Comment LA (Score 2) 285
Los Angeles is a great city. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The weather alone is awesome, the other stuff is a bonus.
Comment Doesn't mean that (Score 1) 7
Do you think this started with the current president? Do you think it will stop with the next one? The one after that?
Comment Your choice (Score 1) 217
The first question is whether your notes are nearly all pure text or whether your notes include mathematical symbols, diagrams or pictures of some sort. If it's the latter, then your fastest, easiest, most flexible, lowest overhead input method is still pen and paper. If you go this route, get a good fountain pen and good quality paper. A fountain pen, unlike a ballpoint, can write with near-zero pressure, which means you can you can write for much longer before your hand starts to cramp up. That's a major advantage if you're sitting in classes taking notes for hours at a time. Good quality, inexpensive fountain pens include things like the Lamy Safari, Faber Castell Basic or Pilot Metropolitan. If you want to go up market a bit from there, I'd suggest having a look at the super-cool looking Namiki Falcon. Top quality paper means Clairefontaine or Rhodia (which are both owned by the same company). Leuchtturm is not quite as good, but still quite good and less expensive. The downside to pen and paper comes at the back end, in that you can't sort, search, copy and paste etc.
If you'd rather take notes on a laptop, then, like other commenters, I'd suggest Emacs Org Mode. Despite its intimidating reputation, learning the basics of Emacs is actually pretty easy and you need to know only a tiny percentage of the capabilities of Emacs in order to use Org mode. You can pick up those basics in 30 minutes and lots of people do useful work with Emacs without ever learning more than that. The upside is that Org Mode can do everything you describe, it's as customizable as any software you'll ever encounter and it stores everything in plain text mode that will always be accessible, not some proprietary binary format that will be unreadable if the software vendor ever goes out of business. Besides the initial learning curve, Org Mode (like any software) requires a bit more overhead effort on the front end compared to pen and paper, but you get your reward at the back end because you'll be able to search, sort, copy, paste, and slice and dice your notes however you like.
Personally, I'd go with Org Mode unless the nature of your notes (e.g. lots of pictures, flow charts etc.) makes keyboard input impractical. Even then you could consider Org Mode for the text plus pen and paper for the occasional picture/diagram, then scan the picture/diagram to pdf to include with your Org Mode notes later.
If you're interested in Emacs / Org Mode, then "Learning GNU Emacs" (3rd ed) is a bit old but still the best book out there on Emacs. Get that book plus download the Org Mode manual and maybe the latest Emacs manual from the FSF and that's all you'll need.
Comment The only news publication worth buying in print (Score 1) 106
is The Economist.
Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."
EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."
Comment Summarized in plain English (Score 3, Informative) 342
What the decision is saying is this:
1) historically, a type of legal question known as an "equitable" claim (or equitable defense) has been decided by the judge, not a jury [for ancient historical reasons I won't get into here on Slashdot]
2) there are some cases which refer to copyright fair use as an equitable defense but it's not clear if those cases are using the term "equitable" as that term is used in (1)
3) some cases have put the fair use defense to the jury to decide, but without considering the issue I have described in (1) and (2)
4) I'd like the parties to tell me, in writing, what they think the correct answer to this issue is, and why
5) once I get the written submissions in (4), I'll decide whether the judge or the jury should rule on the copyright fair use defense
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