First problem: The guy has no technology chops. Second problem: He's a fundamentalist Christian. A Buddhist or Jewish fundamentalist doesn't care if you're a part of their religion. A Wiccan fundamentalist doesn't care if you believe he or she can perform magic.
A Christian or Muslim fundamentalist believes that human lives are expendable if extinguished in the name of God. They deserve neither respect nor even common courtesy. If not for their religion, they would be correctly labeled sociopaths and imprisoned for inciting and participating in violence and wars of aggression.
Waging imperialist war? Eh. Suspending basic human rights for people due to their political, religious, or ethnic affiliation? Meh. Selling weapons to sworn enemies during wartime? Let's hold a congressional thing and exculpate the president and anyone else involved, just because.
TITTIES??!! We've got to do something! Call the press! Notify the local authorities! LOOK OUT! IT'S A VAGINA! NOOOOOoooooooooo.....
No retaliatory ad hominem? What am I going to do while I repave my laptop?
Yeah, I get hung up on stuff. Hyperbole flows in these veins. But at least it's entertaining.
I do think OSS solutions will replace a majority of creative software in the next 10 years, and five if plugin and file format standards are established. I'm not a zealot by any means - I use XP and OSX at work, because I have to get things done. But I have converted every one of my workplaces to OOo and haven't heard a peep. Four years ago I would not have considered it.
With all of the Linux toolkits coming to maturity on the Windows and OS X platforms, OSS will begin to infiltrate very effectively. All it takes is a company to fork the GIMP and give it direction the way Sun did with OOo.
So, you have nothing to add to the discussion about the copyright policies of major software vendors?. Well, thanks for stopping by!
But before I go, I wanted to sincerely wish you luck with teamwork and creation by committee. I'm sure your work will be forgotten long before you're dead. But hey, somebody has to market Hannah Montana Easy Cheese Macaroni!
(Yes, simpleminded AC, I'm well aware of the entire CS3 suite and the traction of existing software platforms. Believe it or not, I even paid $400 for the CS2 Premium Design suite when I was in college, and I was the extreme exception to the rule. But your whole tirade, in left field again, has nothing to do with the topic of piracy and Bittorrent throttling. The whole hypothetical situation was based on the premise of Adobe shutting down piracy, which they will never, ever, ever do, unless they begin to lose market share for other reasons. So, have a heaping helping of your own advice, and GFSUTD - go find something useful to do.)
See, now you're backtracking and changing your analogy to suit your (flawed) argument. No, you're arguing in left field, and I'm playing hockey.
What I described *is* reality. What you mentioned was a possibility. If you think that college kids don't spend money on iPods, weed, graphics cards, and other luxury items before they even consider paying hundreds of dollars for software they can easily get for free, you may be beyond the reach of reason. That was the "reality" part of my post. I then constructed a "hypothetical" future based on what would happen if paying for such product was the only way to get it.
The hypothetical bribing of a senator bears absolutely no relevance to this discussion... It illustrated that regardless of what we want out of human behavior, what happens is completely different. A Senator is supposed to be an incorruptible leader fighting for the needs and wants of his constituency, but is rather a different person when the checks start flying around.
So now he's just getting into college... Yah, whatever. Your focusing on details that are inconsequential. So, my bad, he graduates in 2011. Bask in the windfall intellectual profit of your awesome logical victory!
Now, according to you, he's the equivalent of a Hemingway or a Pollock... he is not qualified to work in a position in which he has no experience whatsoever In this hypothetical, he's an artist. People don't give two shits about what tools an artist uses, they just care about the result. Van Gogh could have shoved the handle of his palette knife up his ass, and it would just make him a little bit weirder. And though our imaginary artist may not be remembered for hundreds of years, his talent as a graphic designer is far more important than his intimate technical knowledge of one computer program.
For your edification, ask a marketing agency if they'd rather have a talented artist who knows how to use the Gimp, or a Photoshop expert with the creative mind of a turnip.
It's not ad hominem if it's true. It's ad hominem if you attack the other person instead of their argument. Even if your petty and subjective opinion was correct, it doesn't dim your inability to provide a stimulating counter-point.
Adobe will never fully prosecute a college kid for pirating their product, because the damage that occurs is far outweighed by having that person hooked on their tools. If they do start sending out the lawyers, it means that there is a better product available for a better price, or Adobe has hired an idiot to run their company.
In reality, the college kid downloads a multi-thousand dollar package for free, and Adobe looks the other way because it's to their benefit.
There is no excuse for the 'college student' you refer to to skip a few keggers and get his needed software legally, rather than pirate it. I was referring to what is commonly known as reality. Of course there is no excuse for him breaking the law in your eyes, just like there's no excuse for a senator to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks for helping companies land government contracts. But these things happen anyway.
Both Gimp and Inkscape are lacking in the areas required in the professional world... so your analogy continues to be wrong. That's the case today. In the imaginary scenario, he's just arriving to college - he won't graduate until 2012. Are you in a position to formally declare that there will be no OSS graphics package to compete with Adobe? Keep in mind, in 2004 Avid was the undisputed king of the video world, becoming worried about a company from Cupertino...
Him being a rockstar in Gimp or Inkscape has just about the same value as him being fantastic with Paintshop Pro or Windows Image tool when it comes to the real world (i.e. useless). If only Hemingway had used Mont Blanc pens instead of whatever pen he did use, he could have really been an artist! And can you believe Jackson Pollock used off-brand paint?
They don't need to be 'more honest'; you need to be more informed before you mouth off and display your ignorance. Well, you didn't totally backslide into ad hominem. But you did make yourself look petty.
300 people died in the Oklahoma City bombings, right? More die every year from "occupational falls" and since the bombings I'll bet more people have died of lightning strikes. For all intensive purposes, domestic terrorism presents zero threat to any non-imperialist country that is relatively safe, and politically and economically free.
The terrorist attacks in Spain and London were similarly terrible tragedies, but on the scale of actual threats to the quality of life in those respective countries, virtually non-existent. The IRA and ETA have killed more people, again, over imperialist policies (though ETA is a more subtle case, and one which I'm not that familiar with.) Was the response to declare Irish-Catholics evil people, and smart-bomb their neighborhoods? Or declare Basque people enemy combatants, and jail them indefinitely without representation?
A society should absolutely spend money gathering intelligence and prosecuting those conspiring to commit such acts, but I can't think of a single instance in history where military force has decreased terrorism. Look at Israel - the whole conflict occurs in an area a bit larger than New Jersey, and their counter-terrorism effort has done nothing but unify the Palestinian people behind Hamas, just as the bombing of Lebanon unified a moderate Arab society behind Hezbollah. I do not know what the Iraqi terrorist group will be called, but you can be sure that it will arise out of the ashes of the current US military action.
George Bush was barely re-elected on a platform of fear, and only after he successfully labeled Kerry as unpatriotic. It's just sheer irony that Bush pulled strings to avoid battle, and Kerry actually served.
Again, if this war on terrorism is so vital to our survival, all of your kids should be signed up. If they aren't, then you aren't serious.
The real reason that Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft don't spend a great deal of time going after pirated software is because they would quickly lose market share. Even if software is cheap, it's never going to be cheap enough for a college student eating Ramen and saving money for beer on the weekends. He's going to nab a copy of whatever he wants to putz around with, and mostly use it complete school work and personal creative projects.
If Adobe made it impossible for him to get an illegal copy of Photoshop, guess what? He'd learn something else. And when he arrives at his first job and they ask him which version of the Creative Suite he needs, he very well might say "That's alright - I know Gimp and Inkscape, and I already have them. Just get me a bigger monitor instead."
It's a nightmare scenario, and one of those things I wish they (Microsoft/Adobe/Autodesk/Apple) would be more honest about. I hope they do lock down Windows with DRM so it is nearly hackproof and rejects the installation of pirated software, because Linux would gain a few million users overnight. In the end, the best thing the OSS movement has going for it is the greed of the big guys, so here's to hoping they only get more delirious with it.
Well, given that a Roman Emperor decided what would become the Bible three hundred years after the fact, you don't have much place to say anything at all. In another hundred and fifty years, these issues with true early Mormon thought will be whitewashed, just as the ideas that didn't turn out to be popular were weeded out of the official version of events for a good two hundred years after Christ died.
Religions are continually liberalized to remain relevant to modern society. And you think this criticism of your pink unicorn is different from his pink unicorn, it's doing it's true job of preventing you from thinking rationally.
Since when is suspending habeas corpus, destroying congressional oversight, and wiretapping phones without permission from any legal authority constitute freedom?
Or is this the crazy part of American culture where abortion is murder and war is heroic?
Versus the actual sex crimes and violence that we've been engaged in since the dawn of time?
I swear, every time someone complains about violent video games, or internet porn (which involves mostly willing participants) where no real person is hurt, I want to throw a 60 inch plasma at the commentator playing the latest glory shot of smart bomb turning humans into red stains.
Freedom of speech is not an absolute. Congratulations... you missed the entire point.
I may not agree with what you want to say, but as American (once upon a time, a long time ago, in a land far far away) you should be willing to die for that right.
Whether what you say causes a fight and then a lawsuit, or if it obstructs someone else's inalienable rights and causes your arrest is one thing. Preventing you from saying it is another.
Alas, America today is "Give me the liberty to buy shit, or at least try not to bother me while I watch TV." True freedom is a forgotten and probably lost dream.
As I stated in the post the more effective part of the plan is that there aren't bunch of marines killing hundreds of thousands of people in Arab territory. However...
Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, there are about six thousand miles of US border. You could take the roughly quarter million troops worlwide, divide them into three shifts, and have 13 US soldiers every mile, or about 1 every four hundred feet.
We are already paying these people. I'm sure they would be happy to take the same money, and actually defend their country instead of serving the interests of a few deranged politicians.
There is zero successful recruiting within the borders. FBI provocateurs have even failed, because the "terrorists" they pick up are poorly educated people who are angry and delusional, but have no ability or intent to actually commit terrorist acts.
You don't hear about domestic terrorism because there isn't any. The angriest cleric in the world has a hell of a time convincing a person with a job, a safe place to sleep, and the opportunities that every American has to strap a bomb to himself and kill innocent people. Maybe he could convince a sociopath, but these events would certainly be rare if they even occurred at all (and haven't yet.)
Now, take a young Iraqi kid who has lost his entire family to American military "collateral damage," or who's seen his sister raped and murdered because we can't even offer basic security after we destroyed their country, and show him a target that's in his neighborhood. That's an easy sell, and one that works in any cultural situation.
The point is that terrorism, like any other crime, isn't preventable. It's going to happen. You can reduce the likelihood through diplomacy, foreign policy, and security measures. All military action does, especially when there is no clear military objective, is make more people dead, and in my opinion, creates more terrorism than it destroys.
You are right about making people not want to do it, but the problem is violence isn't a part of that solution. Israel has been torturing Palestinians, destroying their homes, and assassinating suspected terrorists since the 60s, and the violence has gotten worse.
70% of Israelis believe that direct talks with Hamas are appropriate to achieve peace. Unfortunately, this does not fit in with the goals of their government, just as US politicians don't pay attention to what their constituents want if it happens to conflict with their own.
Security is only achieved when you have a multi-faceted, reactive and proactive system designed to detect anomalies and investigate them, EVEN IF THEY DON'T HAPPEN IN AN AIRPORT.
We have hundreds of millions of tons of cargo coming in and out of the country with zero inspection.
We have hundreds of miles of unprotected borders.
Where is our military force, sworn to protect us against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Across the ocean bombing infrastructure that we have to rebuild, because Americans don't want to drive small cars, or practice sane environmental conservation, or god forbid, live in more humble housing structures. We'd rather kill people who have never threatened us to maintain ground control near oil reserves.
Real security for the US would involve compromise, sacrifice, and hard work. That's why it will never happen.
The TSA stands around, making sure the people in line aren't terrorists. Now, I'm no criminal mastermind, but given the security around most US airports, all it does it make the regular citizens feel warm and fuzzy about all the gadgets they have to walk through to get on their plane. A terrorist would make a few friends at the airport, lift a few IDs, and before you know it, he can walk around the tarmac for weeks on end without being bothered, and walk right past a security line with the flash of his counterfeit badge and a smile.
Really effective security would be to bring every last troop home, and place them in every port and border crossing into the US. Even more effective than their inspections would be the fact that they aren't in foreign countries blowing stuff up. It's very difficult to recruit people to kill the infidel when he's across the ocean behind hundreds of thousands of highly trained Marines, minding his own business.
Unfortunately this would require leaders in government (Republicans and Democrats) to do an about-face on how they deal with terrorism, and as anyone knows, getting a politician to admit a mistake is harder than getting one to tell the truth in the first place. But we're the ones to blame - when the greatest threat to our way of life, according to Sean Hannity, is that "we may be driving around in Yugos," you wonder if the society is worth saving in the first place.
...is that the TSA is 100% ineffective, because no government, regardless of how brutal they are to suspected terrorists, or how many secret police they employ, or how many phones they tap, can prevent one person from committing a terrorist act.
The only thing the TSA does is reduce the likelihood such an attack will occur on a plane. It's a huge waste of money that's simply a security blanket for the uninformed.
If the telecoms don't have anything to hide, why would they be afraid of a few questions?
Uh-oh, Big Brother. It looks like that logic has a nasty way of working both ways. The only way to prevent this from happening in the future is to keep immunity out, sue every single telecom into bankruptcy, and throw every member of the Administration who was involved into prison.
Pff... hahahahah. Alright, it was worth a good laugh. Now please, go back to watching your televisions. The Factor is coming right up! Top news story? Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not an "honest man," and makes money selling lies...
Your son, as you may know (or maybe you don't know), is the President of the United States, whose most popular foreign policy adventures are killing hundreds of thousand of people. Though they are a different color, I do believe they are still people.
Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Iran: "A nuclear Iran must not be allowed."
Taking your son's thought, I would encourage you either to join the Marines, or encourage all of your grand-children to join up, especially Jenna and little Barbara.
What you will see in the next war, if this iteration of war is anything like its predecessors, is incredible interactive violence aimed at everyone (whom you can shoot in the head and see the blood spray), innocent bystanders (whom you can run over with your Humvee or tank just for the heck of it), and of course the plentiful indigenous female prostitutes you can have sex with and then filet with a knife or stomp with your feet in order to get your money back. Experts note that the recent plethora of killings is caused in whole by your darling son's Administration and philosophical flunkies. There are four thousand dead soldiers in Iraq, and perhaps almost a million dead civilians. No, really - it was on 60 Minutes. I hope Bush has provided you with a flat screen TV to see the grief of the bereaved families that fills the screen. I mean, if reporters were allowed to say such things.
The violence that your son trafficks in is the kind of stuff that most mothers would be ashamed to see their son putting into the hands of other mothers' children, but, hey, your son Bush has recently assured the world that he is "a Boy Scout, everybody knows that." I'd love to see the merit badges that Scout Troop handed out. Is there a Colonialism merit badge? If so, your loving son deserves one now.
There's hundreds of thousands of mothers you would do well to talk to. They have a grief they carry every day that only a mother can know. There are other such mothers in the heartland of Iran whose inhabitants your son simply sees as commercial targets.
Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell the new Iran war, to "defend" a country in which your son claims you raised him to be "a Boy Scout." More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.
Happy Mother's day, Mrs. Bush, which this year is May 11, and who knows how soon until your son or his predecessor unleash actual death and violence upon other mothers' boys. I'm sure you're very proud.
Your version of liberty would work in a world with unlimited resources, but here on planet Earth, we are stuck with each other. Your "right" to a 500hp engine may well exist, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't cost $100,000 to buy and $500 to fill up, if that is the effect of damage it has on the ecosystem we all share.
Most others, thankfully, are reasonable. Perhaps a more effective rail system for freight delivery would eliminate the 18 wheelers from the highway system, and make a mother feel safer transporting her children in a lighter weight commuter vehicle, thus bringing down the average vehicle weight, saving energy, and creating less pollution.
Your vision seems to be that of 6000 pound curbweights being thrown around twenty lane highways, in what I would call an apocolyptic vehicular arms race. I'd prefer helping my neighbor through reasoned compromise, rather than drowning in the same cesspool with my arms wrapped around his throat, dying for my right to have the NASCAR edition of a Ford Excursion.
I'd rather have the liberty to receive phone calls from Saudi Arabia without having my phone lines tapped instead of having the liberty to destroy the environment for pure convenience. But the former are the aims of a person, and the latter the created wants of corporations.
And the fact that Toyota wants you to buy the product they've already developed for forty years instead of a newer, less profitable product, is somehow shocking to you? I think you need to re-read your basic economics book.
1) Highway robbery for RAM/HDs from their website 2) Bank robbery for their hard drive prices for XServe 3) Spreadsheet performance (Excel 2008, OOo 2.4, Numbers '08) 4) Closed, shitty file formats for their iWork and iLife products 5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software
Their computers are over priced, but are perfect for casual, non-technical yuppy types, or people who have to use Final Cut / Logic Pro.
Personally, I consider miserable that people clamor for material things at all, but this is the same as lamenting murder or jealousy. They are part of the human experience.
What's most depressing is that never in history has society been more able and more indifferent towards ending poverty, racism, and war. We can now communicate with people worldwide at nearly no cost, and many of us have come to realize that the differences are so tiny in comparison with the similarities across cultures. They are exaggerated for the benefit of the propertied segment of society.
The multiple is somewhat meaningless, but in most developed western countries it's 30 to 50 times the average worker.
Take, for example, the CEO at KB Homes fired for fraud, who made 250 million dollars in two years and then received another 175 million on the way out the door. What was denied to him with 250 million that will be attainable at 425? A second private jet? Does anyone truly believe that his workers would have voted for his golden parachute given the choice?
Now KB is in the shitter, and laying off people across the country. Let's just say we gave him a third of what he received - a "paltry" 108 million - most reasonable people would agree that it represents a fair compensation for the work he performed. And instead of giving him options for seventh and eighth vacation homes, the company could have supported 4,000 workers for another two years until the economy regains it's footing. That's money for working people to stay off of welfare and continue to participate in the economy, versus one guy having extra multi-million dollar luxury goods. And those millions aren't going to recycle into the same economy - he's going to buy some fine art at auction and purchase real estate in France to hedge against the dollar, and buy ten thousand dollar Prada purses for his mistress or trophy wife that end up in the pocket of Prada and sweat shop labor in Malaysia.
When the disparity is at a lower ratio, everyone except that one person wins. And let me head you off at the pass - people will still compete for the same job, even if it only paid 30 million for 30 years of work.
1. The enemy of every state are it's own people, since they carry the power (dictatorship or not) to remove them from their position of privilege.
2. In poorly regulated capitalist countries with huge war (now called "defense") industries, there are always increasing needs to fight wars to fund the industry.
3. Once the media is profit based, it's in their interest to keep access and sell fear by helping to advance government/corporate goals.
Notice the drastic difference in public discourse in Britain where the BBC is taxpayer funded but not owned by the interest of any corporate entity, and America where the truth comes second to the dollar. In my opinion, as long as state-owned industries are open and easily reformed by the populace, they are far superior to the closed door dealings of private corporations.
No one has a "right" to what I would call obscene wealth - making 300 times your average employee for no reason other than the board is stuffed with your friends. And whether this wealth is possible only through human suffering matters very little to the robber barons at the top. It's not their kids losing limbs and lives over there, it's the economic draftees who are given the choice between getting shot at by local criminals or having a gun themselves to shoot back at "terrorists," who, as every other citizen of a civilization has done since time began, do not wish to be bound by foreign chains.
I'm speaking mostly of the inevitable endgame for most power users - when Xorg refuses to launch, most users are completely stuck.
Windowing environments are a requirement for 99% of all computer users, and until someone gets Xorg or another windowing environment to operate -- correctly! -- and 100% of the time in failsafe mode, Linux will never be acceptable to the average user.
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First problem: The guy has no technology chops.
Second problem: He's a fundamentalist Christian. A Buddhist or Jewish fundamentalist doesn't care if you're a part of their religion. A Wiccan fundamentalist doesn't care if you believe he or she can perform magic.
A Christian or Muslim fundamentalist believes that human lives are expendable if extinguished in the name of God. They deserve neither respect nor even common courtesy. If not for their religion, they would be correctly labeled sociopaths and imprisoned for inciting and participating in violence and wars of aggression.
Waging imperialist war? Eh. Suspending basic human rights for people due to their political, religious, or ethnic affiliation? Meh. Selling weapons to sworn enemies during wartime? Let's hold a congressional thing and exculpate the president and anyone else involved, just because.
TITTIES??!! We've got to do something! Call the press! Notify the local authorities! LOOK OUT! IT'S A VAGINA! NOOOOOoooooooooo.....
No retaliatory ad hominem? What am I going to do while I repave my laptop?
Yeah, I get hung up on stuff. Hyperbole flows in these veins. But at least it's entertaining.
I do think OSS solutions will replace a majority of creative software in the next 10 years, and five if plugin and file format standards are established. I'm not a zealot by any means - I use XP and OSX at work, because I have to get things done. But I have converted every one of my workplaces to OOo and haven't heard a peep. Four years ago I would not have considered it.
With all of the Linux toolkits coming to maturity on the Windows and OS X platforms, OSS will begin to infiltrate very effectively. All it takes is a company to fork the GIMP and give it direction the way Sun did with OOo.
So, you have nothing to add to the discussion about the copyright policies of major software vendors?. Well, thanks for stopping by!
But before I go, I wanted to sincerely wish you luck with teamwork and creation by committee. I'm sure your work will be forgotten long before you're dead. But hey, somebody has to market Hannah Montana Easy Cheese Macaroni!
(Yes, simpleminded AC, I'm well aware of the entire CS3 suite and the traction of existing software platforms. Believe it or not, I even paid $400 for the CS2 Premium Design suite when I was in college, and I was the extreme exception to the rule. But your whole tirade, in left field again, has nothing to do with the topic of piracy and Bittorrent throttling. The whole hypothetical situation was based on the premise of Adobe shutting down piracy, which they will never, ever, ever do, unless they begin to lose market share for other reasons. So, have a heaping helping of your own advice, and GFSUTD - go find something useful to do.)
For your edification, ask a marketing agency if they'd rather have a talented artist who knows how to use the Gimp, or a Photoshop expert with the creative mind of a turnip. It's not ad hominem if it's true. It's ad hominem if you attack the other person instead of their argument. Even if your petty and subjective opinion was correct, it doesn't dim your inability to provide a stimulating counter-point.
Adobe will never fully prosecute a college kid for pirating their product, because the damage that occurs is far outweighed by having that person hooked on their tools. If they do start sending out the lawyers, it means that there is a better product available for a better price, or Adobe has hired an idiot to run their company.
In reality, the college kid downloads a multi-thousand dollar package for free, and Adobe looks the other way because it's to their benefit.
300 people died in the Oklahoma City bombings, right? More die every year from "occupational falls" and since the bombings I'll bet more people have died of lightning strikes. For all intensive purposes, domestic terrorism presents zero threat to any non-imperialist country that is relatively safe, and politically and economically free.
The terrorist attacks in Spain and London were similarly terrible tragedies, but on the scale of actual threats to the quality of life in those respective countries, virtually non-existent. The IRA and ETA have killed more people, again, over imperialist policies (though ETA is a more subtle case, and one which I'm not that familiar with.) Was the response to declare Irish-Catholics evil people, and smart-bomb their neighborhoods? Or declare Basque people enemy combatants, and jail them indefinitely without representation?
A society should absolutely spend money gathering intelligence and prosecuting those conspiring to commit such acts, but I can't think of a single instance in history where military force has decreased terrorism. Look at Israel - the whole conflict occurs in an area a bit larger than New Jersey, and their counter-terrorism effort has done nothing but unify the Palestinian people behind Hamas, just as the bombing of Lebanon unified a moderate Arab society behind Hezbollah. I do not know what the Iraqi terrorist group will be called, but you can be sure that it will arise out of the ashes of the current US military action.
George Bush was barely re-elected on a platform of fear, and only after he successfully labeled Kerry as unpatriotic. It's just sheer irony that Bush pulled strings to avoid battle, and Kerry actually served.
Again, if this war on terrorism is so vital to our survival, all of your kids should be signed up. If they aren't, then you aren't serious.
The real reason that Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft don't spend a great deal of time going after pirated software is because they would quickly lose market share. Even if software is cheap, it's never going to be cheap enough for a college student eating Ramen and saving money for beer on the weekends. He's going to nab a copy of whatever he wants to putz around with, and mostly use it complete school work and personal creative projects.
If Adobe made it impossible for him to get an illegal copy of Photoshop, guess what? He'd learn something else. And when he arrives at his first job and they ask him which version of the Creative Suite he needs, he very well might say "That's alright - I know Gimp and Inkscape, and I already have them. Just get me a bigger monitor instead."
It's a nightmare scenario, and one of those things I wish they (Microsoft/Adobe/Autodesk/Apple) would be more honest about. I hope they do lock down Windows with DRM so it is nearly hackproof and rejects the installation of pirated software, because Linux would gain a few million users overnight. In the end, the best thing the OSS movement has going for it is the greed of the big guys, so here's to hoping they only get more delirious with it.
Well, given that a Roman Emperor decided what would become the Bible three hundred years after the fact, you don't have much place to say anything at all. In another hundred and fifty years, these issues with true early Mormon thought will be whitewashed, just as the ideas that didn't turn out to be popular were weeded out of the official version of events for a good two hundred years after Christ died.
Religions are continually liberalized to remain relevant to modern society. And you think this criticism of your pink unicorn is different from his pink unicorn, it's doing it's true job of preventing you from thinking rationally.
How's the koolaid these days?
Since when is suspending habeas corpus, destroying congressional oversight, and wiretapping phones without permission from any legal authority constitute freedom?
Or is this the crazy part of American culture where abortion is murder and war is heroic?
Versus the actual sex crimes and violence that we've been engaged in since the dawn of time?
I swear, every time someone complains about violent video games, or internet porn (which involves mostly willing participants) where no real person is hurt, I want to throw a 60 inch plasma at the commentator playing the latest glory shot of smart bomb turning humans into red stains.
I may not agree with what you want to say, but as American (once upon a time, a long time ago, in a land far far away) you should be willing to die for that right.
Whether what you say causes a fight and then a lawsuit, or if it obstructs someone else's inalienable rights and causes your arrest is one thing. Preventing you from saying it is another.
Alas, America today is "Give me the liberty to buy shit, or at least try not to bother me while I watch TV." True freedom is a forgotten and probably lost dream.
As I stated in the post the more effective part of the plan is that there aren't bunch of marines killing hundreds of thousands of people in Arab territory. However...
Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, there are about six thousand miles of US border. You could take the roughly quarter million troops worlwide, divide them into three shifts, and have 13 US soldiers every mile, or about 1 every four hundred feet.
We are already paying these people. I'm sure they would be happy to take the same money, and actually defend their country instead of serving the interests of a few deranged politicians.
There is zero successful recruiting within the borders. FBI provocateurs have even failed, because the "terrorists" they pick up are poorly educated people who are angry and delusional, but have no ability or intent to actually commit terrorist acts.
You don't hear about domestic terrorism because there isn't any. The angriest cleric in the world has a hell of a time convincing a person with a job, a safe place to sleep, and the opportunities that every American has to strap a bomb to himself and kill innocent people. Maybe he could convince a sociopath, but these events would certainly be rare if they even occurred at all (and haven't yet.)
Now, take a young Iraqi kid who has lost his entire family to American military "collateral damage," or who's seen his sister raped and murdered because we can't even offer basic security after we destroyed their country, and show him a target that's in his neighborhood. That's an easy sell, and one that works in any cultural situation.
The point is that terrorism, like any other crime, isn't preventable. It's going to happen. You can reduce the likelihood through diplomacy, foreign policy, and security measures. All military action does, especially when there is no clear military objective, is make more people dead, and in my opinion, creates more terrorism than it destroys.
You are right about making people not want to do it, but the problem is violence isn't a part of that solution. Israel has been torturing Palestinians, destroying their homes, and assassinating suspected terrorists since the 60s, and the violence has gotten worse.
70% of Israelis believe that direct talks with Hamas are appropriate to achieve peace. Unfortunately, this does not fit in with the goals of their government, just as US politicians don't pay attention to what their constituents want if it happens to conflict with their own.
Western democracy at it's finest.
Security is only achieved when you have a multi-faceted, reactive and proactive system designed to detect anomalies and investigate them, EVEN IF THEY DON'T HAPPEN IN AN AIRPORT.
We have hundreds of millions of tons of cargo coming in and out of the country with zero inspection.
We have hundreds of miles of unprotected borders.
Where is our military force, sworn to protect us against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Across the ocean bombing infrastructure that we have to rebuild, because Americans don't want to drive small cars, or practice sane environmental conservation, or god forbid, live in more humble housing structures. We'd rather kill people who have never threatened us to maintain ground control near oil reserves.
Real security for the US would involve compromise, sacrifice, and hard work. That's why it will never happen.
The TSA stands around, making sure the people in line aren't terrorists. Now, I'm no criminal mastermind, but given the security around most US airports, all it does it make the regular citizens feel warm and fuzzy about all the gadgets they have to walk through to get on their plane. A terrorist would make a few friends at the airport, lift a few IDs, and before you know it, he can walk around the tarmac for weeks on end without being bothered, and walk right past a security line with the flash of his counterfeit badge and a smile.
Really effective security would be to bring every last troop home, and place them in every port and border crossing into the US. Even more effective than their inspections would be the fact that they aren't in foreign countries blowing stuff up. It's very difficult to recruit people to kill the infidel when he's across the ocean behind hundreds of thousands of highly trained Marines, minding his own business.
Unfortunately this would require leaders in government (Republicans and Democrats) to do an about-face on how they deal with terrorism, and as anyone knows, getting a politician to admit a mistake is harder than getting one to tell the truth in the first place. But we're the ones to blame - when the greatest threat to our way of life, according to Sean Hannity, is that "we may be driving around in Yugos," you wonder if the society is worth saving in the first place.
...is that the TSA is 100% ineffective, because no government, regardless of how brutal they are to suspected terrorists, or how many secret police they employ, or how many phones they tap, can prevent one person from committing a terrorist act.
The only thing the TSA does is reduce the likelihood such an attack will occur on a plane. It's a huge waste of money that's simply a security blanket for the uninformed.
If the telecoms don't have anything to hide, why would they be afraid of a few questions?
Uh-oh, Big Brother. It looks like that logic has a nasty way of working both ways. The only way to prevent this from happening in the future is to keep immunity out, sue every single telecom into bankruptcy, and throw every member of the Administration who was involved into prison.
Pff... hahahahah. Alright, it was worth a good laugh. Now please, go back to watching your televisions. The Factor is coming right up! Top news story? Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not an "honest man," and makes money selling lies...
Dear Mrs. Bush:
Your son, as you may know (or maybe you don't know), is the President of the United States, whose most popular foreign policy adventures are killing hundreds of thousand of people. Though they are a different color, I do believe they are still people.
Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Iran: "A nuclear Iran must not be allowed."
Taking your son's thought, I would encourage you either to join the Marines, or encourage all of your grand-children to join up, especially Jenna and little Barbara.
What you will see in the next war, if this iteration of war is anything like its predecessors, is incredible interactive violence aimed at everyone (whom you can shoot in the head and see the blood spray), innocent bystanders (whom you can run over with your Humvee or tank just for the heck of it), and of course the plentiful indigenous female prostitutes you can have sex with and then filet with a knife or stomp with your feet in order to get your money back. Experts note that the recent plethora of killings is caused in whole by your darling son's Administration and philosophical flunkies. There are four thousand dead soldiers in Iraq, and perhaps almost a million dead civilians. No, really - it was on 60 Minutes. I hope Bush has provided you with a flat screen TV to see the grief of the bereaved families that fills the screen. I mean, if reporters were allowed to say such things.
The violence that your son trafficks in is the kind of stuff that most mothers would be ashamed to see their son putting into the hands of other mothers' children, but, hey, your son Bush has recently assured the world that he is "a Boy Scout, everybody knows that." I'd love to see the merit badges that Scout Troop handed out. Is there a Colonialism merit badge? If so, your loving son deserves one now.
There's hundreds of thousands of mothers you would do well to talk to. They have a grief they carry every day that only a mother can know. There are other such mothers in the heartland of Iran whose inhabitants your son simply sees as commercial targets.
Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell the new Iran war, to "defend" a country in which your son claims you raised him to be "a Boy Scout." More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.
Happy Mother's day, Mrs. Bush, which this year is May 11, and who knows how soon until your son or his predecessor unleash actual death and violence upon other mothers' boys. I'm sure you're very proud.
Your version of liberty would work in a world with unlimited resources, but here on planet Earth, we are stuck with each other. Your "right" to a 500hp engine may well exist, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't cost $100,000 to buy and $500 to fill up, if that is the effect of damage it has on the ecosystem we all share.
Most others, thankfully, are reasonable. Perhaps a more effective rail system for freight delivery would eliminate the 18 wheelers from the highway system, and make a mother feel safer transporting her children in a lighter weight commuter vehicle, thus bringing down the average vehicle weight, saving energy, and creating less pollution.
Your vision seems to be that of 6000 pound curbweights being thrown around twenty lane highways, in what I would call an apocolyptic vehicular arms race. I'd prefer helping my neighbor through reasoned compromise, rather than drowning in the same cesspool with my arms wrapped around his throat, dying for my right to have the NASCAR edition of a Ford Excursion.
I'd rather have the liberty to receive phone calls from Saudi Arabia without having my phone lines tapped instead of having the liberty to destroy the environment for pure convenience. But the former are the aims of a person, and the latter the created wants of corporations.
And the fact that Toyota wants you to buy the product they've already developed for forty years instead of a newer, less profitable product, is somehow shocking to you? I think you need to re-read your basic economics book.
The complaints I have about apple:
1) Highway robbery for RAM/HDs from their website
2) Bank robbery for their hard drive prices for XServe
3) Spreadsheet performance (Excel 2008, OOo 2.4, Numbers '08)
4) Closed, shitty file formats for their iWork and iLife products
5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software
Their computers are over priced, but are perfect for casual, non-technical yuppy types, or people who have to use Final Cut / Logic Pro.
Personally, I consider miserable that people clamor for material things at all, but this is the same as lamenting murder or jealousy. They are part of the human experience.
What's most depressing is that never in history has society been more able and more indifferent towards ending poverty, racism, and war. We can now communicate with people worldwide at nearly no cost, and many of us have come to realize that the differences are so tiny in comparison with the similarities across cultures. They are exaggerated for the benefit of the propertied segment of society.
The multiple is somewhat meaningless, but in most developed western countries it's 30 to 50 times the average worker.
Take, for example, the CEO at KB Homes fired for fraud, who made 250 million dollars in two years and then received another 175 million on the way out the door. What was denied to him with 250 million that will be attainable at 425? A second private jet? Does anyone truly believe that his workers would have voted for his golden parachute given the choice?
Now KB is in the shitter, and laying off people across the country. Let's just say we gave him a third of what he received - a "paltry" 108 million - most reasonable people would agree that it represents a fair compensation for the work he performed. And instead of giving him options for seventh and eighth vacation homes, the company could have supported 4,000 workers for another two years until the economy regains it's footing. That's money for working people to stay off of welfare and continue to participate in the economy, versus one guy having extra multi-million dollar luxury goods. And those millions aren't going to recycle into the same economy - he's going to buy some fine art at auction and purchase real estate in France to hedge against the dollar, and buy ten thousand dollar Prada purses for his mistress or trophy wife that end up in the pocket of Prada and sweat shop labor in Malaysia.
When the disparity is at a lower ratio, everyone except that one person wins. And let me head you off at the pass - people will still compete for the same job, even if it only paid 30 million for 30 years of work.
1. The enemy of every state are it's own people, since they carry the power (dictatorship or not) to remove them from their position of privilege.
2. In poorly regulated capitalist countries with huge war (now called "defense") industries, there are always increasing needs to fight wars to fund the industry.
3. Once the media is profit based, it's in their interest to keep access and sell fear by helping to advance government/corporate goals.
Notice the drastic difference in public discourse in Britain where the BBC is taxpayer funded but not owned by the interest of any corporate entity, and America where the truth comes second to the dollar. In my opinion, as long as state-owned industries are open and easily reformed by the populace, they are far superior to the closed door dealings of private corporations.
No one has a "right" to what I would call obscene wealth - making 300 times your average employee for no reason other than the board is stuffed with your friends. And whether this wealth is possible only through human suffering matters very little to the robber barons at the top. It's not their kids losing limbs and lives over there, it's the economic draftees who are given the choice between getting shot at by local criminals or having a gun themselves to shoot back at "terrorists," who, as every other citizen of a civilization has done since time began, do not wish to be bound by foreign chains.
I'm speaking mostly of the inevitable endgame for most power users - when Xorg refuses to launch, most users are completely stuck.
Windowing environments are a requirement for 99% of all computer users, and until someone gets Xorg or another windowing environment to operate -- correctly! -- and 100% of the time in failsafe mode, Linux will never be acceptable to the average user.
You may enjoy three hours of tedium trying to get Xorg to display properly on a new monitor, or god forbid, two monitors. Most people don't.
Does it still require you to edit a configuration file in any situation?
Right.
It's getting better, but it's not ready.