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Comment Re:Superman (Score 1) 249

Or the Make-a-Wish Foundation felt that what they were doing was fair-use. Remember, while they dressed the kid in an off-the-shelf costume, they called him "Batkid", not "Batman"

Scroll down to the list of pictures and see if you can detect any DC-owned intellectual property.

http://sf.wish.org/wishes/wish...

Comment Re:No thanks. (Score 1) 139

Who is going to rob, rape, and/or murder you? The person being tracked via satellite who is specifically responding to your request for a pick up? It's not even worth it to try and rob an Uber driver. You would need a stolen phone and credit card in order to be able to do that, otherwise it's pretty easy to prove exactly who was there. It's not like with a taxi that you can anonymously hail, shoot them while they're sitting in the seat, take everything and go.

Comment Re:It'll come down to an opinion (Score 1) 255

Using Tor is not the norm, and so then it becomes a matter of scrutinizing what it does, who uses it, and for what purposes.

The same could be said for any emerging technology. That argument would have applied when SSL was new. Maybe one day Tor will be standard, you buy a new computer, get online, and it's using Tor without you ever changing any settings. The EFF is already saying that everyone should use Tor. At this point, the only reason it's not the norm is because it's fairly new. I wouldn't be surprised if we see computers within a couple years marketed with privacy in mind that come with Tor already installed and configured, or ISPs adding exit nodes to their networks as a PR privacy initiative.

Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 1) 170

I remember when Patriot passed, I was very suspicious of it. It all got rammed through the system a little too easily considering the power it granted to the government. Everyone was so gung-ho at the time though. That also reminds me of when we decided to bail out all the big banks. I was the only person at the dinner table saying that they should be allowed to fail and that other, more responsible, banks would buy up the pieces and life in the free market would go on. Everyone was giving me reasons why that wouldn't work, and then years later they were trying to tell me why the banks should have been allowed to fail.

It seems that people forget about their convictions really easily in the face of extraordinary circumstances. The fact is that those circumstances are the most important time to keep your convictions. Patriot should have never been passed. The promise to repeal it was the entire reason I voted for Obama the first time. Bastard really got me, didn't he?

Comment Re:Government regulation of political speech (Score 1) 308

All right, so Adelson evades the ban by paying the Times' owners $3 billion for the paper, runs his piece - indistinguishable from a full-page ad - and then sells the paper back to the owners for $3 billion less the price of a full-page ad.

What if they don't want to buy it back for that much, what if the offer is now $2 billion? What if the stock price tanked? What if a court blocks the sale for whatever reason? There are risks to both the buyer and seller that I'm comfortable having them take if that's how they want to play the game.

You're not helping your claimed problem, you're making it worse.

I simply disagree. I'll also freely acknowledge that I should not be the person to draft any kind of law like this. Hell, I wasn't even focused on campaign finance specifically, I just got behind it because Lessig is actually doing something instead of sitting around and talking like everyone else. I see his point though. If it was up to me, I would focus on 4 issues as a starting point for a fix. That paper articulates my position, or at least what it was last November. The more time passes, the more I'm starting to believe that this system is hopelessly broken and irreversibly tilted in favor of those currently in power (I'm not just talking about politicians). Maybe the fix is to abolish all political parties completely and have everyone run on their own name, I don't know. I can promise you this though: unless a substantive push for actual reform gets off the ground in this country, as soon as I can afford it I'm going to expatriate myself. I don't want to live in a hypocritical system which claims to be free but is actually ruled by money and actively tramples on everyones' rights. This country is a far, far cry from the "land of the free and home of the brave." A lot of people living here have continually shown themselves to be neither free nor brave. The people with the money have seized power for themselves, and they are willing and able to spend vast amounts of money in order to make sure that the power and freedom stays with them, at the possible cost of everyone else.

By the way, have you been reading about all of the protesting going on in Germany over the US Federal Reserve? Because I haven't seen it in the news. I've been checking Fox, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post... it's weird though, I can't find any mention of it. Like it's not even happening. Why would virtually all American media refuse to cover a story like that, wouldn't it have some sort of interest here in the US? Or worldwide media, even. I'd almost think that media around the world are controlled by the same group of people. It's almost like when small-party candidates run for office, the media virtually ignores them. Why is that? Well, I can't think about that right now, I have to keep working because I have this mortgage to pay. After work I'll stop by Wal-Mart and pick up some food, then go home and watch entertainment and sports news until I pass out. I'm sure someone else will look out for me.

Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 5, Insightful) 170

Their job is to weigh the benefits of government actions — like stopping terrorist threats — against violations of citizens' rights that may result from those actions.

Wait, what? All of a sudden we've decided that violating rights is OK if it makes us more secure? When did we decide that? I don't remember any court decisions that said "well, it's unconstitutional, sure, but it's OK because..."

Because of the manner in which the NSA conducts upstream collection, and the limits of its current technology, the NSA cannot completely eliminate 'about' communications from its collection without also eliminating a significant portion of the 'to/from' communications that it seeks.

Well, I guess it has to eliminate a significant portion of the "to/from" communications that it seeks, change the manner in which it conducts upstream collection, and develop better technology, then. Right? Or just stay exactly the same and ignore the unconstitutional part of everything?

There's a quote from Benjamin Franklin around here somewhere...

Comment Re:What does this solve? (Score 1) 118

Seems they could have simply created some "molds" with a some 2x4s and a couple plywood sheets and just dumped the cement formula in to make the individual walls instead of this elaborate process.

How many laborers would they need to make all of those molds to allow them to build 10 buildings in 24 hours? Would your method be any cheaper than $5,000 per building?

Comment Re:Government regulation of political speech (Score 1) 308

There's a distinct difference. In one case, someone is paying advertising money for a publication to run their ad. In the other, someone is running an unpaid opinion piece in their own publication. If that person wants to pay a dollar or $3 billion or whatever the price might be to purchase that publication, fine. But the distinction is there. The thing is that I'm not willing to say that publications are not allowed to run political opinion pieces. I'm saying that they should not be allowed to run paid political advertisements.

Comment Re:Node.js (Score 1) 536

What is it that Javascript does that I cannot do with an alternative language just as or more effectively?

If you're asking in the context of a web browser, then Javascript is the only realistic option for a dynamic UI. If you're asking about Node.js on the server, then Javascript support on the server isn't something you can disable in the first place if you're running Node. If you're not running Node, then obviously you don't need Javascript on the server.

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