Too bad VW is busy spewing out stuff like the $80K Phaeton instead of doing smart things like bringing the Lupo/Polo type cars to the US and selling them with a base price of $12K. Peoples Car, hah.
(I say this as a VW owner who is displeased with the company's desire to move upmarket. Fortunately, Ferdinand Piech got sacked and hopefully there will be less of that idiocy in the future. Alas, Len Hunt, the CEO who actually listened to customers (he once IMed me through vwvortex.com's IM feature personally to thank me for my loyalty story in which I explained why I still own my Golf, have owned it for five years, and don't plan to sell it unless I have to -- I've modified it to my liking instead, has gotten replaced -- and I haven't seen any sign of his replacement getting an account on the forum and interacting personally with his customers like Hunt did. Bah.)
The only thing sad about the Beetle story is that the guy who came up with the idea (I know he was despised for other things, but I'm not arguing about that here) never lived to see it work -- the Bug didn't take off until the late 50s and early 60s, rather than the early to mid 40s as originally intended).
That noise you hear is Churchill spinning in his grave. How dare this fucktard turn one of the best speeches in modern history, a speech about fighting for freedom from oppresion, into yet more PR bullshit about oppressing the people and imposing your beliefs and wills upon them?
I sold my old phone (legitimately) on eBay. The buyer turned out to be local, so I just dropped by her house and handed it to her along with a "hey, call me if they refuse to activate it for you". (she never did, so I assume she got it to work).
Buying a phone on eBay isn't the same as full retail price, either. Or talk to friends who are switching phones. I got my Treo 650 at a very good price from a friend who left Sprint and paid less than what Sprint would have charged me at the discount price; also, since I didn't buy it from Sprint, I didn't get tied into another 2-year contract. My contract expired two years ago and I'm still a customer, but monthly billing only. I can leave at any time with no penalty.
It's only illegal if you advertise permitting illegal activities, though. Just downloading a file isn't illegal since not all files are illegal. That's the problem I have with it. I guess it's just me, but I'm sick of seeing legitimate tools killed by big business and the government that constantly goes out of its way to help big business over the citizen.
True, but it seems to me like a case that goes all the way to the Supreme Court based on your claiming A, then your suddenly claiming B... you made false representations of some kind for it to get that far, so it'd be more closely looked at.
If they claimed "we aren't illegal" and now say "we are", there's some lying going on, in one spot or another.
Self defense is legal. So is defense of your property. If someone breaks into your house, they are trespassing and you are within your rights to walk into the room, turn on the lights, and say "You must leave now". If they refuse and attempt to harm you, you are allowed to retaliate in self-defense. A jury, if the criminal sues or dies or whatever, will look at the situation and say "well, he deserved what he got, it was self defense, case dismissed".
Home protection is a very valid use and is a reason why I am considering owning a gun in the future. Just like any other tool, guns have legitimate uses.
Uh, no, that's not what the court said. The court said that if you advertise that you foster illegal activity, you're illegal. Grokster advertised that you could download movies and music, etc. That is not illegal. It's only illegal if you go after files that aren't cleared for distribution -- and there's freely-redistributable movies and music out there. If that's what you're after and that's what you're sharing, you are not committing an illegal act -- and if there are legal ways to do what you advertise, you are not condoning illegal acts.
Uh, where did they say that? They made a big deal out of being able to get movies, music, etc. online -- but there ARE legally-distributed books, movies, songs, etc. on the net that are shared over P2P apps. It's not up to them to ensure that's what you look for, since the software is by design intended to allow anyone to share anything -- that's why it's so powerful.
It is up to you, the user, to make sure you are not doing anything illegal, and you're the one who's rightly held liable if there's a complaint about your actions.
So if they're claiming the service isn't legal, doesn't that make them guilty of perjury for claiming that it was? This seems to me like basically admitting that you lied under oath. They should have said, "This software isn't available anymore" without explaining why.
Not that they're still needed; the gnutella design doesn't require a central server to operate, and lots of open-source alternatives exist.
The problem arises when the place where people are smoking (and yes, they are causing harm to other people; the stuff is not safe to breathe and is hard to get out of clothing and other items) is a place where you cannot find an alternative where no one is smoking. Why is it impossible to wait to smoke until you are outside in a private area where no one is being bothered.
It is not "hurting myself" to want to not be harmed by other people. Or do you want to abolish laws that say you can't speed on public roads? By this logic, that's what we should do because it "doesn't hurt me" to allow someone else to speed (bullshit; it puts me at a greater risk for injury if someone goes past the highest speed at which the road is safe, reaction times aren't fast enough for high speed driving, etc). Should I vote for repeal of speed limit laws, too? No, I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are free to kill yourself however you like, whether quickly with a gun or slowly with cancer. But you are NOT free to put others at risk when you do it. Your "enjoying your personal lifestyle" or whatever you want to call it DOES AFFECT OTHER PEOPLE and other people have the right to not be exposed to dangerous, smelly, and offensive crap spewing out of your mouth or the cigarette you're holding. If you want to do it, fine, but not around other people.
How can we be smart enough to protect ourselves if fucktards like you keep coming by and abusing us? The reason we need laws is because of such stupidity and failure to THINK A LITTLE ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF.
Where convenience and harm to someone cross, the need to prevent harm to someone else overrides convenience.
Or, if you were a cop, would you let me off if I drove 120mph on the way home because it's not convenient for me to have to take more time to do 45 instead? It's my choice to drive faster, after all, isn't it? Oh, I'm putting other people in danger? Forget that; you just said those people don't need to be protected by a law that prevents me from indulging myself at their offense.
This country really IS succumbing to stupid, selfish assholes.
I'm not drunk, I'm just fucking tired of being not listened to by fucktards like you who don't give a shit about other people. I'm done with this argument, so I don't fucking give a fucking crap if you decide to respond to this.
You don't have to file charges right away, you know. If you're enough of an asshole to punch me, by the way, I may be a short harmless-looking girl but I can scream REALLY LOUDLY if someone looks like they're going to hurt me, and I'm really good at clawing back. Want to press charges at me for doing that? Too fucking bad. Self-defense is legal. Assault out of the blue is not.
There is however a difference between "allergic" and "annoyed by", and there aren't many allergens that are deliberately being puffed out by irresponsible people in closed-in spaces and recirculated by the ventilation system.
Actually, restarants do include the text "If you have any allergies, please inform us of them" on their menus. If a restaurant knows that a customer is allergic to anything in its environment, it needs to accomodate that.
Yes it does if I'm allergic and I can't stand the smell and I end up coughing and sneezing and feel sick. Not everyone is unallergic to the smell. Some of us find their food tasting like ash in the presence of the smoke.
And whoever brought in someone who isn't in the room? I'm talking about the people who are actually in the room trying to concentrate on the reason they are there -- enjoying their meal. Some guy who in the end makes the profit is irrelevant in this instance.
Again, it all comes down to "thou shalt not harm others". It is more selfish to say "I know what I'm doing is harmful to you and I don't give a shit because *I* want to keep doing it and *I* feel better when I'm doing it, and the rest of you can go to hell". One person "indulging" themselves can endanger dozens of other people. If people weren't so stupidly selfish and willing to inflict harm on others even though what they are doing has been proven to be harmful, we wouldn't need to enact laws to legally bitchslap them so that they stop. Sadly, we do need these laws to protect people.
I'm a very easygoing person, but I don't stand for allowing other people to hurt me. That's where I draw the line, and this is crossing it.
I don't think we should ban bars, but I do think more enforcement, patrol, and punishment should be done to look for drunk drivers who injure other people by driving after they drink, which is already illegal. The ill effects of bars are largely handled by existing laws -- we don't need to make more laws to handle that.
Again, why should I change my behavior when I'm harming no one to accomodate someone who is? I do not want my choices restricted because of some selfish asshole who sits there and blows his stinking smoke in my direction. (And if you think I'm being selfish, am I? I don't think so, since my choices don't harm you or anyone else).
If you can't possibly be polite to others and go outside to smoke, sit in a spot where the room's airflow doesn't waft the crap over the rest of us. That doesn't stop me from being free of the shit but it also means you can eat your dinner too.
There is actually an in-house app that's used for the enhancement, and usually the credit I've seen is "NASA" although sometimes the AP or Reuters is added. As they were produced by the government, they are not copyrighted.
It is an interesting use of the word, no? But I've often gotten the impression that it's the right one to describe a layperson confronted with something scientific that they don't understand.
Banning smoking in a public place prevents harm from being inflicted on other people, while forcing people who want no smoke out in favor of those who want to pollute the air does cause harm to other people. The factor that tips the balance here is just that -- if you do something to yourself that causes harm to other people, your right to do it stops where other peoples' rights to not be harmed begin.
In other words, I'm not doing anything to harm anyone else, regardless of whether or not I'm harming myself. A smoker on the other hand has the right to do whatever they want to themselves -- but not the right to harm me or anyone else. I certainly have the right to be free from harm by anyone, be they a stranger or someone I know.
And yet the Hubble image sites and MER image sites have gotten huge numbers of pageviews.
The artificial coloring is necesary in many cases because the images show things that aren't in the visible wavelength, or sometimes to highlight something an image is meant to show. While it's true that sometimes the changes can be confusing to the public, they aren't being done to intimidate anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad VW is busy spewing out stuff like the $80K Phaeton instead of doing smart things like bringing the Lupo/Polo type cars to the US and selling them with a base price of $12K. Peoples Car, hah.
(I say this as a VW owner who is displeased with the company's desire to move upmarket. Fortunately, Ferdinand Piech got sacked and hopefully there will be less of that idiocy in the future. Alas, Len Hunt, the CEO who actually listened to customers (he once IMed me through vwvortex.com's IM feature personally to thank me for my loyalty story in which I explained why I still own my Golf, have owned it for five years, and don't plan to sell it unless I have to -- I've modified it to my liking instead, has gotten replaced -- and I haven't seen any sign of his replacement getting an account on the forum and interacting personally with his customers like Hunt did. Bah.)
The only thing sad about the Beetle story is that the guy who came up with the idea (I know he was despised for other things, but I'm not arguing about that here) never lived to see it work -- the Bug didn't take off until the late 50s and early 60s, rather than the early to mid 40s as originally intended).
That noise you hear is Churchill spinning in his grave. How dare this fucktard turn one of the best speeches in modern history, a speech about fighting for freedom from oppresion, into yet more PR bullshit about oppressing the people and imposing your beliefs and wills upon them?
What a fucktard.
Ah, but that oh-so-lovely analysis of the offending software turned up NO EULA to cover Sony's ass, so nobody authorized shit. Thanks for playing.
I sold my old phone (legitimately) on eBay. The buyer turned out to be local, so I just dropped by her house and handed it to her along with a "hey, call me if they refuse to activate it for you". (she never did, so I assume she got it to work).
Buying a phone on eBay isn't the same as full retail price, either. Or talk to friends who are switching phones. I got my Treo 650 at a very good price from a friend who left Sprint and paid less than what Sprint would have charged me at the discount price; also, since I didn't buy it from Sprint, I didn't get tied into another 2-year contract. My contract expired two years ago and I'm still a customer, but monthly billing only. I can leave at any time with no penalty.
It's only illegal if you advertise permitting illegal activities, though. Just downloading a file isn't illegal since not all files are illegal. That's the problem I have with it. I guess it's just me, but I'm sick of seeing legitimate tools killed by big business and the government that constantly goes out of its way to help big business over the citizen.
True, but it seems to me like a case that goes all the way to the Supreme Court based on your claiming A, then your suddenly claiming B ... you made false representations of some kind for it to get that far, so it'd be more closely looked at.
If they claimed "we aren't illegal" and now say "we are", there's some lying going on, in one spot or another.
Self defense is legal. So is defense of your property. If someone breaks into your house, they are trespassing and you are within your rights to walk into the room, turn on the lights, and say "You must leave now". If they refuse and attempt to harm you, you are allowed to retaliate in self-defense. A jury, if the criminal sues or dies or whatever, will look at the situation and say "well, he deserved what he got, it was self defense, case dismissed".
Home protection is a very valid use and is a reason why I am considering owning a gun in the future. Just like any other tool, guns have legitimate uses.
Uh, no, that's not what the court said. The court said that if you advertise that you foster illegal activity, you're illegal. Grokster advertised that you could download movies and music, etc. That is not illegal. It's only illegal if you go after files that aren't cleared for distribution -- and there's freely-redistributable movies and music out there. If that's what you're after and that's what you're sharing, you are not committing an illegal act -- and if there are legal ways to do what you advertise, you are not condoning illegal acts.
Uh, where did they say that? They made a big deal out of being able to get movies, music, etc. online -- but there ARE legally-distributed books, movies, songs, etc. on the net that are shared over P2P apps. It's not up to them to ensure that's what you look for, since the software is by design intended to allow anyone to share anything -- that's why it's so powerful.
It is up to you, the user, to make sure you are not doing anything illegal, and you're the one who's rightly held liable if there's a complaint about your actions.
So if they're claiming the service isn't legal, doesn't that make them guilty of perjury for claiming that it was? This seems to me like basically admitting that you lied under oath. They should have said, "This software isn't available anymore" without explaining why.
Not that they're still needed; the gnutella design doesn't require a central server to operate, and lots of open-source alternatives exist.
The problem arises when the place where people are smoking (and yes, they are causing harm to other people; the stuff is not safe to breathe and is hard to get out of clothing and other items) is a place where you cannot find an alternative where no one is smoking. Why is it impossible to wait to smoke until you are outside in a private area where no one is being bothered.
It is not "hurting myself" to want to not be harmed by other people. Or do you want to abolish laws that say you can't speed on public roads? By this logic, that's what we should do because it "doesn't hurt me" to allow someone else to speed (bullshit; it puts me at a greater risk for injury if someone goes past the highest speed at which the road is safe, reaction times aren't fast enough for high speed driving, etc). Should I vote for repeal of speed limit laws, too? No, I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are free to kill yourself however you like, whether quickly with a gun or slowly with cancer. But you are NOT free to put others at risk when you do it. Your "enjoying your personal lifestyle" or whatever you want to call it DOES AFFECT OTHER PEOPLE and other people have the right to not be exposed to dangerous, smelly, and offensive crap spewing out of your mouth or the cigarette you're holding. If you want to do it, fine, but not around other people.
How can we be smart enough to protect ourselves if fucktards like you keep coming by and abusing us? The reason we need laws is because of such stupidity and failure to THINK A LITTLE ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF.
Where convenience and harm to someone cross, the need to prevent harm to someone else overrides convenience.
Or, if you were a cop, would you let me off if I drove 120mph on the way home because it's not convenient for me to have to take more time to do 45 instead? It's my choice to drive faster, after all, isn't it? Oh, I'm putting other people in danger? Forget that; you just said those people don't need to be protected by a law that prevents me from indulging myself at their offense.
This country really IS succumbing to stupid, selfish assholes.
I'm out of here. Goodbye.
I'm not drunk, I'm just fucking tired of being not listened to by fucktards like you who don't give a shit about other people. I'm done with this argument, so I don't fucking give a fucking crap if you decide to respond to this.
Have a nice fucking fall off the fucking planet.
They're also supposed to not endanger the customers in general. And what if there IS NO ALTERNATIVE for whatever you need, which is often the case?
The fucktard who is poisoning everyone else can fucking wait to fucking smoke.
You don't have to file charges right away, you know. If you're enough of an asshole to punch me, by the way, I may be a short harmless-looking girl but I can scream REALLY LOUDLY if someone looks like they're going to hurt me, and I'm really good at clawing back. Want to press charges at me for doing that? Too fucking bad. Self-defense is legal. Assault out of the blue is not.
There is however a difference between "allergic" and "annoyed by", and there aren't many allergens that are deliberately being puffed out by irresponsible people in closed-in spaces and recirculated by the ventilation system.
And once again, what I am saying goes over someone's head.
Actually, restarants do include the text "If you have any allergies, please inform us of them" on their menus. If a restaurant knows that a customer is allergic to anything in its environment, it needs to accomodate that.
Yes it does if I'm allergic and I can't stand the smell and I end up coughing and sneezing and feel sick. Not everyone is unallergic to the smell. Some of us find their food tasting like ash in the presence of the smoke.
And whoever brought in someone who isn't in the room? I'm talking about the people who are actually in the room trying to concentrate on the reason they are there -- enjoying their meal. Some guy who in the end makes the profit is irrelevant in this instance.
"Yes, officer. I do wish to press charges for assult and battery."
"Hello, is this Dewey, Cheatam & Howe? Yes, I would like a consultation with you regarding a civil lawsuit..."
Again, it all comes down to "thou shalt not harm others". It is more selfish to say "I know what I'm doing is harmful to you and I don't give a shit because *I* want to keep doing it and *I* feel better when I'm doing it, and the rest of you can go to hell". One person "indulging" themselves can endanger dozens of other people. If people weren't so stupidly selfish and willing to inflict harm on others even though what they are doing has been proven to be harmful, we wouldn't need to enact laws to legally bitchslap them so that they stop. Sadly, we do need these laws to protect people.
I'm a very easygoing person, but I don't stand for allowing other people to hurt me. That's where I draw the line, and this is crossing it.
I don't think we should ban bars, but I do think more enforcement, patrol, and punishment should be done to look for drunk drivers who injure other people by driving after they drink, which is already illegal. The ill effects of bars are largely handled by existing laws -- we don't need to make more laws to handle that.
Again, why should I change my behavior when I'm harming no one to accomodate someone who is? I do not want my choices restricted because of some selfish asshole who sits there and blows his stinking smoke in my direction. (And if you think I'm being selfish, am I? I don't think so, since my choices don't harm you or anyone else).
If you can't possibly be polite to others and go outside to smoke, sit in a spot where the room's airflow doesn't waft the crap over the rest of us. That doesn't stop me from being free of the shit but it also means you can eat your dinner too.
Sometimes, indeed they are. Not always. Sometimes, the settings chosen serve both needs.
There is actually an in-house app that's used for the enhancement, and usually the credit I've seen is "NASA" although sometimes the AP or Reuters is added. As they were produced by the government, they are not copyrighted.
It is an interesting use of the word, no? But I've often gotten the impression that it's the right one to describe a layperson confronted with something scientific that they don't understand.
Banning smoking in a public place prevents harm from being inflicted on other people, while forcing people who want no smoke out in favor of those who want to pollute the air does cause harm to other people. The factor that tips the balance here is just that -- if you do something to yourself that causes harm to other people, your right to do it stops where other peoples' rights to not be harmed begin.
In other words, I'm not doing anything to harm anyone else, regardless of whether or not I'm harming myself. A smoker on the other hand has the right to do whatever they want to themselves -- but not the right to harm me or anyone else. I certainly have the right to be free from harm by anyone, be they a stranger or someone I know.
And yet the Hubble image sites and MER image sites have gotten huge numbers of pageviews.
The artificial coloring is necesary in many cases because the images show things that aren't in the visible wavelength, or sometimes to highlight something an image is meant to show. While it's true that sometimes the changes can be confusing to the public, they aren't being done to intimidate anyone.