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Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

shutup. just shut the fuck up. you neither know you are talking about, nor have any valid point to make. its not about solving the digital divide any more than the housing thing is about solving poverty. its been widely and clearly shown that there is an increase in opportunity and outcomes between homes with and home without internet access. you're essentially complaining about improving someones potential opportunities to enrich themselves and make their life better and maybe even get out of that housing you mock. but again, you have no valid point, so therefore theres little sense in talking sense, like pointing out to you that without subsidized housing many of these people would be on street, homeless, increasing both crime rates and homeless and deaths among the impoverished. Theoretically we are a civilized nation. But a civilized nation doesnt advocate intentionally making it harder if not impossible for those most disadvantaged to improve themselves, nor advocate for them to die quickly and get out of the way.

Well spoken, bro

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

The "digital divide" is a real thing. It's the difference between spoiled people like yourself growing up with a computer in your home, and inner city kids who have no computer access at home and have to wait on line at the public library to get a 15 minute time slot.

If you don't recognize that in this society those without computer access are at a disadvantage, you are as stupid as you are uncaring.

Submission + - Power -- And by that I mean Free Broadband -- To the People

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, are leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.

Comment Re:Other things they said couldn't be done... (Score 2) 571

I used to enjoy internet discussions - back in the early 90's when the bar to entry was at least a 105-110 IQ. Now that everyone can "discuss" it becomes obvious that the roughly 23-25% of humanity who are idiots have roughly 75% more time and willingness to post than anyone else which drives the bulk of the sensible posters away and it spirals downwards from there.

The concept of free and open discussion is a failed concept. There need to be bars to entry in order to prevent the 25% from taking up 90% of a forum's bandwidth. I am sure that you have noticed that on any given forum the most prolific posters are inevitably the worst posters - driving other far more informed and interesting posters away? It could be something as simple as requiring a credit card and a $2 fee to participate. When you troll, flame,spam or repeatedly say something incredibly, undeniably stupid than you and your card is banned. There are only so many $2 fees and so many credit cards that someone can reasonably obtain. Additionally how about limiting the posting privileges of both the newest AND THE MOST PROLIFIC contributors so that one person can not dominate a discussion.

I know , I know - cue the rallying cry of "freeze peach!" once again and those are the posters that I am talking about.

Comment Why Is This Still A Thing? (Score 1) 986

Why is this still being posted? Rossi has a background of being convicted for fraud. The "e-cat" scam has been going on for at least 6 years now with nothing at all to show for it. Not. One Single. Thing. There is even less chance of Rossi having developed a cold fusion device than there is of Moller successfully building an actual flying car.

Hey I've got an idea let's put Rossi's ecat into Moller's flying car and send both those a-holes to the moon.

 

Comment Re:I know this is going to sound crazy... (Score 3, Funny) 294

Yes - How insightful! And instead of having a piece of pie now and then why don't we all just satisfy ourselves with some unsweetened bran flakes. Oh hey! Why eat ice cream when you can eat some oats? Why have a steak when you can eat a stick of celery?? Just why DO people want to have a bit of pleasure in their lives anyways? More importantly, exactly how do the most trite comments manage to get modded up to "insightful" ??

Comment Re:The worlds largest optical/near-IR telescope (Score 2) 76

Annnnndddd wrong . Without regard to the annoying pedantry involved in conflating a radio telescope with an optical telescope, of which this article is obviously about, it is in fact the Arecibo radio-telescope which is the largest radio telescope, neither of which has jack to do with this article.

Comment Re:Key Point Missing (Score 2) 34

The summary misses a key point. Yes they scan and store the entire book, but they are _NOT_ making the entire book available to everyone. For the most part they are just making it searchable.

Agreed that it's not in the summary, but as you correctly note, it's just a "summary". Anyone who reads the underlying blog post will read this among the facts on which the court based its opinion: "The public was allowed to search by keyword. The search results showed only the page numbers for the search term and the number of times it appeared; none of the text was visible."

So those readers who RTFA will be in the know.

Submission + - Appeals Court finds scanning to be fair use in Authors Guild v Hathitrust

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In Authors Guild v Hathitrust, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that scanning whole books and making them searchable for research use is a fair use. In reaching its conclusion, the 3-judge panel reasoned, in its 34-page opinion (PDF), that the creation of a searchable, full text database is a "quintessentially transformative use", that it was "reasonably necessary" to make use of the entire works, that maintaining maintain 4 copies of the database was reasonably necessary as well, and that the research library did not impair the market for the originals. Needless to say, this ruling augurs well for Google in Authors Guild v. Google, which likewise involves full text scanning of whole books for research.

Submission + - Councilman/Open Source Developer submits Open Source bill (gothamgazette.com)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: New York City Council Member Ben Kallos (KallosEsq), who also happens to be a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developer, just introduced legislation to mandate a government preference for FOSS and creating a Civic Commons website to facilitate collaborative purchasing of software. He argues that NYC could save millions of dollars with the Free and Open Source Software Preferences Act 2014, pointing out that the city currently has a $67 million Microsoft ELA. Kallos said: "It is time for government to modernize and start appreciating the same cost savings as everyone else."

Comment A little late, but welcome (Score 1) 136

A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

A malcontent like myself might be a little unhappy that it took the courts ten (10) years to finally come to grips with the personal jurisdiction issue, which would have been obvious to 9 out of 10 second year law students from the get go, and I personally have been pointing it out and writing about it since 2005; but at least they finally did get there.

And a philosopher might wonder how much suffering might have been spared had the courts followed the law back in 2004 when the John Doe madness started; but of course I'm a lawyer, not a philosopher. :)

Bottom line, though: this is a good thing, a very good thing. Ten (10) years late in coming, but good nonetheless. - R.B. )

Comment HP is not the company it used to be (Score 1) 288

I remember when HP made really, really (!!) great stuff {sigh}
Those days are long gone.

The Woz came from there originally and almost never left because the environment for engineers was just that good but the money grubbing CEOs and B.O.D. killed all that long ago

Today HP shares only 2 letters with it's former glory and that is not nearly enough.

HP needs to just die and go away - soon.

Comment MetaFilter: Been There Done That (Score 2) 108

It's interesting (and not coincidental) to note that perhaps the very best of the best of the moderators is stepping down and several of the younger newer and frankly less ... ummm ... rock solid of the moderators are remaining.

I tried MeFi some years back and grew disaffected with the environment. I was initially attracted because of the very heavy attention to keeping things on topic and keeping the crazies away but soon grew disenchanted when it became apparent that the uber-heavy moderation was not applied uniformly. Friends of the site were granted far more leniency than others and the sheer amount of what I am forced to label as misplaced political correctness from the younger staff (staff who are staying on) was outright annoying.

Google did not kill MetaFilter. Metafilter did that to themselves by allowing disparity in their moderation and substituting hipsteresque faux-concern for alleged dubious subject matter to prevail over true conversation. I have dropped in from time to time to watch the membership decline and have seen the conversation stagnate.

Buy-bye Mefi (and Boing-Boing) - you were great when you were great but now .... not so much.
The world moves on.

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