It's a forum, where a member copy/pasted some of the old site's mission, and asked about them. There is probably more interesting stuff available on the web, regarding stoppoliceware, if anyone is interested. Or, google for any of these terms:
"The CBDTPA is a bill (S. 2048) proposed in Congress by Senators Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), along with Senators Daniel Inouye (D-HI), John Breaux (D-LA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The acronym stands for "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act". Note that the CBDTPA was originally known as the "SSSCA" while in draft form."
Who remembers stoppoliceware.org ? (don't bother clicking - the site has been abandoned, and it's for sale now)
Word was, some years ago, that "Da gubbermint wants to install spyware on your computer to track what you do, and it will report if you have any pirated software, among other things"
Stoppoliceware was one part of a multipronged attack on that idea, and those politicians who were considering it seemed to have abandoned their idea. So, the site was neglected, and finally ceased to exist.
We see that whole thing coming back, around the world today. RIAA and their ilk are looking for antipiracy, but da gubbermint is willing to go along with that program, so that they can install monitoring software of their own.
Unless, of course, there is enough of an outcry against the concept. Australia and New Zealand have been pretty effective in blocking this kind of crap - but I have little faith in the US. So precious few people have the least clue regarding the issues, and those who have a clue often buy into the "Think of the children" nonsense.
Thank God (and Torvalds) for Linux. There won't be any spyware on my machine. The bastards can spy from my internet gateway, but that's as close as they get, unless they come in with a warrant. At that point, I'll most certainly be joining the revolution!
Face it - most schools are set up to be tedious punishment for kids. I mean, kids need to be punished for being kids.
From time to time, I read of some super exceptional kid who finished high school years ahead of his age group, and is finishing his first degree when his former classmates are getting their diploma. But, for the most part, the schools just want your warm body locked in a classroom for 180 days a year, to keep that revenue coming in.
Given that school is intended to be punishment, is it any wonder that "popular" computer programs are stupid, asinine, difficult, boring, ugly, and all the rest? If people ENJOYED using a program, it would never get approved in any school district!
Exactly. The people who wrote the constitution understood that the government is the enemy. That is why they put so many restrictions on government. Unfortunately, all our technological advances in the past ~150 years has done an end run around the constitution.
"Our forefathers wouldn't have approved of reading private mail stored in the cloud!"
"Your forefathers couldn't DREAM of the cloud, so the constitution doesn't apply!"
GGP is on the mark, when he says "Use cash". But, in today's world, it seems a necessity that we are able to make purchases online. So, I have exactly what Recovery1 has - a plain debit card. I put money on the card, make my purchase, the card is dry, and no one can make any more withdrawals. Doesn't much matter if someone around the world gets my number, they can ONLY steal the money that I have put on the card that day, and if I've already made my purchases, the balance is zero, they can't steal anything at all.
But, their attempts to do so will trigger alarms, and the bank knows that security has been compromised!! In theory, the bank will contact me, and ask about those attempted purchases.
I avoid Chinese products. I've oft repeated the tale of my sons buying cheap but sexy-looking knives. They look awesome in the display case, but Dad whips out any good quality knife and carves holes into those fancy pieces of shit. I can't think of anything that China produces, that has any quality built into it.
When I go to the store, I'm always looking for a bargain - but the lowest price is often the worst bargain. Why buy something for 5 bucks, then watch it deteriorate and fall apart in a month or three, when you can buy a similar item for 15 bucks, and it lasts damned near forever?
Wrenches. I use wrenches every single day. Cheap wrenches round out and break under light to medium use. My tools cost more - sometimes as much as ten times more. But, I have wrenches that are ten years old. My latest purchase were Gear Wrenches. Great tools. At Christmas time, I bought a set of SAE and a set of metric, 60 bucks total. They simply don't break. They don't round out. I abuse the hell out of them, and they just work.
Cheapskates who buy a set of wrenches for 20 bucks replace them frequently. I've seen them come into the plant new, and be broken before the week is out.
But, it's not MY money they are wasting, so what do I care? Stupid is as stupid does, right?
Speaking of suck-asses - the wikileaks didn't show the "murder of civilians". Those "civilians" in the first portion of the video fired on American troops. The gunship was called in to neutralize the attackers. How was the gunship to know that there were CIVILIAN REPORTERS embedded in the enemy unit? Firing on the van? I can't justify that as easily. But, couch warriors doing the Monday morning quarterback routine are failures, plain and simple.
Oh - this is where you throw in the children. Look at the video again. At no point are you able to identify a child, until the soldier comes into view carrying a child to transportation. Children weren't fired on, per se. The fact is, some lame brain Darwin Award recipients brought the children into a battle zone.
Murder? Maybe. The people who had custody of the children might be guilty of murder, depending on the court you tried them in.
That's beside the point. Those people have been tried already, in hell. Hope they like their sentences!!
I speak as a lazy man. I WANT to work about 32 to 40 hours per week, and get a good paycheck. I've seldom done that, though. Those jobs that were paid by the hour, and limited to a "normal" (in the U.S.) workweek generally suck ass on payday. I've worked many jobs that required me to be "on the job" between 60 and 70 hours per week. Nice paydays, but LIFE SUCKS. A half hour commute, 12 hours on the job, another half hour commute, shower, fall into bed, get up, rinse and repeat. No life at all, dude. You forget the wife's name, you forget how many kids you have, the dog growls when you come home, and, worst of all, there's no time for TAH INTARTUBEZ!!! (A man HAS to get his priorities straight, right?)
15 hour days are ridiculous - that is slave labor, plain and simple.
If a person has to work more than 10 hours a day, and more than 70 hours per week, there is something inherently wrong with the wage system. The wages aren't fair here, they aren't fair there, they aren't fair anywhere in the world. I don't care how many relativist arguments you throw in - it's WRONG!
BTW - are you aware that most of those workers are very nearly prisoners in their job sites? They get to leave the plant for a few hours on Sundays, unless they are scheduled to work. They sleep right there, and they can't leave.
What's right about that, I ask?
To be fair, working all those hours, the kids aren't terribly interested in going anywhere. They're probably grateful that they can roll up in their blankets without driving across town.
I'm a swabbie. I was part of the ship's landing force. We, as a squad, went onto the pier to face the rioters, and to buy a few minutes so that the gunner's mates could set up their machine guns, while the rest of the gunner's mates manned the main guns. It takes about three minutes to bring the ship to combat readiness, and it was our job to buy those minutes. And, of course, to intimidate the closest rioters. It worked. It doesn't matter if you have 50, 500, or 5000 fellow rioters behind you - when you are part of a mob, and as few as a half dozen trained, uniformed, and armed men start stomp stepping at you, with bayonets fixed, you will tend to give way. It's human nature.
The carabanieri didn't give way, though. They were better trained than the mob, and they were better armed than we were. Thompson's outshoot M-14's in any match. But, they cops weren't out to get us, they were just there to stop us from leaving the pier. We didn't realize that at the time, or at least those of us on the pier didn't realize it. All we knew was that we were nose to nose with a superior enemy, and that those damned gunner's mates had BETTER be combat ready if the shit hit the fan.
I find few hits on the internet - and I have no access to the most promising hits. I've searched a couple times before, out of curiosity. I've often wondered how the Italians wrote the incident up.
Italy was rather violent in '78. I left a restaurant in Sicily, because I had a bad feeling. Didn't finish my meal, because I just felt like something was wrong. I got a couple blocks away, and heard gunfire erupt behind me. I just kept going - I was on liberty, unarmed, not even in uniform - whatever was going on was none of my business. Next day, the newspapers carried the story of some Mafia guy being killed.
This is probably a good place to make wise cracks about the Army and the Air Force, comparing them to the Marine Corps (part of the Department of the Navy, in case you didn't know) but I really would like to know what you're smoking.
Tell you what. Head on over to your closest Navy base, and try to get in. Take a group of friends, if you like. For best results, pick a nuclear capable base. Post back and tell us that the Corps isn't set to defend their bases physically. For that matter, you could choose someplace with nuclear capability and no marines.
The same year that we evacuated Beruit City, we were invited to visit Crotone, Italy. All unbeknown to us, the local communists staged a riot, protesting our nuclear presence in Italy. The plan seemed to be to storm the ship, take the nukes hostage, and embarrass the United States.
As part of the ship's defense force, I went out on the pier with 6 other guys, armed with M-14 rifles, while the gunner's mates set up M-2 machine guns on the bridge wings. The 5 inch guns were brought to bear on the city. We, the landing party, cleared the pier of rioters, then stood nose to nose with the carabinieri (spelling?) for an hour, while a couple local officials came aboard to talk to our captain.
Fortunately, there was no bloodshed, but we would have detonated that nuke in the harbor to prevent a bunch of rioters from getting it. People with nukes are pretty damned determined to make sure that they cannot possibly ever be used against thier own country.
Oh yeah. Compare that to the long list of "mistakes" that the Air Force has been found guilty of.
You're right. It's such a waste to be doing all that bombing. That's why I advocate putting a crowbar factory into space. No more bombs!
Alright - serious question. Where did you read that the US was going to bomb any place, based on a cyber attack? "returning fire in cyberspace" just doesn't equate to "Nuke 'em Captain!" It doesn't even equate to "Drop a dozen crowbars on this Arizona village".
Bahhh. I've spent much of my life saying and doing outrageous things. "Appropriate" seems to me another way of saying "politically correct". And, both are asinine bullshit.
If some broad has ever dropped dead after I made an outrageous proposal to her, then I've done my civic duty by eliminating a weak link from the gene pool. Where's my medal?
Mmmm. Pretty good point. But, the wench cheapens the suffering of everyone who really has experienced the problems she claims. Someone needs to bitch slap her and her guardian, then hear their evidence, then bitch slap them again.
Imagine. If the Egyptians had been able to do that, the pyramids might not be precisely pyramids!! Or, would they remain pyramids, with little branches supporting yet more pyramids? Hmmmm. Most interesting!
Sadly, most - well, maybe not "most", but "many" Americans judge another man's value by the size of his bank account. Or, by the apparent size of his bank account. That's why status symbols are so important here. A guy might be in debt way over his head, but if he can drive a Farrari, then he's a *S*U*C*C*E*S*S* - complete with the stars. Someone like myself who drives old clunkers because he's not willing to waste 20 to 50 grand on shine is a worthless nobody in America.
"Thirdly, the ISPs are greedy and wrong on this count. They have paying customers. Don't like it that they actually use all of the bandwidth you promised them? Tough luck, find another business model or don't promise something you can't deliver."
And, that is the entire story in a nutshell. I don't download and upload 24/7 - but if I felt like it, that's my right. I'm paying for the service, they promised a little more bandwidth than I EVER see, so I can use it. It ~15 gig of download per month is breaking them, then they should have priced it 5 or 10 dollars higher.
The killer is, I know that I have dozens of neighbors who go online to check their email, browse around for 1/2 hour, play a game or two, then shut their computer down. They never download ANYTHING. Even families with kids who download a lot of music don't use all their bandwidth. Phhht. Every one of us is being overcharged, if you ask me.
But, I don't want to see a pay system that charges for actual bandwidth used, either. You KNOW that when they convert, they'll round up, then pad the figures, so that I'll be paying triple my present fees, for less than half my bandwidth!
"only someone else with equally deep pockets", or a group of someone's who has the time, expertise, and coordination to do it for free. Like, maybe, Open Source?
Uhhhh - are you asking as a rational, thinking person, or are you asking as the normal distracted and in a hurry klutz who can't leave the house a few minutes early?
Rational people are driving a lot slower when the road is covered in ice, and the basic concept will remain the same: if you've not crossed that solid white line before the light turns yellow, you SHOULD be able to stop.
Of course, you can't see white lines on the road to well when they are covered with ice, can you? And, that STILL fails to address the issue of short yellows. Fort Worth and Dallas have been taken to task over short yellows. They are indeed set up to generate REVENUE, with no regard for safety.
You seem to be conveniently forgetting the reasons behind IE6's - uhhh - "extended" life. Those silly programming tricks that enabled crazily hacked "applications" to run only in that version of IE. Without all that nonsense, IE would have died long ago.
IE7, 8, and the upcoming version 9 don't have that legacy baggage.
Failure to support something as potentially popular as this new codec *could* spell IE's demise. I'm not predicting anything, but the possibility is there.
I mostly hold them to the same standards that I hold Microsoft, or any other huge corporation. Google looks good in comparison to almost all of the "competition". So far, at least. They could go and do something downright evil, like helping the next Nazi regime to catalog all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc, like Big Blue did about 70 years ago.
Dammit, have I godwined this thread? That sucks . . . .
I would disagree. The competition locks themselves out by keeping the best quality codecs closed source. If Google can equal the quality of an expensive codec, and make if open source with no royalties paid by anyone to anyone, that's great. But, don't blame Google for locking anyone out! It's still a "free market". Anyone can make an even better codec, and sell it for less!
Slashdot Mirror
http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:7AOx1mO30NoJ:www.erollisimarr.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D18794+stoppoliceware&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It's a forum, where a member copy/pasted some of the old site's mission, and asked about them. There is probably more interesting stuff available on the web, regarding stoppoliceware, if anyone is interested. Or, google for any of these terms:
"The CBDTPA is a bill (S. 2048) proposed in Congress by Senators Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), along with Senators Daniel Inouye (D-HI), John Breaux (D-LA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The acronym stands for "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act". Note that the CBDTPA was originally known as the "SSSCA" while in draft form."
Ahhhh - here's the bill:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.s2048.032102.html
Who remembers stoppoliceware.org ? (don't bother clicking - the site has been abandoned, and it's for sale now)
Word was, some years ago, that "Da gubbermint wants to install spyware on your computer to track what you do, and it will report if you have any pirated software, among other things"
Stoppoliceware was one part of a multipronged attack on that idea, and those politicians who were considering it seemed to have abandoned their idea. So, the site was neglected, and finally ceased to exist.
We see that whole thing coming back, around the world today. RIAA and their ilk are looking for antipiracy, but da gubbermint is willing to go along with that program, so that they can install monitoring software of their own.
Unless, of course, there is enough of an outcry against the concept. Australia and New Zealand have been pretty effective in blocking this kind of crap - but I have little faith in the US. So precious few people have the least clue regarding the issues, and those who have a clue often buy into the "Think of the children" nonsense.
Thank God (and Torvalds) for Linux. There won't be any spyware on my machine. The bastards can spy from my internet gateway, but that's as close as they get, unless they come in with a warrant. At that point, I'll most certainly be joining the revolution!
Face it - most schools are set up to be tedious punishment for kids. I mean, kids need to be punished for being kids.
From time to time, I read of some super exceptional kid who finished high school years ahead of his age group, and is finishing his first degree when his former classmates are getting their diploma. But, for the most part, the schools just want your warm body locked in a classroom for 180 days a year, to keep that revenue coming in.
Given that school is intended to be punishment, is it any wonder that "popular" computer programs are stupid, asinine, difficult, boring, ugly, and all the rest? If people ENJOYED using a program, it would never get approved in any school district!
Exactly. The people who wrote the constitution understood that the government is the enemy. That is why they put so many restrictions on government. Unfortunately, all our technological advances in the past ~150 years has done an end run around the constitution.
"Our forefathers wouldn't have approved of reading private mail stored in the cloud!"
"Your forefathers couldn't DREAM of the cloud, so the constitution doesn't apply!"
Well - why DID you think there were so many earthquakes? Our forefathers are having fits rolling over in their graves!
GGP is on the mark, when he says "Use cash". But, in today's world, it seems a necessity that we are able to make purchases online. So, I have exactly what Recovery1 has - a plain debit card. I put money on the card, make my purchase, the card is dry, and no one can make any more withdrawals. Doesn't much matter if someone around the world gets my number, they can ONLY steal the money that I have put on the card that day, and if I've already made my purchases, the balance is zero, they can't steal anything at all.
But, their attempts to do so will trigger alarms, and the bank knows that security has been compromised!! In theory, the bank will contact me, and ask about those attempted purchases.
I avoid Chinese products. I've oft repeated the tale of my sons buying cheap but sexy-looking knives. They look awesome in the display case, but Dad whips out any good quality knife and carves holes into those fancy pieces of shit. I can't think of anything that China produces, that has any quality built into it.
When I go to the store, I'm always looking for a bargain - but the lowest price is often the worst bargain. Why buy something for 5 bucks, then watch it deteriorate and fall apart in a month or three, when you can buy a similar item for 15 bucks, and it lasts damned near forever?
Wrenches. I use wrenches every single day. Cheap wrenches round out and break under light to medium use. My tools cost more - sometimes as much as ten times more. But, I have wrenches that are ten years old. My latest purchase were Gear Wrenches. Great tools. At Christmas time, I bought a set of SAE and a set of metric, 60 bucks total. They simply don't break. They don't round out. I abuse the hell out of them, and they just work.
Cheapskates who buy a set of wrenches for 20 bucks replace them frequently. I've seen them come into the plant new, and be broken before the week is out.
But, it's not MY money they are wasting, so what do I care? Stupid is as stupid does, right?
Speaking of suck-asses - the wikileaks didn't show the "murder of civilians". Those "civilians" in the first portion of the video fired on American troops. The gunship was called in to neutralize the attackers. How was the gunship to know that there were CIVILIAN REPORTERS embedded in the enemy unit? Firing on the van? I can't justify that as easily. But, couch warriors doing the Monday morning quarterback routine are failures, plain and simple.
Oh - this is where you throw in the children. Look at the video again. At no point are you able to identify a child, until the soldier comes into view carrying a child to transportation. Children weren't fired on, per se. The fact is, some lame brain Darwin Award recipients brought the children into a battle zone.
Murder? Maybe. The people who had custody of the children might be guilty of murder, depending on the court you tried them in.
That's beside the point. Those people have been tried already, in hell. Hope they like their sentences!!
I speak as a lazy man. I WANT to work about 32 to 40 hours per week, and get a good paycheck. I've seldom done that, though. Those jobs that were paid by the hour, and limited to a "normal" (in the U.S.) workweek generally suck ass on payday. I've worked many jobs that required me to be "on the job" between 60 and 70 hours per week. Nice paydays, but LIFE SUCKS. A half hour commute, 12 hours on the job, another half hour commute, shower, fall into bed, get up, rinse and repeat. No life at all, dude. You forget the wife's name, you forget how many kids you have, the dog growls when you come home, and, worst of all, there's no time for TAH INTARTUBEZ!!! (A man HAS to get his priorities straight, right?)
15 hour days are ridiculous - that is slave labor, plain and simple.
If a person has to work more than 10 hours a day, and more than 70 hours per week, there is something inherently wrong with the wage system. The wages aren't fair here, they aren't fair there, they aren't fair anywhere in the world. I don't care how many relativist arguments you throw in - it's WRONG!
BTW - are you aware that most of those workers are very nearly prisoners in their job sites? They get to leave the plant for a few hours on Sundays, unless they are scheduled to work. They sleep right there, and they can't leave.
What's right about that, I ask?
To be fair, working all those hours, the kids aren't terribly interested in going anywhere. They're probably grateful that they can roll up in their blankets without driving across town.
You, sir, want shadowstats.com
The real unemployment rates exceed 20%. Low figure would be ~22%, while my own figures would be closer to 30%.
Negative.
I'm a swabbie. I was part of the ship's landing force. We, as a squad, went onto the pier to face the rioters, and to buy a few minutes so that the gunner's mates could set up their machine guns, while the rest of the gunner's mates manned the main guns. It takes about three minutes to bring the ship to combat readiness, and it was our job to buy those minutes. And, of course, to intimidate the closest rioters. It worked. It doesn't matter if you have 50, 500, or 5000 fellow rioters behind you - when you are part of a mob, and as few as a half dozen trained, uniformed, and armed men start stomp stepping at you, with bayonets fixed, you will tend to give way. It's human nature.
The carabanieri didn't give way, though. They were better trained than the mob, and they were better armed than we were. Thompson's outshoot M-14's in any match. But, they cops weren't out to get us, they were just there to stop us from leaving the pier. We didn't realize that at the time, or at least those of us on the pier didn't realize it. All we knew was that we were nose to nose with a superior enemy, and that those damned gunner's mates had BETTER be combat ready if the shit hit the fan.
No Marines at all. Just us sailors.
For background on the political situation at the time, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Italy "The Socialists enter the Government"
I find few hits on the internet - and I have no access to the most promising hits. I've searched a couple times before, out of curiosity. I've often wondered how the Italians wrote the incident up.
Italy was rather violent in '78. I left a restaurant in Sicily, because I had a bad feeling. Didn't finish my meal, because I just felt like something was wrong. I got a couple blocks away, and heard gunfire erupt behind me. I just kept going - I was on liberty, unarmed, not even in uniform - whatever was going on was none of my business. Next day, the newspapers carried the story of some Mafia guy being killed.
Politics were wild, to say the least.
Uhhhh - huh?
This is probably a good place to make wise cracks about the Army and the Air Force, comparing them to the Marine Corps (part of the Department of the Navy, in case you didn't know) but I really would like to know what you're smoking.
Tell you what. Head on over to your closest Navy base, and try to get in. Take a group of friends, if you like. For best results, pick a nuclear capable base. Post back and tell us that the Corps isn't set to defend their bases physically. For that matter, you could choose someplace with nuclear capability and no marines.
The same year that we evacuated Beruit City, we were invited to visit Crotone, Italy. All unbeknown to us, the local communists staged a riot, protesting our nuclear presence in Italy. The plan seemed to be to storm the ship, take the nukes hostage, and embarrass the United States.
As part of the ship's defense force, I went out on the pier with 6 other guys, armed with M-14 rifles, while the gunner's mates set up M-2 machine guns on the bridge wings. The 5 inch guns were brought to bear on the city. We, the landing party, cleared the pier of rioters, then stood nose to nose with the carabinieri (spelling?) for an hour, while a couple local officials came aboard to talk to our captain.
Fortunately, there was no bloodshed, but we would have detonated that nuke in the harbor to prevent a bunch of rioters from getting it. People with nukes are pretty damned determined to make sure that they cannot possibly ever be used against thier own country.
Oh yeah. Compare that to the long list of "mistakes" that the Air Force has been found guilty of.
You're right. It's such a waste to be doing all that bombing. That's why I advocate putting a crowbar factory into space. No more bombs!
Alright - serious question. Where did you read that the US was going to bomb any place, based on a cyber attack? "returning fire in cyberspace" just doesn't equate to "Nuke 'em Captain!" It doesn't even equate to "Drop a dozen crowbars on this Arizona village".
Bahhh. I've spent much of my life saying and doing outrageous things. "Appropriate" seems to me another way of saying "politically correct". And, both are asinine bullshit.
If some broad has ever dropped dead after I made an outrageous proposal to her, then I've done my civic duty by eliminating a weak link from the gene pool. Where's my medal?
Mmmm. Pretty good point. But, the wench cheapens the suffering of everyone who really has experienced the problems she claims. Someone needs to bitch slap her and her guardian, then hear their evidence, then bitch slap them again.
You missed the engineering feat in the summary.
"the pyramid branches out"
Imagine. If the Egyptians had been able to do that, the pyramids might not be precisely pyramids!! Or, would they remain pyramids, with little branches supporting yet more pyramids? Hmmmm. Most interesting!
Sadly, most - well, maybe not "most", but "many" Americans judge another man's value by the size of his bank account. Or, by the apparent size of his bank account. That's why status symbols are so important here. A guy might be in debt way over his head, but if he can drive a Farrari, then he's a *S*U*C*C*E*S*S* - complete with the stars. Someone like myself who drives old clunkers because he's not willing to waste 20 to 50 grand on shine is a worthless nobody in America.
"Thirdly, the ISPs are greedy and wrong on this count. They have paying customers. Don't like it that they actually use all of the bandwidth you promised them? Tough luck, find another business model or don't promise something you can't deliver."
And, that is the entire story in a nutshell. I don't download and upload 24/7 - but if I felt like it, that's my right. I'm paying for the service, they promised a little more bandwidth than I EVER see, so I can use it. It ~15 gig of download per month is breaking them, then they should have priced it 5 or 10 dollars higher.
The killer is, I know that I have dozens of neighbors who go online to check their email, browse around for 1/2 hour, play a game or two, then shut their computer down. They never download ANYTHING. Even families with kids who download a lot of music don't use all their bandwidth. Phhht. Every one of us is being overcharged, if you ask me.
But, I don't want to see a pay system that charges for actual bandwidth used, either. You KNOW that when they convert, they'll round up, then pad the figures, so that I'll be paying triple my present fees, for less than half my bandwidth!
"only someone else with equally deep pockets", or a group of someone's who has the time, expertise, and coordination to do it for free. Like, maybe, Open Source?
Uhhhh - are you asking as a rational, thinking person, or are you asking as the normal distracted and in a hurry klutz who can't leave the house a few minutes early?
Rational people are driving a lot slower when the road is covered in ice, and the basic concept will remain the same: if you've not crossed that solid white line before the light turns yellow, you SHOULD be able to stop.
Of course, you can't see white lines on the road to well when they are covered with ice, can you? And, that STILL fails to address the issue of short yellows. Fort Worth and Dallas have been taken to task over short yellows. They are indeed set up to generate REVENUE, with no regard for safety.
"I can't read a damn thing!"
Coming soon, to a galaxy near you, will be a COMMUNITY COLLEGE, complete with a REMEDIAL READING class! Enroll early, and avoid the rush!
You seem to be conveniently forgetting the reasons behind IE6's - uhhh - "extended" life. Those silly programming tricks that enabled crazily hacked "applications" to run only in that version of IE. Without all that nonsense, IE would have died long ago.
IE7, 8, and the upcoming version 9 don't have that legacy baggage.
Failure to support something as potentially popular as this new codec *could* spell IE's demise. I'm not predicting anything, but the possibility is there.
I mostly hold them to the same standards that I hold Microsoft, or any other huge corporation. Google looks good in comparison to almost all of the "competition". So far, at least. They could go and do something downright evil, like helping the next Nazi regime to catalog all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc, like Big Blue did about 70 years ago.
Dammit, have I godwined this thread? That sucks . . . .
I would disagree. The competition locks themselves out by keeping the best quality codecs closed source. If Google can equal the quality of an expensive codec, and make if open source with no royalties paid by anyone to anyone, that's great. But, don't blame Google for locking anyone out! It's still a "free market". Anyone can make an even better codec, and sell it for less!