Actually, yes we do. Usually however we listen to the full song, so that's really not an issue.
(Sorry for the sarcastic response, it just came so naturally. In truth, I'd never even noticed that there wasn't a FF/rewind button in the Media Player - as sarcastic as my response was, it is the truth).
It's true, the supply chain to keep millions of soldiers in an unconnected part of the world is almost unfathomable.
As for the ROC situation, my personal opinion is that China really doesn't see them as either a) a threat or b) worth invading. The only thing that Taiwan might be doing is stirring up the seeds of rebellion in mainland China, but other than that, there's really not anything the PRC desperately needs.
You're also quite right on the smoking crater; large scale bombardment and/or annihilation is not the aim, control is. China is actually doing a good job maintaining good relations with the Third World in that regard, even if the First World has their misgivings. I lived in Uganda between 1990-2001 and China was a MAJOR importer of things that the Western world wouldn't sell them - namely, military hardware. By doing this, China not only secures goodwill but essentially has the right of first refusal on exports from the country (and really the region - the ties with Tanzania are still strong from their Communist days - Kenya is still too Anglicized for any really strong ties to form). China is much more likely to keep ties strong with the West African nations to secure fossil fuels rather than trying to secure the goodwill of the OPEC nations - the Middle East invasion would really be an option of last resort (sort of like it was for the US - zing!)
Pretty offtopic as far as the article, but interesting nonetheless.
Tasteless and totally off-topic reply, but this just reminded me of a funny story . . . (insert wave-dream transition)
My brother-in-law loves to pose the philosophical hypothetical situation of a person stuck on the stereotypical desert island with a baby. Question is, would you eat the baby (if you do, you survive; if you don't and you die, the baby's screwed anyway).
When he posed this to a friend of ours there was a slight pause at which point he responded (as I would imagine Sony would) . ..
Actually, my numbers were off, but I really wasn't clear about what I meant.
The number of troops in China is somewhere in the vicinity of 7 million. However, China could amass an army of up to 100 million able bodies.
I'll confess that I don't remember the date of the article, but it was in Time magazine - talking about the rise of China as a superpower and the inevitability of China becoming the #1 superpower in the next 50 years or so; I'll look for the article online and see if I can get the exact figures.
The reason that parts of Europe are going to go Islamic . .. I'm glad you added the word parts, so I can't totally shut you down here.
France has taken away ALL visible displays of religion on a person in any state building; no crosses, headscarves, krises, turbans, yarmukas (sp?) etc. This includes schools. This has, quite expectedly, created an uproar from many religious groups. This (at least in my mind) is not kowtowing to outside religious pressure. It's a radically different way of approaching the issue than the North American way, but it is very much in line with separation of church and state. You can practice whatever you like, but not in my school. And personally, I'm all for it.
If the tension between the west and Islam was religious, the first target would have been the Vatican, which is the largest Christian Church in the world. See, here's where I disagree. Admittedly, the Holy See does oversee (see what I did there?) the largest Christian denomination but it is done in a mostly discrete and relatively respectful way (certain recent comments regarding Islam notwithstanding). The right-wing American Christianity however is very in-your-face, we're-right-you're-not, all-sinners-deservce-to-die, killing-abortionists-is-OK, etc. It's very much front-and-center for many Americans, and is displayed in almost every form of media published in the Western World.
If you look at predominantly Catholic nations (take Italy for example) the people are still fiercly religious and a slight against their religion would likely get you killed. The difference is that they aren't pushy about it. It's subdued and simply a matter of fact. If you think about the Catholic Church in the news (again, excluding the all-too-frequent child molestation cases), it's mostly "Pope says too much violence in the world", "Gay marriage still wrong, says Pope", "Mother Teresa to be canonized before a full century: Vatican insider", etc. It's not the more typical American sensationalist "All Muslims should die for acts of violence: Pat Robertson", "Gays are not citizens, says congressman", etc. They still have strong (and wrong, IMHO) views about current issues, but it's not overbearing.
Don't take this as a promotion of the Catholic Church; they've been responsible for some horrific chapters in our history as well. In the 21st century however, it's the Bible Belt religion that is the worst.
Disclaimer: Atheist pastor's kid - potentially not NPoV.
I think the main difference here is that the US has some restraint when it comes to an attack; they don't actually intend to conquer and occupy the nation, just subjugate it/install a puppet government. If the Chinese were to be given sufficient cause to invade a Middle Eastern nation, with an army of over a hundred million IIRC, I don't believe they would have any trouble with a total occupation and assimilation (for example, Tibet - for counter-example-ish, Taiwan).
We went over this above. Old disks will continue to play. However once you put a new disk (newer than the revocation date) in the player, the blacklist is updated and NO disks will play until an updated key is flashed to the player.
A co-worker has stated that it "should" be on the agreement given to the customer at install; I'm looking into that now (yes I'm posting from work).
If I can find an external link with the bandwidth cap stated, I'll repost it.
The Dixie Chicks . . . [made] a silly statement about Bush -- while I'm no fan of his, I wasn't a fan of theirs either, and it wasn't even a +1 Insightful kind of statement, it was more a -1 Troll thing.
Bonus points for managing to extend the/. moderation system into real life.
That article is an excellent read from someone on the "inside", so to speak.
It is, however, a slightly closed-minded and selfish view.
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here; I personally do not agree with the RIAA's tactics, but I do understand them.
The RIAA's job is not to produce and inspire great works of art. They are a lobbying group who's job is to enable their sponsors to continue to rake in copious amounts of cash. They therefore will be unscrupulous and uncaring and stomp on the little guy and sponsor reports which prove their side (a common practice, even in the scientific community - although that's a little tangential to this issue), etc. The record labels are a BUSINESS. They pretty much don't care about the music, so long as it's of sufficient quality to sell enough to make a profit. This is why the indie music scene generally has to go outside the big labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Time Warner, etc) to get their first albums published; these labels generally aren't willing to take the initial risk of publishing/promoting an unknown. This is bad in general for the music industry but good for the bottom line.
Unfortunately these tactics force other labels to respond in kind. Take an indie label such as Maple Music. They publish/promote an artist who manages to get a Top 40 hit (or just good word-of-mouth) and starts to bring in money (which for an indie label is sometimes a stretch). Suddenly Sony BMG is knocking at the artist's door with a contract and a fat cheque. For most "starving artists" this kind of offer is too good to turn down. In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, the indie label is forced to get a contract. And the cycle repeats.
I only present this in order to bring a bit of balance to the arguement. Yes, these tactics are ridiculous. Yes, the music suffers as a result. But if one of these labels was to go out of business (or if the music industry in general was to become unprofitable) we would all rue the day.
Really this is all a result of the heroification of artists in Western society; musicians, actors, sports figures (who for the sake of arguement we'll throw in here) all the most overpaid people on the face of the earth. Unfortunately we've become accustomed to paying $10 for a movie, $20 for the DVD, $65 for the in-season game, thousands for season tickets, etc. so our pockets continue to be drained.
Are you serious? The implications of a device capable of performing calculations with that level of precision on a model that good would be a huge step forward in computing technology!
I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but to paraphrase Malcolm Reynolds, it is occasionally hilarious.
Would it be acceptable to you if I create an OS company with the aim of destroy a certain American company's market share and name it's first project 9/11?
Personally I would have no problems (Canadian) but understand perfectly the point you are making. Part of this (and I know this is going to get modded flamebait) is arrogance; there's something about "us" that's just inherently better so if WE did it, it's OK.
The other is the timeframe involved. WWII was 60+ years ago. 9/11 is only pushing 6. As time passes, wounds heal and jokes become more acceptable. Gilbert Godfried did stand up on 9/11 a week or so after it happened and may very well have ruined the little that was left of his career.
On the whole though, we are all a little too sensitive. There's nothing "wrong", "illegal" or "bad" about such names, but they are very insensitive. When your aim is to push product, pissing off potential customers doesn't seem to be the way to go.
Well said.
I've never been to Thailand (nor any South East Asian country), but I spent most of my life in East Africa. One thing most Western world residents don't understand about the third world is that there's some things you simply don't do. In Thailand, it's diss the king. In the US, it's burn a flag.
Yes the punishment may be harsh. Yes Thailand may have other issues. The truth of the matter is that the person shouldn't have done what they did and now they're paying for it.
As a low-level grunt for the company, I will confirm that Comcast does indeed cap bandwidth. The stated limited (and yes, it is in the TOS agreement which nobody reads - available on the Comcast.com website) is 60 GB/month. Yes many people exceed that and don't get cut off (which is the penalty), but be warned that the company can legally do so if they feel you are degrading the service for other customers.
Luckily I don't even live in an area where I can GET Comcast, so it's a non-issue for me! I just have to deal with Rogers' packet-shaping, BitTorrent ruining behaviours:(
. . . getting some cheesy 70s porn . .. It's really sad that the world has progressed to the point that when someone mentions cheesy porn, the first thing that runs through my head is a naked women and cheese-in-a-can . . .
Slashdot Mirror
Possibly the same people who came up with "military intelligence".
You mean like Microsoft software? (Zing!)
In Redmond, Washington J Allard is pressing his fingers together repeatedly saying . . . "Excellent."
Actually, yes we do. Usually however we listen to the full song, so that's really not an issue.
(Sorry for the sarcastic response, it just came so naturally. In truth, I'd never even noticed that there wasn't a FF/rewind button in the Media Player - as sarcastic as my response was, it is the truth).
It's true, the supply chain to keep millions of soldiers in an unconnected part of the world is almost unfathomable.
As for the ROC situation, my personal opinion is that China really doesn't see them as either a) a threat or b) worth invading. The only thing that Taiwan might be doing is stirring up the seeds of rebellion in mainland China, but other than that, there's really not anything the PRC desperately needs.
You're also quite right on the smoking crater; large scale bombardment and/or annihilation is not the aim, control is. China is actually doing a good job maintaining good relations with the Third World in that regard, even if the First World has their misgivings. I lived in Uganda between 1990-2001 and China was a MAJOR importer of things that the Western world wouldn't sell them - namely, military hardware. By doing this, China not only secures goodwill but essentially has the right of first refusal on exports from the country (and really the region - the ties with Tanzania are still strong from their Communist days - Kenya is still too Anglicized for any really strong ties to form). China is much more likely to keep ties strong with the West African nations to secure fossil fuels rather than trying to secure the goodwill of the OPEC nations - the Middle East invasion would really be an option of last resort (sort of like it was for the US - zing!)
Pretty offtopic as far as the article, but interesting nonetheless.
Tasteless and totally off-topic reply, but this just reminded me of a funny story . . . (insert wave-dream transition)
.
My brother-in-law loves to pose the philosophical hypothetical situation of a person stuck on the stereotypical desert island with a baby. Question is, would you eat the baby (if you do, you survive; if you don't and you die, the baby's screwed anyway).
When he posed this to a friend of ours there was a slight pause at which point he responded (as I would imagine Sony would) . .
"Is there a blender on the island?"
Actually, my numbers were off, but I really wasn't clear about what I meant.
The number of troops in China is somewhere in the vicinity of 7 million. However, China could amass an army of up to 100 million able bodies.
I'll confess that I don't remember the date of the article, but it was in Time magazine - talking about the rise of China as a superpower and the inevitability of China becoming the #1 superpower in the next 50 years or so; I'll look for the article online and see if I can get the exact figures.
France has taken away ALL visible displays of religion on a person in any state building; no crosses, headscarves, krises, turbans, yarmukas (sp?) etc. This includes schools. This has, quite expectedly, created an uproar from many religious groups. This (at least in my mind) is not kowtowing to outside religious pressure. It's a radically different way of approaching the issue than the North American way, but it is very much in line with separation of church and state. You can practice whatever you like, but not in my school. And personally, I'm all for it.
If you look at predominantly Catholic nations (take Italy for example) the people are still fiercly religious and a slight against their religion would likely get you killed. The difference is that they aren't pushy about it. It's subdued and simply a matter of fact. If you think about the Catholic Church in the news (again, excluding the all-too-frequent child molestation cases), it's mostly "Pope says too much violence in the world", "Gay marriage still wrong, says Pope", "Mother Teresa to be canonized before a full century: Vatican insider", etc. It's not the more typical American sensationalist "All Muslims should die for acts of violence: Pat Robertson", "Gays are not citizens, says congressman", etc. They still have strong (and wrong, IMHO) views about current issues, but it's not overbearing.
Don't take this as a promotion of the Catholic Church; they've been responsible for some horrific chapters in our history as well. In the 21st century however, it's the Bible Belt religion that is the worst.
Disclaimer: Atheist pastor's kid - potentially not NPoV.
I think the main difference here is that the US has some restraint when it comes to an attack; they don't actually intend to conquer and occupy the nation, just subjugate it/install a puppet government. If the Chinese were to be given sufficient cause to invade a Middle Eastern nation, with an army of over a hundred million IIRC, I don't believe they would have any trouble with a total occupation and assimilation (for example, Tibet - for counter-example-ish, Taiwan).
Learning to spell "the" correctly: two years of elementary school.
Learning to spell "retarded" correctly: two years of high school.
So I guess that puts you somewhere in the grade 9 range? LOLWTFOMG pwnage!!!11!1! (I kid, I kid).
We went over this above. Old disks will continue to play. However once you put a new disk (newer than the revocation date) in the player, the blacklist is updated and NO disks will play until an updated key is flashed to the player.
For more details - http://www.google.com/.
My sincerest apologies; you are absolutely correct.
The abuse policy http://www.comcast.net/terms/abuse.jsp does not state the hard number (despite our internal literature telling us differently.
A co-worker has stated that it "should" be on the agreement given to the customer at install; I'm looking into that now (yes I'm posting from work). If I can find an external link with the bandwidth cap stated, I'll repost it.
Best. Pun. Ever.
Bonus points for managing to extend the
Didn't you know? All Christian music has the following lyric at the end of the song . .
!ti nmad
That article is an excellent read from someone on the "inside", so to speak.
It is, however, a slightly closed-minded and selfish view.
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here; I personally do not agree with the RIAA's tactics, but I do understand them.
The RIAA's job is not to produce and inspire great works of art. They are a lobbying group who's job is to enable their sponsors to continue to rake in copious amounts of cash. They therefore will be unscrupulous and uncaring and stomp on the little guy and sponsor reports which prove their side (a common practice, even in the scientific community - although that's a little tangential to this issue), etc. The record labels are a BUSINESS. They pretty much don't care about the music, so long as it's of sufficient quality to sell enough to make a profit. This is why the indie music scene generally has to go outside the big labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Time Warner, etc) to get their first albums published; these labels generally aren't willing to take the initial risk of publishing/promoting an unknown. This is bad in general for the music industry but good for the bottom line.
Unfortunately these tactics force other labels to respond in kind. Take an indie label such as Maple Music. They publish/promote an artist who manages to get a Top 40 hit (or just good word-of-mouth) and starts to bring in money (which for an indie label is sometimes a stretch). Suddenly Sony BMG is knocking at the artist's door with a contract and a fat cheque. For most "starving artists" this kind of offer is too good to turn down. In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, the indie label is forced to get a contract. And the cycle repeats.
I only present this in order to bring a bit of balance to the arguement. Yes, these tactics are ridiculous. Yes, the music suffers as a result. But if one of these labels was to go out of business (or if the music industry in general was to become unprofitable) we would all rue the day.
Really this is all a result of the heroification of artists in Western society; musicians, actors, sports figures (who for the sake of arguement we'll throw in here) all the most overpaid people on the face of the earth. Unfortunately we've become accustomed to paying $10 for a movie, $20 for the DVD, $65 for the in-season game, thousands for season tickets, etc. so our pockets continue to be drained.
Damned tangents again.
Are you serious? The implications of a device capable of performing calculations with that level of precision on a model that good would be a huge step forward in computing technology!
I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but to paraphrase Malcolm Reynolds, it is occasionally hilarious.
Personally I would have no problems (Canadian) but understand perfectly the point you are making. Part of this (and I know this is going to get modded flamebait) is arrogance; there's something about "us" that's just inherently better so if WE did it, it's OK.
The other is the timeframe involved. WWII was 60+ years ago. 9/11 is only pushing 6. As time passes, wounds heal and jokes become more acceptable. Gilbert Godfried did stand up on 9/11 a week or so after it happened and may very well have ruined the little that was left of his career.
On the whole though, we are all a little too sensitive. There's nothing "wrong", "illegal" or "bad" about such names, but they are very insensitive. When your aim is to push product, pissing off potential customers doesn't seem to be the way to go.
Well said. I've never been to Thailand (nor any South East Asian country), but I spent most of my life in East Africa. One thing most Western world residents don't understand about the third world is that there's some things you simply don't do. In Thailand, it's diss the king. In the US, it's burn a flag. Yes the punishment may be harsh. Yes Thailand may have other issues. The truth of the matter is that the person shouldn't have done what they did and now they're paying for it.
As a low-level grunt for the company, I will confirm that Comcast does indeed cap bandwidth. The stated limited (and yes, it is in the TOS agreement which nobody reads - available on the Comcast.com website) is 60 GB/month. Yes many people exceed that and don't get cut off (which is the penalty), but be warned that the company can legally do so if they feel you are degrading the service for other customers.
:(
Luckily I don't even live in an area where I can GET Comcast, so it's a non-issue for me! I just have to deal with Rogers' packet-shaping, BitTorrent ruining behaviours