Are you aware that you're here discussing whether or not a person can be killed in the name of copyright, ignoring that it would already be an atrocity to cause him bodily harm just to protect the "rights" of some company?
Uh. Quite. Maybe you need to read the post you were responding to. Had you read it, you might have noticed that the central premise of the post was that that was indeed an atrocity, not a "reasonable disposition" of an infringing work.
Are you so brainwashed already that copyright can already hold a candle to the right of bodily integrity?
No, but apparently you have such a kneejerk reaction to the topic of discussion that you are incapable of looking to the substance of posts discussing it.
But a professionally-done tattoo is indeed a commercial use, which could potentially make the tattoo artist liable, giving John liability for knowingly aiding blah blah blah. And he's still the work, and thus subject to destruction.
He is not the work. The tatoo is the work. "Destruction or other reasonable disposition of the work" is not a license to kill; destroying the body of a living human being on which an infringing work is made is not even remotely a "reasonable disposition" of the unauthorized copy.
In fact, the phrase makes perfect sense, but only if you know that one of the older meanings of "prove" is "to test". See, for example, here, but a quick Google will turn up plenty more results.
This is a common popular etymology, but its wrong. The phrase is a maxim of legal interpretation and means exactly what the words in their common, current english uses suggest: the existence of an exception demonstrates the existence of a more general, contrary, rule that applies in cases outside of the exception. Particularly, it refers to the idea that when something is expressly prohibited in certain cases (the exception) this establishes that it is allowed in all cases not prohibited (the rule "proved" by the exception.)
Of course, the application of it to examples like the one here has nothing to do with its original legal sense, and arguably really don't have anything to do with any real sense of "proving" the rule, whether "testing" or "demonstrating". Its just become a common thing to say when you point out an exception at the same time as a proposed general rule but want people not to discount the rule based on the exception that you are mentioning.
What, exactly, do you believe his claimed goal to be?
To enable a particular style ("constructionist") of education in the developing world.
Because getting laptops in the hands of children is pretty darn close to the goal.
I suggest you reread your own link and the links out from it. Laptops aren't at all the goal. The particular laptops produced by the project are a means to the goal, and designed specifically to advance it. As the first non-title text on the page you link to quotes Negroponte explaining: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
The thing is, Negroponte's $100 laptop suffers from the same flaw as Ford's Model T ultimately did. A used computer will probably give you more capability than a cheap new one. I think for $150, you could buy a notebook that's better than this "everyman's computer", and while you were at it, you could probably buy a used generator.
I don't think for any price you could buy a used notebook that is as good for the market the XO targets as the XO.
For a general purpose 1st world consumer use, sure, you could spend $150 and get a better machine used.
There are books without chapters like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
There are certainly books without chapters or other formal sections, but Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books clearly aren't a good example; they are broken up into sections, typically of 1-2 pages, which are distinct units.
But, does the world really need any more reviews of "Teach yourself in ", reviewed by absolute beginners?
Reviews written by people that have read the book and are in the target audience seem like the most useful reviews possible.
Admittedly, it'd be better if we could have the beginner read the beginner-focused book, go on to have a full career in the field, and then write a retrospective review of the influence of the book on their career and beam it back in time, but absent the time machine to make the last part possible, you are hardly going to get many of those reviews published in time to be of use to anyone (on tech books at least; reviews of, say, The Joy of Cooking written that way might still be somewhat useful though they would apply to editions of the book several iterations prior to the current one by the time they were published).
There's plenty of such books, finding them really isn't that hard.
Finding books for beginners is, indeed, easy.
Finding good books for beginners is less easy, which is what reviews are designed to help people with: winnowing the wheat from the chaff.
The difficult part is finding the real gems, those books that'll bring you further once you've gotten the basics right.
I dunno about that. Personally, I find it easier to evaluate, just by skimming the book, a more advanced book on a topic where I know the basics than a beginners book in an area where I don't know the basics.
Re:I noticed the lack of theory in the ToC
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They want to drive the car, not build it.
I think it would be more accurate to say they are teaching how to (among other things) build it, but not how to design it.
ALL electric and hybrid vehicles are priced way out of the reach of the typical american. Fact is the typical american makes less than $32,000.00 a year.
The median income for persons aged 25 or older in the United States is a little over $32,000.
The payment on a $24,000.00 car is insane and therefore not afforadble by the masses only by the few rich people.
Its not "insane", but, yes, many people can't afford most new cars ($24,000 isn't very high in the range of new cars, though.)
Most people can afford USED cars under $8000.00 some stretch to the $14,000.00 mark but not many.
Many new cars costing over $14,000 are, in fact, sold in the US each year. And its not just a handful of rich people each buying several tens of thousands of cars, either.
And those used cars that people are buying in the range you are discussing? Many of them were previously new cars costing more than $14,000 in 2007 dollars. Used cars don't start out used.
If the common man and woman cant buy the car then it will make no difference. and your other suggestions only will punish the poor and working class.
To the extent that its true, you can mitigate it to any degree you wish (including eliminating it entirely) simply by making the general tax (and benefit) system more progressive to compensate. You maintain all the incentive features.
Has some "open" play, but also set scenarios which must be completed in order (and reset if/when you fail). Which, to me, is a clear variant of classic level-based play.
Such level-based content is easier to design and implement than completely emergent, open gameplay that is as interesting (the first time through, at least) and detailed.
Re:I really hate these kind of books
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Yes people will be able to use a database quickly, but do we want them to?
Yes. Because you don't get to real understanding until you can start using them.
The problem, of course, is people developing databases that you have to later work with before they've gotten enough understanding, but that's going to keep happening in any case. In fact, there will be more of it if you narrow the field of people with even a basic understanding of the field. (If its not bad databases, per se, that get built this way, it'll be people abusing other technologies to do what should be done in a database, which will be just as bad, if not worse, when you run into it.)
As long as there is something that lots of people need done, and a few people understand really well and are paid well in good jobs to do, there will also be people who understand it less well, and are scrabbling by doing it for as a side part of another job, for a smaller employer, as a lower-priced contractor, etc. And, yeah, they'll be doing lower quality work. Some of them will go on to be experts. Some of them won't.
I guess my feeling is that it would be great if beginner books at least discussed theory, at least in appendix.
IME, there are beginner's books that discuss theory, etc., but they are, surprisingly enough, beginner's books on theory rather (e.g., Relational Database Design Clearly Explained) rather than beginner's books on SQL, or particular software stacks (like the various MySQL/Apache/PHP or similar intro books.)
These books are not "The in depth" kind of books nore are they any good as reference literature. But stil they push the information through in an humorous way. Meaning you learn not knowing that you are learning!
If I'm going to shell out money for a book to learn something, why would I object to knowing that I'm learning?
And, if I'm going to shell out money for a book to learn something, why would I not prefer something that is either in depth, useful for reference, or both, especially given that the Head First books often aren't substantially cheaper than books covering the same topics which meet at least one of those two criteria?
And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this fascinating book doesn't even begin to mention things like ER diagrams, or relational algebra.
But should it? I mean, sure, a database designer, administrator, or developer ought to know about relational database theory, design methodologies, normalization, etc. But is it necessary for a book on SQL to cover all that?
The best book on database design (in terms of covering lots of ground effectively and succinctly) I've seen doesn't cover much SQL (only enough to use it to illustrate the concepts, and I'm not sure the SQL it uses is usable without modification on any real database; SQL isn't its job.)
Why shouldn't the reverse be true? It would be one thing if the book was "Head First Database Design, Development, and Administration" and it didn't cover those things, of course.
It takes more petroleum to make a gallon of ethanol then it does to make a gallon of gasoline.
This statement was always one of dubious methodology and accuracy, and even ignoring that is only applicable to corn ethanol, about the least efficient way to make ethanol known to mankind in end-to-end efficiency and the most undesirable because of its effect on food-staple demand, but one that is politically popular in the US because of the rewards to entrenched mega-agribusiness.
The average home has a 150A electrical capacity from the grid. 150A at 120V is 18kW. 18kW is 24hp.
This is fairly easily changeable; its not a limit on the power from the grid, its basically a limitation of the service panel installed in the house -- the capacity of the mains power lines is a lot greater. Its quite possible for a house to have a service panel with a much greater capacity than 150A. Further, the voltage at the service panel is 240V.
Assuming you have a 100% perfectly efficient electric car and charging system (ha!), and use 100% of your house's energy capacity a one hour charge will let you drive your 24hp moped for one hour.
Even ignoring your problems in determining "capacity", this is true only if you are at full throttle the entire hour. And, unlike internal combustion-powered cars which tend to waste lots of power at less-than-full throttle (bringing their consumption up closer to their full-throttle consumption than the useful energy would suggest), electric vehicles tend to consume more in proportion to what is usefully applied, meaning that the difference between idling consumption (zero, but for any accessories drawing power) and full-throttle consumption is much greater than is the case with most internal combustion engines.
So where do you plan on getting the hydrogen? It doesn't exist naturally on earth.
Actually, it does; hydrogen is mined. The quantities probably aren't enough to support its use as a major motor-vehicle fuel, though, so you have to either go to steam reformation or electrolysis to get massive quantities, which have all the problems you note.
In addition, you have distribution issues with hydrogen that are largely solved already in the case of electric vehicles.
Electric cars reduce, but do not eliminate, these emissions, because while they are more efficient, the power has to come from somewhere, and right now that means a power plant.
Electric cars make it easier to solve the problem because then the problem is one of solving electricity generation, which can be done piecemeal without disruption either to most vehicle users or new delivery systems, since the electrical grid can delivery electricity no matter what fuel is used to generate it, and electric vehicles don't care how their electricity is generated.
The alternatives to fossil fueled power plants just aren't mature enough at this stage in the game. Solar is very inefficient, and wind is costly and unsightly. Nuclear presents its own problems. As far as automotive tech goes, I am much more interested in hydrogen.
Hydrogen is clean when burned, but is either produced at an energy loss by consuming other fuel or mined, and IIRC the mining output that is practical won't support its use as a major fuel. Plus there are the distribution problems. Hydrogen might have uses as a motor vehicle fuel, but EVs are a lot more useful.
Where do you think the power went to once the Roman empire fell?
Largely, to the various peoples that broke free of the Roman state as it fell.
Of course they were! But they were on the path toward modern society. Technology would have brought about the evolution of that society away from a slave-based empire to a capitalistic one, just like the English kings eventually gave power to its business citizens -- because it made more money that way. It was still brutal, but it was moving in the direction of greater freedom.
Er, no. The Roman state was pretty consistently moving toward less freedom (particularly substantive political freedom) for its citizens from a point well before the fall of the Republic through the fall of the western Empire. Its true that toward the end of the western Empire, it was moving toward more inclusive citizenship as more and more of the "barbarians" were granted citizenship in exchange for military service because the Empire was unable to hold itself together, but that was an integral parts of the fall of the Empire, not a trend toward greater liberty that could have been sustained with the Empire standing.
Technology would have brought about the evolution of that society away from a slave-based empire to a capitalistic one
"Slave-based" and "capitalistic" aren't opposites, or even excluded. The American South prior to the Civil War had an economy both slave-based and capitalistic.
Instead, the anti-science Church plunged everybody back into darkness and superstition that lasted over a thousand years
No, the collapse of central authority and organized society and general war of all against all that accompanied it did that, inasmuch as it happened at all (and, actually, its not like the period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance wasn't full of advances, including several agricultural and industrial revolutions which made the Renaissance possible; there is nothing like a period of over a thousand years of relative "darkness and superstition" except in popular mythology.)
and even then Galileo was put in jail for being a scientist. If Galileo had the same ideas in the Roman empire, he would not have been persecuted.
No, Galileo was put in jail for doing what was perceived as a direct and personal insult to the sitting Pope, his principal patron, in his writing. It wasn't his ideas (which he'd made public long before he got in trouble), it was putting the views associated with the current Pope, who supported him despite their disagreement, into the mouth of a figure portrayed as a buffoon that got him into trouble.
Betraying a powerful political patron without securing another willing to protect you first was also not a wise move in the Roman Empire.
Why is it that no one can make pre-packaged or pre-prepared food that isn't awful for you.
Because its easier to optimize shelf life, cost, and taste only than all those plus health qualities, and consumers don't weigh health qualities heavily enough to motivate manufacturer's to make it a major consideration.
Even when you try to buy a healthy snack-- granola bars, for example-- it's filled with high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, and salt. WTF?
Its more profitable for companies to use packaging and marketing to suggest that a product is healthy and make it actually full of junk than to make it actually healthy.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh. Quite. Maybe you need to read the post you were responding to. Had you read it, you might have noticed that the central premise of the post was that that was indeed an atrocity, not a "reasonable disposition" of an infringing work.
No, but apparently you have such a kneejerk reaction to the topic of discussion that you are incapable of looking to the substance of posts discussing it.
He is not the work. The tatoo is the work. "Destruction or other reasonable disposition of the work" is not a license to kill; destroying the body of a living human being on which an infringing work is made is not even remotely a "reasonable disposition" of the unauthorized copy.
This is a common popular etymology, but its wrong. The phrase is a maxim of legal interpretation and means exactly what the words in their common, current english uses suggest: the existence of an exception demonstrates the existence of a more general, contrary, rule that applies in cases outside of the exception. Particularly, it refers to the idea that when something is expressly prohibited in certain cases (the exception) this establishes that it is allowed in all cases not prohibited (the rule "proved" by the exception.)
Of course, the application of it to examples like the one here has nothing to do with its original legal sense, and arguably really don't have anything to do with any real sense of "proving" the rule, whether "testing" or "demonstrating". Its just become a common thing to say when you point out an exception at the same time as a proposed general rule but want people not to discount the rule based on the exception that you are mentioning.
To enable a particular style ("constructionist") of education in the developing world.
I suggest you reread your own link and the links out from it. Laptops aren't at all the goal. The particular laptops produced by the project are a means to the goal, and designed specifically to advance it. As the first non-title text on the page you link to quotes Negroponte explaining: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
Because handling smaller orders incurs more overhead per unit. Not that hard to figure out.
Negroponte has never claimed that was his goal.
There are certainly books without chapters or other formal sections, but Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books clearly aren't a good example; they are broken up into sections, typically of 1-2 pages, which are distinct units.
Reviews written by people that have read the book and are in the target audience seem like the most useful reviews possible.
Admittedly, it'd be better if we could have the beginner read the beginner-focused book, go on to have a full career in the field, and then write a retrospective review of the influence of the book on their career and beam it back in time, but absent the time machine to make the last part possible, you are hardly going to get many of those reviews published in time to be of use to anyone (on tech books at least; reviews of, say, The Joy of Cooking written that way might still be somewhat useful though they would apply to editions of the book several iterations prior to the current one by the time they were published).
Finding books for beginners is, indeed, easy.
Finding good books for beginners is less easy, which is what reviews are designed to help people with: winnowing the wheat from the chaff.
I dunno about that. Personally, I find it easier to evaluate, just by skimming the book, a more advanced book on a topic where I know the basics than a beginners book in an area where I don't know the basics.
I think it would be more accurate to say they are teaching how to (among other things) build it, but not how to design it.
The median income for persons aged 25 or older in the United States is a little over $32,000.
Its not "insane", but, yes, many people can't afford most new cars ($24,000 isn't very high in the range of new cars, though.)
Many new cars costing over $14,000 are, in fact, sold in the US each year. And its not just a handful of rich people each buying several tens of thousands of cars, either.
And those used cars that people are buying in the range you are discussing? Many of them were previously new cars costing more than $14,000 in 2007 dollars. Used cars don't start out used.
To the extent that its true, you can mitigate it to any degree you wish (including eliminating it entirely) simply by making the general tax (and benefit) system more progressive to compensate. You maintain all the incentive features.
Has some "open" play, but also set scenarios which must be completed in order (and reset if/when you fail). Which, to me, is a clear variant of classic level-based play.
Such level-based content is easier to design and implement than completely emergent, open gameplay that is as interesting (the first time through, at least) and detailed.
Yes. Because you don't get to real understanding until you can start using them.
The problem, of course, is people developing databases that you have to later work with before they've gotten enough understanding, but that's going to keep happening in any case. In fact, there will be more of it if you narrow the field of people with even a basic understanding of the field. (If its not bad databases, per se, that get built this way, it'll be people abusing other technologies to do what should be done in a database, which will be just as bad, if not worse, when you run into it.)
As long as there is something that lots of people need done, and a few people understand really well and are paid well in good jobs to do, there will also be people who understand it less well, and are scrabbling by doing it for as a side part of another job, for a smaller employer, as a lower-priced contractor, etc. And, yeah, they'll be doing lower quality work. Some of them will go on to be experts. Some of them won't.
IME, there are beginner's books that discuss theory, etc., but they are, surprisingly enough, beginner's books on theory rather (e.g., Relational Database Design Clearly Explained) rather than beginner's books on SQL, or particular software stacks (like the various MySQL/Apache/PHP or similar intro books.)
If I'm going to shell out money for a book to learn something, why would I object to knowing that I'm learning?
And, if I'm going to shell out money for a book to learn something, why would I not prefer something that is either in depth, useful for reference, or both, especially given that the Head First books often aren't substantially cheaper than books covering the same topics which meet at least one of those two criteria?
But should it? I mean, sure, a database designer, administrator, or developer ought to know about relational database theory, design methodologies, normalization, etc. But is it necessary for a book on SQL to cover all that?
The best book on database design (in terms of covering lots of ground effectively and succinctly) I've seen doesn't cover much SQL (only enough to use it to illustrate the concepts, and I'm not sure the SQL it uses is usable without modification on any real database; SQL isn't its job.)
Why shouldn't the reverse be true? It would be one thing if the book was "Head First Database Design, Development, and Administration" and it didn't cover those things, of course.
This statement was always one of dubious methodology and accuracy, and even ignoring that is only applicable to corn ethanol, about the least efficient way to make ethanol known to mankind in end-to-end efficiency and the most undesirable because of its effect on food-staple demand, but one that is politically popular in the US because of the rewards to entrenched mega-agribusiness.
This is fairly easily changeable; its not a limit on the power from the grid, its basically a limitation of the service panel installed in the house -- the capacity of the mains power lines is a lot greater. Its quite possible for a house to have a service panel with a much greater capacity than 150A. Further, the voltage at the service panel is 240V.
Even ignoring your problems in determining "capacity", this is true only if you are at full throttle the entire hour. And, unlike internal combustion-powered cars which tend to waste lots of power at less-than-full throttle (bringing their consumption up closer to their full-throttle consumption than the useful energy would suggest), electric vehicles tend to consume more in proportion to what is usefully applied, meaning that the difference between idling consumption (zero, but for any accessories drawing power) and full-throttle consumption is much greater than is the case with most internal combustion engines.
Actually, it does; hydrogen is mined. The quantities probably aren't enough to support its use as a major motor-vehicle fuel, though, so you have to either go to steam reformation or electrolysis to get massive quantities, which have all the problems you note.
In addition, you have distribution issues with hydrogen that are largely solved already in the case of electric vehicles.
Electric cars make it easier to solve the problem because then the problem is one of solving electricity generation, which can be done piecemeal without disruption either to most vehicle users or new delivery systems, since the electrical grid can delivery electricity no matter what fuel is used to generate it, and electric vehicles don't care how their electricity is generated.
Hydrogen is clean when burned, but is either produced at an energy loss by consuming other fuel or mined, and IIRC the mining output that is practical won't support its use as a major fuel. Plus there are the distribution problems. Hydrogen might have uses as a motor vehicle fuel, but EVs are a lot more useful.
Even if that's true, who cares? I mean, really, are many people concerned about the sad state of cell phone gaming?
Largely, to the various peoples that broke free of the Roman state as it fell.
Er, no. The Roman state was pretty consistently moving toward less freedom (particularly substantive political freedom) for its citizens from a point well before the fall of the Republic through the fall of the western Empire. Its true that toward the end of the western Empire, it was moving toward more inclusive citizenship as more and more of the "barbarians" were granted citizenship in exchange for military service because the Empire was unable to hold itself together, but that was an integral parts of the fall of the Empire, not a trend toward greater liberty that could have been sustained with the Empire standing.
"Slave-based" and "capitalistic" aren't opposites, or even excluded. The American South prior to the Civil War had an economy both slave-based and capitalistic.
No, the collapse of central authority and organized society and general war of all against all that accompanied it did that, inasmuch as it happened at all (and, actually, its not like the period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance wasn't full of advances, including several agricultural and industrial revolutions which made the Renaissance possible; there is nothing like a period of over a thousand years of relative "darkness and superstition" except in popular mythology.)
No, Galileo was put in jail for doing what was perceived as a direct and personal insult to the sitting Pope, his principal patron, in his writing. It wasn't his ideas (which he'd made public long before he got in trouble), it was putting the views associated with the current Pope, who supported him despite their disagreement, into the mouth of a figure portrayed as a buffoon that got him into trouble.
Betraying a powerful political patron without securing another willing to protect you first was also not a wise move in the Roman Empire.
Because its easier to optimize shelf life, cost, and taste only than all those plus health qualities, and consumers don't weigh health qualities heavily enough to motivate manufacturer's to make it a major consideration.
Its more profitable for companies to use packaging and marketing to suggest that a product is healthy and make it actually full of junk than to make it actually healthy.
Aren't whole albums cheaper? And video cheaper yet, per gig.