If the profile was always 'young white male, bit of a loner,' I'd start to wonder, openly, why it is that they ALWAYS fit that mold. Like there is some sort of factory somewhere that just stamps them out for officers to pick up. Does this not bother anyone else?
Seriously, I'd start to question my reason for existence. I've been created, to catch 'criminals,' which are, like the endings of Scooby-Doo episodes, always the same guy. And I am not, for whatever reason, supposed to think "if they are always the same guy, doesn't that signify that there is something wrong on a higher level?" I mean, these are human beings, they have brains capable of anything -> so why does this one type always choose to be a loaner, be white, be male, and to shoot up a school? It's almost like they're programmed to do it. Why is there never any major changes? The guy visits his mother's grave before he shoots up the school, or he was an outgoing football player, or whatever? Or, given that our population is more than 50% female, one from their gender?
Does everyone just blindly accept the reasons they're given here? "Oh yeah, he was a white male, a loaner, that happens to them sometimes."
Ask yourself this: what is less expensive, imposing data caps on customers, or upgrading capital infrastructure? In the short term, it's data caps. Over the long term, it's upgrading infrastructure.
See, there are people here trying to make a quick buck. Telecom infrastructure needs to be upgraded every few years, and the upgrades are not terribly expensive (we're talking about Verizon here, who can make their own chips / write their own code, easily, if other manufacturers raise costs too high; I mean, they're Bell Atlantic, they have the resources). Anyway, some business fart somewhere probably came to the conclusion, based off of the 20 minutes or so he was awake in Finance class, that they can make a lot more money by putting off upgrades a little longer, and simply increasing costs. Now, any seasoned business type who has run their own company will be groaning right now, as they are aware of all the hidden gotchas to this idea, which is why smarter types avoid it. And those gotchas? One of them is this -> what happens if your customers, fed up with your shit, begin switching to a competitor who is not 'playing ball' by putting off their upgrades to increase their profit margins? An inexperienced type will think "Oh, then I'll just start upgrading my stuff, which will prevent more from switching, and I can convince the others to come back with special deals / etc." But in reality, the first types to switch will be the heaviest users, the most technical of the bunch, and probably the angriest. Angry, with long memories, which even the market cannot understand -> revenge botches all calculations. It's something like having 100,000 full-time marketers with your most prized customers giving them their undivided attention -> I mean, when a non-tech is looking to subscribe to an ISP, who the hell do you think they trust to give them an honest answer? It's not the people on TV. It's their family or friend tech, who will tell them to stay away from your cheap ass. You know, the guy who has been giving away free tech support for years? They'll get a phone call like this -> "Hey lightknight, I am thinking of switching to {ISP with data caps}. I've seen their ads, what do you think?" And I will respond -> "Dude, I had them for 6 months, and they terminated my account because I went over the limit. That's going to be a problem for you if you like NetFlix / Hulu / YouTube / etc. You should really go with {ISP without data caps}." And they will respond -> "Lightknight, you're right. This other guy costs less, and gives us more. Thanks."
If you are, in any way, shape, or form, a tech company, or have heavy ties to tech companies, pissing on techs is a death sentence. The "thanks for recommending us to all your friends, but we're going to have to let you go" approach has destroyed many a tech company. And telecom companies are tech companies, like it or not.
Your customers are always going to go with the guy who offers a faster connection, for a lower price. That's all you need to know about networks. Sure, occasionally other things are added to the equation (latency, QoS, etc.), but in general, if you have a faster connection that your competitors, you already have those things.
And I will say this about Verizon -> I do not care for their wireless services (haven't had them before, but they are very expensive), but their FIOS service? Someone should get promoted for that. Running a fiber line to the customer's house has always been the end game for networking. It's the checkmate move of the networking world. Once someone deploys fiber, it's over. And why is fiber so important? Because it's a plastic or glass tube, which transmits light, and is unaffected by EM interference. It can go miles without repeaters, and upgrade costs are only for the equipment at both ends, not the fiber itself. Once laid, unless a backhoe cuts through it, their job is done. The amortization of fiber is just beautiful from an accounting standpoint -> that little piece of plastic could go centuries before needing to be replaced. The only thing faster than light is something that hasn't even been invented yet.
Aside from the new Start Screen / Start Menu, which is controversial at best, the second most important feature I had heard is that 'it boots up faster.'
Ok, so it boots up faster...I am on a SSD, and before that a 7200 RPM hard drive. My boot times are, what, less than a minute? And part of that has to do with my machine having any number of startup programs / drivers for things hanging off of it?
I mean, don't get me wrong, faster boot times are always appreciated, but for that to be the second most taughted feature....I'm having trouble justifying the $40 upgrade from Windows 7, let alone buying OEM or full versions of 8.
And the third feature is, what, the Windows Store? How is that a feature? Why do I need a marketplace on my desktop? It's an Operating System...what new, compelling features are you offering that makes this operating system a must have? Better driver support for exotic devices? Easier mass deployment / imaging routines? A more powerful framework for designing applications / programs that is not arbitrarily limited to the latest version?
Has MS Paint been upgraded to something Photoshop like? Has the Image Viewer been redesigned to have more features / work with more formats? Has the CD / DVD / BluRay software been upgraded to something more useful? How about the creation and extraction of archives? Backup and restore? Has the Media Player been rewritten to be less annoying, something approaching WinAmp in terms of usefulness? How about its support for codecs? Both old ones and new ones. Subtitles. Have they implemented 'Admin Command Line' here as a standard option? How about video transcoding? A PDF viewer that doesn't make people spit tacks?
I believe it's a coping mechanism. See, people love power, but they hate responsibility. So life is mostly a game of musical chairs / random shuffling of the deck in the attempt to better your position -> does your new job have more power, and less responsibility? Then you win. Does it have less power and more responsibility? Then you lose.
By crying out to their government to 'make those things we don't like' illegal, they place the future responsibility for any failures firmly on their government's back. We all know that the government can't be everywhere, at all times, but that doesn't prevent some people for blaming it for not being so. So, in this case, the power to be f*cking idiots is retained by the people, while the responsibility for their actions is left to their government. A wonderful recipe full of fail.
Think of it as being a war between individual responsibility versus group responsibility. In the former, all power is retained by the individual, but also all responsibility. In the latter, well...how many people here have worked on group projects before? How many would do so again? The point being, in any group, some members will work harder, others will slack. The person representing the group may have more power than others, or less so; responsibility for group actions may be placed on the whole group, or just one person. Being in a group means, typically, giving up some of your power, but, as I pointed out earlier, can be considered a win if more responsibility is offloaded onto others than the power lost.
Of course, modern society, as you have seen, can be a little insane here. There are people out there, earning $7 / hour, on whom all the responsibility for a business is placed, while there are some earning $100,000 / hour, with no responsibility save getting dressed in the morning.
That and, for some odd reason, a fair portion of the human race seems completely unaware that inside each of them is a MacGuyver, that, when pressed into a corner, occasionally pops out to do 'uncertain' things. 'Tis easier to wash a cat than convince a creative human not to strike back at their aggressors, real or imagined.
Yeah, no. Every-time regulation is lifted, it is inevitably the wrong regulation that is removed. It's kind of like having a law that says something like "freedom of speech for everyone, and rape is legal." Then the "freedom of speech" part is removed.
But I digress, this point has been made a billion times before, and is only news to the blind.
In the case of Microsoft, while not being a monopoly, it is true that they violated non-anti trust laws, which they should have been found guilty under. I have heard that they broke standard contract laws in several states, and it was the breaking of these laws for which they should have been punished. The anti-trust laws / potential breakup plans were pointless, both as laws, and as punishment.
There is no problem with a company or corporation being dominant in a market; there is no reason to break it up. However, there is a concern if the company / corporation uses illegal tactics / breaks laws to achieve that dominance.
In short, it's not against the law to have the best pizzeria in town because people actually love its pizza; it's not illegal, even if its competitors hate it for its popularity; it is, however, against the law to have the best pizzeria in town by employing the mob to burn down the other pizzerias, and threatening customers to buy their pizza from here "or else."
And I take it you wish to argue that the telecommunications market is a free market?
But that is neither here nor there. As for the doubling or tripling of infrastructure, I say go for it. Make the electricity providers come to an agreement of their own accord with each other, or put up their own damn poles. There are very few natural monopolies, the example that comes to mind are of someone selling a spring to a bottling company.
In retrospect, using only one infrastructure may be more 'efficient'; however, different players may decide to invest different amounts in each market. Why not play them against each other? Would you rather an electricity company that invests in buried lines, or one on poles? Or would you rather force them to negotiate an access fee with the incumbent, who uses only poles? Why remove choice?
At some point, this generation will realize that it's time to stop duct-taping and wallpapering the inherited set of laws and ordinances, and will have to start anew.
I'd recommend neither punishing nor rewarding corporations, as well as people, from a tax perspective. Outlaw the buying and selling of local freedoms, such as state-sanctioned territorial monopolies. One set of laws, fitted on a dozen pieces of paper, with a few volumes of interpretations / discussions of them and the thoughts behind them, so that they may be understood by a school child; and so that they will not be reinterpreted to mean the opposite of their original intention at some later date; and all of them proofed to their logical extremes; ensure the interpretations / discussions have the same level of authority as the laws themselves, so that they will not be relegated to secondary status like the DoI and Federalist papers.
And who, pray tell, do you think got us into this mess to begin with? Does anyone *looks around* actually read up on how humanity seems to end up in these scenarios, where a portion of the population is bent over a barrel, or do we just start bleating our preferred outlook / solution to things?
We are in this mess, for those who cannot be troubled to read up on telecom history, because municipalities / governments sold off territorial monopolies in order to receive service earlier than they would have otherwise. The thinking went "This company will not provide {electricity, cable, etc.} service to our fair town unless we entice them / make it worth their while, so we'll give them a monopoly (read: a chance to gauge our vassals for an eternity) in return for said service." In short, just another example of the older generation making a bad deal, and their children paying for it.
You see these kinds of interesting deals crop up with old railroad right-of-ways: "Here, have some land in exchange for railway service; oh wait, the railroad is gone now, and telecoms are using the old right of ways to run fiber along the tracks? Sh*t, that was stupid of us!"
So, your solution to bad government is more bad government? Oh, except you think it will be good government this time, wink wink, because you're watching out for everyone? Tell us how no bad laws have been passed under your watch, and the old ones righted.
Exactly. If we just get rid of all of the laws, the market will be free.
I mean, we've seen how well things have worked thus far with laws, and have noticed that increasing the number of laws on the books seems to decrease happiness. So, let us embrace anarchy for a while, and see where it leads us.
Babe, having a 'free' market with controls is kind of what has been killing us lately -> the people in charge of handling things are a wee bit compromised. Like spending their weekends at parties hosted by lobbyists, out of the country, on some tropical island, kind of compromised. They aren't coming back to the non-compromised side.
Indeed. The web has become something of a sewer. It's no longer about getting you the right information on demand, or you offering up the right information on demand. It's about a bunch of people in a dark room, wearing dark clothes, trying to talk to each other with duct tape over their mouths, while the latest pop video blasts loudly from somewhere outside. It has become almost impossible to find even relevant information, which is why people are breaking out into VPNs; they are throwing up dams to keep the misinformation at bay.
See, there were questionable things on the web many moons ago. There still are. However, the good things about the web greatly outweighed the bad. Just by browsing around on it, you became a better person. You were more knowledgeable, you understood that power is often invisible, and while there were trolls, they were dealt with quickly. That's not the case today: the web is now filled with white noise, misinformation, and criminal stupidity. Yes, I said criminal stupidity. It's not that they are holding unpopular opinions, or that they can't spell a word if they have a dictionary in hand, it's just pure idiocy. And it's contagious.
The morons outnumber us, and they would, if given the option, call for further regulation of the web to 'fix' things if they had a chance. And that's where we are failing -> we're too nice, and we are being taken advantage of. You want an open and free web divorced of this stupidity, and while you are trying to convince people of this merit, they are positioning things for a takeover. You come with good intentions and an open hand, they see a delusional person who is unarmed. And contrary to popular belief, the unarmed man is the first person an attacker goes after; why not, he doesn't have a weapon?
Which leads us to the present. Not content with having thrown the creators of the sandbox out of their own invention, the bullies now want to destroy it. To taught their 'alpha male' (actually super beta) -ness, they will destroy it, so no one else can enjoy it. Even now, they are calling for a cyberwar. This entire enterprise is beyond f*cked up, and frankly, it's killing our respective way of life; scientists and engineers can't discuss important information without being accosted, because they "know things," and could use their knowledge for evil. This is anti-freedom of speech, and frankly anti-American. The United States is a slut, and will go down on anyone for the right money; gone are the days when her principles meant anything, she sold them for a pair of pumps and a glittery purse.
That's what I'm reading. Someone coded up a redirector in C#. I'm...I'm not even sure that's a crime here. I mean, it's using someone's resources without their knowledge, but either the English-translation is missing some key info, or Japan has a zero-tolerance policy for, what might considered in other parts of the world, an almost minor transgression.
So, this person setup a redirector, and the Japanese are offering their highest reward for them. Yeah, we're missing something. I mean, the reward is only $36,000, which is, in the grand scheme of things, not much, but, apparently, it is the highest reward they can offer legally. I'm going to assume that they don't do that every day.
As for the C# language thing...I knew there was something we were missing. I am so used to hearing about C++ / VB.NET viruses that...have we ever had a C# virus before? You get so used to hearing the rain fall, sometimes you do not notice it has stopped, until it starts up again.
Borrowed a friend's laptop, they're still logged into Facebook, I change a few things -> LOL I@M71337H@x0r
Yes, the quality has dropped. Through the floor. People getting caught for this stuff these days are doing the technological equivalent of jay-walking. And the people spooked by them are the types that they still scared of telling stories around a camp-fire.
Prove that Jammie ever uploaded a complete file to someone who did not posses a license to the copyright for those songs.
If I download songs for a CD that I own, am I infringing? Was the person uploading the songs to me infringing, provided I own the CD that the very songs I am downloading exist in some form on?
7970, or the 7990? The 7970 has been the top part from ATI for the last however many months, the 7990 is something of a unicorn, as we have heard tales of the 7970x2, but no one has really seen it.
Indeed. If AMD doesn't fix their x86 stuff with something that makes me salute, they're going to be out of the next round of upgrades. The FX-8350 is an improvement over the FX-8150, enough for my to upgrade to it. However, it's still a ways behind where we should be. That Intel processor with the six-cores, with six hyper-threaded units, is calling out to me. Given that I have already purchased the necessary liquid coolant system to keep the FX processor happy, switching over to that i7 wouldn't be much of a change.
Slashdot Mirror
If the profile was always 'young white male, bit of a loner,' I'd start to wonder, openly, why it is that they ALWAYS fit that mold. Like there is some sort of factory somewhere that just stamps them out for officers to pick up. Does this not bother anyone else?
Seriously, I'd start to question my reason for existence. I've been created, to catch 'criminals,' which are, like the endings of Scooby-Doo episodes, always the same guy. And I am not, for whatever reason, supposed to think "if they are always the same guy, doesn't that signify that there is something wrong on a higher level?" I mean, these are human beings, they have brains capable of anything -> so why does this one type always choose to be a loaner, be white, be male, and to shoot up a school? It's almost like they're programmed to do it. Why is there never any major changes? The guy visits his mother's grave before he shoots up the school, or he was an outgoing football player, or whatever? Or, given that our population is more than 50% female, one from their gender?
Does everyone just blindly accept the reasons they're given here? "Oh yeah, he was a white male, a loaner, that happens to them sometimes."
Nonsense, been running WaterFox myself. Works with all the FireFox extensions I can find.
I do not, for the life of me, understand why FireFox is so hell-bent on 32-bit versions.
Ask yourself this: what is less expensive, imposing data caps on customers, or upgrading capital infrastructure? In the short term, it's data caps. Over the long term, it's upgrading infrastructure.
See, there are people here trying to make a quick buck. Telecom infrastructure needs to be upgraded every few years, and the upgrades are not terribly expensive (we're talking about Verizon here, who can make their own chips / write their own code, easily, if other manufacturers raise costs too high; I mean, they're Bell Atlantic, they have the resources). Anyway, some business fart somewhere probably came to the conclusion, based off of the 20 minutes or so he was awake in Finance class, that they can make a lot more money by putting off upgrades a little longer, and simply increasing costs. Now, any seasoned business type who has run their own company will be groaning right now, as they are aware of all the hidden gotchas to this idea, which is why smarter types avoid it. And those gotchas? One of them is this -> what happens if your customers, fed up with your shit, begin switching to a competitor who is not 'playing ball' by putting off their upgrades to increase their profit margins? An inexperienced type will think "Oh, then I'll just start upgrading my stuff, which will prevent more from switching, and I can convince the others to come back with special deals / etc." But in reality, the first types to switch will be the heaviest users, the most technical of the bunch, and probably the angriest. Angry, with long memories, which even the market cannot understand -> revenge botches all calculations. It's something like having 100,000 full-time marketers with your most prized customers giving them their undivided attention -> I mean, when a non-tech is looking to subscribe to an ISP, who the hell do you think they trust to give them an honest answer? It's not the people on TV. It's their family or friend tech, who will tell them to stay away from your cheap ass. You know, the guy who has been giving away free tech support for years? They'll get a phone call like this -> "Hey lightknight, I am thinking of switching to {ISP with data caps}. I've seen their ads, what do you think?" And I will respond -> "Dude, I had them for 6 months, and they terminated my account because I went over the limit. That's going to be a problem for you if you like NetFlix / Hulu / YouTube / etc. You should really go with {ISP without data caps}." And they will respond -> "Lightknight, you're right. This other guy costs less, and gives us more. Thanks."
If you are, in any way, shape, or form, a tech company, or have heavy ties to tech companies, pissing on techs is a death sentence. The "thanks for recommending us to all your friends, but we're going to have to let you go" approach has destroyed many a tech company. And telecom companies are tech companies, like it or not.
Your customers are always going to go with the guy who offers a faster connection, for a lower price. That's all you need to know about networks. Sure, occasionally other things are added to the equation (latency, QoS, etc.), but in general, if you have a faster connection that your competitors, you already have those things.
And I will say this about Verizon -> I do not care for their wireless services (haven't had them before, but they are very expensive), but their FIOS service? Someone should get promoted for that. Running a fiber line to the customer's house has always been the end game for networking. It's the checkmate move of the networking world. Once someone deploys fiber, it's over. And why is fiber so important? Because it's a plastic or glass tube, which transmits light, and is unaffected by EM interference. It can go miles without repeaters, and upgrade costs are only for the equipment at both ends, not the fiber itself. Once laid, unless a backhoe cuts through it, their job is done. The amortization of fiber is just beautiful from an accounting standpoint -> that little piece of plastic could go centuries before needing to be replaced. The only thing faster than light is something that hasn't even been invented yet.
Would you care name a few of these companies? I am intrigued by your comment.
May I ask, what improvements?
Aside from the new Start Screen / Start Menu, which is controversial at best, the second most important feature I had heard is that 'it boots up faster.'
Ok, so it boots up faster...I am on a SSD, and before that a 7200 RPM hard drive. My boot times are, what, less than a minute? And part of that has to do with my machine having any number of startup programs / drivers for things hanging off of it?
I mean, don't get me wrong, faster boot times are always appreciated, but for that to be the second most taughted feature....I'm having trouble justifying the $40 upgrade from Windows 7, let alone buying OEM or full versions of 8.
And the third feature is, what, the Windows Store? How is that a feature? Why do I need a marketplace on my desktop? It's an Operating System...what new, compelling features are you offering that makes this operating system a must have? Better driver support for exotic devices? Easier mass deployment / imaging routines? A more powerful framework for designing applications / programs that is not arbitrarily limited to the latest version?
Has MS Paint been upgraded to something Photoshop like? Has the Image Viewer been redesigned to have more features / work with more formats? Has the CD / DVD / BluRay software been upgraded to something more useful? How about the creation and extraction of archives? Backup and restore? Has the Media Player been rewritten to be less annoying, something approaching WinAmp in terms of usefulness? How about its support for codecs? Both old ones and new ones. Subtitles. Have they implemented 'Admin Command Line' here as a standard option? How about video transcoding? A PDF viewer that doesn't make people spit tacks?
I believe it's a coping mechanism. See, people love power, but they hate responsibility. So life is mostly a game of musical chairs / random shuffling of the deck in the attempt to better your position -> does your new job have more power, and less responsibility? Then you win. Does it have less power and more responsibility? Then you lose.
By crying out to their government to 'make those things we don't like' illegal, they place the future responsibility for any failures firmly on their government's back. We all know that the government can't be everywhere, at all times, but that doesn't prevent some people for blaming it for not being so. So, in this case, the power to be f*cking idiots is retained by the people, while the responsibility for their actions is left to their government. A wonderful recipe full of fail.
Think of it as being a war between individual responsibility versus group responsibility. In the former, all power is retained by the individual, but also all responsibility. In the latter, well...how many people here have worked on group projects before? How many would do so again? The point being, in any group, some members will work harder, others will slack. The person representing the group may have more power than others, or less so; responsibility for group actions may be placed on the whole group, or just one person. Being in a group means, typically, giving up some of your power, but, as I pointed out earlier, can be considered a win if more responsibility is offloaded onto others than the power lost.
Of course, modern society, as you have seen, can be a little insane here. There are people out there, earning $7 / hour, on whom all the responsibility for a business is placed, while there are some earning $100,000 / hour, with no responsibility save getting dressed in the morning.
That and, for some odd reason, a fair portion of the human race seems completely unaware that inside each of them is a MacGuyver, that, when pressed into a corner, occasionally pops out to do 'uncertain' things. 'Tis easier to wash a cat than convince a creative human not to strike back at their aggressors, real or imagined.
Bottle: "Genie, get back in here!"
Genie: "LOL NO"
i 10?
Yeah, no. Every-time regulation is lifted, it is inevitably the wrong regulation that is removed. It's kind of like having a law that says something like "freedom of speech for everyone, and rape is legal." Then the "freedom of speech" part is removed.
But I digress, this point has been made a billion times before, and is only news to the blind.
In the case of Microsoft, while not being a monopoly, it is true that they violated non-anti trust laws, which they should have been found guilty under. I have heard that they broke standard contract laws in several states, and it was the breaking of these laws for which they should have been punished. The anti-trust laws / potential breakup plans were pointless, both as laws, and as punishment.
There is no problem with a company or corporation being dominant in a market; there is no reason to break it up. However, there is a concern if the company / corporation uses illegal tactics / breaks laws to achieve that dominance.
In short, it's not against the law to have the best pizzeria in town because people actually love its pizza; it's not illegal, even if its competitors hate it for its popularity; it is, however, against the law to have the best pizzeria in town by employing the mob to burn down the other pizzerias, and threatening customers to buy their pizza from here "or else."
And I take it you wish to argue that the telecommunications market is a free market?
But that is neither here nor there. As for the doubling or tripling of infrastructure, I say go for it. Make the electricity providers come to an agreement of their own accord with each other, or put up their own damn poles. There are very few natural monopolies, the example that comes to mind are of someone selling a spring to a bottling company.
In retrospect, using only one infrastructure may be more 'efficient'; however, different players may decide to invest different amounts in each market. Why not play them against each other? Would you rather an electricity company that invests in buried lines, or one on poles? Or would you rather force them to negotiate an access fee with the incumbent, who uses only poles? Why remove choice?
At some point, this generation will realize that it's time to stop duct-taping and wallpapering the inherited set of laws and ordinances, and will have to start anew.
I'd recommend neither punishing nor rewarding corporations, as well as people, from a tax perspective. Outlaw the buying and selling of local freedoms, such as state-sanctioned territorial monopolies. One set of laws, fitted on a dozen pieces of paper, with a few volumes of interpretations / discussions of them and the thoughts behind them, so that they may be understood by a school child; and so that they will not be reinterpreted to mean the opposite of their original intention at some later date; and all of them proofed to their logical extremes; ensure the interpretations / discussions have the same level of authority as the laws themselves, so that they will not be relegated to secondary status like the DoI and Federalist papers.
*Puts down book*
And who, pray tell, do you think got us into this mess to begin with? Does anyone *looks around* actually read up on how humanity seems to end up in these scenarios, where a portion of the population is bent over a barrel, or do we just start bleating our preferred outlook / solution to things?
We are in this mess, for those who cannot be troubled to read up on telecom history, because municipalities / governments sold off territorial monopolies in order to receive service earlier than they would have otherwise. The thinking went "This company will not provide {electricity, cable, etc.} service to our fair town unless we entice them / make it worth their while, so we'll give them a monopoly (read: a chance to gauge our vassals for an eternity) in return for said service." In short, just another example of the older generation making a bad deal, and their children paying for it.
You see these kinds of interesting deals crop up with old railroad right-of-ways: "Here, have some land in exchange for railway service; oh wait, the railroad is gone now, and telecoms are using the old right of ways to run fiber along the tracks? Sh*t, that was stupid of us!"
So, your solution to bad government is more bad government? Oh, except you think it will be good government this time, wink wink, because you're watching out for everyone? Tell us how no bad laws have been passed under your watch, and the old ones righted.
Exactly. If we just get rid of all of the laws, the market will be free.
I mean, we've seen how well things have worked thus far with laws, and have noticed that increasing the number of laws on the books seems to decrease happiness. So, let us embrace anarchy for a while, and see where it leads us.
For the same reason that a duck is not a dog, yes.
Babe, having a 'free' market with controls is kind of what has been killing us lately -> the people in charge of handling things are a wee bit compromised. Like spending their weekends at parties hosted by lobbyists, out of the country, on some tropical island, kind of compromised. They aren't coming back to the non-compromised side.
Indeed. The web has become something of a sewer. It's no longer about getting you the right information on demand, or you offering up the right information on demand. It's about a bunch of people in a dark room, wearing dark clothes, trying to talk to each other with duct tape over their mouths, while the latest pop video blasts loudly from somewhere outside. It has become almost impossible to find even relevant information, which is why people are breaking out into VPNs; they are throwing up dams to keep the misinformation at bay.
See, there were questionable things on the web many moons ago. There still are. However, the good things about the web greatly outweighed the bad. Just by browsing around on it, you became a better person. You were more knowledgeable, you understood that power is often invisible, and while there were trolls, they were dealt with quickly. That's not the case today: the web is now filled with white noise, misinformation, and criminal stupidity. Yes, I said criminal stupidity. It's not that they are holding unpopular opinions, or that they can't spell a word if they have a dictionary in hand, it's just pure idiocy. And it's contagious.
The morons outnumber us, and they would, if given the option, call for further regulation of the web to 'fix' things if they had a chance. And that's where we are failing -> we're too nice, and we are being taken advantage of. You want an open and free web divorced of this stupidity, and while you are trying to convince people of this merit, they are positioning things for a takeover. You come with good intentions and an open hand, they see a delusional person who is unarmed. And contrary to popular belief, the unarmed man is the first person an attacker goes after; why not, he doesn't have a weapon?
Which leads us to the present. Not content with having thrown the creators of the sandbox out of their own invention, the bullies now want to destroy it. To taught their 'alpha male' (actually super beta) -ness, they will destroy it, so no one else can enjoy it. Even now, they are calling for a cyberwar. This entire enterprise is beyond f*cked up, and frankly, it's killing our respective way of life; scientists and engineers can't discuss important information without being accosted, because they "know things," and could use their knowledge for evil. This is anti-freedom of speech, and frankly anti-American. The United States is a slut, and will go down on anyone for the right money; gone are the days when her principles meant anything, she sold them for a pair of pumps and a glittery purse.
Indeed. Shotguns vs. demons, shotguns win.
Yeah, that's kind of odd. A C# cracker is...something new for the news.
That's what I'm reading. Someone coded up a redirector in C#. I'm...I'm not even sure that's a crime here. I mean, it's using someone's resources without their knowledge, but either the English-translation is missing some key info, or Japan has a zero-tolerance policy for, what might considered in other parts of the world, an almost minor transgression.
So, this person setup a redirector, and the Japanese are offering their highest reward for them. Yeah, we're missing something. I mean, the reward is only $36,000, which is, in the grand scheme of things, not much, but, apparently, it is the highest reward they can offer legally. I'm going to assume that they don't do that every day.
As for the C# language thing...I knew there was something we were missing. I am so used to hearing about C++ / VB.NET viruses that...have we ever had a C# virus before? You get so used to hearing the rain fall, sometimes you do not notice it has stopped, until it starts up again.
Borrowed a friend's laptop, they're still logged into Facebook, I change a few things -> LOL I@M71337H@x0r
Yes, the quality has dropped. Through the floor. People getting caught for this stuff these days are doing the technological equivalent of jay-walking. And the people spooked by them are the types that they still scared of telling stories around a camp-fire.
Try Thermaltake.
Prove that Jammie ever uploaded a complete file to someone who did not posses a license to the copyright for those songs.
If I download songs for a CD that I own, am I infringing? Was the person uploading the songs to me infringing, provided I own the CD that the very songs I am downloading exist in some form on?
7970, or the 7990? The 7970 has been the top part from ATI for the last however many months, the 7990 is something of a unicorn, as we have heard tales of the 7970x2, but no one has really seen it.
Indeed. If AMD doesn't fix their x86 stuff with something that makes me salute, they're going to be out of the next round of upgrades. The FX-8350 is an improvement over the FX-8150, enough for my to upgrade to it. However, it's still a ways behind where we should be. That Intel processor with the six-cores, with six hyper-threaded units, is calling out to me. Given that I have already purchased the necessary liquid coolant system to keep the FX processor happy, switching over to that i7 wouldn't be much of a change.