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Comment Re:So they got their reservation using deception? (Score 1) 1007

Do you think laws and rules should not protect people you sufficiently dislike?

Do you think the USA should have protected the Nazis in WW2 ?

Absolutely. Not left them free to walk around committing crimes, but also not allow them to be lynched because people disagree with them, even if they do something wrong. Or do you not believe in the rule of law and protecting people's rights?

Comment Re:How badly coded are Windows applications? (Score 1) 349

I once worked with a "programmer" who stored all dates as text, would break them down into day/month/year, and use crappy functions to add parts back and forth. I just couldn't get him to understand that more modern languages stored dates as decimals, with the time as the decimal portion and the date as the integer portion, and that simple math could get you the number of days between two dates. Needless to say, I avoided working on projects with him.

It always pays to know the tools you're working with.

Comment Re:Honestly, rifles are not the problem (Score 1) 651

What I'm seeing here is that guns are dangerous when the person holding it isn't properly trained in how and when to use it.

It's worth noting that of those 30,000 deaths, about 17,000 are suicide. While they're regrettable, they're also matched by an similar number of non-firearm suicides. Clearly, the suicide problem isn't going to be solved by taking away guns. This is not to dismiss these deaths, just to say that blaming them on guns is rather silly.

In the same year I'm examining, accidental firearm deaths ran at about 600. Again, terrible, but accidental deaths by fire was about 5 times higher, and a great deal of these are cause by improperly trained children dealing with their last live fire drill. Personally, I'm not interested in talking about adults foolish enough to fall asleep while smoking of a bed or couch.

Now, let's talk about homicide. This brings us to about 13,000 per year by firearm. Cut/pierce homicides (stabbing fatalities) run about 2,000 per year, or about 1/6 relative to shootings. I'd say that gun control could probably bring the overall number of homicides down, but not by 13,000. How much is hard to say. As much as it's hard to say how much crime and/or gun deaths would go down if everyone was properly trained with a firearm and could be expected to carry at all times.

I personally don't have any firearms, and would only buy them for hunting (long guns, naturally). I also don't have a problem with properly trained people owning them. Personally, with the freedoms purportedly enjoyed in the US, I think it behooves a great number of the population to not only own guns, but take significant training in their use.

Source for above.

Comment Re:Broadcast rights (Score 1) 109

Allow me to correct myself, since you're merely trying to make me say what you're saying.

With internet video streaming, I'm not technologically limited to a certain number of sources...

Yes, laws can add artificial limitations. I think whether they should is the topic under discussion...

Comment Re:Emma Watson is full of it (Score 1) 590

That isn't oppression that is called freedom. On a serious note. I can't imagine dealing with 30 little sacks of shit from other people every day, at least without the "board" of education. I hear the stories from my wife and her fellow teachers and I probably would have ended up in jail.

Oh look, another pedophile!

Seriously, I'm just kidding.

Comment Re:Broadcast rights (Score 1) 109

But the two are fundamentally different. With broadcast TV, there is a limited number of sources I can access. This still applies to VOD. Therefore, one can reason that requiring something that promotes Canadian culture is a benefit to us, which is what the purpose of the law is. Note that I'm not required to watch any of that Canadian content on broadcast TV or VOD by my cable provider of choice.

With internet video streaming, I'm not limited to a certain number of sources - in fact, the number of sources is quite large, almost infinite. And I choose what it is I will watch, with the origin of the content being relevant only if I choose for it to be. Note that I only have to watch what I wish to watch.

That is the key difference. In broadcast, a limited medium, the rule allows me to watch Canadian content if I choose to. With the internet, a much less limited, user-accessed medium, no rule is required to allow me to watch Canadian content if I choose to.

Now tell me, given the current paradigm of the internet, how exactly is the CRTC going to promote Canadian content without requiring me to watch it? Requiring Netflix or Google to pay 'comparable' rates for shows no one wants to watch sounds a lot like extortion to me (against both the providers and the consumers). If they want to promote Canadian content, they can start their own streaming service and provide it to Canadian IP addresses for free. They can even include ads for all I care! All they have to do is include it as a condition of the government money they give to these shows to happen here.

And if you think that's a bad idea, do you really think it's worse than requiring Netflix or Google to buy Canadian shows that people don't want? Please keep in mind, the driving force behind their service is to provide content people want to view. (Well, for Netflix. For Youtube, it's to allow any clown to upload their videos and hope someone watches. I'm sure Google will be happy to price match ad profits, like most other channels.) If they could get quality Canadian content for a reasonable price based on the expected viewership, I'm sure they would be all over it.

Comment Re: What the heck? (Score 1) 354

There is a fundamental difference between reverse engineering and reverse compilation. Copying someone's work, with or without the intermediate step of making it human-readable, is different than examining the functionality of some work and producing an original work that functions the same way (which may still be considered a derived work, depending on what and how it's made).

This is not relevant to whether Mojang is using GPL'd software in a different, related, project or not.

Comment Re:stopping who? (Score 3, Insightful) 322

Moreover, testing was at a less critical phase. Nuclear test bans weren't going to get rid of nuclear bombs, or even necessarily improvements in them. It would just slow them down. If they had followed them in the first place.

What has been somewhat more effective is using various means to keep more nations from joining the nuclear club. But that is because getting the details right (the first time) is kind of hard, especially when sabotage is involved. I suspect you'll see a similar trend here, with the big players getting them and then trying to stop the smaller players from getting them.

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