If the computer comes with what is suggested to be a 9200 card, and is in fact a 9000; BUT the computer it comes with can't use the extra features of the 9200, then all you say is true. Except that someone could take the card out of the computer it came with, and then the presence or lack of the feature (AGP 8x) might become relevant.
Of course, they're using a specific part of the computer in a way that the manufacturer didn't promote or agree to, which would probably cover them fairly well.
The OP made an interesting point--this IS still a very first generation device. The first generation of bikes were more trouble than they were worth.
That said, I agree. The Segway is a solution in search of a problem that's already been solved in better ways--for most people. Still, unlike "new" speakers, a "new" camera, or most other daily "new" shite from companies, the Segway is at least fairly original.
This is silly, and the AC is actually not too far from the truth.
By rejecting the so-called "pay-for-copy scheme," you're denying the musician to make any money off of his recordings. Real recording (not basement stuff, which will never approach studio quality) is still expensive, and resource-intensive. If a musician can't at least recoup his or her costs on it in direct sales, then they won't have any incentive or ability (i.e. money) to make those recordings.
Now even if they could make them for free, or had the finances to be able to call it part of an advertising budget, there's another problem with free downloads: It doesn't give any value to the art itself.
Free music downloads amounts to exactly the same thing as a painter being forced to sell every work he does at materials cost alone. You could go out and buy a Picasso, a Dali, or a 'local craft sale artist' painting for the same price of rougly $50. You can argue that it's an original instead of a infinitely copyable item, but that makes no difference--the value is in the art, and by not paying for the art, you're convincing the artists to quit producing.
That's illegal in Canada. The companies can offer promotions, but they can't refuse to sell you one type of service unbundled from another one. Here the broadband is either through Telus (phone) or Shaw (cable), and you need neither cable TV or a land line to get the internet service.
Hmm. I think that if you look at the laws, you'll still find that the money is a specific-amount collateral for the chips. I'm pretty sure that they remain the property of the casino, even after handing them over to you.
There's also the question of intent. Even if the chips are purchased outright, it's with the intent of using them on the premises, and then selling them back at face value. Not so with razor blades.
Hmm. Let me go after these points in no particular order.
Being tiny and/or not understanding english are certainly not excuses for breaking the law. However, it sounds like the RIAA was targetting people who would (a) be intimidated by their implied show of force, and/or (b) not properly understand that these four guys insisting on 'voluntarily' taking the goods in question weren't police, and had no authority.
In short, bullying tactics. It wouldn't surprise me if they even played good cop/bad cop with the vendors.
It's the "proceed in a legal manner" that they're skirting. They have no more right to ask the vendors for the material than I do, but they're implicitly suggesting otherwise. That gets to be VERY close to extortion or protection money schemes.
OK, they're using RFID tags in their own property to at the very worst, track your behaviour while on their property.
They're NOT putting these in items you buy, they're NOT using them to track you out the door, and they DO have a very real need to prevent counterfeits. There's increased security for them, and no invasion of privacy for their customers.
Where's the problem here? Geez, between this and the "forged colour mars photos," it MUST be a slow news day.
Oh, wait--both of these were posted by Michael. Interesting...
I agree with their choice in targets. I disagree, and take great issue with their tactics. Implied threats, intimidation, misdirection, and coercion are not legally (or morally) acceptable ways of obtaining material 'voluntarily.'
If they would get a court order, or got the cops to act legally, then this wouldn't be bad. Four thugs dressed in 'almost cop' uniforms approaching a tiny guy who may or not understand english well, is unacceptable.
Grasshopper? Not likely! I'm finding that along with most of my fellow "children of the 60s" I'm starting to creak and turn grey.
My two points however, were that (a) taking money out of THIS program to fund THAT program is a fallacy, and (b) doesn't work. I am, in fact, a scientist and a humanitarian social democrat, and my heard bleeds for those people who need (and get, I might add) my help to survive. Th problem is that at the extreme, eliminating NASA from the US budget entirely wouldn't appreciably help the poor. As a planet, we're producing enough to feed and clothe everyone. The US as a microcosm, is fully capable of feeding, sheltering, and caring for it entire population; AND at the same time, capable of funding research and science to unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that either.
Current pop culture? Man, even when I was young enough to pay attention to current pop culture, I wasn't. (Although I've always had a fondness for ELO:-)
As I said before, I was (OK, still am) simply too drunk to have remembered it.
Agreed. Of course the other question is, if you don't allow something like stupidly large charitable donations to reduce the taxes of the hyper-rich to nothing, then where do the worthy non-profits find their funding? If the rich actually started getting taxed instead of rewarded, you can bet that none of that money (or close to none at any rate) would go back into the Coffers Of The Noble.
It's a tough question. The current answer is wrong, but finding the right one is hard to manage.
First of all, nice rhyme. Don't know if it's original or not, but well done.
The same argument was made in 67, when they started to pour tons of money into the first moon landing, and continued for ages. There was a comic in Mad Magazine, from roughly 1972.
Q "How come the guvmint can put people on the moon, but they can't feed us poor people?"
A "Who wants poor people on the moon?"
The same argument goes towards any and all basic scientific research, and budgets for groups like NASA and the NSF get attacked regularly, because there's always somewhere else more dire to spend the money. Unfortunately, throwing more money at medical care won't fix the problems there, and will take away from potentially incredible discoveries. True. you need money--LOTS of money--to make (for example) health care work, but the money is already there. It's reform that's needed, not more cash into the same system.
As for the statement about the US deficits, it's very true--and (again) stopping the space program won't help in the slightest. The US is in a stage of horrible mismanagement, rampant unchecked capitalism, and money(for the people) or power(for the government)-lust. I'm starting to think that within my lifetime, I'll see the first capitalist country to burn itself up, and make no mistake--it will be the US.
And killing off the space program won't change a thing.
Hmm. I've been back to the 'States a few times in the last few years, and I'm no longer convinced that Fox News is any worse than the rest. Certainly, CNN isn't any better anymore.
"Global cooling" was and still is the eventual result of a nuclear holocaust. Leonard Nimoy was talking about nuclear winter.
As for the 0.8 degrees, consider this: A global change of roughly +4 degrees is enough move the California coastline back by several kilometres. It doesn't take much of a change. The nice thing about seeing a hundred years of precise data is that you can actually measure whether it's a fluctuation or a middling-slow but real trend.
There's the possibility, as you suggest, that there are longer term trends at play here. However: the longer the trend, the bigger the overall effect, and we have a pretty good idea about the very large and slow trends. (ice ages, for example).
As a 'skeptical scientist,' do you have ANY training whatsoever in chemistry, biology, meteorology, planetary and climate studies, or anything even remotely relevant to the argument?
Global warming is a fact. The causes are less than certain, but far more than conjecture and certainly more than a "gigantic steaming bowl of crappola."
Go back to school little boy, and actually LEARN the science that you're so casually tossing into disrepute. Then come back and argue facts.
Hmm. Now how do I start to cut down an Anonymous Coward who rebuts my post with careful, thoughtful, well-reasoned response?
(No, I'm not being facetious here)
You bring up some very valid points. Let me first make it clear that not only am I not a Republican operative, I'm not an American at all. I am however, someone who has been watching the political world closely for the last 20 years, and can easily say that Bush is the most frightening leader any western-bloc country has seen in that time. Believe me that I don't make comparisons to Hitler/Nazis lightly at all, and have told many people for many years to get a grip when they make such crazed statements (Bush sr., Reagan, Thatcher, the IRA, etc.)
But the current US government is behaving almost EXACTLY like Hitler and the Nazis did in the beginning of their reign, and they've made their goals perfectly clear: to have no government in the world--PARTICULARLY in the Middle East--able to resist them whatsoever, and to absolutely police/control the flow of politics and economics over the world, at any cost. This isn't conspiracy theorist stuff or wild alarmist rhetoric--it's the stated goals of the thinktank that Rumsfeld, Cheney, et. al. formed several years before getting Bush jr. prepped for leadership.
I will say again that I don't normally make any comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, but Bush (and more importantly, his backers) scare me like nobody else in post-WWII history.
Let's not forget some crucial facts here: The US has killed between two and three times as many civilians in Iraq since the invasion than were murdered in the bombing of the World Trade Center. This invasion WAS to rout and replace one of the most evil dictators in the world (Saddam Hussein), but was NOT at all related to the attack on Al-Quaeda (Bin Laden once issued a fatwa urging his followers to kill Hussein, for dealing with the Americans), nor was it to put a free and fair self-government in his place. Let's also not forget that the previous Bush government (with Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. behind the scenes once again) was the superpower that illegally funded and supplied Hussein.
The United States has a government with absolutely no moral restraint, and if re-elected (or able to sieze power convincingly), WILL be a force more terrifying than that group from WWII.
Funny thing about those countries where they cut off your finger. They only cut off the fingers of the criminals.
This measure (a) will do nothing to stop terrorism or crime, (b) will give the government inappropriate powers to track foreigners, and (c) is the thin edge of the wedge that will lead to mandatory fingerprinting of ALL foreign nationals (and non-native-born citizens) as well as mandatory ID cards, which must be carried at all times. Just like Hitler did with the gays and jews.
OK this might upset some people, but that's too bad.
As a Very Large Company(tm), we outsourced our help desk a few years back. It was a painful running joke in the office that if you wanted to do no work done, you'd "phone India" with a problem.
The joke stopped justover half a year ago. Our India helpdesk is incredibly efficient at fixing problems, the staff are polite, and there's no bad attitude. I don't care how much money the company has saved--they have improved the quality of their internal support, and that's something pretty damned valuable.
So before everyone whines about 'cheap but crappy outsourcing,' make sure that it really is crappy. I'd wager that for all but the most highly skilled jobs, the overseas work is as good as anything locally.
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Hmm. One thorny point, though.
If the computer comes with what is suggested to be a 9200 card, and is in fact a 9000; BUT the computer it comes with can't use the extra features of the 9200, then all you say is true. Except that someone could take the card out of the computer it came with, and then the presence or lack of the feature (AGP 8x) might become relevant.
Of course, they're using a specific part of the computer in a way that the manufacturer didn't promote or agree to, which would probably cover them fairly well.
The OP made an interesting point--this IS still a very first generation device. The first generation of bikes were more trouble than they were worth.
That said, I agree. The Segway is a solution in search of a problem that's already been solved in better ways--for most people. Still, unlike "new" speakers, a "new" camera, or most other daily "new" shite from companies, the Segway is at least fairly original.
There *IS* a middle ground, that you overstepped.
If the product is switched, and provides nothing more OR less than the advertised product, then they're perfectly within their rights.
Now the question comes when you take away a feature that can't be used in the product anyways (i.e. 8x AGP).
This is silly, and the AC is actually not too far from the truth.
By rejecting the so-called "pay-for-copy scheme," you're denying the musician to make any money off of his recordings. Real recording (not basement stuff, which will never approach studio quality) is still expensive, and resource-intensive. If a musician can't at least recoup his or her costs on it in direct sales, then they won't have any incentive or ability (i.e. money) to make those recordings.
Now even if they could make them for free, or had the finances to be able to call it part of an advertising budget, there's another problem with free downloads: It doesn't give any value to the art itself.
Free music downloads amounts to exactly the same thing as a painter being forced to sell every work he does at materials cost alone. You could go out and buy a Picasso, a Dali, or a 'local craft sale artist' painting for the same price of rougly $50. You can argue that it's an original instead of a infinitely copyable item, but that makes no difference--the value is in the art, and by not paying for the art, you're convincing the artists to quit producing.
That's illegal in Canada. The companies can offer promotions, but they can't refuse to sell you one type of service unbundled from another one. Here the broadband is either through Telus (phone) or Shaw (cable), and you need neither cable TV or a land line to get the internet service.
Hmm. I think that if you look at the laws, you'll still find that the money is a specific-amount collateral for the chips. I'm pretty sure that they remain the property of the casino, even after handing them over to you.
There's also the question of intent. Even if the chips are purchased outright, it's with the intent of using them on the premises, and then selling them back at face value. Not so with razor blades.
Hmm. Let me go after these points in no particular order.
Being tiny and/or not understanding english are certainly not excuses for breaking the law. However, it sounds like the RIAA was targetting people who would (a) be intimidated by their implied show of force, and/or (b) not properly understand that these four guys insisting on 'voluntarily' taking the goods in question weren't police, and had no authority.
In short, bullying tactics. It wouldn't surprise me if they even played good cop/bad cop with the vendors.
It's the "proceed in a legal manner" that they're skirting. They have no more right to ask the vendors for the material than I do, but they're implicitly suggesting otherwise. That gets to be VERY close to extortion or protection money schemes.
OK, they're using RFID tags in their own property to at the very worst, track your behaviour while on their property.
They're NOT putting these in items you buy, they're NOT using them to track you out the door, and they DO have a very real need to prevent counterfeits. There's increased security for them, and no invasion of privacy for their customers.
Where's the problem here? Geez, between this and the "forged colour mars photos," it MUST be a slow news day.
Oh, wait--both of these were posted by Michael. Interesting...
Heh. Not confusing them, but in this case they happen to coincide. Stranger things have happened, after all.
I agree with their choice in targets. I disagree, and take great issue with their tactics. Implied threats, intimidation, misdirection, and coercion are not legally (or morally) acceptable ways of obtaining material 'voluntarily.'
If they would get a court order, or got the cops to act legally, then this wouldn't be bad. Four thugs dressed in 'almost cop' uniforms approaching a tiny guy who may or not understand english well, is unacceptable.
Grasshopper? Not likely! I'm finding that along with most of my fellow "children of the 60s" I'm starting to creak and turn grey.
My two points however, were that (a) taking money out of THIS program to fund THAT program is a fallacy, and (b) doesn't work. I am, in fact, a scientist and a humanitarian social democrat, and my heard bleeds for those people who need (and get, I might add) my help to survive. Th problem is that at the extreme, eliminating NASA from the US budget entirely wouldn't appreciably help the poor. As a planet, we're producing enough to feed and clothe everyone. The US as a microcosm, is fully capable of feeding, sheltering, and caring for it entire population; AND at the same time, capable of funding research and science to unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that either.
Current pop culture? Man, even when I was young enough to pay attention to current pop culture, I wasn't. (Although I've always had a fondness for ELO :-)
As I said before, I was (OK, still am) simply too drunk to have remembered it.
Agreed. Of course the other question is, if you don't allow something like stupidly large charitable donations to reduce the taxes of the hyper-rich to nothing, then where do the worthy non-profits find their funding? If the rich actually started getting taxed instead of rewarded, you can bet that none of that money (or close to none at any rate) would go back into the Coffers Of The Noble.
It's a tough question. The current answer is wrong, but finding the right one is hard to manage.
This one entices and scares me a bit.
If reelected, and if pushed to hold to this promise, Bush jr. could easily find the money for this--as a project of military force.
He's just about crazed enough to go to the moon, and declare it an American protectorate state.
Damn damn damn. I should have recognised that. Too drunk by half, I guess.
:-)
Thanks for the reproduction. I hope some others see it for the first time, even if I don't necessarily agree with it all.
Heh. S'ok, it just struck me as particularly ironic, and amusing.
Y'know...
First of all, nice rhyme. Don't know if it's original or not, but well done.
The same argument was made in 67, when they started to pour tons of money into the first moon landing, and continued for ages. There was a comic in Mad Magazine, from roughly 1972.
Q "How come the guvmint can put people on the moon, but they can't feed us poor people?"
A "Who wants poor people on the moon?"
The same argument goes towards any and all basic scientific research, and budgets for groups like NASA and the NSF get attacked regularly, because there's always somewhere else more dire to spend the money. Unfortunately, throwing more money at medical care won't fix the problems there, and will take away from potentially incredible discoveries. True. you need money--LOTS of money--to make (for example) health care work, but the money is already there. It's reform that's needed, not more cash into the same system.
As for the statement about the US deficits, it's very true--and (again) stopping the space program won't help in the slightest. The US is in a stage of horrible mismanagement, rampant unchecked capitalism, and money(for the people) or power(for the government)-lust. I'm starting to think that within my lifetime, I'll see the first capitalist country to burn itself up, and make no mistake--it will be the US.
And killing off the space program won't change a thing.
Hmm. I've been back to the 'States a few times in the last few years, and I'm no longer convinced that Fox News is any worse than the rest. Certainly, CNN isn't any better anymore.
Tragic but true. Sigh.
Ah, sorry. That was the media, not the scientists.
Ummmm...
"Global cooling" was and still is the eventual result of a nuclear holocaust. Leonard Nimoy was talking about nuclear winter.
As for the 0.8 degrees, consider this: A global change of roughly +4 degrees is enough move the California coastline back by several kilometres. It doesn't take much of a change. The nice thing about seeing a hundred years of precise data is that you can actually measure whether it's a fluctuation or a middling-slow but real trend.
There's the possibility, as you suggest, that there are longer term trends at play here. However: the longer the trend, the bigger the overall effect, and we have a pretty good idea about the very large and slow trends. (ice ages, for example).
Um...
As a 'skeptical scientist,' do you have ANY training whatsoever in chemistry, biology, meteorology, planetary and climate studies, or anything even remotely relevant to the argument?
Global warming is a fact. The causes are less than certain, but far more than conjecture and certainly more than a "gigantic steaming bowl of crappola."
Go back to school little boy, and actually LEARN the science that you're so casually tossing into disrepute. Then come back and argue facts.
I think it's interesting that the semantics of the word pirates is being argued by someone who has arbitrarily coined 'robinhood' as a noun.
Hmm. Now how do I start to cut down an Anonymous Coward who rebuts my post with careful, thoughtful, well-reasoned response?
(No, I'm not being facetious here)
You bring up some very valid points. Let me first make it clear that not only am I not a Republican operative, I'm not an American at all. I am however, someone who has been watching the political world closely for the last 20 years, and can easily say that Bush is the most frightening leader any western-bloc country has seen in that time. Believe me that I don't make comparisons to Hitler/Nazis lightly at all, and have told many people for many years to get a grip when they make such crazed statements (Bush sr., Reagan, Thatcher, the IRA, etc.)
But the current US government is behaving almost EXACTLY like Hitler and the Nazis did in the beginning of their reign, and they've made their goals perfectly clear: to have no government in the world--PARTICULARLY in the Middle East--able to resist them whatsoever, and to absolutely police/control the flow of politics and economics over the world, at any cost. This isn't conspiracy theorist stuff or wild alarmist rhetoric--it's the stated goals of the thinktank that Rumsfeld, Cheney, et. al. formed several years before getting Bush jr. prepped for leadership.
I will say again that I don't normally make any comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, but Bush (and more importantly, his backers) scare me like nobody else in post-WWII history.
Let's not forget some crucial facts here: The US has killed between two and three times as many civilians in Iraq since the invasion than were murdered in the bombing of the World Trade Center. This invasion WAS to rout and replace one of the most evil dictators in the world (Saddam Hussein), but was NOT at all related to the attack on Al-Quaeda (Bin Laden once issued a fatwa urging his followers to kill Hussein, for dealing with the Americans), nor was it to put a free and fair self-government in his place. Let's also not forget that the previous Bush government (with Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. behind the scenes once again) was the superpower that illegally funded and supplied Hussein.
The United States has a government with absolutely no moral restraint, and if re-elected (or able to sieze power convincingly), WILL be a force more terrifying than that group from WWII.
Funny thing about those countries where they cut off your finger. They only cut off the fingers of the criminals.
This measure (a) will do nothing to stop terrorism or crime, (b) will give the government inappropriate powers to track foreigners, and (c) is the thin edge of the wedge that will lead to mandatory fingerprinting of ALL foreign nationals (and non-native-born citizens) as well as mandatory ID cards, which must be carried at all times. Just like Hitler did with the gays and jews.
OK this might upset some people, but that's too bad.
As a Very Large Company(tm), we outsourced our help desk a few years back. It was a painful running joke in the office that if you wanted to do no work done, you'd "phone India" with a problem.
The joke stopped justover half a year ago. Our India helpdesk is incredibly efficient at fixing problems, the staff are polite, and there's no bad attitude. I don't care how much money the company has saved--they have improved the quality of their internal support, and that's something pretty damned valuable.
So before everyone whines about 'cheap but crappy outsourcing,' make sure that it really is crappy. I'd wager that for all but the most highly skilled jobs, the overseas work is as good as anything locally.