I look forward to the day when I wont have to face the arduous task of pressing the camera button when I want to switch to camera mode.
And I am sure I won't look like an idiot twisting and shaking my phone back and forth, trying to get the damn camera on (like with iPhone switching portrait/lansdcape mode) because the feature will work flawlessly every time.
Sorry, I tend to be in a sarcastic mood early in the morning. Yes, I know it's 1pm.
That's a tempting view to take but wrong in my opinion. First of all, tariffs work both ways. Some US industries are not the cleanest ones out there either, plus there is such a thing as retaliatory tariffs as well. But regardless of that, it would dangerously undermine any notion of free trade by providing a convenient excuse for any country to penalize foreign imports as it wishes. If you want to set environmental standards for other countries, the best way is to do it through international agreements, and US could possibly take a leading role on that front instead of dragging its feet like it has been doing under Bush administration.
Tax the crap outta sweatshopper companies: Nike, Dell... reward companies that keep jobs here!
That's a very short sighted view. Jobs are going to go where the labor rates are lower anyway. By penalizing US companies who take advantage of this fact you are simply rewarding their foreign competitors. You think Nike would be the world leader in sports equipment and Dell in computers if they had to manufacture all their products in the US? They would be easily out competed by foreign companies who do their manufacturing in China and who face no such obstacles from their own governments
Ah, you mean the bus tour. I see.... well, that truly is a media spectacle worthy of the name. For those millions of you glued to your screens waiting for the latest news, yet unable to see the current location due to slashdoting within seconds of posting the article, here is the most recent update: The Bus has left Belgrade. Coming soon: arriving in some other city later on today. Fucking morons.
You mean they are trying to court the same media companies whose content is being shared through Pirate Bay and who are behind the efforts to shut it down in the first place? Nice to see they have good weed in Sweden. If the trial does become a media spectacle (though I haven't seen it even mentioned in any mainstream news outlets in the US, maybe it's different in Europe) I doubt it will be the kind of coverage that is sympathetic to TPB.
For most people it isn't about free as in beer, but rather, as Richard Stallman might say free as in freedom
I think slashdot can serve as a good example of how complete and obvious bullshit can be earnestly believed and endlessly repeated with total conviction by thousands of otherwise intelligent people. Please spare a second to think about whether what you just said is really true or are you just automatically repeating something you hear so many times here. Majority of people go to pirate bay in order to download free stuff that otherwise they would have to pay for. Simple as that. Nothing to do with freedom. If you want to get worked up about freedom there are plenty of issues for you that are far more important than some restrictions on DVDs.
If I purchase a movie then I expect........
You can expect anything you like, including but not limited to a free vacation on the international space station and an erotic massage from Natalie Portman but that doesn't mean you have any right to. There is a difference between desires and rights. Movie studios (to take one example) make a movie, hence they set the rules for how that movie will be sold. You are free not to buy if you don't like those rules.
The only reason we have crap such as "license agreement" is because of lawyers and lawsuits and consumers who are too meek to grow a pair, stand up, and demand their property rights.
Not exactly clear on what you mean by property rights here. On one hand you say you want the "rights" to share the movie with your friends, on the other hand you acknowledge that public distribution is not included in those rights. Well the issue here (as in with regards to the pirate bay trial that we are talking about) is in fact public distribution. I don't think movie industry really has a problem with you sharing it with a handful of friends, it's more of a technical problem of how to allow you to share it with your friends but not with the rest of the world. The problem with that, which is almost too obvious to even have to spell out and yet so many people don't seem to get it, is that if you have the right to freely share your movie with everybody in the world through a widely available, simple to use and quick download it would mean that only one copy of the movie will ever be sold, which means than no movies can be made with any expectation of profit, which means that almost no movies will be made anymore.
German Armed Forces. It's a reasonably well known term even in the English speaking world not to mention that it only takes a second to google it and it can be inferred fairly easily from the summary as well. Now, linking to an article in German without any kind of English translation, that is pretty dumb
What part of Sovereignty do you not understand? First, as being a sovereign nation, the US as well as any other sovereign country is able to act independent of other nations. You right that we are bound by international treaties insomuch as they have been ratified and made into law. But as a right of sovereignty, any sovereign nation can change it's laws at will.
I don't remember US pulling out of the UN? Sure it could, but it didn't and while it doesn't it is bound by the UN charter like any other member. Presumably its continuing membership means that it is benefiting from it somehow, otherwise it would have pulled out? You can't have it both ways, belonging to an organization but ignoring the rules which are a condition for the membership in the first place.
But more to the point, the First gulf war was never ended. The armistice was an agreement upon conditions that Iraq failed to uphold. When you fail at your obligations, then the conditions behind them disappear too. These conditions were the cease fire that stopped the fighting from the first gulf war.
And Germany invaded Poland because some German border guards were shot at by the Poles, right? Now you are just being an apologist for the Bush administration. They can't say we wanted to take over Iraq for a long time for various strategic reasons and 9/11 gave us the public support we needed, so they have to say something. If you think the reason we invaded Iraq is that weapons inspectors had some difficulties monitoring it's non-existent WMD program then you are living in a funny world.
However, that is all pointless too. A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself. Bush's proactive defense strategy was an exercise of that right. No other nation can stop that while the country is sovereign. Other nations can take up arms or appose it but that's the extent.
Sorry, I had to laugh at "the proactive defense strategy". Self defense has its limits. According to your line of thought the ultimate act of self-defense would be to nuke every other country preemptively so nobody could ever threaten us. I hope you don't really believe that Iraq was some kind of a realistic threat to the US? Might is right might be the reality in the world but you are arguing that this is a good thing.
This is why the US is not a member of the international criminal court (ICC) and your own link to the UN specifically says that UN Charter required the UN security council to rule on a war being illegal before it is. That has not happened and probably won't happen because the US and UK have Veto powers in the security council....To date, no official body with the Authority, internationally or domestic, to rule on the legality or the war has ruled it illegal.
True but not really saying much. If ICC had pronounced the invasion of Iraq illegal, or if there was a UN council resolution to that effect then this wouldn't be an issue worth discussing at all. The fact that they didn't though has more to do with the US power than with any legal issues. If a criminal is so powerful that he has a veto power over his own indictment then he is not a criminal, right? Something can be illegal (as in prohibited by law) even if no court ever makes a ruling on it.
As a sovereign nation, The US doesn't need permission to act on anything. To date, all claims of illegality rely on some hidden idea that we have no sovereignty. Perhaps you could explain why we aren't in control of our own country and aren't sovereign or finally shut the hell up about the illegal bullshit.
The explanation you're asking for is that the US is bound by the international treaties which it signs, and they become part of the US law. If the US did violate the UN Charter by invading Iraq, and lets face it it's obvious that it did, then this is in fact an illegal act by the US law and by the international law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War Even Richard Perle has conceded that the invasion was illegal: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/20/1069027255087.html
I think you got your Iraqs and Afghanistans mixed up. Iraqi women are worse off since the invasion and subsequent rise of religious fundamentalist's power than they were under Sadam's secular regime: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7282064.stm
I don't play video games and my reaction is the same: "kill Jack!" I do like to play chess though. And I like to eat potato chips as well. Still can't decide if it's playing chess or eating potato chips that causes me to have that reaction? Hmmm, something to think about (if you are or should be in a mental institution).
But who says that people who couldn't handle the simple system mentioned above would actually wait for the card to come out? They would probably just leave the card in the machine. Would that count as a bug with the voting machine too?
I guess this is a question of whether it is possible to have a "perfect" user interface such that 100% of people who use it will get it right. Given the number of nincompoops out there, that is a pretty difficult problem. What is the percentage of mistakes with paper ballots? I bet there are 2% who manage to screw that up too.
I looked at the demo of the voting machine user interface and it seems perfectly sensible. You put your voting card in and press the number of the candidate you are voting for. A message comes up with large friendly letters telling you something like "This is the candidate you are voting for: <candidate details>. Press OK to cast your vote. [OK] [CANCEL] Apparently, at this point 2% of the voters simply pulled their card out of the machine and walked out of the booth without pressing OK. If they didn't have the confirmation screen, then the same people would press the wrong number and vote for the wrong candidate, and then complain that they weren't given a chance to correct it.
kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books
Hmm, that's a strange way to put it. Yes that statement is probably true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that if you pack any kid's house with books they would do better at school tests. I think it's more likely that parents who tend to read a lot, and therefore happen to have a lot of books in their house, also tend to place higher value on learning and knowledge in general and then pass on that inclination to their kids. It would be more useful to say that kids whose parents read a lot tend to do better on school tests than those whose parents read less.
In this situation either you are actually drunk while driving, in which case you are a complete jerk and deserve to be locked up, or you are not drunk, in which case you'd save yourself a lot of unnecessary hassle if you just take the test. So your advice is only useful to the guilty trying to evade justice. Therefore, you are a TERRORIST!
Seriously though, I'm sure there is a small probability of a breathalyzer malfunction but that applies to everything else in the world, and there is a way of dealing with that if it happens (as in this case, challenging the evidence and perhaps getting it dismissed in court, requesting a blood test etc) In any case if that is your concern, how do you explain refusing to take the blood test etc. Also, the whole thing about police trying to "bust as many as possible" doesn't make sense, unless you mean to actually catch as many drunk drivers as possible? Isn't that a good thing? Or do you mean the cops somehow rig breathalyzers to show alcohol levels that aren't there?
The chances of being on a plane blown up by a terrorist are so minuscule that to willingly submit to a demeaning treatment and long waits in order to have "peace of mind" seems irrational.
As we saw in India terrorists can just as easily walk into a train station or a hotel and open fire on everyone in sight, so would you like every public place to install metal detectors and strip searches for even more peace of mind? Whatever you do there is some risk involved. I suggest you learn to live with it instead of supporting making everybody life gradually more and more miserable until perfect safety is achieved, which of course will never happen.
Possibly the idea is that receiving mandatory training about scientology (as opposed to being required to practice it) is ok. After all the founder says the company is based on the principles of that "religion". Maybe like a kosher restaurant requiring employees (even if non-jewish) to take lessons on that aspect of jewish religion as it is necessary for their job. Not sure if that's the case here, but if so perhaps it's not so cut and dried.
For us non-laywers and not interested enough to spend time looking up those court cases but interested enough to understand what the significance of this is, can someone please translate the summary into plain English?
As someone who did exactly what you are trying to do I can tell you that while the arrangement was ok for me, it wasn't that great for my employer. What happened was that I decided to quit my job as a developer because I was starting a business (not IT related) and wanted to devote more time to it. Since we were in the middle of a pretty major project, my boss tried to persuade me to stay and after a bit of wrangling we settled on a 3 day week, Mon to Wed.
The problem is, on most IT projects you don't work by yourself. And other people on the team are still there when you are not and face a choice of either calling you on your days off (in which case you might as well work full-time) or assigning your tasks to other people and working around the fact that you're not there (in which case your role will be increasingly marginalized to the point where you might as well not be there at all). It's not just a matter of scheduling. Unexpected things pop out all the time and since we were working on a deadline it was a major annoyance for people to postpone say a conference call where I was needed by 5 days (say Thursday to Monday) etc.
I guess it depends on the circumstances, but generally I would ask a question what's in it for the employer? If you are absolutely essential to them and there is no other way they can keep you then great, but in most cases they might as well hire a full time person instead.
More interesting question would be the effect of Christmas songs on humans. More specifically, whether the endless playing of them in every store starting from at least a month before Christmas causes people to buy more crap. You'd think it would cause the stores must have researched that kind of stuff, but then every person I know regards them as an annoyance. Personally, I would go out of my way to shop at a store that doesn't play them if I could only find one.
Slashdot Mirror
I look forward to the day when I wont have to face the arduous task of pressing the camera button when I want to switch to camera mode. And I am sure I won't look like an idiot twisting and shaking my phone back and forth, trying to get the damn camera on (like with iPhone switching portrait/lansdcape mode) because the feature will work flawlessly every time. Sorry, I tend to be in a sarcastic mood early in the morning. Yes, I know it's 1pm.
Mmmm, tartar pits..... picks up a fried fish finger
from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck
For those of you who prefer more conventional measurement units, that's between 0.35 and 2.5 volkswagens.
That's a tempting view to take but wrong in my opinion. First of all, tariffs work both ways. Some US industries are not the cleanest ones out there either, plus there is such a thing as retaliatory tariffs as well. But regardless of that, it would dangerously undermine any notion of free trade by providing a convenient excuse for any country to penalize foreign imports as it wishes. If you want to set environmental standards for other countries, the best way is to do it through international agreements, and US could possibly take a leading role on that front instead of dragging its feet like it has been doing under Bush administration.
Tax the crap outta sweatshopper companies: Nike, Dell... reward companies that keep jobs here!
That's a very short sighted view. Jobs are going to go where the labor rates are lower anyway. By penalizing US companies who take advantage of this fact you are simply rewarding their foreign competitors. You think Nike would be the world leader in sports equipment and Dell in computers if they had to manufacture all their products in the US? They would be easily out competed by foreign companies who do their manufacturing in China and who face no such obstacles from their own governments
Ah, you mean the bus tour. I see.... well, that truly is a media spectacle worthy of the name. For those millions of you glued to your screens waiting for the latest news, yet unable to see the current location due to slashdoting within seconds of posting the article, here is the most recent update: The Bus has left Belgrade. Coming soon: arriving in some other city later on today. Fucking morons.
You mean they are trying to court the same media companies whose content is being shared through Pirate Bay and who are behind the efforts to shut it down in the first place? Nice to see they have good weed in Sweden. If the trial does become a media spectacle (though I haven't seen it even mentioned in any mainstream news outlets in the US, maybe it's different in Europe) I doubt it will be the kind of coverage that is sympathetic to TPB.
When a law does more harm than good it needs to be abolished.
Great idea. Now all that's left is for you to provide convincing evidence that copyright does more harm than good and we'll be all set.
For most people it isn't about free as in beer, but rather, as Richard Stallman might say free as in freedom
........
I think slashdot can serve as a good example of how complete and obvious bullshit can be earnestly believed and endlessly repeated with total conviction by thousands of otherwise intelligent people. Please spare a second to think about whether what you just said is really true or are you just automatically repeating something you hear so many times here. Majority of people go to pirate bay in order to download free stuff that otherwise they would have to pay for. Simple as that. Nothing to do with freedom. If you want to get worked up about freedom there are plenty of issues for you that are far more important than some restrictions on DVDs.
If I purchase a movie then I expect
You can expect anything you like, including but not limited to a free vacation on the international space station and an erotic massage from Natalie Portman but that doesn't mean you have any right to. There is a difference between desires and rights. Movie studios (to take one example) make a movie, hence they set the rules for how that movie will be sold. You are free not to buy if you don't like those rules.
The only reason we have crap such as "license agreement" is because of lawyers and lawsuits and consumers who are too meek to grow a pair, stand up, and demand their property rights.
Not exactly clear on what you mean by property rights here. On one hand you say you want the "rights" to share the movie with your friends, on the other hand you acknowledge that public distribution is not included in those rights. Well the issue here (as in with regards to the pirate bay trial that we are talking about) is in fact public distribution. I don't think movie industry really has a problem with you sharing it with a handful of friends, it's more of a technical problem of how to allow you to share it with your friends but not with the rest of the world. The problem with that, which is almost too obvious to even have to spell out and yet so many people don't seem to get it, is that if you have the right to freely share your movie with everybody in the world through a widely available, simple to use and quick download it would mean that only one copy of the movie will ever be sold, which means than no movies can be made with any expectation of profit, which means that almost no movies will be made anymore.
German Armed Forces. It's a reasonably well known term even in the English speaking world not to mention that it only takes a second to google it and it can be inferred fairly easily from the summary as well. Now, linking to an article in German without any kind of English translation, that is pretty dumb
What part of Sovereignty do you not understand? First, as being a sovereign nation, the US as well as any other sovereign country is able to act independent of other nations. You right that we are bound by international treaties insomuch as they have been ratified and made into law. But as a right of sovereignty, any sovereign nation can change it's laws at will.
I don't remember US pulling out of the UN? Sure it could, but it didn't and while it doesn't it is bound by the UN charter like any other member. Presumably its continuing membership means that it is benefiting from it somehow, otherwise it would have pulled out? You can't have it both ways, belonging to an organization but ignoring the rules which are a condition for the membership in the first place.
But more to the point, the First gulf war was never ended. The armistice was an agreement upon conditions that Iraq failed to uphold. When you fail at your obligations, then the conditions behind them disappear too. These conditions were the cease fire that stopped the fighting from the first gulf war.
And Germany invaded Poland because some German border guards were shot at by the Poles, right? Now you are just being an apologist for the Bush administration. They can't say we wanted to take over Iraq for a long time for various strategic reasons and 9/11 gave us the public support we needed, so they have to say something. If you think the reason we invaded Iraq is that weapons inspectors had some difficulties monitoring it's non-existent WMD program then you are living in a funny world.
However, that is all pointless too. A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself. Bush's proactive defense strategy was an exercise of that right. No other nation can stop that while the country is sovereign. Other nations can take up arms or appose it but that's the extent.
Sorry, I had to laugh at "the proactive defense strategy". Self defense has its limits. According to your line of thought the ultimate act of self-defense would be to nuke every other country preemptively so nobody could ever threaten us. I hope you don't really believe that Iraq was some kind of a realistic threat to the US? Might is right might be the reality in the world but you are arguing that this is a good thing.
This is why the US is not a member of the international criminal court (ICC) and your own link to the UN specifically says that UN Charter required the UN security council to rule on a war being illegal before it is. That has not happened and probably won't happen because the US and UK have Veto powers in the security council....To date, no official body with the Authority, internationally or domestic, to rule on the legality or the war has ruled it illegal.
True but not really saying much. If ICC had pronounced the invasion of Iraq illegal, or if there was a UN council resolution to that effect then this wouldn't be an issue worth discussing at all. The fact that they didn't though has more to do with the US power than with any legal issues. If a criminal is so powerful that he has a veto power over his own indictment then he is not a criminal, right? Something can be illegal (as in prohibited by law) even if no court ever makes a ruling on it.
As a sovereign nation, The US doesn't need permission to act on anything. To date, all claims of illegality rely on some hidden idea that we have no sovereignty. Perhaps you could explain why we aren't in control of our own country and aren't sovereign or finally shut the hell up about the illegal bullshit.
The explanation you're asking for is that the US is bound by the international treaties which it signs, and they become part of the US law. If the US did violate the UN Charter by invading Iraq, and lets face it it's obvious that it did, then this is in fact an illegal act by the US law and by the international law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War Even Richard Perle has conceded that the invasion was illegal: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/20/1069027255087.html
I think you got your Iraqs and Afghanistans mixed up. Iraqi women are worse off since the invasion and subsequent rise of religious fundamentalist's power than they were under Sadam's secular regime: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7282064.stm
I don't play video games and my reaction is the same: "kill Jack!" I do like to play chess though. And I like to eat potato chips as well. Still can't decide if it's playing chess or eating potato chips that causes me to have that reaction? Hmmm, something to think about (if you are or should be in a mental institution).
But who says that people who couldn't handle the simple system mentioned above would actually wait for the card to come out? They would probably just leave the card in the machine. Would that count as a bug with the voting machine too?
I guess this is a question of whether it is possible to have a "perfect" user interface such that 100% of people who use it will get it right. Given the number of nincompoops out there, that is a pretty difficult problem. What is the percentage of mistakes with paper ballots? I bet there are 2% who manage to screw that up too.
I looked at the demo of the voting machine user interface and it seems perfectly sensible. You put your voting card in and press the number of the candidate you are voting for. A message comes up with large friendly letters telling you something like "This is the candidate you are voting for: <candidate details>. Press OK to cast your vote. [OK] [CANCEL] Apparently, at this point 2% of the voters simply pulled their card out of the machine and walked out of the booth without pressing OK. If they didn't have the confirmation screen, then the same people would press the wrong number and vote for the wrong candidate, and then complain that they weren't given a chance to correct it.
kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books
Hmm, that's a strange way to put it. Yes that statement is probably true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that if you pack any kid's house with books they would do better at school tests. I think it's more likely that parents who tend to read a lot, and therefore happen to have a lot of books in their house, also tend to place higher value on learning and knowledge in general and then pass on that inclination to their kids. It would be more useful to say that kids whose parents read a lot tend to do better on school tests than those whose parents read less.
Subscribe and you'll see them all the time
In this situation either you are actually drunk while driving, in which case you are a complete jerk and deserve to be locked up, or you are not drunk, in which case you'd save yourself a lot of unnecessary hassle if you just take the test. So your advice is only useful to the guilty trying to evade justice. Therefore, you are a TERRORIST!
Seriously though, I'm sure there is a small probability of a breathalyzer malfunction but that applies to everything else in the world, and there is a way of dealing with that if it happens (as in this case, challenging the evidence and perhaps getting it dismissed in court, requesting a blood test etc) In any case if that is your concern, how do you explain refusing to take the blood test etc. Also, the whole thing about police trying to "bust as many as possible" doesn't make sense, unless you mean to actually catch as many drunk drivers as possible? Isn't that a good thing? Or do you mean the cops somehow rig breathalyzers to show alcohol levels that aren't there?
The chances of being on a plane blown up by a terrorist are so minuscule that to willingly submit to a demeaning treatment and long waits in order to have "peace of mind" seems irrational.
As we saw in India terrorists can just as easily walk into a train station or a hotel and open fire on everyone in sight, so would you like every public place to install metal detectors and strip searches for even more peace of mind? Whatever you do there is some risk involved. I suggest you learn to live with it instead of supporting making everybody life gradually more and more miserable until perfect safety is achieved, which of course will never happen.
Possibly the idea is that receiving mandatory training about scientology (as opposed to being required to practice it) is ok. After all the founder says the company is based on the principles of that "religion". Maybe like a kosher restaurant requiring employees (even if non-jewish) to take lessons on that aspect of jewish religion as it is necessary for their job. Not sure if that's the case here, but if so perhaps it's not so cut and dried.
Give the man a break. You think any live chicks would let him feel them at that age...
For us non-laywers and not interested enough to spend time looking up those court cases but interested enough to understand what the significance of this is, can someone please translate the summary into plain English?
As someone who did exactly what you are trying to do I can tell you that while the arrangement was ok for me, it wasn't that great for my employer. What happened was that I decided to quit my job as a developer because I was starting a business (not IT related) and wanted to devote more time to it. Since we were in the middle of a pretty major project, my boss tried to persuade me to stay and after a bit of wrangling we settled on a 3 day week, Mon to Wed.
The problem is, on most IT projects you don't work by yourself. And other people on the team are still there when you are not and face a choice of either calling you on your days off (in which case you might as well work full-time) or assigning your tasks to other people and working around the fact that you're not there (in which case your role will be increasingly marginalized to the point where you might as well not be there at all). It's not just a matter of scheduling. Unexpected things pop out all the time and since we were working on a deadline it was a major annoyance for people to postpone say a conference call where I was needed by 5 days (say Thursday to Monday) etc.
I guess it depends on the circumstances, but generally I would ask a question what's in it for the employer? If you are absolutely essential to them and there is no other way they can keep you then great, but in most cases they might as well hire a full time person instead.
More interesting question would be the effect of Christmas songs on humans. More specifically, whether the endless playing of them in every store starting from at least a month before Christmas causes people to buy more crap. You'd think it would cause the stores must have researched that kind of stuff, but then every person I know regards them as an annoyance. Personally, I would go out of my way to shop at a store that doesn't play them if I could only find one.