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But it's in the US's best interest to promote larger militaries in other nations.

After all it's good for the american economy. Consider:

The US is the largest exporter of weapons:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Arms_trade#Top_15 _arms_exporters_in_1999
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0821-02.htm

Username handling

Gmail allows usernames of between 6 and 30 characters. The only characters that can be used are letters, numbers, and periods (.). An unofficial feature of username handling seems to be that periods do not actually matter when resolving addresses. What this means is that signing up for the account foobar@gmail.com allows one to receive mail sent to the accounts: foo.bar@gmail.com, f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com, etc. Additionally, one is also allowed to receive mail sent to accounts of the form: foo.bar+bas@gmail.com where bas could be any string. This would allow for different aliases to be used when signing up for different services and then being able to easily filter them. /

No they won't. Unless, of course, they start trying to make even more fundamental changes to copyright law. But since the RIAA hasn't had any luck on this front with used CD sales, I doubt the newspapers will either.

I would also support a vigorous ethics investigation into how she used her power in the CIA to get her husband some work.

Actually, for what it's worth, it wasn't the Mediterranian that Jesus walked on, but the Sea of Galilee. At 13 miles long by 8 miles wide it is large, but nothing like the Mediterranian.

"statist" is one of the more abused words used to describe political ideologies, and some more verbage is necessary to separate the libertarian from the socialist, two very different beasts. Chomsky's anarchistic socialism doesn't lead to freedom, at least in terms of property (which the libertarian would argue is absolutely necessary to freedom of the individual).

Back on topic... in the "natural world", things (whether it is a stick or a cave) are owned by force of might and social interaction, essentially systems which enforce ownership of some physical thing. An idea cannot be shared in the "natural world" without that idea becoming free. However, the use of an idea can be controlled by the same systems as physical property. For example, the Chief's Spear could be made by Random Caveman, giving him the same weaponry as the Chief. Chief can control this by taking away, killing, or putting social pressures onto Random Caveman. The idea is no longer free, but subject to force of might and social pressure. Fast forward to today, and we have the same thing except suits are involved. Can an idea be owned? Absolutely.

The question before us is whether or not it is right or wrong to allow anyone to enforce ownership. This is not a cut and dried issue, certainly not in the same way that physics is. Any answer to the question which fails to recognize that we are presented with a moral and philosophical issue can be safely ignored.

All these "optional" programs are favorite budget cutting targets...

According to this report:

Music and visual arts instruction were offered in most of the nation's public secondary schools (90 and 93 percent, respectively) in 1999-2000.

It would appear that the arts are largely intact. Your observation is not only irrelevant, it completely ignores my point that those programs would never have been there in the first place if education was no more than socialization for industrial labour, as you contend.

Yet they're [Walmart] the biggest employer in the U.S. Weird huh?

What's weird is that your observation completely ignores my point that education has not made the employees content to work at Walmart, as you suggested. In addition, Walmart is an example of the service economy, which is quite different from the industrial economy, which you claim that the education system was created to serve.

I suspect the biggest shock of a student's young life is when he gets his first job, but that's 'cause he doesn't qualify for many...

This statement completely contradicts your premise that the only objective of the public education system is to shape students for the work force.

The worst it does is destroy individuality and force monolithic conformity while terrorizing the students. That, and failing to provide an reasonable approximation of an education.

Are you speaking from experience here? Did the school system fail to provide you with a reasonable approximation of an education? Would you be happy working at Walmart? Were there no arts classes available at your school? Are you unqualified for most jobs that are available? Or, are you an example of "a blind pig" finding an acorn, as you put it?

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Left-Right_politi cs

The biggest issue with the current PBMR design is the pebbles contain large quantities of graphite. It is quite safe as long as the inert Helium coolant loop is in tact but if the coolant system is breached and oxygen reaches a red hot graphite there is at least a chance the graphite in the pebbles is going to ignite and burn furiously. The graphite fire at Chernobyl burned for nine days and was the main source of the toxic plume.

From WordIQ:

"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal."

It possible this is a solvable safety issue but it is a source of concern the PBMR advocates seem to downplay without being able to prove its not an issue.

I'd tend to agree that PBMR sounds a lot safer for this kind of thing than a breeder reactor with a steam loop.

"Not the new pebble bed reactors. The old designs would melt down if you didn't actively control the reaction. The new designs just stop producing energy."

I'm sorry to say point out are claiming they are "safe" mostly because they have a low probability to melt down due to a loss of coolant (presumably Helium gas).

But you are either intentionally or unintentionally glossing over the possibility a graphite pebble bed would burn if there was a breach in the coolant system and the hot graphite was exposed to air/oxygen instead of inert gases. Burning graphite helped make Chernobyl the catastrophe it was.

From WordIQ:

"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal. "

It appears this is the source of controversy that needs to be resolved before you can really claim PBMR is probably reasonably "safe". Someone needs to figure out a way to build a pebble bed sans radioactive waste and expose it to oxygen when its at its peak temperature and figure out if it will burn. The key problem being achieving the same thermal profile without fission in the loop.

"Also, I hate to break it to you, but burning coal produces much more environmental radiation than nuclear power."

It doesn't produce more radiation than a breached reactor vessel and burning pile of graphite laced with plutonium, and other assorted deadly isotopes.

As I said when I started this thread I'm all for nuclear energy since burning fossil fuels, coal especially, is obviously bad. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm willing to buy in to propaganda from the companies pushing nuclear power plants that their designs are infallible because they aren't. If they suffer a catastrophic failure they are a bloody mess. Coal fired power plants don't have this catastrophic down side so people tend to be more forgiving of living downwind from them.

An inflatable re-entry craft is nothing compared to Airship-to-Orbit.

But the there is this .

And we all know that the reactors will be perfectly safe until the Posleen invasion begins.

Here's a page with a bunch of other character names that have been used, including Eve. The distinction between Eve and Mallory seems to be that Eve can only intercept a message in transit, but Mallory has potentially unlimited resources for more sophisticated attacks.

Actually, that was just the marketing. NT is rumoured to stand for "NTen" the code name of the Intel i860 chup, the original target platform for Windows NT.

Oficially though, it's just 'NT' The letters according to Microsoft mean nothing, except what you wish to embelish upon it.

Did you read the entire article from which I quoted?
I have to disagree with your comment "The example you gave is a precendent, not a law." (Did you mean "precedent"?) From here:
"The common law originally developed under the auspices of the adversarial system in historical England from judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom, and precedent. The form of reasoning used in common law is known as casuistry or case-based reasoning."
From here
"Law. A judicial decision that may be used as a standard in subsequent similar cases: a landmark decision that set a legal precedent."
We might argue about the meaning of the word "law":
From here
"1. A rule of conduct or procedure established by custom, agreement, or authority."
"4. A piece of enacted legislation."
"9.a. The body of principles or precepts held to express the divine will, especially as revealed in the Bible."

Certain precedents can sometimes have greater effect than can certain pieces of enacted legislation (e.g. "laws" in the sense I suspect you mean).

"I fail to see how they could have ruled any other way"
Are you saying that software patents are not a problem?

That is precisely what they did call them ICB's or "Incendiary cluster bombs" I have seen them referred to in official reports of the era I've even seen it written on the side of museum piece bombs. Do you know what a cluster bomb is? It is a cluster of small bombs inside a bigger case; this is exactly how ww2 incendiary bomb worked they where the first cluster bombs. Just because you don't call them clusters doesn't mean they didn't

Just found this piece of information it also tells you a bit about incendiary cluster bombs Cluster bomb technology was first used by Germany against the United Kingdom in the Second World War, and developed independently by America and Russia, and is now widely available. Please, please, please review the differences between a WWII fragmentation bomb, and a cluster bomb. I can't believe someone is actually defending a journalist's sloppy, inaccurate reporting.

A fragmentation bomb is a metal case full of explosive that fragments a cluster bomb is cluster of little bombs that can be fragmentation incendiary even toxic gas.

I can't believe someone is actually defending a journalist's sloppy, inaccurate reporting. The usage in this case was a journalist who had no idea what he was reporting on, and simply made up details. There were no such things as "cluster bombs" in WWII. Typical journalism. If it was the BBC reporting, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

Perhaps you should apologise for those statements sources more credible than you disagree. And from your title of Shut the F**k up you know it as well but don't wan't to hear it.

And no unpredictable doesn't mean random.

If an event isn't random, then it must be under the control of a preceding event.

Which isn't true, at least in the sense in which we currently understand computers, otherwise we'd be able to build an AI easily

Programming a catalogue of complex behaviors isn't the hard part of AI research. The main difficulty is getting the computer to respond properly to discriminative stimuli.

There's still nothing stopping you from from eating cashews anyway, date someone with a ratio of 0.8 or holding you hand over a flame even when its too hot.

Why would I do those things if they went against my best interests? Is capricious and irrational behavior essential to your definition of free will?

If the options are equal in all other ways, then my preference does effectively stop me from acting in a contrary way. I'm compelled to repeat certain experiences. There is evidence to suggests that those experiences induce the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. The experiences that I'm referring to are known as rewards or reinforcers. I'm also compelled to avoid certain forms of stimulation. As you probably guessed, those stimuli are known as punishments.

Nice dig at Christianity...

The genesis myth that I was referring to predates Christianity by several centuries.

Am I the only one who didn't immediately think of Second Impact the disaster in Neon Genesis Evangelion that destroyed Antarctica and killed half the worlds population. But of course the 'impact' story was a fictional explanation for an event in a fictional anime ... fiction within fiction .. is that like a double negative for reality. Must be, the proof is right there under the ice ... heh heh.

Actually, your synopsis drastically oversimplifies and mis-states the current understanding in linguistics of color terms in relation to Whorf-Sapir. One of the leading linguists in color research is Paul Kay, and in 1999 he wrote this paper (PDF) synopsizing the state of research (he's a major participant in the debates, so salt as needed...). In it, he writes:

Color is one of the very few lexical domains for which humans possess dedicated peripheral receptors. In the retina, the rods and (at least) three different families of cones are devoted to detecting variations in wavelength and luminance information. Color should be the last place where one would expect a priori for language to influence perception. That the relativists [pro-Whorfians] of the fifties and sixties chose color as their empirical battleground stands as a tribute to their self-confidence and a rebuke to their common sense. Of course, if the relativist case could be made in the domain of color, then a fortiori it should hold everywhere else.

However, Kay and Kempton, using a non-correlational, cross-linguistic experimental procedure, showed that certain non-linguistic color similarity judgments do appear to be influenced by the lexical classification of color in a language, although others are not so influenced. The Kay and Kempton results of both Whorfian and anti-Whorfian effects in color similarity judgments have recently been replicated in unpublished work of Jules Davidoff, Ian Davies and Debi Roberson.

The paper also summarizes inter-language color research, emphasizing Kay's work on physiologically-based universals.

Note that virtually everyone has abandoned the "strong" Whorfian hypothesis, that language tends to constrain thought. The "weak" hypothesis, that language can significantly influences thought, was still vigorously argued by the lingustic faculty when I was in college ('80s) and, from Kay's remarks in his paper, was still being argued into this century... WordIQ has a nice summary, which features this provocative quote about programming languages from Alan Perlis

"a language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing".

Dyirbal (an Australian Aboriginal language) has four genders. Masculine, feminine, neuter, and edible non-flesh food.

Cherokee and Arabic has three numbers. Not like 1, 2, 3; but, singular, dual, and plural.

Chinese as a spoken language does not exist. Each "dialect" (not an entirely acurate word depending on its intention) is mutually uninteligible when spoken. Hence, may be considered seperate languages. The term dialect is applied to them because they share a common writing system. A Mandarin speaker will not understand a Cantonese speaker, but can read a message from the Cantonese speaker easily.

Dyirbal (an Australian Aboriginal language) has four genders. Masculine, feminine, neuter, and edible non-flesh food.

Cherokee and Arabic has three numbers. Not like 1, 2, 3; but, singular, dual, and plural.

Chinese as a spoken language does not exist. Each "dialect" (not an entirely acurate word depending on its intention) is mutually uninteligible when spoken. Hence, may be considered seperate languages. The term dialect is applied to them because they share a common writing system. A Mandarin speaker will not understand a Cantonese speaker, but can read a message from the Cantonese speaker easily.

Ted is Short for Teddy. Must be a Boston, Massachusetts thing.

Remember, "Capitalism" is marxist - or at least Sombartic - rhetoric.

To the extent that we "believe" in anything, we don't believe in "Capitalism" - rather, we believe in freedom, which necessarily presupposes the existence of private property rights.

However, to equate freedom with something so vulgar as the ownership of a spinning machine, a steam engine, or a plow, is to lose the battle over language [ipso facto the underlying ideological war itself].

Hell, I'll go you one step further: To the extent that we "believe" in anything, it's not that we believe in "freedom," but that we believe in opposition to tyranny [which is precisely what the marxists would impose upon us].

And their tyranny begins with the corruption and nullification of language [as a vehicle for describing the truth].

This is because you have yet to hit America's favorite disease: Hypercapitalism (a.k.a. "predatory capitalism" or "looting capitalism"). Under Hypercapitalism, all money or property obtained (i.e. earned, defrauded or outrightly stolen) by a businessman is entirely his.

That would be anarcho-capitalism. Nobody outside of the crazy devoted followers of Ayn Rand (a.k.a. "Randroids"; people who follow the cult-building novelist of the 1960s/1970s) and Murray Rothbard (a major Austrian economist) would advocate such a system -- not even the economically far-right Libertarian Party.

What you are describing -- in fraud and stolen money/property -- is theft, pure and simple. Once theft becomes legal, anarchy reigns. No reasonable society will allow such theft to be legal, ever.

And when instances of it do occur -- as under the current Bush administration where Enron and Halliburton are concerned -- that is not capitalism by any means. That is "crony capitalism ," in which government agents (like Bush and Cheney) perform work which favors the economic well-being of certain people or businesses (e.g. the defense industry, the oil industry, etc.).

Crony capitalism is the government stealing from everybody (via taxation) and giving tax money to some politician's business buddies or passing laws which favor those businesses (like the DMCA, for the recording and movie industries). It is, in fact, similar to fascism.

It is due to our large federal government, heavy taxation (which allows the government to spend more and grow as a result, and therefore spend more on a politician's business friends amidst an ever-growing list of increasingly-vague budget items), and pork-barreling legislators that we have the problem of crony capitalism, and the current Presidential administration shows off the problem better than any in recent memory (then again, I'm a youthful 20-something).

After reading your comment I did a quick search in Google News and found this article.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/94 21036.htm?1c
The ironic thing about the article is it recommends DC field a basketball team.

Also, if you want more information on Puerto Rico you can go to this link.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Puerto_Rico

There is some debate about potential fusion accidents and radiactive byproducts in a fairly balanced article here. I remember similar claims about "cheap and clean" fission energy in the 1950s which turned out to be neither in practice. I'm not a Luddite, but we do have to anticipate problems.

Well, the "beating up crowds on TV" comment is an oversimplification, but nevertheless, Brown v. Board came after a long line cases dating back to the 19-teens that chipped away at the legality of segregation. Those cases arguably got their popular impetus from well-publicized lynchings that date as far back 1899. And the abuses of segregation were precisely the sort of thing that the equal protection clause was supposed to prevent, so the legal arguments were easy.

Not that the court never surprises us with a sweeping ruling. That's what Roe v. Wade was. But it doesn't happen very often.

And no, you won't see a new case everytime a justice is replaced. The Supreme court takes only the cases it wants (except for the rare cases where it has original jurisdiction). They listen to a case once and then refuse similar cases for decades. They have bigger fish to fry.

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison to me for 2 reasons:

1) The "Unix Wars" of the late 80's / early 90's were primarily due to various vendors trying to lock people in. See this article as one example. In fact it was this very action that many analysts say opened the door for Microsoft to succeed in moving into the market with Windows NT.

2) [hinted at above] Microsoft was not competing in the same market as Unix or mainframes with Windows 3.0 ... Windows 3.x was almost purely a desktop with some small chunk of the workgroup server space. This didn't change until Windows NT (yes, NT shared the 3.1 version but was extremely different). And Windows NT didn't start eating into the SMB server market significantly until NT 4.0, which was LONG after the Unix Wars has ended.

If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it

Ken Livinstone, the current Major of London, can be a bit of a prat sometimes, but other times he has a point. When did voting (by all the people in the country), alone, last change something?

In the UK the 'opinions', and I use the term in the looses sense of the meaning, between the two main parties are almost identical. It's becoming like the US (or how the US is portried in the UK), of "(s)he with the most money" or "(s)he who is most photogenic" will be elected

It could be worse, much worse, but the present system of politics dominated by large corporations, almost buying their way (or their cronies way) into power cannot be good, in the long run, for the average Joe on the street

Jaj

I'll admit he got very lucky. The tech jobs graph looks like it was rigged for Clinton and against Bush. But the thing is

1. Even ignoring tech jobs, the job sitation was pretty good under Clinton, and still not break even under Bush
2. Eventually you have to come to the conclusion that either Democrats are all very lucky, or that they're doing something better.

As for the Internet, this seems to indicate that the bidding for the ARPANET contract started in 1968, under the LBJ adminstration.
Here

Totalitarianism has a real habit of working against itself...

How does one account for the popularity and prominence of the Communists in Finland after World War?

Althought recently in decline, in the last parliamentary elections, the Left Alliance, the successor to the Communist Party, got close to 10% of the vote. It had three members of the cabinets of the recent governments of Paavo Lipponen (1995-2003).

There have been ample alternatives on the left to a party so closely associated with a foreign invader. I suppose it's possible to get 10% of the voters to support any marginal party but the fact the Communists got positions in the government seems truly strange.

It seems as likely as Quisling getting a cabinet position in Norway.

Oh ya, they dont want bad PR.

Riiiiiiiight.

DRDOS
Windows95 Registration Wizard
Bundling Antitrust
NSAKEY
Windows Product Activation

Etc. Etc. Etc. Me thinks their image is just a bit beyond repair at this point

True enough. See the European Union's Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions for some discussion of ways to limit software patents in just the sort of direction you're implying.

That said, how does your argument about mental processes versus implemented computational processes differ from me going over the plotline to the Harry Potter novels in my head and me publishing my own Harry Potter ripoff novel? The difference is that in the one case it's all in my head, and in the second case, I'm publishing a work for distribution that either brings me income on J. K. Rowling's property or which may, arguably, decrease her income.

Patent is like copyright, it generally only becomes an issue when distribution is involved.

Lawyers make big bucks because the law is designed to work in fuzzy situations, with room for interpretation and argument. I imagine a lawyer faced with your question would simply say that a patent for an algorithmic process comes into effect when a judge (or jury) says it comes into effect.

Nobody said the law was pretty, of course.

A vote is not a bet on who wins. A vote is an expression of your preference.
A vote for a losing candidate is not "wasted". A wasted vote would be a vote for someone you don't want.

A voter can be expressing multiple preferences. I can (and some elections, I do) vote AGAINST a candidate as much as FOR in a specific race. In the presidential race, I will vote for Kerry because I want Bush gone. Even if I liked the alternative candidates (sorry Ralph), I would still vote for Kerry because it furthers my main preference to unseat Bush. It might sound like I don't support John Kerry- actually I think he will make a good President (of course I liked Clinton too...) I thought Clark or Dean or Edwards would have been good choices too, all much better than four more years of W.

FWIW, I'd like to point out that the third-party folks always take for granted that the two-party system is bad and wrong and needs fixing (preferably by making the Greens and Libertarians and USA Constitutionalists et al equal players.) Just remember that multiple-party systems aren't perfect either. Do we really want coalition governments? That the logical result of a Rise of the Third Parties.

Finally, third-party candidates aren't that uncommon in local or state races. What positive impact have those office-holders had on their cities and states? The common argument is that voting Dem or Rep has the same effective result, business as usual. If voting third-party ALSO results in business as usual, that third party is meaningless. Drop the rhetoric please; show me some results.

Semantic Web, proper noun

An attempt to apply the Dewey Decimal system to an orgy.

The Semantic Web is a project underway that intends to create a universal medium for the exchange of information by giving meaning, in a manner understandable by machines, to the content of documents on the web. Currently under the direction of its creator, Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium, the Semantic Web extends the ability of the World Wide Web through the use of standards, markup languages and related processing tools.

The modern corporate state isn't new, but its triumph in America is recent. Compare the Bush Republican state with the original model, Italian Fascism, and much strange behavior seems familiar.

Some years ago, I was running a "RTC" on an Atari 520 STF (with just a floppy and no HD, incidentally). RTC means "Réseau Téléphonique Commuté", which is equivalent to PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). By extension, this is also the name which was given to the telematic servers running on this network, using the French Minitel. Roughly said, this was a kind of BBS.

The Atari was running almost 7/7, 24/24, without any cooling device. I had however to turn it off from time to time for different reasons. Progressively, the power supply began to show failure signs at startup. It was taking more and more time to get full power. There were some funny waves on the screen and, furthermore, there was not enough energy to start the floppy drive motor. But after a few seconds, the screen was almost ok and the drive was able to read the floppy again. Later, "a few seconds" became "a few minutes". But it was still working in the end ... sometimes with the help of a gentle slap on the drive. :-)

Well, considering no less than six (6) posts before yours include the same quote verbatim, with sources ranging from woodieguthrie.com to the linked article to some commercial site that actually uses the wiklipedia entry and only cites in tiny font below the ads at the end up the page, I think we can "trust Wikipedia."

Seriously, have you any examples of Wikipedia being wrong? Wikipedia does have examples of Encyclopedia Britanica being wrong. I wonder if you'd have included such a disclaimer when citing EB? How about now, after reading this? ;)

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Woody_Guthrie

Even more amusing (or ironic) is that you cite a site that is taken entirely and verbatim from Wikipedia: Wkipedia's Woody Guthrie -- with the GNU Free Documention License printed in <font size="1"> underneath a bunch of ads.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Woody_Guthrie

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Water goes through an unusual expansion between 0 deg and 4 deg celcius, (which is why you have water under a layer of ice)Water is most dense at 4 degrees, and that it why . Anyway, you're totally off on the second and the gram. The SI unit is KILOGram, not gram. , and that is defined by a lump of metal of that weightLink. Also the definition of a metre has been redefined as the distance it takes light to travel in certain amount of time. Finally, the second is defined as the time it takes a certain amount of radioactive material to decay. All links here. Nothing arbitrary about it. And that still doesn't explain how we're better off not using simple measurements like the Kilometre, The Centigrade scale and others.

Water goes through an unusual expansion between 0 deg and 4 deg celcius, (which is why you have water under a layer of ice)Water is most dense at 4 degrees, and that it why . Anyway, you're totally off on the second and the gram. The SI unit is KILOGram, not gram. , and that is defined by a lump of metal of that weightLink. Also the definition of a metre has been redefined as the distance it takes light to travel in certain amount of time. Finally, the second is defined as the time it takes a certain amount of radioactive material to decay. All links here. Nothing arbitrary about it. And that still doesn't explain how we're better off not using simple measurements like the Kilometre, The Centigrade scale and others.

The First Indian Uprising of 1857
The Indian Mutiny (also known as the Sepoy Mutiny) as known to the British or The First War Of Indian Independence as known to the Indians was a period of uprising in northern and central India against British rule in 1857-1858. It is also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857. It is widely acknowledged to be the first-ever united rebellion against colonial rule in India.

Causes
The most famous reason for this mutiny is the use of cow and pig fat in .557 calibre Pattern 1853 Enfield (P/53) rifle cartridges. Since soldiers had to break the cartridges with their teeth before they could load them into their rifles, this was offensive to Hindu and Muslim soldiers, who considered tasting beef and pork to be against their respective religious tenets. In February 1857 sepoys refused to use their new cartridges. The British claimed to have replaced the cartridges with new ones and tried to make sepoys make their own grease from beeswax and vegetable oils but the rumor persisted.

Mangal Pande and the march to Delhi
In March 1857 Mangal Pande of the 34th Native Infantry attacked his British sergeant, wounded an adjutant. General Hearsay, who said Pande was in some kind of "religious frenzy" ordered a jemadar to arrest him but the jemadar refused. Mangal Pande then turned the gun against himself and used his foot to try to pull the trigger to shoot himself. He failed, was captured and then hanged on April 7 along with the jemadar. The whole regiment was dismissed as a collective punishment. Other sepoys felt this was too harsh.

On the 10th of May when the 11th and 20th cavalry assembled they broke rank and turned on their commanding officers. They then liberated the 3rd Regiment. The rebelling forces were then engaged by the remaining British forces in Meerut. Meerut had the largest percentage of British troops of every station in India 2,038 European troops versus 2,357 sepoys. The British side even had 12 field guns while the sepoys lacked an artillery. The British forces could have stopped the sepoys from marching on Delhi.

On the 11th of May they reached Delhi. They were joined by other Indians from the local bazaar. Here they attacked and captured the Red Fort (Lal Qila) which was the residence of Bahadur Shah Zafar. The sepoys demanded that he reclaim his throne. At first he was reluctant but eventually he agreed to the demands and became the leader of the rebellion.

About the same time in Jhansi, the army rebelled and killed the British Army Officers. This led to a left Rani Laxmibai, the queen of Jhansi, to defend herself and her kingdom. In 1858, when the British army once again marched towards Jhansi, the Rani assembled an army of 14,000 volunteers to fight the invaders. The war lasted 2 weeks but eventually the British won. The queen escaped on horseback to the fortress of Kalpi. Here she organized a few other kingdoms to rebel against the British. These rebel forces captured Gwalior from the British. The British placed a prize of Rs. 20,000 on the capture of Rani Laxmibai.

"Trademark owners should never use the trademark as a verb or noun, implying the word is generic."

I know it's being predantic, but Bill G has an honorary knighthood. Only citizens of countries which reconise the queen as head of state can have full or substantive awards.

The rules are explained a little better here

It's all a matter of semantics, I suppose, though all civil disobedience is, pretty much by definition, criminal.

The traditional definition of "civil disobedience" is "[t]he active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence."

I suppose it really depends on who's in power and what they want to call your act. Seditionist? Terrorist? Freedom fighter? And if it's the will of the people, is it disobedient at all?

It takes more work these days for me to find an artist that I like but, when I do, it's a great discovery.

And how has the fact that good music has been ubiquitous and now a scarcity wrt to you hearing about it affected your CD buying frequency? I'll tell you how it affected mine: It dropped to zero.

In fact, being forced to "hunt" for music has allowed me to discover a ton of artists and genres that I would not otherwise be exposed to.

I guess we fundamentally differ here. I don't like being forced into anything, especially not by an incestuous oligopoly of corporations that:

• Suppress independent music and oppress their own artists
• Repeatedly lobbies for self-serving legislation at the expense of both public and artists.
• Repeatedly abuse their oligopoly for price-fixing, i.e. ripping the customer off.
• etc. ad nauseam

save me the lecture on how it's not stealing

Exactly. It's not. Only simple minds who can't deal with the complexities of copyright would call it thus, so they can understand. Well that, and people who want to deceive.

You're stealing.

I'm certainly not. I'm not even P2Ping music any more.

You're taking something for nothing that would otherwise be sold. If you could not steal it, you would buy it.

Wrong, very wrong. That's true in some cases. In other cases, music downloading causes people to buy more music due to P2P sampling. At the time that I was a heavy P2P user, I bought almost twice as many CDs per month than before, and that even though my previous No. 1 source for finding out about my kind of music (the German alternative music TV station "Viva 2") had been shut down for the sake of a more RIAA-friendly third mainstream channel. In last year's fall, the RIAA and others successfully lobbied to make file sharing of (most) music illegal in Germany (can't point out one time too often that it was legal before!). I stopped downloading music and haven't bought a single CD since then. A coincidence?

My hypothesis: There are at least three groups of P2P users:

• The casual user: Makes up the majority of P2P users. Downloads some songs, buys some CDs, doesn't buy others. The net effect of P2P on this user's CD consumption is negligible.
• The cadger: Uses P2P because it's free-as-in-beer and has 1000 excuses for not paying. P2P lets his CD consumption drop to zero. But then, most of these probably have always found a way to get free music. If it wasn't for P2P, they would just record songs from the radio, copy/lend it from friends and whatnot. They have never paid much for music and never will.
• The fan (I would say I belong to this group): P2P and other non-RIAA-controlled distribution channels have been a boon for them. They could conveniently find out about gazillions of non-mainstream bands and sample their music in (cf.) high quality. If they found bands whose music they really like, they would go out and buy their CDs because fans show devotion for their idols. You can't call yourself a fan if all you have are burnt CDs. The net CD consumption of this group would increase (sometimes even greatly) because of P2P.

Now what does this boil down to? Blaming the casual user is ridiculous. They have been average customers wrt sales, and they stay average customers. What about the cadgers? Aren't they stealing? Yes, it's definitely not right what they do.

Dumping in terms of anti-competitive behaviour has 2 definitions:

Classically, dumping is a subset of what is known as predatory pricing. Dumping in this sense is the act of selling a product at a loss now in order to drive competitors out of business, with the goal of raising prices when they do in order to recoup the investment. It is illegal in the same way that many other anticompetitive behaviours are. However, in practice, it is enforced far less than other antitrust actions.

In international trade law however, dumping is defined as simply the act of one country selling a product in another country below the cost of what it takes the makers of that product in that country to make the product.

People inside a domestic industry who feel they are the victims of this second type of dumping intentionally try to blur the definition between the two kinds of dumping, in order to give the impression that the foreign country is doing something that would be illegal domestically. This is an attempt by them to justify protectionist measures like tariffs.

> democrats are the party that defends Jeffersonian ideals,
> the republicans are the party of the Whigs, who were
> originally rich land owners

Hmmm .. time for some history friend:

From here:
the rise of the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1856 put an end to the Whig coalition. The Whigs' lukewarm position on slavery, supporting the Compromise for the sake of holding the Union together, appealed to neither side of the increasingly polarized debate: Anti-slavery Northern Whigs deserted the party for the Republicans, while pro-slavery Southern Whigs defected to the Democrats.

Now from here:
The modern Republican Party was born on March 20, 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin as an outgrowth of the dissolved Whig party, choosing the name to recall to mind the founders; no matter that the aims were now different. ...
In the beginning largely a regional party of the Midwest states, the Republican Party's major issue was opposition to the spread of slavery to the western states. ...
The Republicans therefore became strongly identified as the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves, and the party that won the war. As a result, few Southerners joined the Republicans for over a hundred years-the memory of losing the war provided a strong impetus to remain with the Democrats.

More here:
Continuing to take advantage of their majority, Republicans proposed the 14th Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1868, stating: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

And here
Historically, the party has supported

The abolition of slavery
The right of free speech
Support of women's suffrage ...


Hey, I don't think the republicans are flawless - they have corrupion in there - but they seem more principled overall than the Democrats. The Democrats _seem_ to sway much more with what they assume is popular opinion.

OTA HD reception is ATSC based, while cable based HD is QAM - a different type of tuner.

This site has some more useful information about the differences.