>>>the world and the UN were happily behind Afghanistan, but never supported going into Iraq. Perhaps next time you'll listen to the UN, though I doubt it. >>>
Next time the European Union will probably be a superpower, and if the U.S. tries another boned-headed tactic like this one, the EU president will respond in kind: "If you go to war against Iraq, then you go to war against the E.U."
It was a powerful Europe that kept the U.S. "bound up" in the Americas during the 1800s, and it will probably take a powerful EU to have the same effect during the later part of the 2000s.
>>> the president (the guy who actually declares war)
What an ignorant fuck. Have you never read that "WE THE PEOPLE" document in your school or spare time? Not even once? That is so pathetic it makes me tear-up; what an incredibly lousy system our government schools have become when students don't learn about their own U.S. Constitution (the contract between the People and the Government).
It is the People's Representatives assembled in Congress that "declare war", not the president. Furthermore nothing THIS current president (Bush) has to say will convince me the war was necessary. Same applies to that other ignorant boob who started the Vietnam War. What was his name? Oh yeah, Kennedy. They are just one man; nothing more.
The real decision of when to go to war belongs in the hands of the People, as voiced through their representatives in congress, because after all, it's the People who will have to do the dying.
DO YOU THINK YELLING IN BOLD MAKES YOUR POINT "THE TRUTH"? Sorry buddy but I'm not buying it. A death is a death, and it doesn't matter if it happens on one day, or if it's spread out over ten years (like the 400,000 people killed in cars this past decade). 3000 dead people is sad, but during the same day almost 7000 people died in the U.S. from accidents or old age. Why are you not mourning for them?
Probably because you realize that death is a part of life; it can not be stopped. Nobody lives forever. The response of spending trillions of dollars in a foreign war, just because the U.S. yearly death rate increased by 0.1% in 2001, is over-reacting.
Well if we had Arabs wandering around OUR country, bossing-us around, I'm sure some of our citizens would try to strike-back as well. Ya know, like we did in 1775-1783 with the Brits.
I cannot blame certain Saudis being annoyed with our presence in their country. I agree that we should butt-out of their affairs.
Computers dominated? I disagree. The most popular computer ever made only sold 30 million (C=64).
In comparison, during the same 1982-92 timeframe the NES/Famicom sold twice as much. People were buying 2 NESes for every 1 C64 sold.
Which makes sense because a console only requires a $200 investment, whereas a computer requires buying external peripherals like tape drives, disk drives, joysticks,..., all of which increase the computer's price to $500. Customers naturally gravitate towards the cheaper product (console), especially if those customers are "parents" buying "toys" for their kid.
>>>The ~3000 figure refers to what the US DoD has agreed to release.
No the 3000 figure refers to how many people died in the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks ya dope. Now go re-read my message again, since you clearly didn't understand it the first time.
>>>There's no real central point of authority to surrender.
Precisely. This is why I was against the war from day one. Yes it's sad ~3000 people died, but the same number of people die EVERY MONTH in car accidents. Just since 9/11 almost 300,000 people have died in automobiles. We don't declare war on Ford or General Motors due to this problem, do we? No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
The proper response, given the SMALL number of people who died, was to mourn the losses and then get back to living. How Bush reacted was totally disproportional to the small amount of damage received (again, no worse than how many people die in accidents every month).
>>>I'm a dad - should I be raiding my neighbors' wallets and giving the proceeds to my kids? (Tongue firmly planted in cheek for the humor-impaired.)
Haha.:-) That would be funny, but you are doing exactly that when you make your neighbors pay your kids' school tuition. Of course in this case I don't mind, because kids can't provide for themselves.
My main complaint is when perfectly healthy working adults expect others to pay their bills. Like when they go to the doctor, and then they expect their neighbors' to pay the bill. Bzzzz. Pay your own medical bill; you have money; use it.
Holy crap. Talk about clueless. A Bluray uses 50 megabit/s. An HD DVD uses 30 megabit/s.
The 15 megabit/s I quoted for NBC's high-definition broadcast of Heroes is VERY compressed, and if it became any smaller you would see mosquitos, blocking, and other annoying artifacts.
Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you. What you are doing when you take an electronic copy of a book without payment is no different.
>>>Authors, "artists", movie stars... They don't earn $x.00 per hour
If I write the "Windows killer" OS all by my lonesome, and release it in 2009, don't I fall into the same category as an artist? I don't get paid by the hour, but don't I still deserve to get paid for my labor/effort?
You seem to have the strange notion only people who get paid "by the hour" deserve to earn money. And the rest of us do not.
>>>Voluntarily spending labor on something no one is willing to pay you for, regardless of the reason, is not slavery.
Microsoft generates new versions of Windows without pay. Why? Because they expect to recover their costs upon release (circa 2010). In this respect an author like Stephen King is no different.
A lot of people forget that taking people's labor, without payment, is ALSO stealing. That's why I compared it to slavery, because slavery by itself would have been okay, if the plantations owners had simply PAID the people doing the work. It would have been similar to how Migrant workers operate today.
The average TV writer only earns $15,000 a year. Book authors earn much much less. Hardly what I call rich.... in fact it's about the same rate as a Walmart employee. THIS is how you "thank" the people who provide your entertainment???
>>>It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.
It is a privilege to be a programmer, engineer, or salesmen. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches. You will work for $6 an hour and like it! /end sarcasm
Obviously I disagree with you. The writer deserves to get paid for his work the same as you do.
>>>the work can now be distributed extremely cheaply AND indefinitely
That is true. Distribution is essentially free. So perhaps instead of "cost of book", an author should start charging for labor. Minimum wage is $6/hour last I checked, so maybe authors should freely-distribute the material as password-protected text files, but if you want the "key" to unlock the file, you must pay for 1 or 2 hours worth of labor.
Stephen King: "Here's my latest work. I am charging two hours of labor for each copy. Please use paypal or major credit card to pay for my wages. Thanks!"
Books are a little different. It usually consists of four key people - an author, an editor, a publisher, and a salesman (to convince bookstores to put it on their shelves). So the author gets to keep a MUCH bigger chunk of the pie than a song-writer who might be just one of hundreds behind a song's creation.
Bottom Line: I think people like Stephen King deserve to earn money for their sweat, labor, and time invested in their books. None of ye has a right to take Mr. King's labor without just compensation. If you enjoy King's work, pay the man so he can at least buy himself some food.
>>>Otherwise, all that was shown was a brief snippet of text surrounding the search term.
Not true. I've read whole books on google. If it had been fair-use such as a single page, then you're right, it would have been okay. But google presented searchers with virtually the entire book.
>>>Or in your world are used book stores and libraries also "Plantation Masters"?
Not the same. They PAY for their books, whereas Google did not; google just took. ----- Furthermore the library book eventually falls-apart, requiring the library to purchase another book. So in effect a library is purchasing a limited-use license of maybe 10,000 reads. The authors didn't mind a $25 sale of 10,000 reads, followed by another $25 sale of 10,000 reads, and so on.
But a $25 sale with millions of reads, they understandably find objectionable. I would too if I was a writer. You can't live off a single sale of just $25.
>>> 1. Whipping the authors. 2. Raping the authors. 3. Taking their children away. 4. Denying them any personal rights
Nope. You're just making them work without pay for their creations. How would you like to spend time creating a beautiful piece of programming & your employer just says "thanks" and takes it w/o paying you?
I was just having a bit of fun with my Commodore - just to see if the web could be accessed with ancient technology. I'm now back on my 3000 megahertz PC. It's just a hobbyist thing; no different than someone who writes Linux code for fun.
- The C64 I've owned since 1987 (purchased just a few months before Star Trek TNG premiered). - Ditto the modem which was made by Aprotek. - And I use an S-video connection so I can play the classic 8-bit games on my 27" television. Or surf the web.;-)
>>>the guy had the pictures on his computers. guilty... it's pretty cut and dry.
I agree. In fact I think the police should continue their search for child porn, and start searching all 110 million homes in America, confiscating PCs without search warrant, and comparing hash values on the drives.
We'll start with your house first.
What's that? You don't want the inconvenience of warrantless searches and losing your PC for a month while its scanned? WELL NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE YOU DURNED FOOL! That's why the requirement for a judge-issued warrant exists; to stop the government from going house-to-house-to-house harassing citizens!
DUH.
The government is the People's Servant, not the other way round.
>>>Ideologically though, one is far left, one is far right.
Perhaps the reason they were *practically* identical to one another, is because if you move far enough to the left, and far enough to the right, you will eventually meet yourself. (The universe is spherical.) So there's no real difference between National Socialists or Communists - they are both just authoritarian control freaks.
I recommend you go a wee bit "north", and take a look at the ideas of the libertarians or the anarchists. "We would have no government at all, if it were possible. It is only to preserve our rights that we resort to government at all." - Thomas Jefferson
Not free? Well that sucks. I get to watch 25 channels of high-definition digital television completely-and-totally free, and all I need is an antenna.
>>>a total of 12,276 access points
That's it? That doesn't sound like enough bandwidth to support streaming of 1,000,000 copies of Doctor Who (if broadcast television were ended, leaving only the wireless internet to supply television). I guess we still need the "freeview" broadcast television after all.
- - posted with Lynx, a Commodore 64 web browser (using 2 kbit/s modem)
Slashdot Mirror
>>>the world and the UN were happily behind Afghanistan, but never supported going into Iraq. Perhaps next time you'll listen to the UN, though I doubt it.
>>>
Next time the European Union will probably be a superpower, and if the U.S. tries another boned-headed tactic like this one, the EU president will respond in kind: "If you go to war against Iraq, then you go to war against the E.U."
It was a powerful Europe that kept the U.S. "bound up" in the Americas during the 1800s, and it will probably take a powerful EU to have the same effect during the later part of the 2000s.
>>> the president (the guy who actually declares war)
What an ignorant fuck. Have you never read that "WE THE PEOPLE" document in your school or spare time? Not even once? That is so pathetic it makes me tear-up; what an incredibly lousy system our government schools have become when students don't learn about their own U.S. Constitution (the contract between the People and the Government).
It is the People's Representatives assembled in Congress that "declare war", not the president. Furthermore nothing THIS current president (Bush) has to say will convince me the war was necessary. Same applies to that other ignorant boob who started the Vietnam War. What was his name? Oh yeah, Kennedy. They are just one man; nothing more.
The real decision of when to go to war belongs in the hands of the People, as voiced through their representatives in congress, because after all, it's the People who will have to do the dying.
DO YOU THINK YELLING IN BOLD MAKES YOUR POINT "THE TRUTH"? Sorry buddy but I'm not buying it. A death is a death, and it doesn't matter if it happens on one day, or if it's spread out over ten years (like the 400,000 people killed in cars this past decade). 3000 dead people is sad, but during the same day almost 7000 people died in the U.S. from accidents or old age. Why are you not mourning for them?
Probably because you realize that death is a part of life; it can not be stopped. Nobody lives forever. The response of spending trillions of dollars in a foreign war, just because the U.S. yearly death rate increased by 0.1% in 2001, is over-reacting.
Like a teenager.
Well if we had Arabs wandering around OUR country, bossing-us around, I'm sure some of our citizens would try to strike-back as well. Ya know, like we did in 1775-1783 with the Brits.
I cannot blame certain Saudis being annoyed with our presence in their country. I agree that we should butt-out of their affairs.
Computers dominated? I disagree. The most popular computer ever made only sold 30 million (C=64).
In comparison, during the same 1982-92 timeframe the NES/Famicom sold twice as much. People were buying 2 NESes for every 1 C64 sold.
Which makes sense because a console only requires a $200 investment, whereas a computer requires buying external peripherals like tape drives, disk drives, joysticks, ..., all of which increase the computer's price to $500. Customers naturally gravitate towards the cheaper product (console), especially if those customers are "parents" buying "toys" for their kid.
>>>The ~3000 figure refers to what the US DoD has agreed to release.
No the 3000 figure refers to how many people died in the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks ya dope. Now go re-read my message again, since you clearly didn't understand it the first time.
The Neo what?
>>>There's no real central point of authority to surrender.
Precisely. This is why I was against the war from day one. Yes it's sad ~3000 people died, but the same number of people die EVERY MONTH in car accidents. Just since 9/11 almost 300,000 people have died in automobiles. We don't declare war on Ford or General Motors due to this problem, do we? No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
The proper response, given the SMALL number of people who died, was to mourn the losses and then get back to living. How Bush reacted was totally disproportional to the small amount of damage received (again, no worse than how many people die in accidents every month).
>>>I'm a dad - should I be raiding my neighbors' wallets and giving the proceeds to my kids? (Tongue firmly planted in cheek for the humor-impaired.)
Haha. :-) That would be funny, but you are doing exactly that when you make your neighbors pay your kids' school tuition. Of course in this case I don't mind, because kids can't provide for themselves.
My main complaint is when perfectly healthy working adults expect others to pay their bills. Like when they go to the doctor, and then they expect their neighbors' to pay the bill. Bzzzz. Pay your own medical bill; you have money; use it.
>>>15 Mbps? Holy crap. Talk about overkill.
Holy crap. Talk about clueless. A Bluray uses 50 megabit/s. An HD DVD uses 30 megabit/s.
The 15 megabit/s I quoted for NBC's high-definition broadcast of Heroes is VERY compressed, and if it became any smaller you would see mosquitos, blocking, and other annoying artifacts.
Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you. What you are doing when you take an electronic copy of a book without payment is no different.
Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you.
What you are doing when you take a book without payment is no different.
>>>Authors, "artists", movie stars... They don't earn $x.00 per hour
If I write the "Windows killer" OS all by my lonesome, and release it in 2009, don't I fall into the same category as an artist? I don't get paid by the hour, but don't I still deserve to get paid for my labor/effort?
You seem to have the strange notion only people who get paid "by the hour" deserve to earn money. And the rest of us do not.
>>>Voluntarily spending labor on something no one is willing to pay you for, regardless of the reason, is not slavery.
Microsoft generates new versions of Windows without pay. Why? Because they expect to recover their costs upon release (circa 2010). In this respect an author like Stephen King is no different.
A lot of people forget that taking people's labor, without payment, is ALSO stealing. That's why I compared it to slavery, because slavery by itself would have been okay, if the plantations owners had simply PAID the people doing the work. It would have been similar to how Migrant workers operate today.
The average TV writer only earns $15,000 a year. Book authors earn much much less. Hardly what I call rich.... in fact it's about the same rate as a Walmart employee. THIS is how you "thank" the people who provide your entertainment???
>>>It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.
It is a privilege to be a programmer, engineer, or salesmen. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches. You will work for $6 an hour and like it! /end sarcasm
Obviously I disagree with you. The writer deserves to get paid for his work the same as you do.
>>>the work can now be distributed extremely cheaply AND indefinitely
That is true. Distribution is essentially free. So perhaps instead of "cost of book", an author should start charging for labor. Minimum wage is $6/hour last I checked, so maybe authors should freely-distribute the material as password-protected text files, but if you want the "key" to unlock the file, you must pay for 1 or 2 hours worth of labor.
Stephen King: "Here's my latest work. I am charging two hours of labor for each copy. Please use paypal or major credit card to pay for my wages. Thanks!"
Books are a little different. It usually consists of four key people - an author, an editor, a publisher, and a salesman (to convince bookstores to put it on their shelves). So the author gets to keep a MUCH bigger chunk of the pie than a song-writer who might be just one of hundreds behind a song's creation.
Bottom Line: I think people like Stephen King deserve to earn money for their sweat, labor, and time invested in their books. None of ye has a right to take Mr. King's labor without just compensation. If you enjoy King's work, pay the man so he can at least buy himself some food.
>>>Otherwise, all that was shown was a brief snippet of text surrounding the search term.
Not true. I've read whole books on google. If it had been fair-use such as a single page, then you're right, it would have been okay. But google presented searchers with virtually the entire book.
>>>Or in your world are used book stores and libraries also "Plantation Masters"?
Not the same. They PAY for their books, whereas Google did not; google just took. ----- Furthermore the library book eventually falls-apart, requiring the library to purchase another book. So in effect a library is purchasing a limited-use license of maybe 10,000 reads. The authors didn't mind a $25 sale of 10,000 reads, followed by another $25 sale of 10,000 reads, and so on.
But a $25 sale with millions of reads, they understandably find objectionable. I would too if I was a writer. You can't live off a single sale of just $25.
>>> 1. Whipping the authors. 2. Raping the authors. 3. Taking their children away. 4. Denying them any personal rights
Nope. You're just making them work without pay for their creations. How would you like to spend time creating a beautiful piece of programming & your employer just says "thanks" and takes it w/o paying you?
I was just having a bit of fun with my Commodore - just to see if the web could be accessed with ancient technology. I'm now back on my 3000 megahertz PC. It's just a hobbyist thing; no different than someone who writes Linux code for fun.
- The C64 I've owned since 1987 (purchased just a few months before Star Trek TNG premiered). ;-)
- Ditto the modem which was made by Aprotek.
- And I use an S-video connection so I can play the classic 8-bit games on my 27" television. Or surf the web.
>>>the guy had the pictures on his computers. guilty... it's pretty cut and dry.
I agree. In fact I think the police should continue their search for child porn, and start searching all 110 million homes in America, confiscating PCs without search warrant, and comparing hash values on the drives.
We'll start with your house first.
What's that? You don't want the inconvenience of warrantless searches and losing your PC for a month while its scanned? WELL NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE YOU DURNED FOOL! That's why the requirement for a judge-issued warrant exists; to stop the government from going house-to-house-to-house harassing citizens!
DUH.
The government is the People's Servant, not the other way round.
>>>Ideologically though, one is far left, one is far right.
Perhaps the reason they were *practically* identical to one another, is because if you move far enough to the left, and far enough to the right, you will eventually meet yourself. (The universe is spherical.) So there's no real difference between National Socialists or Communists - they are both just authoritarian control freaks.
I recommend you go a wee bit "north", and take a look at the ideas of the libertarians or the anarchists. "We would have no government at all, if it were possible. It is only to preserve our rights that we resort to government at all." - Thomas Jefferson
World's Smallest Quiz - http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp
Not free? Well that sucks. I get to watch 25 channels of high-definition digital television completely-and-totally free, and all I need is an antenna.
>>>a total of 12,276 access points
That's it? That doesn't sound like enough bandwidth to support streaming of 1,000,000 copies of Doctor Who (if broadcast television were ended, leaving only the wireless internet to supply television). I guess we still need the "freeview" broadcast television after all.
-
- posted with Lynx, a Commodore 64 web browser (using 2 kbit/s modem)