Another nail in the coffin for canals and tharks, as scientists claim Mars never even had oceans in the past, just Nemesis-class asteroid strikes that scoured the surface like a…
Another nail in the coffin for canals and tharks, as scientists claim Mars never even had oceans in the past, just Nemesis-class asteroid strikes that scoured the surface like a self-cleaning oven and unleashed massive walls of water as the super-heated steam they produced precipitated down.
Damn. Where’s Ray Bradbury when you need him?
Edward Felton has an interesting approach to overreaching-ad-absurdem copyright assertions — ask for exceptions. Call them and ask for exceptions. Call WalMart and ask permission to tell your friends about…
Edward Felton has an interesting approach to overreaching-ad-absurdem copyright assertions — ask for exceptions.
Call them and ask for exceptions. Call WalMart and ask permission to tell your friends about their prices. (WalMart told FatWallet’s ISP that that’s infringement.) Call Turner Broadcasting and ask permission to fast-forward through the commercials in their shows. (Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner told Cableworld that commercial skipping is illegal.) Call Adobe and ask permission to read their e-book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to your kid. (One of Adobe’s licenses prohibited this.)
In a sense, this is sort of how common law works — by building up a set of precedents, you more reasonably define the boundaries of what particular uses are and are not prohibited. This helps counter one of the reasons why main reasons why these sorts of stupid assertions get put in place — the fear of “missing something” that will let IP get misused. In return, it can also help identify inconsistencies in policy that are helpful either to a company or to the court.
(via BoingBoing)
An amusing (if it doesn’t happen to you) story here about folks being treated with radioisotopes being strip searched by Geiger counter-wielding transit authority cops in New York. Talk about…
An amusing (if it doesn’t happen to you) story here about folks being treated with radioisotopes being strip searched by Geiger counter-wielding transit authority cops in New York. Talk about invasive treatment …
On the one hand, it’s interesting (and even heartening, I supposed) that there is some sort of checking going on for folks carrying radioactive materials in this context. On the other hand, the Law of Unintended Consequences keeps rearing it’s ugly jack-booted head (to mix my metaphors), as in this case. Things are never quite as simple as they seem they would be sitting around a conference table.
It’s time for three threesomes of Thursday! Hoo-hah!…
It’s time for three threesomes of Thursday! Hoo-hah!
With the continued moves by various agencies in the Federal government to expand the data it collects and the way it makes use of it for law enforcement anti-terrorism purposes,…
With the continued moves by various agencies in the Federal government to expand the data it collects and the way it makes use of it for law enforcement anti-terrorism purposes, one old saw that keeps being brought out is the idea that the “innocent” don’t have to worry about the info collected about them because, hey, they’re innocent. “Only the guilty have something to hide.”
But here’s an interesting analysis that notes that innocense is probably a lot more limited and complex a concept than folks who quote that aphorism are willing to face, and we tolerate a certain measure of guilt because of the lack of enforcement.
Indeed, the real point I am after might be understood as applying only a little to any existing laws, for it also has a forward-looking aspect: in times to come we may be confronted with new laws that are asinine or much worse, and when that happens the government’s limited ability to enforce its wishes because of practical constraints will serve as an important brake on its overreaching.
An example the author gives is the speed limit — if there were an effortless method for the authorities to ticket anyone who goes 1 m.p.h. over the speed limit, how happy would folks be about that? Would we change speed laws? Or …
On this view, perfect enforcement would amount to a change in the law itself from a pragmatic standpoint, and sometimes an undesirable one. If the government suddenly were able to costlessly identify and jail everyone who has used illegal drugs in the past X number of years, I expect that the underlying substantive laws in question would be changed very promptly. Some of our distinguished public officials would, ahem, be leading the way.
Maybe that’s a good thing — the tolerance of minor law-breaking could very well be argued to allow a broader, incremental rot in what we consider to be acceptible behavior, a slippery slope where exceeding the speed limit by 5 mph becomes exceeding it by 20 mph or more.
On the other hand, the real world is probably not as binary (legal/illegal, or, more importantly, moral/immoral, right/wrong, allowable/unallowable, tolerable/intolerable) as all that. Having our legal system, including its enforcement, reflect that may be uncomfortable, but we should at least consider the discomfort of “Total Information Awareness” — and the potential of acting on it — as well.
Last night I came home around 5 and flipped on the TV, as is my usual pattern. A few moments of static came up, followed by the TV (detecting no…
Last night I came home around 5 and flipped on the TV, as is my usual pattern.
A few moments of static came up, followed by the TV (detecting no signal) shifting over to a blue screen.
Hmmm.
Cycled the power on the TV, the cable box, etc. The cable box was feeding show descriptions, but not any shows.
Hmmm.
Called AT&T Broadband, our provider (at least until we start getting bills from Comcast). After stepping through the menus, a very friendly and apologetic lady got on and, after taking all my contact info, informed me there were no trouble tickets open in the area.
Then, after ten minutes on (silent) hold (thank heavens for speaker phones), she came back and apologized for the delay, that there was work going on in the area, a thousand apologies, we’ve been credited for today, apologies, everything should be fine later on. Oh, and sorry for the inconvenience.
They have that apologies thing down pat.
Okay, well, that happens. Hung up, and we lived the evening without live TV. Kitten watched a Dora the Explorer video, and we ended up talking about vacation plans and going to bed early.
This morning, I got a call from Margie. Cable was still out. I got her the customer service number.
A bit later, she calls me back, fuming. Nope, no work being done in our area. Nope, no other reports of problems. Must be our cable box. They’ll send a technician out. Oh, but it’s too late to schedule anyone today, and Margie’s working tomorrow, so nobody will be able to come out until Friday. If only we’d called them back after 6 o’clock last night — they’d have been able to schedule someone to come out today.
“Um, it would have been nice if the lady last night had mentioned that.”
“I said that. The person I was talking to apologized.”
They have that down pat, as I said.
“They did credit us through Friday,” Margie continued. “That hardly makes up for the stupidity, though.”
So. Fortunately, Katherine has a decent supply of Blue’s Clues, Dora and Wiggles (shudder) videos, and we have about 90% of the Disney animated film DVDs ever released. And maybe Margie and I can catch up on Firefly before I have to get the tape back to Doyce for Friday’s show.
Or, of course, we can just have the TV off.
But it would be nice if it were our choice, not the dim-bulb AT&T folks.
Feh.
An interesting bit from someone’s experience in mandatory diversity training, wherein a woman’s claiming she had never been oppressed became grounds for oppression itself. Yeesh. (via InstaPundit)…
An interesting bit from someone’s experience in mandatory diversity training, wherein a woman’s claiming she had never been oppressed became grounds for oppression itself.
Yeesh.
(via InstaPundit)
An interesting case is coming up before the Supreme Court. The famous Miranda warning, et al., is derived from the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Given the coercive nature of…
An interesting case is coming up before the Supreme Court. The famous Miranda warning, et al., is derived from the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Given the coercive nature of the state, of being in police custody (just look at any pre-Miranda crime TV or movie for examples), it’s been an extremely powerful protection against police essentially beating confessions out of people.
In the case before the court, though, is the question of whether police must Mirandize suspects, or stop asking them questions when they ask for a lawyer, if they don’t plan on prosecuting them. If I’m not really interested in sending Joe Perp into the slammer, but I think he’s got the goods on Sammy Wiseguy, can I interrogate Joe in a way that would invalidate using any of the evidence so gathered against Joe, but still use that evidence on Sammy?
Note that even if the Supremes rule that this is permissable, it’s not a return to the days of rubber hoses and physical abuse (to the extent that those days are behind us). Such behavior is still illegal, especially if the police are going to turn around and cut the arrestee loose. But it could put an interesting twist in the decisions police make up front about interrogations — and for some interesting new episodes of Law & Order.
Y’know, most people I caught posting pictures of Katherine on the Internet, I’d go out and visit with a baseball bat in hand. But when Doyce does it again and…
Lordy, I’ve been a slacker on doing these. It’s the Tuesday This-or-That….
Lordy, I’ve been a slacker on doing these. It’s the Tuesday This-or-That.
True Porn Clerk Stories seems to have drawn to a close, sadly but appropriately. Ali, who described in both hilarious and poignant detail her life as a clerk at a…
True Porn Clerk Stories seems to have drawn to a close, sadly but appropriately. Ali, who described in both hilarious and poignant detail her life as a clerk at a video store with a large adult movie section, has gone off to new employment, and has written her “valedictory address.”
To everyone else, I’d just like to say this: Be nice to your video clerks. Rewind, take your late fees like an adult, and keep the spooge to a minimum. Better yet, be nice to anyone you meet in a customer service position. Odds are very, very good that they’re having a rougher day than you are, and it’s easy to become a store favorite just by being The Friendly Guy Who Never Yells.
Like a long-running show on closing night, we draw the curtain and turn off the lights. Good stuff.
After NASA decided against publishing a book trying to debunk the conspiracy theorists who still think the moon landings were faked, European astronomers are going to try to use the…
After NASA decided against publishing a book trying to debunk the conspiracy theorists who still think the moon landings were faked, European astronomers are going to try to use the VLT array in the Andes to actually take pictures of the lunar modules left on the moon’s surface.
Of course, there’s no satisfying some people.
Supporters of the conspiracy theory welcomed the news that astronomers were to photograph the landing sites. But Marcus Allen, the British publisher of Nexus magazine and a long-time advocate of the theory, said photographs of the lander would not prove that the US put men on the moon. “Getting to the moon really isn’t much of a problem – the Russians did that in 1959,” he said. “The big problem is getting people there.”
According to Mr Allen, NASA was forced to send robots to the moon and faked the manned missions because radiation levels in space were lethal to humans.
(via Wilde)
About ten minutes ago, I got an e-mail to everyone in the office from one of our long-time employees here. She indicated that someone had stolen a brown suede jacket…
About ten minutes ago, I got an e-mail to everyone in the office from one of our long-time employees here. She indicated that someone had stolen a brown suede jacket from her cube yesterday, one that had been given her by her late husband, and she both wanted to alert the office to this kind of theft and ask for it back, no questions asked.
About five minutes ago, I was exiting the men’s room and passed by a conference table in the atrium. I noted a brown jacket stuffed in one of the chairs there, and confirmed it was suede. I went to the lady, asked her about it, she came over, looked at it, initially thought it wasn’t hers (amazing how we never really look at things we own), then realized it was.
The look on her face and the hug she gave me was one of the nicest things to happen to me here in the office in some time.
An interesting thing fell out of my NaNoWriMo effort this year. I started ripping CDs. (For those even less technically inclined than I am in this arena, this means copying…
An interesting thing fell out of my NaNoWriMo effort this year. I started ripping CDs.
(For those even less technically inclined than I am in this arena, this means copying music files from CDs onto my PC, usually converting them into a less sizable format.)
It occured to me I wanted music. I didn’t want to be dependent on whatever CDs I had around — particularly since it usually meant mismatched discs and cases between work and home.
Doyce, of course, has been doing this for eons, and when he solicited musical contributions for his own writing time, I felt vaguely Neanderthalic giving him a stack of CDs to borrow, when everyone else was either e-mailing or burning-and-mailing CDs of MP3 files. (“Oh, look, Jackie! CDA-formatted tunes, a dozen or so to the disk. How … positively quaint!”)
So I ripped some music off the CDs I had at the office. I also ripped some music off of some games I enjoyed (game music, like soundtracks, are my preferred entertainment during writing).
I initially made use of some of the media player software I already had — WMP, Real, as well as one that comes with the CD burning software I have. They were nice, but vaguely restricting, and generally limited in what formats they could run. So, like so many folks getting into this, I downloaded Winamp and started playing with that.
So now I have music wherever I go (or wherever I go with my notebook, which is most places). Sweet.
Of course, I realize I’m still probably several years behind the technology curve here (“Why, look, Mary … he’s using Winamp and ripping to MP3. How … positively quaint!”), but, hey, I’m a pointy-haired manager, so give me a break.
Okay, since everyone else has been going ballistic over this (well, if not everyone else, then certainly plenty of folks), let me throw in my two cents. In a time…
Okay, since everyone else has been going ballistic over this (well, if not everyone else, then certainly plenty of folks), let me throw in my two cents.
In a time of great moral and political crisis — the War on Terror and its associated follies and challenges — passions get heated. Damn, they should get heated. Whether you think the greatest threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is Islamofascism or John Ashcroft and the rest of the Shadow Government, being impassioned is a good thing. Being sullen, silent, and withdrawn is not.
Which, in part, is why the latest Big Craze in the blogosphere has me irked, to wit, not only removing links to sites you disagree with (“delinking”), but doing so pointedly, as though this were some great Moral Triumph over Evil.
To go further, some folks have actually, formally, and with great fanfare, delinked folks who have links on their pages to folks they dislike. In other words, it would be like my saying, “You know, Doyce has a link in his blogroll to [The Nexus of All Evil], and I can’t stand those folks, so I’m getting rid of my link to Doyce’s page, because the linker of my enemy is my enemy.” Or something like that.
Now don’t get me wrong. What you link to from your page is your business. What I link to from mine is mine. And if I do something on my page, including having a link there, that you find horribly awful and mean and nasty and irreedemably evil, it’s certainly your prerogative to not only delink me, but to never read me again.
But …
1. Don’t be an asshole about it. Don’t get up on a soap box and talk about what a fine human you are by removing that offending link. Don’t shout the virtual equivalent of “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Don’t toot your own horn. It’s not that big a deal, and smacks of self-aggrandizement and self-righteousness, which in most polite society is consdered déclassé. Not to mention stupid and obnoxious.
2. Don’t lean on your friends. Deciding to delink someone because they have a link to NAMBLA or something is your choice. Telling them that if they don’t get rid of that link you’ll delink them is coercive. It reads like, “If you want to be in my club, you can’t be in their club.”
Now, maybe you can’t be a friend (or reader) of someone who has a link to Those People. Fine. If you have to coerce them into dropping that link, does that make them a more suited friend (or writer) to you?
Note, of course, that while this sort of behavior is rude, and stupid, unfriendly, and counter-productive, it’s not “censorship.” If John Ashcroft tells you that if you don’t delink from that page, he’s sending the Feds over, that’s censorship. If Joe-Bob ReadMyBlog tells you if you don’t delink from that page he’s going to delink you, that’s just Joe-Bob being an asshole.
One of the joys of the World Wide Web is that web aspect — the idea of interconnectedness, that you can go from place to place in an undending chain of links and cross-references, learning more, seeing more, discovering new things. Efforts by folks to “sever” those weblines to certain places and opininons through organized boycotting campaigns threatens the fabric of that web, and ultimately impoverishes all of us. It encourages insularism, and ultimately it makes everyone “sullen, silent and withdrawn.” Which would be a hell of a shame, if not suicidal, at a time like this.
Jeez. Twice in one morning I find a case of Brits acting in a loopy manner, trying to prevent crime not by posing an effective threat to criminals, but by…
Jeez. Twice in one morning I find a case of Brits acting in a loopy manner, trying to prevent crime not by posing an effective threat to criminals, but by restricting legitimate activity that might be tempting to someone.
First off, there’s the story of a British school that forbade video and digital cameras from the Christmas pageant because of fears the pictures might end up in the hands of pedophiles. Next up, we’ll ban all digital images of children, of course. And digital cameras. And paintings. And …
And then there’s this little bit of advice from the London police, which basically says “Don’t use cell phones in public because someone might steal them. I mean, sure, it’s one thing to be streetwise, but, damn.
Of course, given that England and Wales have the highest crime rate among developed nations, maybe there’s something to that warning.
Or maybe it’s just easier to tell people to hide their cell phones (and their children) than to do something about crime.
(via DaddyWarblogs and especially InstaPundit)
The US Supreme Court has agreed to review its 1986 decision (Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186) that upheld the right of states to pass laws against homosexual acts, generally…
The US Supreme Court has agreed to review its 1986 decision (Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186) that upheld the right of states to pass laws against homosexual acts, generally classified as oral or anal sex.
Bully for them.
I really scratch my head over this sort of law, in the face of the Fourteenth Amendment diktat for Equal Protection under the law (not to mention more nebulous privacy rights). It seems to me, to support such laws, you have to take one of the following positions:
1. These laws treat everyone equally. The problem is, they don’t, either on the face of it (laws in states that specify same-sex acts), or in practice (laws in states that outlaw anal or oral sex, but, when actually enforced, are only enforced on homosexuals). The assertion that laws in states that make illegal same-sex acts provide Equal Protection” because they apply to homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals who might think about “experimenting” doesn’t pass the horse laugh test.
2. There is a qualitative difference in oral or anal sex depending on the genders of one or another (or both) of the individuals involved. In other words, Equal Protection doesn’t apply because these are not equal cases. This point has at least some ground for argument, since I can think of at least one other significant instance in US law where qualities of the participants in a sex act are considered in its legality: age.
But that quality is not a relatively arbitrary one, but is founded in a body of law regarding consent and minors. There is no question in this case, or in these laws, of consent, or of the ability of the participants to consent.
Further, if you can argue that there is some societally-significant quality (other than aesthetics) that makes oral sex on a women legally different depending on whether it’s a man or a woman on the giving end, then you can also make the same argument about the race of the participants, or the nationality, or the religion, or the social class. Such arguments have been made in the past, but are generally considered abhorrent by the majority of citizens in the nation at this time. I think the principle applies here, too.
Ah, but what about morality? The DA in the Texas case, defending their law, says, “Morality is a fluid concept and public opinion regarding moral issues may change over time, but what has not changed is the understanding that government may require adherence to certain widely accepted moral standards and sanction deviations from those standards.”
Actually, arguing the constitutionality of a law on just moral principles is (and should be) a difficult line to take. That’s because, as the DA notes, it’s a fluid concept, and tends to run into First Amendment barriers as well, which is why the law is more often based on questions of preventing/punishing objective harm, or, slightly more nebulously, the related cause of preserving public order. If we’re talking about consensual acts conducted in private, neither fears of objective harm nor public disorder seem to pertain.
Given the Court’s recent history on privacy cases, and its willingness to rehear its 86 decision, I’ve got a moderate level of confidence that the Texas law (et al.) will be struck down. Most people I know, even those who have moral qualms about homosexuality, tend to take the line of the British actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who said, “My dear, I don’t care what they do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.” I think the Supremes will agree.
UPDATE: Via FindLaw, the request to the Supremes to hear the case and overturn the conviction can be found here. The argument against can be found here.
There’s a lot I could say about Pat Robertson’s recent statements about Islam being an inherently violent and hateful religion. But not only does Robertson spell out his hypocrisy in…
There’s a lot I could say about Pat Robertson’s recent statements about Islam being an inherently violent and hateful religion. But not only does Robertson spell out his hypocrisy in clear, bold terms, JillMatrix has already beat me to the punch.
Where should you design sidewalks and paths in a garden? The easiest way to determine that is to simply plant grass, then look to see where people wear a rut….
Where should you design sidewalks and paths in a garden? The easiest way to determine that is to simply plant grass, then look to see where people wear a rut.
On a related vein, some folks in Amsterdam have been using GPS systems worn by ordinary people to map out where people go in the city. It’s not a road map per se, but a map of movements.
Cool stuff.
(via BoingBoing)
Heck, I was going to do a nice long post about Thanksgiving dinner and related festivities and all, with the in-laws, and the Testerfolk and Randy all in attendance, but…
Heck, I was going to do a nice long post about Thanksgiving dinner and related festivities and all, with the in-laws, and the Testerfolk and Randy all in attendance, but Doyce pegged it:
That done (around 2pm), we went over to the Consortium for chatting and games. And food. Gods forbid that we should forget the food, because it was good.
He also forgot the drink, both good wine and killer margaritas.
But that wasn’t enough to overwhelm the food, both chippy snacks beforehand, and some marvelous deep-fried bird (and mashed potatoes and veggies and salad and more desserts brought over by Jackie than anyone could have dreamed of eating).
Mmmm. And a good time had by all.