The new format was more durable (could be played over and over again without degradation),
BluRay also fits this description, since it is far more scratch-resistant than DVDs.
Laserdiscs also fit this description, vs. VHS.
and provided the viewer with quite a few new valuable features
All these features were also on LaserDiscs.
The one feature LaserDiscs (like Beta) didn't have was the capacity to include an entire movie on one disc. With BluRay, unlike DVDs, you will have a enough space on each disc to include 3+ hour movies. No need to swap discs/sides.
I just can't see regular people willing to invest in new equipment and update their video libraries just for that,
But nobody needs to update their video libraries at all. You can continue playing your old DVDs on the new HD players, in their current resolutions.
(heck, a lot of people still prefer full screen versions of DVD movies).
That has something to do with the fact that most everyone has a fullscreen TV, so the widescreen version has drawbacks. With HDTV, I can't see any such drawbacks, other than the potential prices.
Provide the players and movies are all reasonably priced, it's got a very good chance to catch-on. If the HD movies are all $50, then yes, it will be DOA.
I doubt many people are going to go out and buy a new TV so they can watch HighDef Discs. In the US, most everyone is going to end up with a new digital TV over the next few years, with or without HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
2) A new HD-DVD/blueray player @ £?
It's most likely that you are going to need to buy a new DVD player to hook-up to your new digital TV, anyhow.
3) Copies of Films I possibly already have to play on it @ £?
Nonsense. You can play all of your current DVDs on the next gen of DVD players. No re-buying necessary, unless you're die-hard, and WANT to spend money to get copies of your current movies in HD.
4) An upgrade to my satalite equipment to receive HD content (2 channels atm?) @ £?
The two big sat companies in the US essentially GIVE AWAY their equipment, and I don't see the upgrade to HDTV equipment being any different. They will also be carrying far more HDTV channels, very soon.
5) An upgraded sat subscripition. @ £?
This is up in the air. I think it's most likely the satellite and cable companies will charge about the same rates for HD as they do for current television. They are making such huge profits as-is, and they have equal operating costs whether they have 1 subscriber, or 1 billion.
So, to summarize.
1) Everyone will be getting a new HDTV eventually. 2) You'll want a new DVD player, and high-def ones may be nearly as cheap. 3) You don't need to re-buy any movies. 4) Probably Free. 5) Probably the same as current prices.
Because in 5 years time, when all this stuff is priced at a more reasonable level [...] there WILL be a new/better/cheaper format on the horizon
That's a pretty ridiculous claim to make. We've stuck with the current TV standard for 50+ years now. I can't see anything above HDTV comming along in the next few decades. Since BluRay/HD-DVD have enough room to do full-resolution HDTV, it's very unlikely something else will come along to replace it on HDTVs.
Even worse is MANY consumers (well those of us with better than NTSC) WONT be able to see the real benefits to the upgrade
Absolutely ridiculous. No doubt you're talking about PAL, which is just slightly higher res than NTSC... HDTV DOUBLES the vertical resolution, and almost triples the horizontal resolution.
That would be 1.8 times the vertical, and 2.5 times the horizontal, if upgrading from PAL. Plus, you'll get a 20% increase in refresh-rate, which is a huge improvement.
and are NOT going to be replacing that DVD collection;
NOBODY NEEDS TO REPLACE THEIR DVD COLLECTION.
This is quite probably going to lead to this generation of "technology" being largely shuned in the market place
Since you've got almost everything else wrong, I can't see any reason to have any faith in your conclusions.
or only occupying a niche in the "videophiles" high end market and eventually going the way of laserdisc!!
LaserDiscs were huge and cumbersome, and you needed multiple discs for one single movie. The price was also prohibitive. BluRay/HD-DVD are certain not to suffer from the first problem. The second, though, is entirely up to the studios. Whether the HighDef formats live or die depends on the prices of the movies released for them, and the difficulty of circumventing the copy protection to a lesser extent.
Since I don't know how they are going to price the HD movies, I can't say if it will be a success or not, but it's certainly got everything else going for it.
But it doesn't mater what you think, it's against the law and it's not really that hard to understand why.
If you're using that rationale, then everyone going 1 MPH over the speed-limit should be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone playing an Encrypted DVD on an unlicensed player should be arrested. Etc. After all, IT'S THE LAW. Going 1 MPH above the speed limit is therefore a horrible thing. You know, it's also the law that toddlers can't ride in the front-seat in cars (no mention of an exception for those without airbags, or disabled ones). Clearly, those people using their own common-sense despite the overly-broad law are also in the wrong.
Or, on a more inflamatory note, I could bring up the fact that "stealing" slaves from their owners was against the law in the past.
This oh-so elevated "law" of which you speak-of like the word of god on high, is actually quite a funny thing. The law is decided by the elected representatives you vote for. Basically, that means one individual breaking the law will result in punishment, while a few million individuals breaking the law will force a change to the laws.
Just don't try to justify that you are doing the right thing. Because you aren't.
You say "THE LAW" "THE LAW" over and over again, and then end it with a moral statement. What is right or wrong has little to do with the law. You've made no argument that downloading music is wrong, so your statement that it's wrong, is baseless.
Clearly, they are doing this simply to spit those of us who use XMAME. We just got rid of refresh-rate mismatches by switching to LCDs, and now the LCDs are going to be getting a 60Hz refresh-rate...
DAMN YOU PHILIPS!!! WHY WON'T YOU JUST LET ME PLAY SHINOBI???
I must admit that I've never even noticed this problem with LCD screens. Maybe I'm just incredibly unobservant, but you'd think that something that's known as "the main drawback of LCD TVs" would be noticable to even the casual watcher.
It's not easily noticable with normal action. It just looks slightly blury around motion, which can match with the colors well-enough.
Where it looks REALLY bad is in animation, since you have the sharp contrasts between neighboring pixels. And also, if you watch most news programs, they like to have sharp transitions, like a picture sliding-in from the side of the screen. These quick transitions look very blurry.
That said, this all goes back to the first rule of video. If you can't see it, DON'T LOOK FOR IT. Once you concentrate enough to see some artifact, you'll find it very, very difficult to ignore in the future. Your eyes will be drawn to it from then on. Some people go as far as getting rid of their TVs shortly after they first spot some defect that was pointed out to them.
Windows have the distinct disadvantage of being very poor insulation, being nearly useless in large (office) buildings, and letting UV and infrared light through. Skylights have many of the same problems, and are also the weak-link of a roof.
If done correctly, this could eliminate all of those problems. Of course, it's probably not practical for a home.
Do this, and the EFF will have a larger, more diverse database of printer identifications than any manufacturer.
You're assuming manufacturers won't share this data with anyone who asks. There's no
And just where's their Privacy Policy on this?
There's no need for a privacy policy. You are mailing this to them, so you merely need to omit a return address, and you're anonymous. If you're the tin-foil-hat type, just wait until the next time you have to go out of town, and then mail it from some city you're just passing-though.
The 10,5W P-M CPUs are all 90nm and start at 200 here.
And wont work in this adapter, BTW.
The 10watt CPUs are ULV, and the other approx. ~15watt CPUs are LV, both of which are explicitly mentioned as not working with this adapter. So the PIIIs are actually the lower-power option. P-Ms have much higher clock-rates, though.
I'm anything but a grammar nazi, but the slashdot summary is completely unreadable. April Fools stories are better-written than this.
talking about Apple's 'Colossal Disappointment' for not porting Mac OS X to PC
Apple's Disappointment? WTF? I don't think Apple is disappointed about what Apple did... Perhaps it could have been rephrased to maintain the quote, like this: "talking about what a 'Colossal Disappointment' Apple's move was".
That wasn't enough, though. The subject is that Apple isn't switching to commodity PCs, but the rest of the blurb is unrelated quotes about IBM's supply problems. Why? Sure, that's in the linked article, but so is "selling iTunes", and a "consulting company specializing in Macintosh", but they aren't related to the main subject either.
Interestingly enough, the terrible blurb leads to a terrible discussion. All the highly rated comments on this story are idiotic (I know I'm setting myself up here).
Nonse that's been beaten-down time and time again. People spewing nonsense, like: because Windows is unstable, and MacOS is stable, MacOS must be stable because of it's limited hardware compatibility. This all completely disregards the fact that OSes like FreeBSD are incredibly stable, and on the same diverse commodity hardware that Windows runs on.
People complaining about Lindows/Linspire.
Nonsense about hardware reliability.
Baseless comments that the (no doubt more expensive) Apple PCs will displace current PCs.
And of course the same old crop of "Apple makes money on hardware not software", and the others saying "Apple makes money on software, not hardware". And more debates on why Apple switched to Intel.
I've been tired of loads of Apple stories on/. frequently before, but I just ignored them, and went on, because there is occasionally an interesting Apple story. Now, at long last, I'm disabling the display of Apple stories. This is just too terribly crappy to put up with.
With the common dupes, terrible editing, slashvertisements, other stories that only merit a yawn, etc., I wonder... Are/.ers are, instead of leaving, disabling stories from different sections and editors? Cutting down on the content users view will have the same effect as leaving, just more slowly.
Maybe a few others that agree, or at least understand what I'm saying, will read this before it gets modded down to -1 with the trolls and flames.
And the 10W P-M is not typical, but a real rareity. Most are ~25W. eg.
Pentium M-1.5G 1.484V 24.5W
Personally, I would LOVE to get my hands on a PIII 933MHz or 1.0GHz system. Should be cheap, accepts all the old PC133 RAM I've got lying around, and really, really low power. Otherwise, I'm not getting a new system until some of the lowest-power AMD64s get cheaper.
you'll see the power consumption go up 10-20 watts.
A P4 can consume up to about 100 watts of power, which is significantly more than 10-20 watts.
Notice the bolded section. The previous generation of northbridges weren't drawing 0watts.
Your figures on P4 power consumption is completely wrong as well. They are commonly drawing more than 130watts, but their power consumption increases have ceased, but northbridges are increasing in power consumption dramatically.
It's nice to know that some alternatives to the x86 juggernaut are still live and kicking.
This is NOT an alternative to x86. Think, alternative to embedded PPC/ARM/etc.
I wonder if China will make MIPS-based personal computers or workstations?
We'll see MIPS-based PCs about as soon as we'll see StrongArm-based PCs.
It would nice to see a day where the x86 juggernaut is effectively challenged.
We saw lots of those days... back in 1995 or so.
It's really amazing, though, how Intel's BS about the Itanium being faster and cheaper than everything else convinced so many companies to drop their propritary lines, only to leave the door wide-open for AMD.
So is "SPAM". In fact, spam is a major product, still around, so the potential financial harm to that trademark is much more than the "Cantenna" trademark.
While it's nice to get a lower-power CPU, your results aren't going to be very impressive. The fact is, northbridges are also very power-hungry, and using the northbridge for a P4 with a Pentium M will certainly not give very good results. You really need a motherboard designed for the Pentium-M to get a low-power system, otherwise you'll just be wasting watts, and making a lot of heat for no reason.
It seems nobody ever talks about the Northbridge, which, IMHO, will over-take the CPU, within a year, as the hottest component in a computer. If you take a year-old system, and put all the components (CPU/RAM) in a brand-new motherboard, you'll see the power consumption go up 10-20 watts. Why do you think they are now requiring fans on many of them? Even the motherboards that don't have one, commonly NEED one. They just leave it off because they know people don't buy motherboards with fans on the northbridge.
They just assume case airflow with be enough to keep the northbridge within spec, which is rarely true. Many people with unstable systems may assume it's a CPU or software problem, while pointing a fan at the northbridge heatsink may be all they need to do to solve the problem. I have some Asus and MSI motherboards that are guilty of this (SiS and VIA chipsets).
What pisses me off (personally) is that repeated requests to Asus, MSI, VIA and SiS for power specs on their chipsets/motherboards have been completely ignored. For that reason, I have kept using my old systems (brand-new Asus motherboard wasting space in my closet) and will not upgrade until I can find specs on motherboards (idle/load) before I buy them.
I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.
Remember me?
I've (partially) downloaded that torrent, and had no problems what-so-ever playing it with MPlayer on Linux.
Any x86 OS with MPlayer (or Xine) should have no problems playing it. In time, native WMV3 implimentations will become available, and non-x86 systems will be able to play it with MPlayer/Xine/VLC.
but it's also going to cause problems for anyone unfortunate enough to be sharing a network/webhost/isp with a spammer.
No, not if everything is properly configured.
Besides, you could say the same thing about slashdot linking to a website, but no-one is claiming that is illegal.
There's always the possibility that some bystander will feel some trivial negative consequences from the criminals getting punished, but that's not a reason to let criminals go unpunished.
And what happens when someone sends spam appearing to be from a competitors site, in order for them to be attacked?
That seems very unlikely. They may be generating sales for their competition. Sending out spam is cleap, but it's not free, so if they aren't getting ANY sales out of it, it's very unlikely they will do it.
Besides, that could be prevented by verifying the mail headers.
Just because there's no authority to combat spam doesn't mean that those who take it upon themselves to do so aren't vigilantes.
And when you let telemarketers give their sales pitch while no-one is listening, that is also vigilantism.
And when you use business-reply envelopes to send something useless back to the company that sent you the junk mail, that is also vigilantism.
Just like the "theft"/copyright argument, people are using the word vigilantism to make these individually benign actions seem like murder, mob justice, etc.
The only negative issue I see here is the potential for punishing an innocent bystander, but that can be completely eliminated by verifying the headers, and sending junk via IP address, rather than DNS hostname.
Sender-ID will stop spoofed source-addresses, but will not do the slightest bit to stop spam. All you're doing is ensuring that spamers have to register a handful of domains every month.
You still didn't bother to address my second point at all. It's a big jump to say that learning a second language somehow helps you.
Most people will never need to know a second language, and even if they did, it's hard to say what language that will be when they're only 7 years-old.
So why should some other classes be cut to teach foreign languages?
Those (they) who wanted daylight savings time to save electicity and spend more time on the golf course, spread disonformation that farmers wanted DST.
You make the claim someone was spreading disinformation, yet provide no evidence at all of any of this. You're probably just jumping to the wrong conclusions, and have no evidence to support your little tin-foil-hat theory.
Many people, when polled, still assume that DST was done for the Farmers.
"still" should not be in there. You assume this was hold-over from a time when everyone believed it, which really isn't true. The whole "DST is for farmers" thing is a very recent invention. They're called urban legends.
You can make any insane claim and say "they" did it.
All these things are wrong with cars, therefore cars are bad and wrong,
Now that's just moronic.
I posted that in reply to the grandparent saying "there is NOTHING wrong with sex".
If I said there was nothing wrong with cars, maybe your jack-ass post would be appropriate.
And you might want to note I didn't say a single thing about banning sex, nor that sex was wrong. Of course, you've got to be able to see past your own bias to notice that.
Slashdot Mirror
BluRay also fits this description, since it is far more scratch-resistant than DVDs.
Laserdiscs also fit this description, vs. VHS.
All these features were also on LaserDiscs.
The one feature LaserDiscs (like Beta) didn't have was the capacity to include an entire movie on one disc. With BluRay, unlike DVDs, you will have a enough space on each disc to include 3+ hour movies. No need to swap discs/sides.
But nobody needs to update their video libraries at all. You can continue playing your old DVDs on the new HD players, in their current resolutions.
That has something to do with the fact that most everyone has a fullscreen TV, so the widescreen version has drawbacks. With HDTV, I can't see any such drawbacks, other than the potential prices.
Provide the players and movies are all reasonably priced, it's got a very good chance to catch-on. If the HD movies are all $50, then yes, it will be DOA.
I doubt many people are going to go out and buy a new TV so they can watch HighDef Discs. In the US, most everyone is going to end up with a new digital TV over the next few years, with or without HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
It's most likely that you are going to need to buy a new DVD player to hook-up to your new digital TV, anyhow.
Nonsense. You can play all of your current DVDs on the next gen of DVD players. No re-buying necessary, unless you're die-hard, and WANT to spend money to get copies of your current movies in HD.
The two big sat companies in the US essentially GIVE AWAY their equipment, and I don't see the upgrade to HDTV equipment being any different. They will also be carrying far more HDTV channels, very soon.
This is up in the air. I think it's most likely the satellite and cable companies will charge about the same rates for HD as they do for current television. They are making such huge profits as-is, and they have equal operating costs whether they have 1 subscriber, or 1 billion.
So, to summarize.
1) Everyone will be getting a new HDTV eventually.
2) You'll want a new DVD player, and high-def ones may be nearly as cheap.
3) You don't need to re-buy any movies.
4) Probably Free.
5) Probably the same as current prices.
That's a pretty ridiculous claim to make. We've stuck with the current TV standard for 50+ years now. I can't see anything above HDTV comming along in the next few decades. Since BluRay/HD-DVD have enough room to do full-resolution HDTV, it's very unlikely something else will come along to replace it on HDTVs.
Absolutely ridiculous. No doubt you're talking about PAL, which is just slightly higher res than NTSC... HDTV DOUBLES the vertical resolution, and almost triples the horizontal resolution.
That would be 1.8 times the vertical, and 2.5 times the horizontal, if upgrading from PAL. Plus, you'll get a 20% increase in refresh-rate, which is a huge improvement.
NOBODY NEEDS TO REPLACE THEIR DVD COLLECTION.
Since you've got almost everything else wrong, I can't see any reason to have any faith in your conclusions.
LaserDiscs were huge and cumbersome, and you needed multiple discs for one single movie. The price was also prohibitive. BluRay/HD-DVD are certain not to suffer from the first problem. The second, though, is entirely up to the studios. Whether the HighDef formats live or die depends on the prices of the movies released for them, and the difficulty of circumventing the copy protection to a lesser extent.
Since I don't know how they are going to price the HD movies, I can't say if it will be a success or not, but it's certainly got everything else going for it.
If you're using that rationale, then everyone going 1 MPH over the speed-limit should be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone playing an Encrypted DVD on an unlicensed player should be arrested. Etc. After all, IT'S THE LAW. Going 1 MPH above the speed limit is therefore a horrible thing. You know, it's also the law that toddlers can't ride in the front-seat in cars (no mention of an exception for those without airbags, or disabled ones). Clearly, those people using their own common-sense despite the overly-broad law are also in the wrong.
Or, on a more inflamatory note, I could bring up the fact that "stealing" slaves from their owners was against the law in the past.
This oh-so elevated "law" of which you speak-of like the word of god on high, is actually quite a funny thing. The law is decided by the elected representatives you vote for. Basically, that means one individual breaking the law will result in punishment, while a few million individuals breaking the law will force a change to the laws.
You say "THE LAW" "THE LAW" over and over again, and then end it with a moral statement. What is right or wrong has little to do with the law. You've made no argument that downloading music is wrong, so your statement that it's wrong, is baseless.
Clearly, they are doing this simply to spit those of us who use XMAME. We just got rid of refresh-rate mismatches by switching to LCDs, and now the LCDs are going to be getting a 60Hz refresh-rate...
DAMN YOU PHILIPS!!! WHY WON'T YOU JUST LET ME PLAY SHINOBI???
It's not easily noticable with normal action. It just looks slightly blury around motion, which can match with the colors well-enough.
Where it looks REALLY bad is in animation, since you have the sharp contrasts between neighboring pixels. And also, if you watch most news programs, they like to have sharp transitions, like a picture sliding-in from the side of the screen. These quick transitions look very blurry.
That said, this all goes back to the first rule of video. If you can't see it, DON'T LOOK FOR IT. Once you concentrate enough to see some artifact, you'll find it very, very difficult to ignore in the future. Your eyes will be drawn to it from then on. Some people go as far as getting rid of their TVs shortly after they first spot some defect that was pointed out to them.
In this case, ignorance is bliss.
Windows have the distinct disadvantage of being very poor insulation, being nearly useless in large (office) buildings, and letting UV and infrared light through. Skylights have many of the same problems, and are also the weak-link of a roof.
If done correctly, this could eliminate all of those problems. Of course, it's probably not practical for a home.
You're assuming manufacturers won't share this data with anyone who asks. There's no
There's no need for a privacy policy. You are mailing this to them, so you merely need to omit a return address, and you're anonymous. If you're the tin-foil-hat type, just wait until the next time you have to go out of town, and then mail it from some city you're just passing-though.
And wont work in this adapter, BTW.
The 10watt CPUs are ULV, and the other approx. ~15watt CPUs are LV, both of which are explicitly mentioned as not working with this adapter. So the PIIIs are actually the lower-power option. P-Ms have much higher clock-rates, though.
Apple's Disappointment? WTF? I don't think Apple is disappointed about what Apple did... Perhaps it could have been rephrased to maintain the quote, like this: "talking about what a 'Colossal Disappointment' Apple's move was".
That wasn't enough, though. The subject is that Apple isn't switching to commodity PCs, but the rest of the blurb is unrelated quotes about IBM's supply problems. Why? Sure, that's in the linked article, but so is "selling iTunes", and a "consulting company specializing in Macintosh", but they aren't related to the main subject either.
Interestingly enough, the terrible blurb leads to a terrible discussion. All the highly rated comments on this story are idiotic (I know I'm setting myself up here).
Nonse that's been beaten-down time and time again. People spewing nonsense, like: because Windows is unstable, and MacOS is stable, MacOS must be stable because of it's limited hardware compatibility. This all completely disregards the fact that OSes like FreeBSD are incredibly stable, and on the same diverse commodity hardware that Windows runs on.
People complaining about Lindows/Linspire.
Nonsense about hardware reliability.
Baseless comments that the (no doubt more expensive) Apple PCs will displace current PCs.
And of course the same old crop of "Apple makes money on hardware not software", and the others saying "Apple makes money on software, not hardware". And more debates on why Apple switched to Intel.
I've been tired of loads of Apple stories on
With the common dupes, terrible editing, slashvertisements, other stories that only merit a yawn, etc., I wonder... Are
Maybe a few others that agree, or at least understand what I'm saying, will read this before it gets modded down to -1 with the trolls and flames.
Where in the hell did you get your numbers? 89W is absolutely INSANE for any PIII processor.
PIII-500E FC-PGA 1.6V 13.2W
PIII-1.0G (6-B-x) 1.15V 12.1W
And the 10W P-M is not typical, but a real rareity. Most are ~25W. eg.
Pentium M-1.5G 1.484V 24.5W
Personally, I would LOVE to get my hands on a PIII 933MHz or 1.0GHz system. Should be cheap, accepts all the old PC133 RAM I've got lying around, and really, really low power. Otherwise, I'm not getting a new system until some of the lowest-power AMD64s get cheaper.
Notice the bolded section. The previous generation of northbridges weren't drawing 0watts.
Your figures on P4 power consumption is completely wrong as well. They are commonly drawing more than 130watts, but their power consumption increases have ceased, but northbridges are increasing in power consumption dramatically.
This is NOT an alternative to x86. Think, alternative to embedded PPC/ARM/etc.
We'll see MIPS-based PCs about as soon as we'll see StrongArm-based PCs.
We saw lots of those days... back in 1995 or so.
It's really amazing, though, how Intel's BS about the Itanium being faster and cheaper than everything else convinced so many companies to drop their propritary lines, only to leave the door wide-open for AMD.
Yes, on AMD platforms, which are in the minority. This story is specifically about Intel.
Intel has not made any indication that it plans to get rid of the northbridge like AMD has.
So is "SPAM". In fact, spam is a major product, still around, so the potential financial harm to that trademark is much more than the "Cantenna" trademark.
While it's nice to get a lower-power CPU, your results aren't going to be very impressive. The fact is, northbridges are also very power-hungry, and using the northbridge for a P4 with a Pentium M will certainly not give very good results. You really need a motherboard designed for the Pentium-M to get a low-power system, otherwise you'll just be wasting watts, and making a lot of heat for no reason.
It seems nobody ever talks about the Northbridge, which, IMHO, will over-take the CPU, within a year, as the hottest component in a computer. If you take a year-old system, and put all the components (CPU/RAM) in a brand-new motherboard, you'll see the power consumption go up 10-20 watts. Why do you think they are now requiring fans on many of them? Even the motherboards that don't have one, commonly NEED one. They just leave it off because they know people don't buy motherboards with fans on the northbridge.
They just assume case airflow with be enough to keep the northbridge within spec, which is rarely true. Many people with unstable systems may assume it's a CPU or software problem, while pointing a fan at the northbridge heatsink may be all they need to do to solve the problem. I have some Asus and MSI motherboards that are guilty of this (SiS and VIA chipsets).
What pisses me off (personally) is that repeated requests to Asus, MSI, VIA and SiS for power specs on their chipsets/motherboards have been completely ignored. For that reason, I have kept using my old systems (brand-new Asus motherboard wasting space in my closet) and will not upgrade until I can find specs on motherboards (idle/load) before I buy them.
And, you rarely see (cultural) elitism from anyone other than a European...
So... It's your observation that only Americans want FACTUAL EVIDENCE to back up arguments?
Remember me?
I've (partially) downloaded that torrent, and had no problems what-so-ever playing it with MPlayer on Linux.
Any x86 OS with MPlayer (or Xine) should have no problems playing it. In time, native WMV3 implimentations will become available, and non-x86 systems will be able to play it with MPlayer/Xine/VLC.
No, not if everything is properly configured.
Besides, you could say the same thing about slashdot linking to a website, but no-one is claiming that is illegal.
There's always the possibility that some bystander will feel some trivial negative consequences from the criminals getting punished, but that's not a reason to let criminals go unpunished.
That seems very unlikely. They may be generating sales for their competition. Sending out spam is cleap, but it's not free, so if they aren't getting ANY sales out of it, it's very unlikely they will do it.
Besides, that could be prevented by verifying the mail headers.
And when you let telemarketers give their sales pitch while no-one is listening, that is also vigilantism.
And when you use business-reply envelopes to send something useless back to the company that sent you the junk mail, that is also vigilantism.
Just like the "theft"/copyright argument, people are using the word vigilantism to make these individually benign actions seem like murder, mob justice, etc.
The only negative issue I see here is the potential for punishing an innocent bystander, but that can be completely eliminated by verifying the headers, and sending junk via IP address, rather than DNS hostname.
Sender-ID will stop spoofed source-addresses, but will not do the slightest bit to stop spam. All you're doing is ensuring that spamers have to register a handful of domains every month.
And I never said it was "bad" in the slightest. I was just providing a counter to the parent.
Seems like there's a lot of people here that can't see the words on the page through their own biases.
You still didn't bother to address my second point at all. It's a big jump to say that learning a second language somehow helps you.
Most people will never need to know a second language, and even if they did, it's hard to say what language that will be when they're only 7 years-old.
So why should some other classes be cut to teach foreign languages?
You make the claim someone was spreading disinformation, yet provide no evidence at all of any of this. You're probably just jumping to the wrong conclusions, and have no evidence to support your little tin-foil-hat theory.
"still" should not be in there. You assume this was hold-over from a time when everyone believed it, which really isn't true. The whole "DST is for farmers" thing is a very recent invention. They're called urban legends.
You can make any insane claim and say "they" did it.
Now that's just moronic.
I posted that in reply to the grandparent saying "there is NOTHING wrong with sex".
If I said there was nothing wrong with cars, maybe your jack-ass post would be appropriate.
And you might want to note I didn't say a single thing about banning sex, nor that sex was wrong. Of course, you've got to be able to see past your own bias to notice that.
Nice. Wish I had noticed that before posting it...