Are pipe bombs and the at least dozen or so other explosives makeable with easily accessible materials really that much safer than guns
No, but on the other hand the legal penalties (i.e. disincentives) are an great deal harsher. For instance in the UK armed robbery sentences run at around a decade (meaning about 7 yrs with parole and good behaviour), whilst sentence under the Prevention of Terrorism Act have in some cases been upwards of thirty years, and parole is almost unheard of.
Personally if i was that kind of psycho I'd probably go for the water supply;)
On the knives vs guns point, it's worth noting that only a few weeks after Thomas Hamilton went on his spreee in dunblane, killing a dozen primary school children, another disturbed individual went into a school in Wolverhampton armed with a Machete. Result - one teacher and one pupil received non-life-threatening head wounds and the perpetrator was restrained by other teachers.
Why is it that in the UK I can tell you about the mass shootings of the last two decades - Michael Ryan - Hungerford 1987, 16 dead. Thomas Hamilton, Dunblane 1996, 17 dead. That's it. In a country with a 55 million population.
The Ryan case led to a ban on private possession of automatic weaponry, the Hamilton case to a ban on private ownership of handguns. I pray it'll be another decade before we see a case like these, if ever.
Now please note that this is not an anti-american thing. I'm way jealous of your Bill of Rights, as an example. It's just an anti-gun thing. Guns don't kill people, they just make it far easier for people to kill people
We can get the pics from the internet. There's nothing that comes close to the "frame rate" or "colour depth" of the aurora borealis. It's as dynamic a sight as i've ever laid eyes on.
Personally, I'm very fond of that jaw-dropped feeling of wonder, and the aurora is a surefire way to get it. If the skies are clear, I'm staying awake all night if need be.
If you're going to bash Americans, have a reason. And a good one. And more than one... GOOD ONES.
Oh, go on then...
In the USA, 12 children die from gunshot wounds every day.
In a single day, Mr Average American consumes way disproportionate amount of scarce resources such as food and fossil fuels, and contributes a way disproportionate amount of pollution. Thus destroying the world for your children and everyone else's. They'll not be grateful when they have to pick up the bill.
That said, I'm very fond of the USA - I lived there for a year when i was seven going on 8, and visit when i can. But rose-tinted spectacles help nobody
But English is not the international language of business now (replacing German) because of UK, it is because it is spoken by America
This is definitely open to some dispute. America speaks English because it was a British colony. It took a vote on official languages - german very nearly won, but english was the eventual winner. At the peak of the British Empire, the population was in the region of 400 million (this is 100 years ago, remember) and it's territories encompassed around a third of the habitable surface of the earth. This was a technologically driven Empire, with unrivalled military and civilian navies (and thus geographic reach) at a time before powered flight. Between official policy and missionary activity, the english language was spread across even those parts of the world not under british dominion.
And how long before Spanish is the dominant language in the US? At current rates, i'd give you about another two generations before english is a minority language in the USA.
Incidentally, in strict biblical terms, men can't commit adultery. Adultery is when a married woman sleeps with someone other than her husband. the man's a piece of shit, but not an aduterator. technically. This is plainly b0ll0x, but that's what the book says. Just before it says you'll burn forever if you wear a cotton/wool mix sweater or eat lobster.
Italy has had it for a while. They've also averaged more than one toppled coalition a year since WWII.
Ah, well, you see it rather depends on your definition of 'one.. coalition a year'. although Italy has had about 50 *new* Prime ministers since the war, it's only had about half a dozen individuals in the post, many times each. In many respects it's actually had one remarkably stable coalition between the war and the corruption trials of the 1990's. Which is not necessarily a good thing, but anyway...
Can you point me to a good arguement for PR?
Democracy. Rule by the people. In the UK, no government elected under the existing system has ever polled more than 43% of the popular vote, but as a consequence of the first past the post system and the concept of 'royal prerogative' (the PM has uncontrained rights to use the powers of the Monarch (which is more than the Monarch herself has)), each of these governments, against whom the majority of the population voted, has had near-absolute power. Another factor here is 'party discipline', which enables a party leader to force, let's say, an MP from a coal mining area to vote for the closure of the mining industry, against the interests of his/her constituents. Seems to me that a bit of Party dispoyalty is a very very good thing.
In particular, FPPT tends to benefit parties with concentrations of strength in one area to those with support spread more evenly across the country. Thus in a three party system where each party has roughly similar support aggregated at a national level, if say the Big-endian party has all its supporters in the north and the Little-endian party has all its supporters in the south, a third party with support spread evenly will never gain representation in parliament because the big-endians will always win all the northern seats and the little-endians will win all the seats in the south. So much for democratic representation of the 1/3rd of the population supporting that third party. (if this seems a little theoretical, take the UK as an example and substitute big-endian=Labour, little-endian=Conservative, third party=LiberalDemocrats.
No electoral system is perfect. It's a question of whether you place a higher premium on "Strong Government" or "Fair votes". My personal view is that the Single Transferrable Vote is one of the better compromises available at present.
My other pet hobby horse here is that all ballots should include RON amongst the candidates. RON stands for Re-Open Nominations, as in 'nope, i'm not happy with any of these. Try again and this time offer me something I want'.
Can you give us a reason for your detestation of your 'forbidden letter'. Was it involved in some traumatic incident earlier in life? Or is it part of some wider belief system?
Do you work alone, or are you part of a broader movement?
Also, are any more letters 'forbidden'? It would be really useful if you could give a complete list, so we can try to avoid any more infringements.
TomV
Re:An easier division than your proposal...
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
If you split MS into 4 (OS, Apps, hardware, Multimedia), as an application developer I see one glaring omission.
Which one gets the development tools? Or do we end up with separate development tools and environments for each product line?
This really would make my life as a consumer exceedingly hard compared to the current position.
Well it was a bit beyond me, I have to say, but the buzzword was Neoplatonism. The specialism was to do with the relationship between mind, spirit and soul. Major figures were Plotinus, Porphyry, and some guy known as Simplicius who my dad reckoned was a ringer.
Just keep all your feelings bottled up inside so that no one ever has a chance to see within works quite well
Works great for a while. This was something he was VERY good at. Nowt like a British Public School education to teach this. Trouble is, this was part of the problem, not part of the solution. Stiff upper lip led to an unwillingness (or fear) to express his feelings to pretty much anyone. So for thirty years everyone thought he was fine. Now this is fine for the employment aspect but it's no way to live. He wouldn't even show what was going on to himself. Wouldn't admit he was ill. Thought depression was some wishy washy pathetic excuse for inadequate people to wriggle out of duty. Very big on duty, my dad. therefore thought using the medication was a pathetic surrender and deriliction of duty.
there is a little law called the ADA Sadly, the UK Disability Discrimination Act is rather more recent.
Depression in and of itself cannot kill you
It's not the depression per se, it's the interaction of depression, self-image, upbringing, society's attitudes. I heartily agree with the point about other cultures.
So depressed people are dangerous and should be locked up are they?
my father fought his depression for three decades until it finally won one morning.
In the meantime he was a major scholar in his field, respected and well-liked by colleagues and students across the world. We were simply astonished by the bundles of condolences from around the world, which kept coming for weeks.
he wrote several of the standard texts in his field, as well as what are now the canonical translations / commentaries on a number of classical texts, and was credited with making it a significant area of study wherebefore it was an obscure backwater.
And practically nobody was aware of his illness outside of his family and his closest colleagues. A less dangerous man i can hardly envision.
Now under the WAVE regime, i guess that, if anyone had actually noticed the symptoms, he would have been labelled as dangerous (to people other than himself) and might well have been unable to continue in academia and thus to carry out his work, his humble attempt to add to the sum of human knowledge.
By all accounts this man was a really good teacher. Clearly I'm somewhat biased, but when he taught me, i could see the talent he had. And three decades worth of students would have been deprived of his abilities, care, concern and sense of duty, had he been 'blacklisted' on health grounds.
Tuberculosis is contagious - that's why it's a notifiable disease. depression is an all-too-often fatal condition, but it is not contagious and should in the main remain a matter for the patient, their family and their physician. it is NOT grounds for a witchhunt
You want to tax the privaledged to give internet access to those who can't afford it? That's lunacy!
Well, in my personal morality system (which I do not expect anyone else to follow blindly, it's imperative to tax the privileged to give [education | medical treatment | decent roads | clean water | personal safety | regulation of financial sharks | other forms of basic fairness] to those who can't afford it.
<tory-hat-on> After all i have to share my world with these 'slobs' and it would be a great deal cheaper for me if they were [sufficiently educated to support themselves so I don't have a moral duty to support them | healthy so I don't catch cholera or TB from them | able to get from A to B to work, pay taxes and get off support | well policed so that if they do choose 'the dark side' the impact on me is minimised, and if they work hard they can be sure some other 'slob' isn't going to steal / defraud the fruits of their labour]. selfish i know but that's why politicians who promise to cut taxes regardless of circumstances (stand up Mr Hague) can be 100% sure I'll never vote for them. All i insist on is value for money when my taxes get spent<tory-hat-off>
I think it was J. K.Galbraith {uber-wooly-liberal} who described conservatism as the endless quest to establish a moral basis for avarice. I don't think he was too far wrong. IANAXtian, but avarice as a deadly sin isn't too far wide of the mark. Share the toys fairly, children.
I take it you do nothing with this pc. You leave it on to run word once a week or something.
Take what you like. Let's see now. Emagic Logic, Photoshop 5, SQL server 7, personal web server,the/.-hated Visual Studio 6, Nero, GP legends, don't really do a lot of wordprocessing.
I *have* to reboot 98 once a week to fix the problems 98's stupid network stack has. It gets reeeaaally sloooow, and that's if it hasn't BSoD'ed on me already.
Have you got a particularly cheap network card? BTW, NT has a BSOD, 98 doesn't. If you're referring to 'the memory at location dgafdh could not be 'read'', don't call it a BSOD. Not if you want to come across as intelligent and honest. It's a bad thing, an unforgivable thing (usually caused by amateurish apps) but it's not the same thing.
As usual, MS will inform you of several bug fixes per week if you make the minimal effort of subscribing to the appropriate mailing list for the product in question from www.microsoft.com.
As usual this post will be modded to obscurity and buried in FUD
You forget that the average windows user installs windows at least once a week. THIS IS NO JOKE
please! What is the point of spouting this nonsense? Is this 'average' as in 'my personal unfounded opinion'?
98 installed about a year ago with monthly reboots. Not yet had to get out the install disk. NT4 currently at sp6 - installed clean a fortnight before y2k, still up. One BSOD during the install due to a network card several years newer than NT4-unpatched - none since. A good NT4 install on solid hardware doesn't BSOD. It crashes, yes, but it doesn't BSOD
Anyway, if half the FUD was true the claim would be impossible as, after all, as we all know it takes more than a week to install and boot windows, doesn't it?
Nonsense. Every domain name registered before 1993 was a clear and unambiguous case of squatting. The registrants were just waiting for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the web so they could cash in and exploit legitimate trademarks.
A domain name is a neutral word with no meaning - until it is used for something. Given that, the coca-cola company has to assume that the domain _could_ be a trademark violation.
and in my parochial european ignorance, i thought there was still some vestige of 'innocent until proven guilty' in the 'home of freedom'
But for recording a live performance you need an operating system that has a high level of reliability
..and in this situation the competition is neither Windows, MacOS, Amigas, Ataris or any form of multi-purpose computer. For live performance the competition is hardware sequencers from the likes of Roland and Yamaha, and digital audio systems such as Alesis' ADAT.
However, the original point about decent composition software is entirely valid. Basically it's a job for some good real-time people to get their teeth into. Stability is nice, minimal latency and solid timing are critical. Something with the feature set of, say, Cubasis or Logic Fun would be a big step forward, and in view of the take-off of virtual synths and the like, a plug-in architecture along the lines of (compatible would be a basis) VST is probably now a must-have
Yes, I have the copyright to all of my songs, and yes, I distribute them in MP3 format.
Likewise. I emphasise the word copyright. That means I have the right to copy and distribute my material. And I would be pretty offended to find my publication of my material blocked simply as a consequence of my choice of format.
Criminals have been known to use cars, but cars are available for the use of law-abiding citizens. Is this issue so different?
Or could it be that the record industry doesn't want to let me compete on fair terms in the market. Which would of course be just as criminal as piracy of copyrighted material. Remind me again, what do two wrongs make?
Seriously, though, opening up a personal TLD would lead to just as many disputes, unless you're lucky and have a rare surname
I've got a plenty rare surname (here in England I only know of two other families with the name) - nevertheless, the.com,.org,.net and.co.uk domains have all long gone (to separate people, all of whom are bona fide surname-holders according to whois). But i recently found out that it's common as dirt in New England.
This leads nicely to an important snag with using trademarks as a criterion in the arbitration. Certainly there are some trademarks, with near-global scope, but I would imagine that the vast majority of TM's in any given country apply only to that country, and (corollary) that there must be a fairly large number of strings which represent multiple trademarks across multiple countries.
Now i appreciate that the ICANN process has safeguards so that a corp. can't just walk over the domain owner without good reason, but is there any clear description of what happens if a new US company decides to use a name that's been a registered trademark in, say, Italy for the last 30 years and is a household name in that country. Does the italian country have any ICANN-recognised claim on the.com?
Of course, this would all be much easier if.us had ever caught on.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, i'll bite.
Every time a person gets shot in this country, it's front page news.
That sounds like a side effect of pretty effective gun laws
tomV
No, but on the other hand the legal penalties (i.e. disincentives) are an great deal harsher. For instance in the UK armed robbery sentences run at around a decade (meaning about 7 yrs with parole and good behaviour), whilst sentence under the Prevention of Terrorism Act have in some cases been upwards of thirty years, and parole is almost unheard of.
Personally if i was that kind of psycho I'd probably go for the water supply ;)
On the knives vs guns point, it's worth noting that only a few weeks after Thomas Hamilton went on his spreee in dunblane, killing a dozen primary school children, another disturbed individual went into a school in Wolverhampton armed with a Machete. Result - one teacher and one pupil received non-life-threatening head wounds and the perpetrator was restrained by other teachers.
Why is it that in the UK I can tell you about the mass shootings of the last two decades - Michael Ryan - Hungerford 1987, 16 dead. Thomas Hamilton, Dunblane 1996, 17 dead. That's it. In a country with a 55 million population.
The Ryan case led to a ban on private possession of automatic weaponry, the Hamilton case to a ban on private ownership of handguns. I pray it'll be another decade before we see a case like these, if ever.
Now please note that this is not an anti-american thing. I'm way jealous of your Bill of Rights, as an example. It's just an anti-gun thing. Guns don't kill people, they just make it far easier for people to kill people
TomV
Personally, I'm very fond of that jaw-dropped feeling of wonder, and the aurora is a surefire way to get it. If the skies are clear, I'm staying awake all night if need be.
TomV
Oh, go on then...
In the USA, 12 children die from gunshot wounds every day.
In a single day, Mr Average American consumes way disproportionate amount of scarce resources such as food and fossil fuels, and contributes a way disproportionate amount of pollution. Thus destroying the world for your children and everyone else's. They'll not be grateful when they have to pick up the bill.
That said, I'm very fond of the USA - I lived there for a year when i was seven going on 8, and visit when i can. But rose-tinted spectacles help nobody
TomV
This is definitely open to some dispute. America speaks English because it was a British colony. It took a vote on official languages - german very nearly won, but english was the eventual winner. At the peak of the British Empire, the population was in the region of 400 million (this is 100 years ago, remember) and it's territories encompassed around a third of the habitable surface of the earth. This was a technologically driven Empire, with unrivalled military and civilian navies (and thus geographic reach) at a time before powered flight. Between official policy and missionary activity, the english language was spread across even those parts of the world not under british dominion.
And how long before Spanish is the dominant language in the US? At current rates, i'd give you about another two generations before english is a minority language in the USA.
merci, gracias, danke, domo arigato.
TomV
Incidentally, in strict biblical terms, men can't commit adultery. Adultery is when a married woman sleeps with someone other than her husband. the man's a piece of shit, but not an aduterator. technically. This is plainly b0ll0x, but that's what the book says. Just before it says you'll burn forever if you wear a cotton/wool mix sweater or eat lobster.
TomV
Ah, well, you see it rather depends on your definition of 'one .. coalition a year'. although Italy has had about 50 *new* Prime ministers since the war, it's only had about half a dozen individuals in the post, many times each. In many respects it's actually had one remarkably stable coalition between the war and the corruption trials of the 1990's. Which is not necessarily a good thing, but anyway...
Can you point me to a good arguement for PR?
Democracy. Rule by the people. In the UK, no government elected under the existing system has ever polled more than 43% of the popular vote, but as a consequence of the first past the post system and the concept of 'royal prerogative' (the PM has uncontrained rights to use the powers of the Monarch (which is more than the Monarch herself has)), each of these governments, against whom the majority of the population voted, has had near-absolute power. Another factor here is 'party discipline', which enables a party leader to force, let's say, an MP from a coal mining area to vote for the closure of the mining industry, against the interests of his/her constituents. Seems to me that a bit of Party dispoyalty is a very very good thing.
In particular, FPPT tends to benefit parties with concentrations of strength in one area to those with support spread more evenly across the country. Thus in a three party system where each party has roughly similar support aggregated at a national level, if say the Big-endian party has all its supporters in the north and the Little-endian party has all its supporters in the south, a third party with support spread evenly will never gain representation in parliament because the big-endians will always win all the northern seats and the little-endians will win all the seats in the south. So much for democratic representation of the 1/3rd of the population supporting that third party. (if this seems a little theoretical, take the UK as an example and substitute big-endian=Labour, little-endian=Conservative, third party=LiberalDemocrats.
No electoral system is perfect. It's a question of whether you place a higher premium on "Strong Government" or "Fair votes". My personal view is that the Single Transferrable Vote is one of the better compromises available at present.
My other pet hobby horse here is that all ballots should include RON amongst the candidates. RON stands for Re-Open Nominations, as in 'nope, i'm not happy with any of these. Try again and this time offer me something I want'.
TomV
Can you give us a reason for your detestation of your 'forbidden letter'. Was it involved in some traumatic incident earlier in life? Or is it part of some wider belief system?
Do you work alone, or are you part of a broader movement?
Also, are any more letters 'forbidden'? It would be really useful if you could give a complete list, so we can try to avoid any more infringements.
TomV
Which one gets the development tools? Or do we end up with separate development tools and environments for each product line?
This really would make my life as a consumer exceedingly hard compared to the current position.
TomV
born in London, England, 1944
TomV
Well it was a bit beyond me, I have to say, but the buzzword was Neoplatonism. The specialism was to do with the relationship between mind, spirit and soul. Major figures were Plotinus, Porphyry, and some guy known as Simplicius who my dad reckoned was a ringer.
Just keep all your feelings bottled up inside so that no one ever has a chance to see within works quite well
Works great for a while. This was something he was VERY good at. Nowt like a British Public School education to teach this. Trouble is, this was part of the problem, not part of the solution. Stiff upper lip led to an unwillingness (or fear) to express his feelings to pretty much anyone. So for thirty years everyone thought he was fine. Now this is fine for the employment aspect but it's no way to live. He wouldn't even show what was going on to himself. Wouldn't admit he was ill. Thought depression was some wishy washy pathetic excuse for inadequate people to wriggle out of duty. Very big on duty, my dad. therefore thought using the medication was a pathetic surrender and deriliction of duty.
there is a little law called the ADA Sadly, the UK Disability Discrimination Act is rather more recent.
Depression in and of itself cannot kill you
It's not the depression per se, it's the interaction of depression, self-image, upbringing, society's attitudes. I heartily agree with the point about other cultures.TomV
my father fought his depression for three decades until it finally won one morning.
In the meantime he was a major scholar in his field, respected and well-liked by colleagues and students across the world. We were simply astonished by the bundles of condolences from around the world, which kept coming for weeks.
he wrote several of the standard texts in his field, as well as what are now the canonical translations / commentaries on a number of classical texts, and was credited with making it a significant area of study wherebefore it was an obscure backwater.
And practically nobody was aware of his illness outside of his family and his closest colleagues. A less dangerous man i can hardly envision.
Now under the WAVE regime, i guess that, if anyone had actually noticed the symptoms, he would have been labelled as dangerous (to people other than himself) and might well have been unable to continue in academia and thus to carry out his work, his humble attempt to add to the sum of human knowledge.
By all accounts this man was a really good teacher. Clearly I'm somewhat biased, but when he taught me, i could see the talent he had. And three decades worth of students would have been deprived of his abilities, care, concern and sense of duty, had he been 'blacklisted' on health grounds.
Tuberculosis is contagious - that's why it's a notifiable disease. depression is an all-too-often fatal condition, but it is not contagious and should in the main remain a matter for the patient, their family and their physician. it is NOT grounds for a witchhunt
TomV
Well, in my personal morality system (which I do not expect anyone else to follow blindly, it's imperative to tax the privileged to give [education | medical treatment | decent roads | clean water | personal safety | regulation of financial sharks | other forms of basic fairness] to those who can't afford it.
<tory-hat-on> After all i have to share my world with these 'slobs' and it would be a great deal cheaper for me if they were [sufficiently educated to support themselves so I don't have a moral duty to support them | healthy so I don't catch cholera or TB from them | able to get from A to B to work, pay taxes and get off support | well policed so that if they do choose 'the dark side' the impact on me is minimised, and if they work hard they can be sure some other 'slob' isn't going to steal / defraud the fruits of their labour]. selfish i know but that's why politicians who promise to cut taxes regardless of circumstances (stand up Mr Hague) can be 100% sure I'll never vote for them. All i insist on is value for money when my taxes get spent<tory-hat-off>
I think it was J. K .Galbraith {uber-wooly-liberal} who described conservatism as the endless quest to establish a moral basis for avarice. I don't think he was too far wrong. IANAXtian, but avarice as a deadly sin isn't too far wide of the mark. Share the toys fairly, children.
TomV
Anyone got a viable business plan involving recycled domestic animal waste?
TomV
Take what you like. Let's see now. Emagic Logic, Photoshop 5, SQL server 7, personal web server,the /.-hated Visual Studio 6, Nero, GP legends, don't really do a lot of wordprocessing.
I *have* to reboot 98 once a week to fix the problems 98's stupid network stack has. It gets reeeaaally sloooow, and that's if it hasn't BSoD'ed on me already.
Have you got a particularly cheap network card? BTW, NT has a BSOD, 98 doesn't. If you're referring to 'the memory at location dgafdh could not be 'read'', don't call it a BSOD. Not if you want to come across as intelligent and honest. It's a bad thing, an unforgivable thing (usually caused by amateurish apps) but it's not the same thing.
TomV
From HOSTS...
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 ad.webprovider.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 image.linkexchange.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 jeeves.flycast.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.flycast.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.burstmedia.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.247media.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.ad-venture.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.adauction.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.adsdaq.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 a32.g.a.yimg.com #spamfilter YahooAds
127.0.0.1 www.pagecount.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www1.pagecount.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www2.pagecount.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www3.pagecount.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www4.pagecount.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 ad.linkexchange.com.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.smartclicks.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 mojofarm.mediaplex.com #spamfilter
127.0.0.1 www.etour.com #spamfilter ads in GetRight
____________
TomV
As usual, MS will inform you of several bug fixes per week if you make the minimal effort of subscribing to the appropriate mailing list for the product in question from www.microsoft.com.
As usual this post will be modded to obscurity and buried in FUD
TomV
please! What is the point of spouting this nonsense? Is this 'average' as in 'my personal unfounded opinion'?
98 installed about a year ago with monthly reboots. Not yet had to get out the install disk. NT4 currently at sp6 - installed clean a fortnight before y2k, still up. One BSOD during the install due to a network card several years newer than NT4-unpatched - none since. A good NT4 install on solid hardware doesn't BSOD. It crashes, yes, but it doesn't BSOD
Anyway, if half the FUD was true the claim would be impossible as, after all, as we all know it takes more than a week to install and boot windows, doesn't it?
TomV
TomV
TomV
and in my parochial european ignorance, i thought there was still some vestige of 'innocent until proven guilty' in the 'home of freedom'
TomV
However, the original point about decent composition software is entirely valid. Basically it's a job for some good real-time people to get their teeth into. Stability is nice, minimal latency and solid timing are critical. Something with the feature set of, say, Cubasis or Logic Fun would be a big step forward, and in view of the take-off of virtual synths and the like, a plug-in architecture along the lines of (compatible would be a basis) VST is probably now a must-have
TomV
Likewise. I emphasise the word copyright. That means I have the right to copy and distribute my material. And I would be pretty offended to find my publication of my material blocked simply as a consequence of my choice of format.
Criminals have been known to use cars, but cars are available for the use of law-abiding citizens. Is this issue so different?
Or could it be that the record industry doesn't want to let me compete on fair terms in the market. Which would of course be just as criminal as piracy of copyrighted material. Remind me again, what do two wrongs make?
TomV
Summary - nerds are the master race, therefore they will agree with me
This is repulsive
TomV
I've got a plenty rare surname (here in England I only know of two other families with the name) - nevertheless, the .com, .org, .net and .co.uk domains have all long gone (to separate people, all of whom are bona fide surname-holders according to whois). But i recently found out that it's common as dirt in New England.
This leads nicely to an important snag with using trademarks as a criterion in the arbitration. Certainly there are some trademarks, with near-global scope, but I would imagine that the vast majority of TM's in any given country apply only to that country, and (corollary) that there must be a fairly large number of strings which represent multiple trademarks across multiple countries.
Now i appreciate that the ICANN process has safeguards so that a corp. can't just walk over the domain owner without good reason, but is there any clear description of what happens if a new US company decides to use a name that's been a registered trademark in, say, Italy for the last 30 years and is a household name in that country. Does the italian country have any ICANN-recognised claim on the .com?
Of course, this would all be much easier if .us had ever caught on.
TomV