Palladium still wont stop cheating tho, it just makes it a bit harder. Even if the game binaries are untouchable, the network packets arent. It'll just move to more advanced proxycheats instead.
If the basic PC archetecture is moved so that "secure call" is as basic as any other OS function, creating real cheats can be made difficult enough that the people who can do it won't bother to do it.
If the black-hats move to packet-hacking, the security will shift and change to meet that.
The perfect security for online gaming is already here. It's simple. It's called: Put the security on the server side. Treat the client as a dumb terminal and only send data meant for the player and only recieve data indicating the requested actions of the player. It aint rocket science, it's just that some game programmers appear to be about as dense as a black hole or have spent the last 15 years living in a box without ever reading about anyone else implementing a networked game.
What kind of cheats, exactly, are you thinking about?
Sure, that'd stop game-attribute hacks, but aimbots and other aid-proxies would still be all too viable--and annoying.
It's easy to tell when someone's invulerable, moving to fast, et al. When their aim + reflexes go to the "superhuman" range, it gets harder and harder.
Palladium is simply rediculous. There is a much better solution:
1) Write more secure software. Dont' lock my PC up because you can't produce solid, tested code that's not full of holes.
2) Educate users. If you let someone you didn't know work on your car, and they broke something major, who is at fault? Should GM ship cars with the hood welded shut?
3) Profit!
This isn't a case of people messing with their own PCs. It's people using said PCs for criminal acts--the virtual equivalent of grand theft auto, carjacking, evading arrest, AND slashing the cop's tires.
Okay, bad pun, but seriously... Palladium is just a bad, bad idea. What happens when (not if) someone breaks it? Then what?
Oh, right, hide behind more DMCA-like laws. No need to make it unbreakable, when you can just make it illegal to break (think CSS).
Palladim doesn't need to be unbreakable--it just needs to be hard enough to break that it's not worth the bother/risk for most people.
Microsoft seems to be acting like the RIAA. The RIAA is IMO an unnecessary middle-man, who's usefullness is proving to be less and less. So they lobby to get laws passed in order to survive. MS can't write secure software, so they want to lock us out of the PC, making it a (worse) crime to exploit it. Telco's are using old technology and want the government to bail them out.
MS writes buggy software, but they're not the only ones. Notice the recent proliferation of Linux vriuses & exploits?
Well guess what? If a company can't survive, or a business model proves to be no longer viable, then you lose. It isn't the government's (and thus the taxpayers') responsibility to keep a dead idea going for the benefit of some corporation.
Ah, but I'm rambling again... *sigh* I just get so frustrated with the way things are going these days (which has gotten much worse since 9/11)... my girlfriend thinks I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist... I'm simply making observations.
Remember what MS's & the gov'ts motives are. The USA wants to protect its citizens, itself, and the elected officials. Even McCarthy was driven by patriotism and a belief that he was right.
MS wants to profit; period. They choose do to this for control, which gets them profit, but it needs to be done. Either we (that is, those of us who can help) help them do it right, or we do it ourselves--sitting back and complaining won't help something worthwhile happen.
For mainstream books the issue is more thorny. Naively you would think that publishing houses will loose all their power, and that authors started letting peope download their stuff at rates much, much lower than what would be paid for the book in a store. For some reason though, this did not happen to music. I wonder if publishing houses are as powerful and united as RIAA...
As has been previously stated, the per-item cost of a CD is negligible. Most of the $ goes towards the creative and marketoid folks who promote the CD.
E-books, OTOH, SHOULD have a significant discount, as printing + paper is a significant expense. And it doesn't help when ebooks are priced as "slightly discounted hardcovers" rather than "slightly discounted paperbacks."
Personally, I think ebooks should work like gameboys: Have a hardware piece that acts as an indellible carrier of the book, like a modified SD chip or something, so the "license" and the "media" are identical.
And, yes, I know that'd negate digial's "free" benefit... but a backlit display that doesn't die totally when it gets wet would be a nice thing with a significant market--plus it'd be (slightly) eco-friendlier, and you could upgrade your reader and get a boost to every book you've got...
I've seen ebook readers, and the interface is VERY nice. Unfortunately, they're expensive, and there isn't critial mass to encourage adoption just yet.
Hint: security for multiplayer games is done server side or you are totally, completely and utterly screwed from beginning to end and nothing you can ever do about it will change that. A player can always see any data ever sent to the client and always control and make up any data going back to the server. Anyone even dreaming otherwise is deluding themselves.
Welcome to Palladium.
There are oodles and oodles of instances where it'd just be darn simpler if there was a "no touchie" part of the PC that couldn't be accessed. Let the user wipe it clean if they want to, but require access to it for all the systems and programs that really, really need some security--like digial movies, music licensing, or serious gameplay.
None of this would be necessary if we didn't have social-engineering black-hat hackers who break every attempt at default security just for kicks. Palladium (or something else) is coming, and I blame any bad side effects I suffer on hackers, not MS.
People who think the world can be resolved into black and white always put themselves in the white section, and put anyone who disagrees with them in the black section.
Most of the time--yes. But not always.
Besdies, I didn't say that the world could be dissolved into black and white--just that black and white did exist.
Personally, I'm in the gray somewhere, trying to be white. But that's the whole darn point of morality, after all.
Or, that sometimes there is no right answer.
There is always a right answer. It's just painful sometimes.
Yes. Aramony is a differnet "thing" than the United Way.
It's a LOT easier to call a thing black or white than a person. Anonymous Charity and Random Murder are probably the easiest.
(Oh, and of COURSE Theresa's a "religous fundamentalist," a "political operative", a "sermonizer," and an "accomplice of worldly powers"--she was a active nun in the Catholic Church, which is a political entity in and of itself, no matter what its press says. The important part is how honest they are, and to what end they put their efforts and profits to.)
That standoff started with a government tresspasser
No such thing--especially out west.
The government has the right to come onto your property--either with a warrant or with a strong belief that they need to go there (either to protect evidence or protect citizens.)
And out west, it's even MORE ludicrous to call the gov't a tresspasser, considering that most of the land isn't "owned", it's "perpetually leased" by the feds to the private citizenry.
Bottom line is, when trying to get out from under the government's thumb, you have to be careful not to end up ground under its heel.
Well, yeah. Keeping nuts from leading you, having a good relationship with the press, and never, ever, ever opposing the officers of the law are good checks against that. (Good PR is probably the most important one.)
And once you start, stopping may not be under your control. It only takes ONE side to run a war.
You can always dissolve. Assuming that you haven't done anything out-and-out illegal, your group can just cease to be a group, and the feds will probably let them go.
Welcome to the Real World, where nothing is black or white, no one is evil or good and nothing is _ever_ as simple as it seems.
Nah, that's the "ironic pseduo-post-modern world."
The real world has quite its share of things that are simple and black/white good/evil. They're just not EVERYTHING, and everything has good parts and evil parts.
Cases in point: Hitler & The "Tarot Card Sniper" opposed to Mother Theresa or the United Way. (Heck, the UW is a great example--they're a good thing with bad people at some of their hearts.)
"Those who call the world a thousand shades of grey forget about black and white far too often."
Now that the cult members weren't crazy and everything, but it just shows that people who want to not be under the control of the US government in the US may end up looking down the business end of a government issue sub machine gun.
Even better, when the US Feds come with guns and loudspeakers, it's always in your best interset to let them in; foreign governemtns and internal cults alike get smacked by the feds.
who really thinks that a white kid gets the same punishment for drug use or petty crime as a black kid?
I do. Given the same crime, the same social standing, and the same income level, I'd suspect the same result.
The "problem" is that we've got a disproportionate ammount of poor blacks and rich whites.
Who thinks that a competent defence lawyer has no effect on your chances of a lesser sentence?
Only fools.
I'm very pessimistic this system will ever be reformed
Personally, I think the best reform would be to cause the lawyers for any case to be paid from a "pool." Let them all be pseduo-state employees, and assigned to cases based on merit and choice--and let no less than an equal share of the monies paid to one party's lawyer go to the other party's.
Sadly, those in the best position to reform the system are either tied to it, or focused on a pie-in-the-sky "reparations" idea.
MS's monopoly is based on software installation. Even if you don't send MS one red cent for their software, you still contribute to upkeeping their monopoly.
As long as this doesn't affect their bottom line, and they're taking "reasonable actions" to combat it, they don't need to care.
The same way that we know you're "real." You claim to be, it would be more work to impersonate you than to make you real, and it makes sense for you to be real.
Think about it--what reason would Apple have to FAKE a switch campaign when they can just do it properly?
Do you know if they are in any way connected with Apple (and therefore might be a tad biased).
OF COURSE they're biased--Apple asked for volunteers, got them, and then shot the commercials themselves.
That's like asking if the volunteers at a Red Cross blood drive if they're "biased" towards thinking the Red Cross is a worthy chairity.
Or are you just guessing/hoping/taking Jobs' word that they're real?
1:) It'd be "Jobs's" (apostrophie before the "s") if you were talking about Steve Jobs, not "Jobs'". You can pronounce it "jobses" or "jobs" as you see fit.
2:) I have yet to hear a quote from Steve Jobs that the Switch Campaign features real people. Even if he said it, I'm not basing my belief in their honesty on a CEO quote--I base it on the commercials themselves.
Now we need to start comparing mac users to terrorists?
The Nation of Islam is a racist, reactionist, extreme black Muslim group--but they're hardly terrorists.
Criminals maybe. Name-thieves, probably (the orignal Nation of Islam actually became Muslim, not racist.) Ignorant racist bastards, definitly (most arabs are closer to "white" than "black").
But they're not terrorists.
How can you be so threatened at people thinking for themselves? Oh yeah, that's right, this is a nation that worships conformity.
Tell me again how being a rabid fanboy of ANYTHING is "thinking for yourself?"
I'd love to have a Mac. I'd like to be able to use Linux for what I need it to do. But neither of those means that I'm "thinking for myself."
When you become a certified HVAC mechanic w/30+ years of experience, you can come talk, until then, please express your views to someone else.
(And for those who missed it... )
my father is a HVAC mechanic...
Bill, it doesn't matter if your father is a billionare who invented indoor electricity. Unless HE signs in with his own UID and posts, it's just heresay.
I wager that your father didn't read the article, and that you're not a certified HVAC mechanic, either. Aruging from authority's a despicable practice, especially when it's not YOUR authority.
Eventually, everything gets replaced. When doing so, it's important to look into the savings of more expensive "smart" components as opposed to the traditional ones; the cost differnece doesn't have to factor in time to replace if that's going to happen anyway.
That rings a little hollow though...kind of sounds like arguing the only way to avoid miscarriages of justice is not to have any justice in the first place.
Picture a city where all crimes have to have someone step forth and accuse. There is no police force in this city, and no penalty for a citizen who makes a false claim. Now, picture that the state police wants to go in, but they'll be subject to the laws of this city--and they're going after a gang boss smart enough to abuse the system.
I don't care if it's accurate--this is how I believe my government views the problems with the world crimes court. It's not an argument that "we should be immune from justice." It's an argument that "this court will be abused, and is not justice."
MS Word does not create documents like Wordperfect does. It's more like a CSS file than HTML, keeping track of the formatting of each letter, word, paragraph, page, and section seperately, rather than having "start formatting" and "end formatting" tags.
To get word to work right, turn off the "define styles based on your formatting" function in the Autocorrect menu ("Autoformat as you type" tab). Then use files for any difference in font or heading, making new ones as you go.
Using word this way lets you seperate the content from the presentation (as much as a word processor can), and allows for rather easy editing.
Wordperfect lets you reveal codes, but Word doesn't litter extra codes everywhere.
(Soldiers in peacekeeping missions are citizens, but not all citizens are soldiers on peacekeeping missions.)
It's not as justified for any other country--the USA is seen as the personification of "The West," and there are more countries and more groups that want to cause us harm than there are that wish harm to any one of our allies--maybe more than all of our allies put together.
A permanent "UN Investigation" bureau might be a good answer to the issue. As would significat penalty for a spurious filing.
I always thought the canonical example of a US citizen that might be tried was Henry Kissinger, on a long list of war crimes allegations (try googling for "kissinger" and "cambodia")
I say we try him--if we haven't done so allready at home.
The argument isn't USA wanting to be immune to legitimate claims--it's a desire to avoid all spurious ones.
Office for at least the great majority of things does use native widgets, there may be a few things that are custom built but certainly not everything.
No?
* Open / Save dialogue * Find dialogue (part of "open.) * Toolbars * Menu bars
And how long until that agreed-upon mechanism that's been agreed upon is backed with enough teeth to make a whit of difference?
Only long enough for the US to want to enforce it on someone else. Drug trafficking, anyone?
Until we have a one world government (which is probably a really bad idea), we will have to deal with these situations.
Why do you think it's a really bad idea? Half of the countries out there ALLREADY think that we've got a world government. Giving it teeth and direct representation would just force dictators to be benevolent if they want to stay in power.
(Most of the other arguments I know of to a one-world government can be bypassed with a simple "The USA does that anyway, so why not give non-USians a chance to say in their own fate?")
The US has refused to ratify the treaty on the international criminal court because of the completely hypothetical possibility that US citizens might be tried elsewhere.
Not citizens--soldiers in peacekeeping missions.
The fear is that countires that hate the US will bring spurious charges against innocent US soldiers; I think it's actually justified, although we're a bit extreme in our denial of the court.
I don't believe the US is going to subject its citizens to any form of foreign jurisdiction if it can help it.
In 1952 we wouldn't have allowed trade with Russia, Germany was split, and Iraq / Al Queada were far lesser evils. In 2052 I suspect the world might change just as much.
Everyone in the world is held to US laws, EXCEPT US Law Enforcement Officials.
If those said US law enforcemnet officals ever go to Russia, they can expect to be captured, tried (if they're lucky), and jailed.
We've got a good 15-50 years of "supernationalism" until some agreed-upon mechanism for punnishing extra-national criminals is agreed upon. Probably by an extension of the UN War Crimes court into a body to deal with inter-country legal affairs that aren't War Crimes.
To whit; I can get on a boat chartered in China from California, hook up to an international communications system not owned by the USA, hack a server in Japan, go back to the USA, and ignore any legal threats on the basis that no applicable law makes what I did illegal. If I'm out of the country ANYWAY and I've got a good reason, I've got an even better situation.
Until I go to Japan, of course.
(IANAL; if you, knowing that I am not qualified to dispense legal advice, decide to act upon my suggestion, you should also jump into the ocean while you're out there and save the gene pool.)
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Palladium still wont stop cheating tho, it just makes it a bit harder. Even if the game binaries are untouchable, the network packets arent. It'll just move to more advanced proxycheats instead.
If the basic PC archetecture is moved so that "secure call" is as basic as any other OS function, creating real cheats can be made difficult enough that the people who can do it won't bother to do it.
If the black-hats move to packet-hacking, the security will shift and change to meet that.
The perfect security for online gaming is already here. It's simple. It's called: Put the security on the server side. Treat the client as a dumb terminal and only send data meant for the player and only recieve data indicating the requested actions of the player. It aint rocket science, it's just that some game programmers appear to be about as dense as a black hole or have spent the last 15 years living in a box without ever reading about anyone else implementing a networked game.
What kind of cheats, exactly, are you thinking about?
Sure, that'd stop game-attribute hacks, but aimbots and other aid-proxies would still be all too viable--and annoying.
It's easy to tell when someone's invulerable, moving to fast, et al. When their aim + reflexes go to the "superhuman" range, it gets harder and harder.
Tell me you are kidding. Please.
Nope.
Palladium is simply rediculous. There is a much better solution:
1) Write more secure software. Dont' lock my PC up because you can't produce solid, tested code that's not full of holes.
2) Educate users. If you let someone you didn't know work on your car, and they broke something major, who is at fault? Should GM ship cars with the hood welded shut?
3) Profit!
This isn't a case of people messing with their own PCs. It's people using said PCs for criminal acts--the virtual equivalent of grand theft auto, carjacking, evading arrest, AND slashing the cop's tires.
Okay, bad pun, but seriously... Palladium is just a bad, bad idea. What happens when (not if) someone breaks it? Then what?
Oh, right, hide behind more DMCA-like laws. No need to make it unbreakable, when you can just make it illegal to break (think CSS).
Palladim doesn't need to be unbreakable--it just needs to be hard enough to break that it's not worth the bother/risk for most people.
Microsoft seems to be acting like the RIAA. The RIAA is IMO an unnecessary middle-man, who's usefullness is proving to be less and less. So they lobby to get laws passed in order to survive. MS can't write secure software, so they want to lock us out of the PC, making it a (worse) crime to exploit it. Telco's are using old technology and want the government to bail them out.
MS writes buggy software, but they're not the only ones. Notice the recent proliferation of Linux vriuses & exploits?
Well guess what? If a company can't survive, or a business model proves to be no longer viable, then you lose. It isn't the government's (and thus the taxpayers') responsibility to keep a dead idea going for the benefit of some corporation.
Ah, but I'm rambling again... *sigh* I just get so frustrated with the way things are going these days (which has gotten much worse since 9/11)... my girlfriend thinks I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist... I'm simply making observations.
Remember what MS's & the gov'ts motives are. The USA wants to protect its citizens, itself, and the elected officials. Even McCarthy was driven by patriotism and a belief that he was right.
MS wants to profit; period. They choose do to this for control, which gets them profit, but it needs to be done. Either we (that is, those of us who can help) help them do it right, or we do it ourselves--sitting back and complaining won't help something worthwhile happen.
For mainstream books the issue is more thorny. Naively you would think that publishing houses will loose all their power, and that authors started letting peope download their stuff at rates much, much lower than what would be paid for the book in a store. For some reason though, this did not happen to music. I wonder if publishing houses are as powerful and united as RIAA...
As has been previously stated, the per-item cost of a CD is negligible. Most of the $ goes towards the creative and marketoid folks who promote the CD.
E-books, OTOH, SHOULD have a significant discount, as printing + paper is a significant expense. And it doesn't help when ebooks are priced as "slightly discounted hardcovers" rather than "slightly discounted paperbacks."
Personally, I think ebooks should work like gameboys: Have a hardware piece that acts as an indellible carrier of the book, like a modified SD chip or something, so the "license" and the "media" are identical.
And, yes, I know that'd negate digial's "free" benefit... but a backlit display that doesn't die totally when it gets wet would be a nice thing with a significant market--plus it'd be (slightly) eco-friendlier, and you could upgrade your reader and get a boost to every book you've got...
I've seen ebook readers, and the interface is VERY nice. Unfortunately, they're expensive, and there isn't critial mass to encourage adoption just yet.
Hint: security for multiplayer games is done server side or you are totally, completely and utterly screwed from beginning to end and nothing you can ever do about it will change that. A player can always see any data ever sent to the client and always control and make up any data going back to the server. Anyone even dreaming otherwise is deluding themselves.
Welcome to Palladium.
There are oodles and oodles of instances where it'd just be darn simpler if there was a "no touchie" part of the PC that couldn't be accessed. Let the user wipe it clean if they want to, but require access to it for all the systems and programs that really, really need some security--like digial movies, music licensing, or serious gameplay.
None of this would be necessary if we didn't have social-engineering black-hat hackers who break every attempt at default security just for kicks. Palladium (or something else) is coming, and I blame any bad side effects I suffer on hackers, not MS.
People who think the world can be resolved into black and white always put themselves in the white section, and put anyone who disagrees with them in the black section.
Most of the time--yes. But not always.
Besdies, I didn't say that the world could be dissolved into black and white--just that black and white did exist.
Personally, I'm in the gray somewhere, trying to be white. But that's the whole darn point of morality, after all.
Or, that sometimes there is no right answer.
There is always a right answer. It's just painful sometimes.
But is it black and white?
Yes. Aramony is a differnet "thing" than the United Way.
It's a LOT easier to call a thing black or white than a person. Anonymous Charity and Random Murder are probably the easiest.
(Oh, and of COURSE Theresa's a "religous fundamentalist," a "political operative", a "sermonizer," and an "accomplice of worldly powers"--she was a active nun in the Catholic Church, which is a political entity in and of itself, no matter what its press says. The important part is how honest they are, and to what end they put their efforts and profits to.)
That standoff started with a government tresspasser
No such thing--especially out west.
The government has the right to come onto your property--either with a warrant or with a strong belief that they need to go there (either to protect evidence or protect citizens.)
And out west, it's even MORE ludicrous to call the gov't a tresspasser, considering that most of the land isn't "owned", it's "perpetually leased" by the feds to the private citizenry.
Bottom line is, when trying to get out from under the government's thumb, you have to be careful not to end up ground under its heel.
Well, yeah. Keeping nuts from leading you, having a good relationship with the press, and never, ever, ever opposing the officers of the law are good checks against that. (Good PR is probably the most important one.)
And once you start, stopping may not be under your control. It only takes ONE side to run a war.
You can always dissolve. Assuming that you haven't done anything out-and-out illegal, your group can just cease to be a group, and the feds will probably let them go.
No, that'd be VW.
"The Nazis" might be why we have the Bettle, or "Hitler's Rule," but the man himself was rather pure evil.
Welcome to the Real World, where nothing is black or white, no one is evil or good and nothing is _ever_ as simple as it seems.
Nah, that's the "ironic pseduo-post-modern world."
The real world has quite its share of things that are simple and black/white good/evil. They're just not EVERYTHING, and everything has good parts and evil parts.
Cases in point: Hitler & The "Tarot Card Sniper" opposed to Mother Theresa or the United Way. (Heck, the UW is a great example--they're a good thing with bad people at some of their hearts.)
"Those who call the world a thousand shades of grey forget about black and white far too often."
Now that the cult members weren't crazy and everything, but it just shows that people who want to not be under the control of the US government in the US may end up looking down the business end of a government issue sub machine gun.
Even better, when the US Feds come with guns and loudspeakers, it's always in your best interset to let them in; foreign governemtns and internal cults alike get smacked by the feds.
who really thinks that a white kid gets the same punishment for drug use or petty crime as a black kid?
I do. Given the same crime, the same social standing, and the same income level, I'd suspect the same result.
The "problem" is that we've got a disproportionate ammount of poor blacks and rich whites.
Who thinks that a competent defence lawyer has no effect on your chances of a lesser sentence?
Only fools.
I'm very pessimistic this system will ever be reformed
Personally, I think the best reform would be to cause the lawyers for any case to be paid from a "pool." Let them all be pseduo-state employees, and assigned to cases based on merit and choice--and let no less than an equal share of the monies paid to one party's lawyer go to the other party's.
Sadly, those in the best position to reform the system are either tied to it, or focused on a pie-in-the-sky "reparations" idea.
MS's monopoly is based on software installation. Even if you don't send MS one red cent for their software, you still contribute to upkeeping their monopoly.
As long as this doesn't affect their bottom line, and they're taking "reasonable actions" to combat it, they don't need to care.
How do you know they're "*real*"?
The same way that we know you're "real." You claim to be, it would be more work to impersonate you than to make you real, and it makes sense for you to be real.
Think about it--what reason would Apple have to FAKE a switch campaign when they can just do it properly?
Do you know if they are in any way connected with Apple (and therefore might be a tad biased).
OF COURSE they're biased--Apple asked for volunteers, got them, and then shot the commercials themselves.
That's like asking if the volunteers at a Red Cross blood drive if they're "biased" towards thinking the Red Cross is a worthy chairity.
Or are you just guessing/hoping/taking Jobs' word that they're real?
1:) It'd be "Jobs's" (apostrophie before the "s") if you were talking about Steve Jobs, not "Jobs'". You can pronounce it "jobses" or "jobs" as you see fit.
2:) I have yet to hear a quote from Steve Jobs that the Switch Campaign features real people. Even if he said it, I'm not basing my belief in their honesty on a CEO quote--I base it on the commercials themselves.
Now we need to start comparing mac users to terrorists?
The Nation of Islam is a racist, reactionist, extreme black Muslim group--but they're hardly terrorists.
Criminals maybe. Name-thieves, probably (the orignal Nation of Islam actually became Muslim, not racist.) Ignorant racist bastards, definitly (most arabs are closer to "white" than "black").
But they're not terrorists.
How can you be so threatened at people thinking for themselves? Oh yeah, that's right, this is a nation that worships conformity.
Tell me again how being a rabid fanboy of ANYTHING is "thinking for yourself?"
I'd love to have a Mac. I'd like to be able to use Linux for what I need it to do. But neither of those means that I'm "thinking for myself."
When you become a certified HVAC mechanic w/30+ years of experience, you can come talk, until then, please express your views to someone else.
(And for those who missed it... )
my father is a HVAC mechanic...
Bill, it doesn't matter if your father is a billionare who invented indoor electricity. Unless HE signs in with his own UID and posts, it's just heresay.
I wager that your father didn't read the article, and that you're not a certified HVAC mechanic, either. Aruging from authority's a despicable practice, especially when it's not YOUR authority.
Eventually, everything gets replaced. When doing so, it's important to look into the savings of more expensive "smart" components as opposed to the traditional ones; the cost differnece doesn't have to factor in time to replace if that's going to happen anyway.
two points:
1: I think the US should join this silly international court--and that it should have both real teeth and its own investigative body.
2: The USA prosecutes its own soldiers for violations. "Rouge nations," by and large, don't.
The helpful attitude would be to help the system not to be abused
Yes, it would.
That rings a little hollow though...kind of sounds like arguing the only way to avoid miscarriages of justice is not to have any justice in the first place.
Picture a city where all crimes have to have someone step forth and accuse. There is no police force in this city, and no penalty for a citizen who makes a false claim. Now, picture that the state police wants to go in, but they'll be subject to the laws of this city--and they're going after a gang boss smart enough to abuse the system.
I don't care if it's accurate--this is how I believe my government views the problems with the world crimes court. It's not an argument that "we should be immune from justice." It's an argument that "this court will be abused, and is not justice."
MS Word does not create documents like Wordperfect does. It's more like a CSS file than HTML, keeping track of the formatting of each letter, word, paragraph, page, and section seperately, rather than having "start formatting" and "end formatting" tags.
To get word to work right, turn off the "define styles based on your formatting" function in the Autocorrect menu ("Autoformat as you type" tab). Then use files for any difference in font or heading, making new ones as you go.
Using word this way lets you seperate the content from the presentation (as much as a word processor can), and allows for rather easy editing.
Wordperfect lets you reveal codes, but Word doesn't litter extra codes everywhere.
See http://www.mvps.org/word/Default.htm for more information on Word. I wish that the help file was half this good...
(Soldiers in peacekeeping missions are citizens, but not all citizens are soldiers on peacekeeping missions.)
It's not as justified for any other country--the USA is seen as the personification of "The West," and there are more countries and more groups that want to cause us harm than there are that wish harm to any one of our allies--maybe more than all of our allies put together.
A permanent "UN Investigation" bureau might be a good answer to the issue. As would significat penalty for a spurious filing.
I always thought the canonical example of a US citizen that might be tried was Henry Kissinger, on a long list of war crimes allegations (try googling for "kissinger" and "cambodia")
I say we try him--if we haven't done so allready at home.
The argument isn't USA wanting to be immune to legitimate claims--it's a desire to avoid all spurious ones.
Office for at least the great majority of things does use native widgets, there may be a few things that are custom built but certainly not everything.
No?
* Open / Save dialogue
* Find dialogue (part of "open.)
* Toolbars
* Menu bars
How again does it use native widgets?
And how long until that agreed-upon mechanism that's been agreed upon is backed with enough teeth to make a whit of difference?
Only long enough for the US to want to enforce it on someone else. Drug trafficking, anyone?
Until we have a one world government (which is probably a really bad idea), we will have to deal with these situations.
Why do you think it's a really bad idea? Half of the countries out there ALLREADY think that we've got a world government. Giving it teeth and direct representation would just force dictators to be benevolent if they want to stay in power.
(Most of the other arguments I know of to a one-world government can be bypassed with a simple "The USA does that anyway, so why not give non-USians a chance to say in their own fate?")
The US has refused to ratify the treaty on the international criminal court because of the completely hypothetical possibility that US citizens might be tried elsewhere.
Not citizens--soldiers in peacekeeping missions.
The fear is that countires that hate the US will bring spurious charges against innocent US soldiers; I think it's actually justified, although we're a bit extreme in our denial of the court.
I don't believe the US is going to subject its citizens to any form of foreign jurisdiction if it can help it.
In 1952 we wouldn't have allowed trade with Russia, Germany was split, and Iraq / Al Queada were far lesser evils. In 2052 I suspect the world might change just as much.
Everyone in the world is held to US laws, EXCEPT US Law Enforcement Officials.
If those said US law enforcemnet officals ever go to Russia, they can expect to be captured, tried (if they're lucky), and jailed.
We've got a good 15-50 years of "supernationalism" until some agreed-upon mechanism for punnishing extra-national criminals is agreed upon. Probably by an extension of the UN War Crimes court into a body to deal with inter-country legal affairs that aren't War Crimes.
To whit; I can get on a boat chartered in China from California, hook up to an international communications system not owned by the USA, hack a server in Japan, go back to the USA, and ignore any legal threats on the basis that no applicable law makes what I did illegal. If I'm out of the country ANYWAY and I've got a good reason, I've got an even better situation.
Until I go to Japan, of course.
(IANAL; if you, knowing that I am not qualified to dispense legal advice, decide to act upon my suggestion, you should also jump into the ocean while you're out there and save the gene pool.)