If you wish to correspond with me, you will do so in a civil and courteous manner. Any future correspondence from you which fails to be civil and polite will be immediately ignored and discarded without any further action.
> Late releases, stupid politics and aged packages > isn't doing this distro any justice.
probably the ONLY way that debian will ever get timely releases is to switch to "releasing" *ONLY* a small set of core packages, i.e. the debian base system. that could easily be tested and released for any number of platforms on a six-monthly cycle.
all other packages would be available in "unstable" or "testing", either downloadable on the net or included as a snapshot on the install CDs - so you could download or buy (from a third party CD vendor) a debian release CD with no extras, or with your choice of either "testing" or "unstable" snapshot as of the day of release.
and, since the testing/unstable "extras" would be separate CD images from the stable core release, you could buy/download freshly generated snapshot releases of them every day of the year.
and, for those who really like the long-term constancy that "stable" has to offer, there's no reason why the current slow and steady release method could not be continued to produce a stable full release...once every two or three years as now. or maybe slightly more often since the core system would be getting upgraded and tested more frequently, and more end-users would be using and testing either testing or unstable.
we could call that slow release cycle the "conservative server release" rather than "stable".
> There exist many methods for anti-spam > authentication. Why hasn't someone implemented > one of them in an "Email 2.0" style service with > the single feature being "not compatible with > existing email, including spam"? After the first > service opened up for business, there would be > more. And more. Until Spam was gone for good.
because that wouldn't work either.
idiot windows users would tell their mail software to remember their authentication password, and spammer viruses would be rewritten to look for those passwords and use them. within a very short time, the new "secure" authenticated mail protocol would be compromised by spammers.
as long as people are using insecure garbage like MS Windows & IE & Outlook on the net, there will be millions of spam zombies.
> And yes, I realize that some people expect lives > to be saved by stem cell research. Then those > people must weigh the issues morally for > themselves whether it's a good idea or not. Many > people have weighed against it, and so I don't > think we should be spending their money to do > it.
and yes, i realise that some people expect lives to be saved by the war in iraq. Then those people must weigh the issues morally for themselves whether it's a good idea or not. Many people have weight against it, and so i don't think we should be spending their money to do it.
in case you miss the point: there are a lot more people who oppose the war in iraq than oppose stem-cell research - yet hundreds of billions of public dollars are being spent to wage that war, to bomb children, to dump hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium shells - aka "dirty bombs"), to set up a puppet government, to arrest and torture the citizens of iraq, and many other reprehensible activies.
in other words, this is not a valid argument for opposing public funding of anything. there may or may not be other, valid, arguments but "some people don't like it" is not one of them.
> The ones that were the result of an ethically > iffy in vitro fertilization process can be kept > on ice indefinitely, and can be implanted in any > willing mother with compatible blood factors.
so what?
you say that as if you've made a valid and crucial point here - but it's irrelevant.
aren't there enough people in the world? why do we need to care about whether a handful of embyros come to term?
it's just a blob of cells that are no more special than any other (if you disagree then you must consider yourself to be a mass-murderer every time you ejaculate - millions of "babies" killed with only a chance at life for one or two).
btw, i think IVF is a huge waste of money. there's already way too many people in this world, we don't need to spend a fortune making more.
keeping absurdly premature babies alive is also, IMO, wrong - in every respect, ethically, morally, and financially. even if all goes well, they're never going to be healthy, they're going to have bizarre and painful medical problems all their lives.
that MAME logo would be under copyright by whoever created it originally - this sleazebag has just committed copyright infringement by registering it as a trademark.
suing for copyright infringement would probably get a quicker resolution to this than trying to establish that the name and logo had been in common use for 8+ years.
> The main issue with this is that you have no > answering machine if your phone battery runs > out or you go out of range.
in that case, the telco will probably just divert the call to their voicemail system - which is provided as a standard "option" on most (if not all) mobile networks these days.
although "option" isn't really the right word because it's nearly impossible to turn off and has, in my experience, a mysterious habit of turning itself back on without warning (whenever the telco resets their systems, perhaps? or whenever the telco decides it's time to generate more revenue from voicemail).
one of the things that really pisses me off about the voicemail from my current mobile service is that the damn thing diverts to voicemail after only THREE rings. i almost never get my phone out of my pocket or answer the call in that short a time. i ended up just disabling voicemail (i'd rather miss a call entirely than have to pay per minute to get a message that i would have answered myself in just another ring or two. if it was important, they'd send an sms or email or something). but it has mysteriously re-enabled itself.
in theory, the voicemail service allows you to set it to divert after 10 rings or so - but in practice, it also has a mysterious habit of resetting itself to just 3 rings. very bloody annoying.
i'm going to ditch this telco (telstra, australia) as soon as my pre-paid SIM runs out (not long now, with their absurd pricing). it was a mistake to buy their service, and i knew it was probably going to be a mistake when i bought it - i was just in a hurry and needed a phone service quickly.
> That was the thought that put answering > machine functions on the network, not on the > phone. With long battery lives and better > network coverage this problem is dimished, but > not removed.
i suspect that the actual thought was "how can we gouge even more money out of our customers?". the answer, of course, is to give them a "free" service which costs them a fortune.
they get to double-dip, too. first they get income from the call that leaves the message, especially if the call is from their own network. then they get more from their customers when they retrieve the message.
who cares about a phone with non-essential frills like camera, games, or mp3 (or whatever) player?
what i want is a mobile phone with a built in digital answering machine, similar to what you can get for under $50 for a land line....or even better, use a 128+MB flash "disk" and mp3 or ogg to encode the recorded messages
i suspect that i'll never see one, though, because telcos are the biggest customers for mobile phone manufacturers, and telcos definitely do not want to lose the revenue stream that they get for charging by the minute for people to retrieve their voice mail.
i resent paying those fees, and i certainly do not want MY messages stored on THEIR systems - i want them on MY machine.
> Why should a bunch of armed hooligans with guns > fare any better than some ragtag bunch of > illiterate, underequipped Asian peasants?
1. the vietnamese had the advantage of knowing their surroundings far better than the invading americans
2. they had the morale advantage and incentive of defending their homes against invading barbarians.
3. they weren't apathetic couch-potatoes who spend their whole lives glued to the screen.
4. asian peasants are probably a lot smarter than american rednecks - they certainly couldn't be any dumber.
5. if the corporations that own america ever start to feel really threatened by any movement against them (violent or not), then the gloves will come off. they will do whatever they must to keep control, and that includes bombing, even nuking or nerve-gassing rebellious towns and cities. if things are going badly enough for them, there will no longer be any use for the pretense of democracy and Mom & Apple Pie, so they'll discard it as a tool that they no longer need, that now just gets in the way of what they need to do. they might only need to make an example of a few cities before the rest knuckle under.
and all the while, the TV stations that they own will be pumping out propaganda supporting their cause and demonising the opposition (aka "baby-killing commie atheist terrorists")
this is why guns are stupid. you can't win an armed revolution, corporate (i.e. government) firepower easily overpowers yours by countless orders of magnitude. the only chance you have to rebel is to simply refuse to participate - don't buy their crap, don't watch their TV, don't work in their factories or offices, just refuse.
this doesn't have much (if any) chance of success, either, but at least a) it's the right thing to do, and b) it avoids getting millions of people killed for no good reason.
ah yes, this is the american scale of left to right - where stalin and hitler are considered to be only slightly right of center and anything that the rest of the world would consider to be moderate or centrist is called "extreme left".
> Taxing those guns, hell no. Paying for the > inspection, hell no.
why the hell not? why should the civilised majority (who see no need to own guns) pay for you to indulge YOUR hobby?
as well as taxation (or permit fees) and inspection of guns, there should also be mandatory annual psychological tests. only the most stable of people should be allowed access to guns (and that includes cops - cops are a necessary evil, but they MUST understand that they are granted their legal powers in order to serve the public, not to rule them. not a common attitude amongst cops, i know, but it is the one thing that makes their existence tolerable).
> But telling the government that you do in fact > own twenty rifles and help train your friends > in civil insurgency? Sure. It'll keep them > honest.
do americans actually believe rugged-individualist fantasy crap like that?
of course it won't keep them honest. it'll just mean they make sure they have enough firepower when they come to wipe you out. suicide by cop. or suicide by BATF. or the army. or the national guard. etc.
face it, armed revolution can not overthrow a modern, well-equipped state. it doesn't have even the faintest chance of doing so.
the only thing that does have a chance is the non-violent(*) refusal to participate - refuse to work, refuse to buy, refuse to consume anything beyond the requirements of survival (and, in extreme case, go on hunger strike). spend your time protesting and picketing and blockading.
if enough people refuse, lots of things can change. if not enough people do, then you have to at least consider the possibility that you're just another kook completely out of touch with reality (another possibility is that you are surrounded by bleating sheep- but since you believe that guns are necessary for solving political problems that isn't as likely as the first theory).
note also that civil disobedience is not a "get out of gaol free" card - do what you must to satisfy your conscience but be prepared to accept the consequences.
(*) you *must* take the moral high-ground, it is the only defence you have against the relentless propaganda you and your cause will be subject to in the mainstream media.
and it's not "free shipping", either. it's pre-paying $79 for shipping every eligible item you buy from amazon in a year - which means you have to make at least 10 or 20 separate orders for it to be worthwhile.
can i interest you in a $100000 subscription to an amazing service which gives you 4 free cars per year? wow! it's free!
> "No log items produced, this incident has been > turned over to the vendor for further > investiagion, case number 1213459-X35B"
you can say pretty much the same thing with debian, except you can quote a message-id number as well as a bug tracking number....or even a URL so that any interested parties can read the discussion themselves.
and submitting a bug report to bugs@debian.org will probably get a result (or at least an answer) faster and better than any provided by any commercial linux distro or commercial *nix.
right. you must be an american, saturated with the loony libertarian propaganda which says that evil can only ever come from government.
censorship is the suppression of information that you do not like or approve of. it does not require government action, it does not require any law. most censorship is performed by individuals and by media companies.
terminating a web hosting account because of breach of contract (e.g. non-payment, posting illegal content such as child porn, etc) is not censorship, but terminating simply because you don't approve of (or are scared by) the (legal) content is.
> well i've got news for any legislator who > thinks for a fucking second they are going to > dictate what i can do to my property in my own > home.
no problem. at least, it won't be soon - you won't own any property, you'll just have a non-permanent license to use (in certain approved ways only), with a revocable option to renew.
the corporate "land grab" is in progress, and this time they're serious. they won't stop until they own *everything*.
> definitely not cut and dried one way or another.
actually, it is.
censorship is never an appropriate response to information you don't like or approve of, no matter what the source and no matter what it is saying.
the only proper response is to counter information you don't like with arguments and information of your own.
censorship is self-defeating anyway, all it achieves is to drive the information underground, which feeds the paranoid delusions of conspiracy theorists - 'it must be true, otherwise "they" wouldn't bother to suppress it'.
> "When it comes to developing software today, > innovation should be a last resort, not a first > instinct."
"When it comes to developing software today, innovation should be a last resort, not a first instinct - so buy your software from the company that doesn't innovate, my sponsor, Microsoft".
IMO, this article is an indirect attempt to rebutt one of the advantages of free software - that a company can share the development of the non-differentiating parts of software development with other companies, and customise what they need for themselves in-house.
> Free trade for corporations, restricted trades > for mortal humans.
well, duh!
what the hell did you think that so-called "Free Trade" was about?
you didn't actually think it was about Free Trade, did you? it's about getting governments in sovereign countries to sign agreements that allow US multinational corporations to overturn (or at least, be compensated for) any local laws that they don't like - labour laws, occupational health & safety, environmental controls, quarrantine restrictions, food labelling laws, etc etc etc. anything that potentially has an impact on corporate profits.
even the claim that "There is no physical addiction to gambling" is wrong.
one of the most addictive things about gambling is the adrenaline surge, and adrenaline is most definitely an addictive drug. the fact that it is endogenous is irrelevant, almost all manufactured addictive drugs are either identical to endogenous drugs and hormones or are extremely close analogs.
IMO, gambling is a much worse addiction than drugs like heroin - at least there is a physical limit to how much heroin you can take. take too much and you'll either pass out or die - not good, but at least your family get to keep the house and car. there is no physical limit to gambling, you can keep doing it until you've lost everything and are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
and for all their protestations of innocence and just "good clean fun & entertainment", the gambling industry knows this. they prey on people stupid enough or desperate enough to gamble until they get hooked. the casual punter who has a flutter once in a while isn't important - except that they provide evidence for the "good, clean fun" and "glamour" lies.
> And to think that we wear company logo'ed > tee-shirts for free...
free?
people are willing to pay ridiculous amounts (sometimes over $100) for a t-shirt with an advertising logo on it, that was made in some third-world sweatshop for well under 50 cents.
they walk around telling the whole world "i'm so stupid that I pay to be a billboard".
(they're also saying "i'm bland and have no taste" but that's a different story).
>...and who's going to watch the non-boosted > events?
who cares? hardly anyone watches the international tiddlywinks championship now, but there's no-one calling for more exciting sports to be banned because they are unfairly more interesting
if people want to watch it, they will. if they don't, they won't.
> [...] throw every druggie baseball player into > the slammer?
why? what, exactly, is wrong with people taking performance-enhancing drugs?
i can see why it is wrong for coaches etc to encourage (or require!) child athletes to take risks with drugs (i.e. because informed consent is impossible), but i just can not see anything wrong with an informed adult choosing to take risks with their own body or mind. if they want to risk heart-attack from excessively thick blood (e.g. EPO) then let them - think of it as evolution in action. the really stupid ones will kill themselves off, which has got to be a good thing (especially if it happens before they breed).
yes, it's "unfair" that enhanced athletes have an advantage over un-enhanced athletes. the solution is obvious - have "enhanced" and "un-enhanced" competitions. anyone can choose to move from U to E at any time, but if you're caught competing as U when you should be E, then you are banned from all further competition (in both U & E), and *ALL* titles and awards etc you may have won are stripped from you.
of course, that still leaves a huge grey-area of deciding exactly what qualifies as enhanced. e.g. are spectacles an enhancement? if they are considered an "equaliser" to bring people with naturally bad eyesight to the same level as people with naturally good eyesight, then why is that any different to using steroids to bring "normal" people up to the same level as freaks with naturally high levels of testosterone or other androgens?
if the difference is defined as being "what you were born with" vs "what you enhanced artificially", then that still leaves thousands of questions. e.g. is ridiculously excessive amounts of training an "unnatural" enhancement? what about children whose parents decided (in some future genetic engineering era) to splice in genes for gorilla or chimpanzee muscles? or more efficient blood? or enhanced lung capacity? or stronger bones (which would be essential for significantly stronger muscles anyway)? or just simple removal of common genetic defects?
in any case, i don't see why it's any more "unfair" than the fact that some people are faster/stronger/smarter/etc than others.
(admittedly, i may have an unusually unbiased perspective on this. i'm not in the least bit interested in any sport or sporting competitions or olympics or commonwealth games or any of the other massive money wasting events. personally, i think that the only possible justification for these events is if athletes are allowed to be guinea-pigs to field-test enhancements for the general population - and even then, there are far cheaper and far more effective ways of doing that, but at least we, the public, would get some return on the billions invested in these people)
> plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.
this may not be the generous philanthropic gesture that it, at first glance, appears to be.
pharmaceutical companies have often "donated" old, past use-by-date, or banned drugs and other medical supplies to third world nations in need. by doing so, they get a tax write-off AND they pass on the cost of disposing of these unusable medications to someone else (proper disposal can cost millions)
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Dear inhumanly rude and obnoxious lackeys,
...
RE: YOUR SHRILL DEMANDS
I DEMAND that you go jump in a lake.
If you wish to correspond with me, you will do so in a civil and courteous manner. Any future correspondence from you which fails to be civil and polite will be immediately ignored and discarded without any further action.
yours sincerely,
> I guess this time the evidense is a little to
> overwhelming for them to cry foul over.....
why? it's never stopped them before.
rabid patriots are experts at ignoring inconvenient facts.
> Late releases, stupid politics and aged packages
> isn't doing this distro any justice.
probably the ONLY way that debian will ever get timely releases is to switch to "releasing" *ONLY* a small set of core packages, i.e. the debian base system. that could easily be tested and released for any number of platforms on a six-monthly cycle.
all other packages would be available in "unstable" or "testing", either downloadable on the net or included as a snapshot on the install CDs - so you could download or buy (from a third party CD vendor) a debian release CD with no extras, or with your choice of either "testing" or "unstable" snapshot as of the day of release.
and, since the testing/unstable "extras" would be separate CD images from the stable core release, you could buy/download freshly generated snapshot releases of them every day of the year.
and, for those who really like the long-term constancy that "stable" has to offer, there's no reason why the current slow and steady release method could not be continued to produce a stable full release...once every two or three years as now. or maybe slightly more often since the core system would be getting upgraded and tested more frequently, and more end-users would be using and testing either testing or unstable.
we could call that slow release cycle the "conservative server release" rather than "stable".
> There exist many methods for anti-spam
> authentication. Why hasn't someone implemented
> one of them in an "Email 2.0" style service with
> the single feature being "not compatible with
> existing email, including spam"? After the first
> service opened up for business, there would be
> more. And more. Until Spam was gone for good.
because that wouldn't work either.
idiot windows users would tell their mail software to remember their authentication password, and spammer viruses would be rewritten to look for those passwords and use them. within a very short time, the new "secure" authenticated mail protocol would be compromised by spammers.
as long as people are using insecure garbage like MS Windows & IE & Outlook on the net, there will be millions of spam zombies.
> And yes, I realize that some people expect lives
> to be saved by stem cell research. Then those
> people must weigh the issues morally for
> themselves whether it's a good idea or not. Many
> people have weighed against it, and so I don't
> think we should be spending their money to do
> it.
and yes, i realise that some people expect lives to be saved by the war in iraq. Then those people must weigh the issues morally for themselves whether it's a good idea or not. Many people have weight against it, and so i don't think we should be spending their money to do it.
in case you miss the point: there are a lot more people who oppose the war in iraq than oppose stem-cell research - yet hundreds of billions of public dollars are being spent to wage that war, to bomb children, to dump hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium shells - aka "dirty bombs"), to set up a puppet government, to arrest and torture the citizens of iraq, and many other reprehensible activies.
in other words, this is not a valid argument for opposing public funding of anything. there may or may not be other, valid, arguments but "some people don't like it" is not one of them.
> The ones that were the result of an ethically
> iffy in vitro fertilization process can be kept
> on ice indefinitely, and can be implanted in any
> willing mother with compatible blood factors.
so what?
you say that as if you've made a valid and crucial point here - but it's irrelevant.
aren't there enough people in the world? why do we need to care about whether a handful of embyros come to term?
it's just a blob of cells that are no more special than any other (if you disagree then you must consider yourself to be a mass-murderer every time you ejaculate - millions of "babies" killed with only a chance at life for one or two).
btw, i think IVF is a huge waste of money. there's already way too many people in this world, we don't need to spend a fortune making more.
keeping absurdly premature babies alive is also, IMO, wrong - in every respect, ethically, morally, and financially. even if all goes well, they're never going to be healthy, they're going to have bizarre and painful medical problems all their lives.
that MAME logo would be under copyright by whoever created it originally - this sleazebag has just committed copyright infringement by registering it as a trademark.
suing for copyright infringement would probably get a quicker resolution to this than trying to establish that the name and logo had been in common use for 8+ years.
> The main issue with this is that you have no
> answering machine if your phone battery runs
> out or you go out of range.
in that case, the telco will probably just divert the call to their voicemail system - which is provided as a standard "option" on most (if not all) mobile networks these days.
although "option" isn't really the right word because it's nearly impossible to turn off and has, in my experience, a mysterious habit of turning itself back on without warning (whenever the telco resets their systems, perhaps? or whenever the telco decides it's time to generate more revenue from voicemail).
one of the things that really pisses me off about the voicemail from my current mobile service is that the damn thing diverts to voicemail after only THREE rings. i almost never get my phone out of my pocket or answer the call in that short a time. i ended up just disabling voicemail (i'd rather miss a call entirely than have to pay per minute to get a message that i would have answered myself in just another ring or two. if it was important, they'd send an sms or email or something). but it has mysteriously re-enabled itself.
in theory, the voicemail service allows you to set it to divert after 10 rings or so - but in practice, it also has a mysterious habit of resetting itself to just 3 rings. very bloody annoying.
i'm going to ditch this telco (telstra, australia) as soon as my pre-paid SIM runs out (not long now, with their absurd pricing). it was a mistake to buy their service, and i knew it was probably going to be a mistake when i bought it - i was just in a hurry and needed a phone service quickly.
> That was the thought that put answering
> machine functions on the network, not on the
> phone. With long battery lives and better
> network coverage this problem is dimished, but
> not removed.
i suspect that the actual thought was "how can we gouge even more money out of our customers?". the answer, of course, is to give them a "free" service which costs them a fortune.
they get to double-dip, too. first they get income from the call that leaves the message, especially if the call is from their own network. then they get more from their customers when they retrieve the message.
it's better than a license to print money.
who cares about a phone with non-essential frills like camera, games, or mp3 (or whatever) player?
what i want is a mobile phone with a built in digital answering machine, similar to what you can get for under $50 for a land line....or even better, use a 128+MB flash "disk" and mp3 or ogg to encode the recorded messages
i suspect that i'll never see one, though, because telcos are the biggest customers for mobile phone manufacturers, and telcos definitely do not want to lose the revenue stream that they get for charging by the minute for people to retrieve their voice mail.
i resent paying those fees, and i certainly do not want MY messages stored on THEIR systems - i want them on MY machine.
> Why should a bunch of armed hooligans with guns
> fare any better than some ragtag bunch of
> illiterate, underequipped Asian peasants?
1. the vietnamese had the advantage of knowing their surroundings far better than the invading americans
2. they had the morale advantage and incentive of defending their homes against invading barbarians.
3. they weren't apathetic couch-potatoes who spend their whole lives glued to the screen.
4. asian peasants are probably a lot smarter than american rednecks - they certainly couldn't be any dumber.
5. if the corporations that own america ever start to feel really threatened by any movement against them (violent or not), then the gloves will come off. they will do whatever they must to keep control, and that includes bombing, even nuking or nerve-gassing rebellious towns and cities. if things are going badly enough for them, there will no longer be any use for the pretense of democracy and Mom & Apple Pie, so they'll discard it as a tool that they no longer need, that now just gets in the way of what they need to do. they might only need to make an example of a few cities before the rest knuckle under.
and all the while, the TV stations that they own will be pumping out propaganda supporting their cause and demonising the opposition (aka "baby-killing commie atheist terrorists")
this is why guns are stupid. you can't win an armed revolution, corporate (i.e. government) firepower easily overpowers yours by countless orders of magnitude. the only chance you have to rebel is to simply refuse to participate - don't buy their crap, don't watch their TV, don't work in their factories or offices, just refuse.
this doesn't have much (if any) chance of success, either, but at least a) it's the right thing to do, and b) it avoids getting millions of people killed for no good reason.
> extremely leftist
ah yes, this is the american scale of left to right - where stalin and hitler are considered to be only slightly right of center and anything that the rest of the world would consider to be moderate or centrist is called "extreme left".
> Taxing those guns, hell no. Paying for the
> inspection, hell no.
why the hell not? why should the civilised majority (who see no need to own guns) pay for you to indulge YOUR hobby?
as well as taxation (or permit fees) and inspection of guns, there should also be mandatory annual psychological tests. only the most stable of people should be allowed access to guns (and that includes cops - cops are a necessary evil, but they MUST understand that they are granted their legal powers in order to serve the public, not to rule them. not a common attitude amongst cops, i know, but it is the one thing that makes their existence tolerable).
> But telling the government that you do in fact
> own twenty rifles and help train your friends
> in civil insurgency? Sure. It'll keep them
> honest.
do americans actually believe rugged-individualist fantasy crap like that?
of course it won't keep them honest. it'll just mean they make sure they have enough firepower when they come to wipe you out. suicide by cop. or suicide by BATF. or the army. or the national guard. etc.
face it, armed revolution can not overthrow a modern, well-equipped state. it doesn't have even the faintest chance of doing so.
the only thing that does have a chance is the non-violent(*) refusal to participate - refuse to work, refuse to buy, refuse to consume anything beyond the requirements of survival (and, in extreme case, go on hunger strike). spend your time protesting and picketing and blockading.
if enough people refuse, lots of things can change. if not enough people do, then you have to at least consider the possibility that you're just another kook completely out of touch with reality (another possibility is that you are surrounded by bleating sheep- but since you believe that guns are necessary for solving political problems that isn't as likely as the first theory).
note also that civil disobedience is not a "get out of gaol free" card - do what you must to satisfy your conscience but be prepared to accept the consequences.
(*) you *must* take the moral high-ground, it is the only defence you have against the relentless propaganda you and your cause will be subject to in the mainstream media.
yes, you will get to choose from an impressive range of pre-loved cars - all guaranteed to be less than 30 years old, and at least "95% rust-free".
see the fine print for further details.
and it's not "free shipping", either. it's pre-paying $79 for shipping every eligible item you buy from amazon in a year - which means you have to make at least 10 or 20 separate orders for it to be worthwhile.
can i interest you in a $100000 subscription to an amazing service which gives you 4 free cars per year? wow! it's free!
> "No log items produced, this incident has been
> turned over to the vendor for further
> investiagion, case number 1213459-X35B"
you can say pretty much the same thing with debian, except you can quote a message-id number as well as a bug tracking number....or even a URL so that any interested parties can read the discussion themselves.
and submitting a bug report to bugs@debian.org will probably get a result (or at least an answer) faster and better than any provided by any commercial linux distro or commercial *nix.
right. you must be an american, saturated with the loony libertarian propaganda which says that evil can only ever come from government.
censorship is the suppression of information that you do not like or approve of. it does not require government action, it does not require any law. most censorship is performed by individuals and by media companies.
terminating a web hosting account because of breach of contract (e.g. non-payment, posting illegal content such as child porn, etc) is not censorship, but terminating simply because you don't approve of (or are scared by) the (legal) content is.
> well i've got news for any legislator who
> thinks for a fucking second they are going to
> dictate what i can do to my property in my own
> home.
no problem. at least, it won't be soon - you won't own any property, you'll just have a non-permanent license to use (in certain approved ways only), with a revocable option to renew.
the corporate "land grab" is in progress, and this time they're serious. they won't stop until they own *everything*.
> definitely not cut and dried one way or another.
actually, it is.
censorship is never an appropriate response to information you don't like or approve of, no matter what the source and no matter what it is saying.
the only proper response is to counter information you don't like with arguments and information of your own.
censorship is self-defeating anyway, all it achieves is to drive the information underground, which feeds the paranoid delusions of conspiracy theorists - 'it must be true, otherwise "they" wouldn't bother to suppress it'.
> "When it comes to developing software today,
> innovation should be a last resort, not a first
> instinct."
"When it comes to developing software today,
innovation should be a last resort, not a first
instinct - so buy your software from the company that doesn't innovate, my sponsor, Microsoft".
IMO, this article is an indirect attempt to rebutt one of the advantages of free software - that a company can share the development of the non-differentiating parts of software development with other companies, and customise what they need for themselves in-house.
> Free trade for corporations, restricted trades
> for mortal humans.
well, duh!
what the hell did you think that so-called "Free Trade" was about?
you didn't actually think it was about Free Trade, did you? it's about getting governments in sovereign countries to sign agreements that allow US multinational corporations to overturn (or at least, be compensated for) any local laws that they don't like - labour laws, occupational health & safety, environmental controls, quarrantine restrictions, food labelling laws, etc etc etc. anything that potentially has an impact on corporate profits.
even the claim that "There is no physical addiction to gambling" is wrong.
one of the most addictive things about gambling is the adrenaline surge, and adrenaline is most definitely an addictive drug. the fact that it is endogenous is irrelevant, almost all manufactured addictive drugs are either identical to endogenous drugs and hormones or are extremely close analogs.
IMO, gambling is a much worse addiction than drugs like heroin - at least there is a physical limit to how much heroin you can take. take too much and you'll either pass out or die - not good, but at least your family get to keep the house and car. there is no physical limit to gambling, you can keep doing it until you've lost everything and are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
and for all their protestations of innocence and just "good clean fun & entertainment", the gambling industry knows this. they prey on people stupid enough or desperate enough to gamble until they get hooked. the casual punter who has a flutter once in a while isn't important - except that they provide evidence for the "good, clean fun" and "glamour" lies.
> And to think that we wear company logo'ed
> tee-shirts for free...
free?
people are willing to pay ridiculous amounts (sometimes over $100) for a t-shirt with an advertising logo on it, that was made in some third-world sweatshop for well under 50 cents.
they walk around telling the whole world "i'm so stupid that I pay to be a billboard".
(they're also saying "i'm bland and have no taste" but that's a different story).
> No, the idea is to use one node as a dedicate
> BSOD server, so the rest can stay up all the
> time.
what's the point of that? wouldn't it be better to have a BSOD server which generated BSOD events for other nodes, to save them the trouble?
> ...and who's going to watch the non-boosted
> events?
who cares? hardly anyone watches the international tiddlywinks championship now, but there's no-one calling for more exciting sports to be banned because they are unfairly more interesting
if people want to watch it, they will. if they don't, they won't.
> [...] throw every druggie baseball player into
> the slammer?
why? what, exactly, is wrong with people taking performance-enhancing drugs?
i can see why it is wrong for coaches etc to encourage (or require!) child athletes to take risks with drugs (i.e. because informed consent is impossible), but i just can not see anything wrong with an informed adult choosing to take risks with their own body or mind. if they want to risk heart-attack from excessively thick blood (e.g. EPO) then let them - think of it as evolution in action. the really stupid ones will kill themselves off, which has got to be a good thing (especially if it happens before they breed).
yes, it's "unfair" that enhanced athletes have an advantage over un-enhanced athletes. the solution is obvious - have "enhanced" and "un-enhanced" competitions. anyone can choose to move from U to E at any time, but if you're caught competing as U when you should be E, then you are banned from all further competition (in both U & E), and *ALL* titles and awards etc you may have won are stripped from you.
of course, that still leaves a huge grey-area of deciding exactly what qualifies as enhanced. e.g. are spectacles an enhancement? if they are considered an "equaliser" to bring people with naturally bad eyesight to the same level as people with naturally good eyesight, then why is that any different to using steroids to bring "normal" people up to the same level as freaks with naturally high levels of testosterone or other androgens?
if the difference is defined as being "what you were born with" vs "what you enhanced artificially", then that still leaves thousands of questions. e.g. is ridiculously excessive amounts of training an "unnatural" enhancement? what about children whose parents decided (in some future genetic engineering era) to splice in genes for gorilla or chimpanzee muscles? or more efficient blood? or enhanced lung capacity? or stronger bones (which would be essential for significantly stronger muscles anyway)? or just simple removal of common genetic defects?
in any case, i don't see why it's any more "unfair" than the fact that some people are faster/stronger/smarter/etc than others.
(admittedly, i may have an unusually unbiased perspective on this. i'm not in the least bit interested in any sport or sporting competitions or olympics or commonwealth games or any of the other massive money wasting events. personally, i think that the only possible justification for these events is if athletes are allowed to be guinea-pigs to field-test enhancements for the general population - and even then, there are far cheaper and far more effective ways of doing that, but at least we, the public, would get some return on the billions invested in these people)
> plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.
this may not be the generous philanthropic gesture that it, at first glance, appears to be.
pharmaceutical companies have often "donated" old, past use-by-date, or banned drugs and other medical supplies to third world nations in need. by doing so, they get a tax write-off AND they pass on the cost of disposing of these unusable medications to someone else (proper disposal can cost millions)