> I agree, but the question is: he's inviting other people to connect to what? To an unfiltered global internet, > or to his wacky fun-house where he tortures visitors for his amusement?
Exactly the problem with the anarchists and their notions of "Down with 'da man', Free Internet for Everyone" bilge. When you contract for your connection you get certain assurances and service level promises. When you leech off any ol WiFi router you get what you get. As the practice becomes more commonplace expect the suprises to increase.
This guy is just yanking his neighbor's chain a bit. But just wait until most of those "Free" Hotspots in businesses start learning they can get in on the action for both fun and profit. Advertising, banner/popup insertion spying, user profiling, you name it they will soon be doing it. And because it is "Free" you won't really have any room to object. If enough profit is in it the telcos will switch to "Free" Internet to escape the SLA and bypass any network neutrality laws that might pass.
You know the best that I could come up with is another voting block on the election form on if your state should split their electoral votes or combine them. That would make things very exciting. It would force future Presidents to visit smaller states because you'd never know if those states will vote together or be split. The big fun thing would be the effect on the large states of California, Florida, New York, or Texas. I'd bet that they'd always split their votes rather than combining....
Ok, perhaps in CA they might be that stupid.... nah. Think it through. CA and NY are ALWAYS (unless it is such a blowout that it no longer matters, like Reagan's second run) going to vote D, everyone accepts that. Now if you are a Democrat voting to split means giving away electoral votes while voting the other way means you get to effectively sieze the votes of the outnumbered Republicans and vote em the 'right' way. Which way to you see some Act Up freak in Frisco voting? Uh huh, exactly.
> Absolutely... please let The South Rise Again. I'll see 'em off personally.....We'd all be better off for it.
Yes we would. Both sides would be better off. Interesting that we can agree on that part yet there is zero chance of it happening. Makes ya go hmmmm. Actually the US needs to be broken into more than just the old Confederacy and the rest. I'd suggest the USA name stay with the northeastern 'Yankee' states, the CSA break off and finally realize their dream, the Left Coast break off and form the People's Republic that is obviously their heart's desire, etc.
> The problem with voluntary voting systems - such as in the USA - is that the voluntary voters > aren't necessarily informed. However the voluntary voters are almost certainly opinionated.
But the ones motivated to go to the polls probably are the more informed citizens. If you don't know anything about politics it is because you don't care because there is certainly more than enough information available. Which is why I care not about turnout, in fact I go so far as to say "If you aren't up to speed on the issues and candidates the most responsible thing to do is stay the heck out of a voting booth." And if your sole source of information is 30 second TV ads (and the two minute puff pieces on the evening news) you are NOT up to speed.
I'm all for putting up barriers to voting as long as they aren't some half assed attempt to bring back Jim Crow (a D by the way, like most of the old southern racists, but you wouldn't know that from the evening news....) We don't allow any old ignorant 'tard to drive a car in public without demonstrating basic competence but we will allow them to vote?
But why couldn't we program these electronic voting machines to administer a short ten question civics quiz before displaying the ballot? Set the bar low, 50% passes and generate the quiz from a well publicized pool of a hundred questions. Nothing too hard, just weed out the clueless.
> This is not the first time Microsoft has collaborated with Xen.
No, you were right in your next statements, Cambridge had an XP source license. Microsoft didn't 'collaborate' with Xen except in the sense AT&T 'collaborated' with UCB in creating BSD.
This is all about Microsoft coming to terms with the coming sea change of hardware virtualization. UP to now they could simply deny teh right to redistribute the updated device drivers and HAL bits to allow NT based kernels to run in Xen, problem solved. But now comes hardware that rewrites the equation. Before it was "Is it in Microsoft's interest to allow NT based kernels to run in Xen?" and the answer was no. But now it will be running in Xen whether Microsoft wants it to or not, but hardware virtualization is going to be slower than running a modified kernel. Linux already has such a modified kernel. So now the question is "Do we allow the benchmarks for XP and Shorthorn running in Xen to suck compared to Linux?"
> This is just Microsoft trying to ensure that Windows can run as Domain 0, ensuring that you need one more Windows license > for something that NetBSD would do better.
Most certainly, as other posters have pointed out this initial effort is aimed at running Linux-Xen atop Windows, and takes great pains to make clear the opposite stacking order is not being considered. But they will, it is just taking them a bit of time to yield to reality. Corporate behemoths the size of Microsoft don't turn quicky unless BillG or The Embalmer does another "We are gonna fucking kill Netscape". (Yea I know I am mangling two different events for comedic value.)
Oh? In what way is 2k3 better than 2000 for server duties? Of course I'd ask how any competent admin can deploy either in an Internet facing role but that is one of those questions "That Must Not Be Asked(TM)" lest Microsoft strike you down. Thankfully I'm one of that 1% who are lucky enough to be operating in a 99% Microsoft Free environment so I can ask such questions with relative impunity. Of course the more correct formulation of the question is "How can an admin be considered 'competent' after deploying a Microsoft OS in an Internet facing environment considering their awful security track record."
> > Longhorn is right out.
> You haven't even seen it yet, and you're deciding against it?
It really isn't required to to see the final version, it will be a subset of the betas (expect more defeaturing before final RTM) and they are bad enough. There isn't anything there for an Enterprise IT shop to even consider a feature, so we can't even move to the part of the sales pitch where features can be sold as a benefit to the customer. Seriously, if Microsoft thinks Enterprise IT depts are going to forklift their entire existing workstation inventory for the dubious 'benefits' of Aero Glass they are stark raving insane. And as for servers, Eh? Tell me again why I want Shorthorn?
> > Then there's also the matter of Windows Genuine Spyware Disadvantage(TM), which you don't have installed on the old OSes.
> Funny, as you don't have to install it. It comes as a Automatic update, I uncheck the box to tell it not to install, then I check > another box telling me not to bother me again. Haven't heard from it since.
And you also won't get updates. And next comes the part where you get 0wn3d. Then comes the suffering. And even that probably won't be an option with shorthorn, I really don't expect them to be giving you a choice in the matter unless you are a major corporate install and considering how widely Corporate XP was pirated they will probably be turning the screws there as much as they can get away with.
Sorry, like the rest of the sane and semi-sane/. readers I have to call BS. Ok, the brain generates and uses EM and it is probably susceptable to EM interference if the field strength were cranked up enough. So you might someday demonstrate some sort of communication across distances of inches. But anything longer range isn't possible if you assume EM as the transmission method considering the output power of a human brain and the noise floor at the frequencies involved. Period.
That leaves transmission method X. And since nobody can even propose a method X, even a crackpot one, you are left trying to do a bunch of handwaving "by methods unknown". Combine with hundreds of controlled experiments failing to show that any such thing is happening and you have a non-existent effect with no way to propagate even if it did exist. And people are still getting money to do yet another test, even though nobody sane expects results anymore. Gotta love people who can manage to grab onto a public teat on such a bogus justification... wonder who's dick ya suck to get one of those jobs! Why do I have this mental image of Dr. Venkman slacking away in the open of Ghostbusters.
The problem isn't making a software based IVR system or even a softswitch run at a better rate. Now find me a SIP phone that runs at anything other than 8Khz. No, I'm not talking about a F/OSS softphone, but a real hardphone. They have the minimum DSP power the manufacturers can get away with to support 8Khz. Now find me a PRI that can interface with it. For now that is still an issue.
Skype has been running their softphones at higher than 8Khz/8bit so their softswitch obviously was the first widely deployed one to leave 64kbit max quality behind.
Yes, someday all telephony (except legacy telco stuff that will never change, which will be a shrinking market) will offer higher quality audio and an option for video. But not for a few more years until the saturation of next gen telephony products gets better.
> Asterisk does not currently provide the nuts and bolts of connecting SIP callers. It's SIP integration is not built out so great either. > (ex. can't easily connect to a STUN or RTP proxy)
Methinks thou have been modded 'informative' by others as lacking as clue as thee. Granted I'm still learning about VoIP and Asterisk but I took a WiFi VoIP phone (zyxel) home and it used the Asterisk server at work from behind my Linky's NAT just fine. Perhaps previous versions of * didn't have as complete support for SIP as 1.2 but I think you need to try a current version and update your knowledge.
As for Skype, it is great it has been reversed. Now we need a reversed copy of the protocol out in public so other products can interoperate with it. Until then it is just another closed product of zero interest because it has zero longterm future.
> Therefore, many see birth control as the only way to minimize what they feel is an undesirably large terrestrial population.
No need to worry about population. Show me a single country with a) prosperiety, b) stability (i.e. prosperous for at least a generation) and c) population growth among the native population. You won't. Without immigration no major economic power would be even sustaining their population The answer is therefore obvious, export capitalism, the rule of law and the various republican/parlimentarian forms of government that make material wealth possible for large numbers of people. Small elites can be wealthy under almost any form of government but examples of widespread wealth in the absence of political liberty.
Close the freedom gap and you solve the poverty problem, solving the population problem as a bonus. Additional bonus is freedom loving prosperous people don't tend to have much time for or interest in the ravings of charismatic madmen preaching suicide/genocide. And that is where I see the #1 threat to human survival as a species.
> It only cost them about 12 million so they definately got their money's worth from this one. They suckered > a bank into dumping a bunch of money (who took it in the shorts) and that bank is probably wanting some sort > of re-imbursement but still just chump change for MS.
You clearly aren't cynical enough. Those banks didn't lose a dime. They were laundering MSFT's money to SCOX pure and simple. Somewhere (probably in Balmer's office on well encrypted media) is a set of books showing how other payments (remember both Baystar and RBC had and still have extensive dealings with MSFT) were inflated to cover the transfer^Winvestment to SCOX.
SCO was Microsoft's sock puppet from day one. SCO was dead and they knew it so it wasn't like they had much choice, so they took on Darl and went on a suicide mission to buy Microsoft some time to come up with some strategy that might actually be able to stop FOSS other than launching the Patent Wars.
Nobody wants the Patent Wars, it is a doomsday device, once it goes off nobody can say with any certainty who survives or what the postwar world looks like. But they are increasingly being pushed against the wall and will eventually be forced to push the button. Yes they are still mighty, have annual sales in the billions and a virtual monopoly. But their stock has been flat since the.bomb crash and pressure is mounting for them to "do something." Be afraid, very afraid that the SCO trial is about over.
> That still doesn't mean we understood the cost of the fallout to protect ourselves, as is also > obviously true. To anyone without a fascist stick up their ass.
Successful war leaders must be able to make life and death decisions on incomplete information, the standard of 'knowing all the consequences of a decision beyond a reasonable doubt' you are advocating would translate into defeat in any War ever fought between any two combatants at any point in history. It was War, two options were available. Bomb or Invade. Both courses had thousands of unknown/unknowable consequences. But we had able leaders who made the tough calls and we won even though uncounted decisions up and down the chain of command were unmitigated disasters. More soldiers died in a training mission for D-Day than we have lost in both Afganistan and both wars in Iraq but the New York Times either didn't learn of it or was sane enough back then to STFU.
I'd like to belive you are just a mind numbed Kossack who doesn't realize the policies you advocate only prolong the War and cost American and Allied lives, but I find it harder to do every day. No, I think most of you idiots have went beyond dissent, beyond being anti-war all the way to being ON THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE. The NYT certainly is.
> As any fool could guess, and anyone with a brain doesn't have to guess, no one should be waving around these > ridiculous devices as if they worked to "extract truth".
Even if they don't 'work' they certainly have propaganda value. Remember, since Vietnam modern wars are still fought on the battlefield but aren't won or lost there. And even if it doesn't work well in the 1.0 version give em a few years of field experience.
> Any more than that Star Wars "missile defense shield" works to protect us
Ah yes, that standard issue lie. We won't know is missle defense 'won't work' until we have tried until the sun goes cold and we all freeze. Until then it only hasn't worked yet. The question is whether it is a good idea in general ( I happen to believe it is) and whether the current lines of research are promising enough to justify further research and the unclassified information in the general press is fairly encouraging in a defense against a limited attack like North Korea or Iran could muster in the near future.
> I require you to immediately report to one of "the G's" test centers to tweak this sexy Mystery Machine > into working order. It's your patriotic duty...
Are you saying if a general call for volunteers to help refine such a machine went out you would refuse? What a disgusting piece of human filth! Good men, and these days more than a few good women, are in Iraq tonight facing death each and every day and you wouldn't do such a minor thing to help? Where do I sign up? (With adaquate non-disclosure and other legal protections of course.)
> Personally, despite being a combat veteran and an expert marksman, I don't particularly like the idea > of every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying guns. In my experience, at least half of all people seem stupid, > irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three, and I'd feel safer if the stupid, irresponsible > and/or crazy people didn't have easy access to guns.
I really don't think you have thought this through, with all due respect. I know the military doesn't teach much civics though and the government schools certainly don't so perhaps it isn't your fault.
Because you see, there is a pretty obvious problem with that statement of yours. If you really think half of America is too "stupid, irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three" to be trusted with small arms how can you argue they should be trusted with something infinitely more dangerous, a ballot. But of course trusting anyone not actually declared mentally incompetent by a court of competent jurisdiction with a ballot is a pretty fundamental idea in modern American political thought.
I'd really be interested in how you reconcile the two.
> If we violate the civil (inalienable?) rights of terrorists, we are no better than them.
Terrorists don't have many rights. They usually aren't US Citizens or resident aliens so the US Courts are rightly closed to them. Being irregulars/spies/etc instead of regular military units with established uniforms and chains of command they aren't subject to very many of the protections outlined in the Geneva Conventions. People get hurt in War, that is why they are bad things. The ACLU and their fellow terorist enablers are solely interested in filing suits such as this one to throw sand in the US war machine, or bluntly, to lend aid and comfort to declared enemies in time of War.
But to date the ACLU has yet to commit an overt act of treason, unlike say the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Those morons need to be safely removed to a POW camp for the duration. Although going for broke and actually charging them with treason would have the nice potential of decades from now, after all the endless appeals settled, of actually sticking a needle in Pinch Sulzburger and Bill Keller's arms.
> Without groups like the ACLU holding the government accountable, the government would not be such..
No, We The People hold the government accountable, in the case of the US Federal Governent every two years. You guys are just unhappy at the judgement your fellow citizens rendered and looking at getting sympathetic judges to give do overs.
> However, not tested enough to protect ourselves from fallout and other contamination.
I'd say the side effects of bombing Japan have proven to be vastly outweighed by the savings in lives. I.e. the government made the right call.
> Even in this case, a libertarian activist organization is trying to stop the government from > (ab)using this technology before it's reliable.
Saying the ACLU is 'libertarian' is an insult to every libertarian. The ACLU is Socialist/Marxist/Communist on a good day and since 9/11 is pro terrorist.
> We can't afford our $3.5TRILLION government, with its miniscule accountability, beta testing devices > like this before the law is even ready, let alone the machines.
Listen up moonbat, who ELSE do you nominate? The Government, by definition, is the only ones capable of exercising the responsibility of making a decision like this one. They are elected and accountable, the ACLU is neither. Same for the "Union of Concerned Scientisists" and other front groups.
I suspect the G doesn't give a crap whether evidence gained from using the Mystery Device will be admissable in a court. They need the info to stop threats occuring in realtime. I think we can all agree that torturing (not sleep deprivation, mind games, and the other stuff the ACLU and Amnesty Int. claim is torture, real rip your fingernails off, hook your nuts to electrodes, ya know the stuff Saddam was fond of) prisioners is not cool except in the very most dire circumstances, so this gives them an option. Hell, if it is pimped out enough it will probably scare many of those ignorant goat herders into spillin their guts.
> Funny, I would put the right to have enough to eat as more basic than the right to bear arms, > while I'm sure you'd call that socialism.
No such 'right' is even possible. Declaring my inalienable Right to speak, think, worship (or not) as I choose requires nothing of my fellow Citizens other than they not oppress me. Same for my Right to defend myself. Your concept of a 'Right to Food' is nothing less than the assertion of an Obligation on me to feed you and anyone else who can't (more likely won't) do the things needed to feed themselves. More bluntly, you wish to enslave me to service your needs and you and the rest of your shiftless Socialist bretheren can go f*** yourself.
> What do non-property owners get out of upholding the rights of property holders?
That is easy, because EVERYONE is a 'property holder'. Yes, that is correct. Each and every one of us owns at least one very valuable item, themselves. I'd also bet you own quite a bit more property, perhaps not so much as Mr. Gates but more than a good three quarters of the world's population owns. But property rights begins with owning oneself. Socialism, by asserting that the individial is only valuable as property of the State, denies that. Defending the absolute Right to own property for Mr. Gates means my Right to my own more humble slice of the pie is also secure.
You can and should be free to use your powers of persuasion to convince me to do 'good works' like helping the less fortunate you should NOT be able to use the power of the State to take my property at gunpoint to do things you consider more worthy with the product of my labor. Yes that means I object to the bulk of the State and Federal government's expenditures.
> Guns are not a fundamental right. Not in my country, anyway.
Hope you see my point then. That if you weaken any of the Fundamental Human Rights they all suffer. And whether or not your government is oppressing you or not, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, to defend oneself against those who would use Force against you whether they be common brigands or a government run amok, are Fundamental Human Rights everywhere. It is no coincidence that the only nation state to enshrine ALL of the basic Human Rights in our highest laws is also the most free and prosperous nation in history. Doing do has allowed our system of government to withstand a century of determined effort to overthrow it by Socialism.
> How on Earth is someone going to talk millions of hunters and target shooters into adding a key encryption > device to their already expensive repertoire of presses, measurement tools, and cleaning equipment?
They aren't going to 'talk' you into anything. They will simply pass a law, which is one of the whole points of this exercise. No sane person would ever buy any of this crap, the point is to turn the screws of gun prohibition one more turn. Raise the price of guns and ammo enough to make it a sport for the upper classes only, eliminate reloaders (who they can't otherwise control) and set the stage for the next round of 'common sense gun control.'
> Also, given the incredible insecurity of RFID technology, it wouldn't take much to "modify" the things.
Also totally not the point, since only criminals would do that since attempting to do so or talking about it would be illegal. qed. They don't care about criminals, they care about the lawful. And they don't care if your gun is reliable, in fact if they bacame totally unreliable they (the Brady Bunch pushing this BS) would be happy as hell.
Join the NRA people, before it is too late. The ballot and soap boxes rest firmly atop the cartridge box, lose (or willingly surrender as your case may be) one fundamental Right and eventually you will lose them all.
Amen to that, I know I LIKE having the shelf of DVDs. It means I will always be able to watch those movies and shows, whenever I feel like it and without paying per view. No streaming service will ever be able to offer either of those features.
And I know what certain clueless types are already getting ready to reply with and; No, it won't. You will get whatever selection the services you are subscribing to have up at the moment, with zero certainty that same content will still be available in ten, twenty, fifty years and without a per use fee and/or user tracking. Terms of service are subject to change at the whim of the provider, your provider today will be just a cog in a different corporation next year, etc. Hell, a Cable Company hasn't kept the same name on their trucks for a decade in any city since the invention of Cable TV as best as I can tell, don't expect me to believe in permanancy on an Internet based service.
Streaming will offer DIFFERENT benefits, once the obsession with DRM is overcome, but I can't ever see myself not wanting physical copies of the stuff I really care about. A working streaming system would certainly make NetFlicks obsolete overnight, for example. And for that purpose it could even have DRM.
And of course I don't expect the obsession with DRM to end in the next decade so the whole streaming thing is mostly moot. Same for the various attempts at HiDef content. Given a choice of open (as a practical matter, Thanks DVD Jon) DVDs or closed hi res variants I can live with 720x480@60i.
> Most of the shareware I used back in the day was much more open and non commercial than it is now. There's a huge movement to bring out > limited software and leverage its popularity to persuade people to upgrade. Software like Easy CD Creater, Quicktime, Realplayer etc. > all attempt to recieve extra income by witholding features that are not expensive to implement.
Back in 'the day' there used to be something called the Association of Shareware Professionals who defended the original defination of "Shareware" and discouraged BBSes from allowing Demoware, Crippleware, Time limited trials, etc. from calling itself "Shareware". The ASP disappeared with the death of BBSes (no more enforcement powers, most of the ASPs powers came from freindly relations with Sysops, now an extinct breed)
But in the end, Shareware is usually a combination of the worst aspects of Free Software and Commercial. But there were some outstanding exceptions, I wouldn't have moved to DOS (from a Tandy CoCo3 w/ OS9 Level 2) when I did without someone showing me 4DOS could relieve the crappy existence of living in MS-DOS. But generally Shareware combines the no support of Free with the slow development cycle of Commercial and adds in the dependence on a single person remaining interested lest a program you depend upon becomes orphaned.
This sort of dissent has existed for years, ignored by 'all right thinking people', but out there. Looks like Gore's movie has goaded a few of the dissenters to go on the record and risk destroying their careers. Gotta salute the poor brave but doomed bastards.
But what I'm amazed at is Slashdot actually accepting a dissenting opinion as an actual article submission instead of this being posted as a reply to a glowing review of the film.
For another whack at Gore's credibility try this one:
> The civilian arm of Hezbollah is very active in providing civic, social and news services inside Lebanon. They are even > represented in the Lebanese government.
Yea, and back in the day apologists for the KKK pointed to various 'good works' they did when they weren't 'stringin' up niggers'. So by your apolgist for evil logic, if we Louisiana Republicans hadn't went gonzo "this time, vote for the crook![1]" to stop David Duke being elected to the Senate, the KKK would now be legit or would they need two Senators first? I wouldn't want to live in your moonbat world.
Stalin (only because he had no choice mind you) helped us defeat Germany. He also butchered millions of innocents.
So I have to come right out and ask, "And your point is?"
> Maybe he was trying to say more than "these kids are teh terrists"
No, I think he is so deep in Kos/DU thinking he doesn't see Hezbollah as evil, nay, he sees them as valliant warriers worthy of praise and emulation. That makes him not a dissident, not even anti American, it puts him on the other side. Because you can't be on my side, the side of the Enlightenment and (Classical) Liberalism and see anything worthy of praise, or compare to groups he supports, in Hezbollah, Hamas, the PA, Al Qaeda, the Mullas in Iran, Fidel Castro, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or any of the other barbarian butchers of the 20th Century. You just can't. Period, full stop.
To give them credit where it is due our enemy understands this fully, that there isn't room for compromise. In a Global society and economy there isn't room for superstitious barbarians and enlightened civilization. So this is a battle to the death of one way of life or the other. We must drag them kicking and screaming into the the 21st Century before they can destabilize and destroy Civilization. I picked my side and it is clear you picked yours. The difference is if my side wins you still get to be a misguided fool, if your side wins you will be killed as an infidel.
[1] The 'crook' being former Gov. Edwin Edwards D-LA, now serving time in Federal Prison. When David Duke suprised the establishment by winning second place in our crazy open primary, making the final election between him and multiple indicted (but yet to be convicted) ex two term governor Edwin Edwards (it's a Louisiana Thang, you wouldn't understand), the Republican Party, National and State, held it's nose and spent millions urging people to "this time, vote for the crook".
Full disclosure: Although I am a Republican born and raised in LA I'm strictly not part of the "WE" that prevented Duke from being elected to the Senate as I was living in Texas at the time and instead had equally easy job of deciding to vote for George W. Bush over that no class skank (Ann Richards D-TX) he replaced.
> they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah
To compare file traders to Hezbollah shows either a grotesque sense of proportion or a distorted sense of reality. Had it been the MPAA idiot making the comparision it would simply be the typical file traders == pirates == menace to society == torrorist rubbish we have grown to expect from those asshats. Dispicable but par for the course. But no, this quote was from the EFF, meaning they think the comparison is apt. Which either means they AGREE that trading files online is morally comparable to intentionally murdering women, children and other non-combatants or, more likely, they think terrorists, as long as they are politically correct anti-american/anti-semitic terrorists that is, are admirable people worthy of comparing oneself to.
Yes, the original goals of the EFF were praiseworthy and I supported them. But 9/11 apparently did change everything. Lately the EFF seems to spend most of its time and effort supporting the terrorists and even when, like this event, they were back on topic they can't seem to avoid showing their true political calling. Harsh criticism? Yes. But there is a difference between criticism of the current administration, criticism of your country, and supporting the enemy, lending them aid and comfort. And for most of the left today, they are so far over that line they don't even see the line anymore. Anyone who can entertain the notion there is ANYTHING praiseworthy in Hezbollah is someone who is way over the line.
> I think that assuming the upcoming format battle is limited to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is too simplistic. I would add > to the mix: existing DVD and the anti-format: movies via the internet.
And more. Using MPEG4 encoding a current DVD9 can do a pretty good HD. More and more players support various MPEG4/Divx media, standardize it and let studios see market and sooner or later one of em will try it. It just might turn out to be 'good enough' for most people.
And of course the major wildcard is whether Holographic DVD will get to market soon enough to turn both HD-DVD and Blue-Ray into a dead end. If they can solve the transfer rate problems with Holographic DVD we could even see uncompressed HD content. Talk about ending the format wars, that would certainly be game over in the quality battle.
Internet delivery is a non-starter. The tech isn't there and even if it were the studios aren't clueful enough. They will insist on being totally fascist with the DRM to the point where nobody is likely to care. No current broadband provider is provisioned to deal with HD delivery and any attempt to force the issue will end any hope of maintaining network neutrality. The net will of course remain THE place for p2p trading, for every Pirate Bay closed another will replace it although perhaps none as in your face as they were.
> No technological solution will ever fix the problem so long as it remains profitable..
There is a great deal of truth in your position. But it does miss the part tech can play. Current email on all platforms is as spammer friendly as Windows is zombie/virus friendly. Almost every MUA has features explicitly enabled by default that make the spammer's job easier than it should be. Making a better breed of user would certainly solve the spam problem, but short of a harsh program of forced eugenics over several generations and the destruction of every government school, a user smart enough to be a total solution is as mythical as 'honest politicians'. So lets look first at what we can actually do.
Change the default behaviour of MUAs so that external content is NOT retrieved without explicit action from the user. This eliminates the webbugs that allow the spammers to blast out a billion pieces of mail to randomly generated mail addresses and see which ones are live. It also stops them from keeping track of which spams make it through the filters on various sites. So called 'rich media' could still be easilly sent via email but it would all have to be inlined via the magic of MIME.
Forbid ANY 'active' content in email. Yes this might stifle the 'creativity' of a few lame ad agencies but the security implications of email are totally different from web pages. You GO to webpages, email comes TO you. Accepting executable content from random strangers is a recipe for infection. This means NO Javascript, JAVA, Flash, etc. And just to be safe you should probably stop DOM and all the other shiny new Web 2.0 things that blur the line between static HTML or plain text and executable content. At a bare minumum a new email should be presented as a static page and if it contains 'dynamic content' add a bar at the top stating "This email wants to use dynamic content that is dangerous. Allow [Yes] [No] [Always for this sender]?"
The current practice of embedding IE or Gecko to render html in email must be stopped. A reduced rendering engine capable of only the most simple static html needs to be created, preferrably in a safe language like Python, Java or C#. If the user opts to rerender in full html unmap the window with the simple html and THEN embed Gecko or IE for that one email.
It of course goes without stating that ActiveX should NEVER be permitted anywhere for any reason.
Mail clients need to be simplified to the point their operation can be VERIFIED to be safe.
Crypto could be as ubiquitious for email as it is currently for the web. I suspect the only reason it isn't is fear of the US Government. Even with the relaxation of the ITAR regs everybody seems to be acting under an unwritten agreement that crypto can only be used to secure ecommerce, not the private communications of individuals. I can see MS/Outlook making some under the table deal to ease the paperwork but why hasn't Thunderbird or Eudora stepped up to the plate and built in seamless GPG support? For that matter why not Evolution, Pine or Mutt? Or why isn't it commonplace for emails from major corp senders to be crypographically signed and major mail clients already verifying them? Sure would stop almost all phishing attacks now wouldn't it? A big red banner atop that mail perporting to be from Paypal saying "WARNING, the signature on this mail doesn't match previous mail from paypal.com" instead of a green one saying "Signature verified: paypal.com" would put a fast stop to those scams now wouldn't it? Since I can't be the only one to see such an obvious solution I have to ask "Who is stopping it?"
Or how about programming some very simple sanity checks on the mail path and adding a warning banner when one comes via a strange path along with some whitelisting based on previous history. I'm not talking full Bayesian filtering here, but something a wet behind the ears incompetent asshat at Microsoft could even manage to implement right in only a few years.
Slashdot Mirror
> I agree, but the question is: he's inviting other people to connect to what? To an unfiltered global internet,
> or to his wacky fun-house where he tortures visitors for his amusement?
Exactly the problem with the anarchists and their notions of "Down with 'da man', Free Internet for Everyone" bilge. When you contract for your connection you get certain assurances and service level promises. When you leech off any ol WiFi router you get what you get. As the practice becomes more commonplace expect the suprises to increase.
This guy is just yanking his neighbor's chain a bit. But just wait until most of those "Free" Hotspots in businesses start learning they can get in on the action for both fun and profit. Advertising, banner/popup insertion spying, user profiling, you name it they will soon be doing it. And because it is "Free" you won't really have any room to object. If enough profit is in it the telcos will switch to "Free" Internet to escape the SLA and bypass any network neutrality laws that might pass.
Ok, perhaps in CA they might be that stupid.... nah. Think it through. CA and NY are ALWAYS (unless it is such a blowout that it no longer matters, like Reagan's second run) going to vote D, everyone accepts that. Now if you are a Democrat voting to split means giving away electoral votes while voting the other way means you get to effectively sieze the votes of the outnumbered Republicans and vote em the 'right' way. Which way to you see some Act Up freak in Frisco voting? Uh huh, exactly.
> Absolutely ... please let The South Rise Again. I'll see 'em off personally.....We'd all be better off for it.
Yes we would. Both sides would be better off. Interesting that we can agree on that part yet there is zero chance of it happening. Makes ya go hmmmm. Actually the US needs to be broken into more than just the old Confederacy and the rest. I'd suggest the USA name stay with the northeastern 'Yankee' states, the CSA break off and finally realize their dream, the Left Coast break off and form the People's Republic that is obviously their heart's desire, etc.
> The problem with voluntary voting systems - such as in the USA - is that the voluntary voters
> aren't necessarily informed. However the voluntary voters are almost certainly opinionated.
But the ones motivated to go to the polls probably are the more informed citizens. If you don't know anything about politics it is because you don't care because there is certainly more than enough information available. Which is why I care not about turnout, in fact I go so far as to say "If you aren't up to speed on the issues and candidates the most responsible thing to do is stay the heck out of a voting booth." And if your sole source of information is 30 second TV ads (and the two minute puff pieces on the evening news) you are NOT up to speed.
I'm all for putting up barriers to voting as long as they aren't some half assed attempt to bring back Jim Crow (a D by the way, like most of the old southern racists, but you wouldn't know that from the evening news....) We don't allow any old ignorant 'tard to drive a car in public without demonstrating basic competence but we will allow them to vote?
But why couldn't we program these electronic voting machines to administer a short ten question civics quiz before displaying the ballot? Set the bar low, 50% passes and generate the quiz from a well publicized pool of a hundred questions. Nothing too hard, just weed out the clueless.
> This is not the first time Microsoft has collaborated with Xen.
No, you were right in your next statements, Cambridge had an XP source license. Microsoft didn't 'collaborate' with Xen except in the sense AT&T 'collaborated' with UCB in creating BSD.
This is all about Microsoft coming to terms with the coming sea change of hardware virtualization. UP to now they could simply deny teh right to redistribute the updated device drivers and HAL bits to allow NT based kernels to run in Xen, problem solved. But now comes hardware that rewrites the equation. Before it was "Is it in Microsoft's interest to allow NT based kernels to run in Xen?" and the answer was no. But now it will be running in Xen whether Microsoft wants it to or not, but hardware virtualization is going to be slower than running a modified kernel. Linux already has such a modified kernel. So now the question is "Do we allow the benchmarks for XP and Shorthorn running in Xen to suck compared to Linux?"
> This is just Microsoft trying to ensure that Windows can run as Domain 0, ensuring that you need one more Windows license
> for something that NetBSD would do better.
Most certainly, as other posters have pointed out this initial effort is aimed at running Linux-Xen atop Windows, and takes great pains to make clear the opposite stacking order is not being considered. But they will, it is just taking them a bit of time to yield to reality. Corporate behemoths the size of Microsoft don't turn quicky unless BillG or The Embalmer does another "We are gonna fucking kill Netscape". (Yea I know I am mangling two different events for comedic value.)
> Server 2k3 is far more advanced that 2000
Oh? In what way is 2k3 better than 2000 for server duties? Of course I'd ask how any competent admin can deploy either in an Internet facing role but that is one of those questions "That Must Not Be Asked(TM)" lest Microsoft strike you down. Thankfully I'm one of that 1% who are lucky enough to be operating in a 99% Microsoft Free environment so I can ask such questions with relative impunity. Of course the more correct formulation of the question is "How can an admin be considered 'competent' after deploying a Microsoft OS in an Internet facing environment considering their awful security track record."
> > Longhorn is right out.
> You haven't even seen it yet, and you're deciding against it?
It really isn't required to to see the final version, it will be a subset of the betas (expect more defeaturing before final RTM) and they are bad enough. There isn't anything there for an Enterprise IT shop to even consider a feature, so we can't even move to the part of the sales pitch where features can be sold as a benefit to the customer. Seriously, if Microsoft thinks Enterprise IT depts are going to forklift their entire existing workstation inventory for the dubious 'benefits' of Aero Glass they are stark raving insane. And as for servers, Eh? Tell me again why I want Shorthorn?
> > Then there's also the matter of Windows Genuine Spyware Disadvantage(TM), which you don't have installed on the old OSes.
> Funny, as you don't have to install it. It comes as a Automatic update, I uncheck the box to tell it not to install, then I check
> another box telling me not to bother me again. Haven't heard from it since.
And you also won't get updates. And next comes the part where you get 0wn3d. Then comes the suffering. And even that probably won't be an option with shorthorn, I really don't expect them to be giving you a choice in the matter unless you are a major corporate install and considering how widely Corporate XP was pirated they will probably be turning the screws there as much as they can get away with.
Sorry, like the rest of the sane and semi-sane /. readers I have to call BS. Ok, the brain generates and uses EM and it is probably susceptable to EM interference if the field strength were cranked up enough. So you might someday demonstrate some sort of communication across distances of inches. But anything longer range isn't possible if you assume EM as the transmission method considering the output power of a human brain and the noise floor at the frequencies involved. Period.
That leaves transmission method X. And since nobody can even propose a method X, even a crackpot one, you are left trying to do a bunch of handwaving "by methods unknown". Combine with hundreds of controlled experiments failing to show that any such thing is happening and you have a non-existent effect with no way to propagate even if it did exist. And people are still getting money to do yet another test, even though nobody sane expects results anymore. Gotta love people who can manage to grab onto a public teat on such a bogus justification... wonder who's dick ya suck to get one of those jobs! Why do I have this mental image of Dr. Venkman slacking away in the open of Ghostbusters.
The problem isn't making a software based IVR system or even a softswitch run at a better rate. Now find me a SIP phone that runs at anything other than 8Khz. No, I'm not talking about a F/OSS softphone, but a real hardphone. They have the minimum DSP power the manufacturers can get away with to support 8Khz. Now find me a PRI that can interface with it. For now that is still an issue.
Skype has been running their softphones at higher than 8Khz/8bit so their softswitch obviously was the first widely deployed one to leave 64kbit max quality behind.
Yes, someday all telephony (except legacy telco stuff that will never change, which will be a shrinking market) will offer higher quality audio and an option for video. But not for a few more years until the saturation of next gen telephony products gets better.
> Asterisk does not currently provide the nuts and bolts of connecting SIP callers. It's SIP integration is not built out so great either.
> (ex. can't easily connect to a STUN or RTP proxy)
Methinks thou have been modded 'informative' by others as lacking as clue as thee. Granted I'm still learning about VoIP and Asterisk but I took a WiFi VoIP phone (zyxel) home and it used the Asterisk server at work from behind my Linky's NAT just fine. Perhaps previous versions of * didn't have as complete support for SIP as 1.2 but I think you need to try a current version and update your knowledge.
As for Skype, it is great it has been reversed. Now we need a reversed copy of the protocol out in public so other products can interoperate with it. Until then it is just another closed product of zero interest because it has zero longterm future.
> Therefore, many see birth control as the only way to minimize what they feel is an undesirably large terrestrial population.
No need to worry about population. Show me a single country with a) prosperiety, b) stability (i.e. prosperous for at least a generation) and c) population growth among the native population. You won't. Without immigration no major economic power would be even sustaining their population The answer is therefore obvious, export capitalism, the rule of law and the various republican/parlimentarian forms of government that make material wealth possible for large numbers of people. Small elites can be wealthy under almost any form of government but examples of widespread wealth in the absence of political liberty.
Close the freedom gap and you solve the poverty problem, solving the population problem as a bonus. Additional bonus is freedom loving prosperous people don't tend to have much time for or interest in the ravings of charismatic madmen preaching suicide/genocide. And that is where I see the #1 threat to human survival as a species.
> It only cost them about 12 million so they definately got their money's worth from this one. They suckered
.bomb crash and pressure is mounting for them to "do something." Be afraid, very afraid that the SCO trial is about over.
> a bank into dumping a bunch of money (who took it in the shorts) and that bank is probably wanting some sort
> of re-imbursement but still just chump change for MS.
You clearly aren't cynical enough. Those banks didn't lose a dime. They were laundering MSFT's money to SCOX pure and simple. Somewhere (probably in Balmer's office on well encrypted media) is a set of books showing how other payments (remember both Baystar and RBC had and still have extensive dealings with MSFT) were inflated to cover the transfer^Winvestment to SCOX.
SCO was Microsoft's sock puppet from day one. SCO was dead and they knew it so it wasn't like they had much choice, so they took on Darl and went on a suicide mission to buy Microsoft some time to come up with some strategy that might actually be able to stop FOSS other than launching the Patent Wars.
Nobody wants the Patent Wars, it is a doomsday device, once it goes off nobody can say with any certainty who survives or what the postwar world looks like. But they are increasingly being pushed against the wall and will eventually be forced to push the button. Yes they are still mighty, have annual sales in the billions and a virtual monopoly. But their stock has been flat since the
> That still doesn't mean we understood the cost of the fallout to protect ourselves, as is also
> obviously true. To anyone without a fascist stick up their ass.
Successful war leaders must be able to make life and death decisions on incomplete information, the standard of 'knowing all the consequences of a decision beyond a reasonable doubt' you are advocating would translate into defeat in any War ever fought between any two combatants at any point in history. It was War, two options were available. Bomb or Invade. Both courses had thousands of unknown/unknowable consequences. But we had able leaders who made the tough calls and we won even though uncounted decisions up and down the chain of command were unmitigated disasters. More soldiers died in a training mission for D-Day than we have lost in both Afganistan and both wars in Iraq but the New York Times either didn't learn of it or was sane enough back then to STFU.
I'd like to belive you are just a mind numbed Kossack who doesn't realize the policies you advocate only prolong the War and cost American and Allied lives, but I find it harder to do every day. No, I think most of you idiots have went beyond dissent, beyond being anti-war all the way to being ON THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE. The NYT certainly is.
> As any fool could guess, and anyone with a brain doesn't have to guess, no one should be waving around these
> ridiculous devices as if they worked to "extract truth".
Even if they don't 'work' they certainly have propaganda value. Remember, since Vietnam modern wars are still fought on the battlefield but aren't won or lost there. And even if it doesn't work well in the 1.0 version give em a few years of field experience.
> Any more than that Star Wars "missile defense shield" works to protect us
Ah yes, that standard issue lie. We won't know is missle defense 'won't work' until we have tried until the sun goes cold and we all freeze. Until then it only hasn't worked yet. The question is whether it is a good idea in general ( I happen to believe it is) and whether the current lines of research are promising enough to justify further research and the unclassified information in the general press is fairly encouraging in a defense against a limited attack like North Korea or Iran could muster in the near future.
> I require you to immediately report to one of "the G's" test centers to tweak this sexy Mystery Machine
> into working order. It's your patriotic duty...
Are you saying if a general call for volunteers to help refine such a machine went out you would refuse? What a disgusting piece of human filth! Good men, and these days more than a few good women, are in Iraq tonight facing death each and every day and you wouldn't do such a minor thing to help? Where do I sign up? (With adaquate non-disclosure and other legal protections of course.)
> Personally, despite being a combat veteran and an expert marksman, I don't particularly like the idea
> of every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying guns. In my experience, at least half of all people seem stupid,
> irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three, and I'd feel safer if the stupid, irresponsible
> and/or crazy people didn't have easy access to guns.
I really don't think you have thought this through, with all due respect. I know the military doesn't teach much civics though and the government schools certainly don't so perhaps it isn't your fault.
Because you see, there is a pretty obvious problem with that statement of yours. If you really think half of America is too "stupid, irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three" to be trusted with small arms how can you argue they should be trusted with something infinitely more dangerous, a ballot. But of course trusting anyone not actually declared mentally incompetent by a court of competent jurisdiction with a ballot is a pretty fundamental idea in modern American political thought.
I'd really be interested in how you reconcile the two.
> If we violate the civil (inalienable?) rights of terrorists, we are no better than them.
Terrorists don't have many rights. They usually aren't US Citizens or resident aliens so the US Courts are rightly closed to them. Being irregulars/spies/etc instead of regular military units with established uniforms and chains of command they aren't subject to very many of the protections outlined in the Geneva Conventions. People get hurt in War, that is why they are bad things. The ACLU and their fellow terorist enablers are solely interested in filing suits such as this one to throw sand in the US war machine, or bluntly, to lend aid and comfort to declared enemies in time of War.
But to date the ACLU has yet to commit an overt act of treason, unlike say the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Those morons need to be safely removed to a POW camp for the duration. Although going for broke and actually charging them with treason would have the nice potential of decades from now, after all the endless appeals settled, of actually sticking a needle in Pinch Sulzburger and Bill Keller's arms.
> Without groups like the ACLU holding the government accountable, the government would not be such..
No, We The People hold the government accountable, in the case of the US Federal Governent every two years. You guys are just unhappy at the judgement your fellow citizens rendered and looking at getting sympathetic judges to give do overs.
> However, not tested enough to protect ourselves from fallout and other contamination.
I'd say the side effects of bombing Japan have proven to be vastly outweighed by the savings in lives. I.e. the government made the right call.
> Even in this case, a libertarian activist organization is trying to stop the government from
> (ab)using this technology before it's reliable.
Saying the ACLU is 'libertarian' is an insult to every libertarian. The ACLU is Socialist/Marxist/Communist on a good day and since 9/11 is pro terrorist.
> We can't afford our $3.5TRILLION government, with its miniscule accountability, beta testing devices
> like this before the law is even ready, let alone the machines.
Listen up moonbat, who ELSE do you nominate? The Government, by definition, is the only ones capable of exercising the responsibility of making a decision like this one. They are elected and accountable, the ACLU is neither. Same for the "Union of Concerned Scientisists" and other front groups.
I suspect the G doesn't give a crap whether evidence gained from using the Mystery Device will be admissable in a court. They need the info to stop threats occuring in realtime. I think we can all agree that torturing (not sleep deprivation, mind games, and the other stuff the ACLU and Amnesty Int. claim is torture, real rip your fingernails off, hook your nuts to electrodes, ya know the stuff Saddam was fond of) prisioners is not cool except in the very most dire circumstances, so this gives them an option. Hell, if it is pimped out enough it will probably scare many of those ignorant goat herders into spillin their guts.
> Funny, I would put the right to have enough to eat as more basic than the right to bear arms,
> while I'm sure you'd call that socialism.
No such 'right' is even possible. Declaring my inalienable Right to speak, think, worship (or not) as I choose requires nothing of my fellow Citizens other than they not oppress me. Same for my Right to defend myself. Your concept of a 'Right to Food' is nothing less than the assertion of an Obligation on me to feed you and anyone else who can't (more likely won't) do the things needed to feed themselves. More bluntly, you wish to enslave me to service your needs and you and the rest of your shiftless Socialist bretheren can go f*** yourself.
> What do non-property owners get out of upholding the rights of property holders?
That is easy, because EVERYONE is a 'property holder'. Yes, that is correct. Each and every one of us owns at least one very valuable item, themselves. I'd also bet you own quite a bit more property, perhaps not so much as Mr. Gates but more than a good three quarters of the world's population owns. But property rights begins with owning oneself. Socialism, by asserting that the individial is only valuable as property of the State, denies that. Defending the absolute Right to own property for Mr. Gates means my Right to my own more humble slice of the pie is also secure.
You can and should be free to use your powers of persuasion to convince me to do 'good works' like helping the less fortunate you should NOT be able to use the power of the State to take my property at gunpoint to do things you consider more worthy with the product of my labor. Yes that means I object to the bulk of the State and Federal government's expenditures.
> Guns are not a fundamental right. Not in my country, anyway.
Hope you see my point then. That if you weaken any of the Fundamental Human Rights they all suffer. And whether or not your government is oppressing you or not, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, to defend oneself against those who would use Force against you whether they be common brigands or a government run amok, are Fundamental Human Rights everywhere. It is no coincidence that the only nation state to enshrine ALL of the basic Human Rights in our highest laws is also the most free and prosperous nation in history. Doing do has allowed our system of government to withstand a century of determined effort to overthrow it by Socialism.
> How on Earth is someone going to talk millions of hunters and target shooters into adding a key encryption
> device to their already expensive repertoire of presses, measurement tools, and cleaning equipment?
They aren't going to 'talk' you into anything. They will simply pass a law, which is one of the whole points of this exercise. No sane person would ever buy any of this crap, the point is to turn the screws of gun prohibition one more turn. Raise the price of guns and ammo enough to make it a sport for the upper classes only, eliminate reloaders (who they can't otherwise control) and set the stage for the next round of 'common sense gun control.'
> Also, given the incredible insecurity of RFID technology, it wouldn't take much to "modify" the things.
Also totally not the point, since only criminals would do that since attempting to do so or talking about it would be illegal. qed. They don't care about criminals, they care about the lawful. And they don't care if your gun is reliable, in fact if they bacame totally unreliable they (the Brady Bunch pushing this BS) would be happy as hell.
Join the NRA people, before it is too late. The ballot and soap boxes rest firmly atop the cartridge box, lose (or willingly surrender as your case may be) one fundamental Right and eventually you will lose them all.
Amen to that, I know I LIKE having the shelf of DVDs. It means I will always be able to watch those movies and shows, whenever I feel like it and without paying per view. No streaming service will ever be able to offer either of those features.
And I know what certain clueless types are already getting ready to reply with and; No, it won't. You will get whatever selection the services you are subscribing to have up at the moment, with zero certainty that same content will still be available in ten, twenty, fifty years and without a per use fee and/or user tracking. Terms of service are subject to change at the whim of the provider, your provider today will be just a cog in a different corporation next year, etc. Hell, a Cable Company hasn't kept the same name on their trucks for a decade in any city since the invention of Cable TV as best as I can tell, don't expect me to believe in permanancy on an Internet based service.
Streaming will offer DIFFERENT benefits, once the obsession with DRM is overcome, but I can't ever see myself not wanting physical copies of the stuff I really care about. A working streaming system would certainly make NetFlicks obsolete overnight, for example. And for that purpose it could even have DRM.
And of course I don't expect the obsession with DRM to end in the next decade so the whole streaming thing is mostly moot. Same for the various attempts at HiDef content. Given a choice of open (as a practical matter, Thanks DVD Jon) DVDs or closed hi res variants I can live with 720x480@60i.
> Most of the shareware I used back in the day was much more open and non commercial than it is now. There's a huge movement to bring out
> limited software and leverage its popularity to persuade people to upgrade. Software like Easy CD Creater, Quicktime, Realplayer etc.
> all attempt to recieve extra income by witholding features that are not expensive to implement.
Back in 'the day' there used to be something called the Association of Shareware Professionals who defended the original defination of "Shareware" and discouraged BBSes from allowing Demoware, Crippleware, Time limited trials, etc. from calling itself "Shareware". The ASP disappeared with the death of BBSes (no more enforcement powers, most of the ASPs powers came from freindly relations with Sysops, now an extinct breed)
But in the end, Shareware is usually a combination of the worst aspects of Free Software and Commercial. But there were some outstanding exceptions, I wouldn't have moved to DOS (from a Tandy CoCo3 w/ OS9 Level 2) when I did without someone showing me 4DOS could relieve the crappy existence of living in MS-DOS. But generally Shareware combines the no support of Free with the slow development cycle of Commercial and adds in the dependence on a single person remaining interested lest a program you depend upon becomes orphaned.
This sort of dissent has existed for years, ignored by 'all right thinking people', but out there. Looks like Gore's movie has goaded a few of the dissenters to go on the record and risk destroying their careers. Gotta salute the poor brave but doomed bastards.
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But what I'm amazed at is Slashdot actually accepting a dissenting opinion as an actual article submission instead of this being posted as a reply to a glowing review of the film.
For another whack at Gore's credibility try this one:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDE3ZTkyOWYx
> The civilian arm of Hezbollah is very active in providing civic, social and news services inside Lebanon. They are even
> represented in the Lebanese government.
Yea, and back in the day apologists for the KKK pointed to various 'good works' they did when they weren't 'stringin' up niggers'. So by your apolgist for evil logic, if we Louisiana Republicans hadn't went gonzo "this time, vote for the crook![1]" to stop David Duke being elected to the Senate, the KKK would now be legit or would they need two Senators first? I wouldn't want to live in your moonbat world.
Stalin (only because he had no choice mind you) helped us defeat Germany. He also butchered millions of innocents.
So I have to come right out and ask, "And your point is?"
> Maybe he was trying to say more than "these kids are teh terrists"
No, I think he is so deep in Kos/DU thinking he doesn't see Hezbollah as evil, nay, he sees them as valliant warriers worthy of praise and emulation. That makes him not a dissident, not even anti American, it puts him on the other side. Because you can't be on my side, the side of the Enlightenment and (Classical) Liberalism and see anything worthy of praise, or compare to groups he supports, in Hezbollah, Hamas, the PA, Al Qaeda, the Mullas in Iran, Fidel Castro, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or any of the other barbarian butchers of the 20th Century. You just can't. Period, full stop.
To give them credit where it is due our enemy understands this fully, that there isn't room for compromise. In a Global society and economy there isn't room for superstitious barbarians and enlightened civilization. So this is a battle to the death of one way of life or the other. We must drag them kicking and screaming into the the 21st Century before they can destabilize and destroy Civilization. I picked my side and it is clear you picked yours. The difference is if my side wins you still get to be a misguided fool, if your side wins you will be killed as an infidel.
[1] The 'crook' being former Gov. Edwin Edwards D-LA, now serving time in Federal Prison. When David Duke suprised the establishment by winning second place in our crazy open primary, making the final election between him and multiple indicted (but yet to be convicted) ex two term governor Edwin Edwards (it's a Louisiana Thang, you wouldn't understand), the Republican Party, National and State, held it's nose and spent millions urging people to "this time, vote for the crook".
Full disclosure: Although I am a Republican born and raised in LA I'm strictly not part of the "WE" that prevented Duke from being elected to the Senate as I was living in Texas at the time and instead had equally easy job of deciding to vote for George W. Bush over that no class skank (Ann Richards D-TX) he replaced.
> they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah
To compare file traders to Hezbollah shows either a grotesque sense of proportion or a distorted sense of reality. Had it been the MPAA idiot making the comparision it would simply be the typical file traders == pirates == menace to society == torrorist rubbish we have grown to expect from those asshats. Dispicable but par for the course. But no, this quote was from the EFF, meaning they think the comparison is apt. Which either means they AGREE that trading files online is morally comparable to intentionally murdering women, children and other non-combatants or, more likely, they think terrorists, as long as they are politically correct anti-american/anti-semitic terrorists that is, are admirable people worthy of comparing oneself to.
Yes, the original goals of the EFF were praiseworthy and I supported them. But 9/11 apparently did change everything. Lately the EFF seems to spend most of its time and effort supporting the terrorists and even when, like this event, they were back on topic they can't seem to avoid showing their true political calling. Harsh criticism? Yes. But there is a difference between criticism of the current administration, criticism of your country, and supporting the enemy, lending them aid and comfort. And for most of the left today, they are so far over that line they don't even see the line anymore. Anyone who can entertain the notion there is ANYTHING praiseworthy in Hezbollah is someone who is way over the line.
> I think that assuming the upcoming format battle is limited to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is too simplistic. I would add
> to the mix: existing DVD and the anti-format: movies via the internet.
And more. Using MPEG4 encoding a current DVD9 can do a pretty good HD. More and more players support various MPEG4/Divx media, standardize it and let studios see market and sooner or later one of em will try it. It just might turn out to be 'good enough' for most people.
And of course the major wildcard is whether Holographic DVD will get to market soon enough to turn both HD-DVD and Blue-Ray into a dead end. If they can solve the transfer rate problems with Holographic DVD we could even see uncompressed HD content. Talk about ending the format wars, that would certainly be game over in the quality battle.
Internet delivery is a non-starter. The tech isn't there and even if it were the studios aren't clueful enough. They will insist on being totally fascist with the DRM to the point where nobody is likely to care. No current broadband provider is provisioned to deal with HD delivery and any attempt to force the issue will end any hope of maintaining network neutrality. The net will of course remain THE place for p2p trading, for every Pirate Bay closed another will replace it although perhaps none as in your face as they were.
> No technological solution will ever fix the problem so long as it remains profitable ..
There is a great deal of truth in your position. But it does miss the part tech can play. Current email on all platforms is as spammer friendly as Windows is zombie/virus friendly. Almost every MUA has features explicitly enabled by default that make the spammer's job easier than it should be. Making a better breed of user would certainly solve the spam problem, but short of a harsh program of forced eugenics over several generations and the destruction of every government school, a user smart enough to be a total solution is as mythical as 'honest politicians'. So lets look first at what we can actually do.
Change the default behaviour of MUAs so that external content is NOT retrieved without explicit action from the user. This eliminates the webbugs that allow the spammers to blast out a billion pieces of mail to randomly generated mail addresses and see which ones are live. It also stops them from keeping track of which spams make it through the filters on various sites. So called 'rich media' could still be easilly sent via email but it would all have to be inlined via the magic of MIME.
Forbid ANY 'active' content in email. Yes this might stifle the 'creativity' of a few lame ad agencies but the security implications of email are totally different from web pages. You GO to webpages, email comes TO you. Accepting executable content from random strangers is a recipe for infection. This means NO Javascript, JAVA, Flash, etc. And just to be safe you should probably stop DOM and all the other shiny new Web 2.0 things that blur the line between static HTML or plain text and executable content. At a bare minumum a new email should be presented as a static page and if it contains 'dynamic content' add a bar at the top stating "This email wants to use dynamic content that is dangerous. Allow [Yes] [No] [Always for this sender]?"
The current practice of embedding IE or Gecko to render html in email must be stopped. A reduced rendering engine capable of only the most simple static html needs to be created, preferrably in a safe language like Python, Java or C#. If the user opts to rerender in full html unmap the window with the simple html and THEN embed Gecko or IE for that one email.
It of course goes without stating that ActiveX should NEVER be permitted anywhere for any reason.
Mail clients need to be simplified to the point their operation can be VERIFIED to be safe.
Crypto could be as ubiquitious for email as it is currently for the web. I suspect the only reason it isn't is fear of the US Government. Even with the relaxation of the ITAR regs everybody seems to be acting under an unwritten agreement that crypto can only be used to secure ecommerce, not the private communications of individuals. I can see MS/Outlook making some under the table deal to ease the paperwork but why hasn't Thunderbird or Eudora stepped up to the plate and built in seamless GPG support? For that matter why not Evolution, Pine or Mutt? Or why isn't it commonplace for emails from major corp senders to be crypographically signed and major mail clients already verifying them? Sure would stop almost all phishing attacks now wouldn't it? A big red banner atop that mail perporting to be from Paypal saying "WARNING, the signature on this mail doesn't match previous mail from paypal.com" instead of a green one saying "Signature verified: paypal.com" would put a fast stop to those scams now wouldn't it? Since I can't be the only one to see such an obvious solution I have to ask "Who is stopping it?"
Or how about programming some very simple sanity checks on the mail path and adding a warning banner when one comes via a strange path along with some whitelisting based on previous history. I'm not talking full Bayesian filtering here, but something a wet behind the ears incompetent asshat at Microsoft could even manage to implement right in only a few years.
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