I'm with you on this one. I don't have a problem with the basic concept of "all states must use this basic format for their driver's licenses." It would certainly be a lot better than dealing with 50 (actually, more, since many states, such as Maine, are or recently finished the transition to new styles) completely different styles and trying to remember what they all are. The real problem will be what they make the standard. "All states must put their state seal in the top left corner, have the person's name, address, and license number, in that order, below the state seal, and have the photograph on the right side of the license" would be fine. "All licenses must have an RFID chip that can be read from 10 feet away and be registered with the federal government to be stored in a database" would be not so fine.
And just to try to further boost Slashdot's opinion of the state, I'd like to mention that Maine made marijuana a legal prescription drug about 10 years ago.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
(The Constitution was later amended to allow the taxes to be based on personal income)
Obviously people can disagree on how much money should be collected and spent for the purpose, but I would imagine that programs such as Medicare and Medicaid could easily be defended in the Supreme Court with the General Welfare clause.
Therefore, to do as he insists, he would have to take control of those servers.
Because no leaders in the governments of any other countries would agree to participate in a similar plan and stick a "Think of the Children!" label on it?
Möbius loops also only have one side and one edge. Maybe he meant that not only will people just end up where they started, but everyone will be stuck on the same circle of advertising pages?
The press is usually paid by the company they work for (or by their audience directly or advertising in many cases online) to report on the activities of other people, organizations, etc. This bill targeted people that were paid by a corporation or lobbying firm to write specifically about the primary interests of that company. Someone paid by Fox News to write about how the government shouldn't have the ability to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug costs would not be subject to this law. Someone paid by Pfizer to do so would be subject to this law.
Is that really all that surprising? More market means more profit. More profit means more money for the shareholders. Far too often, money comes before morals in the world of stocks.
Either way, whether or not the information was paid for should not affect how I evaluate the information.
True, but if your information comes from a paid source, it is rather likely to be inaccurate or misleading and almost definitely incomplete. As a truly horrible analogy, consider drinking alcohol. If I tell you that drinking alcohol makes you feel happy, you may go out and start loading up on alcohol. While what I said may be factually correct, I failed to mention one very important piece of information, specifically that when the alcohol level in your bloodstream reaches about 0.4%, you'll probably die. Should I have been required to tell you that I wasn't giving you all the information you need? If I was some random guy, maybe you wouldn't take me very seriously. What if I said I was a doctor when I was actually paid by a company that produces beer?
I don't know of any law that says a weatherman must be qualified in any way to broadcast their interpretation of public weather data.
I had thought that as well, but a co-worker of mine disagreed. I'm not sure if there's any actual law or regulation requiring it, but I think most, if not all, forecasters working in television news actually do have degrees in meteorology. Yes, meteorology is a four-year college degree. You actually have to know a fair amount of chemistry, physics, and geology to make any sense of the metric tons of data involved in trying to predict the weather.
No, I'm pretty sure he meant gorillas. They're probably less expensive than guerrillas, ripping someone in half is just as effective as shooting them, and you don't really have to worry about them ratting you out afterwards.
Did you actually remove anything from the "theft victim"? Nope.
Note: the following statements should in no way be interpreted as defense of or agreement with the RIAA and its tactics.
I'm not sure about other states, but where I grew up (Maine), theft of services is a crime, even though the victim didn't lose any physical property. I worked at an amusement park when I was in school, and anyone who came into the park or went on rides without paying to do so could be arrested for theft of services. Obviously there are differences between sneaking into an amusement park (or movie theater, etc.) and downloading a song, but the whole "they still have their property, so it isn't theft" argument is not necessarily correct.
It doesn't remove the tie-in, since these things can change just as easily in an open source program as they can in a closed source program. The difference (which of course is still a benefit of open source) is that the change is transparent, so you have a chance, though probably a very small one, of fighting against that change. And in the worst case, you can undo the change on your copy of the source code and recompile.
I'm assuming this was meant as a joke, but still, it's a very bad idea. Yes, the guy will complain to the cops, and yes, it will be you who ends up in jail. In the US, you can break into someone's house, trip on a rug, fall down the stairs, and sue the owner of the house for liability for your injuries. It's a sad country.
I was just thinking about this. Not knowing exactly how this IE7-on-Linux works or how IETab accesses IE's rendering engine, I wonder if it would now be possible to have a Linux version of IETab.
Slashdot Mirror
And crab-eating? That should be lobster, not crab. Only in Maine can you buy lobsters from trucks on the side of the road for about $5 per pound.
I'm with you on this one. I don't have a problem with the basic concept of "all states must use this basic format for their driver's licenses." It would certainly be a lot better than dealing with 50 (actually, more, since many states, such as Maine, are or recently finished the transition to new styles) completely different styles and trying to remember what they all are. The real problem will be what they make the standard. "All states must put their state seal in the top left corner, have the person's name, address, and license number, in that order, below the state seal, and have the photograph on the right side of the license" would be fine. "All licenses must have an RFID chip that can be read from 10 feet away and be registered with the federal government to be stored in a database" would be not so fine.
Which is actually illegal. Social Security numbers are explicitly prohibited from being used for identification purposes.
And just to try to further boost Slashdot's opinion of the state, I'd like to mention that Maine made marijuana a legal prescription drug about 10 years ago.
Obviously people can disagree on how much money should be collected and spent for the purpose, but I would imagine that programs such as Medicare and Medicaid could easily be defended in the Supreme Court with the General Welfare clause.
This may be a decent explanation.
Möbius loops also only have one side and one edge. Maybe he meant that not only will people just end up where they started, but everyone will be stuck on the same circle of advertising pages?
OMG, ponies???
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. Please don't hate me.
The press is usually paid by the company they work for (or by their audience directly or advertising in many cases online) to report on the activities of other people, organizations, etc. This bill targeted people that were paid by a corporation or lobbying firm to write specifically about the primary interests of that company. Someone paid by Fox News to write about how the government shouldn't have the ability to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug costs would not be subject to this law. Someone paid by Pfizer to do so would be subject to this law.
Is that really all that surprising? More market means more profit. More profit means more money for the shareholders. Far too often, money comes before morals in the world of stocks.
It wasn't a law to restrict free speech. It was a law to restrict paid speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_U
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto
I'm not sure about other states, but where I grew up (Maine), theft of services is a crime, even though the victim didn't lose any physical property. I worked at an amusement park when I was in school, and anyone who came into the park or went on rides without paying to do so could be arrested for theft of services. Obviously there are differences between sneaking into an amusement park (or movie theater, etc.) and downloading a song, but the whole "they still have their property, so it isn't theft" argument is not necessarily correct.
It doesn't remove the tie-in, since these things can change just as easily in an open source program as they can in a closed source program. The difference (which of course is still a benefit of open source) is that the change is transparent, so you have a chance, though probably a very small one, of fighting against that change. And in the worst case, you can undo the change on your copy of the source code and recompile.
I'm assuming this was meant as a joke, but still, it's a very bad idea. Yes, the guy will complain to the cops, and yes, it will be you who ends up in jail. In the US, you can break into someone's house, trip on a rug, fall down the stairs, and sue the owner of the house for liability for your injuries. It's a sad country.
I was just thinking about this. Not knowing exactly how this IE7-on-Linux works or how IETab accesses IE's rendering engine, I wonder if it would now be possible to have a Linux version of IETab.