Um, really? Cause it's easy to think of quite a few.
Pollution, for one. The market has every incentive in the world to pollute, and practically incentive to refrain from it. (It might want to pollute in secret, but that's hardly any better!)
The solution chosen by the market is almost always the cheapest solution, because that makes it the most money. That does not make it the superior solution.
And, hell, sometimes the solution chosen by the market isn't the cheapest solution. Sometimes entities in the market can gain an entire market or operate in collusion with the entire market and jack up prices as high as they go, which you can't even blame on the government failing to price externalities like with pollution.
So if the market is restrained from doing things that harm society but we traditionally fail to charge for, like pollution, and if it is restrained from operating in an anti-competitive manner, and it is restrained from lying to customers, and it is restrained in bunch of other ways, yes, it produces the 'superior' solution, which is an obvious admission that if we hadn't restrained it would have produced a different solution that we didn't think was all that superior.
That's why I always tell people: If the police have the power to do something, they don't have to ask you.
Often they ask you anyway, or they're in a situation where they are not sure, so they ask.
If so asked, tell them they do not have your permission to do that, but you will not hinder them in any way. And then stand off to the side so they can't possibly construe your actions as hindering.
I know it sounds weird, but any other option is a trap: If you refuse and don't let them, and it turns out it was something they were legally allowed to do, they can arrest you merely for that. Likewise, if you consent and let them, and they find something, it counts, even if they couldn't have done the search without your consent.
The only thing that makes sense is to repeatedly say you do not consent to what they are doing, but you are not going to stop them in any way.
Note this stops at their actions. If they ask you to do anything except 'move out of the way', don't do it. (Barring things like turning over license and registration or telling your name, which are actual laws.) They cannot order you to open things or tell them passwords.(1)
It gets really tricky if they want to look in something you're carrying. Do not hand them it. Do not attempt to stand there and let them take it from you, because they can construe any movement as you trying to keep it from them. Just immediately set it down where you are and step away.
Sometimes they will threaten to break into things if you don't unlock them. If you can, unlock it but don't open it, so they don't have an excuse to break it but can't argue that you opening it in front of them means it wasn't 'a search'. If it's something like your car trunk, set your car keys on it. But make them take action to look inside, no matter what, otherwise they can argue it was in 'plain sight' and they didn't need a warrant, despite having badgered you into opening it.
Obviously, if they do have a warrant, read that, and do whatever it says.
1) Before someone argues that you can be ordered to turn over a password...maybe you can...by the court. Not by the police.
I don't know what's wrong with the British legal system where doing that would make any sense, but you can't just assert things on the stand to be true without any evidence. If they're going to be calling some other witness, the prosecution really should be notified of it.
Introducing a new fact like that in American court would just result in a recess while the prosecution checked it out and nailed you to a wall for lying.
If the alibi checks out, of course, it makes no sense to introduce it on the stand. Now, hypothetical innocent people who are actually wasting the court's time by refusing to demonstrate their innocence to police, and instead waiting for court, might, indeed, need to be punished, but those people do not actually exist.
The British court system is apparently pretty stupid, and has 'solved' this problem in entirely the wrong way. Saying 'It is suspicious to demonstrate innocence that late in the game' is idiotic. If they can demonstrate innocence, 'suspicion' is, itself, idiotic, as they are, duh, innocent.
If that's a 'problem' where the courts cannot handle bogus demonstrations of innocence at trial, than the courts need changing to be able to handle that, by calling a recess, or a mistrial, or something, disproving the alibi, and then going again.
Otherwise, defendants could just 'discover' such bogus demonstrations the same way, or have 'good reasons' for hiding them. 'The reason I didn't tell you my alibi is I'm having an affair with a married woman. I have finally be able to contact her and she has given me permission to tell you.' 'Well, as this court has no ability to handle supposed revelations in middle of trial, we have no option but to let you go free without confirming this alibi, cause we're morons.'
Japanese' not signing something or other does not eliminate the distinction between non-state combatants and a state's military. Contrary to your implications, that distinction was not created by Geneva Conventions â" it was merely reflected in it.
Ah, so you agree there are obligations that exist towards captured prisoners that exist independent of the Geneva convention. (And presumably the convention against torture, which Japan hadn't signed either.)
Interesting, interesting...
So bad was the mistreatment, that 50% of the prisoners have died. It is awfully convenient for you (and other foes of the previous President) to concentrate on the waterboarding part of that verdict, but it is not any more instrumental to that case, that, say, intoxication is to a charge of "public disorder".
If someone is charged with intoxication and public disorder, yes, we have in fact charged someone with intoxication.
The high percentage of the dead â" and waterboarding was simply evidence, that the mistreatment was deliberate â" is the crime "regardless of treaty of domestic law".
So you agree that waterboarding is mistreatment.
Also very interesting.
However, you're wrong. Simulated drowning was treated as a crime. It was not treated solely as 'evidence of intent', but an actual crime in and of itself.
'Oh, please stop talking about the time we charged the Japanese with a war crime for waterboarding soldiers, because that refutes my point that didn't charge the Japanese with war crimes for waterboarding.'
Um, no. The Japanese waterboarded enemy soldiers, we included that fact as part of the charges against them as a war crime. Yes, there were other charges, but that really doesn't have anything to do with anything. We charged them with waterboarding, or at least doing the same procedure of laying people down and simulating drowning by pouring water on their face while actually keeping them from drowning. (The term 'waterboarding' was invented in 2003.)
And you're about to invent a distinction between 'enemy combatants' and 'POWs', but let me cut you off at the knees and point out that the Japanese had not signed the Geneva convention and thus had not pledged to treat 'prisoners of war' in any manner whatsoever. If it was legal to do to 'enemy combatants', it was legal to do to 'POWs'. There were no protected POWs.
We concluded that torture wasn't legal to do to anyone, period, and that it was in fact one of those war crimes that was illegal regardless of treaty or domestic law, like genocide.
My question is why the fuck don't 'trapped' businesses mandate, say, Firefox for web browsing, and use IE6 only for the internal crap.
In fact, hook IE up an internal proxy so it can't be used elsewhere.
IE 6 is too insecure and too broken to use as a web browser, period. If a business needs it because of internal code, fine. And the fact that they can't use IE7 or 8 at the same time means they can't upgrade, but there are other browsers out there.
Um, tell that to the people who waterboarded Lieutenant Chase Jay Nielsen.
Oh, you can't. We hung them for doing that.
Seriously, you think they just waterboarded civilians? I'm not actually aware of any civilians they did that too. (I wouldn't doubt it, I just don't know of any.)
You include the 10' interface with the software to download TV shows.
The question isn't really 'who watches their computer hooked to a TV', but 'What are the pirates doing that we're trying to replace?', as that is, in theory, the problem. It doesn't really matter what they're using.
Now, once that gets out there, once large amounts of people of watching TV shows on their PC, people will start hooking them to TVs as a matter of course.
And, yes, it's always annoyed me that no one's ever seen the market for a Linux-running settop box that doesn't record TV. The closest thing out there is xbmc running on an Xbox, everything else seems to assume you're on a full PC and you're trying to record shows.
Oh, I agree that there's a market for content on things besides a PC, at least right now. (Although I wonder how large that market would be once everyone started hooking their PC to their TV.)
But I wasn't talking about that market. That market is fringe. Put downloadable TV on PCs and maybe on TiVos and that's essentially all the studios need to stop 90% of piracy.
Seriously, I'm sitting here watch a truck about to be driven off a cliff and I'm saying 'Take your foot off the gas, you morons'. You may additionally point out the existence of brakes and whatnot, which might come in handy later, but not really right now.
Yes, eventually, some sort of tiered setup with DRM and DVDs and non-DRM and all sorts of things might make sense, but TV studios have to start.
Which they would if they could. The people holding it up are the TV networks, who have everything they're airing licensed in such a way that they can't do that. (And the fact that the TV studios seem unable to negotiate in good faith with the unions is part of the problem, too.)
TV networks could have taken the lead here, after all, they already have the rights to broadcast the shows, but they have completely failed, as they fail at every single thing they do or attempt. (1)
I'm waiting for TV studios to just entirely give up on them and start producing shows without any input from them at all and having them downloadable with ads in them. (Or wait for their licensing of some existing, older show to expire everywhere in the world, and then use it.)
1) David's TV Network Theory: A company operated by a bunch of dueling fiefdoms sabotaging each other operates worse than a company that make entirely random business decisions by coin flips.
France doesn't consider anyone to be a religion. There's no such thing as a 'religion' under the law, except possibly some vestigial laws about the RCC.
Well, the real problem is that, essentially, you're probably lying.
Churches don't even have ways know who's tithing in general.
In fact, most churches have deliberate practices that keep as few people as possible from knowing the amounts of tithes, and that's only if you tithe via check or in an envelope for you. (So you can put it on your taxes.) If you donate in cash, they can't tell that from not donating...and a lot of people donate in cash.
The only way this could possible work is if you were in a very small church, setup in such a way that people could actually see your lack of donation, and it would require the pastor, in violation of explicit Presbyterian doctrine, to call you out on it.
If you happen, though some near impossible convergences of factors, have what you have laid out actually happened to you, you should have taken it up with the governing authority for your church.
I don't want to call you a liar, but, really, I think I have to.
I'm a member of a Baptist church where I do not tithe (I am not a fan of how they spend my money, I donate to charity in other ways.), I have never been made to feel uncomfortable in the slightest, or had the slightest indication that anyone even knows I don't tithe.
Which, by the way, begs the question: how come an organisation claiming so loudly to be a religion, with its own spirituality and rites, feels the need to catch their new members by pretending at first not to be one, and to have nothing to do with spirituality and rites at all?
That's exactly it. They are pretending to be therapists and psychologists, and thus everyone expects that the 'therapists' and 'psychologists' they've started to see (Thanks to a stupid survey) are, you know, licensed with the same sort of quality control and standards that others have.
They call themselves a religion but operate like an entirely different sort of business.
Anyone trying to differentiate between a 'religion' and a 'cult' based on how 'commonplace' their beliefs are or how big they are is a fool causing people to dismiss actual cults.
Actual cults have definable qualities that have nothing to do with their size or, mostly, their beliefs.
They include:
Initiations with starvation, sleep deprivation, and/or drugs, to put people in a weakened mental state. (Which is a mild form of brainwashing.)
Cutting people off from their friends and family. And vis versa, even if members 'choose' not to see their friend and family
Even further, cutting members, especially newer ones, off from all external human interaction.
A 'cult of personality' around a charismatic leader, often resulting in them 'owning' the female members for whatever sexual purpose they want.
Communal property, with members turning over all their assets, which in addition to the obvious fact that it funds the cult, helps keep members from being able to leave.
And there are others signs I can't think of off the top of my head.
You'll notice the only thing not actually in line with 'standard religions' is the charismatic leader. But if you've got a 'Christian compound' without that one, but all the others, yup, still a cult, no matter how mainstream their religious beliefs are.
Likewise, if you've got so guy who says he's figure everything out, and starts printing pamplets and starts holding services for the Great All-Seeing Guy that no one's heard of, every Tuesday evening, it's not a cult if believers are driving up in their cars and heading home afterwards to their families and going to work the next day.
Scientology is not a cult. It is a scam. Those are not the same thing.
Christian churches also con people into joining under false pretenses.
Wrong and false are not the same thing.
Christian churches state exactly what they believe. They might be wrong, but it's not false pretenses.
CoS does not. In fact, their most common 'recruitment' is stupid surveys where you don't even know you're talking to a religions organization, and usually don't know until you've shelled out quite a lot of money for something that seems very similar to psychiatric therapy but, you know, done by totally unlicensed and unqualified people. (Because it's 'religious'.)
Incidentally, the LDS church is pretty open about what they believe, too. I've never heard of any 'secret' teachings. They have obscure beliefs that vary from traditional Christian ones, which cause a good deal of confusion when they assert to be 'Christian', but Christianity has plenty of obscure beliefs also.
The difference is, of course, Christian (and Mormon) churches don't sue people for talking about said beliefs.
There's a difference between suppressing and discrediting stuff that doesn't match up with what the Church believes, and charging people for extra stuff.
The first is just 'that is not part of this religion, although it claims to be', and all religions do that.
And, thanks to the limited power that religion has in modern society, they can't do the whole 'Destroy the stuff' that were able to do at the height of their power. But, even then, it was stuff that they insist aren't church teachings that you didn't get to see.
The CoS, OTOH, has stuff it insists are church teachings, and you eventually have to see...and you have to pay money for it.
Look, the grandparent is right. Say what you want about modern Christian churches, but you can go in and learn every single thing for free. You can walk in and go to services for free, you can go to classes for free (Heck, the church will usually pay for your materials for free, which you keep.), you can read the bible there for free, if you head over to the church offices and ask for a Bible you'll probably be given one for free. You can go to the Catholic church or any Protestant denomination's website and learn all their beliefs for free.
Someone's going to say 'What about tithing?', but that's not the same thing at all. Churches don't keep track of that. Well, they do if you want them to, for your taxes, but you can even be a member them of without tithing. (And you don't have to be an actual member to learn all the 'secrets'. In fact, you're not allowed to be a member until you've demonstrated you understand stuff, which, again, the church will teach you for free.)
And it's not just Christian churches. Show up at any religion's place of worship and you can read, and probably take home for free, their sacred text, a bunch of pamphlets, etc. You can probably even wrangle a meeting with a religion leader who will sit down with you for free and explain what their religion believes.
CoS, OTOH, sits there and charges you for everything. Services, mandatory 'sessions' to clear you, to read their books (You can't buy some of them, you essentially buy access to them.)
This is because CoS is a psychoanalysis scam pretending to be a religion so they don't have to actually, you know, help people or be licensed, and can use pseudo-science like their 'readers' thingies.
Bingo, although you might want to tack another $50 on that video card, depending. (Although I think the sweet spot of video cards has decreased somewhat, so maybe that's it now.)
The people that develop them are not stupid. They do not expect people to buy a new graphics card just to play their game. It will run on the cards released not even a year ago, and it will run well.
In fact, it will run perfect on cards released a year ago, considering that's what they developed the fucking game under.
Sometimes, very rarely, they can implement features that just assume a generally faster card. Like the game runs with all settings maxed at 1680x1050, but you'd have to turn them down to get a higher resolution, and it's possible a faster card, which exists by the time the game is released, will let you run on them at max also. (And, of course, updates can add stuff.)
But in general, games do not use all the abilities of video cards that exist when they are released.
And most of them aren't even targeted at the high-end that existed during development. They're targeted at the ~$150 dollar cards. The ~$150 dollar cards that existed a year ago. I bought at a $150 nVidia 9600GT a year ago, and I suspect the next game I get, for the first time, I won't be able to max everything 1680x1050.
And, yes, computer salespeople, crazy gamers who don't know any better, and gaming magazines just blatantly lie about all this.
And they're all lying about CPU speed, which has almost no effect on game speed at this point.
That's what I did about a year ago. (I already had the Vista copy, the DVD-ROM, and the SATA hard drive, so it was cheaper.)
But it's a 32-bit AMD triple-core Phenom. And, of course, being 32-bit, I only put 2 gigs in it. (I might add another one some day.) An nVidia 9600GT, about 160 dollars.
All this stuff about super-fast gaming machines is nonsense. I can run any game I've ever tried at maximum settings. Spore, Fallout 3, NWN2, whatever Ive tried. Scores a 5.9 in Vista on everything but processor, which is a 5.3.
People who build $1000 water-cooled computers or even things in this article for $800 to play games are like people who buy Monster cables.
Buy a ~$150 video card, a midrange processor, a midrange motherboard, fill it with memory, and buy generic crap to fill out the rest. (No, a game's performance doesn't depend on the speed of the hard drive or even the DVD-ROM.)
And you're done for at least three years, at which point the newest games will start requiring you to turn down settings. Boo hoo.
With the money you saved, buy a Wii for casual multi-player gaming. And a cheap stereo to use as an amp and speakers.
People bitch when they are not informed of the rules beforehand.
If they are informed of the rule 'You can only watch this on computers you own. You can change what computers those are, but you can never move it to a DVD and watch it in a DVD player', they would not complain.
My internet connection maxes out at 160k. I don't do streaming, it is shit.
And I can't control it via remote and watch it on my TV, or, at least, said companies don't appear to like it.
I use utorrent and tvrss.net, like everyone else. They want me to watch TV shows with ads in them, I would do that....give me a damn program to download them automatically and put them somewhere I can watch them, and either give me a nice interface or some way to watch them in some other interface, and I'm there. Especially if you make them available as the show is airing, which would be a huge incentive to do them via your interface.
And I, like most people, don't care one bit about DRM. You want to only let me watch it until the DVD comes out? Fine, I guess. (That's what netflix is for, or buying the DVD if I really like it.)
I do, however, care about the other invasive effects of DRM...you start fucking with the rest of my computer and I get pissed.
Seriously, I've been standing here saying: Most of your problems with pirates go away if you provide TV shows exactly like you do over the air, except on computer. Plenty of ads, an interface that works on a TV screen with a remote control, the ability to time shift for some amount of time, them 'getting recorded' automatically, etc. Exactly the same fucking way that TVs work, but on computers and hopefully set-top boxes.
Apparently this is too complicated a concept to grasp.
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Um, really? Cause it's easy to think of quite a few.
Pollution, for one. The market has every incentive in the world to pollute, and practically incentive to refrain from it. (It might want to pollute in secret, but that's hardly any better!)
The solution chosen by the market is almost always the cheapest solution, because that makes it the most money. That does not make it the superior solution.
And, hell, sometimes the solution chosen by the market isn't the cheapest solution. Sometimes entities in the market can gain an entire market or operate in collusion with the entire market and jack up prices as high as they go, which you can't even blame on the government failing to price externalities like with pollution.
So if the market is restrained from doing things that harm society but we traditionally fail to charge for, like pollution, and if it is restrained from operating in an anti-competitive manner, and it is restrained from lying to customers, and it is restrained in bunch of other ways, yes, it produces the 'superior' solution, which is an obvious admission that if we hadn't restrained it would have produced a different solution that we didn't think was all that superior.
That's why I always tell people: If the police have the power to do something, they don't have to ask you.
Often they ask you anyway, or they're in a situation where they are not sure, so they ask.
If so asked, tell them they do not have your permission to do that, but you will not hinder them in any way. And then stand off to the side so they can't possibly construe your actions as hindering.
I know it sounds weird, but any other option is a trap: If you refuse and don't let them, and it turns out it was something they were legally allowed to do, they can arrest you merely for that. Likewise, if you consent and let them, and they find something, it counts, even if they couldn't have done the search without your consent.
The only thing that makes sense is to repeatedly say you do not consent to what they are doing, but you are not going to stop them in any way.
Note this stops at their actions. If they ask you to do anything except 'move out of the way', don't do it. (Barring things like turning over license and registration or telling your name, which are actual laws.) They cannot order you to open things or tell them passwords.(1)
It gets really tricky if they want to look in something you're carrying. Do not hand them it. Do not attempt to stand there and let them take it from you, because they can construe any movement as you trying to keep it from them. Just immediately set it down where you are and step away.
Sometimes they will threaten to break into things if you don't unlock them. If you can, unlock it but don't open it, so they don't have an excuse to break it but can't argue that you opening it in front of them means it wasn't 'a search'. If it's something like your car trunk, set your car keys on it. But make them take action to look inside, no matter what, otherwise they can argue it was in 'plain sight' and they didn't need a warrant, despite having badgered you into opening it.
Obviously, if they do have a warrant, read that, and do whatever it says.
1) Before someone argues that you can be ordered to turn over a password...maybe you can...by the court. Not by the police.
That's absurd.
I don't know what's wrong with the British legal system where doing that would make any sense, but you can't just assert things on the stand to be true without any evidence. If they're going to be calling some other witness, the prosecution really should be notified of it.
Introducing a new fact like that in American court would just result in a recess while the prosecution checked it out and nailed you to a wall for lying.
If the alibi checks out, of course, it makes no sense to introduce it on the stand. Now, hypothetical innocent people who are actually wasting the court's time by refusing to demonstrate their innocence to police, and instead waiting for court, might, indeed, need to be punished, but those people do not actually exist.
The British court system is apparently pretty stupid, and has 'solved' this problem in entirely the wrong way. Saying 'It is suspicious to demonstrate innocence that late in the game' is idiotic. If they can demonstrate innocence, 'suspicion' is, itself, idiotic, as they are, duh, innocent.
If that's a 'problem' where the courts cannot handle bogus demonstrations of innocence at trial, than the courts need changing to be able to handle that, by calling a recess, or a mistrial, or something, disproving the alibi, and then going again.
Otherwise, defendants could just 'discover' such bogus demonstrations the same way, or have 'good reasons' for hiding them. 'The reason I didn't tell you my alibi is I'm having an affair with a married woman. I have finally be able to contact her and she has given me permission to tell you.' 'Well, as this court has no ability to handle supposed revelations in middle of trial, we have no option but to let you go free without confirming this alibi, cause we're morons.'
However, you certainly should instruct your lawyer to inform the police of your alibi.
Japanese' not signing something or other does not eliminate the distinction between non-state combatants and a state's military. Contrary to your implications, that distinction was not created by Geneva Conventions â" it was merely reflected in it.
Ah, so you agree there are obligations that exist towards captured prisoners that exist independent of the Geneva convention. (And presumably the convention against torture, which Japan hadn't signed either.)
Interesting, interesting...
So bad was the mistreatment, that 50% of the prisoners have died. It is awfully convenient for you (and other foes of the previous President) to concentrate on the waterboarding part of that verdict, but it is not any more instrumental to that case, that, say, intoxication is to a charge of "public disorder".
If someone is charged with intoxication and public disorder, yes, we have in fact charged someone with intoxication.
The high percentage of the dead â" and waterboarding was simply evidence, that the mistreatment was deliberate â" is the crime "regardless of treaty of domestic law".
So you agree that waterboarding is mistreatment.
Also very interesting.
However, you're wrong. Simulated drowning was treated as a crime. It was not treated solely as 'evidence of intent', but an actual crime in and of itself.
'Oh, please stop talking about the time we charged the Japanese with a war crime for waterboarding soldiers, because that refutes my point that didn't charge the Japanese with war crimes for waterboarding.'
Um, no. The Japanese waterboarded enemy soldiers, we included that fact as part of the charges against them as a war crime. Yes, there were other charges, but that really doesn't have anything to do with anything. We charged them with waterboarding, or at least doing the same procedure of laying people down and simulating drowning by pouring water on their face while actually keeping them from drowning. (The term 'waterboarding' was invented in 2003.)
And you're about to invent a distinction between 'enemy combatants' and 'POWs', but let me cut you off at the knees and point out that the Japanese had not signed the Geneva convention and thus had not pledged to treat 'prisoners of war' in any manner whatsoever. If it was legal to do to 'enemy combatants', it was legal to do to 'POWs'. There were no protected POWs.
We concluded that torture wasn't legal to do to anyone, period, and that it was in fact one of those war crimes that was illegal regardless of treaty or domestic law, like genocide.
At least, we concluded that for the Japanese.
My question is why the fuck don't 'trapped' businesses mandate, say, Firefox for web browsing, and use IE6 only for the internal crap.
In fact, hook IE up an internal proxy so it can't be used elsewhere.
IE 6 is too insecure and too broken to use as a web browser, period. If a business needs it because of internal code, fine. And the fact that they can't use IE7 or 8 at the same time means they can't upgrade, but there are other browsers out there.
Doing him any harm was a war crime under what law? The Japanese were not a party to the Geneva Convention.
Um, tell that to the people who waterboarded Lieutenant Chase Jay Nielsen.
Oh, you can't. We hung them for doing that.
Seriously, you think they just waterboarded civilians? I'm not actually aware of any civilians they did that too. (I wouldn't doubt it, I just don't know of any.)
I'll have you know, some people sleep during the day. How do you sleep at any time, making such blanket generalizations?!
You include the 10' interface with the software to download TV shows.
The question isn't really 'who watches their computer hooked to a TV', but 'What are the pirates doing that we're trying to replace?', as that is, in theory, the problem. It doesn't really matter what they're using.
Now, once that gets out there, once large amounts of people of watching TV shows on their PC, people will start hooking them to TVs as a matter of course.
And, yes, it's always annoyed me that no one's ever seen the market for a Linux-running settop box that doesn't record TV. The closest thing out there is xbmc running on an Xbox, everything else seems to assume you're on a full PC and you're trying to record shows.
Oh, I agree that there's a market for content on things besides a PC, at least right now. (Although I wonder how large that market would be once everyone started hooking their PC to their TV.)
But I wasn't talking about that market. That market is fringe. Put downloadable TV on PCs and maybe on TiVos and that's essentially all the studios need to stop 90% of piracy.
Seriously, I'm sitting here watch a truck about to be driven off a cliff and I'm saying 'Take your foot off the gas, you morons'. You may additionally point out the existence of brakes and whatnot, which might come in handy later, but not really right now.
Yes, eventually, some sort of tiered setup with DRM and DVDs and non-DRM and all sorts of things might make sense, but TV studios have to start.
Which they would if they could. The people holding it up are the TV networks, who have everything they're airing licensed in such a way that they can't do that. (And the fact that the TV studios seem unable to negotiate in good faith with the unions is part of the problem, too.)
TV networks could have taken the lead here, after all, they already have the rights to broadcast the shows, but they have completely failed, as they fail at every single thing they do or attempt. (1)
I'm waiting for TV studios to just entirely give up on them and start producing shows without any input from them at all and having them downloadable with ads in them. (Or wait for their licensing of some existing, older show to expire everywhere in the world, and then use it.)
1) David's TV Network Theory: A company operated by a bunch of dueling fiefdoms sabotaging each other operates worse than a company that make entirely random business decisions by coin flips.
France doesn't consider anyone to be a religion. There's no such thing as a 'religion' under the law, except possibly some vestigial laws about the RCC.
Well, the real problem is that, essentially, you're probably lying.
Churches don't even have ways know who's tithing in general.
In fact, most churches have deliberate practices that keep as few people as possible from knowing the amounts of tithes, and that's only if you tithe via check or in an envelope for you. (So you can put it on your taxes.) If you donate in cash, they can't tell that from not donating ...and a lot of people donate in cash.
The only way this could possible work is if you were in a very small church, setup in such a way that people could actually see your lack of donation, and it would require the pastor, in violation of explicit Presbyterian doctrine, to call you out on it.
If you happen, though some near impossible convergences of factors, have what you have laid out actually happened to you, you should have taken it up with the governing authority for your church.
I don't want to call you a liar, but, really, I think I have to.
I'm a member of a Baptist church where I do not tithe (I am not a fan of how they spend my money, I donate to charity in other ways.), I have never been made to feel uncomfortable in the slightest, or had the slightest indication that anyone even knows I don't tithe.
Which, by the way, begs the question: how come an organisation claiming so loudly to be a religion, with its own spirituality and rites, feels the need to catch their new members by pretending at first not to be one, and to have nothing to do with spirituality and rites at all?
That's exactly it. They are pretending to be therapists and psychologists, and thus everyone expects that the 'therapists' and 'psychologists' they've started to see (Thanks to a stupid survey) are, you know, licensed with the same sort of quality control and standards that others have.
They call themselves a religion but operate like an entirely different sort of business.
Anyone trying to differentiate between a 'religion' and a 'cult' based on how 'commonplace' their beliefs are or how big they are is a fool causing people to dismiss actual cults.
Actual cults have definable qualities that have nothing to do with their size or, mostly, their beliefs.
They include:
Initiations with starvation, sleep deprivation, and/or drugs, to put people in a weakened mental state. (Which is a mild form of brainwashing.)
Cutting people off from their friends and family. And vis versa, even if members 'choose' not to see their friend and family
Even further, cutting members, especially newer ones, off from all external human interaction.
A 'cult of personality' around a charismatic leader, often resulting in them 'owning' the female members for whatever sexual purpose they want.
Communal property, with members turning over all their assets, which in addition to the obvious fact that it funds the cult, helps keep members from being able to leave.
And there are others signs I can't think of off the top of my head.
You'll notice the only thing not actually in line with 'standard religions' is the charismatic leader. But if you've got a 'Christian compound' without that one, but all the others, yup, still a cult, no matter how mainstream their religious beliefs are.
Likewise, if you've got so guy who says he's figure everything out, and starts printing pamplets and starts holding services for the Great All-Seeing Guy that no one's heard of, every Tuesday evening, it's not a cult if believers are driving up in their cars and heading home afterwards to their families and going to work the next day.
Scientology is not a cult. It is a scam. Those are not the same thing.
Christian churches also con people into joining under false pretenses.
Wrong and false are not the same thing.
Christian churches state exactly what they believe. They might be wrong, but it's not false pretenses.
CoS does not. In fact, their most common 'recruitment' is stupid surveys where you don't even know you're talking to a religions organization, and usually don't know until you've shelled out quite a lot of money for something that seems very similar to psychiatric therapy but, you know, done by totally unlicensed and unqualified people. (Because it's 'religious'.)
Incidentally, the LDS church is pretty open about what they believe, too. I've never heard of any 'secret' teachings. They have obscure beliefs that vary from traditional Christian ones, which cause a good deal of confusion when they assert to be 'Christian', but Christianity has plenty of obscure beliefs also.
The difference is, of course, Christian (and Mormon) churches don't sue people for talking about said beliefs.
There's a difference between suppressing and discrediting stuff that doesn't match up with what the Church believes, and charging people for extra stuff.
The first is just 'that is not part of this religion, although it claims to be', and all religions do that.
And, thanks to the limited power that religion has in modern society, they can't do the whole 'Destroy the stuff' that were able to do at the height of their power. But, even then, it was stuff that they insist aren't church teachings that you didn't get to see.
The CoS, OTOH, has stuff it insists are church teachings, and you eventually have to see...and you have to pay money for it.
Look, the grandparent is right. Say what you want about modern Christian churches, but you can go in and learn every single thing for free. You can walk in and go to services for free, you can go to classes for free (Heck, the church will usually pay for your materials for free, which you keep.), you can read the bible there for free, if you head over to the church offices and ask for a Bible you'll probably be given one for free. You can go to the Catholic church or any Protestant denomination's website and learn all their beliefs for free.
Someone's going to say 'What about tithing?', but that's not the same thing at all. Churches don't keep track of that. Well, they do if you want them to, for your taxes, but you can even be a member them of without tithing. (And you don't have to be an actual member to learn all the 'secrets'. In fact, you're not allowed to be a member until you've demonstrated you understand stuff, which, again, the church will teach you for free.)
And it's not just Christian churches. Show up at any religion's place of worship and you can read, and probably take home for free, their sacred text, a bunch of pamphlets, etc. You can probably even wrangle a meeting with a religion leader who will sit down with you for free and explain what their religion believes.
CoS, OTOH, sits there and charges you for everything. Services, mandatory 'sessions' to clear you, to read their books (You can't buy some of them, you essentially buy access to them.)
This is because CoS is a psychoanalysis scam pretending to be a religion so they don't have to actually, you know, help people or be licensed, and can use pseudo-science like their 'readers' thingies.
Bingo, although you might want to tack another $50 on that video card, depending. (Although I think the sweet spot of video cards has decreased somewhat, so maybe that's it now.)
The people that develop them are not stupid. They do not expect people to buy a new graphics card just to play their game. It will run on the cards released not even a year ago, and it will run well.
In fact, it will run perfect on cards released a year ago, considering that's what they developed the fucking game under.
Sometimes, very rarely, they can implement features that just assume a generally faster card. Like the game runs with all settings maxed at 1680x1050, but you'd have to turn them down to get a higher resolution, and it's possible a faster card, which exists by the time the game is released, will let you run on them at max also. (And, of course, updates can add stuff.)
But in general, games do not use all the abilities of video cards that exist when they are released.
And most of them aren't even targeted at the high-end that existed during development. They're targeted at the ~$150 dollar cards. The ~$150 dollar cards that existed a year ago. I bought at a $150 nVidia 9600GT a year ago, and I suspect the next game I get, for the first time, I won't be able to max everything 1680x1050.
And, yes, computer salespeople, crazy gamers who don't know any better, and gaming magazines just blatantly lie about all this.
And they're all lying about CPU speed, which has almost no effect on game speed at this point.
That's what I did about a year ago. (I already had the Vista copy, the DVD-ROM, and the SATA hard drive, so it was cheaper.)
But it's a 32-bit AMD triple-core Phenom. And, of course, being 32-bit, I only put 2 gigs in it. (I might add another one some day.) An nVidia 9600GT, about 160 dollars.
All this stuff about super-fast gaming machines is nonsense. I can run any game I've ever tried at maximum settings. Spore, Fallout 3, NWN2, whatever Ive tried. Scores a 5.9 in Vista on everything but processor, which is a 5.3.
People who build $1000 water-cooled computers or even things in this article for $800 to play games are like people who buy Monster cables.
Buy a ~$150 video card, a midrange processor, a midrange motherboard, fill it with memory, and buy generic crap to fill out the rest. (No, a game's performance doesn't depend on the speed of the hard drive or even the DVD-ROM.)
And you're done for at least three years, at which point the newest games will start requiring you to turn down settings. Boo hoo.
With the money you saved, buy a Wii for casual multi-player gaming. And a cheap stereo to use as an amp and speakers.
People bitch when they are not informed of the rules beforehand.
If they are informed of the rule 'You can only watch this on computers you own. You can change what computers those are, but you can never move it to a DVD and watch it in a DVD player', they would not complain.
No, it is unacceptable for the Japanese to waterboard enemy combatants.
People who do so will be charged with war crimes.
As opposed to now, where it's torrented anyway?
Me too.
My internet connection maxes out at 160k. I don't do streaming, it is shit.
And I can't control it via remote and watch it on my TV, or, at least, said companies don't appear to like it.
I use utorrent and tvrss.net, like everyone else. They want me to watch TV shows with ads in them, I would do that....give me a damn program to download them automatically and put them somewhere I can watch them, and either give me a nice interface or some way to watch them in some other interface, and I'm there. Especially if you make them available as the show is airing, which would be a huge incentive to do them via your interface.
And I, like most people, don't care one bit about DRM. You want to only let me watch it until the DVD comes out? Fine, I guess. (That's what netflix is for, or buying the DVD if I really like it.)
I do, however, care about the other invasive effects of DRM...you start fucking with the rest of my computer and I get pissed.
Seriously, I've been standing here saying: Most of your problems with pirates go away if you provide TV shows exactly like you do over the air, except on computer. Plenty of ads, an interface that works on a TV screen with a remote control, the ability to time shift for some amount of time, them 'getting recorded' automatically, etc. Exactly the same fucking way that TVs work, but on computers and hopefully set-top boxes.
Apparently this is too complicated a concept to grasp.