Now, let's talk about child pr0n. Doesn't matter whether it's virtual or not -- if you're a pedophile, it will still make you want to go out and act on that, just as 'normal' pr0n does for the non-sexual-deviant. Are you saying that playboy turns normal into rapists? That as someone who is attracted to adult females, that if I view pictures of nude adult females it will make me want to go out and abuse adult females, and furthermore that I am more likely to actually do so?
I think we can look at the stereotypical slashdotter as ample evidence that looking at porn doesn't get you laid or turn you into a crazed sex offender.
But the judgments should be a lot closer to reality, not in the millions of dollars for simple copyright infringement. People that did real harm suffer less than that. Agreed 100%.
And people get wrongly convicted for crimes all the time. It sucks, but it happens. That doesn't mean we stop charging people and repeal all the laws. What it does mean is we need to look at ways of making it less likely to happen in the future. The way it works now they (the *AA) don't have a lot of incentive to be careful before bringing a case, I'd like to see them pay costs equivalent to their own costs (not the opponents') if they lose, and be penalised for either delaying payment or bringing excessive losing cases. These penalties should include being prevented from bringing any more cases.
It sucks to be falsely accused, and we should try to make the longterm effects of that as small as possible, but we shouldn't go so far as to hamper people/corps from getting legitimate complaints addressed.
I don't give a shit about corporations, but I do give a shit about people getting caught up in the injustice system just because they fucked around with a corporation. What about all the customers who got screwed? No access to email etc, the hassle of sitting on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why nothing works. Comcast didn't lose much but a huge number of people were quite seriously inconvenienced, all for no good reason.
When you're already downloading a 50K html page, another 10K of javascript code in the same file inline downloads at full-speed. The external file requires yet another hit to the server, and everything involved therein. It almost never makes any sense
Ummm....let's say a visitor to my site views 30 different pages, all of which use the same ajax lib. Now in your case they're downloading that 10k 30 times (300k), rather than just once. Make sense now? Persistent connections are supported by all modern browsers/servers, and that fixes the whole setup/teardown expense. The only overhead is the actual latency of the HTTP GET and response, which is minimal.
The Wii may have sold an ass load of consoles, but the attach rate (particularly for third party games) is awful. Sure, part of this is that most third party games on Wii are shovelware, but plenty of research is pointing to the fact that all these "new gamers" Wii is creating aren't actually interested in buying games - they're quite happy with Wii Sports.
If you're a software publisher interested in anything other than party games/licensed crap, 360 is the place to be right now.
No, you shouldn't be forced to do anything, of course. The free market will decide. However, part of the free market process isn't just punishing things you don't like by not buying them, it's also rewarding things you do like by supporting them. Hence, whilst I do run adblock, I disable it for sites I particularly like and wish to support. Why? Because I want that site to stay around, simple really. A value judgement - am I willing to put up with some ads in exchange for this content.
Raciest? How so? Because I posted actual photos of India? Because of the implication. You don't think I could find photos of bad wiring in the US? And a photo of the Taj Mahal wouldn't have served your purpose as well of course...the point is the whole site is about "I have a problem and it's Indian people's fault". That's both wrong and racist.
I was actually talking about L-1, not H-1B (the GP was essentially ranting that they're the same thing, which is patently false).
Other countries do accept US immigrants of course, and in most cases with a lot less paperwork. Any American who thinks that foreign workers like myself just waltz in as we please should take a look at the application process & paperwork, it's a nightmare. So much so that I would probably have given up and gone home by now if it weren't for the fact that I now have an American wife. And to set the record straight, I only came to the US in the first place because my employer wanted to move me to the NY office, and I can tell you they didn't save any money at all in the process! It's a myth that all incoming workers are undercutting local workers, in many cases (like mine) I had very specific knowledge that the company wanted in a different location, and that's what an L-1's for.
What is it about Slashdot and the "Java isn't cross platform" FUD?. I've been a Java developer for around 8 years now. In all that time, developing server side and client side apps I can count on one finger the number of times I've had an app behave significantly differently between platforms. Java really does a fantastic job of running on pretty much any hardware you throw it at - typically I develop/unit test locally on XP and deploy serverside stuff out to Solaris & Linux for QA/prod.
It. Just. Works.
As for C#, as a language it's amazingly similar to Java, with a few nice additions (Delegates, Events, Properties) and some abominations that should have been shot at birth (structs). The big issues I have with it are:
* Deployment model is a pain compared to "stick it all in a jar" * Memory management is extremely opaque. Whilst many/most people can get away with default GC settings, when you get large scale having the fine control Java gives you in very valuable. * Not cross platform (really, mono doesn't count). This is a biggy as it means I'm not doing anything server side with it. * Closed source libraries (makes debugging a hassle). * The standard class libraries _suck_ compared to Java. * VS just isn't as good as any of the major Java IDEs * There isn't anywhere near the community/ecosystem developed yet for C# - it'll come (probably) but right now I miss being able to find nice pre-written libraries for pretty much anything I can think of.
But I do appreciate having access to a sensible, modern dev environment which is native to the desktop OS in use around here, it makes building nice desktop apps a lot easier. As much as I love Java, Swing never really cut it for anything complex. Maybe one day I'll learn SWT;)
Ermm...what?? Java (generally) works on a single app per JVM model, in fact I have many servers running multiple JVMs (the merits of that is another discussion!). The JVM most certainly does go away when the app does, primarily because the JVM _is_ the app. If you're talking about applets then the browser is responsible for running the lifecycle of the shared JVM in that case, talk to them.
Your crappy racist rant site is full of spam comments. You might like to fix that, or hire an H1B to do it for you. Hardly a commercial for the fantastic skills of American IT professionals.
Speaking as someone who has an L-1, you have no fricking clue what you're talking about. L-1 and H-1B are very different, are used in different situations and apply to different people.
As a country founded and populated almost entirely by immigrants, the reactions of some portions of the population to the very idea that a skilled worker might be allowed to come here, contribute to the GDP and pay insane taxes is pretty amazing to me. If you want to complain about something, look at wacky stuff like the green card lottery not L-1 visas.
so... what about children raised in a red china communism 'I love the government' household?...
Or what about children raised in a red america christian 'I love god' household?
Of course children pick up on and inherit their parent's beliefs and values - that's a large part of what parents are for. Why should it be different in China? We allow parents to teach their children to be Christian or Jewish, or Republican or Democrat, or racist or homophobic, why not Communist?
It seems rather insulting to me to assume that because someone thinks differently from you they must either have been coerced or just be dumb. Sure, either of those is possible, but so is the option that they just like things a particular way.
So because you can't afford something it's OK to not pay for it? Try explaining that to your local supermarket. You know what I do when I can't afford something? I live without it.
Indeed, and you're welcome to do whatever you like with the thing you bought. Which is a physical disc, a box, some bits of paper, and a license to use the software. You can burn them, sell them, whatever. You didn't buy the software though, so the only rights you have with regard to that are those granted by the license.
Is there anything in law where if the authorities go looking for a missing person, and find them, the "missing" person can state that they WANT to remain "lost" and the authorities will have to honour that??
Absoloutely (at least in the UK, I assume also in the US). I did some work with the National Missing Persons Helpline a while ago and they explained some of the details. Basically if you're under 18 and are reported missing, and then found, you'll be returned to your parents/guardians in almost all cases. The exceptions would be where there are doubts that you'd be safe there in which case you could be taken into care.
Over 18 you're obviously responsible for yourself. If I vanished and my wife reported me missing the police would investigate - looking for foul play, but they'd have to suspect a crime had been committed before really searching for me. If they did find me (or if I contacted them myself to tell them I was OK) but I said that I wanted to remain "lost" they would typically tell my wife that I was OK but they'd have no right to tell her where I was. One exception to that would be if they decided I was not capable of making such a decision or looking after myself (e.g. I'd had a breakdown) in which case as my next of kin they'd notify her of my whereabouts.
If you post material online, someone can send a DMCA notice and have it instantly taken down. They must though state that legally and in good faith they have strong reason to believe they are copyright owners.
No, not "strong reason to believe". By sending the takedown they are stating under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright holders. Read the letter, he says he personally downloaded the file(s) in question and verified that his copyright was being infringed. This is, however, impossible as he has since admitted nothing on that site actually did infringe his copyright. So he lied in the takedown notice.
As crappy as the DMCA may be, it is very clear that if you're sending a takedown you better be 110% sure you're in the right - because otherwise you are liable, no excuses. In this case it appears as if the resolution will be amicable, which is good, but the CodeCodec guy is lucky.
It wasn't the lawyer who sent out the takedown, it was signed by the CEO. His first mistake was sending & signing a document like that without actually understanding what it said. His next mistake was publically admitting that he knew that the takedown notice was inappropriate and in fact he didn't have a claim.
I was taught that it was the number of masts: 0-1 masts == boat, >1 masts == ship. For vessels with smoke stacks, they're supposed to count as masts, and most big ships (e.g. cruise liners) have at least one of each - making them a ship.
The original Matrix had neat (maybe not original) effects but it also had a very sound core science fiction theme along with a lot of great drama and situations I agree with your post in general, but I think the Matrix certainly had original effects. The first bullet time scene had my jaw on the floor - I had never seen anything like it and I couldn't even figure out how it was done (at first, anyway). It was original enough that it's been copied a million times since.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, let's talk about child pr0n. Doesn't matter whether it's virtual or not -- if you're a pedophile, it will still make you want to go out and act on that, just as 'normal' pr0n does for the non-sexual-deviant.
Are you saying that playboy turns normal into rapists? That as someone who is attracted to adult females, that if I view pictures of nude adult females it will make me want to go out and abuse adult females, and furthermore that I am more likely to actually do so?
I think we can look at the stereotypical slashdotter as ample evidence that looking at porn doesn't get you laid or turn you into a crazed sex offender.
But the judgments should be a lot closer to reality, not in the millions of dollars for simple copyright infringement. People that did real harm suffer less than that.
Agreed 100%.
And people get wrongly convicted for crimes all the time. It sucks, but it happens. That doesn't mean we stop charging people and repeal all the laws. What it does mean is we need to look at ways of making it less likely to happen in the future. The way it works now they (the *AA) don't have a lot of incentive to be careful before bringing a case, I'd like to see them pay costs equivalent to their own costs (not the opponents') if they lose, and be penalised for either delaying payment or bringing excessive losing cases. These penalties should include being prevented from bringing any more cases.
It sucks to be falsely accused, and we should try to make the longterm effects of that as small as possible, but we shouldn't go so far as to hamper people/corps from getting legitimate complaints addressed.
I've no idea what you were eating but fried plantains are awesome - soft, sweet and delicious! Like the best banana you ever tasted - fried!
I don't give a shit about corporations, but I do give a shit about people getting caught up in the injustice system just because they fucked around with a corporation.
What about all the customers who got screwed? No access to email etc, the hassle of sitting on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why nothing works. Comcast didn't lose much but a huge number of people were quite seriously inconvenienced, all for no good reason.
When you're already downloading a 50K html page, another 10K of javascript code in the same file inline downloads at full-speed. The external file requires yet another hit to the server, and everything involved therein. It almost never makes any sense
Ummm....let's say a visitor to my site views 30 different pages, all of which use the same ajax lib. Now in your case they're downloading that 10k 30 times (300k), rather than just once. Make sense now? Persistent connections are supported by all modern browsers/servers, and that fixes the whole setup/teardown expense. The only overhead is the actual latency of the HTTP GET and response, which is minimal.
The Wii may have sold an ass load of consoles, but the attach rate (particularly for third party games) is awful. Sure, part of this is that most third party games on Wii are shovelware, but plenty of research is pointing to the fact that all these "new gamers" Wii is creating aren't actually interested in buying games - they're quite happy with Wii Sports.
If you're a software publisher interested in anything other than party games/licensed crap, 360 is the place to be right now.
No, you shouldn't be forced to do anything, of course. The free market will decide. However, part of the free market process isn't just punishing things you don't like by not buying them, it's also rewarding things you do like by supporting them. Hence, whilst I do run adblock, I disable it for sites I particularly like and wish to support. Why? Because I want that site to stay around, simple really. A value judgement - am I willing to put up with some ads in exchange for this content.
Raciest? How so? Because I posted actual photos of India?
Because of the implication. You don't think I could find photos of bad wiring in the US? And a photo of the Taj Mahal wouldn't have served your purpose as well of course...the point is the whole site is about "I have a problem and it's Indian people's fault". That's both wrong and racist.
I was actually talking about L-1, not H-1B (the GP was essentially ranting that they're the same thing, which is patently false).
Other countries do accept US immigrants of course, and in most cases with a lot less paperwork. Any American who thinks that foreign workers like myself just waltz in as we please should take a look at the application process & paperwork, it's a nightmare. So much so that I would probably have given up and gone home by now if it weren't for the fact that I now have an American wife. And to set the record straight, I only came to the US in the first place because my employer wanted to move me to the NY office, and I can tell you they didn't save any money at all in the process! It's a myth that all incoming workers are undercutting local workers, in many cases (like mine) I had very specific knowledge that the company wanted in a different location, and that's what an L-1's for.
What is it about Slashdot and the "Java isn't cross platform" FUD?. I've been a Java developer for around 8 years now. In all that time, developing server side and client side apps I can count on one finger the number of times I've had an app behave significantly differently between platforms. Java really does a fantastic job of running on pretty much any hardware you throw it at - typically I develop/unit test locally on XP and deploy serverside stuff out to Solaris & Linux for QA/prod.
;)
It. Just. Works.
As for C#, as a language it's amazingly similar to Java, with a few nice additions (Delegates, Events, Properties) and some abominations that should have been shot at birth (structs). The big issues I have with it are:
* Deployment model is a pain compared to "stick it all in a jar"
* Memory management is extremely opaque. Whilst many/most people can get away with default GC settings, when you get large scale having the fine control Java gives you in very valuable.
* Not cross platform (really, mono doesn't count). This is a biggy as it means I'm not doing anything server side with it.
* Closed source libraries (makes debugging a hassle).
* The standard class libraries _suck_ compared to Java.
* VS just isn't as good as any of the major Java IDEs
* There isn't anywhere near the community/ecosystem developed yet for C# - it'll come (probably) but right now I miss being able to find nice pre-written libraries for pretty much anything I can think of.
But I do appreciate having access to a sensible, modern dev environment which is native to the desktop OS in use around here, it makes building nice desktop apps a lot easier. As much as I love Java, Swing never really cut it for anything complex. Maybe one day I'll learn SWT
Ermm...what?? Java (generally) works on a single app per JVM model, in fact I have many servers running multiple JVMs (the merits of that is another discussion!). The JVM most certainly does go away when the app does, primarily because the JVM _is_ the app. If you're talking about applets then the browser is responsible for running the lifecycle of the shared JVM in that case, talk to them.
Your crappy racist rant site is full of spam comments. You might like to fix that, or hire an H1B to do it for you. Hardly a commercial for the fantastic skills of American IT professionals.
Speaking as someone who has an L-1, you have no fricking clue what you're talking about. L-1 and H-1B are very different, are used in different situations and apply to different people.
As a country founded and populated almost entirely by immigrants, the reactions of some portions of the population to the very idea that a skilled worker might be allowed to come here, contribute to the GDP and pay insane taxes is pretty amazing to me. If you want to complain about something, look at wacky stuff like the green card lottery not L-1 visas.
so... what about children raised in a red china communism 'I love the government' household? ...
Or what about children raised in a red america christian 'I love god' household?
Of course children pick up on and inherit their parent's beliefs and values - that's a large part of what parents are for. Why should it be different in China? We allow parents to teach their children to be Christian or Jewish, or Republican or Democrat, or racist or homophobic, why not Communist?
5. That's actually what they prefer.
It seems rather insulting to me to assume that because someone thinks differently from you they must either have been coerced or just be dumb. Sure, either of those is possible, but so is the option that they just like things a particular way.
So because you can't afford something it's OK to not pay for it? Try explaining that to your local supermarket. You know what I do when I can't afford something? I live without it.
The screen on the kindle only uses power when it refreshes. The other stuff in there obviously uses power (cpu, memory, data link, etc).
Indeed, and you're welcome to do whatever you like with the thing you bought. Which is a physical disc, a box, some bits of paper, and a license to use the software. You can burn them, sell them, whatever. You didn't buy the software though, so the only rights you have with regard to that are those granted by the license.
Is there anything in law where if the authorities go looking for a missing person, and find them, the "missing" person can state that they WANT to remain "lost" and the authorities will have to honour that??
Absoloutely (at least in the UK, I assume also in the US). I did some work with the National Missing Persons Helpline a while ago and they explained some of the details. Basically if you're under 18 and are reported missing, and then found, you'll be returned to your parents/guardians in almost all cases. The exceptions would be where there are doubts that you'd be safe there in which case you could be taken into care.
Over 18 you're obviously responsible for yourself. If I vanished and my wife reported me missing the police would investigate - looking for foul play, but they'd have to suspect a crime had been committed before really searching for me. If they did find me (or if I contacted them myself to tell them I was OK) but I said that I wanted to remain "lost" they would typically tell my wife that I was OK but they'd have no right to tell her where I was. One exception to that would be if they decided I was not capable of making such a decision or looking after myself (e.g. I'd had a breakdown) in which case as my next of kin they'd notify her of my whereabouts.
If you post material online, someone can send a DMCA notice and have it instantly taken down. They must though state that legally and in good faith they have strong reason to believe they are copyright owners.
No, not "strong reason to believe". By sending the takedown they are stating under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright holders. Read the letter, he says he personally downloaded the file(s) in question and verified that his copyright was being infringed. This is, however, impossible as he has since admitted nothing on that site actually did infringe his copyright. So he lied in the takedown notice.
As crappy as the DMCA may be, it is very clear that if you're sending a takedown you better be 110% sure you're in the right - because otherwise you are liable, no excuses. In this case it appears as if the resolution will be amicable, which is good, but the CodeCodec guy is lucky.
It wasn't the lawyer who sent out the takedown, it was signed by the CEO. His first mistake was sending & signing a document like that without actually understanding what it said. His next mistake was publically admitting that he knew that the takedown notice was inappropriate and in fact he didn't have a claim.
I was taught that it was the number of masts: 0-1 masts == boat, >1 masts == ship. For vessels with smoke stacks, they're supposed to count as masts, and most big ships (e.g. cruise liners) have at least one of each - making them a ship.
The original Matrix had neat (maybe not original) effects but it also had a very sound core science fiction theme along with a lot of great drama and situations
I agree with your post in general, but I think the Matrix certainly had original effects. The first bullet time scene had my jaw on the floor - I had never seen anything like it and I couldn't even figure out how it was done (at first, anyway). It was original enough that it's been copied a million times since.
Seriously? OK, how about this, or this or this. Most of these deals are for considerably better hardware/bandwidth too - as well as being cheaper.