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Comment Re:That is cool, but... (Score 2) 194

You can Archive messages in Gmail, which removes them from your Inbox. Regarding Labels, you can either add a label to a message in your inbox, which simply tags it, or you can use the Move To option to tag it and remove it from your Inbox. The More You Know. =)

Comment Re:Boggles (Score 1) 329

True, those take a lot of bandwidth and I though of the Linux DVDs, but I didn't think you'd use all that stuff to the point of having a full-time, 24/7 pipe at 2 MB/s, which your calculations seemed to imply. I guess I was wrong. =)

"Legal" downloads use the same bandwidth as "illegal" ones.

While this is true, I was speaking more of the fact that complaining that the cap is ridiculously low would be hard to justify if most of that cap is used up with illegal downloads. If you're torrenting all the movies you can find, of course your cap is going to seem low, and IMO your ISP doesn't have to cater to your needs for a higher allocation of resources in that case. However, you have shown me that there can be users that legitimately need a higher cap, so I can understand it if you think 250 GB is small. Still, my whole household uses about 100 GB/month, so I'm impressed that you actually use that much.

Comment Re:Can't test social theories with real people (Score 1) 172

A point could be made that telling people to change their schedules/habits "for science", with no proof that it would actually be beneficial, might be harder than telling them to do so after it has been tested and shown that it would improve their lives in documented ways. Also, with automation, you can try strategies without having to worry about the social part of the experiment. For example, robots will not complain if their "sleep" schedule changes 4-5 times over a given month, so you can try a lot of different strategies, changing as soon as you figure out that it's not going to work. I think you'd get a lot more testing efficiency that way.

Regarding the usefulness of the results, while it's true that the optimal configuration for a city might not be attainable if it has actual inhabitants, you can at least get an idea of what the city should strive towards. Although... There might be a situation where the result of a real city trying to achieve optimal configuration will end up being less efficient (on whatever metric we're using here) than another that has set a more realistic, human-friendly goal. I see what you mean, now. =)

Comment Re:No Right to Anonimity when Committing a Crime (Score 2) 342

Too many people are using legetimate protest as a cover for hooliganism, and it's a shame.

Yup, I agree. There's civil disobedience, and then there's "let's do illegal stuff and say it's activism". Breaking a storefront window tends to be the latter, IMO. I do hope that it'll go as you say, and that the 10-year penalty will only be awarded to people who did a lot worse than simply having a mask on.

Comment Re:roadrage demonstrations. (Score 3, Insightful) 342

From Wikipedia:

Under Part II of the Canadian Criminal Code (Offences Against Public Order), Unlawful Assemblies and Riots is when the assembly of three or more persons who cause fear and on reasonable grounds disturb peace in the neighborhood.

From what I know, at some point during a protest, police may declare a protest illegal if they believe that it will lead to a disturbance of the peace, for example to a riot. It happens on a pretty regular basis lately here in Montréal, and I've heard that once they declare it as such they go around and tell everyone to disperse and leave, informing them of the fact. Now, if they do so in a way that people have a reasonable chance to understand it and GTFO if they'd rather not get arrested, I can't say - I wasn't at any such protest.

Comment from the bad-news-for-student-protesters dept (Score 1) 342

I think this move probably has something to do with the current situation here in Québec, where student protests have led to the formation of less-than-pacific groups of masked protesters roaming the protests and causing havoc in Montréal. I can see the motive behind such legislation - make suspect identification easier if they bolt after throwing a brick through a storefront - but wow, that's a pretty strong penalty for what is a essential victimless crime, if it can even be called a crime in the first place.

Now, will police officers ask for masks to be taken off? I don't think there are enough officers to actually enforce this with any efficiency, nor will it prevent people from putting a mask on just before committing an illegal act - and then running away. Sure sounds like more of a "let's reassure the general public that we're in control here" move than a policy that'll actually have a positive effect, IMO.

Comment Re:17938 infringements or just 1? (Score 1) 227

They provided the means to circumvent the server lock on the client, thus allowing people to connect to the UMaple servers instead of the official ones. Doing so probably revoked the client's EULA, making its use infringement - usage without a valid license. Now, if all UMaple did was provide the tool and instructions to use it, I think charging them with one count of infringement per user is not fair and that the damages awarded are wildly excessive. However, they did profit from unauthorized use of a copyrighted program so I agree that there /is/ infringement.

Comment Re:17938 infringements or just 1? (Score 1) 227

Oh, and the game is F2P, too. I forgot to take into account that you might have meant that the users would be avoiding payment of a subscription fee. There is still the fact that users potentially could access premium content that would normally have to be paid for, which /would/ be payment avoidance. That and the fact that UMaple apparently had their own premium features, which were "rewards" for "donations".

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