P2P is a tool, like a saw, a hammer or yes, even a gun. Don't blame the tool when some human uses it in a wrong way. Over the years many tools have been used to commit crimes - even the lowly rock can be used to murder.
It seems to me that history would teach us that when a popular activity is outlawed, that activity doesn't go away it moves underground. Look at the roaring 20's and the temperance movement that caused prohibition. Outlawing alcohol didn't make it go away, it just drove it underground and made common criminals wealthy and willing to protect their enterprise with guns and a little enterprise called "Murder Inc."
A similar corelation can be made with illicit drugs today; Crack, crank, heroin, and pot are all available on street corners in every major city! Those gangsters also protect thier illicit interests with guns and murder.
One has to wonder if the drug situation were dealt with a little differently, if things wouldn't be better? Please note I am not being pro-drug here. But I have to wonder if cocaine and other drugs were available to adults in controlled stores if we wouldn't have less crime and about the same number of adicts? If that was the case, wouldn't it be a success? Our prisons would be less crowded and we would probably have less crime.
By now some of you are thinking I'm a lunatic, that P2P software is different from drugs. Please believe me when I say I understand that. But regulation brings with it unanticipated and often disasterous consiquences. It makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens and, it puts the country that regulates it at a competitive disadvantage to the countries that don't. All in all, I see this kind of conservitive over regulation as a "bad thing."
Also, FTP can and frequently is used "peer to peer," so are IM programs: Are all of these going to be legislated away because of some short-sighted law? Is this really appropriate legislation - aren't there already plenty of laws that address copyright violations? I can't see how true American's can't agree!
This Thanksgiving, prepare a CD that contains your favorite tools, making sure you load heavy on the spyware and AV stuff and bring it with you. While everyone else is running around getting the dinner ready. or sitting and watching the football game, or the parade, settle down in front of the computer and just do it.
Also bring a Knoppix CD (and leave both CD's behind).
Then when you get the call, you know the one, have them boot the Knoppix CD.
Thank you for another good story from your homeland. These are things that Americans (like me) never really get to see. When we read one of your stories, it humanizes you and your people far more than any history book could.
I've read your stories, and am impressed - I hope you keep up your work and that the skeptics don't stop you. In your own way, you have done more to help relations between your people and the rest of the world than your government has. After reading your stories, I feel like I know a bit more about you and your people than I ever have before. It is now easier to understand some of the things about you and your people than before - because I can see some of your roots.
As a student I studied these wars, but they were abstract. Now they are real. The numbers still astound me, probably even more now.
I like CSI and watch it often. I think it is good entertainment and well written although I view it as a work of fiction and know enough to seperate reality from fantasy. I think most people can do this.
I'm not really one of those people who feel that TV, or entertainment in general, have some sort of obligation to provide factual presentations. I'm all for fiction or the mixing of fact and fiction to tell an entertaining story.
Even though I feel that story-telling is a legit purpose, I do sometimes have to wonder if there is some segment of society that is affected differently by all of the gratuitious violence and dark story lines (never mind that the good guy almost always wins).
I won't go so far as to say that TV, movies, music, or entertainment in general are responsible for violent crime (individuals are - period), I can see how some people may become desensitized by the blood, guts, and gore on TV, in movies, and yes, perhaps even in music. I suspect that these people probably have other contributing factors (like abusive parents, alcoholisim, mental illness and so on).
Life itself can be brutal. Earlier this week, I saw a dead body laying on the road, police had a large area taped off waiting for the real CSI & medical examiners. Less than a month ago, an aquaintance of mine was murdered in a convenience store robbery. Would these things have happened if there wasn't so much violence on TV? I don't know, how the hell could I? How can the "experts" quantify this? There are so many variables and each situation is unique.
I do know we aren't living in the 1950's any more. Kids don't live a Beaver Cleaver lifestyle anymore and families aren't like Ozzie and Harriet. But so much has happened in the past fifty years. Vietnam, Kennedy's assination, the war on drugs, Civil Rights, women's lib, Iran, Iraq, Columnbine, Iraq redux and thousands of other things. Isn't is safe to assume that these things may have played into our collective psyches too?
People are so quick to ask: "What is this or that doing to us?" Isn't the obvious answer that we are a collective combination of everything that has touched us? Aren't we responsible for making sense of these things? Then, if that is the case, why ask why? Most of us are capable of seperating fact from fantasy, those us us who aren't need help.
The Mayo Clinic is a great resource for problems that are somewhat out of the ordinary, they stay well abrest of all the latest things and almost seem to specialize in anything out of the ordinary.
Also, don't give up hope. I had an infection in my leg that came from "soil bacteria" according to the doctor. In a little less than two hours I went from nothing to being afraid that my leg was going to split like an overcooked hot dog. The first course of antibiotics stopped the rapid growth but it wasn't long before the bacteria regained their foothold (sorry, that pun wasn't intended) and I was unable to even put on a pair of pants! The little blood vessels on the surface were tearing apart and I had bloody spiderwebs all over my lower leg. Attempts at lancing only produced pain.
Hot whirlpool baths were an attempt to raise the local temp high enough to kill some of the bacteria felt like someone was running a belt sander and torch against my leg but the bacteria kept winning.
The decision was made to amputate my leg. One last try with an anti-biotic cocktail was tried and lo and behold, it worked. I came within just a few hours and the magic bullet was found.
That was about ten years ago. I still have the scars on my leg and there are spots where the infection ate so much away that it is pitted but it is fully functional.
Once you get the right doctor, who is willing to try old and new and pull out all of the stops, your odds are good.
Rural outsourcing would help people living in rural areas get jobs. Because business looks at an areas pay scale before they decide what to offer the tech style jobs will be lower in rural America than in the cities and that will probably be good for business.
The rural techs would "steal" jobs from their urban counterparts and would cheapen the overall value of technical jobs.
The truth is there are already a lot of underpaid technical types in rural areas. Today you can consider mechanics technical types and people with these analytical skills do live in rural areas.
I grew up in a small midwestern town. I left. I left because I like computers and I like being well paid. You don't find many computer jobs in small towns and you don't find hardly any decent paying jobs in small towns.
Still keeping the jobs in the US is a boon to the country and getting rural areas jobs will help with the chronic unemployment in these towns. But there is nothing to stop these folks from gaining experience and moving to the city in search of better pay! If that happens there will be a larger surplus of us tech types in the city and our pay will slide closer to the rural folks. So for me, perhaps it is bad.
I'm going to bring a lot of fire for this but I'm going to say that Microsoft is right, Firefox is not a threat to IE. They just have the reasons wrong.
If the internet is a browser mono-culture, in otherwords if IE is nearly ubiquitious, any security issue no matter how small it is or how difficult it is to impliment, threatens the entire structure of the network. That is bad for everyone, especially bad for Microsoft.
If a percentage of the "society" that is the internet is immune to a security threat then the network is more capable of surviving any sort of attack. These survivors get to play two very special roles; they get to be the "defenders" in that they get to survive the attack and become a backbone of the culture that returns after the attack. Second, they offer a hint as to what needs to be done to repel the attack. Microsoft doesn't have to "copy" Firefox to fix their browser, they just have to see how it was done and why it works and then develop the fix knowing that information.
For that reason, Microsoft needs Firefox, Opera, and other non-IE browsers.
I don't doubt that Microsoft will also use the ideas in Firefox if enough people state that they appreciete things like tabbed browsing, Microsoft will impliment something similar (they always have before).
Also, a coffee shop owner I know was never happier than when another coffee shop opened several blocks away. It actually brought more people into his shop! His theory is that additional business in the neighborhood added vitality to the entire neighborhood and brought more people in who would have just driven past before. I think that this may be applicable with browsers too. I personally use both Netscape and IE, almost but not quite interchangably. I think a lot of people do this to one degree or another.
I do take issue with the statement that IE has a lot of features that most users don't know about. There are a lot of them that I don't use. I do know about them, they just don't appeal to me. Favorites are cool to some people but I find that if I use them, they actually hinder me - all too fast, my filing system breaks down and I just get a confusing bunch of similar hyperlinks.
Spammers are individuals without scruples who deserve to be punnished for each and every crime they commit. In many cases, you can say one message = one crime. This is the case when they attempt fraud for instance each email they send, and they may send millions, is in and of itself a mini-crime. Each one of them could put them in jail.
In other instances, the crime may vary - putting porn in a child's email account is far worse than putting it in an adult's email account yet they (spammers) make no effort to identify and exclude children when they send their pictures of horses and women. Each child who recieves these emails is a true victim and they deserve true justice. There are no grey areas here, at least not in my book. These are felonies. Yes, even if they send a hyperlink to something like this.
Then there is the teft of service issues. When the spammers use someone else's hardware and bandwidth to send their emails, they are stealing something of value from their unwitting accomplice. This is exactly like siphoning gas out of someone's car or "borrowing" a bicycle from the corner. It is theft. Spammers should be held both criminally and civily liable.
These guys do it because they think that they can get away with it. Perhaps some may say "it isn't fair to make an example out of a few of them" and I think that is probably true but the punnishment should fit the crime and many of these people do deserve a rather stiff sentence.
A few years ago I bought a computer from you, I bought the extended warranty and everything. When my modem died, you took my computer, you insisted on the whole thing and kept it for three weeks. When it came back, it had a new modem in it but it was a cheap piece of generic crap. The modem that died was a good for the time US Robotics 56K modem. The one I got back never connected above 42K although it said it was a 56K modem. I complained and was told in essence "tough."
One bad experience isn't enough to send me away from you. You actually have good sales, and a decent inventory. Still it left a bad taste in my mouth. Then I bought a printer and brought it home. It was new but was missing the cartridges and the little tab that held the carts was broken. I brought it back and it was replaced but I saw the looks you guys gave me and they weren't nice. I wasn't my fault, I swear it.
About a year and a half ago, my daughter and I made a deal. If she came up with half the money, I'd throw in the other half and buy her a pre-pay cell phone. She wanted one from Virgin that she saw at your store. The big day came and I went in to buy it even though she was a bit short of her half. The phone came with a $25.00 Best Buy gift card. I filled out the paperwork and followed the instructions to the letter and mailed it in - figuring I could use that to make up the money she was short - but we never saw the card. So you scammed us. I feel pretty ripped off.
I was in your store a while ago - for the first time since you ripped me off. I wanted to buy a stylus for my Palm. Your clerk told me you don't have them in the stores, that I have to buy them online. I bought a pack of them at an office supply store.
I can take a hint. You don't want me as a customer. That is pretty obvious. So, you don't have to worry about me. There are plenty of places that treat me right. I'll shop them. Forget about Best Buy. You don't give a shit about me so you can keep your precious products, I'll gladly buy them somewhere else. Someplace that isn't crooked.
Thats why I said: "Things like faulty or spoiled products should never be held against a customer. Obviously these kinds of returns should never be entered in the database."
I haven't had the same kind of problems with HP printers but I have had the same kind of luck with other products, some times it is a "bad batch" or just plain old "rotten luck."
Every time I get a phishing scam, I contact the affected bank's security department providing them all of the information that I've developed. In many cases this is made extra difficult because the only method they provide of contacting is a web-form. With these, I have to cut and paste the headder info and so on. It really sucks.
Usually, no matter what the method of contact, all I get is an email reply with boilerplate info telling me how to protect myself against these scams. This is utterly stupid, I've already taken action that shows them I am aware of what is happening!
After a week or two I always follow up. On the few occasions where I recieve a human reply from this follow up, I am told they can't provide me with information on an on-going investigation. I know BS when I see it and these replys are BS.
I'm trying to do the banks a favor yet apparently they view this as more hassle then help. Apparently they don't do anything unless someone actually loses something (and maybe not even then, I wouldn't know - I've never fallen victim).
I'd suggest that the banks rotate their images in a public folder changing the real image with ones that say You are visiting a scam site if you are seeing this image. That would slow the phishers down or make them do some real work at least.
So Google's image search wasn't as complete as someone elses. That alone does not mean that there is censorship or conspiracy. Perhaps Google screwed up, perhaps they took the initiative on their own or perhaps in some country where they have a presence, these images are illegal so they have taken them down to comply with the law. There are probably many other possible explainations as well!
Believe me I am not a fan of the current administration (don't blame me, I voted but not for these clowns). But to jump to the conclusion that there is some sort of conspiracy or censorship going on that involves them is just plain stupid. It lacks foundation or a shred of evidence.
Slashdot editors - I appreciate your freedom of speech and agree that you have a right to publish anything you damed well please. But your product is now mature enough and enjoys enough distribution so you should consider establishing and abiding by a set of "journalistic ethics" that would keep your integrity where you want it.
I am and will continue to be a faithful Slashdot reader - but will now always think back to this story and think about how appalled I was before I take your word on anything again. You have lost credibility with me and I suspect with a lot of other Slashdotters as well.
Fellow Slashdotters please help me: Reply to this message if you agree or disagree with my point. By asking this, I hope to accomplish two things. First make it more likely that someone from Slashdot will actually read and consider this. Second, maybe, just maybe it will help me keep my good karma!
I don't think I have too much of an objection to this, I only return a couple of things a year and don't believe that I will rise to the level of "bad customer" based on that. I think most of us fall into that category.
There are many things that cost business and each and every one of those costs is passed on to their customers. With few exceptions a company exists to provide profit to it's investors, it does not exist simply to provide a service to customers. So, as a customer, I am all for a company finding ways to operate cheaper (perhaps some of those savings will be passed on to me).
I hope the database taps in to criminal records, so that it declines returns to people who have been convicted of shoplifting, fraud, bad checks and that sort of thing. Those are the people most likely to be committing some sort of return fraud.
Now, having said all of these things about why I think this is a good idea, I'll tell you what I think concerns me.
I think people have a right to know that their return information is going to be entered into a database that may be used against them. This should be done at the time of purchase so people will have that moment to make a buy/don't buy decision. They should be reminded of this before the return is processed. They should also be informed before they make any other decision that the business may enter into the database.
People should have the right to respond to the information contained in the database and allowed to provide their own explaination.
Gift returns should probably be handled a little differently (they should still count though).
The "statute of limitations" for non-criminal information in the database should not be excessive (perhaps a year). The fact that you returned a few too many things should not haunt you forever.
Proof of identification should be required for any action that makes it into the database. That way John Smith #1 and John Smith #2 won't be confused. This proof should not be tied to a person's social security number. Soundex information should not be used. The guiding principal should be that if the information is not absolute it should not be held against an individual.
The database should not be the sole deciding factor. If the database declines a return, a manager should make the actual decision after listening to the customer.
The information in the database should remain independant of credit information and should be considered somewhat private and not used for other purposes.
Stores who participate in this system should post notices on their door (just like they do for Visa and other credit cards).
Things like faulty or spoiled products should never be held against a customer. Obviously these kinds of returns should never be entered in the database.
Customers should be able to know what their "score" is and what their information contains. This should be provided for free and should be automatic in the event of a decline.
Nuclear power certainaly has it's place in the menu of power choices for North America but it can never replace oil. All those extenstion cords would get in the way on the freeway.
My primary energy concern right now is that oil is our life blood. Dry up our supply of oil and we will die. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. Without oil, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing all grind to a halt. Even a minor bump in the supplies could have disasterous effects on our economy and our way of life. Currently it is impossible for us to produce enough of our own oil to sustain us. To make matters worse, the flow of oil into our country is controlled by only a few entities that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart (their job is to leech just enough cash from us so that they don't hurt the beast the feeds them). Finally, there are only a handfull of major ports where all of this oil enters our country, making these ports easy and attractive targets for terrorsts and others who wish us ill.
We need liquid energy to ensure transportation, agriculture and other parts of our economy can function. It has to be liquid because we can not retro-fit fast enough for any other kind to work. Germany was faced with a similar situation in WWII and turned to the manufacture of "synthetic" fuels to augment their meger oil reserves. Of course we bombed the heck out of those syn-plants too. But the point is, that the technology existed back in WWII and it has gone a long ways since then. It can be done. These fuels inlculde things like Bio-diesel, ethanol, methanol, cellulose ethanol and others. In many cases they can be mixed with petro and in other cases, they can be engineered to stand alone. The argument against them has traditionally been that they are all more expensive to produce than oil - but that is less true now and if we build large plants, the economy of scale can make them completely justifiable.
My personal opinion is that we would have a safer, more secure nation if we started developing and using this technology so that we could attain energy independance from outside sources. It would also strengthen our economy by revitalizing agriculture (which would grow the crops to make the fuel). If you think that this can't be done, think again. Many cars produced today are E85 compatible. All gasoline sold in Minnesota is currently required to conatin a minimum of 10% ethanol and that number is goint to be increased to 20% in the not too distant future. Minnesota; an oil-less state is pretty close to already producing 10% of it's energy "inhouse"! There is plenty of fallow land that can be used to produce crops (perhaps genettically engineered) for fuel.
I'm not a nuclear advocate but agree that it has it's place in our society. The big problem I see with it is as much political as it is technical. The disposal of high level nuclear waste does not have a perfect solution. Technically, Yucca mountain may be viable but it still has a lot of opposition and some of those who oppose it have some valid points. I'd like to see something practical done with some of that "waste." Perhaps tiny pieces of it could be encapsulated in glass and placed in the roadways to allow more accurate vehicle positioning using a geiger-counter to detect the pellets in the center of the road? Maybe some of it could be used to build really strong x-ray machines that are used to x-ray cargo containers as the enter the country? There has to be some safe, technological solutions to use some of this stuff!
Spam costs the world many millions of dollars in lost time, wasted bandwidth, and paying for services to deal with it. On top of that, most spam is in some way fraudulent. Some of it (that this spammer was apparently guilty of) was porn sent to children's email accounts.
Perhaps each individual message isn't much of a problem in and of itself, but when taken in aggrigate, the millions of messages he sent cost thousands of bucks to business and individuals. Children were exposed to things that their parents didn't want them to see. People were conned out of money and who knows what their credit card numbers were used for!
Perhaps when you think of it like this, you will see the beach rather than the individual grains of sand and realize that this man, and his accomplices are CRIMINALS and that the outrage isn't that he got a lengthy sentence but that the other escaped with too light of a fine.
Perhaps that last part is conjecture on my part, I do not know as well as the court what her role was in this criminal enterprise. But I find myself wishing that they were prosicuted under the RICO act.
You do not register your party with the government. If you wish to join a party (and there is no requirement you do so) you register with them if you wish. Again, there is nothing that says you have to.
Most of the voting systems are fair and secure. There has been a lot of noise about them lately and there are some systems in some places that sure look like they need to be at least better evaluated but for most people, in most places the voting systems are "tried and true."
I'm not sure what you mean by: "The neutrality of the electorial process can't be assured." This process is not supposed to be neuteral. It's primary purpose used to be a system that allowed a smaller number of people to place the votes for a larger number of people they represented by individual state. So they litterally carried the votes of the state to Washington DC. Today, the system is less litteral but it is still a proxy system that allows the individual states to consolidate their votes and vote enblock by proxy. The number of electorial votes a state has is based on the population of the state.
For the next part you have to understand that our system of government is set up to assure "states rights." In essence our federal government recognises that different states see things differently. For instance; Texas allows capitol punnishment while Minnesota doesn't. The Federal government believes that states have the right to choose how to apportion their electorial votes. Most states chooses the "winner takes all" approach. They do this because the majority of voters in the state have said (in essence) we want our electorial votes to go to a specific candidate and with this system, the votes make a bigger difference than if they were apportioned.
I'll agree that the Electorial system is a bit archaic, that with the technology we have today, a popular vote could almost as easily work. But doing the way we have done it for a couple of hundred years works too - it is just a tad bit different.
On a personal level, I think it is time to change the election process. I think that we could change our government to allow some sort of people's vote. Where people could vote on major issues and be self representing. But I realize that won't happen, the entrenched system works and there are those who don't want it to change. I think if anyone who wanted to could vote on major issues, it would do away with a great deal of "pork" and corruption.
I moved in to the neighborhood about fourteen years ago because housing prices were lower there than in the suburbs. At the time, there were a lot of older people in the area. Many of them have moved out (or died). Younger people with kids have moved in because the houses are a bit older and still less expensive than other areas close by. Almost all of us are homeowners there are very few renters so, we are in it for the long haul. Aside from a few retired people, almost everyone works in the neighborhood - many at a nearby hospital. The nurses and technicians can afford the houses and be close enough to walk to work.
I'm not saying there are no conflicts between us. There sometimes are but it is just neigbor stuff, like the one guy who parks his car infront of his neighbors house for days at a time. Or the kids who knock over planters.
My daughter, 16 is one of the older kids in the neighborhood now and her best friends are of different races than her (she is white) and she never even notices it. They are good kids. All of the younger kids run in a bunch, from yard to yard and play together all the time. You can just see that race plays no part in their friendship. I think it shows that there is hope for the next generation to break some of the barriers. It says a lot for the kids, and by extenstion, a lot for us parents who have encouraged it.
I live in what somepeople may call an inner-city neighborhood. Actually, it is a pretty nice middle class neighborhood but we have a lot of diversity. On our block we have Samolli, Hispanic, Black, White, mixed-race, and Hmong families. All of the kids play together even though some of them are only exposed to their native tounge at home (and some are too young for school).
I frequently hear the kids use a mix of language as they play. One kid may yell in Spanish and get their answer in Hmoung - but they know what each other is saying. Less often (but it still happens) is one of the kids will talk to another kid in "their" language rather than the one they are most familiar with.
As the kids age, it seems that they become a little more entrenched in their home lanuage and English. The Hmoung kids speak English without a trace of accent which really impresses me because their parents don't speak it at all and rely on the kids to be interpeters.
All of the kids really impress me. When I was a child, you would have never seen a neighborhood so integrated. All of the parents make an effort to get along, all of the kids - they just simply get along, they don't even notice the differences!
I am an American but you have to realize that we live in what has become a global economy. Microsoft has it's headquarters here and does employ many software developers here but they are traded on a stock exchange where people from everywhere can and do buy shares of them. Ditto for Sony (although their stock exchange is probably in Japan). For what its worth, I don't own a Play Station either.
From what the other article said, the Xbox is made either in Mexico or Singapore so, the wages paid to the people who build them (an most likely most of the components) are deficit dollars just the same as the Sony Playstation.
Anyway, to a degree, I was kind of making fun of the Slashdotters who love to bash MS by asking the question about why do so many Slashdotters own Microsoft Xboxes. Don't you see the humor in that?
Why, if MS software crashes, shouldn't MS hardware do the same?
I don't own an X-box and really can't weigh in on facts because I don't have any and don't care enough to make 'em up (unlike many of our politicians).
But I can float some questions:
1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1
product?
2. Is this a through and through Microsoft
product or are they just the marketers
of someone else's (custom) design, built
in a contract manufacturers plant?
3. Why are so many slashdotters buying
Microsoft X-Boxes?
Most states require that you keep your insurance as it is until the divorce is finalized. For most families, this means the man is paying a significant sum that benefits the wife. I pay over $600/month for health & life (etc) and another $300/month for car.
In your initial court hearing, make sure that she is ordered to pay 50% of the premiums and that it is stipulated that she has to pay them to you on or before the day they are due.
She most likely won't. You'll still be stuck with the premiums but the court will see that she is not holding up her end of the bargain.
Most lawyers (even divorce lawyers) don't think of this tactic. But it works for you one way or the other. If she pays, you have a few extra bucks, if she doesn't, the judge will penalize her in the end.
Fiat pulled out of the US market years ago. I miss them. Over the years I've had several Fiat 850 Spyders and a coupe, I've had a 124 too.
They were good basic cars that were fun to drive and easy to work on. What more can you really ask for?
Now to see what they offer in Europe, hell, I'd kill for one of them.
Sometimes people would tell me that FIAT stood for "Fix It Again, Tony." I'll admit that I have my share of problems with the cars, but then I was really driving 'em a little harder than I should have too. Besides, they were fun to fix. I could lift the engine out of an 850 all by myself and a complete engine swap only took an afternoon or so. Frankly, I'd bet that had I been driving American cars I would have had as many problems and would have had to spend a lot more to fix 'em.
A junk yard I knew spliced a 124 and a 128 together, it was just sort of a joke but they had a two engined car to show off!
I only regret that I never got around to owning a X/19 or 2000.
Yes, I could (and maybe should) vote for a third party candidate (I did last time). I do live in a battleground state (Minnesota) and have heard many times how this year my vote means something.
Voting for a thrid party candidate is not throwing your vote away, it is more like making a statement. You are telling people about your level of dissatisfaction in the way things are. And yes, I'm considering it. I've done it before and will probably do it again (although maybe not in this election).
Living in Minnesota, I know thrid parties can be viable (We had Jessie Ventura as govenor until recently, he was a third party candidate). I've been a member of the Green Party but can't say I still am, they have wandered too far off of the course that I expected them to follow. Right now, politically I am adrift, sailing mostly in liberal and libritarian waters. I don't see a third party candidate out there who really accurately represents me. Nader sure as hell doesn't! So, even considering third parties, I am still disenfranchised!
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P2P is a tool, like a saw, a hammer or yes, even a gun. Don't blame the tool when some human uses it in a wrong way. Over the years many tools have been used to commit crimes - even the lowly rock can be used to murder.
It seems to me that history would teach us that when a popular activity is outlawed, that activity doesn't go away it moves underground. Look at the roaring 20's and the temperance movement that caused prohibition. Outlawing alcohol didn't make it go away, it just drove it underground and made common criminals wealthy and willing to protect their enterprise with guns and a little enterprise called "Murder Inc."
A similar corelation can be made with illicit drugs today; Crack, crank, heroin, and pot are all available on street corners in every major city! Those gangsters also protect thier illicit interests with guns and murder.
One has to wonder if the drug situation were dealt with a little differently, if things wouldn't be better? Please note I am not being pro-drug here. But I have to wonder if cocaine and other drugs were available to adults in controlled stores if we wouldn't have less crime and about the same number of adicts? If that was the case, wouldn't it be a success? Our prisons would be less crowded and we would probably have less crime.
By now some of you are thinking I'm a lunatic, that P2P software is different from drugs. Please believe me when I say I understand that. But regulation brings with it unanticipated and often disasterous consiquences. It makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens and, it puts the country that regulates it at a competitive disadvantage to the countries that don't. All in all, I see this kind of conservitive over regulation as a "bad thing."
Also, FTP can and frequently is used "peer to peer," so are IM programs: Are all of these going to be legislated away because of some short-sighted law? Is this really appropriate legislation - aren't there already plenty of laws that address copyright violations? I can't see how true American's can't agree!
This Thanksgiving, prepare a CD that contains your favorite tools, making sure you load heavy on the spyware and AV stuff and bring it with you. While everyone else is running around getting the dinner ready. or sitting and watching the football game, or the parade, settle down in front of the computer and just do it.
Also bring a Knoppix CD (and leave both CD's behind).
Then when you get the call, you know the one, have them boot the Knoppix CD.
Elana,
Thank you for another good story from your homeland. These are things that Americans (like me) never really get to see. When we read one of your stories, it humanizes you and your people far more than any history book could.
I've read your stories, and am impressed - I hope you keep up your work and that the skeptics don't stop you. In your own way, you have done more to help relations between your people and the rest of the world than your government has. After reading your stories, I feel like I know a bit more about you and your people than I ever have before. It is now easier to understand some of the things about you and your people than before - because I can see some of your roots.
As a student I studied these wars, but they were abstract. Now they are real. The numbers still astound me, probably even more now.
Thank you,
I like CSI and watch it often. I think it is good entertainment and well written although I view it as a work of fiction and know enough to seperate reality from fantasy. I think most people can do this.
I'm not really one of those people who feel that TV, or entertainment in general, have some sort of obligation to provide factual presentations. I'm all for fiction or the mixing of fact and fiction to tell an entertaining story.
Even though I feel that story-telling is a legit purpose, I do sometimes have to wonder if there is some segment of society that is affected differently by all of the gratuitious violence and dark story lines (never mind that the good guy almost always wins).
I won't go so far as to say that TV, movies, music, or entertainment in general are responsible for violent crime (individuals are - period), I can see how some people may become desensitized by the blood, guts, and gore on TV, in movies, and yes, perhaps even in music. I suspect that these people probably have other contributing factors (like abusive parents, alcoholisim, mental illness and so on).
Life itself can be brutal. Earlier this week, I saw a dead body laying on the road, police had a large area taped off waiting for the real CSI & medical examiners. Less than a month ago, an aquaintance of mine was murdered in a convenience store robbery. Would these things have happened if there wasn't so much violence on TV? I don't know, how the hell could I? How can the "experts" quantify this? There are so many variables and each situation is unique.
I do know we aren't living in the 1950's any more. Kids don't live a Beaver Cleaver lifestyle anymore and families aren't like Ozzie and Harriet. But so much has happened in the past fifty years. Vietnam, Kennedy's assination, the war on drugs, Civil Rights, women's lib, Iran, Iraq, Columnbine, Iraq redux and thousands of other things. Isn't is safe to assume that these things may have played into our collective psyches too?
People are so quick to ask: "What is this or that doing to us?" Isn't the obvious answer that we are a collective combination of everything that has touched us? Aren't we responsible for making sense of these things? Then, if that is the case, why ask why? Most of us are capable of seperating fact from fantasy, those us us who aren't need help.
The Mayo Clinic is a great resource for problems that are somewhat out of the ordinary, they stay well abrest of all the latest things and almost seem to specialize in anything out of the ordinary.
Also, don't give up hope. I had an infection in my leg that came from "soil bacteria" according to the doctor. In a little less than two hours I went from nothing to being afraid that my leg was going to split like an overcooked hot dog. The first course of antibiotics stopped the rapid growth but it wasn't long before the bacteria regained their foothold (sorry, that pun wasn't intended) and I was unable to even put on a pair of pants! The little blood vessels on the surface were tearing apart and I had bloody spiderwebs all over my lower leg. Attempts at lancing only produced pain.
Hot whirlpool baths were an attempt to raise the local temp high enough to kill some of the bacteria felt like someone was running a belt sander and torch against my leg but the bacteria kept winning.
The decision was made to amputate my leg. One last try with an anti-biotic cocktail was tried and lo and behold, it worked. I came within just a few hours and the magic bullet was found.
That was about ten years ago. I still have the scars on my leg and there are spots where the infection ate so much away that it is pitted but it is fully functional.
Once you get the right doctor, who is willing to try old and new and pull out all of the stops, your odds are good.
Rural outsourcing would help people living in rural areas get jobs. Because business looks at an areas pay scale before they decide what to offer the tech style jobs will be lower in rural America than in the cities and that will probably be good for business.
The rural techs would "steal" jobs from their urban counterparts and would cheapen the overall value of technical jobs.
The truth is there are already a lot of underpaid technical types in rural areas. Today you can consider mechanics technical types and people with these analytical skills do live in rural areas.
I grew up in a small midwestern town. I left. I left because I like computers and I like being well paid. You don't find many computer jobs in small towns and you don't find hardly any decent paying jobs in small towns.
Still keeping the jobs in the US is a boon to the country and getting rural areas jobs will help with the chronic unemployment in these towns. But there is nothing to stop these folks from gaining experience and moving to the city in search of better pay! If that happens there will be a larger surplus of us tech types in the city and our pay will slide closer to the rural folks. So for me, perhaps it is bad.
I'm going to bring a lot of fire for this but I'm going to say that Microsoft is right, Firefox is not a threat to IE. They just have the reasons wrong.
If the internet is a browser mono-culture, in otherwords if IE is nearly ubiquitious, any security issue no matter how small it is or how difficult it is to impliment, threatens the entire structure of the network. That is bad for everyone, especially bad for Microsoft.
If a percentage of the "society" that is the internet is immune to a security threat then the network is more capable of surviving any sort of attack. These survivors get to play two very special roles; they get to be the "defenders" in that they get to survive the attack and become a backbone of the culture that returns after the attack. Second, they offer a hint as to what needs to be done to repel the attack. Microsoft doesn't have to "copy" Firefox to fix their browser, they just have to see how it was done and why it works and then develop the fix knowing that information.
For that reason, Microsoft needs Firefox, Opera, and other non-IE browsers.
I don't doubt that Microsoft will also use the ideas in Firefox if enough people state that they appreciete things like tabbed browsing, Microsoft will impliment something similar (they always have before).
Also, a coffee shop owner I know was never happier than when another coffee shop opened several blocks away. It actually brought more people into his shop! His theory is that additional business in the neighborhood added vitality to the entire neighborhood and brought more people in who would have just driven past before. I think that this may be applicable with browsers too. I personally use both Netscape and IE, almost but not quite interchangably. I think a lot of people do this to one degree or another.
I do take issue with the statement that IE has a lot of features that most users don't know about. There are a lot of them that I don't use. I do know about them, they just don't appeal to me. Favorites are cool to some people but I find that if I use them, they actually hinder me - all too fast, my filing system breaks down and I just get a confusing bunch of similar hyperlinks.
Spammers are individuals without scruples who deserve to be punnished for each and every crime they commit. In many cases, you can say one message = one crime. This is the case when they attempt fraud for instance each email they send, and they may send millions, is in and of itself a mini-crime. Each one of them could put them in jail.
In other instances, the crime may vary - putting porn in a child's email account is far worse than putting it in an adult's email account yet they (spammers) make no effort to identify and exclude children when they send their pictures of horses and women. Each child who recieves these emails is a true victim and they deserve true justice. There are no grey areas here, at least not in my book. These are felonies. Yes, even if they send a hyperlink to something like this.
Then there is the teft of service issues. When the spammers use someone else's hardware and bandwidth to send their emails, they are stealing something of value from their unwitting accomplice. This is exactly like siphoning gas out of someone's car or "borrowing" a bicycle from the corner. It is theft. Spammers should be held both criminally and civily liable.
These guys do it because they think that they can get away with it. Perhaps some may say "it isn't fair to make an example out of a few of them" and I think that is probably true but the punnishment should fit the crime and many of these people do deserve a rather stiff sentence.
A few years ago I bought a computer from you, I bought the extended warranty and everything. When my modem died, you took my computer, you insisted on the whole thing and kept it for three weeks. When it came back, it had a new modem in it but it was a cheap piece of generic crap. The modem that died was a good for the time US Robotics 56K modem. The one I got back never connected above 42K although it said it was a 56K modem. I complained and was told in essence "tough."
One bad experience isn't enough to send me away from you. You actually have good sales, and a decent inventory. Still it left a bad taste in my mouth. Then I bought a printer and brought it home. It was new but was missing the cartridges and the little tab that held the carts was broken. I brought it back and it was replaced but I saw the looks you guys gave me and they weren't nice. I wasn't my fault, I swear it.
About a year and a half ago, my daughter and I made a deal. If she came up with half the money, I'd throw in the other half and buy her a pre-pay cell phone. She wanted one from Virgin that she saw at your store. The big day came and I went in to buy it even though she was a bit short of her half. The phone came with a $25.00 Best Buy gift card. I filled out the paperwork and followed the instructions to the letter and mailed it in - figuring I could use that to make up the money she was short - but we never saw the card. So you scammed us. I feel pretty ripped off.
I was in your store a while ago - for the first time since you ripped me off. I wanted to buy a stylus for my Palm. Your clerk told me you don't have them in the stores, that I have to buy them online. I bought a pack of them at an office supply store.
I can take a hint. You don't want me as a customer. That is pretty obvious. So, you don't have to worry about me. There are plenty of places that treat me right. I'll shop them. Forget about Best Buy. You don't give a shit about me so you can keep your precious products, I'll gladly buy them somewhere else. Someplace that isn't crooked.
I haven't had the same kind of problems with HP printers but I have had the same kind of luck with other products, some times it is a "bad batch" or just plain old "rotten luck."
Every time I get a phishing scam, I contact the affected bank's security department providing them all of the information that I've developed. In many cases this is made extra difficult because the only method they provide of contacting is a web-form. With these, I have to cut and paste the headder info and so on. It really sucks.
Usually, no matter what the method of contact, all I get is an email reply with boilerplate info telling me how to protect myself against these scams. This is utterly stupid, I've already taken action that shows them I am aware of what is happening!
After a week or two I always follow up. On the few occasions where I recieve a human reply from this follow up, I am told they can't provide me with information on an on-going investigation. I know BS when I see it and these replys are BS.
I'm trying to do the banks a favor yet apparently they view this as more hassle then help. Apparently they don't do anything unless someone actually loses something (and maybe not even then, I wouldn't know - I've never fallen victim).
I'd suggest that the banks rotate their images in a public folder changing the real image with ones that say You are visiting a scam site if you are seeing this image. That would slow the phishers down or make them do some real work at least.
So Google's image search wasn't as complete as someone elses. That alone does not mean that there is censorship or conspiracy. Perhaps Google screwed up, perhaps they took the initiative on their own or perhaps in some country where they have a presence, these images are illegal so they have taken them down to comply with the law. There are probably many other possible explainations as well!
Believe me I am not a fan of the current administration (don't blame me, I voted but not for these clowns). But to jump to the conclusion that there is some sort of conspiracy or censorship going on that involves them is just plain stupid. It lacks foundation or a shred of evidence.
Slashdot editors - I appreciate your freedom of speech and agree that you have a right to publish anything you damed well please. But your product is now mature enough and enjoys enough distribution so you should consider establishing and abiding by a set of "journalistic ethics" that would keep your integrity where you want it.
I am and will continue to be a faithful Slashdot reader - but will now always think back to this story and think about how appalled I was before I take your word on anything again. You have lost credibility with me and I suspect with a lot of other Slashdotters as well.
Fellow Slashdotters please help me: Reply to this message if you agree or disagree with my point. By asking this, I hope to accomplish two things. First make it more likely that someone from Slashdot will actually read and consider this. Second, maybe, just maybe it will help me keep my good karma!
I don't think I have too much of an objection to this, I only return a couple of things a year and don't believe that I will rise to the level of "bad customer" based on that. I think most of us fall into that category.
There are many things that cost business and each and every one of those costs is passed on to their customers. With few exceptions a company exists to provide profit to it's investors, it does not exist simply to provide a service to customers. So, as a customer, I am all for a company finding ways to operate cheaper (perhaps some of those savings will be passed on to me).
I hope the database taps in to criminal records, so that it declines returns to people who have been convicted of shoplifting, fraud, bad checks and that sort of thing. Those are the people most likely to be committing some sort of return fraud.
Now, having said all of these things about why I think this is a good idea, I'll tell you what I think concerns me.
I think people have a right to know that their return information is going to be entered into a database that may be used against them. This should be done at the time of purchase so people will have that moment to make a buy/don't buy decision. They should be reminded of this before the return is processed. They should also be informed before they make any other decision that the business may enter into the database.
People should have the right to respond to the information contained in the database and allowed to provide their own explaination.
Gift returns should probably be handled a little differently (they should still count though).
The "statute of limitations" for non-criminal information in the database should not be excessive (perhaps a year). The fact that you returned a few too many things should not haunt you forever.
Proof of identification should be required for any action that makes it into the database. That way John Smith #1 and John Smith #2 won't be confused. This proof should not be tied to a person's social security number. Soundex information should not be used. The guiding principal should be that if the information is not absolute it should not be held against an individual.
The database should not be the sole deciding factor. If the database declines a return, a manager should make the actual decision after listening to the customer.
The information in the database should remain independant of credit information and should be considered somewhat private and not used for other purposes.
Stores who participate in this system should post notices on their door (just like they do for Visa and other credit cards).
Things like faulty or spoiled products should never be held against a customer. Obviously these kinds of returns should never be entered in the database.
Customers should be able to know what their "score" is and what their information contains. This should be provided for free and should be automatic in the event of a decline.
Nuclear power certainaly has it's place in the menu of power choices for North America but it can never replace oil. All those extenstion cords would get in the way on the freeway.
My primary energy concern right now is that oil is our life blood. Dry up our supply of oil and we will die. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. Without oil, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing all grind to a halt. Even a minor bump in the supplies could have disasterous effects on our economy and our way of life. Currently it is impossible for us to produce enough of our own oil to sustain us. To make matters worse, the flow of oil into our country is controlled by only a few entities that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart (their job is to leech just enough cash from us so that they don't hurt the beast the feeds them). Finally, there are only a handfull of major ports where all of this oil enters our country, making these ports easy and attractive targets for terrorsts and others who wish us ill.
We need liquid energy to ensure transportation, agriculture and other parts of our economy can function. It has to be liquid because we can not retro-fit fast enough for any other kind to work. Germany was faced with a similar situation in WWII and turned to the manufacture of "synthetic" fuels to augment their meger oil reserves. Of course we bombed the heck out of those syn-plants too. But the point is, that the technology existed back in WWII and it has gone a long ways since then. It can be done. These fuels inlculde things like Bio-diesel, ethanol, methanol, cellulose ethanol and others. In many cases they can be mixed with petro and in other cases, they can be engineered to stand alone. The argument against them has traditionally been that they are all more expensive to produce than oil - but that is less true now and if we build large plants, the economy of scale can make them completely justifiable.
My personal opinion is that we would have a safer, more secure nation if we started developing and using this technology so that we could attain energy independance from outside sources. It would also strengthen our economy by revitalizing agriculture (which would grow the crops to make the fuel). If you think that this can't be done, think again. Many cars produced today are E85 compatible. All gasoline sold in Minnesota is currently required to conatin a minimum of 10% ethanol and that number is goint to be increased to 20% in the not too distant future. Minnesota; an oil-less state is pretty close to already producing 10% of it's energy "inhouse"! There is plenty of fallow land that can be used to produce crops (perhaps genettically engineered) for fuel.
I'm not a nuclear advocate but agree that it has it's place in our society. The big problem I see with it is as much political as it is technical. The disposal of high level nuclear waste does not have a perfect solution. Technically, Yucca mountain may be viable but it still has a lot of opposition and some of those who oppose it have some valid points. I'd like to see something practical done with some of that "waste." Perhaps tiny pieces of it could be encapsulated in glass and placed in the roadways to allow more accurate vehicle positioning using a geiger-counter to detect the pellets in the center of the road? Maybe some of it could be used to build really strong x-ray machines that are used to x-ray cargo containers as the enter the country? There has to be some safe, technological solutions to use some of this stuff!
Spam costs the world many millions of dollars in lost time, wasted bandwidth, and paying for services to deal with it. On top of that, most spam is in some way fraudulent. Some of it (that this spammer was apparently guilty of) was porn sent to children's email accounts.
Perhaps each individual message isn't much of a problem in and of itself, but when taken in aggrigate, the millions of messages he sent cost thousands of bucks to business and individuals. Children were exposed to things that their parents didn't want them to see. People were conned out of money and who knows what their credit card numbers were used for!
Perhaps when you think of it like this, you will see the beach rather than the individual grains of sand and realize that this man, and his accomplices are CRIMINALS and that the outrage isn't that he got a lengthy sentence but that the other escaped with too light of a fine.
Perhaps that last part is conjecture on my part, I do not know as well as the court what her role was in this criminal enterprise. But I find myself wishing that they were prosicuted under the RICO act.
I wish I could mod you up. Someone actually modded you as off topic and my parent post was modded overrated.
Sheesh, some people, no sense of understanding or humor. Apparently politicians mod on Slashdot. Who woulda thunk it?
You have been given some mis-information.
You do not register your party with the government. If you wish to join a party (and there is no requirement you do so) you register with them if you wish. Again, there is nothing that says you have to.
Most of the voting systems are fair and secure. There has been a lot of noise about them lately and there are some systems in some places that sure look like they need to be at least better evaluated but for most people, in most places the voting systems are "tried and true."
I'm not sure what you mean by: "The neutrality of the electorial process can't be assured." This process is not supposed to be neuteral. It's primary purpose used to be a system that allowed a smaller number of people to place the votes for a larger number of people they represented by individual state. So they litterally carried the votes of the state to Washington DC. Today, the system is less litteral but it is still a proxy system that allows the individual states to consolidate their votes and vote enblock by proxy. The number of electorial votes a state has is based on the population of the state.
For the next part you have to understand that our system of government is set up to assure "states rights." In essence our federal government recognises that different states see things differently. For instance; Texas allows capitol punnishment while Minnesota doesn't. The Federal government believes that states have the right to choose how to apportion their electorial votes. Most states chooses the "winner takes all" approach. They do this because the majority of voters in the state have said (in essence) we want our electorial votes to go to a specific candidate and with this system, the votes make a bigger difference than if they were apportioned.
I'll agree that the Electorial system is a bit archaic, that with the technology we have today, a popular vote could almost as easily work. But doing the way we have done it for a couple of hundred years works too - it is just a tad bit different.
On a personal level, I think it is time to change the election process. I think that we could change our government to allow some sort of people's vote. Where people could vote on major issues and be self representing. But I realize that won't happen, the entrenched system works and there are those who don't want it to change. I think if anyone who wanted to could vote on major issues, it would do away with a great deal of "pork" and corruption.
He is innocent until proven guilty, just like Scott Peterson and O.J. Simpson.
I moved in to the neighborhood about fourteen years ago because housing prices were lower there than in the suburbs. At the time, there were a lot of older people in the area. Many of them have moved out (or died). Younger people with kids have moved in because the houses are a bit older and still less expensive than other areas close by. Almost all of us are homeowners there are very few renters so, we are in it for the long haul. Aside from a few retired people, almost everyone works in the neighborhood - many at a nearby hospital. The nurses and technicians can afford the houses and be close enough to walk to work.
I'm not saying there are no conflicts between us. There sometimes are but it is just neigbor stuff, like the one guy who parks his car infront of his neighbors house for days at a time. Or the kids who knock over planters.
My daughter, 16 is one of the older kids in the neighborhood now and her best friends are of different races than her (she is white) and she never even notices it. They are good kids. All of the younger kids run in a bunch, from yard to yard and play together all the time. You can just see that race plays no part in their friendship. I think it shows that there is hope for the next generation to break some of the barriers. It says a lot for the kids, and by extenstion, a lot for us parents who have encouraged it.
I live in what somepeople may call an inner-city neighborhood. Actually, it is a pretty nice middle class neighborhood but we have a lot of diversity. On our block we have Samolli, Hispanic, Black, White, mixed-race, and Hmong families. All of the kids play together even though some of them are only exposed to their native tounge at home (and some are too young for school).
I frequently hear the kids use a mix of language as they play. One kid may yell in Spanish and get their answer in Hmoung - but they know what each other is saying. Less often (but it still happens) is one of the kids will talk to another kid in "their" language rather than the one they are most familiar with.
As the kids age, it seems that they become a little more entrenched in their home lanuage and English. The Hmoung kids speak English without a trace of accent which really impresses me because their parents don't speak it at all and rely on the kids to be interpeters.
All of the kids really impress me. When I was a child, you would have never seen a neighborhood so integrated. All of the parents make an effort to get along, all of the kids - they just simply get along, they don't even notice the differences!
I am an American but you have to realize that we live in what has become a global economy. Microsoft has it's headquarters here and does employ many software developers here but they are traded on a stock exchange where people from everywhere can and do buy shares of them. Ditto for Sony (although their stock exchange is probably in Japan). For what its worth, I don't own a Play Station either.
From what the other article said, the Xbox is made either in Mexico or Singapore so, the wages paid to the people who build them (an most likely most of the components) are deficit dollars just the same as the Sony Playstation.
Anyway, to a degree, I was kind of making fun of the Slashdotters who love to bash MS by asking the question about why do so many Slashdotters own Microsoft Xboxes. Don't you see the humor in that?
Why, if MS software crashes, shouldn't MS hardware do the same?
I don't own an X-box and really can't weigh in on facts because I don't have any and don't care enough to make 'em up (unlike many of our politicians).
But I can float some questions:
1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1
product?
2. Is this a through and through Microsoft
product or are they just the marketers
of someone else's (custom) design, built
in a contract manufacturers plant?
3. Why are so many slashdotters buying
Microsoft X-Boxes?
One more thing.
Most states require that you keep your insurance as it is until the divorce is finalized. For most families, this means the man is paying a significant sum that benefits the wife. I pay over $600/month for health & life (etc) and another $300/month for car.
In your initial court hearing, make sure that she is ordered to pay 50% of the premiums and that it is stipulated that she has to pay them to you on or before the day they are due.
She most likely won't. You'll still be stuck with the premiums but the court will see that she is not holding up her end of the bargain.
Most lawyers (even divorce lawyers) don't think of this tactic. But it works for you one way or the other. If she pays, you have a few extra bucks, if she doesn't, the judge will penalize her in the end.
Fiat pulled out of the US market years ago. I miss them. Over the years I've had several Fiat 850 Spyders and a coupe, I've had a 124 too.
They were good basic cars that were fun to drive and easy to work on. What more can you really ask for?
Now to see what they offer in Europe, hell, I'd kill for one of them.
Sometimes people would tell me that FIAT stood for "Fix It Again, Tony." I'll admit that I have my share of problems with the cars, but then I was really driving 'em a little harder than I should have too. Besides, they were fun to fix. I could lift the engine out of an 850 all by myself and a complete engine swap only took an afternoon or so. Frankly, I'd bet that had I been driving American cars I would have had as many problems and would have had to spend a lot more to fix 'em.
A junk yard I knew spliced a 124 and a 128 together, it was just sort of a joke but they had a two engined car to show off!
I only regret that I never got around to owning a X/19 or 2000.
Yes, I could (and maybe should) vote for a third party candidate (I did last time). I do live in a battleground state (Minnesota) and have heard many times how this year my vote means something.
Voting for a thrid party candidate is not throwing your vote away, it is more like making a statement. You are telling people about your level of dissatisfaction in the way things are. And yes, I'm considering it. I've done it before and will probably do it again (although maybe not in this election).
Living in Minnesota, I know thrid parties can be viable (We had Jessie Ventura as govenor until recently, he was a third party candidate). I've been a member of the Green Party but can't say I still am, they have wandered too far off of the course that I expected them to follow. Right now, politically I am adrift, sailing mostly in liberal and libritarian waters. I don't see a third party candidate out there who really accurately represents me. Nader sure as hell doesn't! So, even considering third parties, I am still disenfranchised!