Unauthorized access and changes to the router configuration (this was, after all, the router at a public facility, and at least potentially -- hence the investigation -- was not done by an authorized user) is likely a crime regardless of whether the message had a target (or even whether the changes sent a message via the SSID at all); "bias crime" laws tend to provide enhancements to existing crimes based on racist (and other) motives, and I think that there is at least a plausible grounds for considering that such motives might be involved in this act.
In other words, you're one of the many people with contempt for the visually impairedas well as contempt for those that are using portable display gadgets that fit in a pocket or purse.
No. Look, what features are essential to me as a user have nothing to do with how much I respect other people.
Second, my iPhone fits in a pocket or purse. Its one of the things I use, and I discussed it in the post your responding to. Its a factor in my preferences.
Your attitude is why PDF is a crappy format for portable electronic devices.
Its crappy for some people with certain preferences, its not crappy for other people. I read PDFs formatted for letter-sized pages on the iPhone all the time with no problem, and for certain types of content its better than any ePub's I've seen.
And correcting for such contemptuous attitudes was the primary reason that HTML was invented.
First, I don't have a contemptuous attitude, that's something you've invented. Second, that has little to do with why HTML was invented. (Though certainly scalability is -- as I acknowledge repeatedly in the post you are responding to -- a useful feature of HTML-based eBook format that in some circumstances is compelling.)
If the ePub, iBooks, and other related formats truly include HTML, especially HTML5, then they are an approach that can actually make life better for people with poor eyes or small screens.
ePub is XHTML1.1 based, ePub 3 is XHTML5-based.
Arguing against PS and PDF, and in favor of all the SGML-derived formats, is part of how we can improve life for those less fortunate than us with good eyes.
No, it isn't.
Improving HTML-based formats to the point where they are competitive with PDF in the areas of PDFs strengths, and therefore so that they can compete in the marketplace effectively with them, is how we can do that.
And the first step of that is recognizing where PDF is still ahead.
I can't understand why they allowed what was really an ex post facto law stay on the books just because it normalizes a treaty we have. Treaties do not trump the Constitution.
Because its not an ex post facto law, even by the definition you posted (from Wikipedia, apparently.)
It makes only prospective changes in legal status based on past actions, it doesn't change the legality of past actions after they occurred.
If there was an attempt to apply the consequences of the extended copyright to acts that occurred after the works entered the public domain and before the extensions was passed, then it would, to the extent of that application, be an ex post facto law, but that's not an issue actually raised in the case.
The depends on what you want out of "ebooks". PDFs work very well for electronic books for what I want out of them.
Now the iPad may handle it better than the other options
It might, but nothing I said in GP indicated that I thought it did, just that the iPad was reaching into the size range where the advantages of PDFs in practice outweighed those of ePub in my experience.
but PDFs do not scale well and they are not intended to.
While scaling is a useful feature in ebooks, its not something I see as an essential feature. For content that is pure linear text, like novels, scaling may outweigh other factors particularly when using a very small reader device (like a smartphone), but IME that's about the only case where scaling is the dominant consideration.
They're intended for printing and exchanging in away that's essentially identical no matter what device you're using.
Consistent presentation across devices is a useful feature since presentation is often the way it is for a reason, particularly when the content isn't pure linear text. This is one of the reasons that PDFs are often, IMO and IME, a superior ebook format for content that isn't limited to simple linear text.
Which is a very serious problem as it makes it really tough to use on an ebook reader.
I regularly read PDFs designed for letter-size print on a variety of devices ranging from an iPhone to a Nook Color to a netbook to a desktop with a 23" widescreen 1080p monitor. I don't find it "really tough" to use PDF on any of those devices.
I don't see any mention of that on Apple's site that it's ePub. Maybe I missed it, can you give me a link that confirms this?
iBooks has always been ePub 2 with proprietary extensions. Virtually everything Apple's proprietary extensions do ePub 3 does, and much of the pre-press about the recent announcement included speculation that it would include adoption of ePub 3, though I can't find anything which indicates whether it actually did or whether they are still using ePub 2 plus custom extensions and, for DRM-protected works, Apple-specific DRM.
Even if they are using the standard, there is no reason for them to advertise it, since "you can use any ePub toolchain to make content for iBooks" doesn't help them sell Macs with the lure of iBooks Creator, and "you can use any ePub reader to read non-DRMed iBooks" doesn't help them sell iPads/iPods/iPhones with iBooks as a selling point.
"Reinvent" is a big word. But the most significant thing I see here is that the tools - including and especially the content development tools - are free (as in beer). But the next question is, what iBook tools will be available on other platforms?
The tools Apple is selling here are Macs and iPads. iBooks and iBooks Creator are features of those tools.
Why would Apple make those features available for competing tools?
(Of course, there are already other toolchains for making ePub books, and other readers for viewing them. Apple also isn't going to focus on highlighting that that's what iBooks Creator and iBooks are.)
The epub format (which iBooks uses, I'm not sure about iBooks2, we'll have to see) is HTML5.
Well, ePub 2, which most existing ePub readers (including iBooks) use has content that is XHTML1.1 (or Daisy Talking Book, but no one actually uses that.)
ePub 3, which iBooks 2 presumably uses, has content in the XHTML syntax of HTML5.
And trust me, you don't want PDF for e-books.
I have plenty of PDF ebooks. In general, they are better than the ePub ones for technical books (they'd be worse for novels), though the best ePubs (from PragProg) are good enough that it depends where I'm reading them (desktop, I prefer PDF, iPhone or Nook Color, I prefer ePub; at the size of the iPad, I'd probably be back to PDF.)
Part of the reason that PDF is generally better is that most ebooks are made by publishers that also do print and have lots of experience with it: and PDF, while you can add a lot to it that isn't in print, lets you apply everything you do in print seemlessly (and most print toolchains produce PDF with no additional effort.)
Removing things from the public domain, including works upon which derivative works may have been made, does nothing "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" and is therefore prohibited.
While I still disagree with the ultimate conclusion in the majority opinion here, I think the majority is correct to find that Congress could legitimately determine that uniformity with other nations in shared copyright regime, on balance, promotes the progress of science and useful arts. Note that, when looking to purpose, the Supreme Court generally applies (and, IMO, rightly so) a fairly low standard, because determining what means do advance a particular end is generally a legislative function.
On an unrelated not, I could see an argument being made that copyrights may neither be signed off to another person nor inherited in any manner. After all, the rights are secured only "to authors and inventors", not "to authors, inventors, and other related people".
That's largely irrelevant to the issues raised in the instant case (though it would be an alternate ground for striking down both the pre-existing copyright law and the change at issue), but there is certainly a case as regards heritability. Voluntary transfer during and limited by the life of the original creator can't be meaningfully distinguished from a right of the creator, so doesn't seem to be an issue.
No language to prohibit, I was understanding that the federal government has no power that is not specifically given
While I disagree with the majority holding in this case, I will note that the Copyright Clause is an specific grant of power. Where there is an specific grant of power, it is only limited in the way that there is some language (either in the grant itself or elsewhere in the Constitution) limiting the grant.
Don't we have something in the constitution about, I dunno, ex post facto laws?
An ex post facto law is a law which makes an act criminal (or increases the criminal punishment applicable to the act) after the act was committed. Applying copyright to existing works (even to the extent that copyright law has criminal elements) isn't an ex post facto law.
(It would be if doing so meant that the exclusive rights under copyright and the criminal penalties that apply for violating them applied to acts which occurred prior to the passage of the law taking the works out of the public domain, but that's not the issue here.)
I haven't read the opinion, but generally speaking, my understanding is that international treaties signed by the US are on the same legal level as the Constitution.
This understanding is incorrect. Its a reasonably common misapplication of Art. VI, para 2: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
This doesn't mean that treaties (or federal statute law) is on the "same legal level" as the Constitution, it means that the Constitution itself, and any treaties or laws ratified or adopted under it, are superior to acts of state government.
The rationale in the decision in this case is basically that the Copyright Clause has no language in it which prohibits retrospective application of the exclusive rights Congress is authorized to grant under that Clause, and that, there is a long history of Congress creating copyright in existing works which were in the public domain, the whole way back to the first copyright law under the Constitution, the Copyright Act of 1790.
I think you missed the GP's point. No senators will vote for SOPA because it is a HOUSE bill. Some senators, however, may vote for the corresponding bill (PIPA) in the SENATE.
PIPA is an alternative bill in the Senate, not the corresponding bill to SOPA. For SOPA to become law, it has to be passed by both houses (same thing for PIPA.)
If one house passes SOPA and one house passes PIPA, and neither house passes the bill passed by the other house, than neither becomes law (or even goes to the President for signature or veto.)
Granted, the GP was a bit confusing by talking of senators not supporting SOPA because it is a house bill. Senators support various house bills all the time by lobbying their colleagues in the house to pass this bill or that bill. It's just that, being senators, they don't get to vote on house bills.
Wrong. They do get to vote on House bills, but only get to do so after the House has passed them. That's how federal laws get made: one house of Congress passes a bill, it goes to the other house, who passes it and sends it to the President, who signs it (or vetoes it, and then has the veto overridden in both houses.)
A "House bill" or "Senate bill" is just a way of describing where a bill originates. Certain bills (e.g., revenue measures) can only be House bills, but they still need to pass both the House and Senate before they go to the President. If the Senate didn't get to vote on House bills, no revenue measure would ever become law.
Is it because girls are bad at programming? I see no reason to think there's a gender-related basis for programming... do you?
Sure, social gender roles (and gender is a social construct) certainly have an influence.
But you are probably meaning to ask about a biological sex-related basis for programming. Which probably exists as well. There is fairly strong evidence of sex-based differences in cognition, including in various areas related to mathematical reasoning that could reasonably be expected to impact programming ability.
There are also at least some published evidence of sex-linked differences in cognition that directly relate to preferred models of software development; this is particularly important because it implies that any dominance of one sex in the open source community will tend to be "sticky", since once the field is dominated by one sex, it will be less accessible to the other sex due to the establishment of less-favorable (to the excluded sex) development models.
Don't think "file storage" - think what you can do with it. I can, for example, envision a very nice web-app like business model where you store HTML5 apps in the Dropbox cloud and can, with the click of a button, make a personal copy and execute that, with storage and all in a nice bundle. Something like that would eat the cake of the flash games sites and many others.
So, essentially, you'd just be syncing the HTML5 local storage? You could do that (providing that browsers expose where that is in a way which makes it practical), but from an app developer perspective, the very small amount of extra work of persisting user data to a more traditional server (which then lets you use some of it, in the case of games, for shared leaderboards and social features) woud seem to be worthwhile in most cases. What's the case -- for developers -- for using something like dropbox to sync web apps?
Now after that you get some additional theories like the theory that this will be a net bad thing for humanity.
That's not a scientific theory (the theories about specific effects are, "net bad" is, ultimately, a subjective value judgement, which isn't falsifiable, and thus not within the scope of scientific investigation.)
I thought one of the fundamental aspects of modern empirical science is that, unlike a religion, it is ALWAYS open to revision and dispute.
It is open to revision in response to, and dispute in the form of, results that contradict the existing explanations and more parsimonious explanations for the results which have been produced.
Defending against pressure to teach, as science, "controversy" which does not actually exist within the scope of the scientific work in a field is not anti-science.
Whether there is a significant modern consensus or not, I think it goes against the core spirit of scientific inquiry to EVER say "This matter is settled and no future scientist may ever question it."
Yes, it would be, but that's not what the National Center for Science Education is saying, so that's what's known as a strawman.
That's the very kind of anti-empirical position the Creationists themselves take in presenting their religious take on science.
And its the anti-empirical ideological-based approach, and the pressure to present the results of that approach as science, that the NCSE is opposing in the two areas in which it is taking stands.
And I'm certainly glad for Einstein's sake that no one ever thought this way about Newtonian physics. "Sorry little German, the matter is settled. Stop being a Newton denier."
Unlike the non-scientific work at issue, Einstein's work was scientific, and there wasn't an enormous amount of pressure to teach "the controversy" between Einstein's models and Newtonian physics in primary and secondary education when no such controversy actually existed in the scientific community, so the issue is in no way parallel.
They aren't suggesting right now. They're suggesting sometime in the next 100 years.
Its still pretty unlikely, but its a far enough window that they don't have to worry too much about being proven wrong in their lifetime.
The last US civil was only a bit more than a hundred years ago.
And...so, what?
The USSR only lasted 69 years.
And...again, so what?
The key is that "getting along just fine as is" bit. Those days are numbered.
More evidence is needed for this claim.
China is taking over as world superpower.
China is certainly emerging as a superpower, though "taking over" (suggesting a transition from a monopolar, US-dominated world to a monopolar, Chinese-dominated one) is far from evident.
Mod parent up. The Republican party is disintegrating because while they point their fingers at each other screaming "RINO! RINO!" the fact is that just about everyone but Ron Paul is Conservative In Name Only.
Ron Paul is, somewhat more than the average Republican, , a small-government, anti-tax libertarian.
Most Republicans are conservatives -- adherents to a political and social philosophy that is itself an offshoot of the earlier royalism, and which appeals to the preservation of traditional institutions and values with, at most, gradual change.
Fairly recently in historic terms (pretty much contemporaneously with the rise fo neoconservatism), Republicans, in the attempt to broaden their electoral base, attempted to recast their support of certain policies which support well-established institutions of economic power as being based on an ideological opposition to taxes and big government (though, in the same time, the same Republicans have frequently supported massive expansions of government and massive tax increases -- the real opposition has been to government action in particular domains and taxation of particular entities), and have attempted to sell libertarianism as a component of conservatism.
Which is one reason why Paul is a perennial also-ran in Republican Presidential campaigns: the conservative interests that run the Republican Party, supply most of its base, and supply even more of the money for Republican campaigns aren't interested in libertarianism except as a marketing tool for conservatism.
California's problems are first and foremost political.
True.
There is no political will to actually clean up your state's problems with spending too much money.
That's no more true of California than of most other jurisdictions. Insomuch as California has unique challenges, its that it has political structures which require extraordinary broad political support to make certain changes in tax and spending policy, which make much of the budget impervious to change even with the degree of political will that would suffice in other jurisdictions.
California has the largest prison population in the US--even compared to states like Texas and Florida which rival it in population size.
Neither Texas nor Florida rival California in population size. Texas has about 2/3 the population of California, Floriday has about 1/2 the population of California.
You spend more on average for public schools than most of the union
Actually, spending per student (calculated by average daily attendance), California public K-12 spending in 2009-2010 (the most recent year I can find rankings for) was 43rd out of 51 (states + DC), with 81.8% of the national average.
The feds don't have to worry. California is in worse fiscal condition than the Federal government -- they can't afford to break off.
California appears, if you gauge by the news coverage of "budget crises", to be in worse fiscal condition than the federal government simply because California, unlike the federal government, is Constitutionally required to have a balanced budget. The "major" deficit gaps that the State has had to close in recent budgets have been less than 2% of gross state product. Certainly, structurally limitations (until a few years ago, California had a supermajority requirement to pass a budget, and it still has a supermajority requirement to raise any taxes) make it politically difficult to meet those Constitutional requirements, hence the breathless media coverage, but that political drama is out of proportion to the scale of the actual fiscal issues.
The federal government -- counting only on-budget spending -- has recently been running (not "finding ways to close in budget negotiations") deficits of over 5% of GDP, peaking at over 10% of GDP.
And that's all with California receiving substantially less in federal funds than Californians pay in federal taxes.
Objectively speaking, California is in better fiscal shape than the federal government, and that would only get better for California (and worse for the Federal Government) if Californians weren't providing a net subsidy (in terms of federal taxes paid vs. federal spending received) to the Federal government. Total state debt in California is also much lower, as a percent of GSP, than the US federal debt as a percent of GDP.
Politically speaking, there's always a lot of budget drama in California, but that's a feature of the political structure, and is different from the substantive fiscal situation.
Well, it's an indefinite hold. Which means that the longer it goes on, the more painful it can get. Oracle may simple just wait until the numbers are right.
If Oracle doesn't produce a viable calculation (and even before they next produce one -- the court is still considering whether they get a third try or not) then they simply don't get to put their theory on damages forward at all. And they don't have unlimited basis to put forward new theories, they have to cure specific problems in their previously-advanced calculations.
You haven't entered the market until the phones are available at retail.
If the market at issue is the retail market for cellphones, there might be some validity to that. The market Intel is actually entering is the market for supplying processors to smartphone manufacturers, which they've entered as soon as they have a product available for those manufacturers to order.
So let me ask you, and I'm sincerely curious, why did you or anybody else ever thought "Liking" a commercial company meant?
Exchanging the right to be listed as someone who "likes" them and counted in their total number of "likes" in exchange for getting information updates from them.
Facebook has altered what the "like" relationship means, which means two things: 1. I'm going to need to re-evaluate what pages I've liked (not a big deal for me, because I'm not particularly prolific in "likes".) 2. I'm going to need to reconsider some of the connections in my Facebook social graph to people who aren't particularly restrained in their "likes".
Exploiting this by broadcasting your sponsorship to all your friends in an attempt to expand brand-awareness seems logical, if creepy.
As a matter of fact, I always assumed this was happening already.
Broadcasting the fact that you have "liked" something to your social graph was happening already. Using the news feed to periodically relay advertisements created by the entity that you have "liked" is new. These are substantially different ways in which the fact that you "liked" the entity are used. The difference is roughly analogous to the difference between a company getting permission to list you as a fan in marketing materials in exchange for signing up for email updates and them getting permission to use your email address and contact list to send unsolicited commercial email to all of your contacts when you sign up for email updates.
(Actually, given the way definitions in legal rules are often broader than in common use, I wouldn't be surprised if it was exactly that in terms of CAN-SPAM, which might have interesting consequences.)
I've been seeing a lot of Android-based mediatanks and mediaplayers lately, complete with TV guides, dedicated apps and, ofcourse, access to the entire Android market. What's the benefit of GoogleTV over these Android-based alternative?
Well, there are a number of GoogleTV-specific apps in the market, and GoogleTV uses Chrome rather than the normal Android browser (not sure how different that is in practice, but that should also make the Chrome web store available.) So there are some differences which may be advantages to some users. The real deciding differences may be the particular features of each device.
But I'm not really sure Google is all that concerned which side people choose when people choosing between some other Android-based, Android-market-using media device and a GoogleTV-branded device.
Slashdot Mirror
Unauthorized access and changes to the router configuration (this was, after all, the router at a public facility, and at least potentially -- hence the investigation -- was not done by an authorized user) is likely a crime regardless of whether the message had a target (or even whether the changes sent a message via the SSID at all); "bias crime" laws tend to provide enhancements to existing crimes based on racist (and other) motives, and I think that there is at least a plausible grounds for considering that such motives might be involved in this act.
No. Look, what features are essential to me as a user have nothing to do with how much I respect other people.
Second, my iPhone fits in a pocket or purse. Its one of the things I use, and I discussed it in the post your responding to. Its a factor in my preferences.
Its crappy for some people with certain preferences, its not crappy for other people. I read PDFs formatted for letter-sized pages on the iPhone all the time with no problem, and for certain types of content its better than any ePub's I've seen.
First, I don't have a contemptuous attitude, that's something you've invented. Second, that has little to do with why HTML was invented. (Though certainly scalability is -- as I acknowledge repeatedly in the post you are responding to -- a useful feature of HTML-based eBook format that in some circumstances is compelling.)
ePub is XHTML1.1 based, ePub 3 is XHTML5-based.
No, it isn't.
Improving HTML-based formats to the point where they are competitive with PDF in the areas of PDFs strengths, and therefore so that they can compete in the marketplace effectively with them, is how we can do that.
And the first step of that is recognizing where PDF is still ahead.
Because its not an ex post facto law, even by the definition you posted (from Wikipedia, apparently.)
It makes only prospective changes in legal status based on past actions, it doesn't change the legality of past actions after they occurred.
If there was an attempt to apply the consequences of the extended copyright to acts that occurred after the works entered the public domain and before the extensions was passed, then it would, to the extent of that application, be an ex post facto law, but that's not an issue actually raised in the case.
The depends on what you want out of "ebooks". PDFs work very well for electronic books for what I want out of them.
It might, but nothing I said in GP indicated that I thought it did, just that the iPad was reaching into the size range where the advantages of PDFs in practice outweighed those of ePub in my experience.
While scaling is a useful feature in ebooks, its not something I see as an essential feature. For content that is pure linear text, like novels, scaling may outweigh other factors particularly when using a very small reader device (like a smartphone), but IME that's about the only case where scaling is the dominant consideration.
Consistent presentation across devices is a useful feature since presentation is often the way it is for a reason, particularly when the content isn't pure linear text. This is one of the reasons that PDFs are often, IMO and IME, a superior ebook format for content that isn't limited to simple linear text.
I regularly read PDFs designed for letter-size print on a variety of devices ranging from an iPhone to a Nook Color to a netbook to a desktop with a 23" widescreen 1080p monitor. I don't find it "really tough" to use PDF on any of those devices.
iBooks has always been ePub 2 with proprietary extensions. Virtually everything Apple's proprietary extensions do ePub 3 does, and much of the pre-press about the recent announcement included speculation that it would include adoption of ePub 3, though I can't find anything which indicates whether it actually did or whether they are still using ePub 2 plus custom extensions and, for DRM-protected works, Apple-specific DRM.
Even if they are using the standard, there is no reason for them to advertise it, since "you can use any ePub toolchain to make content for iBooks" doesn't help them sell Macs with the lure of iBooks Creator, and "you can use any ePub reader to read non-DRMed iBooks" doesn't help them sell iPads/iPods/iPhones with iBooks as a selling point.
The tools Apple is selling here are Macs and iPads. iBooks and iBooks Creator are features of those tools.
Why would Apple make those features available for competing tools?
(Of course, there are already other toolchains for making ePub books, and other readers for viewing them. Apple also isn't going to focus on highlighting that that's what iBooks Creator and iBooks are.)
Well, ePub 2, which most existing ePub readers (including iBooks) use has content that is XHTML1.1 (or Daisy Talking Book, but no one actually uses that.)
ePub 3, which iBooks 2 presumably uses, has content in the XHTML syntax of HTML5.
I have plenty of PDF ebooks. In general, they are better than the ePub ones for technical books (they'd be worse for novels), though the best ePubs (from PragProg) are good enough that it depends where I'm reading them (desktop, I prefer PDF, iPhone or Nook Color, I prefer ePub; at the size of the iPad, I'd probably be back to PDF.)
Part of the reason that PDF is generally better is that most ebooks are made by publishers that also do print and have lots of experience with it: and PDF, while you can add a lot to it that isn't in print, lets you apply everything you do in print seemlessly (and most print toolchains produce PDF with no additional effort.)
While I still disagree with the ultimate conclusion in the majority opinion here, I think the majority is correct to find that Congress could legitimately determine that uniformity with other nations in shared copyright regime, on balance, promotes the progress of science and useful arts. Note that, when looking to purpose, the Supreme Court generally applies (and, IMO, rightly so) a fairly low standard, because determining what means do advance a particular end is generally a legislative function.
That's largely irrelevant to the issues raised in the instant case (though it would be an alternate ground for striking down both the pre-existing copyright law and the change at issue), but there is certainly a case as regards heritability. Voluntary transfer during and limited by the life of the original creator can't be meaningfully distinguished from a right of the creator, so doesn't seem to be an issue.
While I disagree with the majority holding in this case, I will note that the Copyright Clause is an specific grant of power. Where there is an specific grant of power, it is only limited in the way that there is some language (either in the grant itself or elsewhere in the Constitution) limiting the grant.
An ex post facto law is a law which makes an act criminal (or increases the criminal punishment applicable to the act) after the act was committed. Applying copyright to existing works (even to the extent that copyright law has criminal elements) isn't an ex post facto law.
(It would be if doing so meant that the exclusive rights under copyright and the criminal penalties that apply for violating them applied to acts which occurred prior to the passage of the law taking the works out of the public domain, but that's not the issue here.)
This understanding is incorrect. Its a reasonably common misapplication of Art. VI, para 2: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
This doesn't mean that treaties (or federal statute law) is on the "same legal level" as the Constitution, it means that the Constitution itself, and any treaties or laws ratified or adopted under it, are superior to acts of state government.
The rationale in the decision in this case is basically that the Copyright Clause has no language in it which prohibits retrospective application of the exclusive rights Congress is authorized to grant under that Clause, and that, there is a long history of Congress creating copyright in existing works which were in the public domain, the whole way back to the first copyright law under the Constitution, the Copyright Act of 1790.
So much is wrong here...
PIPA is an alternative bill in the Senate, not the corresponding bill to SOPA. For SOPA to become law, it has to be passed by both houses (same thing for PIPA.)
If one house passes SOPA and one house passes PIPA, and neither house passes the bill passed by the other house, than neither becomes law (or even goes to the President for signature or veto.)
Wrong. They do get to vote on House bills, but only get to do so after the House has passed them. That's how federal laws get made: one house of Congress passes a bill, it goes to the other house, who passes it and sends it to the President, who signs it (or vetoes it, and then has the veto overridden in both houses.)
A "House bill" or "Senate bill" is just a way of describing where a bill originates. Certain bills (e.g., revenue measures) can only be House bills, but they still need to pass both the House and Senate before they go to the President. If the Senate didn't get to vote on House bills, no revenue measure would ever become law.
Sure, social gender roles (and gender is a social construct) certainly have an influence.
But you are probably meaning to ask about a biological sex-related basis for programming. Which probably exists as well. There is fairly strong evidence of sex-based differences in cognition, including in various areas related to mathematical reasoning that could reasonably be expected to impact programming ability.
There are also at least some published evidence of sex-linked differences in cognition that directly relate to preferred models of software development; this is particularly important because it implies that any dominance of one sex in the open source community will tend to be "sticky", since once the field is dominated by one sex, it will be less accessible to the other sex due to the establishment of less-favorable (to the excluded sex) development models.
So, essentially, you'd just be syncing the HTML5 local storage? You could do that (providing that browsers expose where that is in a way which makes it practical), but from an app developer perspective, the very small amount of extra work of persisting user data to a more traditional server (which then lets you use some of it, in the case of games, for shared leaderboards and social features) woud seem to be worthwhile in most cases. What's the case -- for developers -- for using something like dropbox to sync web apps?
That's not a scientific theory (the theories about specific effects are, "net bad" is, ultimately, a subjective value judgement, which isn't falsifiable, and thus not within the scope of scientific investigation.)
It is open to revision in response to, and dispute in the form of, results that contradict the existing explanations and more parsimonious explanations for the results which have been produced.
Defending against pressure to teach, as science, "controversy" which does not actually exist within the scope of the scientific work in a field is not anti-science.
Yes, it would be, but that's not what the National Center for Science Education is saying, so that's what's known as a strawman.
And its the anti-empirical ideological-based approach, and the pressure to present the results of that approach as science, that the NCSE is opposing in the two areas in which it is taking stands.
Unlike the non-scientific work at issue, Einstein's work was scientific, and there wasn't an enormous amount of pressure to teach "the controversy" between Einstein's models and Newtonian physics in primary and secondary education when no such controversy actually existed in the scientific community, so the issue is in no way parallel.
Its still pretty unlikely, but its a far enough window that they don't have to worry too much about being proven wrong in their lifetime.
And...so, what?
And...again, so what?
More evidence is needed for this claim.
China is certainly emerging as a superpower, though "taking over" (suggesting a transition from a monopolar, US-dominated world to a monopolar, Chinese-dominated one) is far from evident.
Ron Paul is, somewhat more than the average Republican, , a small-government, anti-tax libertarian.
Most Republicans are conservatives -- adherents to a political and social philosophy that is itself an offshoot of the earlier royalism, and which appeals to the preservation of traditional institutions and values with, at most, gradual change.
Fairly recently in historic terms (pretty much contemporaneously with the rise fo neoconservatism), Republicans, in the attempt to broaden their electoral base, attempted to recast their support of certain policies which support well-established institutions of economic power as being based on an ideological opposition to taxes and big government (though, in the same time, the same Republicans have frequently supported massive expansions of government and massive tax increases -- the real opposition has been to government action in particular domains and taxation of particular entities), and have attempted to sell libertarianism as a component of conservatism.
Which is one reason why Paul is a perennial also-ran in Republican Presidential campaigns: the conservative interests that run the Republican Party, supply most of its base, and supply even more of the money for Republican campaigns aren't interested in libertarianism except as a marketing tool for conservatism.
True.
That's no more true of California than of most other jurisdictions. Insomuch as California has unique challenges, its that it has political structures which require extraordinary broad political support to make certain changes in tax and spending policy, which make much of the budget impervious to change even with the degree of political will that would suffice in other jurisdictions.
Neither Texas nor Florida rival California in population size. Texas has about 2/3 the population of California, Floriday has about 1/2 the population of California.
Actually, spending per student (calculated by average daily attendance), California public K-12 spending in 2009-2010 (the most recent year I can find rankings for) was 43rd out of 51 (states + DC), with 81.8% of the national average.
California appears, if you gauge by the news coverage of "budget crises", to be in worse fiscal condition than the federal government simply because California, unlike the federal government, is Constitutionally required to have a balanced budget. The "major" deficit gaps that the State has had to close in recent budgets have been less than 2% of gross state product. Certainly, structurally limitations (until a few years ago, California had a supermajority requirement to pass a budget, and it still has a supermajority requirement to raise any taxes) make it politically difficult to meet those Constitutional requirements, hence the breathless media coverage, but that political drama is out of proportion to the scale of the actual fiscal issues.
The federal government -- counting only on-budget spending -- has recently been running (not "finding ways to close in budget negotiations") deficits of over 5% of GDP, peaking at over 10% of GDP.
And that's all with California receiving substantially less in federal funds than Californians pay in federal taxes.
Objectively speaking, California is in better fiscal shape than the federal government, and that would only get better for California (and worse for the Federal Government) if Californians weren't providing a net subsidy (in terms of federal taxes paid vs. federal spending received) to the Federal government.
Total state debt in California is also much lower, as a percent of GSP, than the US federal debt as a percent of GDP.
Politically speaking, there's always a lot of budget drama in California, but that's a feature of the political structure, and is different from the substantive fiscal situation.
If Oracle doesn't produce a viable calculation (and even before they next produce one -- the court is still considering whether they get a third try or not) then they simply don't get to put their theory on damages forward at all. And they don't have unlimited basis to put forward new theories, they have to cure specific problems in their previously-advanced calculations.
If the market at issue is the retail market for cellphones, there might be some validity to that. The market Intel is actually entering is the market for supplying processors to smartphone manufacturers, which they've entered as soon as they have a product available for those manufacturers to order.
That's pretty much what "like" on Facebook used to mean.
Now it means that you want to spam everyone you know everytime the page owner has a new ad they want to put out, as well as you getting ads/updates.
Exchanging the right to be listed as someone who "likes" them and counted in their total number of "likes" in exchange for getting information updates from them.
Facebook has altered what the "like" relationship means, which means two things:
1. I'm going to need to re-evaluate what pages I've liked (not a big deal for me, because I'm not particularly prolific in "likes".)
2. I'm going to need to reconsider some of the connections in my Facebook social graph to people who aren't particularly restrained in their "likes".
Broadcasting the fact that you have "liked" something to your social graph was happening already. Using the news feed to periodically relay advertisements created by the entity that you have "liked" is new. These are substantially different ways in which the fact that you "liked" the entity are used. The difference is roughly analogous to the difference between a company getting permission to list you as a fan in marketing materials in exchange for signing up for email updates and them getting permission to use your email address and contact list to send unsolicited commercial email to all of your contacts when you sign up for email updates.
(Actually, given the way definitions in legal rules are often broader than in common use, I wouldn't be surprised if it was exactly that in terms of CAN-SPAM, which might have interesting consequences.)
Well, there are a number of GoogleTV-specific apps in the market, and GoogleTV uses Chrome rather than the normal Android browser (not sure how different that is in practice, but that should also make the Chrome web store available.) So there are some differences which may be advantages to some users. The real deciding differences may be the particular features of each device.
But I'm not really sure Google is all that concerned which side people choose when people choosing between some other Android-based, Android-market-using media device and a GoogleTV-branded device.