Cash is also a good way to stay within your means, since you're less likely to spend lots of cash than make a large purchase on plastic. It's not just the government that gets a cut of the transaction, so the credit card companies would also prefer you not use cash. That's one reason to use cash: all of the money goes to the business you're buying from. And oddly, security is a good reason to use cash, since if someone steals $100 in cash, you're out $100, but if they steal your card/license, you could be out a lot more.
Give me a voicemail equivalent to isolatr.com. I use this service and am very pleased with the results, but for some reason have no friends to recommend it to.
I think I'll vote via absentee ballot and send it via registered mail. Paranoid? Maybe.
Not paranoid enough. What should be important to you is that all the voters decide the outcome, not a single person hijacking things. Assuming absentee ensures your vote is counted properly, it still puts you (and those few other who vote absentee) against the potential hijacker bypassing the majority of voters.
You've already lost the vast majority at "root cert". They have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about.
No, no, we know exactly what you mean: root-flavored Certs breath mints! Well, I haven't heard of the root flavor, maybe it's some new all-natural thing or something.
What happens if we replace "minor" with "human" and "sexually explicit conduct" with "murder"?
"any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of murder, where -
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a human engaging in murder;
(B) such visual depiction is, or appears to be, of a human engaging in murder;
(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable human is engaging in murder; or
(D) such visual depiction is advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression that the material is or contains a visual depiction of a human engaging in murder . .."
But that'd have too great an impact on Hollywood, and it's only murder anyway.
I don't think copyright was about enticing people to create, rather making it more economically viable. To make a significant work takes many months. That in turn takes money to pay for materials, food, and a place to work and live; making the creative work is an investment. To justify such an investment, there must be reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. The temporary monopoly increases the chance of making a reasonable return, since you'll be the only one producing and selling copies of the work. There are other ways of funding creative works, of course, that don't require any government policing.
Argue the case and fund it through ordinary state budgets, not hidden away in the uncounted taxation of intellectual monopoly rights.
And as a bonus, no money is wasted on policing. Going against natural law, especially such a beneficial one as "information can be copied virtually without cost", causes much bigger losses.
I don't have a problem with large computers you carry from room to room with a built-in UPS. But at some point it's a desktop all-in-one or something else.
If this were a story about Microsoft trying to stop vendors from building machines that can run their OS, there would be a million typical comments about them being an evil monopoly, etc.
Are you kidding? We'd be rejoicing! "Go ahead Microsoft, please stop everyone from making machines that run your OS!"
CAPTCHA used to be an easy and useful way for Web administrators to authenticate users. Now it's an easy and useful way for malware authors and spammers to do their dirty work.
So if they removed the CAPTCHA, malware authors and spammers wouldn't have an easy and useful way to do their dirty work?!? Hmmm, a term comes to mind: CRAPTCHA
Floods caused by increased snowfall? Somehow that was also Global Warming, I'd have thought they would have went with Global Climate Change, but every rule seems to need an exception.
What do you think melted the snow? Global Warming of course!
Dump the triumvirate of Windows design retardedness:
1. Drive letters (we are not using CP/M)
2. Backward slashes for directory separation (we are not using DOS)
3. CRLF (we are not using a typewriter!)
4. Sorry, can't do (we are using Windows, after all)
For example, the government wants us to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs; this is a good thing. However, they shouldn't make incandescent bulbs illegal, they should just make sure it's more cost-effective for me to buy CFLs so that I won't want to buy incandescent bulbs. That way it's still my choice.
I see, making something illegal is like bringing in the nukes, while slightly altering prices (through taxes or subsidies) is like putting up a toll road so that people who really need to do things that way can continue to; it allows market "intelligence" (based on prices) to continue to work in subtle ways as before.
Don't ban it. Let the market work. Make it expensive, and it will stop. This is something the government should be doing: add taxes and tariffs to things that are harmful and cause problems for society; give tax breaks to things that are helpful and do good things for society. [...] Unfortunately, the government doesn't step in this way as often as it should, or it interferes in the wrong ways [...]
Letting the market work is not interfering as you describe. Once you start interfering, you have to do it right or you'll screw things up, since you're overriding the market's "intelligence".
How about a scheme that funds creation of works based on the labor/materials cost to make the work, rather than the number of times it's distributed? Then downloading and distribution is encouraged and beneficial, and never something that needs to be policed. I'm thinking of something like the way a road is built: workers do the work and get paid, then anything can be done with the work afterwards. The only place laywers would become involved is if the worker isn't paid (once) after doing the work.
Right, the point was just that unmoderated groups exist; try finding an unmoderated web forum! And as I mentioned, since some Usenet clients have fairly sophisticated filtering and rating systems, the S/N ratio of unmoderated (and even moderated) groups can be improved a lot. Usenet compared to a web forum is like a Unix shell compared to a scriptless GUI.
I mentioned usenet to my sister the other day, and she asked me what it was and why I wanted to use it. I actually had a hard time explaining it until I thought about it later.
My take: It's an online forum with unmoderated groups that gives you a choice of hundreds of programs to access it, similar to email. The choice of programs means there are really good ones that respond quickly and have good filtering options, and no fucking advertisements or images to load at all. Since there are hundreds of thousands of groups, you get a common interface to whatever topic you want to discuss. When you're subscribed to your groups of interest, you can quickly check for new messages within a couple of seconds. With web-based forums, you don't get any of this; you're stuck with whatever the administrator uses for each forum, and with sometimes over-zealous moderators.
Slashdot Mirror
Impressive; Vista can slow down a company's product development, not just the computers it's running on!
PowerPC beat you to it: enforce in-order execution of I/O
Cash is also a good way to stay within your means, since you're less likely to spend lots of cash than make a large purchase on plastic. It's not just the government that gets a cut of the transaction, so the credit card companies would also prefer you not use cash. That's one reason to use cash: all of the money goes to the business you're buying from. And oddly, security is a good reason to use cash, since if someone steals $100 in cash, you're out $100, but if they steal your card/license, you could be out a lot more.
Give me a voicemail equivalent to isolatr.com. I use this service and am very pleased with the results, but for some reason have no friends to recommend it to.
Yeah, my wetware browser was having trouble parsing the article summary. Guess, I need to, upgrade don't, you, think?
I thought their main advantage was that they light faster, reducing the time from brake pedal to the driver behind you seeing them light.
Not paranoid enough. What should be important to you is that all the voters decide the outcome, not a single person hijacking things. Assuming absentee ensures your vote is counted properly, it still puts you (and those few other who vote absentee) against the potential hijacker bypassing the majority of voters.
No, no, we know exactly what you mean: root-flavored Certs breath mints! Well, I haven't heard of the root flavor, maybe it's some new all-natural thing or something.
But that'd have too great an impact on Hollywood, and it's only murder anyway.
I don't think copyright was about enticing people to create, rather making it more economically viable. To make a significant work takes many months. That in turn takes money to pay for materials, food, and a place to work and live; making the creative work is an investment. To justify such an investment, there must be reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. The temporary monopoly increases the chance of making a reasonable return, since you'll be the only one producing and selling copies of the work. There are other ways of funding creative works, of course, that don't require any government policing.
And as a bonus, no money is wasted on policing. Going against natural law, especially such a beneficial one as "information can be copied virtually without cost", causes much bigger losses.
That guy thinks otherwise.
Are you kidding? We'd be rejoicing! "Go ahead Microsoft, please stop everyone from making machines that run your OS!"
Let's try that: Moderators, mod this post down!
Will they also log losses from their DB in their DB, or will a meta-foundation do that?
So if they removed the CAPTCHA, malware authors and spammers wouldn't have an easy and useful way to do their dirty work?!? Hmmm, a term comes to mind: CRAPTCHA
What do you think melted the snow? Global Warming of course!
4. Sorry, can't do (we are using Windows, after all)
I see, making something illegal is like bringing in the nukes, while slightly altering prices (through taxes or subsidies) is like putting up a toll road so that people who really need to do things that way can continue to; it allows market "intelligence" (based on prices) to continue to work in subtle ways as before.
Letting the market work is not interfering as you describe. Once you start interfering, you have to do it right or you'll screw things up, since you're overriding the market's "intelligence".
How about a scheme that funds creation of works based on the labor/materials cost to make the work, rather than the number of times it's distributed? Then downloading and distribution is encouraged and beneficial, and never something that needs to be policed. I'm thinking of something like the way a road is built: workers do the work and get paid, then anything can be done with the work afterwards. The only place laywers would become involved is if the worker isn't paid (once) after doing the work.
There are no rights involved here, just temporary monopoly privileges granted by the government.
Right, the point was just that unmoderated groups exist; try finding an unmoderated web forum! And as I mentioned, since some Usenet clients have fairly sophisticated filtering and rating systems, the S/N ratio of unmoderated (and even moderated) groups can be improved a lot. Usenet compared to a web forum is like a Unix shell compared to a scriptless GUI.
These will go perfect with a 150x increase in power plant construction!
My take: It's an online forum with unmoderated groups that gives you a choice of hundreds of programs to access it, similar to email. The choice of programs means there are really good ones that respond quickly and have good filtering options, and no fucking advertisements or images to load at all. Since there are hundreds of thousands of groups, you get a common interface to whatever topic you want to discuss. When you're subscribed to your groups of interest, you can quickly check for new messages within a couple of seconds. With web-based forums, you don't get any of this; you're stuck with whatever the administrator uses for each forum, and with sometimes over-zealous moderators.