On the off chance that you're asking an honest question, I'll give you an honest answer. I am an Apple fan, I own an iPod Touch, a Macbook, a G5 iMac, and a G4 iBook. I guess I qualify. Thinks I don't like about Apple products? iTunes, for one. Since iPhoto got upgraded in Leopard, iTunes is the shittiest piece of software that Apple has let out of Cupertino. I hate it. The only reason I haven't switched away from it is that I haven't found anything better for the Mac to manage a music collection. I also am wary of the fact that iTunes has grown from a shitty music manager to a central control system for multiple devices. That makes me nervous. There are a few other things, but those are the biggies. Oh, and iProduct pisses me off no end.
I still buy Apple products because they do interfaces brilliantly. The OS itself is beautiful to use, doesn't crash on me, paying for an update of an OS usually is beneficial to me and not just a cash grab (just put Leopard on the G5, it actually runs faster than Tiger). The hardware looks beautiful, and is generally high-quality as well, particularly the computers.
In short, there are things about Apple products that I hate, but there are more things that I love, and those things that I love are more important to me. If too many of those things change for the worse, I'll stop buying Apple products.
Despite the nastyness that you store on your own hard drive (which you couldn't read anyway unless you want searching for it), it's not like you or anyone else could ever prove it was on your system-
I dunno. If I were a Fed, I'd break Freenet like this:
Fed: "We have a bunch of nodes on the darknet that contain Bad Things."
Judge: "What's a node?"
Fed: "We surfed for Bad Things on Fed1, wrote the offending keys of the Very Worst Things into a textfile, and then ran a script on Fed2 that downloaded a whole bunch of the Very Worst Things. Fed2 is running a modified client that doesn't save chunks that are being passed through it to other machines. Therefore, the only stuff in its datastore is stuff that got there from our own requests. Then we walked away from Fed2's keyboard and let it stew for a few hours."
Judge:......
Fed: "Right. When a request for a chunk comes in, and Fed2 doesn't have it, we just pass the request on to the next node. When a chunk comes through from some other node, our modified client passes it on without storing it locally."
Judge: *blank stare*
Fed: "...we add the requestor's IP address to the list of IP addresses for which we have probable cause to believe are requesting - or facilitating - the transmission of Bad Things. By the way, here's the list."
Judge: "Signed. Go get 'em."
I think the above changes might more accurately reflect reality.
I haven't read TFA, but my impression from other posters who have is that this driver enables users to run vm's of linux on Windows host boxes, using Microsoft's vm software. In other words, the better this driver works, the happier Microsoft is going to be.
Rather than ask you to substantiate your claims that the US government is actually supporting all those dictators you mentioned (which I don't think you can reasonably do), I'm going to ask you this: how is this different from the dictators the US government has always supported (or installed)? Really, your government has a long long history of getting into bed with dictators and fascists. Pot, meet kettle.
leveraging their media player monopoly (arguably) to negatively affect a competitor in a different business unit.
People keep saying this, and it keeps not being true. Nobody is forcing anybody to use iTunes. There are plenty of options out there. The only people "stuck" with iTunes are those with iPods/Phones, who need iTunes to serve apps, music and DRM authorization. This is troubling (especially for me, since I own an iPod) but it shouldn't affect Pre owners at all. If Palm can't be bothered to design a decent interface to their own phone, they deserve to fail.
I can tell you this, if I bought a Pre, the very last thing I'd want to do is connect to it with iTunes. As a loyal Apple consumer, I have to say that iTunes is shit, and the further away you can get from it, the better.
It almost certainly doesn't count as a monopoly, and we'd all better hope that it doesn't, because every operating system bundles software with the OS, whether the OS is proprietary, free, or libre.
There are a lot of other mp3 players, as well. Go to your local $Electronics_Retailer and count the different non-apple products. I bet you can count at least a dozen, from the likes of Sansa, RCA, Archos, iRiver (I think they're still making product, even after being hosed playing the Playsforsure game), and let's not forget the Zune. There's plenty of competition for the iPod, and they must be moving units or they'd have all gone out of business by now.
But Microsoft isn't just competing against OS X and Linux and OpenOffice, it's now discovering that it has to compete with past versions of its own software. If people and corporations simply decide to stick with WinXP and Office 2000, Microsoft loses as much money as if all those people had switched. People are starting the realize (thanks to the Windows Vista marketing debacle) that last year's "good enough" is good enough, and they don't have to spend the money and time to upgrade if they don't want to.
The Downfall of Windows 7 won't be Linux, it will be Windows XP. The downfall of Office 2010 won't be OpenOffice, it will be Office 2007 (or 2003, or 2000).
Sure, they comprehend those things in relation to the body, but apply the same reasoning to a directory tree, and many of them will look at you, smile and say "I get it." And two days later you'll have to explain it again. Because they don't care. They want the thing to work, so they can get busy seeing patients.
If they don't 'get it' when it's explained that simply, then they're below the mental cutoff for that level of abstract thought.
Sorry, this isn't a sufficient explanation. Many professional-level people have extraordinary difficulty understanding anything to do with computers, and certainly can't comprehend the finer points of file/directory systems, while maintaining very high levels of abstract thought. Doctors and lawyers in particular seem to be incapable of grasping even the most rudimentary computer, while being able to perform other reasoning tasks on the highest levels.
The problem with many users isn't that they are incapable of understanding, it's that they don't care. Do you remember the proles in 1984, who were illiterate or semi-literate, but could carry in their minds vast tables of winning lottery numbers, and do odds calculations in their heads? If you're emotionally invested in understanding something, you will understand it better than if it's a matter of indifference to you.
This is not to say that there aren't plenty of users incapable of understanding the basics of computing, but I would wager that a significant number of users are fully capable of that level of understanding, but don't give a shit.
It certainly would be nice if only people qualified to use a computer did so, but it won't happen any time soon.
Would it be nice? I don't think it would. If only people who are "qualified" to use a computer did so, we'd still be paying $3000 for Pentium I-era technology. The vast majority of computer purchasers buy their computers to do something else with them, not to become computer experts. It's that large market that allows for the economies of scale that drive processing power up, and price down. Without those "unqualified" computer users, computing would still be an expensive hobby.
Maybe you missed the part in the summary where they indicate that 3.5% of news stories originated at blogs, and then were picked up by the traditional media. Apparently their testing methodology can indeed detect stories that originate on blogs.
Well, strictly speaking, they would only be entitled to damages if people would certainly have otherwise licensed the pics. They wouldn't likely get damages for people who only might have otherwise paide for licenses. But don't let that get in the way of your sad attempt to score points off me.
The fact that the RIAA uses batshit-insane figures for their losses due to piracy doesn't change the fact that they probably do lose some money when people download music.
If the museum has to compete with their own images, copied by someone who paid nothing for them, they would lose some money from people who would otherwise have paid to license those pics. Of course quantifying those losses would be difficult, and open to various interpretations, but it doesn't seem reasonable to assume there would no losses at all.
So a Canadian court might hear things under Chinese law, if a Canadian citizien was threatened over some political statements they'd written on a Canadian website;
No, if all parties are Canadian, Canadian law applies. Canadian judges can only make rulings under the laws of another nation if there is substantial connection between the jurisdiction in question and the subject of the court action.
So for example, a Canadian company, doing business overseas, causes damages to the locals of that country. The government of that country chooses not to prosecute. The plaintiffs, if they choose, can bring the action in Canada. If the judge chooses to hear the action (they usually don't, but that's starting to change), then the judge can hear the action under Canadian law, or the law of the other jurisdiction.
If a Canadian posts things on a Canadian website about other people, and that posting is legal in Canada, the action can't be brought in Canada under Canadian law. The incident in question would also be subtantially related to Canada, so a judge would be unlikely to hear it under the laws of another country, but it's not impossible.
In the situation at hand, if the defendants were Canadian rather than American, the National Portrait Gallery would be better off bringing their action in London, and then asking a Canadian court to enforce the judgment. Canadian courts have a fairly liberal rule regarding enforcing judgments from other jurisdictions: as long as the two countries' laws are similar, and the other jurisdiction is willing to honour Canadian court judgments, the Canadian court would enforce the UK decision.
2) The National Portrait Gallery is a public body who receive public funds on the basis that they display and educate a many people as possible about the artworks they have.
They have no obligation to spend money (or forgo revenue) for non-residents of the UK. As a public body, they have the responsibility to carry out their mandate to the British people, while not costing those same people more than is necessary to do so.
That doesn't mean the museum -- or the Ministry overseeing the museum -- won't work to make sure as much of their revenue as possible comes from private funds as opposed to the government's coffers. Some governments really do believe in efficiency. Usually they're governments where the elected still have some fear of the voters.
I don't know what the law is in the US or the UK, but in Canada, if a court assumes jurisdiction in a cross-border dispute such as this one, the Canadian court could hear the case under UK, not Canadian law. The Judge would simply make her ruling using UK statutes and UK case law. Is there something similar in the US?
When you eat anything nutritious, it gets turned into body and blood - yours.
This isn't what Catholics (and I was one, remember) believe happens. The Priest takes the wine and bread, prays over it, and performs the Miracle of Transubstantiation. This is supposed to turn the wine and bread into the body and blood of Jesus. Not metaphorically, literally. The fact that they still look and taste like wine and bread is irrelevant. No shit, this is what the doctrine states, and if you're a Catholic and you don't really believe this, you're going to Hell.
That's not mysticism, it's science. The bread and wine used at communion is definitely getting turned into somebody's body and blood (within a few days at most and at a certain level of efficiency) so now we're really just debating whose body it becomes, yours or some kind of Holy Spirit which is embodied inside of you (and if you believe the Bible, other people, so don't go thinking you're special).
No, you've raised a red herring. No Catholic would question that the bread and wine is turned by metabolic processes into parts of their own body. Catholics don't believe in Creationism, either. But every good Catholic is supposed to believe that by eating that blessed bread and wine, they're tucking into the body and blood of their Saviour (whether they really do believe this is an open question, of course).
At communion, it's specifically said that God has given us spiritual food already (presumably those lessons, and hopefully, the priest's opinions on them as well) and is giving us bread and wine as a symbol of the spiritual instruction, and a reminder to absorb those lessons and make them part of us, and put them to use in the world, just as we absorb the physical food and presumably put it to good use.
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, this is Heresy. You eat the bread and wine, you get saved, regardless of how well you absorb the lessons of the homily and sermon. It's a little more complicated than that, but not much. Understanding is not required for salvation.
The Roman Catholic doctrine seems to be it isn't just a symbolic gesture, which is different from claiming there's no symbolism.
I never intended to claim that there was no symbolism in the act, but to show that the act itself has at its core a non-symbolic, mystical event. The symbolism is secondary (and much symbolism -- specifically the symbolism of ritual cannibalism -- is pointedly ignored by the Church and the Laity both).
Beyond that, I'm not going to try to explain why they think it's an important distinction, but personally, I don't see their reasoning as a big deal one way or the other.
But Catholics do see it as a big deal, the whole ritual of the Mass is centred around the performance of this Miracle and attendant ritual cannibalism.
If God doesn't do anything supernatural or miraculous there, but acts by natural processes, I don't see that as harming the rest of the faith,
The whole point is that God is supposedly doing something Miraculous, it's one of the things the Church points to to bolster the faith of the Laity. If nothing miraculous is happening, what's the point?
just like I don't think you can shoot down the claim from the parable of the good Samaritan that any person who would stop and help you is your brother, regardless of race, by proving that the story of Jonah and the whale didn't happen.
What does the parable of the good Samaritan have to do with faith? It's an interesting moral instruction, and you can test the benefits of it in your own life, and decide on its appropriateness from there. Faith has nothing to do with it.
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Forgive my ignorance but where are you getting your 1 machine generation = 18 months figure from?
What does capitalism have to do with the free market?
On the off chance that you're asking an honest question, I'll give you an honest answer. I am an Apple fan, I own an iPod Touch, a Macbook, a G5 iMac, and a G4 iBook. I guess I qualify. Thinks I don't like about Apple products? iTunes, for one. Since iPhoto got upgraded in Leopard, iTunes is the shittiest piece of software that Apple has let out of Cupertino. I hate it. The only reason I haven't switched away from it is that I haven't found anything better for the Mac to manage a music collection. I also am wary of the fact that iTunes has grown from a shitty music manager to a central control system for multiple devices. That makes me nervous. There are a few other things, but those are the biggies. Oh, and iProduct pisses me off no end.
I still buy Apple products because they do interfaces brilliantly. The OS itself is beautiful to use, doesn't crash on me, paying for an update of an OS usually is beneficial to me and not just a cash grab (just put Leopard on the G5, it actually runs faster than Tiger). The hardware looks beautiful, and is generally high-quality as well, particularly the computers.
In short, there are things about Apple products that I hate, but there are more things that I love, and those things that I love are more important to me. If too many of those things change for the worse, I'll stop buying Apple products.
" A few machine generations..."
That should take what, two, three days?
Actually, I don't think the FBI is clueless-more's the pity.
I dunno. If I were a Fed, I'd break Freenet like this:
Fed: "We have a bunch of nodes on the darknet that contain Bad Things."
Judge: "What's a node?"
Fed: "We surfed for Bad Things on Fed1, wrote the offending keys of the Very Worst Things into a textfile, and then ran a script on Fed2 that downloaded a whole bunch of the Very Worst Things. Fed2 is running a modified client that doesn't save chunks that are being passed through it to other machines. Therefore, the only stuff in its datastore is stuff that got there from our own requests. Then we walked away from Fed2's keyboard and let it stew for a few hours."
Judge: ......
Fed: "Right. When a request for a chunk comes in, and Fed2 doesn't have it, we just pass the request on to the next node. When a chunk comes through from some other node, our modified client passes it on without storing it locally."
Judge: *blank stare*
Fed: "...we add the requestor's IP address to the list of IP addresses for which we have probable cause to believe are requesting - or facilitating - the transmission of Bad Things. By the way, here's the list."
Judge: "Signed. Go get 'em."
I think the above changes might more accurately reflect reality.
I haven't read TFA, but my impression from other posters who have is that this driver enables users to run vm's of linux on Windows host boxes, using Microsoft's vm software. In other words, the better this driver works, the happier Microsoft is going to be.
Rather than ask you to substantiate your claims that the US government is actually supporting all those dictators you mentioned (which I don't think you can reasonably do), I'm going to ask you this: how is this different from the dictators the US government has always supported (or installed)? Really, your government has a long long history of getting into bed with dictators and fascists. Pot, meet kettle.
leveraging their media player monopoly (arguably) to negatively affect a competitor in a different business unit.
People keep saying this, and it keeps not being true. Nobody is forcing anybody to use iTunes. There are plenty of options out there. The only people "stuck" with iTunes are those with iPods/Phones, who need iTunes to serve apps, music and DRM authorization. This is troubling (especially for me, since I own an iPod) but it shouldn't affect Pre owners at all. If Palm can't be bothered to design a decent interface to their own phone, they deserve to fail.
I can tell you this, if I bought a Pre, the very last thing I'd want to do is connect to it with iTunes. As a loyal Apple consumer, I have to say that iTunes is shit, and the further away you can get from it, the better.
It almost certainly doesn't count as a monopoly, and we'd all better hope that it doesn't, because every operating system bundles software with the OS, whether the OS is proprietary, free, or libre.
There are a lot of other mp3 players, as well. Go to your local $Electronics_Retailer and count the different non-apple products. I bet you can count at least a dozen, from the likes of Sansa, RCA, Archos, iRiver (I think they're still making product, even after being hosed playing the Playsforsure game), and let's not forget the Zune. There's plenty of competition for the iPod, and they must be moving units or they'd have all gone out of business by now.
But Microsoft isn't just competing against OS X and Linux and OpenOffice, it's now discovering that it has to compete with past versions of its own software. If people and corporations simply decide to stick with WinXP and Office 2000, Microsoft loses as much money as if all those people had switched. People are starting the realize (thanks to the Windows Vista marketing debacle) that last year's "good enough" is good enough, and they don't have to spend the money and time to upgrade if they don't want to.
The Downfall of Windows 7 won't be Linux, it will be Windows XP. The downfall of Office 2010 won't be OpenOffice, it will be Office 2007 (or 2003, or 2000).
Sure, they comprehend those things in relation to the body, but apply the same reasoning to a directory tree, and many of them will look at you, smile and say "I get it." And two days later you'll have to explain it again. Because they don't care. They want the thing to work, so they can get busy seeing patients.
should be "even the most rudimentary computer concepts" and now I'm off to get more coffee
If they don't 'get it' when it's explained that simply, then they're below the mental cutoff for that level of abstract thought.
Sorry, this isn't a sufficient explanation. Many professional-level people have extraordinary difficulty understanding anything to do with computers, and certainly can't comprehend the finer points of file/directory systems, while maintaining very high levels of abstract thought. Doctors and lawyers in particular seem to be incapable of grasping even the most rudimentary computer, while being able to perform other reasoning tasks on the highest levels.
The problem with many users isn't that they are incapable of understanding, it's that they don't care. Do you remember the proles in 1984, who were illiterate or semi-literate, but could carry in their minds vast tables of winning lottery numbers, and do odds calculations in their heads? If you're emotionally invested in understanding something, you will understand it better than if it's a matter of indifference to you.
This is not to say that there aren't plenty of users incapable of understanding the basics of computing, but I would wager that a significant number of users are fully capable of that level of understanding, but don't give a shit.
It certainly would be nice if only people qualified to use a computer did so, but it won't happen any time soon.
Would it be nice? I don't think it would. If only people who are "qualified" to use a computer did so, we'd still be paying $3000 for Pentium I-era technology. The vast majority of computer purchasers buy their computers to do something else with them, not to become computer experts. It's that large market that allows for the economies of scale that drive processing power up, and price down. Without those "unqualified" computer users, computing would still be an expensive hobby.
Maybe you missed the part in the summary where they indicate that 3.5% of news stories originated at blogs, and then were picked up by the traditional media. Apparently their testing methodology can indeed detect stories that originate on blogs.
Well, strictly speaking, they would only be entitled to damages if people would certainly have otherwise licensed the pics. They wouldn't likely get damages for people who only might have otherwise paide for licenses. But don't let that get in the way of your sad attempt to score points off me.
The fact that the RIAA uses batshit-insane figures for their losses due to piracy doesn't change the fact that they probably do lose some money when people download music.
If the museum has to compete with their own images, copied by someone who paid nothing for them, they would lose some money from people who would otherwise have paid to license those pics. Of course quantifying those losses would be difficult, and open to various interpretations, but it doesn't seem reasonable to assume there would no losses at all.
So a Canadian court might hear things under Chinese law, if a Canadian citizien was threatened over some political statements they'd written on a Canadian website;
No, if all parties are Canadian, Canadian law applies. Canadian judges can only make rulings under the laws of another nation if there is substantial connection between the jurisdiction in question and the subject of the court action.
So for example, a Canadian company, doing business overseas, causes damages to the locals of that country. The government of that country chooses not to prosecute. The plaintiffs, if they choose, can bring the action in Canada. If the judge chooses to hear the action (they usually don't, but that's starting to change), then the judge can hear the action under Canadian law, or the law of the other jurisdiction.
If a Canadian posts things on a Canadian website about other people, and that posting is legal in Canada, the action can't be brought in Canada under Canadian law. The incident in question would also be subtantially related to Canada, so a judge would be unlikely to hear it under the laws of another country, but it's not impossible.
In the situation at hand, if the defendants were Canadian rather than American, the National Portrait Gallery would be better off bringing their action in London, and then asking a Canadian court to enforce the judgment. Canadian courts have a fairly liberal rule regarding enforcing judgments from other jurisdictions: as long as the two countries' laws are similar, and the other jurisdiction is willing to honour Canadian court judgments, the Canadian court would enforce the UK decision.
2) The National Portrait Gallery is a public body who receive public funds on the basis that they display and educate a many people as possible about the artworks they have.
They have no obligation to spend money (or forgo revenue) for non-residents of the UK. As a public body, they have the responsibility to carry out their mandate to the British people, while not costing those same people more than is necessary to do so.
That doesn't mean the museum -- or the Ministry overseeing the museum -- won't work to make sure as much of their revenue as possible comes from private funds as opposed to the government's coffers. Some governments really do believe in efficiency. Usually they're governments where the elected still have some fear of the voters.
I don't know what the law is in the US or the UK, but in Canada, if a court assumes jurisdiction in a cross-border dispute such as this one, the Canadian court could hear the case under UK, not Canadian law. The Judge would simply make her ruling using UK statutes and UK case law. Is there something similar in the US?
It's not lupus.
When you eat anything nutritious, it gets turned into body and blood - yours.
This isn't what Catholics (and I was one, remember) believe happens. The Priest takes the wine and bread, prays over it, and performs the Miracle of Transubstantiation. This is supposed to turn the wine and bread into the body and blood of Jesus. Not metaphorically, literally. The fact that they still look and taste like wine and bread is irrelevant. No shit, this is what the doctrine states, and if you're a Catholic and you don't really believe this, you're going to Hell.
That's not mysticism, it's science. The bread and wine used at communion is definitely getting turned into somebody's body and blood (within a few days at most and at a certain level of efficiency) so now we're really just debating whose body it becomes, yours or some kind of Holy Spirit which is embodied inside of you (and if you believe the Bible, other people, so don't go thinking you're special).
No, you've raised a red herring. No Catholic would question that the bread and wine is turned by metabolic processes into parts of their own body. Catholics don't believe in Creationism, either. But every good Catholic is supposed to believe that by eating that blessed bread and wine, they're tucking into the body and blood of their Saviour (whether they really do believe this is an open question, of course).
At communion, it's specifically said that God has given us spiritual food already (presumably those lessons, and hopefully, the priest's opinions on them as well) and is giving us bread and wine as a symbol of the spiritual instruction, and a reminder to absorb those lessons and make them part of us, and put them to use in the world, just as we absorb the physical food and presumably put it to good use.
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, this is Heresy. You eat the bread and wine, you get saved, regardless of how well you absorb the lessons of the homily and sermon. It's a little more complicated than that, but not much. Understanding is not required for salvation.
The Roman Catholic doctrine seems to be it isn't just a symbolic gesture, which is different from claiming there's no symbolism.
I never intended to claim that there was no symbolism in the act, but to show that the act itself has at its core a non-symbolic, mystical event. The symbolism is secondary (and much symbolism -- specifically the symbolism of ritual cannibalism -- is pointedly ignored by the Church and the Laity both).
Beyond that, I'm not going to try to explain why they think it's an important distinction, but personally, I don't see their reasoning as a big deal one way or the other.
But Catholics do see it as a big deal, the whole ritual of the Mass is centred around the performance of this Miracle and attendant ritual cannibalism.
If God doesn't do anything supernatural or miraculous there, but acts by natural processes, I don't see that as harming the rest of the faith,
The whole point is that God is supposedly doing something Miraculous, it's one of the things the Church points to to bolster the faith of the Laity. If nothing miraculous is happening, what's the point?
just like I don't think you can shoot down the claim from the parable of the good Samaritan that any person who would stop and help you is your brother, regardless of race, by proving that the story of Jonah and the whale didn't happen.
What does the parable of the good Samaritan have to do with faith? It's an interesting moral instruction, and you can test the benefits of it in your own life, and decide on its appropriateness from there. Faith has nothing to do with it.