Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

Legally, you are of course correct. However, find me any person who knows all the laws the U.S.A. Please. Heck, even the people who have full, unfettered access to all legislation and case law, the Supreme Court, can't agree on interpretation of it once they look it up! It's stupid that an average person cannot hope to grasp all the laws related to running a local hardware store, let alone a website that serves to a national and international audience.

Hoax or not, this case spotlights how easily our current legal system can be used to spread FUD.

I don't have mod points today, but you'd get one if I did. Great argument against one-size-fits-all messaging.

Call me paranoid, but either U.S. Customs/DHS is totally stupid, or smuggling data into the country physically is the only way to get it in without being noticed nowadays. Has anyone looked into the possibility that Echelon and it's progeny might be active after all? Maybe the NSA can, to a high degree of confidence, wade though all online data traveling across the U.S. backbones. If they can't, and it's really that easy to get data into the U.S. via the 'Net, then the searches of the laptops are either A) only a good way to catch the two people too dumb not to keep their drug kingpin boss's accounts in quickbooks, or B) so incredibly daft that it's mind-blowing. Or, to take it to the next level of crazy paranoia, they want us to think that we have to send data over the interwebs to get it "past customs" so they can slurp it all up into their giant multi-petaflop interweb analyzer.

I'd love to see statistics on how many prosecutions have resulted from border-laptop-searches. Unfortunately, I think the dumb answer is probably correct.

Well, there's the bitch of it. Based on our own western rules Hamas is a legitimate government because they were elected democratically. Now, that's not to say that I agree with them or their methods, but it certainly reveals a flaw in our own rhetoric. It's a dirty and nasty thing, but sometimes democracy is not compatible with our other stated goals of human rights and security. Democracy gives people what the (sometimes slim) majority (of voters) wants; it does not give people neccesarily what they need, or what makes them good neighbors (or even human beings).

D'oh! Thanks for the reminder!

The format used to encode a data stream isn't copyrightable? I'll easily grant you that user-generated data wouldn't be copyrightable by MS (eg the image of you jumping around), but the encoded stream would be if it used a proprietary, closed format, wouldn't it? If so, it' might break the US's DMCA just to try to read the data stream, no?

LOL. I remember this argument in college. And you are correct, everybody makes their own meaning (more so on post modern and later literature, but that's the point of that genre, no?). So? Did you have a bad experience with a professor who got upset that you didn't see the same meaning?

I was actually part of the very experiment you described (again, in college). We found that interpretations varied widely. It was both frustrating and fun. It taught most of us that even when given the same input, people would come to hugely different (and often equally logically valid) conclusions. One reason for this is past experiences. Knowing all this helps me all the time; how else can you explain logical, reasoned analysis of the same input leading to both Smart Conservatives and Smart Liberals? Both have equally defensible points logically, but their starting interpretations of the data are so divergent that they're unlikely to agree. If you can find the divergences, one can better figure out how to re-frame the starting arguments to bring them both to a more agreeable position.

Example: Randall Munroe. I interpret that comic as a dig against literary analysis, but not a definitive one. Randall appears to see everything in life through the lens of mathematics, making Deconstructionism, a highly interpretive practice which is heavily influenced by Philosophy, as unintelligible to him as mathematics above 7 dimensions was to me. However, I can appreciate both his frustration and see how he can be just like the nincompoops who think that since they don't understand the equations behind how quantum foam behaves near an event horizon that it's both useless and meaningless (just in reverse). We all do it sometimes, and it doesn't make me dislike XKCD (it is the only comic I read religiously), but it seems we have different takes on this strip.

You, sir, have a good question. Literary analysis is, by definition, the analysis of literature, so it's taught on literature. I was unclear in saying that it's used all over. The skills used in literary analysis are used all the time. It's our ability to interpret, analogize, and make inferences about meaning that make communication richer than simple communication of action. Listen to or read Carl Sagan's works for a great example of how very intricate and exciting scientific ideas can be communicated in a rich and interesting way that would not be possible without skills which are often described as "interdisciplinary". My overarching message was just that all studies are important; yes, to varying degrees to different people due to both their work and aptitude. But if we completely ignore any subject we do so at our own peril.

You're obviously correct, it didn't help you; but that's probably more to do with you being an asshat than any lack of value of a liberal arts education. For the educable among us, well, we take something from everything. Today I learned that some douchebags think that their experiences apply to everybody, and that if it's not in their experience, it can't exist.

For those who missed the joke, parent was being disingenuous, which in this case is funny as that's the crime the article's author was committing. We all use literary analysis every time we read a news site, watch a movie, or myriad other situations every day; but just like with math we're not tested on it by writing an essay or an equation. Doesn't mean we don't need both. (On a side note, this use of saying the opposite of what you actually mean is true irony.)

Unless I'm reading too much into the parent post, then he's just an asshat ;)

Why'd you post the most insightful comment of this thread AC? I'll bet you know better, but the environment around here may have you skittish. ;)

I was going to mod you troll, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you really do believe that all brains are created equal- but in that case, and by your own argument, you must not be very motivated or lack the discipline to learn the truth of the matter. I wonder what could account for that?

Thanks for saying this for us. It's one of the two hurdles to me using a Kindle2 (no resale and not beach-safe); and I'd still buy one for home if they'd get over this one hurdle. Problems is, with a physical book, the purchaser has control of the medium, with puts them in a powerful position relative to Amazon. Since Amazon controls the license, and there is no individual physical medium, they have all the power. It's essentially free for them to create a new license themselves, so why would they ever resell your license for you? If they create a new license, they get to keep all of the profit instead of sharing it with you, so they'll never allow the re-licensing of books at a cost less than an original license (ie same profit margin). Heck, the cost of re-sale of licenses would probably have to be higher than "new" because of the infrastructure needed to do the re-sale verification. Guess I'll stick with dead-tree for a while longer.

Not so in my experience.

Which is why I used the word "sometimes" and speculated as to whether it was the case or not. In the two big instances where I thought the FOSS was the best choice for the business, I was told that FOSS was "unreliable". You have a different experience. Many data points.

You are right, but sometimes what's best for the company cannot be achieved through reasoned, logical argument. While the poster and his manager should sit down and objectively evaluate all products, if they are neck and neck, then FOSS will usually lose, in my experience, because of the FUD factor. If that's the case, then he needs the "other" arguments for the FOSS package. Since he didn't tell us the complete situation, we'll never really know what's needed here.