Lebanon is one of the few countries to have Christian militias with slogans like "The only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian" and which have carried out massacres at Palestinian refugee camps. Other neighbouring countries don't have such a large religious division and would probably be more accommodating.
I wonder why the Tesco's-Levi jeans trademark infringement precedent doesn't apply in this case? Maybe large publishers want to sell their stuff in Tesco.
For those who don't know, in the UK Levi sued Tesco to stop them selling jeans that they'd bought through third party distributors outside of the EU, thus preventing them from undercutting other retailers.
since shipping is OBVIOUSLY an ancillary service that adds no value to the product besides what consumers ALREADY expect from the sales contract.
Well, consumers expect that the book will be delivered to their door, right? So, who's paying for that courier company? Amazon isn't offering free shipping out of charity. Claiming that shipping is free, is like claiming that the police service is free; technically, it's true, but clearly you're still paying (through taxation) in the end. And in the Amazon case, the link isn't even that indirect, clearly some portion of your payment must be used to pay for shipping.
Some contend that this is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen
Looks like you've fallen for yet another untrue smear propagated by the right-wing.
This is the religious/moral imperative
This argument reminds me of one I had a long time ago. One of my friends claimed that science was a dubious religion, and you had to believe in it. I said no, science is a methodology, not a theology; you don't have to believe in it any more than you must believe in bricks and cement in order to build houses.
I believe will some day (though not in any of our lifetimes) will be made utterly insignificant by technology.
That's nice. Is there any reason we should hold your opinion above those of the many climatologists out there? Or the CIA, who say that water is shaping up to be the planet's number one most contested resource, and a driver of wars and instability?
Most supermarkets accept plastic bags for recycling
You must live in a very environmentally friendly area - I've never seen a supermarket doing this in the UK (though maybe there are some that do, somewhere..).
He says: "What surprised me here is that Firefox is substantially slower than IE, once you factor out that wildly anomalous string result."
To paraphrase: "What surprised me here is that Firefox is substantially slower than IE, once you manipulate the experimental data by removing something that IE is particularly slow at."
And guess what? If you remove string ops, bit ops, and date ops, then Firefox is probably faster than IE.;-)
I dont want your website, I want it in a way I can download it and play it on my ipod or phone, not your crappy website. Maybe you do, but the success of YouTube has shown that many people find a web accessible service easier to use than a download service. I just watched this debate and found it acceptable - the video quality seems better than YouTube. I think the BBC just killed their iPlayer download software; most people aren't going to bother messing about with p2p download software when the have a high quality streaming alternative.
Now we just need an open source flash... gnash, anyone?
The article lambasts the BBC for spending £4.5m on the iPlayer. While it seems a lot, it should be viewed in the context of other media distribution systems: it will be accessible to 10 million homes with broadband in the UK. Given the popularity of BBC content, I'd expect at least 50% to use it at least weekly. Which would work out to an initial cost per home of £1, or about 35p per user, which seems more reasonable. Remember that YouTube sold for $1.65 billion, and it owns no content.
You are glossing over many of the legitimate concerns people had with Sun's Java. Your argument basically boils down to "Linux users were stupid, they tried Java but got GNUs gcj, didn't realise the difference, and complained that it was Java's fault. Every problem they had stemmed from gcj, not Sun's Java, which rocked and had no problems". Well, that's one possibility. You might like to also consider some others: that Java was marketed as high performance but found lacking, that distributor's couldn't ship Sun's Java, that neither Java nor Blackdown or the libraries were actually opensource (yes, if you jump through some hoops you could get *some* of the source, but if you jump through hoops you can also get the Windows CE source, but that doesn't make Windows CE "open source").
Java source code was available but simply licensed in such a way which didn't really go well with some
What, like not allowing distributors to apply bugfixes and ports, compile a JRE+libs, and shipping it to end users? You don't see why not being allowed to do these things might pose a problem for a Linux distributor?
but when the bs was still spreading you could already easily download binary installers (self extractors) to install Java on Linux.
The problem people had with this approach is that self extracting binary installers were already obsolete. Dpkg/Rpm/emerge track every single installed file. Those self extracting installers write files all over the file system without any regard to native packaging. And the license prevented distributions from shipping their own pre-packaged JRE.
The reason they used the wacky GNU Java is that Sun's licensing made it hard to include their Java on free distros.
Hence the reason for the existence of Blackdown: it was created specifically to allow the free distros to include a Sun-compatible JRE and JDK.
Red Hat wanted an open source Java stack that they had some control over, so that they could do development, bug fixes etc. Neither Sun's JDK or Blackdown were open source, so they heavily invested in gcj and classpath, porting Openoffice to use both, to try and head off the possibility of Openoffice (and eventually, the Linux desktop) becoming dependant on something over which they had no control.
Well, that Ubuntu bug report is over 1 year old, and according to ThinkWiki, and as confirmed by several people on the thinkpads.com forums, updating the harddrive firmware may well fix the problem.
Nope, those were legitimate scientific questions, about which different scientists come to different conclusions. Regarding race, Jean- Phillipe Rushton, and Bengt Saltin have published many articles in peer reviewed journals (your statement "the valid studies on those criteria that have actually been carried out do not show a statistically significant difference between races" is false). Chris Brand has written extensively on race differences and paedophilia; if you check his home page you'll find he does reference journal published papers with appropriate scientific findings that back up his scientific arguments.
Not that I agree with those points, I use them as examples precisely because they're notable and controversial, but your statement that in science all scientists must accept the same hypotheses is false. There will always be some scientists who reject the mainstream consensus because they think the science points to other explanations.
In real science, you have to wait until everybody agrees among the scientists
There are some scientists who believe that black people are inferior to whites, that paedophilia is good for children, and that the US faked the moon landings.
You may want to rethink your statement regarding the necessity of all scientists being in agreement.
The CIA disagree with your analysis. 'Drinking water, in fact, is shaping up to be the single most contested resource on the planet... it notes that almost half of the world's population will live in "water-stressed" societies. And that's going to drive a number of regional conflicts in the coming years.'
(though, even per hour worked, Americans are more productive, so that further raises the value of the labor to the company).
This isn't true when corrected for GDP (source). Of course, you can could try to argue that increased GDP is an effect of increasing hours worked, but this would clearly be only one of a number of factors (natural resources available to nation, location, political system, etc.).
And, of course, unemployment in America is much lower than in Europe (for August, it was 4.6% in the US vs 9% in, e.g, Germany). If you have twice as many people looking for jobs, well, the employer can offer lower pay and someone will be glad to be earning more than zero.
This is only true for certain age groups - the very young, and the very old; in the US people begin work longer because they either don't have access to socialised education, or due to other social pressures (source; "25-55 age group, there is virtually no difference; the employment rates are 86 and 88 percent for the EU-15 and the US respectively").
And from the same source: "The most important feature of the comparison is neither the growth nor the unemployment record of the US and the EU. It is, rather, that US growth, unlike that in the EU, is funded by a dangerously high mountain of foreign debt." If you're borrowing massive amounts of money, it's easier to employ more people.
There are some huge problems with the libertarian philosophy. Unregulated markets produce some of the worst abuses possible. Libertarians should consider that currently one of the least regulated markets (for manufacturing, not political) in the world is China - the US used to be like that, so why did it change? Some examples:
No environmental regulations. Companies/people should be free to pollute as they wish. Example: factories in China have practically no restrictions chemical dumping. Result: drinking water gets polluted and people die.
No trademark regulations, no intellectual property (or not enforced). Result: pirated goods are everywhere, consumers can't tell the difference between legit goods and pirated.
No safety regulations. Equivalent of FDA is corrupt or useless. Result: pirated drugs are everywhere. Nobody can tell the difference. Thousands of people have died. Lead paint in baby toys.
No restrictions on manufacturing or owning weapons. No ATF. Result: Rich people (like Osama bin Laden) could legitimately buy any biological or nuclear weapon.
No government restrictions on publishing. Absolutely no censorship. Result: child pornography becomes legalised.
No government interference in financial markets. Result: Enron. Inability to government finance short-term problems eg. post 9/11 bankruptcy of all airlines.
No restrictions on monopolies. Result: large companies dominate and destroy all competition. You buy gasoline from Standard Oil. Your software is from Microsoft. Your phone service is provided by Ma Bell. Since competitors are crushed or absorbed before becoming established in the marketplace, you will never have any other choice.
No restrictions on drugs. Result: drugs become as common as sweeties. In fact, some manufacturers start adding morphine, heroin, etc. to sweets. Coca-cola reverts back to cocaine.
That's some selective reading syndrome you've got there. He also said "Defense, Police, Disaster relief, public safety. These are the business of government."
Well, that's certainly not a libertarian ideal. A libertarian government would leave those things to private enterprise.
Good point. Since the embargoes on Iran they have developed the capability to domestically manufacture helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft. The wikipedia page on the Iranian Airforce has some nice photos of some Iranian-made fighters.
2) Have said that they want to wipe Isreal from the map
False. Read Lost in translation: Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'."
3) Seem to be spreading fear through their military and covert actions
False. Again, from Wikipedia: Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, said "For the sake of peace and stability in Iraq we need a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces. Violence in Iraq is good for no country in the region. Security of Iraq is our security and stability in Iraq is a necessity for peace and security in the region." Iran has strong ties with Iraq Shia political groups, and would rather see the Shia dominated government remain in power than have Iraq splinter. Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki has praised Iran for its positive and constructive stance on Iraq, including providing security and fighting terrorism.
Afghan president Karzai has also praised Iran for its help, and pubically stated that he believes the US position is intended to divide the nations rather than bring them together.
"we expect to soon join the club of the countries that have a nuclear industry, with all its branches, except the military one, in which we are not interested." - former president and Islamic cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. On August 9, 2005 Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons.
Gharavian - "We do not seek nuclear weapons and the Islamic religion encourages coexistence along with peace and friendship"
Slashdot Mirror
Lebanon is one of the few countries to have Christian militias with slogans like "The only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian" and which have carried out massacres at Palestinian refugee camps. Other neighbouring countries don't have such a large religious division and would probably be more accommodating.
There are also Jews living happily in Iran. By your logic, that means the actions of the Iranian government are also excusable.
I wonder why the Tesco's-Levi jeans trademark infringement precedent doesn't apply in this case? Maybe large publishers want to sell their stuff in Tesco.
For those who don't know, in the UK Levi sued Tesco to stop them selling jeans that they'd bought through third party distributors outside of the EU, thus preventing them from undercutting other retailers.
Well, consumers expect that the book will be delivered to their door, right? So, who's paying for that courier company? Amazon isn't offering free shipping out of charity. Claiming that shipping is free, is like claiming that the police service is free; technically, it's true, but clearly you're still paying (through taxation) in the end. And in the Amazon case, the link isn't even that indirect, clearly some portion of your payment must be used to pay for shipping.
Looks like you've fallen for yet another untrue smear propagated by the right-wing.
This argument reminds me of one I had a long time ago. One of my friends claimed that science was a dubious religion, and you had to believe in it. I said no, science is a methodology, not a theology; you don't have to believe in it any more than you must believe in bricks and cement in order to build houses.
That's nice. Is there any reason we should hold your opinion above those of the many climatologists out there? Or the CIA, who say that water is shaping up to be the planet's number one most contested resource, and a driver of wars and instability?
You must live in a very environmentally friendly area - I've never seen a supermarket doing this in the UK (though maybe there are some that do, somewhere..).
He says: "What surprised me here is that Firefox is substantially slower than IE, once you factor out that wildly anomalous string result."
;-)
To paraphrase: "What surprised me here is that Firefox is substantially slower than IE, once you manipulate the experimental data by removing something that IE is particularly slow at."
And guess what? If you remove string ops, bit ops, and date ops, then Firefox is probably faster than IE.
Now we just need an open source flash... gnash, anyone?
The article lambasts the BBC for spending £4.5m on the iPlayer. While it seems a lot, it should be viewed in the context of other media distribution systems: it will be accessible to 10 million homes with broadband in the UK. Given the popularity of BBC content, I'd expect at least 50% to use it at least weekly. Which would work out to an initial cost per home of £1, or about 35p per user, which seems more reasonable. Remember that YouTube sold for $1.65 billion, and it owns no content.
Current results
The results say the current number of respondents is 10941 (and counting). Where did the figure of 20,000 come from?
www.linuxfoundation.org appears to be some kind of domain search squatter.
Well, that Ubuntu bug report is over 1 year old, and according to ThinkWiki, and as confirmed by several people on the thinkpads.com forums, updating the harddrive firmware may well fix the problem.
Nope, those were legitimate scientific questions, about which different scientists come to different conclusions. Regarding race, Jean- Phillipe Rushton, and Bengt Saltin have published many articles in peer reviewed journals (your statement "the valid studies on those criteria that have actually been carried out do not show a statistically significant difference between races" is false). Chris Brand has written extensively on race differences and paedophilia; if you check his home page you'll find he does reference journal published papers with appropriate scientific findings that back up his scientific arguments.
Not that I agree with those points, I use them as examples precisely because they're notable and controversial, but your statement that in science all scientists must accept the same hypotheses is false. There will always be some scientists who reject the mainstream consensus because they think the science points to other explanations.
There are some scientists who believe that black people are inferior to whites, that paedophilia is good for children, and that the US faked the moon landings.
You may want to rethink your statement regarding the necessity of all scientists being in agreement.
The CIA disagree with your analysis. 'Drinking water, in fact, is shaping up to be the single most contested resource on the planet... it notes that almost half of the world's population will live in "water-stressed" societies. And that's going to drive a number of regional conflicts in the coming years.'
This isn't true when corrected for GDP (source). Of course, you can could try to argue that increased GDP is an effect of increasing hours worked, but this would clearly be only one of a number of factors (natural resources available to nation, location, political system, etc.).
This is only true for certain age groups - the very young, and the very old; in the US people begin work longer because they either don't have access to socialised education, or due to other social pressures (source; "25-55 age group, there is virtually no difference; the employment rates are 86 and 88 percent for the EU-15 and the US respectively").
And from the same source: "The most important feature of the comparison is neither the growth nor the unemployment record of the US and the EU. It is, rather, that US growth, unlike that in the EU, is funded by a dangerously high mountain of foreign debt." If you're borrowing massive amounts of money, it's easier to employ more people.
There are some huge problems with the libertarian philosophy. Unregulated markets produce some of the worst abuses possible. Libertarians should consider that currently one of the least regulated markets (for manufacturing, not political) in the world is China - the US used to be like that, so why did it change? Some examples:
No environmental regulations. Companies/people should be free to pollute as they wish. Example: factories in China have practically no restrictions chemical dumping. Result: drinking water gets polluted and people die.
No trademark regulations, no intellectual property (or not enforced). Result: pirated goods are everywhere, consumers can't tell the difference between legit goods and pirated.
No safety regulations. Equivalent of FDA is corrupt or useless. Result: pirated drugs are everywhere. Nobody can tell the difference. Thousands of people have died. Lead paint in baby toys.
No restrictions on manufacturing or owning weapons. No ATF. Result: Rich people (like Osama bin Laden) could legitimately buy any biological or nuclear weapon.
No government restrictions on publishing. Absolutely no censorship. Result: child pornography becomes legalised.
No government interference in financial markets. Result: Enron. Inability to government finance short-term problems eg. post 9/11 bankruptcy of all airlines.
No restrictions on monopolies. Result: large companies dominate and destroy all competition. You buy gasoline from Standard Oil. Your software is from Microsoft. Your phone service is provided by Ma Bell. Since competitors are crushed or absorbed before becoming established in the marketplace, you will never have any other choice.
No restrictions on drugs. Result: drugs become as common as sweeties. In fact, some manufacturers start adding morphine, heroin, etc. to sweets. Coca-cola reverts back to cocaine.
Those are just my thoughts. You might also like to read What's wrong with libertarianism.
Well, that's certainly not a libertarian ideal. A libertarian government would leave those things to private enterprise.
False. Iran manufactures its own fighters and helicopter gunships. Read more.
Good point. Since the embargoes on Iran they have developed the capability to domestically manufacture helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft. The wikipedia page on the Iranian Airforce has some nice photos of some Iranian-made fighters.
False. Read Lost in translation: Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'."
False. Again, from Wikipedia: Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, said "For the sake of peace and stability in Iraq we need a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces. Violence in Iraq is good for no country in the region. Security of Iraq is our security and stability in Iraq is a necessity for peace and security in the region." Iran has strong ties with Iraq Shia political groups, and would rather see the Shia dominated government remain in power than have Iraq splinter. Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki has praised Iran for its positive and constructive stance on Iraq, including providing security and fighting terrorism.
Afghan president Karzai has also praised Iran for its help, and pubically stated that he believes the US position is intended to divide the nations rather than bring them together.
No they haven't.From Wikipedia:
"we expect to soon join the club of the countries that have a nuclear industry, with all its branches, except the military one, in which we are not interested." - former president and Islamic cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. On August 9, 2005 Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons.
Gharavian - "We do not seek nuclear weapons and the Islamic religion encourages coexistence along with peace and friendship"