Imagine sitting down to watch Six Feet Under only to have the screen scramble and a message start scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying: "1 0wnZ U - W4tch my H4x0red F33D N0w L0s3r!" and having to watch some pimply faced geek's idea of programming. Just great.
Do I need your permission to move into your spare room?
Yes and here's why. If you were to move into my spare room, I would lose access to that room. You would be physically occupying space that I "own." I would thus have a substantive loss. If you perform a song, and I tape it fro some source, I have not deprived you of anything tangible. You have not lost anything. You still have your song. The analogy is flawed, and the xxAA, as I have mentioned, has been, rather successfully, blurring the definitions of theft and copyright infringement. I don't argue that copyright infringement is illegal, but it's not the same as theft. This completely bypasses the other legal issues involved such as fair use, etc...
its high time people quit bitching because the recording industries are trying to prevent theft.
No. They're not. They're attempting to prevent copyright violation. There is a marked difference. Intellectual property is an artificial concept. When someone downloads a copy of a song, they are acquiring "intellectual property." Theft requires a tangible loss on the part of the person against whom the theft was committed. This is not the case with copyright violation. Theft and copyright violation are NOT the same and should not be considered as such. The xxAA has made a concerted effort to entangle the terms, but they are not the same.
Of course, don't get me wrong. The more time they spend on pointless hardware and software solutions the more time they divert from their likely more effective political attempts.
No it doesn't. The coders are handling the hw/sw side of things, but that doesn't mean that the lawyers are asleep while they're doing it.
a) The pirates weren't making much of a dent in sales anyway.
There's a huge difference. One assumes that there weren't that many pirates. The other (and what I think is more accurate) assumes that those pirating weren't going to buy the stuff anyway. 90% of the population could be pirating music but if 89% of those pirates weren't going to buy the music in the first place, sales won't be affected by effective copy protection.
It would depend on who the lawyer is. Seriously, though, an ISP could make an argument that a vpn does cause them harm because it is bandwidth intensive. Moreso than the average web surfing/emailing that most people do. Some ISPs even offer vpn service at an additional cost. To set up your own without going through your ISP could, again, if they have the right lawyers, be interpreted as causing harm to the ISP.
Not true. There are forces from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Australia at least. I think there are actually more, but those are the ones that I know of (See General Frank's press conference from yesterday).
As for why UN backing matters, I think many people feel that we're going to need the support of other nations to pursue our own global interests in the future. It's getting to be a much smaller world, and we can't afford to act as though the input of other powerful nations is meaningless or that our actions have no diplomatic consequences. Clearly the US can't tie themselves down to acting only at the discretion of the UN, but in all but the most dire of circumstances, global policy ought to be driven by the global community.
By the same token, US policy should not be held hostage by a single foreign power. France is the only permanent member of the Security Council that consistantly threatened a veto, even including a threat of veto of ANY resolution that authorized the use of force under ANY circumstances. By the reasoning of the French, the Iraqis could have launched a risen attack againt Saudi Arabia and they would still have vetoed a resolution authorizing the use of force. The Russians, Germans, and Chinese all had at one point or another said that they would have abstained from such a vote rather than vetoed (granted they wavered back and forth on the issue). The French are really what was keeping this from passing the SC. It is clear that the US had made the decision that regime change was necessary for the disarmament of Iraq. The only options that France left open would have left Hussein in power. Spain and the UK were of like mind with the US. The UN security council is an incredibly ineffective body. it has had over 200 resolutions vetoed since the 1960s. If France were to invade all of her neighbors and sink Europe into a nuclear winter, a resolution to invoke force to stop her would never pass due to France's position as a permanent member of the SC. Of course, the same goes for all other members of the SC. The idea that the SC represents the will of the international community is laughable. And now, it has proven itself to be ineffective as well.
The only country in the worlds where the population is supporting the war is USA, and that's because of the propaganda in mainstream media (the same people who support the war, also believe that it was Saddam Hussein who organized 9/11, which is clearly a nonsense).
Speaking of propaganda - hello, pot, this is kettle, you're black. While there may be those that believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 (though there may be some confusion between 9/11 and the first WTC bombing, for which there is ample evidence connecting it with Saddam Hussein), I doubt they number any more than the anti-war protesters that don't have a clue about what's going on either. I, personally, and for several different reasons, support the current military action. Saddam Hussein having a connection to 9/11 is NOT one of them. I don't even think there's sufficient evidence to connect Hussein to Al Queada to even mention said supposed link. So, to say that the only people that support the continuation of hostilities (from '91) are people that believe that Saddam sent the planes to the WTC is as much propaganda as anything being broadcast on Fox News Channel, if not more.
Since when does speculation build the foundation for unilateral military action?
Does EVERYONE need an english refresher class? Unilateral would be if the only nation involved in the action was the US. That is not the case. If even one other country (but there are many more) were involved, it could not, by definition, be classified as a unilateral action. Which brings me to an even bigger gripe that I have. What's with the people that oppose the action unless it's backed by the UN? Either the war is correct or it is incorrect. It shouldn't matter whether the UN approves or disapproves. The UN would have disapproved of the action in Bosnia, but no one was pointing out that we didn't have "international support." If the UN passed a resolution authorizing sinking Australia into the sea, would these people support it? Sheesh, people, get a brain of your own!
It isn't because they have weapons of mass destruction, North Korea has more in that catagory, and we're trying "diplomatic means" to deal with them. It isn't because of Saddam's human rights record, or we'd be at war with China, not granting them favoured trade status.
This assumes that every situation should be dealt with in the exact same way. Which, of course, is ludicrous.
It isn't because the inspections were failing, the inspectors themselves thought the process was working, and shouldn't they know?
Well, since Hans Blix is quoted as saying that if the Iraqis are using SCUDs, then they are in clear violation of the UN mandates and that the Iraqis said they didn't HAVE any SCUDs, if anything, there is already evidence that the inspections were not working. The inspectors, apparently, were taking the Iraqi regime at their word on at least some things. Incidentally, the inspectors were NEVER supposed to have to seek out any weapons. The Iraqis were supposed to give them an accurate inventory and take them to the sites so that the inspectors could verify their disposal. Iraq had not complied with this in 12 years. The inspections, by definition, were not working. Regardless of what the inspectors said.
My thought on Cisco. They make good products. On the other hand, they have managed to extend a monopoly by making their products more difficult to use than the competitions'. Were it not for their proprietary programming language, anyone could administer Cisco equipment, there would be no need for CCNE/A's, and Cisco would lose their iron grip on the network device market. For this reason, I NEVER reccommend Cisco equipment.
Or you could try Macromedia Freehand MX. This is my favorite. I've tried them all (except Xara). Never really liked Draw! and while Illustrator is very powerful, it's not exactly wasy to get around in. Freehand is great though. Versions 9 and 10 had some issues, but MX is absolutely fantastic.
But what were they to do for revenue while they waited for the other companies to advance their technologies to a point that it would have been feasable? Then there's the problem with the Sun/MS Java thing. No. I think they were right to drop plans to move the main suite to Java. Now if they had taken what they had learned and created a new WP that was smaller and less feature bogged for Java as a side project, THAT would have been cool. As for the Linux thing, they were pretty much forced to abandon that avenue the second they signed on the dotted line with Microsoft. Can't blame them too much for that.
Actually, I'm a consultant and most of my clients are lawyers. They are split about 80/20 on WordPerfect/Office. And the ones that are on WordPerfect are running the latest versions. At least one of my clients is running Office 97 because it does what they need it to do. Unfortunately that is rapidly changing. When it comes to making a choice, I tell a client to take apoll in the office and figure out how many want WP vs. MSO. Make the decision based on which side wins. The only caveat is that the secretaries have more weight. Always. If the secretaries are happy, then things will be much smoother.
I remember a while back that there were some Parallel modems (I think I actually have one in my closet). The spin was that Parallel modems had higher throughput. In addition, Maximum PC just did a benchmark test between Parallel ATA and Serial ATA and the Parallel drive/interface beat the Serial in all but one test. Is Serial actually faster and why?
Not while people in the UK are spending £15 per session to talk to Dianna from beyond the grave. There appears to be a significant desire for many to believe in paranormal and pseudoscientific poppycock. It makes my teeth itch, but there it is.
And, as it turns out, there IS an actual nowhere.com. I'd be kind of pissed if I owned the domain and the BSA was falsely claming to originate their spider scripts from there.
Yet, with all the trouble they go to to get the informatio about said hardware, they still get the information wrong. I have two clients running Dell OptiPlexes and every time Windows Update is spawned, it says there's a new driver for their HP RAID array.
The LXG thing is not in the comic. I hate it as well. They are obviously dumbing down the titles for the masses which I think is a huge mistake. But that's why they don't pay me the big bucks.
With the exception of the jerkwads that use relays (and shame on you if you have an open relay to exploit), the sender AND receiver already pay for spam as well as all other email. It's built into some ISP charges and it's charged by the bandwidth used on others. This idea, whether it's CPU cycles, cash, whatever, is akin to double charging. As mentioned in another reply, the solution lies in fixing the system (SMTP), not piling more crap on top of it. Remember the origin of the QWERTY keyboard as an example of how NOT to fix a problem.
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Imagine sitting down to watch Six Feet Under only to have the screen scramble and a message start scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying: "1 0wnZ U - W4tch my H4x0red F33D N0w L0s3r!" and having to watch some pimply faced geek's idea of programming. Just great.
Do I need your permission to move into your spare room?
Yes and here's why. If you were to move into my spare room, I would lose access to that room. You would be physically occupying space that I "own." I would thus have a substantive loss. If you perform a song, and I tape it fro some source, I have not deprived you of anything tangible. You have not lost anything. You still have your song. The analogy is flawed, and the xxAA, as I have mentioned, has been, rather successfully, blurring the definitions of theft and copyright infringement. I don't argue that copyright infringement is illegal, but it's not the same as theft. This completely bypasses the other legal issues involved such as fair use, etc...
its high time people quit bitching because the recording industries are trying to prevent theft.
No. They're not. They're attempting to prevent copyright violation. There is a marked difference. Intellectual property is an artificial concept. When someone downloads a copy of a song, they are acquiring "intellectual property." Theft requires a tangible loss on the part of the person against whom the theft was committed. This is not the case with copyright violation. Theft and copyright violation are NOT the same and should not be considered as such. The xxAA has made a concerted effort to entangle the terms, but they are not the same.
Of course, don't get me wrong. The more time they spend on pointless hardware and software solutions the more time they divert from their likely more effective political attempts.
No it doesn't. The coders are handling the hw/sw side of things, but that doesn't mean that the lawyers are asleep while they're doing it.
a) people weren't pirating much anyway
More accurately, this should read:
a) The pirates weren't making much of a dent in sales anyway.
There's a huge difference. One assumes that there weren't that many pirates. The other (and what I think is more accurate) assumes that those pirating weren't going to buy the stuff anyway. 90% of the population could be pirating music but if 89% of those pirates weren't going to buy the music in the first place, sales won't be affected by effective copy protection.
Does a VPN "harm or defraud" an ISP? NO
It would depend on who the lawyer is. Seriously, though, an ISP could make an argument that a vpn does cause them harm because it is bandwidth intensive. Moreso than the average web surfing/emailing that most people do. Some ISPs even offer vpn service at an additional cost. To set up your own without going through your ISP could, again, if they have the right lawyers, be interpreted as causing harm to the ISP.
Not true. There are forces from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Australia at least. I think there are actually more, but those are the ones that I know of (See General Frank's press conference from yesterday).
As for why UN backing matters, I think many people feel that we're going to need the support of other nations to pursue our own global interests in the future. It's getting to be a much smaller world, and we can't afford to act as though the input of other powerful nations is meaningless or that our actions have no diplomatic consequences. Clearly the US can't tie themselves down to acting only at the discretion of the UN, but in all but the most dire of circumstances, global policy ought to be driven by the global community.
By the same token, US policy should not be held hostage by a single foreign power. France is the only permanent member of the Security Council that consistantly threatened a veto, even including a threat of veto of ANY resolution that authorized the use of force under ANY circumstances. By the reasoning of the French, the Iraqis could have launched a risen attack againt Saudi Arabia and they would still have vetoed a resolution authorizing the use of force. The Russians, Germans, and Chinese all had at one point or another said that they would have abstained from such a vote rather than vetoed (granted they wavered back and forth on the issue). The French are really what was keeping this from passing the SC. It is clear that the US had made the decision that regime change was necessary for the disarmament of Iraq. The only options that France left open would have left Hussein in power. Spain and the UK were of like mind with the US. The UN security council is an incredibly ineffective body. it has had over 200 resolutions vetoed since the 1960s. If France were to invade all of her neighbors and sink Europe into a nuclear winter, a resolution to invoke force to stop her would never pass due to France's position as a permanent member of the SC. Of course, the same goes for all other members of the SC. The idea that the SC represents the will of the international community is laughable. And now, it has proven itself to be ineffective as well.
Iraq is a secular country, and Saddam Hussein is certainly not an islamic crackpot.
He's certainly gone out of his way to portray himself as such in recent months.
The only country in the worlds where the population is supporting the war is USA, and that's because of the propaganda in mainstream media (the same people who support the war, also believe that it was Saddam Hussein who organized 9/11, which is clearly a nonsense).
Speaking of propaganda - hello, pot, this is kettle, you're black. While there may be those that believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 (though there may be some confusion between 9/11 and the first WTC bombing, for which there is ample evidence connecting it with Saddam Hussein), I doubt they number any more than the anti-war protesters that don't have a clue about what's going on either. I, personally, and for several different reasons, support the current military action. Saddam Hussein having a connection to 9/11 is NOT one of them. I don't even think there's sufficient evidence to connect Hussein to Al Queada to even mention said supposed link. So, to say that the only people that support the continuation of hostilities (from '91) are people that believe that Saddam sent the planes to the WTC is as much propaganda as anything being broadcast on Fox News Channel, if not more.
Since when does speculation build the foundation for unilateral military action?
Does EVERYONE need an english refresher class? Unilateral would be if the only nation involved in the action was the US. That is not the case. If even one other country (but there are many more) were involved, it could not, by definition, be classified as a unilateral action. Which brings me to an even bigger gripe that I have. What's with the people that oppose the action unless it's backed by the UN? Either the war is correct or it is incorrect. It shouldn't matter whether the UN approves or disapproves. The UN would have disapproved of the action in Bosnia, but no one was pointing out that we didn't have "international support." If the UN passed a resolution authorizing sinking Australia into the sea, would these people support it? Sheesh, people, get a brain of your own!
It isn't because they have weapons of mass destruction, North Korea has more in that catagory, and we're trying "diplomatic means" to deal with them. It isn't because of Saddam's human rights record, or we'd be at war with China, not granting them favoured trade status.
This assumes that every situation should be dealt with in the exact same way. Which, of course, is ludicrous.
It isn't because the inspections were failing, the inspectors themselves thought the process was working, and shouldn't they know?
Well, since Hans Blix is quoted as saying that if the Iraqis are using SCUDs, then they are in clear violation of the UN mandates and that the Iraqis said they didn't HAVE any SCUDs, if anything, there is already evidence that the inspections were not working. The inspectors, apparently, were taking the Iraqi regime at their word on at least some things. Incidentally, the inspectors were NEVER supposed to have to seek out any weapons. The Iraqis were supposed to give them an accurate inventory and take them to the sites so that the inspectors could verify their disposal. Iraq had not complied with this in 12 years. The inspections, by definition, were not working. Regardless of what the inspectors said.
My thought on Cisco. They make good products. On the other hand, they have managed to extend a monopoly by making their products more difficult to use than the competitions'. Were it not for their proprietary programming language, anyone could administer Cisco equipment, there would be no need for CCNE/A's, and Cisco would lose their iron grip on the network device market. For this reason, I NEVER reccommend Cisco equipment.
Or you could try Macromedia Freehand MX. This is my favorite. I've tried them all (except Xara). Never really liked Draw! and while Illustrator is very powerful, it's not exactly wasy to get around in. Freehand is great though. Versions 9 and 10 had some issues, but MX is absolutely fantastic.
But what were they to do for revenue while they waited for the other companies to advance their technologies to a point that it would have been feasable? Then there's the problem with the Sun/MS Java thing. No. I think they were right to drop plans to move the main suite to Java. Now if they had taken what they had learned and created a new WP that was smaller and less feature bogged for Java as a side project, THAT would have been cool. As for the Linux thing, they were pretty much forced to abandon that avenue the second they signed on the dotted line with Microsoft. Can't blame them too much for that.
Freehand is the best illustration proggy out there in my view. They stumbled a bit with 9 and 10, but MX is awesome.
Actually, I'm a consultant and most of my clients are lawyers. They are split about 80/20 on WordPerfect/Office. And the ones that are on WordPerfect are running the latest versions. At least one of my clients is running Office 97 because it does what they need it to do. Unfortunately that is rapidly changing. When it comes to making a choice, I tell a client to take apoll in the office and figure out how many want WP vs. MSO. Make the decision based on which side wins. The only caveat is that the secretaries have more weight. Always. If the secretaries are happy, then things will be much smoother.
"gaining three more planets - Quaoar, Varuna and Ceres."
There are those that claim that Luna (the moon) actually qualifies as a planet.
I remember a while back that there were some Parallel modems (I think I actually have one in my closet). The spin was that Parallel modems had higher throughput. In addition, Maximum PC just did a benchmark test between Parallel ATA and Serial ATA and the Parallel drive/interface beat the Serial in all but one test. Is Serial actually faster and why?
Not while people in the UK are spending £15 per session to talk to Dianna from beyond the grave. There appears to be a significant desire for many to believe in paranormal and pseudoscientific poppycock. It makes my teeth itch, but there it is.
And, as it turns out, there IS an actual nowhere.com. I'd be kind of pissed if I owned the domain and the BSA was falsely claming to originate their spider scripts from there.
...has been sent. :)
Ans under status, it says: Registrar Lock
Yet, with all the trouble they go to to get the informatio about said hardware, they still get the information wrong. I have two clients running Dell OptiPlexes and every time Windows Update is spawned, it says there's a new driver for their HP RAID array.
The LXG thing is not in the comic. I hate it as well. They are obviously dumbing down the titles for the masses which I think is a huge mistake. But that's why they don't pay me the big bucks.
With the exception of the jerkwads that use relays (and shame on you if you have an open relay to exploit), the sender AND receiver already pay for spam as well as all other email. It's built into some ISP charges and it's charged by the bandwidth used on others. This idea, whether it's CPU cycles, cash, whatever, is akin to double charging. As mentioned in another reply, the solution lies in fixing the system (SMTP), not piling more crap on top of it. Remember the origin of the QWERTY keyboard as an example of how NOT to fix a problem.