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The 43-year-old mother of a toddler began her second trial on charges she attempted to smother her son while he was being treated for digestive problems at Erlanger hospital.
Monica Dawn Hammers originally was arrested and indicted on charges of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse after a hospital worker told police she covered her son's face with a pillow.
But as the first trial began in September 2012, Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to proceed on the murder charge.
So prosecutor Charlie Minor went to trial on the aggravated child abuse charge. After nearly two days of deliberations the jury could not reach a verdict.
The second trial, which began Tuesday, is on the charge of attempted aggravated child abuse.
Minor told the jury that the trial is about what happened when Hammers tried to smother her son on May 5, 2011.
"But it begins way before this; it begins with the conception of her child," Minor said.
He told jurors that this all spilled out of a nasty custody battle between Hammers and her ex-husband. Minor claims that Hammers denied her son food and initiated medical child abuse by taking him to the hospital unnecessarily.
A volunteer sitter was in the room with Hammers and her son when, Minor said, Hammers got frustrated and covered her son's face with a pillow.
"And when she realized the sitter was there, she quit," Minor said.
Defense attorney Harry Christensen countered that the history of the parent's conflict, custody battles and previous unsubstantiated child abuse claims all help his client.
He attacked previous testimony by the sitter, which he said showed no evidence that Hammers covered the boy's face other than in a quick game of peek-a-boo. He also said there is no evidence of injury to the boy.
"How do you intend to try and smother a child by shaking a pillow [over his face]?" Christensen. "Mr. Minor said, 'She stopped when she saw the sitter.' Well the sitter was there all day.'"
"What happened here is a woman's life has been completely turned upside-down and you'll be the ones who decide whether she deserves it or not," Christensen said.
The trial is set to resume this morning.
Contact staff writer Todd South at firstname.lastname@example.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him @tsouthCTFP.
Todd South covers courts, poverty, technology, military and veterans for the Times Free Press. He has worked at the paper since 2008 and previously covered crime and safety in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. Todd's hometown is Dodge City, Kan. He served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq before returning to school for his journalism degree from the University of Georgia. Todd previously worked at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. Contact ...


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Hey I'm working on my Prot Warrior through the dungeon finder and had a question for when I start raiding. I want to stick with tanking and wanted to know if some prot warriors dual spec having one spec for Heroics/Trash and the other for Raid bosses? I heard a prot warrior on a podcast saying that he has 2 tank specs with minor changes to talents and glyph that help more with AoE/Single target threat.
If there are different specs for Heroics/Trash and Single Target Boss fights, can i please get the links?
Thank you for your time :)

subset: commoncrawl


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- 18 & over
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Los Angeles, CA
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THE WET HOT SUMMER CAMP STORIES Thursday, July 18, 2013 10:00 PM Hollywood Improv, Los Angeles, CA
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- Ticket Price: $5.00
- Door Time: 9:30 PM
- Show Type: Stand Up
- Showroom: Main Room
- Tags: Alternative, Female
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Join us for a night of coming of age stories, characters and jokes from summer camp experiences. Female comedians, actresses and all around funny ladies will bare the good, bad and dirty details of what it was like to go to summer camp. Sit back, relax and laugh as these ladies get their bits dirty before school starts. Hosted by Meghan Falcone and Courtney Pape.
Courtney Pape:
Courtney is a Chicago native and UCLA, UCB, iO West & Groundlings student alum. Her one woman show, "Courtney Pape: A Girl's Best Friend" was described as "Hilarious" by LAist and "Genius" by her Mom. In her free time Courtney likes to figure out the meaning of life, one joke at a time.
Meghan Falcone:
Meghan Falcone, born in Tennessee, made it to Hollywood by way of UCLA, UCB, and a lot of terrible choices. Check her out on the internet. She's always avail.


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Harbor Springs House Rental Photos and Description
2200sf home, two great rooms, two decks, office, close to all Club activities
Nestled at the edge of a semi-wooded lot, this inviting Birchwood home is within walking distance of the Birchwood Club House, the Club's heated pool, fitness center, tennis courts and various tee-off points for the three golf courses…great for those guests with one car.
The sophisticated yet welcoming interior and furnishings make you immediately feel at home. The open floor plan is ideal as a gathering destination for family or multiple couples.
The entry level includes a well decorated gathering area with TV, large office with WiFi for "keeping in touch" as well as a half bath and entrance to the two car garage.
Continuing to the main level, you are greeted by a second gathering area with embracing leather furnishings. This attractive area includes a gas fireplace and expansive view of the outdoors. There is a separate dining area and fully equipped kitchen with an eat-in island. Floor to ceiling windows showcase an enchanting view of the surrounding area. A laundry room with full size washer & dryer and half bath are within steps of the kitchen.
Just off the dining area are two decks for your enjoyment. They are ideal for relaxing, getting lost in a good book or entertaining friends. A large gas grill awaits the "chef" and the creative meals to be prepared. Or if you prefer, relaxing in a comfy hammock near the garden area.
The large master bedroom (king) on the main level includes an armoire with TV, dresser, comfy chair and large windows overlooking the woods. The two addition bedrooms (queen and a set of twins) located upstairs include their individual full bathes.
As guest of Birchwood, you have full access to the various amenities. In the summer, this includes 27 holes of outstanding golf, use of the ten NEW clay tennis courts, heated pool and kiddy pool, fitness center, miles of walking trails and various dining facilities.
In the winter, the fitness center, miles of cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, the Grille Room and Casual Bar for dining are available. This wonderful home is only 12 miles from Boyne Highlands and Nub's Nob via the "back-way" on well traveled road—clear directions are provided.
As for sightseeing, Birchwood is just 3 miles from Harbor Springs, 10 miles from Petoskey and 45 minutes to Mackinaw Island. The entrance to the famous "Tunnel of Trees" is a few miles beyond the main entrance to Birchwood.
- Suitability:
- Minimum Age Limit for Renters
- children welcome
- non smoking only
- wheelchair inaccessible
Guestbook comments from the manager
Great place! We really enjoyed your home. Extremely clean, bright and great decorating.


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These shades are just awful. The edges are crooked, the folds are uneven and they look like they were put together by a child. Overstock should be embarrassed to sell them. They certainly aren't up to Overstocks standards. I have only put two up because I have four windows and one shade was damaged and NOT in shipment either. It had a slash in an underneath fold where you couldn't see it until it was rolled down. It came from the factory that way. I will now take them all down and send them back. I'm sure I can find something a lot better than these. The one positive thing I can say is they are a nice neutral color shade.
These are very nice shades. You can tell they aren't the best quality but for the price they are perfect. The color was spot on and they were very easy to install. I am pleased with them and will likely order more for other windows in our house. I used these on our double front doors using the outside mount and they look great. I like that they don't stick out from the door very far, maybe 1.5", so the privacy is great.
Manufacturers photograph does not represent true to the color, ending up seemingly darker than met our needs. Returned only for color purposes, otherwise we really liked the shade. Seamless return.
The hardware does not work on these blinds. I had to send them back. They are worthless.
Curtains are fairly easy to install. Not at thick as I would have liked for thermal curtains.
Usually leaves our warehouse in 1-2 business days. *
Items must be returned in new or unused condition and contain all original materials included with the shipment. More details
FINAL SALE EXCLUSION: Items marked as FINAL SALE are not returnable unless the problem you experience is the result of our error.
Our standard shipping method is ground shipping. We also offer expedited shipping for most items. Your final shipping cost and estimated delivery timeframe will be available at checkout.
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* For your safety, some orders go through our loss prevention department. If we select your order for this process, we will immediately notify you that there may be up to a 3-day delay on your order.
** Most Oversize orders are delivered within 1-4 weeks. Some orders may take 6 weeks to be delivered.


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Intel: tweak Nehalem's nobs to hit high notes
Despite a tightened budget, Intel's information chief, Diane Bryant, claims the company saved $19 million by upgrading its older servers this year rather than deferring a hardware refresh until 2010. Chipzilla's pitch for its Nehalem-based chips during a year when most IT budgets are pancake flat is focused squarely on …
But but but
Hyperthreading is all about parallelisation, and all that Intel can bring to the table in terms of performance increases is more more more parallelisation. Now Facebook tell us that parallelisation isn't delivering for them.
If we can't trust Intel and Facebook, who can we trust?
Developers need faster cores, not just more of them.
For the last several years Intel seems to have thrown in the towel on making individual cores significantly faster, instead simply relying on process shrinking to cram more of the same into a chip package. Unfortunately for the rest of us, most software on planet earth does not take much advantage of increasing numbers of cores, infact some stuff actually slows down marginally as more cores are added!
Taking multi-core out of the equation, looking at single cores only, Moores Law ran out of steam at Intel somewhere around 2004.
That said, how a platform like Facebook with its thousands (tens of thousands?) of concurrent users can fail to take at least some advantage of hyperthreading within a core and a shift from 2 to 4 to 6 cores is beyond me. Perhaps they need better developers? Consider a move to developing in Erlang?
No, developers don't need faster cores, they need to get better at efficiently parallelising their software and using multiple threads, or just make their algorithms more efficient. Only lazy devs would assume that the only way to speed something up was to run a single thread faster.
so when are we going to see the manual?
if Intel set the chips a certain way, that may not be providing the best performance, then what the user needs is a manual to suggest beneficial tweaks
so......... where's that manual?
You are seriously suggesting developers re-code to take advantage of new hardware/architecture? I am not a developer, I'm more a sysadmin, but I cant remember a single time in history when developers radically changed their method/practices to better fit with the hardware.
Everyone was going to re-code for Itanium weren't they? Too hard.
How about the incredible power of cheap, fast GPUs, even software that would suit their particular kind of performance doesnt get re-coded. I do know that parallel programming is very hard, and most languages dont make it any easier... (hence the Erlang ref) We have had multi-core in the x86 market for 5-6 years and still Microsoft and Apple are announcing "some special multi-core features coming soon to the next version of their OS". At this rate we should have multi-core/multi-thread applications in widespread use by about 2050...
Look Richard, I don't know what your experience is, but my multiprocessor experience dates back to the 1990s. See, the thing is, good designers aren't common, but bad coders are. If you increase the complexity of things by adding multiprocessor synchronisation to the coder's challenge, benchmark performance may appear to increase when the circumstances are right, but real-world productivity (which is harder to measure) and customer satisfaction (ditto) will generally decrease because the apps and systems will crash more frequently than they already do.
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I signed and commented as "tomz", so therez you goz
I decied to try a small social expreament.
This is my peition for the enslavment of women, it was ment to be a joke that was inspired by the peition for the enslavment of men posted in this forum.
But I decied to make this petion not only as a joke but as social expreament to see if I would get the same kind of reaction to it as the enslavement of men petion, by now most of you here should know that I'm a level headed kind of guy and that this petion is not a refelction of my true self, I decied to play the exstreamest card to see will happen with this mock petion of mine, so I would like you to coment on it and who knows maybe we might be able to get a debate going with anyone who coments on it, or at the very lest we all can have a good laugh as we watch people flip their wigs.
And if you really want to have some fun with this pretend to agree with it, espeacily the ladies here, nothing like watching a feanazi go nuclear when a women agrees with anything other then their sick twisted views on things and to let you laides here know that I don't see you as second class people I respect the fact that you have the guts to stand up on not only the behalf of men but of women as well.
Here's the link
I signed and commented as "tomz", so therez you goz


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Scientists in research groups around the world are trying to design ever smaller "biochips" that can test for a variety of diseases at once, give instant results, and, crucially, can be mass produced cheaply. But until now, no one has been able to solve the problem of finding a power source as small and as cheap to fabricate as the detection technology itself.
Led by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a research team at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have developed a paper battery that is small, cheap to fabricate, and which ingeniously uses the fluid being tested (urine) as the power source for the device doing the testing.
The chemical composition of urine is widely used as a way of testing for tell-tale signs of various diseases and also as an indicator of a person's general state of health. The concentration of glucose in urine is a useful diagnostic tool for diabetics. The lead researcher, Dr Lee, envisions a world where people will easily be able to monitor their health at home using disposable test-kits that don't need lithium batteries or external power sources.
Dr. Lee said: "We are striving to develop cheap, disposable credit card-sized biochips for disease detection. Our battery can be easily integrated into such devices, supplying electricity upon contact with biofluids such as urine."
The battery unit is made from a layer of paper that is steeped in copper chloride (CuCl) and sandwiched between strips of magnesium and copper. This "sandwich" is then held in place by being laminated, which involves passing the battery unit between a pair of transparent plastic films through a heating roller at 120ºC. The final product has dimensions of 60 mm x 30 mm, and a thickness of just 1 mm (a little bit smaller than a credit card).
Writing in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Lee describes how the battery was created and quantifies its performance. Using 0.2 ml of urine, they generated a voltage of around 1.5 V with a corresponding maximum power of 1.5 mW. They also found that the battery performances (such as voltage, power or duration) may be designed or adjusted by changing the geometry or materials used.
"Our urine-activated battery would be integrated into biochip systems for healthcare diagnostic applications," says Lee. He envisions a world where people will easily be able to monitor their health at home, seeking medical attention only when necessary. "These fully-integrated biochip systems have a huge market potential," adds Lee.
For further information and interviews contact:
David Reid, Press Officer, Institute of Physics, Tel: 44-207-470-4815 or 0794-632-1473.
Notes to editors:
This research is published by the Institute of Physics in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
Reference: Lee K B 2005 Urine-activated paper batteries for biosystems J. Micromech. Microeng. 15 S210-4.
The paper can be downloaded here: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0960-1317/15/9/S06 (after 15 August).
The Institute of Physics is a leading international professional body and learned society with over 37,000 members, which promotes the advancement and dissemination of a knowledge of and education in the science of physics, pure and applied. It has a world-wide membership and is a major international player in:
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


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Staubitz spends spring break donating bone marrow
Women's soccer player endures painful procedure
April 21, 2011Tweet
Spring Break. That annual teenage celebration of anything that isn't school and studying.
Count Binghamton sophomore women's soccer player Alyssa Staubitz among those who spent the break traveling away from home, relaxing and creating long-lasting memories.
But while many college students were flying to exotic locales and lounging poolside or on a tropical beach, Staubitz traveled 20 miles from her Massapequa home and her "lounging" was done in a hospital room. You see, Stautibz was a bone marrow donor who voluntarily went through a lengthy and painful process of a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation. And those spring break memories she created were future memories for a female leukemia patient, the recipient of her bone marrow.
Staubitz offered a selfless sacrifice with her anonymous donation. Peripheral blood stem cell transplantation restores stem cells that have been destroyed by high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. According to the Institute for Justice, more than 1,000 individuals die each year because they can't find a matching donor and at any given time, at least 7,500 Americans are actively searching the national registry for an unrelated donor. Only 30% of patients who need bone marrow transplants have matching donors in their families, making Alyssa's act all the more vital.
The nearly nine-hour procedure at the hospital was the end of a process that began more than one month earlier when she signed up during an organized on-campus drive sponsored by DKMS Americas.
"My suitemate, who had signed up in high school, told me a little about it," Staubitz says. "Donating my bone marrow seemed like a small price to pay for a leukemia patent who truly needed it."
Signing up was the easy part. Many people are never called to action because they aren't a strong enough match for the patient. Or many times the call doesn't come for years. Staubitz was ready, though. Her friend, Christine Monroy, had donated her bone marrow a few weeks earlier, and hearing of Christine's experience only further motivated Alyssa. Alyssa's mom, Michelle, recalls the phone call.
"I was getting ready for work one morning while Alyssa was home from school and she started screaming," Michelle says. "She was also waiting to find out if she was accepted into the Decker School of Nursing. So my first thought was that she had heard back from the nursing school and was accepted into the program. Much to my surprise, her excitement was that she was a match and was so happy she was going to be part of saving someone's life."
From there, Alyssa had to return home and go to the hospital to be tested to confirm that she was the best match for the patient. She then scheduled the procedure for spring break so she could have time to recover before returning to campus, a decision that caught her mom's eye.
"I thought to myself ... wow ... what a kid to take time away from her break and go through such an evasive procedure," Michelle says. "She has always had a big heart and is a kind soul. She always finds the good in people and will put herself last to help others."
Not that Michelle didn't have reservations about her daughter being a donor. She was concerned about the physical toll of the procedure and Alyssa's ability to recover and continue her dual focus of being a student-athlete - particularly the daily rigors of being a soccer player.
The next step in the process was for a home nurse to administer five injections of a synthetic protein called filgrastim to increase the number of blood-forming cells in her bloodstream. Alyssa received one injection each day for five days leading up to the procedure. The shots made her tired and gave her muscle pain, bone pain and headaches.
She arrived at the hospital at 7:30 a.m. and shortly thereafter her procedure began. She was hooked up to three different tubes, two in her left arm and one in her right. She had to keep her left arm completely still as the tubes took her blood into a machine, where it was filtered to capture her platelets and marrow before it was returned into her right arm. Several hours later, Alyssa's marrow was captured and her healing began, as it soon will for the leukemia patient.
"The day of the donation was the worst day because it took a toll on my body," Alyssa recalls. "I was very light-headed and nauseous and had a loss of appetite."
But no one heard any complaints.
"She was there for nearly nine hours and walked away like a trooper ... never complained one bit," her mom says. "When we were in the car driving home, she turned to me and said, 'Mom I really hope this works and the woman will be okay.'"
Staubitz endured fatigue for several days after the procedure but was back to normal within a week. She finished recovering over the break and only missed a few days of soccer practice after returning to school. Start to finish, it was nearly two weeks of poking, prodding, draining and wearing down of her body - a body she works hard to keep in top shape throughout the year. But Staubitz, whose knowledge of the body was heightened through her anatomy and physiology coursework, wouldn't have it any other way.
"This person and her family truly needed my help and I couldn't imagine denying them that," she says.
Vanessa Erazo, Post-Donation Follow Up Coordinator at DKMS Americas who worked with Alyssa, was quick to offer praise.
"Not everyone says 'yes'," Erazo explains. "We talk to people everyday that for some reason or another just can't go through with it. It takes a truly special and amazing person to do what Alyssa did for a complete stranger. She has given this person a second chance at life."
Staubitz, who has career aspirations of being a nurse anesthetist, is driven toward helping people. Head soccer coach Sarah McClellan has seen it firsthand.
"Alyssa is a caring person and a great teammate," McClellan says. "Her compassion and willingness to help others provide a great representation of our University and women's soccer program."
McClellan actually has two potential donors in her program, as Staubitz's teammate, Kerry Sullivan, also signed up at the same donor drive and could be a potential match for another patient.
"Who could turn down a chance to save someone's life?" Alyssa asks.
According to DKMS, the world's largest bone marrow donor center, every four minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and every 10 minutes blood cancer takes a precious life. Today, DKMS has more than 2.7 million registered donors. Go online at www.GetSwabbed.org to request a cheek swab kit to be mailed directly to your home.


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|ton wrote:
There's another major sponsor coming along as well, but we have to talk about the final details yet.
|ton wrote:
|Sorry! But that's what the sponsors get. Luckily only at the front page, and pages that directly link from it. So not while reading the messages here. Hope postNuke allows us to do so...
|ton wrote:
|allowing us to burn up to 10k euro in services and bandwidth per year!
|jeotero wrote:
|If its a lot of money, coding and research support it can come from anybody.


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On-Base Perception
Newsday's new all-encompassing baseball blog on the Yankees, Mets, MLB and more from around the sport.
BloggersErik Boland Marc Carig Cody Derespina Nick Klopsis Mark La Monica David Lennon Casey Musarra Anthony Rieber
ArchivesMore »
Brett Gardner, David Robertson avoid arbitration with Yankees, reports say
The Yankees have avoided arbitration and agreed to one-year deals with Brett Gardner, Ivan Nova and David Robertson, according to multiple reports.
Gardner will make $5.6 million, according to multiple reports. Robertson is due to earn $5.215 million, according to Jon Heyman. Nova will make $3.3 million according to Joel Sherman.
Gardner, 30, and Robertson, 28, are in their last season of arbitration-eligibility and can file for free agency after the 2014 season. Nova, in his first year of arbitration eligibility, isn't eligible for free agency until after the 2016 season.
Defensive wiz Gardner is expected to man left field this season as part of a crowded outfield that also features Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran, Alfonso Soriano and Ichiro Suzuki. Gardner is a .268 hitter with a .352 on-base percentage in six seasons, all with the Yankees. He's stolen 161 bases and has an 80.9 percent success rate.
Robertson is likely to occupy the closer role vacated by Mariano Rivera. The righthander has a 2.76 ERA in six seasons spent largely as a set-up man. He's struck out 428 batters in 329 innings.
Nova is 38-20 with a 4.04 ERA in four seasons. He was 9-6 with a 3.10 ERA for the Yankees in 2013.
With the trio of Friday signings, the Yankees have signed all of their arbitration-eligible players.
Tags: Brett Gardner , Yankees , David Robertson


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The Community Hospice's Wave Riders program is a six week support group for grieving children and teens. Through art and dialogue, Wave Riders provides a safe, supportive environment to help children and teens learn that:
They are not alone,
their feelings are perfectly normal, and
how to express those feelings in safe and healthy ways.
Any child or teen, aged 3-17 years old,
who has experienced any type of death-related loss in their lifetime,
regardless if the loved one was on Hospice, is welcome to apply.


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Really wasn't worth the money. You can hardly tell what it says.
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Pretty much what I expected as far as product and quality, my only wish is that the words were more visible... the picture of them here the words are brighter/easier to read than the actual product.
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Friday, 27 November 2009 00:00
Though only a quarter of a page long, Dr. James DiMaio's letter to the editor, "Healthcare Debate: Drop the 'Crisis'" in the November 11 issue was so unbelievably absurd and misguided that I felt compelled to respond. Though Dr. DiMaio is certainly entitled to his opinion and afforded the freedom to express it publicly in this paper, his views are indicative of a larger problem with the honesty of the health care debate, and as such I feel it necessary to critique part of his letter.
Dr. DiMaio initially makes the point that only 10 percent of Americans are currently without health insurance and since 90 percent of us do have it, that it is erroneous to call this is a health care "crisis." A rate of just 10 percent does sound negligible until you remember, not only is it closer to 15 percent, but also that this figure represents nearly 50 million people who are without health insurance and therefore marginalized from what Dr. DiMaio hails to be "the best health care system on the planet."
Yet, as a direct result of being unable to afford expensive health care plans, thousands of men, women, and children will die every year in this country from easily preventable or treatable illnesses. By simple logic, would not the "best" healthcare system be one that includes equal access and care for every single citizen, regardless of income? How did that unbelievably simple idea get lost in the ether?
Dr. DiMaio goes on to echo the same asinine rationalization of this flawed system in saying that those 50 million Americans without insurance still have access to the emergency room and will not be denied care in an emergency. Does anyone ever stop and take a second to realize what that means? Even a child should recognize that the emergency room should be intended for medical "emergencies" only and not as a hospital dumping ground for people who become a medical afterthought for lacking costly insurance. Not only is this backwards policy-excuse a burden to the taxpayer who pays for the uninsured, but people being treated for simple ailments in the ER that can and should be the responsibility of a family doctor are taking up limited space and valuable resources that are needed when real medical emergencies inevitably arise.
Dr. DiMaio's idea as stated is to try and insure the other 10 percent and leave the 90 percent of Americans with insurance alone. That would be a great idea if the majority of people were actually happy with their health insurance. You have to ask yourself honestly, how many stories do you, or people close to you have, about being denied a medical necessity by a health insurance provider? Whether it is an additional medical test or new procedure, a prescription that is not covered, or a hospital stay beyond what the insurance company is willing to pay, most people with insurance are extremely unhappy with the quality of their coverage and this needs to be seriously addressed.
In addition, the health care crisis goes far beyond the palaver of premiums and pre-existing conditions. Rather, it should be recognized as a fundamental component of our current recession and burgeoning domestic frustration. According to a Harvard Law School study concerning the alarmingly high rates of recent home foreclosures, nearly "half of all respondents (49 percent) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32 percent), unmanageable medical bills (23 percent), lost work due to a medical problem (27 percent), or caring for sick family members (14 percent)."
When hardworking Americans are becoming homeless simply for getting sick, it is disingenuous to call this anything but a "crisis."
Dr. DiMaio laments over the 1,990 page health care reform bill claiming that "no one could possibly ever read" it. Yet, this is the length of two Harry Potter books and is a document attempting to reform a health care system for over 300 million people. To bemoan it as being too long and complicated is to not only devalue the important work of our elected representatives but additionally continue the failed bumper-sticker solutions characterized by the overly simplistic and unequivocally disastrous Bush administration.
Furthermore, Dr. DiMaio claims that reform will bring a "more intrusive health care system which would have a financial interest" in personal life decisions regarding a person's health. Yet he apparently fails to realize that we already suffer from a system based on warped financial interests. Since healthcare in the U.S. is based on a for-profit business model, heath insurance companies are betrothed only to the interests of their shareholders — not the patients to whom they consistently deny insurance or provide bare-bones coverage. Health insurance companies earn enormous profits by denying or undercutting the very services with which they are tasked (and paid) to provide. That is why every other industrialized nation in the world, except for the United States, has a national health care system to the overwhelmingly positive support of the vast majority of their citizens.
Though I cannot begin to so much as scratch the surface of the multifaceted nuances of health care reform, the simple fact is our system desperately needs a massive overhaul. To deny otherwise is to remain mired in this perverse status quo, which puts profits before the health of our fellow citizens, weakens our strength and stability as a nation, and divides us as a people. This is more than a crisis- it is a disaster and a shameful embarrassment. And it is about time we got the facts straight.
Sean Callahan


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Welcome to Deuxave!
Located at the corner of Boston's two prominent avenues, Commonwealth and Massachusetts, Deuxave is much more than just another neighborhood restaurant; it's a place where our guests from near and far will truly feel at home. Learn more about our inspiration.
Deuxave Restaurant & Bar is located at 371 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's historic and trendy Back Bay.
Hours of Operation
Deuxave is open for dinner daily from 5PM – 10PM (Thursday-Saturday until 11PM). Our bar is open daily until 1 AM.
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UA Scholars Program
2015 UA Scholar Reception
Click on the location of your choice below to RSVP to an event.
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Egan Classroom Wing, Room 112
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Welcome Class of 2015 Scholars!
Congratulations to each of you on your accomplishment of being designated as a UA Scholar! There are great things in store for you at the University of Alaska.
We offer this award because Alaska's future depends on talented people like you. Join more than 7,000 of our best and brightest ahead of you who accepted the UA Scholars Award, attended the University, and who are now shaping Alaska's future. We want to see you at UA!
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UA Scholars Award
The UA Scholar Award is awarded to the top ten percent of all graduating seniors from Alaska high schools. It is an $11,000 scholarship to any of the 15 University of Alaska campuses. With over 500 degree and certificate programs to choose from you are likely to find a program that will help you meet your career goals.
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Fine Arts Theatres? four venues surround moviegoers with classic silver-screen ambiance as they present the latest independent and mainstream film offerings. Lovingly refurbished neighborhood movie palaces such as the early-20th-century Rio Theatre now boast surround-sound digital audio, high-backed rocker seats with arm-mounted cup holders, and movie trailers acted out by gregarious ticket takers. In addition to flicks opening each week, The Fine Arts Theatres hosts special independent screenings throughout the year including the Kansas International Film Festival (Oct. 10-16th) that features 55 films in 7 days and the Latin American Film Festival every September.
Each of Cinetopia's locations adds a touch of luxury to the movie-watching experience, accenting stunning, lifelike projections of blockbusters with fine wine, a selection of local microbrews, fresh market-to-table cuisine, and plush, cozy seats.
At the newest Overland Park location, movies in the GXL theater light up a 75-foot wide, super-high-definition screen equipped with high-tech sound systems like Dolby Atmos and Meyer EXP. Up to 300 guests fully recline in its plush, oversized seats, which are steeply banked to maximize visibility. The living-room theater cultivates a more intimate atmosphere with full restaurant service and comfy leather seats, while the new movie parlor imitates a celebrity home screening room with its cozy "cuddle couches" and its top-of-the-line digital 7.1-channel surround sound. 18 LED screens dance with themed animations to complete the immersive experience.
Patrons can order food made fresh in Vinotopia and wine from waiters and dine during their movies. Viewers can also eat before or after in the on-site restaurants, where live musicians often serenade diners on weekends with tunes such as "I Love You Just The Way You Are (Full of Food)."
At Screenland, campy and classic are rarely mutually exclusive terms. The movie theater serves as a cinematic time machine, transporting spectators through the history of Hitchcock's mysteries and straight into the heyday of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Though it also shows current titles, its schedule is often beholden to audience whims—the Crossroads location hosts new independent films that are uniquely screened at this sole location. This dual devotion to cherished and modern flicks helped Screenland earn the 2012 Readers' Choice award for Best Movie Theater from the Pitch.
Even outside the projection room, nostalgia rules. More than 40 games, from Donkey Kong to Missile Command, test dexterity at the Crossroads location's retro arcade, where guests can purchase passes to play indefinitely or until Frogger finally flags down a cab. Photographs taken by former Kansas City mayor Dick Berkley accompany historical trivia in the adjacent gallery, and celebrity handprints mark the outdoor patio. Greeting cinephiles out front is a marquee salvaged from the Isis Theatre, just as it once greeted a young Walt Disney when he shared his early animations there.
Wedding receptions and corporate meetings alike have taken advantage of the theater's capacity for private functions. At both exclusive and public events, however, a full-service bar supplies guests with libations, cracking open bottles of Boulevard Pale Ale and Tallgrass Velvet Rooster.
Since its origins as a converted parking garage, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has ushered film-lovers of all breeds into its auditoriums, even gaining a following among Hollywood legends; Quentin Tarantino has been known to host five-day movie marathons at Alamo. The theater has earned that reputation by making moviegoing a personal experience, from the menu of handcrafted snacks and locally brewed beer to the completely ad-free presentations before shows. Alamo's ninja servers pick up written food and drink orders throughout the movie and serve moviegoers directly at their seat. The staff enforces a strict no-talking, no-texting policy by kicking out any offenders, falling just short of yanking them from their seats with a giant's shepherd's crook.
Both first-run blockbusters and classics are projected onto Alamo's silver screens in crisp 35-millimeter or digital format. Meanwhile, surround speakers immerse audiences in the cinematic soundscape, whether they're seated in one of the expansive theaters afforded to blockbuster reels or the more intimate spaces reserved for indie films wound around tiny bobbins. Despite Alamo's vow of silence, fan-centric Quote-Along and Sing-Along nights encourage guests to shout their favorite lines, and actors, directors, and other celebrities often attend special screenings to lead in-depth discussions. These exclusive events have led to acclaim for Alamo from publications such as Entertainment Weekly, which called it "one of America's most fanatically unique moviegoing experiences," and Wired, which opined that it "might just be the coolest movie theater in the world."
The B&B Windsor 10 entertains moviegoers with cinematic shrines to elegant art-deco-inspired design, modern cinematic technology, and cushy seating. Wall-to-wall screens flood the eyes with even the most minute plot points and DTS digital surround sound in select auditoriums ensures that every car chase, merchandise-friendly catchphrase, and doomed love affair set in space is clearly heard. Select theatres embrace viewers with high-back rocker seats, arranged in stadium-style seating for optimum screen-seeing abilities.
For the late Dr. George Henry Alexander Clowes, the most important things in life were science and the arts. The good doctor wanted to share this devotion with the Indianapolis community, so he devised and funded Clowes Memorial Hall at Butler University. Completed in 1963, the hall shares Butler's gorgeous aesthetic with its arching stone fa?ade and lush crimson interior, which has room for over 2,000 patrons. In addition to major touring productions and public speakers, Clowes Memorial Hall is also the home of the Indianapolis Opera, the Butler Ballet, and the Indy 500.


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its hard to believe how long cosmo was active for.
"what about those old posters"
"i heard god, hicky and justin had a threesome"
I wish God would send me nudes :'[
Damnit, Mewtwo, what the fuck. You are dumb. Fix the forums
fix cosmo forums already mewtwo
Forum Rules


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Gameness RashguardsGameness® Gis have a long history of quality, innovation, and value, always designed on the mat to provide great form and function. Those same qualities also hold true for Gameness Rashguards. Gameness seeks to innovate the sport with technologies such as built-in rash guards and ultra-light weaves. It's no wonder why MMA pros, BJJ world champions and every day athletes continue to use Gameness Gis and rashguards in their own pursuit of excellence.
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Study Abroad Program
SMU reserves the right to change, at any time and without prior notice, any provision or requirement, including but not limited to, itineraries, fees, and cancellation/refund policies.
If the health or safety of participants becomes an issue, SMU reserves the right to recall or close an international program. SMU is not responsible for any loss or damage that may occur when participants travel outside of scheduled program activities. In addition, independent participant travel before the start or after the conclusion of the scheduled class is entirely at the individual's own expense and risk.


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Found May 13, 2012 on Pro Boxing Fans:
PLAYERS: Chad Dawson, Andre Ward, Miguel Cotto, Zab Judah, Manny Pacquiao, Amir Khan, Juan Manuel Marquez
We're back with another edition of the rumor mill, as the last week has been busy with buzzing boxing headlines and news. Right here, we'll give you a quick rundown of all of the biggest stories, including a potential mega-fight between Chad Dawson and Andre Ward, and pay-per-view numbers for the recent Floyd Mayweather vs. Miguel Cotto event, and a rumored match at 140 lbs between Juan Manuel Marquez and Zab Judah. Take a look. Ward vs. Dawson Credit: Tom Casino / Showtime The promoters of Ward and Dawson are trying to hash out the details of a September clash between the undefeated winner of the Super Six Tournament, and the current WBC light heavyweight champion. The Ward vs. Dawson fight would pit two of America's best young - and proven - fighters against one another, and would be at a catchweight of about 170 lbs. That means that Dawson's light heavyweight titles would be at stake for both men. It's hard to envision Ward vs. Dawson being particularly ent...
Original Story: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProBox...
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"Over the Hills and Far Away" - English Trad. Folk Tune - Arr. John Tams - YouTube
via www.youtube.com 1 year, 12 months ago
For all you fans of the "Sharpe's" movies...
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Cobrapilot 1 year, 12 months ago
Yes! Sharpes Rifles. I can see him walking away and looking over his shoulder right now.
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Food and Beverage
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Ofcom grills pirates, loses report under fridge for two years
On Monday Ofcom published two studies it commissioned into digital piracy: one attempting to quantify the level of piracy, the other a smaller study collecting pirates' opinions. Oddly, the 'new' quantitative research is old - almost as old as the Norman Domesday Book. The field work was conducted by Kantar Media in March 2010, …
It is not the price, it is the overall lack of quality.
How many times have you watched a trailer, then seen the film only to realize the best bits were all in the trailer?
I buy quality footwear, trousers and suits because they last and are value for money. Movies today are mostly forgettable.
I so totally agree with your statements of fact.
What I miss the most about quality are the 1980's style polo shirts.
That is when they still had a tail to tuck in so nobody has to look at your cheeks and now today the tail of the shirt is just as long as the front! Then when you wash it the xtra large becomes a medium within 2 months of washing. So I stopped buying american stuff 100% just out of spite. The things they sell in USA are for short stubby people who have tow thumbs and wabble around the stores like ducks. I do not mind a shirt that is properly made then I do not mind spending an extra $10 for quality. My stores in my area used to sell nice high quality winter jackets costing $600. The type used to trek up Mt. Everest. But they stopped selling them and now nobody sells decent jackets that fit me and no I do not weigh 500 stones/pounds.
Clothing/car/video manufacturers no longer respect the vast varity people and sell only cookie cutter chinese size clothing. Funny enough I now only buy chinese videos the past 15 years. I just watch kungfu movies as they have more depth than todays movies besides that of the triology of JR TOLKIEN.
Who'd of thought that the best bits of the film were put into the trailer. Next you'll be telling me that they use models in underwear commercials.
And: If you object to the quality, don't consume it in any way. If you pirate it, the producers think you like it and are just tight.
"There was a feeling that if a file sharing application had offered paid-for, high quality content at low prices at this time then legal file sharing would not have taken off ....."
Oh bollocks, that argument has always been complete and utter cods-wallop! There's only one reason people help themselves, because it's free and they can get away with it! As the other guy said, no one really ever gets caught or punished. You could say each album or movie will cost 5p and people would still avoid paying and simply rip off from a torrent! Add to that the convenience of being able to simply pull down a torrent rather than all that tedious setting up an account, registering your bank card, etc and torrents are piece of piss to get something for nothing.
Some yes, most no.
I agree with your statement to a limited extent. Yes, some people will download regardless of the cost and these you will never deal with. However, most people have some moral code and generally believe in paying for things provided the price is right and sensible. Lower down someone says how can an old album cost more than new material. Well, if purchased on CDs, the manufacturer might need to allow for a production run that either doesn't get fully sold or takes a long time. The beauty of downloads, is that this simply doesn't matter. You're talking about a few meg of disk space........nothing in terms of cost.
It would be a better service, with more available whenever the customer wants at a better price. Sheet music is an interesting area as well. Unpopular and old pieces are generally hard to get because they can't justify the print run. They either won't get sold or the price will be so high that people will photocopy it. Obviously answer? Downloads. Cost would reduce dramatically, all for the cost of a few meg of disk. Problem solved. Again, better customer experience, lower overheads, easier life for suppliers etc.etc.
However, all the industries have one thing in common................they have unrealistically high expectations of profit. Therefore, they can't support this model as they can't milk the customer. Eventually they will loose.......it might takes years, but they will. The genie is out the bottle and the first to offer a really good service might well take out all the others. If only the company execs had the brains to think beyond the next 12 months and into the medium/long term and see their companies fading away.
AC for obvious reasons
I have a niche taste (no, not porn, nothing like that) and more or less the only way I can obtain the stuff I like is mail order where the postage would triple the cost and take it to nearly three digits, or a download. If the stuff was available reasonably over on this side of the world, I'd buy. Maybe not all, but most. But it isn't. So I can't. Perhaps it might be time for distributors to look beyond their country's borders and consider monetizing the international market. That the stuff is downloaded at all internationally suggests that some people at least are interested.
The only reason I download music for free, I don't bother with films, is because, I have already bought it on vinyl, then on cassette and then they wanted more money for cds...
I'll be damned if I'm paying for the same thing over and over again. All my new music is bought and paid for. I'm a punk so I buy band cds straight off those I like at gigs.
At least that way my money is not paying for some corporate turd at the likes of BGM, Universal, Sony, to buy himself another big fat bifter.
Au contraire, mon capitaine
Actually, I beg to disagree. Allofmp3.com was doing very well by charging small amounts based upon the size of the files you were downloading. I took the opportunity to get mp3s of a load of albums I have on vinyl. From my point of view, it was far more convenient paying reasonable amounts than to go through the effort of creating the mp3s myself.
As far as the copyright infringement issue goes (it isn't theft), the artist has already been recompensed for the intellectual property rights, and I was paying for the convenience of someone else converting analogue to digital for me.
The problem with legal downloads is that the rights holders have inflated ideas about the value of the content. With content on plastic discs, the likes of Amazon will discount them when they wish to shift old stock. However, the download cost remains high. And you can't sell it on ebay when you are done with it.
Pricing at the Allofmp3 end of the scale might well get people to increase their legal downloads. It it was £1 for a downloaded album, rather than a track, we might well see a lot more sold. Me, I go for the physical disk anyway...
Which laws have been broken
The issue here is who is prosecuted and for what. Yes, people who download illegal copies of whatever are guilty of copyright theft whether you think in a legal or moral sense. However, there are also laws against cartels and such like that the industries were undoubtedly in breach of and yet there were no prosecutions. From a moral stance (and should be legal), if you prosecute one, you should prosecute the other. Unfortunately, from a legal standpoint, the industries are rich enough to effectively buy the law.
So, the moral argument for prosecuting illegal file sharers is almost impossible to justify on the grounds that those calling for the prosecutions are guilty of crimes as well, and some might consider them more serious!! Nobody expects any person, company or industry to be whiter than white and never make a mistake, but the wholesale profiteering, cartels etc. in the music, film and software industries are so obvious and so large, you can hardly consider them a minor wobble in an otherwise decent life.
As the writer has said, if the companies had taken notice of what was obviously happening at the time, they would have created their own online sources, charging a reduced amount (no CD production etc. needed) and could have avoided all this. Instead they tried to carry on profiteering etc. and got what was coming to them. Morally, the companies don't have a leg to stand on, but as they own the law, legally they do.
And it doesn't matter how you try and spin it Andrew, or how the survey questions were worded... Charging 'nearly the same', 'the same' or 'even more' for digital copies (with no physical product required) is morally wrong and totally unjustifiable. Anybody who does not agree with that clearly has more money than common sense or is a greedy c**t record company rep.
Thumbs up is for Mad Mike.
Re: Morally wrong and totally unjustifiable
Is it wrong to charge the same for the same product? CDs are just a transport medium for me. If I buy one, it's going to end up encoded as a high quality MP3 on my hard drive just the same as if I buy a download. The difference being that the download I can get immediately, don't have to bother ripping and I don't end up with the clutter of a CD around the place. Other people for various might prefer the CD, but to most of us, they are actually the same product delivered in two separate ways. Maybe people stuck in the past get hung up on thinking that they have been cheated by missing out on the bits of plastic, but I don't.
I hear the same outrage about ebooks sometimes - how dare they charge the same for an ebook as a physical copy? Well, the eBook is infinitely lighter and more convenient to me, so if anything I'm lucky I'm not charged more. We all have our preferences, but it's not "morally wrong" and "totally unjustifiable" to charge the same or nearly the same cost for what is effectively the same product or, in the case of ebooks, where there are plusses and minuses on both sides that cancel each other out.
And note also, it's the "greedy c**t record company reps." getting the money - not the creative artists!
A download is just not the same as a CD. Yes I can encode it if I want and make it the same as the download (except for the DRM). BUT I can also:
play it as a CD.
encode it as many times as I want.
play it on as many different devices as I want.
re encode when my mac/ipod get nicked.
convert it later into some as yet uninvented format.
be sure that the rights owner will not be able to take away my ability to play it.
give it to someone else or sell it.
take it back to the shop if doesn't work on my player.
peruse the sleeve notes long years after the website has been shut down
I would disagree. When you buy a CD in a shop, a significant part of that cost is associated with the physical object - artwork design, manufacture, transport, renting and staffing the shop, the risk that some of the CDs you mass produce won't sell etc.
All these costs disappear with a download. Most of the remaining costs (producing the music, marketing etc) are fixed costs rather than per unit costs.
Of course anything is worth what the market will bear, but if you take away a large chunk of the production costs and the price doesn't change it is surely an indication that the market isn't free and fair.
The internet is not free...
Running a service on the Internet is not free - especially a media and payment based service.
Storage, Bandwidth and payment processing are some of the most expensive things that you can do in modern IT.
Something to think about.
I looked up the definition, and to my amazement, they are real places, and the don't charge to let you watch movies on DVD, TV shows on DVD, and you can read books for free too.
Every comment on here keeps going on about freetards, so tomorrow I'm going down to my local library and call everyone one I see just that. Aren't they freetards too? I called my grandmother a freetard, and she just looked at me quixotically. I'm not sure about how far physically you need to be away from a library before one starts being a "freetard". Does anyone have any data on this?
I also found out that these "libraries" have been around for as long as people have been. How is that possible, should we get together and burn these places now? Don't they know people should only be allowed to enjoy books and media AFTER they pay, and if they can't pay, why should they get to see/read it. What I don't understand is how artists and writers have been able to eek out a existence all these years (3,000 years) with these houses of piracy in every town (some even have 2 or 3)?
/end of sarcasm/
Hopefully that was the equivalent of a "divide by zero" to your media company brainwashing.
Quite! But it is never that simple...
CD and download are different but there are delivery/fulfilment costs associated with both. What they are per unit I have no idea but lets not pretend that it is free to provide downloads.
I notice that when I buy SW licenses from M$ the download is always cheaper than shipping a physical copy so I assume download is a saving.
What skews this argument slightly is the availability of FREE software that lets me generate my own digital copy from the CD and other flexibility that a download does not allow. If you had to pay for encoders then I could see a good argument for the cost of downloads.
Digi downloads were an opportunity for the biz to reduce price whilst maintaining margin. Instead they tried to use it to increase margin and people can see through that.
"if you take away a large chunk of the production costs and the price doesn't change it is surely an indication that the market isn't free and fair."
As both products are available side by side (download and CD) and the price is similar, in this case it's an indication that most people didn't care much about the things that have changed. I personally can do without the clutter of the plastic. As people aren't flocking to buy CDs instead of MP3s (and in fact, the other way around), it's an indication that the convenience of instant gratification far trumps inlays and artwork. So as people's purchasing habits clearly demonstrate that they don't value the product less, and in fact seem to be preferring it, then why should seller's lower their prices? Keep in mind with inflation the way it is, any price staying where it is (and albums are slightly cheaper than they were I think), is actually a reduction in real terms.
Libraries are not free; I believe they're paid for by council tax, of which I and most others on here pay copious amounts.
It's a matter of opinion whether it is better to buy a CD or download a track, but I absolutely accept that some people find it more convenient to download music.
But it is also undoubtedly much cheaper to distribute music as downloads. There are costs, but they are much lower than distributing CDs.
In other industries, competition ensures that digital technology benefits the consumer in terms of price *and* convenience. I have just bought some leaflets, banners and printed CDRs for a trade show - really easy to submit the artwork online, quick turnaround, good quality ... and a really good price too. I didn't have to pay extra for the convenience, I actually paid a lot less than it would have been 20 years ago because technology has made the process cheaper.
So yes, some people will pay the same for a download as a CD because they want the song on their phone and they want it now. But a lot of people see the download price as a blatant rip off and feel perfectly justified in downloading it for free.
"They felt that when sites like Napster and Kazaa had begun, the industry had had a chance to develop high quality, legal file sharing"
If the music indusrty had got their shit together in time...
It wouldnt need to be done by dirty , virus ridden peer to peer sharing , if people were paying for the music, the sellers would just host it on their servers.
<pedantic rant mode>
I really wish people wouldn't keep using inaccurate terms like 'Piracy' and 'Theft' when referring to un-authorised downloading of digital material. Yep, it's probably some form of offence, but it is NOT Theft or Piracy.
Theft is clearly defined in English law:
"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and "thief" and "steal" shall be construed accordingly." Clearly the owner of the original downloaded material is still in possession, so no theft. Money may be owed to them, or contract terms may have been breached, but theft has not occurred.
Similarly Piracy specifically refers to acts of robbery or violence on the high seas, or outside the jurisdiction of any state. Again, nothing to do with copyright violations.
</pedantic rant mode>
Unauthorised duplication or infringement of copyright.
Theft is walking into a record store and walking out with the product.
Record store?
What's a record store?
Indeed, what's a record?
I don't know which dictionary you have but my OED makes the following definitions (paraphrased):
Theft - to steal
Stealing - ... take (another person's property) without permission or *legal right*... Dishonestly pass off *someone else's ideas* as their own...
(My emphasis)
I also notice that you don't quote a dictionary for the definition of Piracy. Is that because it gives two definitions, one for the thing done on the high seas with the stealing of ships, etc, and the other bing the thing with taking copies of copyrighted material without payment. At least, that's what my OED says.
I've done some research into this, and use of "piracy" to describe copyright infringement goes back at least to Charles Dickens. Take a look at his 'Proclamation' regarding Nicholas Nickleby:
That was published in 1838. So if you think use of the word "piracy" to describe copyright infringment is some hideous probably-transatlantic coinage, you couldn't be much further from the mark.
Just FYI.
Hey AC
And the definition of theft you thoughtfully provided absolutely doesn't apply - unless you abstract theft to potential earnings in which case anyone who is preferred for a job over you is also stealing your money.
Also under most countries laws prior to now copyright violation was about 'making available' - that is, the providers - now uploaders, selling or giving out works that they did not have the right to, usually for profit. Now they've moved to demonising the recipients, much the same as the war on drugs (another resounding success story). Hell, they've even created an industry ot of enforcement.
As a composer/writer I'm strongly for protection of creative rights. I would argue that what the various 'rights organisations', their lobby-groups and the politicians they buy are not interested in artist rights at all, merely protecting their established business model.
The current model is broken, protects neither consumer nor creator and only really benefits the parasitic businesses that have grown up around it.
And Andrew, it's nice finding myself agreeing with much of what you wrote for a change.
@Stephen 10
In what way does stealing an idea not apply to copyright?
A classic argument for copying copyright material without paying for it is that the producer of the material doesn't loose anything - ie: You have only taken the idea, not the physical object.
Don't trust dictionaries...
Definition of theft is from Section 1(1) of the Theft Act 1968, which beats the OED definition as far as UK law is concerned.
Definition of Piracy is a slight editing of Article 101 of the UN Convention on the law of the sea.
If I want to know what a word means, I'll go to the OED. I am not a lawyer, neither are any other people here, AFAICT. The law may well have specific need to use particular words in different ways to those which are used and understood by the general public. I am an IT expert, I would not argue that a mouse is a tool for moving a pointer and not a small rodent, just because that's the definition my industry uses of that word,.
Taking a definition of piracy from the law of the sea would suggest that you're deliberately cherry picking where you get your definitions from in order that they fit your worldview.
The OED is a official definition of (UK) English, these semantic arguments people make to justify their actions are, frankly, tedious. Either way, you don't change the moral implications that because you have taken someone's intellectual property and not paid for it, they have less money that if you had paid for it. Dress it up how you like, it's not right and you know it, otherwise you wouldn't make such arguments to try to justify it.
So I take an idea, if I don't act upon it to make money, how is it relevant that I "have it".
Where do you think we would be as a society if we horded knowledge like you suggest? We live in a world, built on the knowledge of those that came before us.
So if I download an e-book for free because I can't find a DRM-free version for my Sony device, and they only sell a Kindle version, I'm a douche freetard? But if I go to the library and check it out for free, then read it, I am not a douche freetard? Where is the money transfer with either? There isn't any, they are the same. You judge one of those two scenarios differently, even though the end-result to all parties is the exact same. And you are defensive about it, because deep-down you know it's irrational.
The music studios have managed to subvert the one thing that has made us humans great, sharing. Digital media is a infinite quantity object, until recently we called those types of things stories or folk-songs, and we shared them.
It's great that people can make money from writing, singing, and painting, but they have been able to make money doing it long before the idea of recordings came about.
The problem seems to be that they expect to be millionaires and to be paid for the rest of their lives for a performance or two. That's swell, but don't for one second think that anyone that has to wake up everyday and work 40+ hours a week for the rest of our lives is going to shed a tear when you don't get your wish.
Artist of all types would make plenty of money from the people willing to pay (previously called benefactors), if you got rid of the parasites between the two. It's not the artists suing people, it's the parasites, and the artists should be furious because the amount of money being spent is insane, and could be paying the artists, but instead is going to lawyers, to keep their niche positions they have made for themselves, as parasites.
If you want to be an artist, and don't want people to download your stuff, then don't record it. Perform at venues, and charge at the door. You might have to work more than once, but then so do we.
Libraries pay rights holders to lend books.
Oh, so they pay $49 per DVD for everyone, everytime? Right.
I wonder how they kept track in the year 30 AD, did they send out checks, or was it gold, and did they pay out yearly? What about 1960, was it weekly then?
The question they should ask is
"If all media companies got together, made a portal like the piratebay and stuck all their media on there for either an all-you-can-eat or pay-by-download basis, would you subscribe?"
I'd bet that nearly everyone would say yes, but the fact is to consume media legally you need 50 million accounts to a thousand different companies, all of whom want your credit card details (who'll then lose them obviously) and it's too much effort.
Why can't the MAFIAs see this? Piracy offers simplicity and a complete, unrestricted catalogue. Build that and they will come.
The Aug 2011 report is based on interviews of 36 people!!!!! What did they do pass it around the ofcom office, FFS, I could get more than that just by asking my son's school friends.
"Kantar also tried to mitigate against the "leading question"."
It would seem to me that if the conclusion of the report is that that downloaders are "Self-serving consumers" downloading what they can because they can, or were "collectors" and "cyber-techies" then there leading questions asked. I have asked my son's school friends why they download and they will say the same thing, they can't afford to buy music and videos. And having just handed over over 60 notes for what I consider stocking fillers for Christmas, I think they have a point.
My own son wanted to buy me the remastered DSOM as a Christmas present but was shocked when he found out that the remastered 38 year old record cost 40% more that the current chart offerings.
Out of the mouth of babes……
Obvious answer (in my oppinion)
"Well, chaps, here's an idea. Why not choose a representative sample of 2,000 broadband users, grant them immunity for a couple of months, and do a silent double-blind test? Perhaps with some of the sample you could experiment with new ideas. The ISP knows exactly what's going on, so speculating on speculation should become superfluous."
This research would have to be conducted by (or with the express consent of) the industry (music/film/software producers working together) to allow them to offer immunity. However, these are the exact same people who do not want this research conducted: they want to be able to maintain their archaic business models, and this research would likely (IMHO) force them into doing something new.
yes and don't choose Kantar.
and be scrupulous with the questions!
The original survey was evaluating research methods NOT piracy itself
Having taken a look (at the Kantar survey at least)...
The primary brief of the Kantar Survey was to evaluate different methods of questioning individuals about file sharing NOT to evaluate file sharing issues themselves.
This was a pilot survey for the purpose of understanding differences between Online, Face to Face and Telephone interviews for this area of research (yes, even more boring than the original topic).
Whilst "I find music and video files that you pay for on the internet expensive" is somewhat leading, it is the difference in response that was of interest not the responses themselves. Often there are reasons for leading questions.
Take a look at the survey (@Ellie) and see if you're really appreciating what it's purpose was.
If those most likely to download are cash poor..
Then it just simply proves that DRM is nothing but snake oil. DRM exists supposedly to encourage them to buy (by presumably slowing down the release of pirated copies). Since these folk won't buy anyway spending money to dissuade piracy just results in lower overall profit thanks to the cost of DRM in the first place.
Logical theory
In reality, though, the cash-strapped are less guilty of thieving than one would think, and if they do start stealing, it will be to acquire things they actually need, not useless stuff they can do without.
I think that the people most guilty of copyright infringement are people who could very well pay for it, but choose not to for various reasons (some that can actually be valid from their point of view).
After all, we're not talking about survival here, but about entertainment. When you've reached that level of preoccupation, you've most likely done away with more basic issues like where do you sleep and do you have enough to eat.
DRM puts off legit customers
We got rid of our DVD players when new format disks wrecked both of them. We also stopped playing DVD's on our living room PC when they also started trying to infect our systems and damaged the drives.
We used to buy a DVD a week - we have not bought any DVD's for well over 18 months, since the very last one we bought cost us a new drive and a system reformat.
Instead we wait until films appear on freesat(HD) and download to the portable hard drive attached to this - better quality than DVD and we can prune the advs :-) Also no stupid forced-to-watch trailers or threats etc and the files can be ffmpeg'd down to fit on a phone if anything was actually worth watching more than once. IMHO most stuff today is not even worth watching - if you have seen the trailer you ave probably seen the best bits - the rest is padding.
I would be very happy to buy boxed sets etc and buy mpeg audio books etc but DVD's no longer play on anything I own.
Damn true that !
I am sick to death of being forced to watch that stupid FBI warning.
Do they really think that their bloody warning will be kept by pirates ?
Not counting the idiots that make film trailers mandatory before being able to watch the film. Yeah, as if six years after the DVD has been sold I'll still be interested in trailers for films that I either have the DVD for, or have decided that I am totally not interested.
Still, could be good for some laughs (hey, remember that turkey ? Man was that film stupid !).
But no. These days I buy my DVDs when I'm interested, and rip the film to keep only the film. That way I can watch what I want, when I want, which is something I find perfectly normal to do in my own house.
Lies, damned lies and more lies
Surely last weeks "sexual partners" survey proved once and for all that asking the public in order to ascertain the truth is entirely pointless. For those that missed it that survey published results last week in which the average man claimed to have had 15 sexual partners and the average woman claimed to have had just six. Which proved that either the vast majority of men are homosexual or everyone lies in surveys, particularly on moral issues.
If downloading copyrighted material requires a payment to the owner of the copyright (which all reasonable standards of logic would suggest is true). Why are you coming after me for the payment ?
I'm currently paying my ISP circa 20 quid a month for somthing that, on the face of it, should be a low or no-charge add-on to my already extortionate phone rental contract....Surely if Mistra Performing Rights wants his pound of flesh he should be looking at the man making the money out of providing me with the means, motive and opportunity ?
private and public performances
Musicians have rights in respect of music played in public perfomances, but not in private ones. As an Internet user I also don't consider my private use of content readily available any of the business of the music industry for the same kind of reason they don't get to know what is played and sung around the piano in my home. But given the ISPs claim my Internet connection is capable of downloading 100 movies and 2000 songs/month etc. as part of their advertising and selling my connection, I wouldn't mind the content providers getting a sales commission, as the ISP's business is carried out within the public domain.
This is not a tax as has sometimes been claimed - it's as legitimate a sales commission as the rights payments work in broadcasting, as without the content the means of transforming or transporting it would not be bought and sold. This could be done without intimidation or interfering with listener/viewer privacy, and in much the same way as with broadcasting.
What if I connect a recorder to a radio or tv or computer and record the output?
It's happened for years and years and will continue to happen regardless of what DRM etc.. systems "they" try to impose.
The whole industry needs to change or utlimately die!
HDCP was intended to stop this happening
In my experience, the primary effect of HDCP and similar has been to piss off business CEOs who want to show their home videos at conferences, but can't because it won't show on the secondary monitor. We had to set up some rather convoluted video paths to get around it.
- Amusingly, the biggest effect Windows Genuine Advantage has had on my life was to delay the launch of Intel Centrino/Windows XP Media Centre edition, forcing Microsoft to pay up for a satellite broadband link just to verify the computers they provided!
(They would not log on without WGA sorting itself out, and we couldn't use the manual method or even connect to WiFi without logging in. Well done!)
This is somewhat disingenuous; research completed in May 2010 is not regarded as 'old' in the research industry, indeed anything under 2 years old is generally seen as quite fresh. I wouldn't be surprised if the report had taken until December of that year to be released, as it would have had to wend its way from vendor to client, then from client to client's boss, and onwards and upwards. Something as politically sensitive as this would take longer to release.
That said, that still leaves 12 months unaccounted for by Ofcom, and the suspicion has to be that they were waiting for an opportune moment to release it.
Oh, and qual research is NEVER representative, that's the point. As a professional research nerd, this is one of those incredibly difficult - yet remarkably intriguing - subject areas for which there isn't a perfect research methodology. The idea of granting 2,000 people immunity is interesting, but would quickly be ruled out for a) logistical (could it even be done legally?!) and b) behavioural (it's going to affect behaviour) reasons.
</research geekery> Still an interesting read, though; I'd like to see this not being brushed over in future policy decisions on piracy.
"could it even be done legally?"
If there is a written agreement between the media cartel and the subjects of the research specifying that nothing the subjects can do will be the subject of a lawsuit during the length of the study, then the law will not be brought into the equation.
Simple as that.
As long as murder is not involved, of course.
"And digital prices are typically lower than physical prices."
Maybe in lalaland. 'Round here in the real world, the per-song price usually makes the digital album a tad more expensive than the physical one. And then you add the data transfer costs, and then the storage. And most of the time it comes with idiotic "anti-piracy" systems that do nothing to deter pirates but do hinder legitimate use -a lot.
So, quite a bit more expensive, and less convenient to use.
That doesn't excuse anything, of course, and it's not relevant really. Joe Bloggs has a fixed budget for that kind of things usually. Piracy or not, Ms and Mr 50 quids WILL spend their 50 quids. The amount of music/movies/etc they will have access to is what varies.
The "an illegal download is a lost sale" argument assumes that
1. households have an unlimited budget.
2. People don't buy what they like if they already have a crappy version of it.
Both assumptions are stupid; the first one for obvious reasons, and as for the second one, would you please look at the Star Wars fans, for example? The ones who own 5 physical copies of every movie, and went to see each at least twice in a theatre? (and probably have a few ripped copies around for convenience, too).
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