Respectfully, I couldn't disagree more. Strategy and, to some degree, tactics have not changed fundamentally since Alexander. Technology has altered the way that strategy is applied, and changed how tactics are implemented, but the fundamentals remain the same. Military doctrine, if by that you mean a sort of understanding of the role of various elements of the military and their proper application, tends to change as technology alters capability. Even so, it doesn't change that much.
Consider the role of armored cavalry (by which I mean everything from mounted knights to modern tanks). It has always played the traditional role of cavalry. It screens moving columns, light cavalry scouts ahead of a main army, heavier cavalry breaks defensive lines. Whether you're talking about lancers or tanks, the role is basically the same. It is as true today as it was four hundred years ago that cavalry is only effective when it support infantry. Equally true is that infantry is the basic unit of warfare. You've gotta have boots on the ground to occupy territory, and you have to occupy territory to control it. If you call asymmetrical warfare by it's more traditional name, i.e. guerrilla warfare, you will see that it hasn't changed much, either. Whether you're talking about American revolutionaries harassing British troops during the Revolutionary War, or insurgents in Iraq detonating IEDs, asymmetrical warfare is the only way a smaller, weaker combatant can fight against a stronger, larger combatant. And even then, the goal isn't to defeat the enemy, but to make occupation more trouble than it's worth.
The only real thing that changed after WWII was the geopolitical structure of the world, and even that wasn't something completely alien in the history of international relations. To claim that the only warfare left is asymmetric warfare is to propose that all future conflicts will be between a state and a non-state actor, or between two dramatically mismatched states. I think that such a viewpoint ignores the potential for interstate conflict between rivals in the near and distant futures.
No, the specious argument is that this park alone supports the entire tourist income of the RGV, which is clearly what the press release implied. To say that this one park, one out of many parks in the area, is the lynchpin of Brownsville tourism income, is grossly overestimating the impact of the place. It's not the only park, it's not the only beach, and it's not even the best of the bunch, apparently.
First, you keep posting a link to the group's own press release. That's not exactly an unbiased source. But let's just go ahead and use their numbers, because they're still very obviously wrong about the overall argument.
Second, the Rio Grande Valley is much bigger than the 49 acres of land SpaceX is asking for, and the Boca Chica site is at the very farthest eastern end of the river. In fact, it's probably more accurate to think of Boca Chica as part of the Gulf Coast rather than part of the Rio Grande Valley. For reference, the Rio Grande Valley is the southern bottom of Texas, and Boca Chica is pretty much a dot on the Gulf Coast just above the Rio Grande. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'd guess that it doesn't quite make up 1% of the land area of the RGV.
Third, Boca Chica State Park is completely undeveloped, and is only open during the day. There are no, repeat, no facilities in the park. The road doesn't even stay paved up to the beach. Your precious hotel taxes? Not from Boca Chica, because there are no hotels there. Sales taxes? Not from Boca Chica; there isn't so much as a lemonade stand. So the money that your group is mentioning does not even a little bit come from Boca Chica, unless you count any parking fees, of which there appear to be none, as there don't appear to be any parking spaces at the park. It is literally just a beach.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Chica_State_Park. You can see some pictures of the place. The only development appears to be two old wooden fenceposts which show where the road stops, and a rusted-out oil drum for trash. Unless Texas hired someone specifically to drive out, straighten the fenceposts, and empty the trash, Boca Chica does not currently offer any significant employment opportunities.
"Scare the heck out of wildlife?" What does that mean in real actual sciencey terms? Because in five minutes I learned that they've got a decent-sized airport in the city, and the city scored the theoretical worst score on a scale of human impact on the environment, according to some arbitrary rating system invented by treehugging luddites. After about ten more minutes, I found that the actual site is so close to Mexico you'd need a passport if you tripped over a branch, and while the area is indeed known for its birdwatching potential, the only endangered thing even nearby is the ocelot, and that's well away from the site. The word "desolate" kept coming up, and this was in Texas tourism ad copy. Not "wild, windswept shores unsullied by the hand of Man." Just "ain't shit here; good fishin' though." So there's already frequent air traffic, and the area isn't exactly pristine wilderness. It's a rocket pad, not a strip mine. How much damage could it actually do to what appears to be a mile and a half of sand?
Meanwhile, it looks like the overwhelming majority of Brownsvillians not only want the site, but could use the revenue. Not to diminish the environmentalists' argument overly much, but from a distance this sure looks like a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing Austin treehuggers minding other people's business for them. I'll hazard a guess that Austin doesn't really need the money like Brownsville does, which makes it much easier for the Austin-based group to tell Brownsville that they ought to turn SpaceX (and any potential revenue) away.
I've used a Droid, an Eris, and now have an Incredible. I use the Chrome sync feature, and I seem to recall that carrying over from the Droid up to the Incredible. Are you sure the default browser isn't Chrome, maybe just without the branding?
It isn't even necessarily that in depth. I mean, would blue-collar immigrants even know to fill out a FAFSA form to get grant and scholarship money for a kid about to go to college? When would parents meet with their kids' teachers if they work nights instead of a 9 to 5? There's stuff that those of us from middle-class backgrounds don't even realize we know that gives us a huge advantage over people who are coming from totally different backgrounds. Just like the children of the super-wealthy probably wouldn't know very much about applying for unemployment, or even that servers depend on tips for a living.
My wife is pursuing her doctorate in science education, and this comes up continually. Equity in education is a huge, huge issue, especially in STEM, and the theme that consistently shows up is that having parents who are educated, who are in the upper middle class, and/or who are in a professional field gives you a huge leg up. It doesn't mean that these kids work less, or aren't as smart, or aren't as deserving as kids from poorer backgrounds, but it does mean that they start out with larger reserves of educational capital than other kids. I mean, you could be a genius, but if your parents are working two full-time landscaping jobs and barely speak English, you're going to be at a disadvantage compared to a kid who has a parent who can spend an hour a day helping with homework.
You said you were from somewhere else in an earlier post. I don't know what it's like in your crappy country, but in countries people actually want to live in, most people have higher than 3% body fat. But I'll bet you think Keira Knightley is what healthy looks like, right?
What is with Slashdotters? Plain? Stocky? "Struggling with her weight?" If you go outside twice a week you'll see that this is what most people look like. I think she's a cute girl who probably weighs what normal women weigh, for all that it's my business or even of interest to me. She wouldn't stop the music walking into a bar, but she'd definitely get a few drinks bought for her.
Struggling with her weight, please. She's wearing an H & M skirt that comes up to her nose. Aunt Flo was probably in town and she threw something baggy on to go buy groceries. If and when you con some woman into marrying you that will make sense.
God, seriously, you people and your sharp knees...
40 pounds? It might seem strange to you, given your...perspective...but heterosexual men aren't really attracted to anorexic models. Yes, they're easy to drape clothes on, which I'm sure comes in handy in your profession, but they don't really look, well, feminine. Again, not something you're concerned about, but the rest of us kinda dig chicks, see?
Let me first say that I'm in favor of this ruling, especially as a friend of mine is currently serving 5 years in prison because of child porn that was posted in a regular ol' legal porn trading forum he frequented.
If your intent is to look at child porn, there is no reason under the terms of this law why you couldn't go to a site with child porn, view it, and access it later simply by opening the file from your browser cache. Provided that you don't clear the cache, it's still there. Distribution would be the same vis a vis illegality and risk of being caught, but if you ran a child porn site/service/whatever, there's no reason there couldn't be some sort of quid pro quo arrangement whereby someone could safely access child porn while also compensating the pornographer.
Again, I think this is a good ruling, but I also think that there's a pretty big loophole that could be exploited. I don't believe that it will make a difference in the actual amount of child exploitation that happens, but I do think it will help keep people from being branded as a sick pedo because they went to some of the seedier (but legal) corners of the Internet, which makes it worthwhile.
...mmmm....no, I think he does. One can be an anti-Semite, or one can be anti-Semitic, and they mean the same thing, essentially. It's commonly misspelled "Semetic", though, so maybe you're thinking of that.
Or you're thinking of the Semites, a Biblical term referring to the descendants of one of Noah's sons. Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common. Amharic is in there, too, as well as a bunch of others. So, yes, in that sense it is ironic to say that someone criticizing the Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians is an anti-Semite.
However, in English, the term has been overwhelmingly used to refer to discrimination against Jews, so if you have a gripe with that, take it up with the late 19th century. Whether the claim of antisemitism is valid or not is another issue, but his use of the word is correct.
Interesting idea, but that only works if you use a phone with a forward-facing camera on a system that supports simultaneous voice and data transmission. Also, the flash might be an issue from a not-being-seen-by-ax-wielding-lunatic perspective.
Virginia Tech. Columbine. 9/11. There are three examples off the top of my head where people would have been able to text emergency services without revealing their location to a lunatic on a rampage. In the latter example, as a matter of fact, people were using text messages to tell people on the ground about the hijacking. It's not a perfect solution, but it's silly to suggest that it's unrealistic to imagine feasible emergency situations where the ability to contact emergency service providers silently would be beneficial. Shit, any home invasion or robbery would be a perfect time to text from the relative safety of your bedroom rather than alerting intruders to your presence and putting yourself at risk by talking to an operator. I don't get why that's difficult to wrap your head around, frankly.
Sounds suspiciously like recruitment tactics used by terrorist organizations. So what did the FBI accomplish here, besides proving that you can convince people to become terrorists given enough time and a budget?
I think you've got a point here, but I also wonder whether this represents the FBI being in the business of arresting people for thinking about doing bad things. How far is this from some drunk guy talking about how he hates the President getting egged on by an FBI agent until he makes a threat, then getting hauled in? We don't know how much pushing or pulling the FBI did here.
And, let's be frank; these guys don't look like the sharpest knives in the drawer. Even if they wanted to blow up a bridge, were they really a threat if they wouldn't have been able to come close to doing it without the FBI helping them?
Think about DRM as a software solution to making something that is intangible (an ebook) have the same constraints that a tangible item has. Ideally, all DRM *should* do is make sure that if you buy one copy of a book, you only have one copy of that book. If you were to go to a bookstore and buy a paperback, you could read it yourself, anywhere, and you could lend it to someone, but you couldn't do both at the same time. For an ebook, all DRM should do is replicate that.
I don't like where DRM has gone, although I think that it's reached its most draconian point with video games, but I don't think the intent is wrong. And yes, it is a method of ensuring that some stuff doesn't get pirated. There is a continuum of "piracy": at one end are people who will never download anything illegally, ever, no matter what; at the other end are people who will illegally download stuff to the exclusion of legitimate commercial transactions of any kind. Most of the action happens somewhere in the middle. All DRM does is keep casual piracy from happening, same as car alarms or locking your door keeps "honest people honest". But I don't think that demographic is all that small.
I'm willing to bet that if you limit DRM to simply ensuring that you don't have more than one copy per purchase per user at a time, just like a physical book, and you make it portable by standardizing ebooks to the extent that, at a minimum, there are no device-exclusive features, and add the ability to lend ebooks, you'll strike the right balance between preserving the rights of authors and publishers while also preserving the rights of consumers.
DRM is supposed to be a burden, in the same way that the inability to make one physical book be in two places at once places a burden on the consumer vis a vis reading the book while simultaneously lending the books to seven friends. That's a burden I'm more than comfortable with both bearing myself and placing on others. The option that some people seem to be taking, the "Well, DRM sucks, and piracy will never stop, so why bother trying" approach, is not a solution. It isn't even a bad solution, it's just a non-solution.
Incidentally, I don't have a personal problem with "piracy", and have definitely downloaded things in the past (and will in the future) because they weren't available on DVD, or because I wanted to try a demo that didn't exist, or because, like you said, the DRM screwed up the legit version so bad that the only working version is the pirated copy. I've also downloaded ebooks. A hell of a lot of them. In seven years, I have definitely encountered pirated versions of games that were better than the legit retail. I have never--NEVER--encountered an instance where the pirated version of an ebook was better than the legit version. Not once, not in any genre, not with any author.
I couldn't agree with you more, and if I had mod points I'd mod you up. As someone else pointed out, all DRM is meant to do is to preserve the same security that physical limitations provided before digital editions, i.e. you can only read a book if you're physically holding it, which limits you to one copy. As a writer, I want to get paid for the work I put into writing something, and DRM is one way of ensuring that no one is reading something of mine without my permission. BUT, I also want people to want to buy my stuff, and they're more likely to do that if the ebook version has the same utility as a physical book, meaning portability. Ergo, standardization solves a lot of the piracy issue by increasing the perceived value of each ebook and reducing the burden that DRM places on the consumer.
The whole point of USAID since inception has been to very publicly give financial aid to allies and countries with whom we want to establish stronger ties, and to less publicly give American foreign service personnel an excuse to be in a foreign country with a bunch of cash. And that's not some Cold War stuff, either. Like, right now, American military advisors and CIA operatives act in places like Afghanistan under the auspices (and budget) of the USAID, which, ironically, stands for United States Agency for International Development. It's a major foreign policy arm of the US, and if you think the government, no matter which party is in power, is going to rush to put a leash on it just because outsourcing has some feathers ruffled, you're very much mistaken.
I don't find that pedantic at all, and I think it's a good idea to be precise about terms in a discussion like this. To my mind, if you come at the understanding of evolution as a system that operates according to predictable, understandable rules, even if that system was put in place by a supernatural agent, you're effectively talking about the idea of evolution that science generally accepts. If you start talking about evolution taking certain paths as the result of the desire or will of a supernatural entity or agency, then you've left evolution as it is understood in the conventional scientific community and are now talking about intelligent design. You can still discuss evolution scientifically from beginning to end within the whole "clockmaker" paradigm, i.e. acceptance of evolution does not preclude faith in a divine creator where the latter doesn't contradict tangible evidence of the former. Evolution picks up immediately after the first living thing (or pseudo-living thing, I suppose) pops up, and it doesn't really matter if you believe that happened as a cosmic accident or because some Prime Mover turned on the universe, so long as the Big Guy's involvement effectively ceases after the planning and launch phases are done.
As a yardstick, if you can talk about evolution from soup to nuts without referencing the supernatural, you're not talking about what Tennessee meant when they passed this bill. If at some point you need to reference faith, or the "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" trope, you're leaving hard science and heading towards religion, or at least metaphysics. As I understand it, there are evolutionary scientists who are also Christians, Jews, Muslims, and what not, who just don't believe that a.) Genesis is a literal account of the creation of the Earth, b.) humans as a species are somehow totally separate from the forces of evolution that produced all other species, or that c.) there was a fixed number of species on Earth at the beginning of time, and that the only change has been a reduction of the number of species.
Slashdot Mirror
Respectfully, I couldn't disagree more. Strategy and, to some degree, tactics have not changed fundamentally since Alexander. Technology has altered the way that strategy is applied, and changed how tactics are implemented, but the fundamentals remain the same. Military doctrine, if by that you mean a sort of understanding of the role of various elements of the military and their proper application, tends to change as technology alters capability. Even so, it doesn't change that much.
Consider the role of armored cavalry (by which I mean everything from mounted knights to modern tanks). It has always played the traditional role of cavalry. It screens moving columns, light cavalry scouts ahead of a main army, heavier cavalry breaks defensive lines. Whether you're talking about lancers or tanks, the role is basically the same. It is as true today as it was four hundred years ago that cavalry is only effective when it support infantry. Equally true is that infantry is the basic unit of warfare. You've gotta have boots on the ground to occupy territory, and you have to occupy territory to control it. If you call asymmetrical warfare by it's more traditional name, i.e. guerrilla warfare, you will see that it hasn't changed much, either. Whether you're talking about American revolutionaries harassing British troops during the Revolutionary War, or insurgents in Iraq detonating IEDs, asymmetrical warfare is the only way a smaller, weaker combatant can fight against a stronger, larger combatant. And even then, the goal isn't to defeat the enemy, but to make occupation more trouble than it's worth.
The only real thing that changed after WWII was the geopolitical structure of the world, and even that wasn't something completely alien in the history of international relations. To claim that the only warfare left is asymmetric warfare is to propose that all future conflicts will be between a state and a non-state actor, or between two dramatically mismatched states. I think that such a viewpoint ignores the potential for interstate conflict between rivals in the near and distant futures.
Yeah, you know, I've always wondered why there isn't a mod option for "Spam", considering how often it shows up.
No, the specious argument is that this park alone supports the entire tourist income of the RGV, which is clearly what the press release implied. To say that this one park, one out of many parks in the area, is the lynchpin of Brownsville tourism income, is grossly overestimating the impact of the place. It's not the only park, it's not the only beach, and it's not even the best of the bunch, apparently.
First, you keep posting a link to the group's own press release. That's not exactly an unbiased source. But let's just go ahead and use their numbers, because they're still very obviously wrong about the overall argument.
Second, the Rio Grande Valley is much bigger than the 49 acres of land SpaceX is asking for, and the Boca Chica site is at the very farthest eastern end of the river. In fact, it's probably more accurate to think of Boca Chica as part of the Gulf Coast rather than part of the Rio Grande Valley. For reference, the Rio Grande Valley is the southern bottom of Texas, and Boca Chica is pretty much a dot on the Gulf Coast just above the Rio Grande. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'd guess that it doesn't quite make up 1% of the land area of the RGV.
Third, Boca Chica State Park is completely undeveloped, and is only open during the day. There are no, repeat, no facilities in the park. The road doesn't even stay paved up to the beach. Your precious hotel taxes? Not from Boca Chica, because there are no hotels there. Sales taxes? Not from Boca Chica; there isn't so much as a lemonade stand. So the money that your group is mentioning does not even a little bit come from Boca Chica, unless you count any parking fees, of which there appear to be none, as there don't appear to be any parking spaces at the park. It is literally just a beach.
So, no, it doesn't affect jobs, and I wish you'd quit tossing out the same link to the same damn article from TFA above. Here, here's a link from Texas Parks and Wildlife: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wildlife/wildlife-trails/coastal/lower/boca-chica-loop. Boca Chica is #43 on the map.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Chica_State_Park. You can see some pictures of the place. The only development appears to be two old wooden fenceposts which show where the road stops, and a rusted-out oil drum for trash. Unless Texas hired someone specifically to drive out, straighten the fenceposts, and empty the trash, Boca Chica does not currently offer any significant employment opportunities.
"Scare the heck out of wildlife?" What does that mean in real actual sciencey terms? Because in five minutes I learned that they've got a decent-sized airport in the city, and the city scored the theoretical worst score on a scale of human impact on the environment, according to some arbitrary rating system invented by treehugging luddites. After about ten more minutes, I found that the actual site is so close to Mexico you'd need a passport if you tripped over a branch, and while the area is indeed known for its birdwatching potential, the only endangered thing even nearby is the ocelot, and that's well away from the site. The word "desolate" kept coming up, and this was in Texas tourism ad copy. Not "wild, windswept shores unsullied by the hand of Man." Just "ain't shit here; good fishin' though." So there's already frequent air traffic, and the area isn't exactly pristine wilderness. It's a rocket pad, not a strip mine. How much damage could it actually do to what appears to be a mile and a half of sand?
Meanwhile, it looks like the overwhelming majority of Brownsvillians not only want the site, but could use the revenue. Not to diminish the environmentalists' argument overly much, but from a distance this sure looks like a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing Austin treehuggers minding other people's business for them. I'll hazard a guess that Austin doesn't really need the money like Brownsville does, which makes it much easier for the Austin-based group to tell Brownsville that they ought to turn SpaceX (and any potential revenue) away.
Does this only apply to events held at venues, or will Mounties start riding up to backyard barbecues with their hands out?
Come on, Canada. WE'RE supposed to be the running dogs of corporate interests, YOU'RE supposed to be the hippy-dippy socialized medicine peaceniks.
...can I mod this "-1 ...whoa..."?
I've used a Droid, an Eris, and now have an Incredible. I use the Chrome sync feature, and I seem to recall that carrying over from the Droid up to the Incredible. Are you sure the default browser isn't Chrome, maybe just without the branding?
It isn't even necessarily that in depth. I mean, would blue-collar immigrants even know to fill out a FAFSA form to get grant and scholarship money for a kid about to go to college? When would parents meet with their kids' teachers if they work nights instead of a 9 to 5? There's stuff that those of us from middle-class backgrounds don't even realize we know that gives us a huge advantage over people who are coming from totally different backgrounds. Just like the children of the super-wealthy probably wouldn't know very much about applying for unemployment, or even that servers depend on tips for a living.
My wife is pursuing her doctorate in science education, and this comes up continually. Equity in education is a huge, huge issue, especially in STEM, and the theme that consistently shows up is that having parents who are educated, who are in the upper middle class, and/or who are in a professional field gives you a huge leg up. It doesn't mean that these kids work less, or aren't as smart, or aren't as deserving as kids from poorer backgrounds, but it does mean that they start out with larger reserves of educational capital than other kids. I mean, you could be a genius, but if your parents are working two full-time landscaping jobs and barely speak English, you're going to be at a disadvantage compared to a kid who has a parent who can spend an hour a day helping with homework.
Actually, she's American, and lives in America.
You said you were from somewhere else in an earlier post. I don't know what it's like in your crappy country, but in countries people actually want to live in, most people have higher than 3% body fat. But I'll bet you think Keira Knightley is what healthy looks like, right?
What is with Slashdotters? Plain? Stocky? "Struggling with her weight?" If you go outside twice a week you'll see that this is what most people look like. I think she's a cute girl who probably weighs what normal women weigh, for all that it's my business or even of interest to me. She wouldn't stop the music walking into a bar, but she'd definitely get a few drinks bought for her.
Struggling with her weight, please. She's wearing an H & M skirt that comes up to her nose. Aunt Flo was probably in town and she threw something baggy on to go buy groceries. If and when you con some woman into marrying you that will make sense.
God, seriously, you people and your sharp knees...
40 pounds? It might seem strange to you, given your...perspective...but heterosexual men aren't really attracted to anorexic models. Yes, they're easy to drape clothes on, which I'm sure comes in handy in your profession, but they don't really look, well, feminine. Again, not something you're concerned about, but the rest of us kinda dig chicks, see?
Let me first say that I'm in favor of this ruling, especially as a friend of mine is currently serving 5 years in prison because of child porn that was posted in a regular ol' legal porn trading forum he frequented.
If your intent is to look at child porn, there is no reason under the terms of this law why you couldn't go to a site with child porn, view it, and access it later simply by opening the file from your browser cache. Provided that you don't clear the cache, it's still there. Distribution would be the same vis a vis illegality and risk of being caught, but if you ran a child porn site/service/whatever, there's no reason there couldn't be some sort of quid pro quo arrangement whereby someone could safely access child porn while also compensating the pornographer.
Again, I think this is a good ruling, but I also think that there's a pretty big loophole that could be exploited. I don't believe that it will make a difference in the actual amount of child exploitation that happens, but I do think it will help keep people from being branded as a sick pedo because they went to some of the seedier (but legal) corners of the Internet, which makes it worthwhile.
...mmmm....no, I think he does. One can be an anti-Semite, or one can be anti-Semitic, and they mean the same thing, essentially. It's commonly misspelled "Semetic", though, so maybe you're thinking of that.
Or you're thinking of the Semites, a Biblical term referring to the descendants of one of Noah's sons. Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common. Amharic is in there, too, as well as a bunch of others. So, yes, in that sense it is ironic to say that someone criticizing the Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians is an anti-Semite.
However, in English, the term has been overwhelmingly used to refer to discrimination against Jews, so if you have a gripe with that, take it up with the late 19th century. Whether the claim of antisemitism is valid or not is another issue, but his use of the word is correct.
Interesting idea, but that only works if you use a phone with a forward-facing camera on a system that supports simultaneous voice and data transmission. Also, the flash might be an issue from a not-being-seen-by-ax-wielding-lunatic perspective.
Virginia Tech. Columbine. 9/11. There are three examples off the top of my head where people would have been able to text emergency services without revealing their location to a lunatic on a rampage. In the latter example, as a matter of fact, people were using text messages to tell people on the ground about the hijacking. It's not a perfect solution, but it's silly to suggest that it's unrealistic to imagine feasible emergency situations where the ability to contact emergency service providers silently would be beneficial. Shit, any home invasion or robbery would be a perfect time to text from the relative safety of your bedroom rather than alerting intruders to your presence and putting yourself at risk by talking to an operator. I don't get why that's difficult to wrap your head around, frankly.
Sounds suspiciously like recruitment tactics used by terrorist organizations. So what did the FBI accomplish here, besides proving that you can convince people to become terrorists given enough time and a budget?
I think you've got a point here, but I also wonder whether this represents the FBI being in the business of arresting people for thinking about doing bad things. How far is this from some drunk guy talking about how he hates the President getting egged on by an FBI agent until he makes a threat, then getting hauled in? We don't know how much pushing or pulling the FBI did here.
And, let's be frank; these guys don't look like the sharpest knives in the drawer. Even if they wanted to blow up a bridge, were they really a threat if they wouldn't have been able to come close to doing it without the FBI helping them?
Think about DRM as a software solution to making something that is intangible (an ebook) have the same constraints that a tangible item has. Ideally, all DRM *should* do is make sure that if you buy one copy of a book, you only have one copy of that book. If you were to go to a bookstore and buy a paperback, you could read it yourself, anywhere, and you could lend it to someone, but you couldn't do both at the same time. For an ebook, all DRM should do is replicate that.
I don't like where DRM has gone, although I think that it's reached its most draconian point with video games, but I don't think the intent is wrong. And yes, it is a method of ensuring that some stuff doesn't get pirated. There is a continuum of "piracy": at one end are people who will never download anything illegally, ever, no matter what; at the other end are people who will illegally download stuff to the exclusion of legitimate commercial transactions of any kind. Most of the action happens somewhere in the middle. All DRM does is keep casual piracy from happening, same as car alarms or locking your door keeps "honest people honest". But I don't think that demographic is all that small.
I'm willing to bet that if you limit DRM to simply ensuring that you don't have more than one copy per purchase per user at a time, just like a physical book, and you make it portable by standardizing ebooks to the extent that, at a minimum, there are no device-exclusive features, and add the ability to lend ebooks, you'll strike the right balance between preserving the rights of authors and publishers while also preserving the rights of consumers.
DRM is supposed to be a burden, in the same way that the inability to make one physical book be in two places at once places a burden on the consumer vis a vis reading the book while simultaneously lending the books to seven friends. That's a burden I'm more than comfortable with both bearing myself and placing on others. The option that some people seem to be taking, the "Well, DRM sucks, and piracy will never stop, so why bother trying" approach, is not a solution. It isn't even a bad solution, it's just a non-solution.
Incidentally, I don't have a personal problem with "piracy", and have definitely downloaded things in the past (and will in the future) because they weren't available on DVD, or because I wanted to try a demo that didn't exist, or because, like you said, the DRM screwed up the legit version so bad that the only working version is the pirated copy. I've also downloaded ebooks. A hell of a lot of them. In seven years, I have definitely encountered pirated versions of games that were better than the legit retail. I have never--NEVER--encountered an instance where the pirated version of an ebook was better than the legit version. Not once, not in any genre, not with any author.
I couldn't agree with you more, and if I had mod points I'd mod you up. As someone else pointed out, all DRM is meant to do is to preserve the same security that physical limitations provided before digital editions, i.e. you can only read a book if you're physically holding it, which limits you to one copy. As a writer, I want to get paid for the work I put into writing something, and DRM is one way of ensuring that no one is reading something of mine without my permission. BUT, I also want people to want to buy my stuff, and they're more likely to do that if the ebook version has the same utility as a physical book, meaning portability. Ergo, standardization solves a lot of the piracy issue by increasing the perceived value of each ebook and reducing the burden that DRM places on the consumer.
The whole point of USAID since inception has been to very publicly give financial aid to allies and countries with whom we want to establish stronger ties, and to less publicly give American foreign service personnel an excuse to be in a foreign country with a bunch of cash. And that's not some Cold War stuff, either. Like, right now, American military advisors and CIA operatives act in places like Afghanistan under the auspices (and budget) of the USAID, which, ironically, stands for United States Agency for International Development. It's a major foreign policy arm of the US, and if you think the government, no matter which party is in power, is going to rush to put a leash on it just because outsourcing has some feathers ruffled, you're very much mistaken.
I don't find that pedantic at all, and I think it's a good idea to be precise about terms in a discussion like this. To my mind, if you come at the understanding of evolution as a system that operates according to predictable, understandable rules, even if that system was put in place by a supernatural agent, you're effectively talking about the idea of evolution that science generally accepts. If you start talking about evolution taking certain paths as the result of the desire or will of a supernatural entity or agency, then you've left evolution as it is understood in the conventional scientific community and are now talking about intelligent design. You can still discuss evolution scientifically from beginning to end within the whole "clockmaker" paradigm, i.e. acceptance of evolution does not preclude faith in a divine creator where the latter doesn't contradict tangible evidence of the former. Evolution picks up immediately after the first living thing (or pseudo-living thing, I suppose) pops up, and it doesn't really matter if you believe that happened as a cosmic accident or because some Prime Mover turned on the universe, so long as the Big Guy's involvement effectively ceases after the planning and launch phases are done.
As a yardstick, if you can talk about evolution from soup to nuts without referencing the supernatural, you're not talking about what Tennessee meant when they passed this bill. If at some point you need to reference faith, or the "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" trope, you're leaving hard science and heading towards religion, or at least metaphysics. As I understand it, there are evolutionary scientists who are also Christians, Jews, Muslims, and what not, who just don't believe that a.) Genesis is a literal account of the creation of the Earth, b.) humans as a species are somehow totally separate from the forces of evolution that produced all other species, or that c.) there was a fixed number of species on Earth at the beginning of time, and that the only change has been a reduction of the number of species.
Really? I'm not familiar with anything he's written, only with his whole Scientology thing. I wonder if Red Dwarf pulled the spoof of all spoofs...
Wow, man, you just whiffed hard on that one. Google "Arnold Rimmer" and learn something.