Pedophile's believe that it's right to engage in sexual intercourse with children
I think this is probably false in most cases actually - most pedophiles are quite aware that what they are doing is wrong, but for whatever reasons either can't stop themselves or don't want to stop themselves.
But otherwise, yes, I agree with you, religion is outright dangerous. I personally don't believe that religion serves a positive purpose *at all* to mankind. Religion is there for the sole purpose of controlling masses of people. MHO.
I'm of the belief that when the last religion finally collapses, mankind will "officially" (in my opinion) be out of the dark ages. Until then, I consider this to still be "the dark ages", and I suspect that one day people will look back and see religion in history in pretty much the same way. Religion has proved itself again and again and again to be intolerably harmful to man. We should really truly squelch this horrible concept. Religion is about *one thing only* - *controlling people*. It serves this purpose very well.
For Taco's sanity's sake alone, he had to delete the post.
Anyone who takes the time to do even a little bit of research into Microsoft will realize that the organization will use *ANY* means, *LEGAL OR ILLEGAL* to harass, repress and *destroy* its opponents.
The Taco's life, and the life of everyone at Slashdot and Andover, would have become a living hell.
Microsoft has a no-holds-barred *rule*: they are explicitly instructed by Bill Gate's words to do *anything* it takes to win.
Which means Taco would have had his pets killed, his car trashed, his house picketed, his parents harassed, his business associates -- banks, etc -- sent packages claiming he's a pedophile, his entire neighbourhood pamphleted with the same pedophile claims, etc. Plus, he'd be challenged by a dozen or more legal suits.
Like I said, a living hell.
People have committed suicide because of Microsoft blue-screen lost-work frustration.
Oh -- and the examples I presented: they're real life. Microsoft has done exactly those things to opponents (and even the judges in their court cases!) before, and they'll do it again.
Microsoft is one of the most evil organizations on this planet. By every metric you could possibly apply, they are the antithesis of good.
---
OK.. it's just a joke. You can stop flaming me now.
Thats just the point - that nobody has to explain the "technique" used in these bogus patents. Sure, you have to *READ* the patent, but that is *NOT* the same as having to *explain* it - when people "skilled in the field" read patents like this, there is nothing that requires them to think about it at any point. Your definition of 'obvious' is a little weird'. Say somebody patented the process of brushing one's teeth. Now what you're saying is that simply because somebody has to *explain the patent* to you, the patent is not obvious? Come on - that would imply that NOT ONE SINGLE patent is obvious, since all the *patents* have to be explained. I'm talking about explaining the *process* described in the patent. Is the *process* obvious. Brushing one's teeth - have you ever written out that exact same series of steps? No - why bother, its obvious and well-known - but according to you the "brushing teeth" patent, since it first had to be *read* to somebody, ISNT obvious? Thats ridiculous.
I know that it covers Palm handhelds simply because they're portable computers, without reading the patent. That should be enough to convince any moron. Nevertheless, for the other morons out there, a bit more is needed. So I've *actually* read the patent since, and I can't say anything in it validates the patent one jot. The patent just sounds a bit more specific about the capabilities of the patented device (e.g. it can communicate a transaction with something else, has a touch-screen LDC, takes a password, has IR communication). Hint on patents: you cannot simply combine a number of existing technologies (LCD+touchscreen+IRcomms) into some new *arrangement* and claim innovation. You must have a new *technique* that has not been used before and is not obvious (e.g. if they had come up with a clever new method of creating a touch screen or something). Simply adding a few other things together in some order does not constitute a *new technique*. I'm more convinced than ever that this patent (the first of the two) has no merit. If I'm the first guy to slap a thin LCD screen backed with a microchip onto a milk carton to display animated adverts or whatever, sure as hell doesn't mean that it is an original, innovative invention. It's just A+B+C+D.
They don't have to have come up with it first. If the majority of computer programmers read the patent and find it obvious (i.e. the patent does not actually have to make them *think* at all to figure it out) then the patent IS "obvious to those skilled in the field". Otherwise you'd end up with people patenting all sorts of things that are so obvious nobody bothers to mention them.. oh wait..
My boss told me another similar one; a special form of a ship's wake that does not spread out behind the ship, but remains parallel to the direction of movement of the ship. I can't remember the name, but it was named after the guy who first noticed and described it, probably in the region of a centry ago. The reason for this specific behaviour of the wake had to do with the shape of the channel the ship was in. Apparently, nobody could figure out a use for this somewhat esoteric theory for quite a long time - until the development of fiber (or fibre) optics - apparently light travelling through a fiber can exhibit the same behaviour, and is quite useful for minimizing refraction within the fiber.
Patents are not supposed to be obvious "to experts in the field.
When "experts in the field" read Amazon's patent, do they say "holy shit, thats so obvious, there is nothing innovative here", or do they say "hey thats quite clever, wouldn't have been able to put that system together myself without some good serious thinking"? As far as I can tell, the vast majority (including myself when I read it) exclaim quite readily the 'thats so obvious, there is nothing new here'. There is no requirement that the 'obviousness' must have presented itself before the patent claim to other experts. Rather, it is the opposite: even a person who is an expert in the field, when reading the patent, must at least have to *think* at least *once* to understand the patent. No thinking required for the Amazon patent, I promise you that.
That should just plain give it away, really: the patent IS "obvious to experts in the field". It IS. They don't just say it, it really is. That alone is enough to invalidate the patent.
The very specific nature of the patent (essentially writing down all the details in the order they happen) makes it narrower and more specific, but the patent isn't bogus for being too broad, it's bogus for being obvious. Simply writing down all the details and steps (thereby making it specific) don't make it any less ridiculous. If I wrote down all the steps I take to buy something from the local shopping mall (e.g. "leave house", "enter motor vehicle", "start vehicle ignition", "put vehicle in gear", "enter the public road transport system", "navigate through public road transport system using built-in neural network algorithms"), etc etc etc, doesn't make it innovative. This is exactly what Amazon has tried to do, all they've done is outline all the exact steps in the process. Lame!
"Portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions"
Sounds a bit like a cordless phone to me.
How the hell did they get such a broad patent? Holy shit. How can anybody credibly claim that adding the word "portable" in front of any commonly used device (any computer in 1987) makes for an 'original invention'? Unbelievable. This is one of the worst patents I've seen in a long time. The sad thing is, I don't think this should one even be going as far as trying to prove "prior art" - it's just plain *obvious*. Not just to people who are experts in the field either, which is the requirement for patents to be considered 'obvious'. Really. "Computer" + "portable". Obvious to Joe Sixpack, for petes sake.
OK, disclaimer, I haven't *read* the patents, so maybe they actually have all sorts of additional fluffy, confusing, meaningless technical terms that make the concept sound less obvious.
If the patent had been claimed in the early 70's, and one ignored the huge body of popular science fiction that referenced such possible portable devices, then maaaybe. What a joke.
There is, of course, a difference between "writing style" and "spelling and grammar errors". I notice you could only find problems with the former in my post. You must have been pretty desperate.
I guess 30 fps with beautiful visuals would be nice for games that don't involve too much action, but I'm a Quake3 fan, and you simply cannot play Quake3 competitively at 30 fps.
We have yet to see a single instance of speciation in the animal kingdom
Of course, we have only been observing for less than 10 thousandths of a percent of the duration of time over which there has been life on earth. Makes it a little difficult to observer what is anyway an inherently slow process.
I stared at one of my pot plants for a whole week recently. I did not see it grow AT ALL. So all these people who keep telling me that plants grow must be smoking something - it clearly just does not happen.
Come on. Speciation HAS TO happen, given the current system and the rules that act on the system, its as natural as the idea that if pizza-eating people don't like olives, then the last remaining pieces of pizza when everybody has taken their share of a pizza with olives on is the one that has the most olives on - the "fitness function" of the pizza. Its the same idea. To say that the principles of evolution are bogus is to say that people will choose pizza pieces randomly, regardless of how many olives each piece has. Thats just ridiculous.
Hey, I'm just trying to help these guys out a little, they obviously need it, spelling is actually a very useful and important skill in the workplace - most of us will at one time or another be involved in producing supposedly professional documentation. And really, it doesn't take that much effort to learn the absolute basics for 6 year olds (e.g. then vs. than). And it really doesn't take that much effort to quickly scan something before you post it, just to catch at least some of the huge, obvious, gaping grammar and spelling errors. Come on.
MSNBC is running an article about Sony's new Slim TV is thinner, brighter, and has a better picture then current LCD screens.
MSNBC is running an article about Sony's new Slim TV, which is thinner, brighter, and has a better picture than current LCD screens
The organic electroluminescent (OEL) display is a little thicker then a credit card was showed Wednesday.
The organic electroluminescent (OEL) display, which is a little thicker than a credit card, was shown Wednesday.
These screens offer a faster responcethen LCD becuasethe are self-luminous (no back-lighting required) and allow a wider viewing angle. Sony hopes to have these screens in mass production by 2003
These screens offer a faster responsethan LCD becausethey are self-luminous (no back-lighting required) and allow a wider viewing angle. Sony hopes to have these screens in mass production by 2003
"In response to rampant theft and corruption, most parcel-delivery companies either charge insane rates (DHL) or simply refuse to deliver to all but the most accessible, modern Russian cities"
Then they should make that clear to their clients up front, not make bogus claims. If you advertise that you provide a certain service, take money to provide that service, and then not provide that service, thats theft/fraud/whatever.
The least they could have done was been less snotty about providing the refund, since the mistake was theirs.
"How an industry claims loss of revenue when they report record earnings is the real problem here. Record companies are making more money this year than last year. Where is this loss of revenue caused by the Internet?"
It always annoys me when (a) record companies, (b) movie companies, (c) computer game industry complains about how much revenue they supposedly lose to piracy. It's always some hugely inflated value; the problem is they work on the assumption that if somebody pirated something, that that would have been revenue had the person not pirated it - in other words, that the person would actually have bought it. This assumption is entirely BS, most people who copy a computer game would simply never have bought it or played it all, had they not been able to pirate it. So it anyway wouldn't have been revenue.
So the recording industry asks Napster, "how many downloads", Napster says, say, "100 million". RIAA multiplies 100 million by the average price of a song, goes crying to the media and the courts that they've lost that much money. It's BS.
Problem: Billions and billions of dollars are at stake for massive corporations.
Consider, thousands of corrupt politicians, lawyers and judges are in the pockets of such corporations, who have a large budget for bribes (legal bribes and illegal bribes..)..
So the solution is (a) buying some public lobbies for a "grass-roots" attack on copyright infringement, and (b) buying of a few well-thought-out bills to "amend" current copyright law.
So in a few years time your ISP will practically be held liable for anything you pirate. Suddenly ISP's stop selling you "bandwidth and a TCP/IP connection" and starts selling you "e-mail and the web" (there's already a horrible trend in this direction, if you look at some of the cable terms-of-service contracts out there. And besides, the majority of people out there are not computer literate and anyway think that the internet is only web and e-mail.) So you get massive fire-walling, to the extent that you'll probably only have ports 80, 25, 110 and maybe 119 available.
There will always be ways to pirate stuff, yes, but don't underestimate the power these corporations have to drive piracy back into the underground, restrict it to a small minority of people who have a fair amount of technical knowledge. This isn't the piracy the RIAA care about - they're worried about mainstream piracy, like Napster, so thats all they really have to stop. We've already seen that new laws can practically be "bought". They've stopped Napster, they'll stop other things that come up.
I think the main point is that it's getting harder and harder to trust anything you see as technology improves.
In the early days of photography, you could generally trust a photo, as it was extremely difficult to mess with a photo after it had been taken. Nowadays every second Joe with a scanner/digital camera and Photoshop and a bit of artistic talent can bring you falsified photos, and almost every photo you'll ever see in any magazine published in the last five years has been through software like Photoshop at some point (unless you really believe that the Cosmopolitan cover girl has such perfect, plastic skin..)
Up until recently it was a lot easier to trust movies, especially live footage, very recent footage etc, because it took a fair amount of time, money, skill and special equipment to do decent video "retouching".
This new technology (actually just improvements on existing technology) makes it possible to do something that has never actually been possible before - manipulate live footage. Not to mention making it easier to manipulate any video. Each new technology increment allows for a greater percentage of what we see to be imaginary.. it's just gone from, say, 80%, to, say, 95%, with these new techniques.
I generally abide by the "believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" adage, but I know that a huge proportion of the gullible masses actually trust what they see, trust the media, trust what they read, trust what they see (yes there are people who really believe those infomercials telling you of the latest super-easy way to lose weight, gain muscle etc.). If anything this technology might be a good thing, as it may teach even these people that they can't actually trust everything they see.
(Incidentally, I was watching one of those informercials recently for a skin-care, and they were showing the usual "before/after" photos.. they boldly displayed on the screen each time they showed a set of photos "UNRETOUCHED PHOTOS".. only problem is, it was plainly obvious that it was the exact same photo being used for "before" and for "after" - just retouched. That takes some gall for them to do that, not to mention a huge amount of stupidity and gullibility for the majority of people to not realise it.)
Sorry to post this twice, hit the send button too soon..
When I graduated, I put together a CV (I already had real work experience programming C++, and I was clearly already a very qualified C++ programmer, and had experience programming Linux, Windows (Win32, MFC, DirectX) etc - so I'm not exactly underqualified) and went to a few recruitment agencies, not because I couldn't find a job, but because I wanted a fairly specific type of work.
One of the places I went to, I first thought they'd lost my CV, when I gave it to them they said they'd get back to me to arrange an interview, instead they ignored me. I phoned them a few weeks later ("uh, we'll look at your CV and call you").
Six months later, long after I'd already found a decent job myself, they had the cheek to call me back and nag me to find a job for me. Now that I'd had a bit of fulltime work experience, *now* they suddenly wanted to help me. As if I was going to help them after that.
By this time I was getting lots of calls from various recruitment agencies, who kept calling me at work pestering me. Not one of them took an interest when I went to them to find a job. So I refuse to have the time of day for them. I'm happy with my job.
A friend of mine also had bad experiences with them. He has honors and he has work experience and is also a good C++ programmer... he went to a recruitment agency the other day (he has just moved, so he is looking for a job where he is now) and was told by the person there, literally: "don't waste my time".
The problem is the headhunters are only interested in recruiting people who already have a good job. They're not willing to take risks on guys who don't have jobs currently. So whats they fucking point, from an employee's perspective?
"it seems to me that if some govermant organisations says anything about enviroment or anything else most americans think that its propaganda"
Just to clarify, when I spoke of US propaganda, I wasn't talking about NASA's newfound potential evidence of global warming, I was referring to much of the rest of the media attempting to deny that global warming exists.. also I'm not American.. so I think I have a bit more of an objective "external" view, since I see more than just the US viewpoint (ok yes yes I know there isn't one single "US viewpoint" so don't slam me for generalising here, you know what I mean...). I agree with NASA, I don't think they're lying..
Huh? Where did you get the idea that I am french? Anyway, don't get too defensive.. Americans in general seem to react very strongly to any criticism, whether it's valid or not.. should learn to accept some criticism.
Does it matter? Whether they are capping the bandwidth, or are congested, they are still marketing and selling a service that they are not capable of providing. They should either upgrade their network, or downgrade their marketing, but consumers must get what they have payed for.
Actually, it's not incorrect, it's called "thermodynamics". When you get to University you will study this in first year physics.
PS, you will also learn at University about the notion of backing up your arguments with some evidence, rather than just stating them as facts and leaving the burden of proof to somebody else. This is part of what is called "science", and these little things seperate "science" from "religion" and "zealotry".
Slashdot Mirror
Pedophile's believe that it's right to engage in sexual intercourse with children
I think this is probably false in most cases actually - most pedophiles are quite aware that what they are doing is wrong, but for whatever reasons either can't stop themselves or don't want to stop themselves.
But otherwise, yes, I agree with you, religion is outright dangerous. I personally don't believe that religion serves a positive purpose *at all* to mankind. Religion is there for the sole purpose of controlling masses of people. MHO.
I'm of the belief that when the last religion finally collapses, mankind will "officially" (in my opinion) be out of the dark ages. Until then, I consider this to still be "the dark ages", and I suspect that one day people will look back and see religion in history in pretty much the same way. Religion has proved itself again and again and again to be intolerably harmful to man. We should really truly squelch this horrible concept. Religion is about *one thing only* - *controlling people*. It serves this purpose very well.
For Taco's sanity's sake alone, he had to delete the post.
.. it's just a joke. You can stop flaming me now.
Anyone who takes the time to do even a little bit of research into Microsoft will realize that the organization will use *ANY* means, *LEGAL OR ILLEGAL* to harass, repress and *destroy* its opponents.
The Taco's life, and the life of everyone at Slashdot and Andover, would have become a living hell.
Microsoft has a no-holds-barred *rule*: they are explicitly instructed by Bill Gate's words to do *anything* it takes to win.
Which means Taco would have had his pets killed, his car trashed, his house picketed, his parents harassed, his business associates -- banks, etc -- sent packages claiming he's a pedophile, his entire neighbourhood pamphleted with the same pedophile claims, etc. Plus, he'd be challenged by a dozen or more legal suits.
Like I said, a living hell.
People have committed suicide because of Microsoft blue-screen lost-work frustration.
Oh -- and the examples I presented: they're real life. Microsoft has done exactly those things to opponents (and even the judges in their court cases!) before, and they'll do it again.
Microsoft is one of the most evil organizations on this planet. By every metric you could possibly apply, they are the antithesis of good.
---
OK
Thats just the point - that nobody has to explain the "technique" used in these bogus patents. Sure, you have to *READ* the patent, but that is *NOT* the same as having to *explain* it - when people "skilled in the field" read patents like this, there is nothing that requires them to think about it at any point. Your definition of 'obvious' is a little weird'. Say somebody patented the process of brushing one's teeth. Now what you're saying is that simply because somebody has to *explain the patent* to you, the patent is not obvious? Come on - that would imply that NOT ONE SINGLE patent is obvious, since all the *patents* have to be explained. I'm talking about explaining the *process* described in the patent. Is the *process* obvious. Brushing one's teeth - have you ever written out that exact same series of steps? No - why bother, its obvious and well-known - but according to you the "brushing teeth" patent, since it first had to be *read* to somebody, ISNT obvious? Thats ridiculous.
I know that it covers Palm handhelds simply because they're portable computers, without reading the patent. That should be enough to convince any moron. Nevertheless, for the other morons out there, a bit more is needed. So I've *actually* read the patent since, and I can't say anything in it validates the patent one jot. The patent just sounds a bit more specific about the capabilities of the patented device (e.g. it can communicate a transaction with something else, has a touch-screen LDC, takes a password, has IR communication). Hint on patents: you cannot simply combine a number of existing technologies (LCD+touchscreen+IRcomms) into some new *arrangement* and claim innovation. You must have a new *technique* that has not been used before and is not obvious (e.g. if they had come up with a clever new method of creating a touch screen or something). Simply adding a few other things together in some order does not constitute a *new technique*. I'm more convinced than ever that this patent (the first of the two) has no merit. If I'm the first guy to slap a thin LCD screen backed with a microchip onto a milk carton to display animated adverts or whatever, sure as hell doesn't mean that it is an original, innovative invention. It's just A+B+C+D.
They don't have to have come up with it first. If the majority of computer programmers read the patent and find it obvious (i.e. the patent does not actually have to make them *think* at all to figure it out) then the patent IS "obvious to those skilled in the field". Otherwise you'd end up with people patenting all sorts of things that are so obvious nobody bothers to mention them .. oh wait ..
My boss told me another similar one; a special form of a ship's wake that does not spread out behind the ship, but remains parallel to the direction of movement of the ship. I can't remember the name, but it was named after the guy who first noticed and described it, probably in the region of a centry ago. The reason for this specific behaviour of the wake had to do with the shape of the channel the ship was in. Apparently, nobody could figure out a use for this somewhat esoteric theory for quite a long time - until the development of fiber (or fibre) optics - apparently light travelling through a fiber can exhibit the same behaviour, and is quite useful for minimizing refraction within the fiber.
Patents are not supposed to be obvious "to experts in the field.
When "experts in the field" read Amazon's patent, do they say "holy shit, thats so obvious, there is nothing innovative here", or do they say "hey thats quite clever, wouldn't have been able to put that system together myself without some good serious thinking"? As far as I can tell, the vast majority (including myself when I read it) exclaim quite readily the 'thats so obvious, there is nothing new here'. There is no requirement that the 'obviousness' must have presented itself before the patent claim to other experts. Rather, it is the opposite: even a person who is an expert in the field, when reading the patent, must at least have to *think* at least *once* to understand the patent. No thinking required for the Amazon patent, I promise you that.
That should just plain give it away, really: the patent IS "obvious to experts in the field". It IS. They don't just say it, it really is. That alone is enough to invalidate the patent.
The very specific nature of the patent (essentially writing down all the details in the order they happen) makes it narrower and more specific, but the patent isn't bogus for being too broad, it's bogus for being obvious. Simply writing down all the details and steps (thereby making it specific) don't make it any less ridiculous. If I wrote down all the steps I take to buy something from the local shopping mall (e.g. "leave house", "enter motor vehicle", "start vehicle ignition", "put vehicle in gear", "enter the public road transport system", "navigate through public road transport system using built-in neural network algorithms"), etc etc etc, doesn't make it innovative. This is exactly what Amazon has tried to do, all they've done is outline all the exact steps in the process. Lame!
"Portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions"
Sounds a bit like a cordless phone to me.
How the hell did they get such a broad patent? Holy shit. How can anybody credibly claim that adding the word "portable" in front of any commonly used device (any computer in 1987) makes for an 'original invention'? Unbelievable. This is one of the worst patents I've seen in a long time. The sad thing is, I don't think this should one even be going as far as trying to prove "prior art" - it's just plain *obvious*. Not just to people who are experts in the field either, which is the requirement for patents to be considered 'obvious'. Really. "Computer" + "portable". Obvious to Joe Sixpack, for petes sake.
OK, disclaimer, I haven't *read* the patents, so maybe they actually have all sorts of additional fluffy, confusing, meaningless technical terms that make the concept sound less obvious.
If the patent had been claimed in the early 70's, and one ignored the huge body of popular science fiction that referenced such possible portable devices, then maaaybe. What a joke.
There is, of course, a difference between "writing style" and "spelling and grammar errors". I notice you could only find problems with the former in my post. You must have been pretty desperate.
You don't need to compile it, you can get Unix Utils for Win32 at http://www.weihenstephan.de/~syring/win32/UnxUtils .html. wget must be one of the most useful Gnu utilities there is out there!
I guess 30 fps with beautiful visuals would be nice for games that don't involve too much action, but I'm a Quake3 fan, and you simply cannot play Quake3 competitively at 30 fps.
We have yet to see a single instance of speciation in the animal kingdom
Of course, we have only been observing for less than 10 thousandths of a percent of the duration of time over which there has been life on earth. Makes it a little difficult to observer what is anyway an inherently slow process.
I stared at one of my pot plants for a whole week recently. I did not see it grow AT ALL. So all these people who keep telling me that plants grow must be smoking something - it clearly just does not happen.
Come on. Speciation HAS TO happen, given the current system and the rules that act on the system, its as natural as the idea that if pizza-eating people don't like olives, then the last remaining pieces of pizza when everybody has taken their share of a pizza with olives on is the one that has the most olives on - the "fitness function" of the pizza. Its the same idea. To say that the principles of evolution are bogus is to say that people will choose pizza pieces randomly, regardless of how many olives each piece has. Thats just ridiculous.
Hey, I'm just trying to help these guys out a little, they obviously need it, spelling is actually a very useful and important skill in the workplace - most of us will at one time or another be involved in producing supposedly professional documentation. And really, it doesn't take that much effort to learn the absolute basics for 6 year olds (e.g. then vs. than). And it really doesn't take that much effort to quickly scan something before you post it, just to catch at least some of the huge, obvious, gaping grammar and spelling errors. Come on.
MSNBC is running an article about Sony's new Slim TV, which is thinner, brighter, and has a better picture than current LCD screens
The organic electroluminescent (OEL) display, which is a little thicker than a credit card, was shown Wednesday.
These screens offer a faster response than LCD because they are self-luminous (no back-lighting required) and allow a wider viewing angle. Sony hopes to have these screens in mass production by 2003
"In response to rampant theft and corruption, most parcel-delivery companies either charge insane rates (DHL) or simply refuse to deliver to all but the most accessible, modern Russian cities"
Then they should make that clear to their clients up front, not make bogus claims. If you advertise that you provide a certain service, take money to provide that service, and then not provide that service, thats theft/fraud/whatever.
The least they could have done was been less snotty about providing the refund, since the mistake was theirs.
No conspiracy theories here, just bad service.
You've hit the nail on the head ..
"How an industry claims loss of revenue when they report record earnings is the real problem here. Record companies are making more money this year than last year. Where is this loss of revenue caused by the Internet?"
It always annoys me when (a) record companies, (b) movie companies, (c) computer game industry complains about how much revenue they supposedly lose to piracy. It's always some hugely inflated value; the problem is they work on the assumption that if somebody pirated something, that that would have been revenue had the person not pirated it - in other words, that the person would actually have bought it. This assumption is entirely BS, most people who copy a computer game would simply never have bought it or played it all, had they not been able to pirate it. So it anyway wouldn't have been revenue.
So the recording industry asks Napster, "how many downloads", Napster says, say, "100 million". RIAA multiplies 100 million by the average price of a song, goes crying to the media and the courts that they've lost that much money. It's BS.
Problem: Billions and billions of dollars are at stake for massive corporations.
Consider, thousands of corrupt politicians, lawyers and judges are in the pockets of such corporations, who have a large budget for bribes (legal bribes and illegal bribes ..) ..
So the solution is (a) buying some public lobbies for a "grass-roots" attack on copyright infringement, and (b) buying of a few well-thought-out bills to "amend" current copyright law.
So in a few years time your ISP will practically be held liable for anything you pirate. Suddenly ISP's stop selling you "bandwidth and a TCP/IP connection" and starts selling you "e-mail and the web" (there's already a horrible trend in this direction, if you look at some of the cable terms-of-service contracts out there. And besides, the majority of people out there are not computer literate and anyway think that the internet is only web and e-mail.) So you get massive fire-walling, to the extent that you'll probably only have ports 80, 25, 110 and maybe 119 available.
There will always be ways to pirate stuff, yes, but don't underestimate the power these corporations have to drive piracy back into the underground, restrict it to a small minority of people who have a fair amount of technical knowledge. This isn't the piracy the RIAA care about - they're worried about mainstream piracy, like Napster, so thats all they really have to stop. We've already seen that new laws can practically be "bought". They've stopped Napster, they'll stop other things that come up.
I think the main point is that it's getting harder and harder to trust anything you see as technology improves.
In the early days of photography, you could generally trust a photo, as it was extremely difficult to mess with a photo after it had been taken. Nowadays every second Joe with a scanner/digital camera and Photoshop and a bit of artistic talent can bring you falsified photos, and almost every photo you'll ever see in any magazine published in the last five years has been through software like Photoshop at some point (unless you really believe that the Cosmopolitan cover girl has such perfect, plastic skin ..)
Up until recently it was a lot easier to trust movies, especially live footage, very recent footage etc, because it took a fair amount of time, money, skill and special equipment to do decent video "retouching".
This new technology (actually just improvements on existing technology) makes it possible to do something that has never actually been possible before - manipulate live footage. Not to mention making it easier to manipulate any video. Each new technology increment allows for a greater percentage of what we see to be imaginary .. it's just gone from, say, 80%, to, say, 95%, with these new techniques.
I generally abide by the "believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" adage, but I know that a huge proportion of the gullible masses actually trust what they see, trust the media, trust what they read, trust what they see (yes there are people who really believe those infomercials telling you of the latest super-easy way to lose weight, gain muscle etc.). If anything this technology might be a good thing, as it may teach even these people that they can't actually trust everything they see.
(Incidentally, I was watching one of those informercials recently for a skin-care, and they were showing the usual "before/after" photos .. they boldly displayed on the screen each time they showed a set of photos "UNRETOUCHED PHOTOS" .. only problem is, it was plainly obvious that it was the exact same photo being used for "before" and for "after" - just retouched. That takes some gall for them to do that, not to mention a huge amount of stupidity and gullibility for the majority of people to not realise it.)
Sorry to post this twice, hit the send button too soon ..
When I graduated, I put together a CV (I already had real work experience programming C++, and I was clearly already a very qualified C++ programmer, and had experience programming Linux, Windows (Win32, MFC, DirectX) etc - so I'm not exactly underqualified) and went to a few recruitment agencies, not because I couldn't find a job, but because I wanted a fairly specific type of work.
One of the places I went to, I first thought they'd lost my CV, when I gave it to them they said they'd get back to me to arrange an interview, instead they ignored me. I phoned them a few weeks later ("uh, we'll look at your CV and call you").
Six months later, long after I'd already found a decent job myself, they had the cheek to call me back and nag me to find a job for me. Now that I'd had a bit of fulltime work experience, *now* they suddenly wanted to help me. As if I was going to help them after that.
By this time I was getting lots of calls from various recruitment agencies, who kept calling me at work pestering me. Not one of them took an interest when I went to them to find a job. So I refuse to have the time of day for them. I'm happy with my job.
A friend of mine also had bad experiences with them. He has honors and he has work experience and is also a good C++ programmer ... he went to a recruitment agency the other day (he has just moved, so he is looking for a job where he is now) and was told by the person there, literally: "don't waste my time".
The problem is the headhunters are only interested in recruiting people who already have a good job. They're not willing to take risks on guys who don't have jobs currently. So whats they fucking point, from an employee's perspective?
"it seems to me that if some govermant organisations says anything about enviroment or anything else most americans think that its propaganda"
Just to clarify, when I spoke of US propaganda, I wasn't talking about NASA's newfound potential evidence of global warming, I was referring to much of the rest of the media attempting to deny that global warming exists .. also I'm not American .. so I think I have a bit more of an objective "external" view, since I see more than just the US viewpoint (ok yes yes I know there isn't one single "US viewpoint" so don't slam me for generalising here, you know what I mean ...). I agree with NASA, I don't think they're lying ..
Huh? Where did you get the idea that I am french? Anyway, don't get too defensive .. Americans in general seem to react very strongly to any criticism, whether it's valid or not .. should learn to accept some criticism.
Does it matter? Whether they are capping the bandwidth, or are congested, they are still marketing and selling a service that they are not capable of providing. They should either upgrade their network, or downgrade their marketing, but consumers must get what they have payed for.
Actually, it's not incorrect, it's called "thermodynamics". When you get to University you will study this in first year physics.
PS, you will also learn at University about the notion of backing up your arguments with some evidence, rather than just stating them as facts and leaving the burden of proof to somebody else. This is part of what is called "science", and these little things seperate "science" from "religion" and "zealotry".