such as the massive & ongoing civil rights violations/infringements that most people agree are wrong, regardless of what political stripe they self-identify as.

But I think that's wrong.

You and I may not agree with this, but I think that MOST people are quite happy to trade-away their civil liberties for the illusion of security. Particularly those who are convinced that since they "do nothing wrong", they have nothing to fear from such violations.

It's a very sad commentary on our democratic peers, but unfortunately, factual, and consistent with pretty much everything else that's gone on since 9/11, (and more-or-less, since the McCarthy era - with regard to "communists").

We're not going to unite in this country. Period. It's like Morpheus said, in The Matrix: "Most people are not ready to be unplugged from the system, and will fight to protect it." Cliche, but true.

Except my four, when they were preschoolers, not very long ago.

Because libraries don't exist?

Nope, you misunderstand what the loophole was. It's utterly irrelevant whether or not it's easy to copy the music out.

You need to forget "plain English" and what "makes sense". We're dealing with the law and legalese. You need to think like a computer running into odd code. If a programmer writes "int Two=3;" then you'll get "Two+2=5". You need to obey the definition you're given, even if it clashes with what you think it should mean. You can't just assume Two+2 is supposed to be 4 when the code (or the law) says something different.

This law has a definitions section, and we are concerned with with three key pieces. I'll trim it to the critical bits.

A "digital musical recording" is a material object [...blah blah...]
A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object [...blah blah blah..] in which one or more computer programs are fixed

Therefore, according to the law, MP3 files on a computer hard drive are not "digital musical recordings".

A "digital audio copied recording" is a reproduction in a digital recording format of a digital musical recording [...blah blah...]

Therefore, according to the law, an MP3 player that copies an MP3 off of a computer is not creating a "digital audio copied recording".

A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device [...blah blah...] making a digital audio copied recording

Therefore an MP3 player copying MP3's off a computer is not a "digital audio recording device".

The law only applies to "digital audio recording devices", therefore nothing in the law applies to MP3 players. Unfortunately this shitty law does seem to apply to a car audio system copying music off of CDs. Unless the judge gets "creative" in interpreting the law, it seems to me that car manufacturers are going to have to pay damages for every unit produced so far, are going to have to implement DRM on these car audio systems (preventing them from loading any song that's flagged as already being a copy), and are going to have to pay royalties to the RIAA for each future unit sold.

-

drugs are increasingly being tested on homeless, destitute and mentally ill people

This is an outrage and a waste. We must switch to testing on the successful and the smart, who have nothing else to contribute anyway!

Second, it turns out many human trials are being run by doctors who have had their licenses revoked for drug addiction, malpractice and worse

Sure, malpractice, drug addiction and, especially, the unspecified "worse" are known to cause people to quickly forget all the training they've ever received in the medical school, and all the practice they got before losing their license.

A three year degree in 'electronic engineering' means it wasn't someone with an Electrical Engineering degree from an accredited college. Since degrees are either two or four year, it also means that dude probably took three years to complete the two year Associate's degree.

I was thinking Jimmy Dean's Pork Sausage. I mean, why not something meaningfully tasty?

Arbitrarily redefining the terms to suit your argument doesn't make you right, and ins't a valid form.

I am in full agreement with you here. Unfortunately, that — redefining the terms — is exactly, what proponents of "gay marriage" want the rest of us to do. They want the society to change the meaning of the word "marriage" to include homosexual unions (which no civilization in the history of the world has ever equated with regular marriage). You found "paraplegic karate" to be ridiculous — well, "gay marriage" is equally non-sensical...

Gays want to be "married". We all KNOW what they mean by that.

Yeah, they want the recognition — both societal and legal — that has hitherto been given only to the heterosexual couples, to be given to homosexual unions as well. Whether such recognition is a good idea or not, I don't believe it to be a human right — and that is how this subtopic started, when somebody up above equated Iran's handling of their gays with America's treatment of ours.

I was not suggesting that the law prevented gays from entering into straight marriages.

"Straight marriage" is just as much a tautology, as "gay marriage" is a self-contradiction (think "meatless steak")...

In the firmware development group I work in we actually have a good amount of diversity.
We will hire anyone with talent.
The lack of opportunity is not in the hiring area. It is in the home and education. Hiring someone because of race is bigotry. I doesn't matter if the race happens to be anglo or african descent.

The Audio Home Recording Act makes it illegal to manufacture or sell "Audio Recording Devices" unless they implement the Serial Copy Management System (a form of DRM).

The Audio Home Recording Act has a clause explicitly excluding computers from being "an Audio Recording Device", and excluding computer hard drives from being "Audio Recording Media". So when MP3 players copy music from a computer they basically slide through a loophole in the law. The music industry fought a court case over MP3 players and lost on this exact point. According to that court ruling, MP3 players do NOT fall within the law's explicit definition of "Audio Recording Device". Therefore MP3 players are not required to implement the idiot DRM system.

It looks like the system installed in these cars does fall within the law's definition of Audio Recording Device. It looks like the music industry has a solid case here, unless an "activist" judge sees how stupid this all is and comes up with some creative way to avoid applying this idiot law.

-

It's not racism to point out the fact that most H1B scab labor in IT is Indian. It's also not racist to point out that "lowering the bar" is bogus.

If Jesse wants to wage the next race war, he should start by getting more black kids interested in STEM and education in general. He can fight against the pervasive drug and gang culture that keeps black kids away from any means to better themselves.

Perhaps he could even get a bunch of athletes and rappers to just read to kids.

Having an "equal opportunity" President is proving to be so popular, I can't wait for Mr. Jackson to be treated by an "equal opportunity" heart surgeon...

fessed up to having a tech workforce that's only 1% Black, apparently par for the course in Silicon Valley.

Not only is Silicon Valley young and Illiberal, they are also working on developing their businesses and would not sabotage their start-ups' success by turning away real talent.

Whatever the problem is, Silicon Valley's "racism" ain't it...