A chairman is supposed to be objective but I am still stunned. Finland is a place where you're almost always permitted to speak your mind freely. Interesting... Normally I would agree with you, but when it comes to Microsoft my personal experience is to the contrary.
Back in day I was participating in a booze & schmooze portion of a microsoft event where they invited MCPs (I was young and I needed the money). This was the time when the decision had just come down in the US courts to chop up M$ into little pieces a'la Ma Bell (good idea, but as governments change, so do court rulings). Well, we had been encouraged (told even) to let our hair down for the "informal" part of the evening and everyone was a bit into the beers. Naturally the topic came up in conversation and not 10 seconds after I made the chopping-into-slices movement with my hand I had two M$ marketing people in front of me, smiling, asking "What's up, what are you talking about". This was done in the nicest of ways and I had no reason to to keep the topic of the group's conversation a secret. We weren't even bashing MS, we were merely discussing the hot news topic of the day.
I was probably too drunk to smell trouble when they bent down to look at my nametag (it had gone a bit lopsided so you could only read it from below), but I didnt. I left the party and went on my merry way.
Less than a week later I'm summoned to my manager's office. At the time I worked for a large company, but they had a small team working on Microsoft stuff and we were one of MS partners. He sits me down and explains that he'd been to MS Finland and discussed maintaining/upgrading their partnership level. At the conference he'd been told pretty much the following: " --insert my name here--- has been voicing attitudes hostile to Microsoft. This is a funny way to act for an employee of a company that wishes to maintain their partnership status". It's been so many years that I forget the exact details, but I was clearly told by M$ via my manager that if I discuss Microsoft in a way that even approaches negative, they'll make me pay for it.
Needless to say, I soon found a better and more lucrative niche of the IT trade. But to this day this is the only time I've been censored from discussion in Finland. Up to that point I'd always been thinking that the anti-M$ crowd is just a bit too fanatical, that M$ is an bad corp, but it's still staffed by real people. But this event opened my eyes to the fact that M$ marketing is a staffed by truly diabolical people who'll stop at nothing to achieve their ends. As a matter of fact, had my manager not been as nice as he was, I could've ended up being fired. This just to stop me from discussing the biggest IT news item of the time.
So before you take your MCSE examns, stop to think for a while. If you can life with your freedom of speech being limited, then go for it. If not, pick another field.
Before we actually crucify the MPAA, let's look at the big picture. Does anyone have it? I mean a picture of this Neri woman, because if she's hot it's just a simple case of bribery by "hide the salami", or as the MPAA says "An innocent relationship, which in no way affected Ms. Neri's opinion".
But what if she's a complete dog? I think then you could actually start charging people with bribery and MPAA with pimping. Come to think of it, MPAAs methods aren't too far from those of a street pimp, though MPAA actually prefers the term "Carborne entrepeneur":
*SMACK* *SLAP* "I don't give a s**t if you already bought da movie, gimme da money, b**ch!" *SLAP* *SMACK* *THUD*
Sure, terraforming isn't going to be that difficult considering the technology we have. Methinks the biggest hurdle will be getting enough Ford Super-Duty's transported to Mars.
The question is why should we mess up Mars, we're just barely starting on the road to fix the damage we've done to our own planet.
*Read small print*...ISP not liable if they lose data...devil owns my soul for eternity...agree to have my details being sold to spammers...pretty standard stu.., no wait... own the rights to genes produced by me and any of my offspring in perpetuity... no not it either. Looks like I never agreed to this.
I'd sue, but the contract with my ISP waived that right.
..why not the other? I'll trademark "Closed Source", "Proprietary", "Confidential" and "Copyrighted". We'll see who'll bleed out of which orifice then.
I see piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Ofcourse this might sound a *bit* preposterous, since highlight cases of civil disobedience in US are things like the civil liberties movement, the American revolution (quite a bit of civil disobedience, that) and the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era.
However, the fact is that the companies that sell movies have the inferior product. They sell you a bulky disk with a movie you can't really take back if it sucks and that you can only view on a player (or if you use the right OS/software, on a laptop). If you pirate a movie, you get a slim file, able to go on a variety of devices for easy viewing. And mostly the picture quality does not discernibly change from the original. The old image of piracy was inferior product = lower price. Now it's superior product / free.
Now, why should a consumer pay for an inferior product, which is not only expensive, but promises to keep milking the full price (media+license to watch) for each new media update. **AA believes that laws should be changed to solve the "problem", and I believe the same. I believe that you should be able to buy the right to watch the movie and that right should be transferrable to any media. I do believe that it's OK to charge a minor fee for new media innovations/media, but it's not OK to charge full price every time you move from Beta -> VHS -> Laserdisc -> DVD -> HDDVD -> whatever.
I personally have large collection of DVDs gathering dust because I just can't be bothered to watch them from the disc, I rather see the DivX version. Luckily in Finland you're no longer a criminal for DeCSSing a DVD (you were, until a recent court ruling), but in many countries you are. Therefore it's easy to see why people would just get a superior product for free, rather than pay for a DVD, convert it and then be considered a criminal anyway.
So whatever else it is, it's a community fighting the evil empire to bring balance to the for... eh, to bring fairness into the business models. There will always be piracy, but there would not be widespread piracy if the products are reasonably priced and better/equal to those of the pirates.
And yes.. I know this is a bit of a troll, but i'm just trying to bring out a point of view that seems to drown under the cries of "Down with **AA!" or "Piracy is crime!".
Usually userfriendly.org can run atleast a few strips poking fun at the inevitability of the crack before one is actually delivered. I guess in the future they should make a stock strip and replace the daily strip with it the second a new AACS fix is announced.
Then again, considering all those pre-release movies out there, I wonder when we'll start getting pre-fix cracks.
I thought that false advertising was illegal or atleast frowned upon. They show pirated movies as being poor quality camera copies and containing virii etc. Couldn't be farther from the truth as AVI and MKV are not known for carrying virii and the quality is outstanding, especially in the.mkv 720p rips. Or atleast so I hear from a friend of a friend:)
It doesn't help if the US government keeps giving ammunition to the nut crowd. You said it yourself. 19 Saudi extremists hit US on 9/11. I thought Saudis lived in Saudi Arabia, a country viewed as "ally" by the US, not in Iraq. But hey, that's just my lunatic fringe talking.
At the risk of having this degenerate into a flamewar, i'll enter a few corrections, plus a few clarifications from the non-Russian point of view.
1. 30 Million dead russians (as you state in your original message) is not just a death toll caused by the Germans. How many were killed in "friendly" hands?
2. The policy of "Russification" was widely adopted during and after WWII. As stated in the original message titled "They forgot something", Estonia was one of the nations to suffer from this. The results of this policy can be seen in many countries and occupied regions. The natives of occupied Karelia are now a minority with their language all but extinct. And if you go to Ukraine, their language has been all but replaced by Russian.
3. You say in your reply that there are 300 search parties recovering and burying bodies. That's fine, but I was referring to wartime and it's immediate aftermath.
Considering point 2, why would you blame Ukrainian nationalists for tearing down the memorials of their oppressors? Or Estonians for moving the memorial out of the center of the city. I realize that for russians it's a memorial to great victory, but since it's not on their soil, how can they dictate how it should been viewed and treated? Is it not for an independent country to decide what to do in their soil?
If your answer to the last question is "not in cases such as these" or something similar, I suggest you head off to Iraq and start putting up Saddam statues that have been torn down.
And the Russians, who are so indignant that their soldiers bodies were "desecrated" by moving them to a military cemetary, seem to forget one historical fact: They themselves cared very little for their own dead in WWII. Not that they cared too much for the living either. The road to Berlin is littered with unburied bodies.
As to who is doing the "cyber attacks". It's hard to determine the origin of a DDoS attack, but the timing and context seems to point to Russian intervention. However, this is unlikely to be direct government intervention, but rather it uses a proxy organization such as the Putin Youth (Nashi). The same government sponsored (but nominally independent) group attacked the Estonian embassy. Correct me if i'm wrong, but could this not be construed as casus belli in an of itself (that is, if Estonia had such designs and the capability to carry them to a conclusion). If the Russians are willing attack an embassy, which results in no real economic damage to Estonia, but huge reputational damage to Russia, why would they shy from sponsoring DDoS attacks against Estonia to cause real economic damage?
and it's using different size fonts in the same sheet of text, different fonts, different styles, different colors. The site, especially the copyright notice seems to violate every law of HTML abuse except . This leads me to believe she's either just totally schizoid person with no sense of style and no knowledge of the web, or she's just doing everything she can to piss people off and stir controversy.
However, I think she's bitten off more than she can chew with this lawsuit.. companies like Google cannot allow this to fly, so they won't buy her off because that would bring out 10000 copycats each with their hand out. As to her chances of actually winning, i think that's not even worth the ink that's been used on this site to discuss the possibility.
But hey, america's all about pursuit of happyness, and maybe controversy makes her happy. Her site seems to indicate that.
Someone comes up with a new tech that could be used for something "evil" and people shit themselves? If you're truly worried about being RFID tagged, or having stuff you're shoplifting being tagged, get scanner, locate the spot and apply a neutralizer (electricity, magnetics?). So I think there's no cause for world-wide panic quite yet.
It's quite another thing with fiber-optic cameras, which are ostensibly used by doctors for gastro- and colonoscopies. However, there is irrefutable evidence from trusted sources that this technology is a trojan horse planed by the Tau Cetians and it contains a uplink feed. Now they don't have to abduct us to do anal probes, we do it to ourselves.
In the case of gay porn.. maybe it will turn people into straights, when you see the dingleberries up close and personal the whole idea of anal sex suddenly becomes very unappetizing (same can be said for straight anal as well I guess).
HD porn may actually finally be the porn that's good for relationships. Once you see the "actors" in glorious HD, your girlfriend/wife suddenly starts to look a whole lot more appealing.
ya'll are just too paranoid. Can't you see uncle Bill has your best interest in mind. If you're a guy, he's your rolemodel, if you're female, he'll give you his mojo. With this in mind, who can resist putting their ID data into uncle Bill's database of Sexual Healing.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in day I was participating in a booze & schmooze portion of a microsoft event where they invited MCPs (I was young and I needed the money). This was the time when the decision had just come down in the US courts to chop up M$ into little pieces a'la Ma Bell (good idea, but as governments change, so do court rulings). Well, we had been encouraged (told even) to let our hair down for the "informal" part of the evening and everyone was a bit into the beers. Naturally the topic came up in conversation and not 10 seconds after I made the chopping-into-slices movement with my hand I had two M$ marketing people in front of me, smiling, asking "What's up, what are you talking about". This was done in the nicest of ways and I had no reason to to keep the topic of the group's conversation a secret. We weren't even bashing MS, we were merely discussing the hot news topic of the day.
I was probably too drunk to smell trouble when they bent down to look at my nametag (it had gone a bit lopsided so you could only read it from below), but I didnt. I left the party and went on my merry way.
Less than a week later I'm summoned to my manager's office. At the time I worked for a large company, but they had a small team working on Microsoft stuff and we were one of MS partners. He sits me down and explains that he'd been to MS Finland and discussed maintaining/upgrading their partnership level. At the conference he'd been told pretty much the following: " --insert my name here--- has been voicing attitudes hostile to Microsoft. This is a funny way to act for an employee of a company that wishes to maintain their partnership status". It's been so many years that I forget the exact details, but I was clearly told by M$ via my manager that if I discuss Microsoft in a way that even approaches negative, they'll make me pay for it.
Needless to say, I soon found a better and more lucrative niche of the IT trade. But to this day this is the only time I've been censored from discussion in Finland. Up to that point I'd always been thinking that the anti-M$ crowd is just a bit too fanatical, that M$ is an bad corp, but it's still staffed by real people. But this event opened my eyes to the fact that M$ marketing is a staffed by truly diabolical people who'll stop at nothing to achieve their ends. As a matter of fact, had my manager not been as nice as he was, I could've ended up being fired. This just to stop me from discussing the biggest IT news item of the time.
So before you take your MCSE examns, stop to think for a while. If you can life with your freedom of speech being limited, then go for it. If not, pick another field.
Before we actually crucify the MPAA, let's look at the big picture. Does anyone have it? I mean a picture of this Neri woman, because if she's hot it's just a simple case of bribery by "hide the salami", or as the MPAA says "An innocent relationship, which in no way affected Ms. Neri's opinion".
But what if she's a complete dog? I think then you could actually start charging people with bribery and MPAA with pimping. Come to think of it, MPAAs methods aren't too far from those of a street pimp, though MPAA actually prefers the term "Carborne entrepeneur":
*SMACK* *SLAP* "I don't give a s**t if you already bought da movie, gimme da money, b**ch!" *SLAP* *SMACK* *THUD*
I second that motion. I think I busted my gluteus maximus laughing. This post should get get an exception to the +5 max mod rule.
ps. Yes, I know it's ass, so don't bother posting a wiseass remark.
I wonder what the adult toy industry will do with this. I could probably hazard a few guesses, but children might be reading this thread.
Sure, terraforming isn't going to be that difficult considering the technology we have. Methinks the biggest hurdle will be getting enough Ford Super-Duty's transported to Mars.
The question is why should we mess up Mars, we're just barely starting on the road to fix the damage we've done to our own planet.
*Read small print* ...ISP not liable if they lose data...devil owns my soul for eternity...agree to have my details being sold to spammers...pretty standard stu.., no wait... own the rights to genes produced by me and any of my offspring in perpetuity... no not it either. Looks like I never agreed to this.
I'd sue, but the contract with my ISP waived that right.
..why not the other? I'll trademark "Closed Source", "Proprietary", "Confidential" and "Copyrighted". We'll see who'll bleed out of which orifice then.
NO! I DISAGREE! You suck, your opinions suck and you remind me of Hitler!
.toLowerCase() when you need it.
PS. My computer is bigger than yours!
pps. I had this all typed out in CAPS, but someone had the lameness filter turned on. Where's
I see piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Ofcourse this might sound a *bit* preposterous, since highlight cases of civil disobedience in US are things like the civil liberties movement, the American revolution (quite a bit of civil disobedience, that) and the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era.
However, the fact is that the companies that sell movies have the inferior product. They sell you a bulky disk with a movie you can't really take back if it sucks and that you can only view on a player (or if you use the right OS/software, on a laptop). If you pirate a movie, you get a slim file, able to go on a variety of devices for easy viewing. And mostly the picture quality does not discernibly change from the original. The old image of piracy was inferior product = lower price. Now it's superior product / free.
Now, why should a consumer pay for an inferior product, which is not only expensive, but promises to keep milking the full price (media+license to watch) for each new media update. **AA believes that laws should be changed to solve the "problem", and I believe the same. I believe that you should be able to buy the right to watch the movie and that right should be transferrable to any media. I do believe that it's OK to charge a minor fee for new media innovations/media, but it's not OK to charge full price every time you move from Beta -> VHS -> Laserdisc -> DVD -> HDDVD -> whatever.
I personally have large collection of DVDs gathering dust because I just can't be bothered to watch them from the disc, I rather see the DivX version. Luckily in Finland you're no longer a criminal for DeCSSing a DVD (you were, until a recent court ruling), but in many countries you are. Therefore it's easy to see why people would just get a superior product for free, rather than pay for a DVD, convert it and then be considered a criminal anyway.
So whatever else it is, it's a community fighting the evil empire to bring balance to the for... eh, to bring fairness into the business models. There will always be piracy, but there would not be widespread piracy if the products are reasonably priced and better/equal to those of the pirates.
And yes.. I know this is a bit of a troll, but i'm just trying to bring out a point of view that seems to drown under the cries of "Down with **AA!" or "Piracy is crime!".
Usually userfriendly.org can run atleast a few strips poking fun at the inevitability of the crack before one is actually delivered. I guess in the future they should make a stock strip and replace the daily strip with it the second a new AACS fix is announced.
Then again, considering all those pre-release movies out there, I wonder when we'll start getting pre-fix cracks.
Now it's only a matter of time before someone rolls it up and tries to smoke it.
I thought that false advertising was illegal or atleast frowned upon. They show pirated movies as being poor quality camera copies and containing virii etc. Couldn't be farther from the truth as AVI and MKV are not known for carrying virii and the quality is outstanding, especially in the .mkv 720p rips. Or atleast so I hear from a friend of a friend :)
It doesn't help if the US government keeps giving ammunition to the nut crowd. You said it yourself. 19 Saudi extremists hit US on 9/11. I thought Saudis lived in Saudi Arabia, a country viewed as "ally" by the US, not in Iraq. But hey, that's just my lunatic fringe talking.
At the risk of having this degenerate into a flamewar, i'll enter a few corrections, plus a few clarifications from the non-Russian point of view.
1. 30 Million dead russians (as you state in your original message) is not just a death toll caused by the Germans. How many were killed in "friendly" hands?
2. The policy of "Russification" was widely adopted during and after WWII. As stated in the original message titled "They forgot something", Estonia was one of the nations to suffer from this. The results of this policy can be seen in many countries and occupied regions. The natives of occupied Karelia are now a minority with their language all but extinct. And if you go to Ukraine, their language has been all but replaced by Russian.
3. You say in your reply that there are 300 search parties recovering and burying bodies. That's fine, but I was referring to wartime and it's immediate aftermath.
Considering point 2, why would you blame Ukrainian nationalists for tearing down the memorials of their oppressors? Or Estonians for moving the memorial out of the center of the city. I realize that for russians it's a memorial to great victory, but since it's not on their soil, how can they dictate how it should been viewed and treated? Is it not for an independent country to decide what to do in their soil?
If your answer to the last question is "not in cases such as these" or something similar, I suggest you head off to Iraq and start putting up Saddam statues that have been torn down.
And the Russians, who are so indignant that their soldiers bodies were "desecrated" by moving them to a military cemetary, seem to forget one historical fact: They themselves cared very little for their own dead in WWII. Not that they cared too much for the living either. The road to Berlin is littered with unburied bodies.
As to who is doing the "cyber attacks". It's hard to determine the origin of a DDoS attack, but the timing and context seems to point to Russian intervention. However, this is unlikely to be direct government intervention, but rather it uses a proxy organization such as the Putin Youth (Nashi). The same government sponsored (but nominally independent) group attacked the Estonian embassy. Correct me if i'm wrong, but could this not be construed as casus belli in an of itself (that is, if Estonia had such designs and the capability to carry them to a conclusion). If the Russians are willing attack an embassy, which results in no real economic damage to Estonia, but huge reputational damage to Russia, why would they shy from sponsoring DDoS attacks against Estonia to cause real economic damage?
The use of sauna is in cycles of heating up and cooling down. 4-5 hours is no problem, especially if you have plenty of cold beer available.
on how to get a Finn to see your point in negotiations. It's easy:
1. Invite the Finn to a sauna that's been heated to a 120C
2. Help him down a case of beer and 2 litres of vodka while enjoying the sauna for 4-5 hours
If you are still able to make your case after this, you will find the Finn much more appreciative of your point of view.
and it's using different size fonts in the same sheet of text, different fonts, different styles, different colors. The site, especially the copyright notice seems to violate every law of HTML abuse except . This leads me to believe she's either just totally schizoid person with no sense of style and no knowledge of the web, or she's just doing everything she can to piss people off and stir controversy.
However, I think she's bitten off more than she can chew with this lawsuit.. companies like Google cannot allow this to fly, so they won't buy her off because that would bring out 10000 copycats each with their hand out. As to her chances of actually winning, i think that's not even worth the ink that's been used on this site to discuss the possibility.
But hey, america's all about pursuit of happyness, and maybe controversy makes her happy. Her site seems to indicate that.
...Next thing you know you make a comment about Bush and the FBI is at your doorstep. It has happened before. oooh, you live in the US.Someone comes up with a new tech that could be used for something "evil" and people shit themselves? If you're truly worried about being RFID tagged, or having stuff you're shoplifting being tagged, get scanner, locate the spot and apply a neutralizer (electricity, magnetics?). So I think there's no cause for world-wide panic quite yet.
It's quite another thing with fiber-optic cameras, which are ostensibly used by doctors for gastro- and colonoscopies. However, there is irrefutable evidence from trusted sources that this technology is a trojan horse planed by the Tau Cetians and it contains a uplink feed. Now they don't have to abduct us to do anal probes, we do it to ourselves.
<post type="Standard">g line>
<comment type="opening" style="witty"></comment>
<notice type="inequality_of_treatment" participant1="large companies" participant2="independents"></hint>
<rant about="conspiracy" cause="campaign_contributions"></rant>
<sigline URL="http://www.sigsRus.com/sigoftheday.asp"></si
</post>
In the case of gay porn.. maybe it will turn people into straights, when you see the dingleberries up close and personal the whole idea of anal sex suddenly becomes very unappetizing (same can be said for straight anal as well I guess).
HD porn may actually finally be the porn that's good for relationships. Once you see the "actors" in glorious HD, your girlfriend/wife suddenly starts to look a whole lot more appealing.
ya'll are just too paranoid. Can't you see uncle Bill has your best interest in mind. If you're a guy, he's your rolemodel, if you're female, he'll give you his mojo. With this in mind, who can resist putting their ID data into uncle Bill's database of Sexual Healing.
The LEO clearing racket over Brooklyn is already cornered by the Soprano Family Garbage Consulting Inc.