reasonable suspiscion to justify compelling those entities to release it to the government. That law is right, and it is being enforced.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you didn't fix that for me. You broke it with your utterly incorrect conception of how a currency works. Banks do not create a currency or even back it. Banks take in currency and loan currency. The only assets a bank has are property that it has bought in exchange for currency -- by buying the asset directly or by assuming ownership of the asset because the currency that it already lent was not repaid.
People who use "FTFY' more often then not need to be bitch-slapped. Prove that it was broken first, numbnuts.
You're wrong.
Modern currencies are backed by the governments which issue them. More bluntly, modern currencies are backed by modern government's ability to tax the labor of their citizens and imprison them if they do not pay. You trust that the currency is worth something in part because of the trust that everyone places in the currency itself (the prices that people set for goods), but also because the government buys services and goods (labor and goods), sells rights and services (user fees, police service, defense), and transacts in that currency (meaning that citizens of that government pretty much need to transact in that currency, at least in part, as well).
BitCoin cannot imprison me if I do not pay it in bitcoins. BitCoin does not inconvenience me in the least if I refuse to accept it. BitCoin only marginally inconveniences me if I decide not to pay for goods using it. BitCoin is not "backed by anything" tangible, such as gold, or practical, such as a need to use it. There's your substantial contact with reality.
There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system.
Merely that pesky First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech") as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)) and a host of Supreme Court precedent stating that prior restraints to speech must serve a compelling governmental interest, be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest, and be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.
The closest analog to this situation is likely found in the imminent lawless action test. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969). Before you interpret that phrase too broadly, consider that the Supreme Court stated that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
"Because July protests against BART police shootings had turned violent, BART officials took the unusual step to protect public safety, they said." Source: Christian Science Monitor.
That doesn't sound like evidence that anyone was advocating imminent violence. That doesn't even sound like evidence that violence was likely to occur last week. Instead, that sounds like an official decided that potential violence was a good hook and shut down the BART cell phone repeater system based on the likely content of the calls (calls organizing a protest) rather than any substantial likelihood of violence.
First, Anonymous wasn't involved last week's demonstration. Second, BART is a governmental organization that is incapable of owning "private property." Third, even in the sense that the government can exclude the general public from public property, there's this pesky problem:
Subways and their stations are merely another iteration of a public street, and while they merit tighter regulations due to the environment (confined spaces, dangerous areas, etc), that last "but" does not completely go away. Public transit, like it or not, is required to deal reasonably with public speech and protest.
It will. Merely not in the sense that you intended. Peaceful protestors* will defend against charges filed against them in court (that pesky Brandenburg didn't like his criminal conviction), the ACLU or some other entity will drag BART into court if they use that tactic again.
Too late. BART in general faces an even more riled up and motivated opposition as a result of this action. Besides, the courts are not there to resolve political problems. Politics exists to resolve political problems. Politics is sometimes diplomatic, sometimes backroom, and sometimes made on the streets. Get used to it.
If you draw a paycheck, you'll notice that it has much more than just one number on it. Your failure to read those numbers does not mean tha they are obfuscated.
If you don't draw a paycheck, then you are making estimated tax payments at least every quarter, and cutting a check each time. That's four times a frequently as you recommend. While the instructions may be obscenely difficult to read and follow, the cutting of the check is not obfuscated at all.
The 1 oz flat rate hasn't increased since May 2009, and has increased only 10% since January 2006.
Try again.
Accessories to crimes are not innocent people.
As republican as I tend to be, the "all money is fungible" meme needs to die a quick, very ugly death. The modern republican party needs to get its act together and stop with this nonsense -- I can and have voted for 'the lesser of two evils' where the lesser evil was a democrat and the greater idiot was an ultraconservative, evangelical zealot.
You are not forced to fund the intellectual curiosity of others. You are forced to pay taxes to a government which represents a pluralistic society that is reasonably evenly split politically, and quite fractured philosophically.
That government engages in compromise. Nobody get everything they want, some causes that you oppose get something because a good fraction of the population wants it, and some worthy causes get nothing because of insufficient support.
Grow up. Deal with it.
Because Compton is not the entire nation. Why don't you head over to the Cape or Houston or Seattle and ask them? How big a group do you have to be to get a veto? How does anything get done if it only takes 15% of the population to veto something? Make that the standard, and I guarantee that the people of Compton won't be getting anything from the government either.
No. You're so far off you're not even wrong.
Your opinion has no chance of becoming the law.
Property that cannot be bought and sold is effectively not property at all. "People who innovate" will not be able to sell their idea, obtain financing using their idea as collateral, or invest their idea as capital in a business. Only corporations could exploit the idea using their own resources, but because inventions are developed by employees and 'sold' to their employer, not even the employer could enforce a patent.
Thank you very little -- don't bother trying again.
Now apply the same standard to coal, gas, and oil-fired power, not to mention solar (nasty chemicals in the fabrication process), wind (tower deaths), hydro (failure or entrapment)...
How so? Do you believe that copyright law 'already' protects "copyright management information" (absent the DMCA and this interpretation)? Or do you believe that removing "copyright management information" like this is not a bad act and does not create any additional harm? I hope neither, because on both counts you're wrong.
Pre-DMCA copyright law wouldn't provide any additional protection or penalty if someone removed a byline, photographer's attribution, copyright notice, or the like. At best, you might spend an inordinate amount of time and money arguing for additional damages under a tort theory like slander of title. Meanwhile, the work, stripped of any indication of source and/or copyright, would have essentially been turned into an "orphaned work." People who obtained copies of the work couldn't determine who the original owner was in order to obtain permission to legally redistribute or modify the work, or worse yet could assume that the work was released into the public domain. That's assuming that the person who stripped the information didn't have the gall to claim that it is their own -- as if that never happens.
This application is exactly what Congress intended:
There's a reason why Righthaven is attempting to avoid doing that. That makes the copyright an asset that can be reached by defendants who are awarded sanctions. When Righthaven receives a settlement, you can reasonably assume that the money is not sitting in a bank in Righthaven's name. Instead, it is disbursed to offset "expenses," "salaries," payments by the LLC to its members, etc. One of the significant reasons for forming an LLC for a venture is to limit liability -- with rare and expensive-to-litigate exceptions, losses would be limited to the present value of the members' investment in the LLC.
If Righthaven is subject to significant sanctions, for example, in this case, the members could decide to pay the sanctions to keep the entity afloat, or declare the entity insolvent. In the latter case, the defendent is merely an unsecured creditor who had better hope that the bankruptcy trusteee chooses to be agressive in pursuing recourse from the LLC members.
If Righthaven owns the copyright, suddenly there is the specter of a defendant gaining control of the copyright, including the right to sue for infringement. All related litigation against other defendants could be rendered moot, and the defendent holding the copyright could potentially have a field day. A ticked off defendant holding a right to create and distribute derivative works is not an appetizing prospect.
You presume that the critics have attempted to independently reproduce the results. They have not. They are merely identifying potential sources of false positives. While the original team would be wise to explain how these potential sources of error were already addressed, and if necessary to run additional experiments addressing lapses or unconsidered factors, hypothetical arguments as to why an experiment cannot have worked do not prove that the results cannot be reproduced and/or are actually caused by other mechanisms.
"The exchange does not put forth new data on the matter, but centers on the original experiments in which Wolfe-Simon isolated bacteria from arsenic-laden Mono Lake, California, and then tried to grow them in cultures with large amounts of arsenic and no phosphorus, which is typically required for growth."
Nobody has tried to reproduce the result.
"University of British Columbia microbiologist Rosie Redfield, the blogger most critical of Wolfe-Simon both personally and professionally, asserts in one of the Technical Comments that Wolfe-Simon did not go far enough in purifying DNA from GFAJ-1 before testing it for its arsenic components."
Valid criticism, but not proof of irreproducability or alternate mechanism.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. On the other hand, scientists claiming that things are impossible have routinely been proven wrong. Unless something is shown to violate well established laws, hypothetical criticism is usually far less valuable than actual experimentation and reproducible alternate explanation.
Why not? It's a "probable cause" standard, not a virtual certainty standard. You're envisioning corner cases and then saying that the corner cases must be addressed by something other than a search.* What proportion of people who have high and consistent electricity usage, particularly as a result of a sustained spike, are going to be running a beowulf cluster or a folding farm? What proportion of those people are going to be growing DEMON WEED?
Leaving aside the war on drugs debate, you can't seriously argue that the computer geeks outnumber or even equal the potheads. Correlation is, in fact, cause for investigation in both science and the law.
*Note: The search must be directed toward what is suspected, it cannot become a fishing expedition and remain valid. That being said I'll freely admit that the "plain view" exception, even though logical, is often abused.
Having lived through the WordPerfect 5.x - Microsoft Word for Windows ("WfW") era and made the transition myself, all I can say is "bollocks." WordPerfect was far more difficult to use than WfW for the entry level user, lacked much in the way of WYSIWYG compsing, and utterly bungled the transition into a GUI with WordPerfect for Windows (5.1-7).
Ami Pro pulled it off in not one but TWO operating systems (Windows and OS/2) despite Microsoft's involvement in both operating systems. They didn't survive, but then again they were building from a minimal base whereas WordPerfect admits it was the leader at the time.
Very few who have read reviews of word processor software from the early 90s would objectively agree with your opinion. "MakeItFit" does not make up for the awkward mess than was WordPerfect for Windows 5.1 and 5.2, much less the disaster of WordPerfect 7.
Traditionally, when you use those pesky quotation marks, you do not change the text within the quotation marks without indicating that you have done so. You also do not quote so as to change context.
"Catastrophe risk modeling company EQECAT said that with initial reports of nearly 10,000 destroyed buildings, property insurance losses were expected to range from $2 to $5 Billion."
Destroyed buildings is a reasonable substitute for damage. Property insurance losses refers to the loss of insured property by the "people without homes" (residences, vehicles, commercial buildings), not the insurance company's bottom line. And nevermind that the 11 preceding paragraphs focus on deaths, missing persons, and general damage.
You'll forgive me for thinking that you're just as low, if not worse, for turning "the people without homes" into mere prop for your personal hatred of insurance companies.
TEPCO will not use liquid nitrogen to cool the reactor (other than incidentally). TEPCO will use liquid nitrogen because that is the form in which one manufactures and ships large quantities of nitrogen gas. They will still use water for primary cooling, and use nitrogen to dilute any hydrogen that is accumulating inside the containment.
Hydrogen has a wide explosive range of 4%-75% at STP in an otherwise normal atmospheric mix. By introducing appropriate amounts of nitrogen into an enclosed space, TEPCO can dilute the hydrogen in the escaping gas to a point where it cannot explode
Very simplified example: Escaping gas is 4% H2 and 96% N2. Air is about 20% O2. Now consider a mix of: 4 parts H2, 96 parts N2, 25 parts O2. Merely adding the oxygen necessary to bring levels up to those found in air creates mixture that is about 3.2% H2, 76.8% N2, and 20% O2. The hydrogen drops below its LEL. There's more flexibility in real life since the atmosphere is a 78/21/other mixture, but then there's safety factors and other complications as well.
"That tax data" includes rates which vary by municipality (hint: zip codes do not conform to municipal boundaries), rates which vary by class of good (cookies not taxable, candy taxable), rates which vary in time (temporary tax rates, 'permanent' tax rate changes) and the occasional 'tax holiday.'
If I have a B&M store in particular municipality, I tax according to that municipality. It may be moderately difficult to implement the regulations, but I don't have to care if you're from that municipality, the next one over, or the next state -- you're getting taxed at the rate where I am.
If I have an internet store subject to local tax rates, I in theory have to implement 7,000+ tax schemes, because suddenly it matters where the customer is rather than where I am.
Amazon's reported objection is not to collecting sales tax, but to doing so according to 7000+ sets of rules. They've been nominally supportive of a simplified taxation scheme where states enact uniform sales taxes, and Congress authorizes the tax liability through its interstate commerce powers. Something like that is going to be inevitable, because (1) Congress is not going to force companies to follow 7000+ sets of rules (2) B&M stores are screaming bloody murder about the advantage internet-only stores gain by not collecting sales taxes (3) states need money, badly and (4) customers just don't pay the sales taxes due (in the form of 'use taxes') in all but rare circumstances.
Bah! The crazy big lightbulb is regular as clockwork and generally provides good illumination. It's the crazy HVAC system which sporadically tries to kill you that I dislike.
Here. Of course it's not a refinery, we don't know if it'll be decades, and it's not quite thousands of square kilometers unless you count the massive drinking water contamination associated with pouring sludge into a freshwater river, but then, you haven't exactly proven that the Japanese incident is going to require a decades long evacuation of thousands of square kilometers either.
Curse the lack of a post-submittal editor. 17 USC 107.
I predict that many people will falsely claim persecution rather than recognize and address the fundamental flaws in their own arguments.
Do you obtain the permission of the people who you photograph? Do you pay them for using their image or likeness in a commercial product? Have you immediately destoryed every photograph that you've taken where the subject has objected?
You don't -- do you. You'd ague that you don't need to because publicity rights, etc. have broad exceptions for news gathering and reporting.
Ditto 35 USC 107.
Document an instance where your work was infringed and clearly not covered by a 107 exception. Discuss the ruling in the Perfect 10 case and how it does not apply to your photographs as they allegedly appear in Google News. The fact that Google doesn't respect your interpretation of your rights does not mean that Google doesn't respect copyright.
Once object code is being distributed to end users who are not developers, and source code is not being distributed to those same end users, then it is closed source.
Nobody is purposefully conflating closed development with closed source. You are purposefully saying that development may continue until whatever arbitrary point Google declares to be the 'end' of development, and we are saying, despite Google's propensity for perpetual betas, that Motorola Xoom purchasers are neither developers nor beta users, ergo the development stage is complete. Google's choice to further develop the software does not alter that fact.
Because there is a mile of difference between an administrative law judge and an Article III Federal judge. One is an employee of the agency involved, essentially an "Article I" judge that is a member of the Executive branch. The other is a member of the Judicial branch. One is used within an agency to determine the agency's position on an issue. The other has the power to review agency decisions and to overturn them. The linked article is describing an internal appeal process within the agency prior to the agency developing a 'final' agency position.
Saying that it's a parenting problem does not absolve Apple of a practical need to deal with it.
Yes, my child purchasing things without asking due to a poorly designed authentication mechanism (use case analysis, anyone) is proximately my problem. I must solve that problem.
I can solve that problem in many ways:
1. I can manually toggle in app purchasing, and hope that I never forget
2. I can teach my child to never ever push a button when they see that funny $ without talking to a parent, and hope that they perfectly comply
3. I can call Apple out on its bonehead use case analysis. The trite 'he who has the gold makes the rules' also applies to collections of customers. Make customers happy, make money. Make customers unhappy, make less money.
4. etc.
Most importantly, I can engage in defense in depth by pursuing solutions at the same time. Trolls bleat "sounds like a parenting problem," and parents demanding that a braindead authentication mechanism change get ridiculed because these self-aggrandizing paragons of foresight cannot conceive a world in which others would do anything other than 'blame Apple.' An attempt to get Apple to improve the product couldn't possibly be made by people who believe that it's ultimately their responsibility to deal with the problem. After all, everybody except for you and the rest of the Illuminati are "sheeple."
House fire? Sounds like a homeowner problem to me. House fire caused by an Easy Bake oven? Yeah, that's a homeowner problem too. You should have been handcuffed to your kid at all times, or else taken the lightbulb out. After all, nobody making an Easy Bake over could foresee that a child would leave something in it for hours, and even if they could, we simply don't care about the manufacturer's ability to fix the risk for $2/unit. Don't complain about the fire risk (fix it yourself), don't call the fire department (put it our yourself), and for heaven's sake don't create a moral hazard by allowing people to take insurance out against fire (enablers, every one).
Your ultra-libertarian utopia is nothing more than a warmed over Hobbesian distopia. I'll do you one better: Adam Smith's utopia. If the value of the effort required for Apple to mitigate this in-game purchase problem is substantially less than the value of all of parents' collective efforts to control their kiddies' in-game purchases, then Apple will (as it has) volunteer some 'responsibility'. Why? Because they can generate greater value, gain sales, and make money doing it. They know that because parents have complained and they can see the value proposition. Make the product that your customers want, solve the problems that your customers have, and keep your customer happy. And that last part most definitely "sounds like an Apple problem."
Yes, it is. Reasonable also does not mean that there cannot be a difference in opinion. If you dislike the law, change it. Violate it at your peril.
Says you. Investigating who participated in a leak of classified information is perfectly reasonable. If Manning is guilty, then those who aided and abetted or solicited his activity are legitimate subjects of investigation, and anyone who is subject to U.S. jurisdiction may be compelled to disclose information related to that investigation. You're skipping directly from having to disclose information to conviction and punishment. It's not even clear that the Swedish MP and/or Assange are criminally liable. However, if they've left information in the hands of U.S. entities, there's certainly reasonable suspiscion to justify compelling those entities to release it to the government. That law is right, and it is being enforced.