You know, I've never understood this one. If you have written a zero to every sector on the hard drive, including the hidden space, how in the world is it possible to recover any data at all?
Sales tax isn't a tax on businesses, not directly. It's a tax on consumers. What is at issue here is the perceived total price of an item. All other things being equal, when two different companies offer the same product, consumers will choose the one that is cheaper 100% of the time. If Amazon offers something that Tiger Direct offers for the same price, chances are Amazon will get the sale because Tiger Direct charges sales tax.
I am not saying I agree with Amazon, but from their perspective, they do not need to have a physical presence in Texas to sell to consumers in Texas. I highly doubt they put a distribution center in Texas solely because they thought they wouldn't have to charge sales tax. They likely built a distribution center in Texas because of a corporate tax incentive designed to lure business to Texas or perhaps because of Texas's longtime anti labor union practices.
This weekend my black labrador retriever snarfed two bags of M&M's off the kitchen counter while I was out raking leaves. He ingested roughly a pound and a half of chocolate. On the way to the vet hospital, I joked that if my dog lived through the chocolate poisoning, I was going to kill him. My wife understood this to be my way of dealing with the stress and that I really was worried about my dog and was in no way inclined to actually kill him. In other words, she got the joke.
If my wife got the joke, what is so hard about seeing the "joke" behind what this politician said? Or is it possible that my wife is smarter than the people that arrested this guy?
[sarcasm] that parents should take an interest in what their kids are watching because we all know that responsible parents are the last thing this world needs..... [/sarcasm]
I don't suppose the blog was accompanied by a short video of Asa Dotzler and Steve Balmer making Ducktales-like swan dives from a diving board into a swimming pool filled with cash?
"'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business."
Does this mean that Dell and HP should get out of the computer manufacturing business because they provide a device that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes? You might as well sue the oil companies because they provide the gasoline that powers the automobiles used in vehicular homicide.
Why am I suddenly curious about the annual revenue of iiNet? Something tells me that iiNet probably can't afford a protracted legal battle in the way that say... Dell or AT&T could.
The MAFIAA may change names and countries, but the bullshit is still the same.
If the judge has ruled that Mininova did not violate any laws, how does he have the legal foundation to order them to enforce a law that they have not broken?
My hackles go up anytime I hear or read things like this. I know people who have had bad experiences with a single piece of hardware from a specific manufacturer and never use that brand again. They tell people that the brand is "crap" or "worthless" based on a single piece of data, namely, the failure of a single device from that manufacturer.
As an example, I have a friend who purchased a Maxtor SATA hard drive several years back. It died on him less than 2 months after he got it. He threw it away and refused to purchase any more Maxtor hard drives. If he had sent the drive in for warranty replacement, and that one had failed in much the same way, I might put more stock in what he says.
I've had bad experiences with many brands of hardware. But I rarely have a consistent problem. A few years back, it was time to start replacing our company laptops. As we had a contract with Dell, I purchased several Latitude D620's and D630's. Over the course of the next year, all of the hard drives suffered the same type of hardware failure without exception. In most cases, nothing was lost. But as the other Admins can attest to, there are always one or two people who refuse to backup the work they do at home, and in those cases, quite a bit of information was lost.
Because Dell continued to use the same brand of hard drives in their laptops, this year, we switched to HP laptops. I didn't make the switch because of one isolated event. And I certainly don't tell people that Dell laptops are crap because of my experience. But as a Network Admin, my primary responsibility is the safety of the data that my company requires for operation. It would be derelict of me to continue purchasing a model of laptop with a proven track record of hard drive failure.
I personally use Western Digital hard drives. I have not had any "bad" or discouraging experiences with the hard drives I've bought over the years from WD. However, I have also not had any of those issues with the Maxtor or Seagate hard drives that I have had over the years. Maybe I am lucky. Who knows.
In reality, you can never assess the quality of a manufactured item based on one sample because there is no such thing as a perfect manufacturing process. And even if there was, there would still be human beings involved in the process at some point. Even robots are not perfect and mess things up from time to time.
Remember back a year or so, when the.alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
I've been an MMO gamer nearly 10 years. EQ, Asheron's Call, EQII, WOW, Eve Online, SWG, Navy Field, World War II Online, and even DDO(Dungeons and Dragons Online). Not to mention Warhammer Online, AOC, Lineage II, Guild Wars, LOTRO, and Vanguard.
My longest running MMO playtime is Eve online(5+ years) and Everquest(4+ years.) Until World of Warcraft, MMO's mostly catered to niche markets. EQ catered to the Dungeons and Dragons/fantasy game crowd. I remember a time when the maximum level in EQ was a 6 month endeavor or better. I really felt as though I achieved something. Then came World of Warcraft. A game that was an almost polar opposite. I once heard it described as "an arcade version of EQ." Now don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing WoW. Everyone has their tastes and styles. But what Blizzard did was take the concept of the MMO and bring it into the world of casual gaming and thus.. mainstream.
When Blizzard achieved stellar success with WoW, I think that MMO developers saw that and learned the wrong lessons from it. What exists today, for the most part, is a market where MMO developers create games to appeal to the biggest markets possible for the IP behind it. Matrix Online anyone?
What results is a mishmash of pooled ideas and diminished achievements so that everyone will enjoy it enough to want to pay for it. I remember the first time I played EQ. I walked into the Necromancer's guild in Neriak as a level 1 Dark Elf and shivered as chills ran up my spine. I've had similar experiences in Eve Online, but thats it.
When was the last time you played an MMO that could draw you in by sheer creativity?
A content company..... that doesn't always see eye to eye with the MAFIAA? Alright! Which one of you divided by zero?
In all seriousness, I have yet to see a company that has purely altruistic motives. I'm quite convinced that it is most assuredly within the realm of impossibility. I'm not wondering if Real is simply moving proactively to guard against what they view as a threat to one of their revenue streams.
But maybe, just maybe, karma and ironic fate have come back to bite the MAFIAA in the ass. And who knows, if Real wins, other companies may bring this kind of litigation as well.
After a bad experience with the Starforce DRM that was included with my copy of X3, I've avoided DRM protected games until the publisher or the developer removed it.
I have been playing and collecting PC games for the better part of 15 years. I have stacks of manuals, boxes, and CD's that inhabit many areas of my house.
Over the course of 15 years, many of the CD's such as Total Annihilation or Seven Kingdoms II have worn out or broke from being dropped or scratched or run over with a car(Ask me later.) I create burned copies of every game I own and I use the burned copies to play the games. And yes, sometimes, to create that copy, I have to circumvent copy protection software. But I don't create the copies to spread through the internet in a splurge of piracy. I create a copy so that 15 years from now, I can still play Civ IV if I want to and I won't need to go diving through the discount bin at Walmart to find it.
The key here is that Myspace was able to show that this particular method of spam caused a negative impact. And while I am not a rabid fan of Myspace, I viciously HATE spam. Good luck trying to find the guy, let alone get 230 million from him.
The real root issue is that our justice system is chronically uninformed and attempting to deal with issues that require education in a wide variety of subjects. Think about it. A judge could be asked to hear arguments on copyright issues that include technical knowledge on everything from CD recorders to MP3 compression and storage.
The problem is that this issue is not easily fixable and is inherent in the justice system because of how it is designed to function. Most judges are older people. This is a GOOD thing. The average age of the supreme court justices is 66. According to wikipedia, the average age of US state supreme courts is 53. And therein lies the paradox. My Dad is 47. And while I think he would make a good judge, he knows virtually nothing about computers or technology. In my experience, this is typical of middle aged people and older people.
In 15-20 years, this problem will have solved itself as a new generation of judges who are more tech savvy will have replaced or begun to replace the older generation and media companies will hopefully not be able to get away with the things they do now. But once that happens, a new set of issues will be presented that relate to new technology and that the new generation of judges will know nothing about.
This bandwagon is by no means new. When AMD hit the 1ghz barrier with the original Athlon and Intel paper released the 1.03 ghz PIII to "compete," people predicted the doom of Intel. When Intel subsequently released the first P4's which could outclock the then current Thunderbirds, people predicted the doom of AMD. It has been a seesaw market for years, even before AMD and Intel were the only major desktop CPU competitors. Remember that AMD and Intel both have business OUTSIDE the desktop and server CPU markets. I highly doubt that either company will in danger of bankruptcy or liquidation any time in the near future.
To quote a favorite TV show of mine: "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."
According to the Material Safty Data Sheet(MSDS)linked above, the exposure limit for Hydrazine is.1 PPM.(Parts Per Million) The threshold at which average humans are capable of smelling hydrazine, according the MSDS, is 3.7 PPM which is 370 times the exposure limit.
During my time in the Air Force I was a 3E9 which is essentially a military version of FEMA with a lot more wartime and military applications in addition to the natural disaster stuff plus some gas mask training. I remember a whole entire class during training that was devoted to hydrazine and chemicals like it. Now I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that anything that requires 370 times the maximum SAFE concentration for you to smell it qualifies as extremely dangerous.
Weapon systems capable of shooting down a satellite is nothing new. The US and the USSR explored using nuclear tipped missles in the early 60's that could get close enough to a satellite to bring it down. Several countries experimented with high powered lasers as a method of disabling or destroying satellites. The Soviets experimented with so called "Killer Satellites" that would take out a target with the orbital equivalent of a giant shotgun. Since the mid to late 80's, the US Air Force has had an ASAT(Anti Satellite) missle called the ASM-135 that was fired from a F-16 at extreme altitude and would seek out and collide with its targets as opposed to exploding near them.
Now I personally did not know that we had a ship based missile capable of knocking down satellites but apparently we do. However, that is likely not an epiphany for any other country that is capable of fielding an ASAT weapon system. It's highly likely that several other countries were even informed of the planned launch to forestall any tensions that it might have created.
If we did give away any important information as a result of this launch, it's that our president is capable of making rationale decisions every once in a while. It's entirely possible that countries such as China and India were not aware of that.
What soldiers are you referring to? Perhaps the draftee's of the vietnam era? I'll never be naive enough to say that the things that branded soldiers in that time as "baby killers" have never happened since or won't happen again. And nothing can excuse that behavior. But since when is that different from society as a whole?
Also, understand that in the vietnam era, thousand of men who were never fit to wear a military uniform let alone fight in a war, were drafted into service. There are too many cases where a convicted criminal was given a choice to either serve jail time or join the military. That is no longer the case. EVERYONE in the modern military is a volunteer. I personally served 4 years in the air force during the original invasion of Iraq back in 2003. When I was enlisting, I couldn't even tell you how many times I was asked if a judge had ordered me to be there or if I was was forced to be there because they asked it all the time. Even when I made it to basic training they still kept asking.
And for the record, you have no right to slander those soldiers who protect you and your way of life. You might as well go live in France. Public servants are underpaid, overworked, and perform some of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Who are you to think you are better than them?
DISCLAIMER: I served 4 years in the US Air Force. I have a brother who is currently serving his 6th year in the Air Force and two younger brothers who are in the enlistment process for the Air Force. My Grandpa served in the Army during world war II and was awarded the silver star for action during the battle of the bulge. I may be slightly biased....
It's not the old technology that matters. My nomad is cranky and intolerant of any kind of movement. Technology ages like milk. If you keep it too long, it will eventually go sour on you.
My beef is with the lack of choice. For instance, if I want to play music downloaded from iTunes in my car, I have to either purchase an iPod or pay extra for iTunes "Plus." I am one of the 4 people in America who don't like standard iPods. I've never liked apple's sense of style or design. Simple as that. I do, however, like the iTunes Store. While the price might be just a tad high, they have a great selection and purchasing music is fairly easy to do and manage.
I am not sure how much of the proprietary game is related to the RIAA. After all, it's not like this is a new idea.(I'm looking at you, Cisco) But I have a great deal of respect for Steven Jobs, and none for the RIAA. And yes, I'm biased.
For whatever reason, as much as I try, I can't bring myself to feel sorry for the RIAA. They stand between me and the reasonable use of content that I purchase with my hard earned cash. If I purchase an MP3, I expect to be able to listen to that MP3 anywhere that I listen to music. But thats not the case. While I can listen to it on my computer, I can't lug my desktop out to my car with me. So I must use my mp3 player. Except, my mp3 player is a 6 year old creative jukebox. Not compatible with any modern DRM scheme. I must then spend MORE money on a newer mp3 player or risk legal implications by stripping the DRM away from the mp3. That's like buying an orange at the grocery store and being told that I can't use my fingers to peel it because my fingers aren't "compatible" with the skin of the orange. Instead, I must buy a knife to legally peel the skin from the orange. But I can't just buy any knife. I hafta buy an "iKnife." As a consumer, I feel no sympathy for the RIAA.
Whether by ignorance or lack of attention to detail, the RIAA left a security hole big enough to drive a truck through. Someone figured out where the hole was and then posted instructions on how to drive the truck. It was only a matter of time before someone jumped into the drivers seat. While my understanding of SQL isn't exactly at a mastery level, it seems to me that this exploit could have been easily avoided. So, as a system admin, I again feel no sympathy.
Having said that, this is/was illegal. Those who helped deface the RIAA website have done nothing more than stoop to the level that the RIAA has made its home in for some time now. The RIAA is not averse to using tricks, legal games, and outright dishonesty in pushing its agenda. How is hacking their website any better?
There are better and more legal ways to fight the greed that the RIAA represents. All hacking their website does is add another dimension to an already complicated problem. Way to go guys.
Ideas like this are great. And I agree that a 120 year copyright is a little absurd. But this is a double edged sword. It's easy to point at the recording and movie industries as examples of copyright gone wrong. With the mafiaa claiming every copyright under the sun and some that aren't, they are digging their own graves. Lengthy copyright limits stifle innovation. But so do short ones.
Let's assume that Bob has created a widget that changes the color of the paint in your house with the press of a button. He then patents his idea and creates a prototype to sell to others. But Bob isn't a good salesman, nor a good marketer. So Bob makes very little money on his own. Let's assume that the MegaGlobal Corp finds out about Bob's widget and see's a profit opportunity. Under current law, MegaGlobal must pay Bob either by licensing the patent for his widget, or by purchasing the patent entirely. Now let's assume that the copyright law only protects Bob's widget for 5 years. Instead of paying Bob for his widget, MegaGlobal simply waits for 5 years, and then creates their own copy of the widget. MegaGlobal makes millions, Bob gets the shaft. Now let's assume that Bob has another great idea for a widget that automatically changes your hair style in 3 seconds. But, Bob has not made any money from his previous idea. Not only that, but someone else took his idea after the legal protection of the idea ran out, and made millions. Do you think Bob is more or less likely to create a 2nd widget?
As was stated earlier, copyrights are a balancing act. And care must be taken to protect not only the creators, but the producers as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Bad news on this one, if you own a current gen gaming console(Xbox 360 ect...), this is already the case.
You know, I've never understood this one. If you have written a zero to every sector on the hard drive, including the hidden space, how in the world is it possible to recover any data at all?
Sales tax isn't a tax on businesses, not directly. It's a tax on consumers. What is at issue here is the perceived total price of an item. All other things being equal, when two different companies offer the same product, consumers will choose the one that is cheaper 100% of the time. If Amazon offers something that Tiger Direct offers for the same price, chances are Amazon will get the sale because Tiger Direct charges sales tax.
I am not saying I agree with Amazon, but from their perspective, they do not need to have a physical presence in Texas to sell to consumers in Texas. I highly doubt they put a distribution center in Texas solely because they thought they wouldn't have to charge sales tax. They likely built a distribution center in Texas because of a corporate tax incentive designed to lure business to Texas or perhaps because of Texas's longtime anti labor union practices.
This weekend my black labrador retriever snarfed two bags of M&M's off the kitchen counter while I was out raking leaves. He ingested roughly a pound and a half of chocolate. On the way to the vet hospital, I joked that if my dog lived through the chocolate poisoning, I was going to kill him. My wife understood this to be my way of dealing with the stress and that I really was worried about my dog and was in no way inclined to actually kill him. In other words, she got the joke.
If my wife got the joke, what is so hard about seeing the "joke" behind what this politician said? Or is it possible that my wife is smarter than the people that arrested this guy?
[sarcasm] that parents should take an interest in what their kids are watching because we all know that responsible parents are the last thing this world needs..... [/sarcasm]
I wonder what would happen if Pres Obama, who IS a Blackberry user, ended up calling Verizon to complain about the Bing lock in.
I don't suppose the blog was accompanied by a short video of Asa Dotzler and Steve Balmer making Ducktales-like swan dives from a diving board into a swimming pool filled with cash?
"'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business."
Does this mean that Dell and HP should get out of the computer manufacturing business because they provide a device that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes? You might as well sue the oil companies because they provide the gasoline that powers the automobiles used in vehicular homicide.
Why am I suddenly curious about the annual revenue of iiNet? Something tells me that iiNet probably can't afford a protracted legal battle in the way that say... Dell or AT&T could.
The MAFIAA may change names and countries, but the bullshit is still the same.
If the judge has ruled that Mininova did not violate any laws, how does he have the legal foundation to order them to enforce a law that they have not broken?
My hackles go up anytime I hear or read things like this. I know people who have had bad experiences with a single piece of hardware from a specific manufacturer and never use that brand again. They tell people that the brand is "crap" or "worthless" based on a single piece of data, namely, the failure of a single device from that manufacturer.
As an example, I have a friend who purchased a Maxtor SATA hard drive several years back. It died on him less than 2 months after he got it. He threw it away and refused to purchase any more Maxtor hard drives. If he had sent the drive in for warranty replacement, and that one had failed in much the same way, I might put more stock in what he says.
I've had bad experiences with many brands of hardware. But I rarely have a consistent problem. A few years back, it was time to start replacing our company laptops. As we had a contract with Dell, I purchased several Latitude D620's and D630's. Over the course of the next year, all of the hard drives suffered the same type of hardware failure without exception. In most cases, nothing was lost. But as the other Admins can attest to, there are always one or two people who refuse to backup the work they do at home, and in those cases, quite a bit of information was lost.
Because Dell continued to use the same brand of hard drives in their laptops, this year, we switched to HP laptops. I didn't make the switch because of one isolated event. And I certainly don't tell people that Dell laptops are crap because of my experience. But as a Network Admin, my primary responsibility is the safety of the data that my company requires for operation. It would be derelict of me to continue purchasing a model of laptop with a proven track record of hard drive failure.
I personally use Western Digital hard drives. I have not had any "bad" or discouraging experiences with the hard drives I've bought over the years from WD. However, I have also not had any of those issues with the Maxtor or Seagate hard drives that I have had over the years. Maybe I am lucky. Who knows.
In reality, you can never assess the quality of a manufactured item based on one sample because there is no such thing as a perfect manufacturing process. And even if there was, there would still be human beings involved in the process at some point. Even robots are not perfect and mess things up from time to time.
Remember back a year or so, when the .alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
I've been an MMO gamer nearly 10 years. EQ, Asheron's Call, EQII, WOW, Eve Online, SWG, Navy Field, World War II Online, and even DDO(Dungeons and Dragons Online). Not to mention Warhammer Online, AOC, Lineage II, Guild Wars, LOTRO, and Vanguard.
My longest running MMO playtime is Eve online(5+ years) and Everquest(4+ years.) Until World of Warcraft, MMO's mostly catered to niche markets. EQ catered to the Dungeons and Dragons/fantasy game crowd. I remember a time when the maximum level in EQ was a 6 month endeavor or better. I really felt as though I achieved something. Then came World of Warcraft. A game that was an almost polar opposite. I once heard it described as "an arcade version of EQ." Now don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing WoW. Everyone has their tastes and styles. But what Blizzard did was take the concept of the MMO and bring it into the world of casual gaming and thus.. mainstream.
When Blizzard achieved stellar success with WoW, I think that MMO developers saw that and learned the wrong lessons from it. What exists today, for the most part, is a market where MMO developers create games to appeal to the biggest markets possible for the IP behind it. Matrix Online anyone?
What results is a mishmash of pooled ideas and diminished achievements so that everyone will enjoy it enough to want to pay for it. I remember the first time I played EQ. I walked into the Necromancer's guild in Neriak as a level 1 Dark Elf and shivered as chills ran up my spine. I've had similar experiences in Eve Online, but thats it.
When was the last time you played an MMO that could draw you in by sheer creativity?
So the misleading ads from Apple were okay, but the Microsoft ads that point to the higher average price of Macs isn't?
A content company..... that doesn't always see eye to eye with the MAFIAA? Alright! Which one of you divided by zero?
In all seriousness, I have yet to see a company that has purely altruistic motives. I'm quite convinced that it is most assuredly within the realm of impossibility. I'm not wondering if Real is simply moving proactively to guard against what they view as a threat to one of their revenue streams.
But maybe, just maybe, karma and ironic fate have come back to bite the MAFIAA in the ass. And who knows, if Real wins, other companies may bring this kind of litigation as well.
After a bad experience with the Starforce DRM that was included with my copy of X3, I've avoided DRM protected games until the publisher or the developer removed it.
I have been playing and collecting PC games for the better part of 15 years. I have stacks of manuals, boxes, and CD's that inhabit many areas of my house.
Over the course of 15 years, many of the CD's such as Total Annihilation or Seven Kingdoms II have worn out or broke from being dropped or scratched or run over with a car(Ask me later.) I create burned copies of every game I own and I use the burned copies to play the games. And yes, sometimes, to create that copy, I have to circumvent copy protection software. But I don't create the copies to spread through the internet in a splurge of piracy. I create a copy so that 15 years from now, I can still play Civ IV if I want to and I won't need to go diving through the discount bin at Walmart to find it.
The key here is that Myspace was able to show that this particular method of spam caused a negative impact. And while I am not a rabid fan of Myspace, I viciously HATE spam. Good luck trying to find the guy, let alone get 230 million from him.
The real root issue is that our justice system is chronically uninformed and attempting to deal with issues that require education in a wide variety of subjects. Think about it. A judge could be asked to hear arguments on copyright issues that include technical knowledge on everything from CD recorders to MP3 compression and storage.
The problem is that this issue is not easily fixable and is inherent in the justice system because of how it is designed to function. Most judges are older people. This is a GOOD thing. The average age of the supreme court justices is 66. According to wikipedia, the average age of US state supreme courts is 53. And therein lies the paradox. My Dad is 47. And while I think he would make a good judge, he knows virtually nothing about computers or technology. In my experience, this is typical of middle aged people and older people.
In 15-20 years, this problem will have solved itself as a new generation of judges who are more tech savvy will have replaced or begun to replace the older generation and media companies will hopefully not be able to get away with the things they do now. But once that happens, a new set of issues will be presented that relate to new technology and that the new generation of judges will know nothing about.
In Soviet France, P2P scams YOU! Oh... wait....
This bandwagon is by no means new. When AMD hit the 1ghz barrier with the original Athlon and Intel paper released the 1.03 ghz PIII to "compete," people predicted the doom of Intel. When Intel subsequently released the first P4's which could outclock the then current Thunderbirds, people predicted the doom of AMD. It has been a seesaw market for years, even before AMD and Intel were the only major desktop CPU competitors. Remember that AMD and Intel both have business OUTSIDE the desktop and server CPU markets. I highly doubt that either company will in danger of bankruptcy or liquidation any time in the near future.
To quote a favorite TV show of mine: "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."
According to the Material Safty Data Sheet(MSDS)linked above, the exposure limit for Hydrazine is .1 PPM.(Parts Per Million) The threshold at which average humans are capable of smelling hydrazine, according the MSDS, is 3.7 PPM which is 370 times the exposure limit.
During my time in the Air Force I was a 3E9 which is essentially a military version of FEMA with a lot more wartime and military applications in addition to the natural disaster stuff plus some gas mask training. I remember a whole entire class during training that was devoted to hydrazine and chemicals like it. Now I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that anything that requires 370 times the maximum SAFE concentration for you to smell it qualifies as extremely dangerous.
Weapon systems capable of shooting down a satellite is nothing new. The US and the USSR explored using nuclear tipped missles in the early 60's that could get close enough to a satellite to bring it down. Several countries experimented with high powered lasers as a method of disabling or destroying satellites. The Soviets experimented with so called "Killer Satellites" that would take out a target with the orbital equivalent of a giant shotgun. Since the mid to late 80's, the US Air Force has had an ASAT(Anti Satellite) missle called the ASM-135 that was fired from a F-16 at extreme altitude and would seek out and collide with its targets as opposed to exploding near them.
Now I personally did not know that we had a ship based missile capable of knocking down satellites but apparently we do. However, that is likely not an epiphany for any other country that is capable of fielding an ASAT weapon system. It's highly likely that several other countries were even informed of the planned launch to forestall any tensions that it might have created.
If we did give away any important information as a result of this launch, it's that our president is capable of making rationale decisions every once in a while. It's entirely possible that countries such as China and India were not aware of that.
What soldiers are you referring to? Perhaps the draftee's of the vietnam era? I'll never be naive enough to say that the things that branded soldiers in that time as "baby killers" have never happened since or won't happen again. And nothing can excuse that behavior. But since when is that different from society as a whole?
Also, understand that in the vietnam era, thousand of men who were never fit to wear a military uniform let alone fight in a war, were drafted into service. There are too many cases where a convicted criminal was given a choice to either serve jail time or join the military. That is no longer the case. EVERYONE in the modern military is a volunteer. I personally served 4 years in the air force during the original invasion of Iraq back in 2003. When I was enlisting, I couldn't even tell you how many times I was asked if a judge had ordered me to be there or if I was was forced to be there because they asked it all the time. Even when I made it to basic training they still kept asking.
And for the record, you have no right to slander those soldiers who protect you and your way of life. You might as well go live in France. Public servants are underpaid, overworked, and perform some of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Who are you to think you are better than them?
DISCLAIMER: I served 4 years in the US Air Force. I have a brother who is currently serving his 6th year in the Air Force and two younger brothers who are in the enlistment process for the Air Force. My Grandpa served in the Army during world war II and was awarded the silver star for action during the battle of the bulge. I may be slightly biased....
It's not the old technology that matters. My nomad is cranky and intolerant of any kind of movement. Technology ages like milk. If you keep it too long, it will eventually go sour on you.
My beef is with the lack of choice. For instance, if I want to play music downloaded from iTunes in my car, I have to either purchase an iPod or pay extra for iTunes "Plus." I am one of the 4 people in America who don't like standard iPods. I've never liked apple's sense of style or design. Simple as that. I do, however, like the iTunes Store. While the price might be just a tad high, they have a great selection and purchasing music is fairly easy to do and manage.
I am not sure how much of the proprietary game is related to the RIAA. After all, it's not like this is a new idea.(I'm looking at you, Cisco) But I have a great deal of respect for Steven Jobs, and none for the RIAA. And yes, I'm biased.
For whatever reason, as much as I try, I can't bring myself to feel sorry for the RIAA. They stand between me and the reasonable use of content that I purchase with my hard earned cash. If I purchase an MP3, I expect to be able to listen to that MP3 anywhere that I listen to music. But thats not the case. While I can listen to it on my computer, I can't lug my desktop out to my car with me. So I must use my mp3 player. Except, my mp3 player is a 6 year old creative jukebox. Not compatible with any modern DRM scheme. I must then spend MORE money on a newer mp3 player or risk legal implications by stripping the DRM away from the mp3. That's like buying an orange at the grocery store and being told that I can't use my fingers to peel it because my fingers aren't "compatible" with the skin of the orange. Instead, I must buy a knife to legally peel the skin from the orange. But I can't just buy any knife. I hafta buy an "iKnife." As a consumer, I feel no sympathy for the RIAA.
Whether by ignorance or lack of attention to detail, the RIAA left a security hole big enough to drive a truck through. Someone figured out where the hole was and then posted instructions on how to drive the truck. It was only a matter of time before someone jumped into the drivers seat. While my understanding of SQL isn't exactly at a mastery level, it seems to me that this exploit could have been easily avoided. So, as a system admin, I again feel no sympathy.
Having said that, this is/was illegal. Those who helped deface the RIAA website have done nothing more than stoop to the level that the RIAA has made its home in for some time now. The RIAA is not averse to using tricks, legal games, and outright dishonesty in pushing its agenda. How is hacking their website any better?
There are better and more legal ways to fight the greed that the RIAA represents. All hacking their website does is add another dimension to an already complicated problem. Way to go guys.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Ideas like this are great. And I agree that a 120 year copyright is a little absurd. But this is a double edged sword. It's easy to point at the recording and movie industries as examples of copyright gone wrong. With the mafiaa claiming every copyright under the sun and some that aren't, they are digging their own graves. Lengthy copyright limits stifle innovation. But so do short ones.
Let's assume that Bob has created a widget that changes the color of the paint in your house with the press of a button. He then patents his idea and creates a prototype to sell to others. But Bob isn't a good salesman, nor a good marketer. So Bob makes very little money on his own. Let's assume that the MegaGlobal Corp finds out about Bob's widget and see's a profit opportunity. Under current law, MegaGlobal must pay Bob either by licensing the patent for his widget, or by purchasing the patent entirely. Now let's assume that the copyright law only protects Bob's widget for 5 years. Instead of paying Bob for his widget, MegaGlobal simply waits for 5 years, and then creates their own copy of the widget. MegaGlobal makes millions, Bob gets the shaft. Now let's assume that Bob has another great idea for a widget that automatically changes your hair style in 3 seconds. But, Bob has not made any money from his previous idea. Not only that, but someone else took his idea after the legal protection of the idea ran out, and made millions. Do you think Bob is more or less likely to create a 2nd widget?
As was stated earlier, copyrights are a balancing act. And care must be taken to protect not only the creators, but the producers as well.