Contrary to right-wing scaremongering, its mandated reductions in greenhouse emissions are quite moderate and and attainable (before Bush rejected it, most enviros blasted the Kyoto treaty for being pathetically inadequate).
It was killed 99-0 in the U.S. Senate during the Clinton administration. Bush just did us all the favor of burying it rather than letting there be any question as to whether or not it could be revived.
It would provide an impetus for developing new fuel/energy technologies that could very well boost the economy.
I'd rather we make those developments with our economy humming along with current energy resources rather than trying to do it while our economy is being stifled by premature CO2 caps.
If the US doesn't develop this technology, Japan and Europe will, which certainly won't do much to cure our our trade deficit.
It doesn't matter who develops it. Once it is developed, it will be used worldwide. If the Europeans can find some good alternative energy source, more power to them! We'll implement it once it makes financial sense.
Gas/electric hybrid vehicles are now a reality - in fact, the Toyota Prius won several awards for best car of the year.
But does it make financial sense? How much does it cost? Does it look like a normal car, or some futuristic bubble that I don't want regardless of how cheap or efficient it is?
Public transportation should also be encouraged - Europe has a very efficient and reliable rail system, and there's no reason why the US can't have one.
Public transportation is good, where applicable.
The money for funding all this could be attained by stopping corporate welfare for the oil & auto industries, as well as diverting money from all the pork-barrel highway funding projects that Congress is so fond of.
Well, I happen to be fond of working highways so I'm glad Congress shares my views.
Basically, you're asking for a change in American attitudes. First, if 99% of Americans like their current attitudes, what right do you have to say they should change?
Give me a solution that fits my lifestyle. I like the freedom a car gives me. I like being able to drive from NYC to LA. If you give me the option to buy a normal-looking car that gets 100mpg for $2k more than the same car that gets 25mpg, I'll pay the extra $2k. But don't expect me to pay 20% more for a car that I don't even like. And don't base your economic and envrionmental goals on the assumption I'm going to start taking a train or bike to work.
WTF? Lots of things that are caused by things other than man can stopped (or adapted to, or modified) by man... Why should global warming be any different?
This is based on the (incorrect) assumption that we actually know what is best. We can't even conclusively conclude that global warming is being caused by humans. Regardless of whether or not it is natural, some predict that global warming will help, some say that it will hurt, and others say that it will help some areas and hurt othrs.
So, what you're saying is that we should take action on something we don't know we're effecting to achieve effects that we aren't sure will help or hurt. Seems silly to me.
It is silly to take action before we a) Know there is a problem, b) Know the effects of the problem, and c) Know how our changes will impact the situation. If we have any doubts about the answers to any of the above, taking any action could be just as easily destructive as helpful.
I usually use cash on vacation, too. Sure, you might need a credit card (which I have) for hotels and car rentals, but you can usually pay cash at the end of the deal--they just need your credit card for guarantee. Sometimes it's just a voucher that gets ripped up and is never processed (good), but at worst it's an authorization on your account which goes away within about 3 days. They *might* keep authorization information, but I doubt it.
Even if they did, I don't think an occasional hotel room or car rental is particularly secretive or useful to the government (unless it happened to be in Afghanistan). They are occasional expenses that might tell about your vacation tastes, not your lifestyle on a day-to-day business. What is a good idea to avoid is buying every day stuff with credit cards which would let the FBI (or anyone else) build a picture of your daily life.
It's one thing to look someone's bank/credit card account and say "Oh, he went to Cancun on vacation." It is quite another to look at the same and say, "Ok, he buys an Egg McMuffin on the way each day to work, buys $20 of gas for his Honda every week so he probably drives about 300 miles a week so purchasing gas more frequently might indicate an unusual out-of-town trip, he bought books on Amazon about skycrapers and high explosives so that might be suspicious, he checks into a cheap hotel every Wednesday so he is probably having an affair..."
One thing is that the government knows where you vacation, quite another is that they can figure out your life. Neither is desireable, but the first option worries me a lot less.
Right. Which is why I said that they could probably determine I bought two cars in cash. But I don't consider that a particularly secret aspect of my finances, nor does it really give them any interesting information about me other than the fact that after buying a lemon of a Chrysler I decided to buy a Honda.
I pretty much haven't used credit cards in the last 8 years. About the only thing they'll see transaction-wise on my credit card bills is payment for hosting services and some business expenses. I've paid for my last two cars in cash so not much to dig up on me there. And while they can see my ATM cash-withdrawl activity, that's not going to tell them much except where I am (which is usually where I live).
So, basically, the solution to this kind of crap is not doing anything that gives away personal information about yourself. Cash is usually pretty anonymous.
I suspect that if the FBI did a financial investigation about all they could say is "He doesn't seem to own a house, he has bought two cars in cash, and based on ATM withdrawls we know approximately where he lives." If they look at my IRS records then they'd know exactly where I live, which is overseas... Actually, the lack of information that they could dig up probably makes me look like a terrorist or drug dealer.:(
They can only track those aspects of your life that you let them track. Live smart, transact intelligently, and you can maintain a lot of your privacy.
My informational website--the kind of site someone is looking for when they look for content on the subject of my website--gets virtually all its search engine referrals from Google. As far as my site goes, you could completely eliminate the other search engines and I probably wouldn't even notice it in my site traffic.
No way. That would encourage people to engage in risky public nudity, which would, in turn, increase the number of people involuntarily exposed to public nudity.
I don't understand. You're saying that if the statue of limitations was 2 days that more people would engage in public nudity?
Question: What is "risky public nudity?"
Comment: If more people do it in places where that behavior is being seen by people that don't want to see it, then these people will be reported and prosecuted. A couple of prosecutions and it will be clear that if you want to do something like this, you had either better get permission from anyone present or do it when there's no-one that can be offended by it.
I tend to agree with you. I'm not a fan of public nudity, but like you said--public nudity is illegal because it offends someone. If no-one is there to be offended, or if everyone there agrees that there isn't a problem, there shouldn't be a problem.
Actually, I think the solution would be to make the statue of limitations on public nudity be, say, 2 days. Enough time for someome that was offended to report it. If no-one reports it in 2 days, no-one was offended and no harm, no foul, and certainly no crime.
The funny thing is you only need a "secure" BIOS if you're using an OS as unsecure as Windows. I use my same unsecure BIOS under Linux that I used to use for Windows XP, but I haven't had any security problems since I switched nearly a year ago.
I just bought a $100 Samsung DVD player in Wal-Mart here in Mexico. It is "multiregion." There's a sticker on the back that says (in English) that it will only work for the regions specified on the sticker. The sticker specifies no regions at all and, in fact, will play any DVD from any region.:)
So I can buy region 1 DVDs for $9 when I visit the U.S. and rent region 4 DVDs here in Mexico. Perfect!
Some claim the First, Second, and Third world are economic descriptions. However, there are also those who say that it was a political description. I tend to believe it was originally a political term but has come to be more of an economic one now that the political blocs that defined the "three worlds" have largely disappeared.
The First, Second, Third World and the Forth World
A rough probably outdated model of the geopolitical world from the time of the cold war.
There is no official definition of the terms of the first, second, and the third world. Following OWNO's explanation of the terms.
Four Worlds
After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs of contrary views on government and the politically correct society: the bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, - the "First World" - and the Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World". The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."
The in the early 1970s coined term of the "Forth World" refers to widely unknown nations (cultural entities) of indigenous peoples, living within or across state boundaries.
First there was the three worlds model
The origin of the terminology is unclear. In 1952 Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, wrote an article in the French magazine L'Observateur which ended by comparing the Third World with the Third Estate: "ce Tiers Monde ignore, exploite, meprise comme le Tiers Etat" (this ignored Third World, exploited, scorned like the Third Estate). Other sources claim that Charles de Gaulle coined the term Third World, maybe de Gaulle only has quoted Sauvy. However...
The term "First World" refers to so called developed, capitalist, industrial countries, roughly, a bloc of countries aligned with the United States with common political and economic interests: North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
"Second World" refers to the (former) communist-socialist, industrial states, (formerly the Eastern bloc, the territory and sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic) today: Russia, Eastern Europe (e.g., Poland) and some of the Turk States (e.g., Kazakhstan) as well as China.
"Third World" are all the other countries, today often used to roughly describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The term Third World includes as well capitalist (e.g., Venezuela) and communist (e.g., North Korea) countries as very rich (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and very poor (e.g., Mali) countries.
The term "Forth World" first came into use in 1974 with the publication of Shuswap Chief George Manuel's: The fourth world : an Indian reality (amazon link to the book), the term refers to nations (cultural entities, ethnic groups) of indigenous peoples living within or across state boundaries (political units, states).
Unlike discrimination against blacks, we're not talking about any fundamental right here. Gays can live together and, in practice, do whatever it is they do in the privacy of their own home. No-one is stopping them and that is not the issue.
What we're talking about here is financial and legal definitions.
The legal definition of marriage includes the requirement that it be between a man and woman. They're asking that to be changed. That's kind of like if I practice some kind of weird black magic to cure people and getting upset because the state won't cerify me as a "doctor." They're not stopping me from doing what I do, but they're not going to bend the definition of "doctor" to include something that is outside what society and the law agrees constitutes a doctor. The same goes for marriage.
Financially I believe gays have even less standing. We all make decisions that affect us financially and we all have burdens that are not of our choosing that affect us financially. I was born with asthma, that's going to cost me more. They were, presumably, born gay and that's going to cost them more because they aren't going to get any tax benefits (if there are any!) from being married.
If you want something that stands for the union of a man and a woman, why don't YOU invent and use that new term, and keep it only for religious purposes.
Did I misunderstand you? Are you suggesting that marriage, which has always been the union between a man and a woman, should now be open to gay individuals and if we want something that only means man and woman that we should create a new term for THAT?
I hate to break it to you, we DO have a term for that. It's "marriage." The concept of two people of the same sex getting "married" is the new concept... let THAT receive a new term and if need be perhaps even extend it the same legal rights as marriage.
But to suggest that gays can now wiggle into the term "marriage" and that traditional man/wife unions have to look for our own term is rediculous. It already exists and it is "marriage."
I have nothing against gays and in the past have had friends that were gay. No problem. I also wouldn't want someone disqualified from a job because they were gay. I am opposed to gay marriage, however. I don't feel I contradict myself.
That society tolerates homosexuality is fair. But for homosexuals to demand that society modify its traditional definitions of marriage simply because society is more tolerant of their lifestyle is not reasonable. Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman, not between a man and something who thinks he is a woman.
That they don't get marriage benefits is unfortunate, but that's the way it goes. I wish I didn't have asthma, but I do--which means I have to pay more to be healthy than someone who doesn't have asthma. I didn't choose to be asthmatic, but that's the way it goes.
Life isn't always fair and the courts can't and shouldn't try to "fix" the hands we were all dealt. Just as being asthamtic increases my cost of living, perhaps being gay also has its cost. Tough.
Hmm, given your experience I would start an 'Outsourced Network Monitoring and Intrusion Detection' and start offering your service to companies in your area. Then, label each responsible network administrator as a security risk and get them fired.
I seriously doubt they're going to arrest any of the customers. Or at least they aren't going to arrest many of them.
If they earned $10 million then there are apparently a lot of people that bought these things. You don't win elections or build rapport with the citizens in your area by arresting tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding, productive citizens for something like this. The constituents and citizens will be rightfully pissed off and will make their feelings clearly known.
This is just one more example of how things like the DMCA are out of step with reality. While I agree that the people that build and sold these things should be arrested, you're not going to score any brownie points with the public going after their customers--especially considering how many there are. I think I saw these things mentioned in spam for, what, $100? If so, 10 million would be about 100,000 customers. You can't arrest 100,000 people and win the next election.
I also suspect that while most people in the U.S. would probably agree that these guys should be in trouble, I doubt you'll find much sympathy for the cable providers when it comes to your next-door neighbor trying to avoid being extorted into paying what cable companies bill their subscribers.
In thecase of Cable companies, just like the RIAA, the first thing they need to do to stem piracy is price their product reasonably. If you price your product too high there WILL be a black market.
Region-encoding is just stupid, and always was. It's why I originally never bought a DVD player. I still haven't although it's mostly because I haven't wanted one often enough to justify even the $100 outlay.
Anyway, here in Mexico (Region 4) they sell DVD players in Blockbuster (and I'm sure elsewhere) that are region-less. That's because here--at least in Northern Mexico--we're close enough to the border that many people here buy DVDs on day-trips to U.S. border towns (Region 1) but when they rent them locally they are region 4. Obviously, you need to be able to use both.
This is a perfect example of how silly region encoding is. If it wasn't for the region-less players here in Mexico people wouldn't be buying DVDs when they visit the States. One could argue "Well, they'd be buying them in Mexico then." Not really. Most everyone with a U.S. visa tends to buy almost everything electronic in the U.S. because it's cheaper. CD players, car stereos, computers, etc. They buy everything up there. If they couldn't use the DVDs they buy in Texas in their DVD players in Mexico they probably just wouldn't buy the DVDs at all (since everything is rediculously priced in Mexico--another topic altogether). So the fact that Mexicans aren't subject to region-encoding (because region-less players are widely available) means even MORE sales for DVDs.
I'm glad someone "important" is finally saying what needs to be said. Region-encoding is counter-productive and doesn't do a thing to reduce piracy. It probably increases piracy and stifles legitimate commerce in DVD sales. And all this just so that the MPAA can control when their movies are released in certain areas of the world? Just goes to show how much they value CONTROL because it certainly never was a wise financial decision.
The other night we used my Wife's Windows laptop to watch a region 4 movie we rented here in Mexico. Windows told me "This is another region, you can only change regions 4 times. Are you sure you want to change it?" Clicked "No" and just watched it on my Linux machine instead. And people wonder why I don't use Windows anymore.:)
I'm really not worried about bulk emailers who have and use real email addresses. But when they're sending spam from "xxlksjdflkj@yahoo.com" or some other nonexistant/forged address, they'll never get whatever credential is included in the confirmation request.
The problem with challenge/response is if the spammers use joejob@yahoo.com and joejob@yahoo.com actually belongs to some poor guy totally unrelated to the spam, HE'S going to get thousands and thousands of challenge/response messages. So all the sudden your spam solution has caused a spam problem for joejob@yahoo.com... and any of the other hundreds of forged addresses spammers use each day.
Challenge/response is a brain-dead solution. It increases mail traffic and every user that uses it has the potential of sending bogus challenge/response messages to hundreds of users every day just because those people were the victim of having their address forged.
The quicker people forget about challenge/response the better. The last thing we want is everybody using it--that'd just be a perfect way for spammers to DDoS the email infrastructure.
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This can be accomplished in a linux environment too except I see it far more rarely.
Hmm, yeah, I See lots of WinXP users going in there and modifying their configuration and shutting down unneeded services. I'm sure that's much more common than seeing a decent Linux installation. Right.
I was thinking of going to Linux anyway and when WinXP worked out of the box on my laptop slower than my Win98 machine even though the new laptop was supposedly 3 times faster, that's what decided it for me. Sure, I could have dicked around with the WinXP settings, but why would I want to? I was sick of Microsoft for awhile and when they introduced product activation and my HP laptop didn't come with an OS installation disk I figured I'd go with an OS that I actually have OS installation CDs for.
Anyway, I switched for the speed and stayed for the freedom. Worked out great!
Properly configure both and you will see that although VMWare is fast under Linux (Faster than the Windows version) It is still not the same as running it natively.
I also wasn't talking about VMWare. I was saying that Win4Lin running Win98 runs the same applications faster than the same machine running WinXP. I'm talking about 10x faster when double-clicking Word. And that's the honest truth. It seemed faster when I was in Win4Lin and that's when I popped the XP hard drive back in and got the stopwatch out, then popped the Linux/Win4Lin hard drive back in and checked it there. The proof was in the numbers in launching Word and VB6. Those are the two applications I timed. The other apps seemed faster and I suspect they were, but I didn't bother timing them all.
I was just surprised I didn't take a performance HIT. I was perfectly willing to do so. I didn't plan on using Windows that much anyway so I would be willing to put up with it being a bit sluggish. That's why I was so surprised when it actually ran faster.
Don't believe me? Doesn't bother me. I'm a happy camper anyway and that's what matters to me. I'm not going to lose any sleep over a few guys on Slashdot not believing me, ACs no less.:)
Re:Expect their products to be leased tsarkon ..
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You are trolling, I know, but what the heck...
And you claim about moving from XP to Linux for performance, is a flat out bull faced lie. I dont like Microsoft, but linux is a rickety bucket of bolts and there is no way you can run Office and the other apps you are addicted to in a VM faster with Linux. Its not possible.
It is amusing when someone makes a fool of themselves, but it'd be even more amusing if you weren't an A.C.
Fact: Word 2000 and VisualStudio both run faster on my laptop under Win98 under Win4Lin under Linux than those same two applications under WinXP on the same laptop. That's a fact. I even took a stopwatch out and timed it. I'm talking "load times"--the time from when I double click the corresponding icon to when the app is loaded and ready to use.
Sorry, it's not impossible. It's my real world experience.
You probably sounded a lot smarter espousing here when you were a Windows Kiddie. You probably knew a fair amount about windows. Now you are a UNIX idiot. Congrats.
I'd rather be a UNIX idiot than a misinformed person that doesn't let reality get in the way of beliefs. Doesn't it suck when reality doesn't properly align with your view of how things should be?
Or, more likely, you are just a troll and I have just fed you.:)
Interestingly, a few apps (such as Paint Shop Pro) worked on earlier versions of Wine but no longer work for me with newer versions of Wine.
At some point I look forward to Wine doing most of what I need. But I doubt it'll get to the point that I can adequately develop and test a VisualStudio 6.0 application there. But if it could handle my QuickBooks and Quicken needs then my excursions into Windows would be even more rare than they already are (I usually do my business and personal accounting once per month, so that's usually about as often as I have to get into Win4Lin).
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold
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Well, depending on what you need VMWare for, just consider Win4Lin. Granted, VMWare does a whole ton of stuff that Win4Lin doesn't do and VMWare does it very well. But for 99% of the users Win4Lin makes more sense anyway.
VMWare is great for those that have to make their application work on different platforms. VMWare provides a great way to do that kind of testing without having to have a box (or a pluggable hard drive) for each platform. Just boot into Linux (or Windows, if that's your game) and then you can run entire operating systems within VMWare.
Win4Lin is EXCELLENT for those of us--and I think we're the majority of the emulation market--that just need to run some legacy Windows apps within Linux. I upgraded from WinXP to Linux for performances reasons in February and purchased Win4Lin for $89. It lets me run Windows under Linux and every single Windows application I've wanted to run has run fine under Win4Lin. That includes QuickBooks, Quicken, Microsoft Office 2000, VisualStudio 6.0, GoldWave, Paint Shop Pro, a number of 16-bit applications, IE, RealPlayer, etc. I have yet to find an application that doesn't work. Win4Lin does have limitations (USB support and you can't run XP within Win4Lin), but if you are really trying to migrate to Linux then this is not much of an issue. My USB devices work fine with Linux (scanner and camera) so I don't need them to work in Windows, and I don't have any legacy apps that require XP so that limitation isn't a factor either.
When I made my move to Linux I spent a week or two trying to decide which to buy--VMWare or Win4Lin. In the end, I went with Win4Lin. I just decided that what I really needed was some legacy Windows support and that's it. While I was tempted to get VMWare so I could do multi-platform testing, that was more of a "cool thing to be able to do" rather than something I really needed. So far I haven't needed that flexibility. And if what you want is to run Windows legacy apps in Win4Lin, you can't beat the speed. My Windows legacy apps run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than the same apps on the same computer under Windows XP!
Another factor is that Win4Lin uses the native file system whereas VMWare creates a "virtual disk" which ends up being a huge file on your drive somewhere. So Win4Lin runs out of a copy of Windows in my ~/win directory with a whole Windows file structure below it. I can copy/delete, etc. anything in my Windows installation from my Linux shell. And since it uses the native filesystem, it's fast. VMWare, on the other hand, creates a virtual disk which is a huge file somewhere in your filesystem. So you'll see your Windows installation as a 2GB file and the only way to get data out of it is to run VMWare, enter that environment, and then copy it out (using FTP, networking, etc.). Meanwhile, I can get to every file in my Win4Lin installation just by cd'ing to that directory. I don't actually have to run Win4Lin to get to my files.
Anyway, long rant... what I really meant to address is your statement "Why would they go to a subscription model? Because they CAN?" Well, maybe. But I think only a small percentage of the Win4Lin/VMWare market really NEEDS VMWare. For most companies migrating from Windows to Linux Win4Lin is a much cheaper, much faster solution. So I'm not so sure VMWare can really just decide to go subscription "because they can"--unless they plan on surviving on just the developer's market who very well may NEED VMWare. The rest of the market (which is huge) would be fine with Win4Lin.
The point is, they seem to have little regard for people in 'smaller' cars and most don't even have a NEED for these monsters.
That's a gross generalization. Yes, I'm sure you notice them more since they have big vehicles. But I've personally seen just as many--if not more--bad drivers driving smaller cars than SUVs. But when they do it you just honk your horn and flip them off and forget about it. When it happens with an SUV all the sudden it's some crusade.
They're just bad drivers that have big cars. Keep it in perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it most definitely shouldn't.
Contrary to right-wing scaremongering, its mandated reductions in greenhouse emissions are quite moderate and and attainable (before Bush rejected it, most enviros blasted the Kyoto treaty for being pathetically inadequate).
It was killed 99-0 in the U.S. Senate during the Clinton administration. Bush just did us all the favor of burying it rather than letting there be any question as to whether or not it could be revived.
It would provide an impetus for developing new fuel/energy technologies that could very well boost the economy.
I'd rather we make those developments with our economy humming along with current energy resources rather than trying to do it while our economy is being stifled by premature CO2 caps.
If the US doesn't develop this technology, Japan and Europe will, which certainly won't do much to cure our our trade deficit.
It doesn't matter who develops it. Once it is developed, it will be used worldwide. If the Europeans can find some good alternative energy source, more power to them! We'll implement it once it makes financial sense.
Gas/electric hybrid vehicles are now a reality - in fact, the Toyota Prius won several awards for best car of the year.
But does it make financial sense? How much does it cost? Does it look like a normal car, or some futuristic bubble that I don't want regardless of how cheap or efficient it is?
Public transportation should also be encouraged - Europe has a very efficient and reliable rail system, and there's no reason why the US can't have one.
Public transportation is good, where applicable.
The money for funding all this could be attained by stopping corporate welfare for the oil & auto industries, as well as diverting money from all the pork-barrel highway funding projects that Congress is so fond of.
Well, I happen to be fond of working highways so I'm glad Congress shares my views.
Basically, you're asking for a change in American attitudes. First, if 99% of Americans like their current attitudes, what right do you have to say they should change?
Give me a solution that fits my lifestyle. I like the freedom a car gives me. I like being able to drive from NYC to LA. If you give me the option to buy a normal-looking car that gets 100mpg for $2k more than the same car that gets 25mpg, I'll pay the extra $2k. But don't expect me to pay 20% more for a car that I don't even like. And don't base your economic and envrionmental goals on the assumption I'm going to start taking a train or bike to work.
This is based on the (incorrect) assumption that we actually know what is best. We can't even conclusively conclude that global warming is being caused by humans. Regardless of whether or not it is natural, some predict that global warming will help, some say that it will hurt, and others say that it will help some areas and hurt othrs.
So, what you're saying is that we should take action on something we don't know we're effecting to achieve effects that we aren't sure will help or hurt. Seems silly to me.
It is silly to take action before we a) Know there is a problem, b) Know the effects of the problem, and c) Know how our changes will impact the situation. If we have any doubts about the answers to any of the above, taking any action could be just as easily destructive as helpful.
Even if they did, I don't think an occasional hotel room or car rental is particularly secretive or useful to the government (unless it happened to be in Afghanistan). They are occasional expenses that might tell about your vacation tastes, not your lifestyle on a day-to-day business. What is a good idea to avoid is buying every day stuff with credit cards which would let the FBI (or anyone else) build a picture of your daily life.
It's one thing to look someone's bank/credit card account and say "Oh, he went to Cancun on vacation." It is quite another to look at the same and say, "Ok, he buys an Egg McMuffin on the way each day to work, buys $20 of gas for his Honda every week so he probably drives about 300 miles a week so purchasing gas more frequently might indicate an unusual out-of-town trip, he bought books on Amazon about skycrapers and high explosives so that might be suspicious, he checks into a cheap hotel every Wednesday so he is probably having an affair..."
One thing is that the government knows where you vacation, quite another is that they can figure out your life. Neither is desireable, but the first option worries me a lot less.
I pretty much haven't used credit cards in the last 8 years. About the only thing they'll see transaction-wise on my credit card bills is payment for hosting services and some business expenses. I've paid for my last two cars in cash so not much to dig up on me there. And while they can see my ATM cash-withdrawl activity, that's not going to tell them much except where I am (which is usually where I live).
So, basically, the solution to this kind of crap is not doing anything that gives away personal information about yourself. Cash is usually pretty anonymous.
I suspect that if the FBI did a financial investigation about all they could say is "He doesn't seem to own a house, he has bought two cars in cash, and based on ATM withdrawls we know approximately where he lives." If they look at my IRS records then they'd know exactly where I live, which is overseas... Actually, the lack of information that they could dig up probably makes me look like a terrorist or drug dealer. :(
They can only track those aspects of your life that you let them track. Live smart, transact intelligently, and you can maintain a lot of your privacy.
My informational website--the kind of site someone is looking for when they look for content on the subject of my website--gets virtually all its search engine referrals from Google. As far as my site goes, you could completely eliminate the other search engines and I probably wouldn't even notice it in my site traffic.
I don't understand. You're saying that if the statue of limitations was 2 days that more people would engage in public nudity?
Question: What is "risky public nudity?"
Comment: If more people do it in places where that behavior is being seen by people that don't want to see it, then these people will be reported and prosecuted. A couple of prosecutions and it will be clear that if you want to do something like this, you had either better get permission from anyone present or do it when there's no-one that can be offended by it.
Actually, I think the solution would be to make the statue of limitations on public nudity be, say, 2 days. Enough time for someome that was offended to report it. If no-one reports it in 2 days, no-one was offended and no harm, no foul, and certainly no crime.
So I can buy region 1 DVDs for $9 when I visit the U.S. and rent region 4 DVDs here in Mexico. Perfect!
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_ countries.htm
The First, Second, Third World and the Forth World
A rough probably outdated model of the geopolitical world from the time of the cold war. There is no official definition of the terms of the first, second, and the third world. Following OWNO's explanation of the terms.
Four Worlds After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs of contrary views on government and the politically correct society: the bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, - the "First World" - and the Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World". The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."
The in the early 1970s coined term of the "Forth World" refers to widely unknown nations (cultural entities) of indigenous peoples, living within or across state boundaries.
First there was the three worlds model
The origin of the terminology is unclear. In 1952 Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, wrote an article in the French magazine L'Observateur which ended by comparing the Third World with the Third Estate: "ce Tiers Monde ignore, exploite, meprise comme le Tiers Etat" (this ignored Third World, exploited, scorned like the Third Estate). Other sources claim that Charles de Gaulle coined the term Third World, maybe de Gaulle only has quoted Sauvy. However...
The term "First World" refers to so called developed, capitalist, industrial countries, roughly, a bloc of countries aligned with the United States with common political and economic interests: North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
"Second World" refers to the (former) communist-socialist, industrial states, (formerly the Eastern bloc, the territory and sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic) today: Russia, Eastern Europe (e.g., Poland) and some of the Turk States (e.g., Kazakhstan) as well as China.
"Third World" are all the other countries, today often used to roughly describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The term Third World includes as well capitalist (e.g., Venezuela) and communist (e.g., North Korea) countries as very rich (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and very poor (e.g., Mali) countries.
The term "Forth World" first came into use in 1974 with the publication of Shuswap Chief George Manuel's: The fourth world : an Indian reality (amazon link to the book), the term refers to nations (cultural entities, ethnic groups) of indigenous peoples living within or across state boundaries (political units, states).
What we're talking about here is financial and legal definitions.
The legal definition of marriage includes the requirement that it be between a man and woman. They're asking that to be changed. That's kind of like if I practice some kind of weird black magic to cure people and getting upset because the state won't cerify me as a "doctor." They're not stopping me from doing what I do, but they're not going to bend the definition of "doctor" to include something that is outside what society and the law agrees constitutes a doctor. The same goes for marriage.
Financially I believe gays have even less standing. We all make decisions that affect us financially and we all have burdens that are not of our choosing that affect us financially. I was born with asthma, that's going to cost me more. They were, presumably, born gay and that's going to cost them more because they aren't going to get any tax benefits (if there are any!) from being married.
Did I misunderstand you? Are you suggesting that marriage, which has always been the union between a man and a woman, should now be open to gay individuals and if we want something that only means man and woman that we should create a new term for THAT?
I hate to break it to you, we DO have a term for that. It's "marriage." The concept of two people of the same sex getting "married" is the new concept... let THAT receive a new term and if need be perhaps even extend it the same legal rights as marriage.
But to suggest that gays can now wiggle into the term "marriage" and that traditional man/wife unions have to look for our own term is rediculous. It already exists and it is "marriage."
That society tolerates homosexuality is fair. But for homosexuals to demand that society modify its traditional definitions of marriage simply because society is more tolerant of their lifestyle is not reasonable. Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman, not between a man and something who thinks he is a woman.
That they don't get marriage benefits is unfortunate, but that's the way it goes. I wish I didn't have asthma, but I do--which means I have to pay more to be healthy than someone who doesn't have asthma. I didn't choose to be asthmatic, but that's the way it goes.
Life isn't always fair and the courts can't and shouldn't try to "fix" the hands we were all dealt. Just as being asthamtic increases my cost of living, perhaps being gay also has its cost. Tough.
A million each over 5 years and that isn't nearly a large amount? Man, I want YOUR job. :)
If they earned $10 million then there are apparently a lot of people that bought these things. You don't win elections or build rapport with the citizens in your area by arresting tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding, productive citizens for something like this. The constituents and citizens will be rightfully pissed off and will make their feelings clearly known.
This is just one more example of how things like the DMCA are out of step with reality. While I agree that the people that build and sold these things should be arrested, you're not going to score any brownie points with the public going after their customers--especially considering how many there are. I think I saw these things mentioned in spam for, what, $100? If so, 10 million would be about 100,000 customers. You can't arrest 100,000 people and win the next election.
I also suspect that while most people in the U.S. would probably agree that these guys should be in trouble, I doubt you'll find much sympathy for the cable providers when it comes to your next-door neighbor trying to avoid being extorted into paying what cable companies bill their subscribers.
In thecase of Cable companies, just like the RIAA, the first thing they need to do to stem piracy is price their product reasonably. If you price your product too high there WILL be a black market.
Anyway, here in Mexico (Region 4) they sell DVD players in Blockbuster (and I'm sure elsewhere) that are region-less. That's because here--at least in Northern Mexico--we're close enough to the border that many people here buy DVDs on day-trips to U.S. border towns (Region 1) but when they rent them locally they are region 4. Obviously, you need to be able to use both.
This is a perfect example of how silly region encoding is. If it wasn't for the region-less players here in Mexico people wouldn't be buying DVDs when they visit the States. One could argue "Well, they'd be buying them in Mexico then." Not really. Most everyone with a U.S. visa tends to buy almost everything electronic in the U.S. because it's cheaper. CD players, car stereos, computers, etc. They buy everything up there. If they couldn't use the DVDs they buy in Texas in their DVD players in Mexico they probably just wouldn't buy the DVDs at all (since everything is rediculously priced in Mexico--another topic altogether). So the fact that Mexicans aren't subject to region-encoding (because region-less players are widely available) means even MORE sales for DVDs.
I'm glad someone "important" is finally saying what needs to be said. Region-encoding is counter-productive and doesn't do a thing to reduce piracy. It probably increases piracy and stifles legitimate commerce in DVD sales. And all this just so that the MPAA can control when their movies are released in certain areas of the world? Just goes to show how much they value CONTROL because it certainly never was a wise financial decision.
The other night we used my Wife's Windows laptop to watch a region 4 movie we rented here in Mexico. Windows told me "This is another region, you can only change regions 4 times. Are you sure you want to change it?" Clicked "No" and just watched it on my Linux machine instead. And people wonder why I don't use Windows anymore. :)
The problem with challenge/response is if the spammers use joejob@yahoo.com and joejob@yahoo.com actually belongs to some poor guy totally unrelated to the spam, HE'S going to get thousands and thousands of challenge/response messages. So all the sudden your spam solution has caused a spam problem for joejob@yahoo.com... and any of the other hundreds of forged addresses spammers use each day.
Challenge/response is a brain-dead solution. It increases mail traffic and every user that uses it has the potential of sending bogus challenge/response messages to hundreds of users every day just because those people were the victim of having their address forged.
The quicker people forget about challenge/response the better. The last thing we want is everybody using it--that'd just be a perfect way for spammers to DDoS the email infrastructure.
Hmm, yeah, I See lots of WinXP users going in there and modifying their configuration and shutting down unneeded services. I'm sure that's much more common than seeing a decent Linux installation. Right.
I was thinking of going to Linux anyway and when WinXP worked out of the box on my laptop slower than my Win98 machine even though the new laptop was supposedly 3 times faster, that's what decided it for me. Sure, I could have dicked around with the WinXP settings, but why would I want to? I was sick of Microsoft for awhile and when they introduced product activation and my HP laptop didn't come with an OS installation disk I figured I'd go with an OS that I actually have OS installation CDs for.
Anyway, I switched for the speed and stayed for the freedom. Worked out great!
Properly configure both and you will see that although VMWare is fast under Linux (Faster than the Windows version) It is still not the same as running it natively.
I also wasn't talking about VMWare. I was saying that Win4Lin running Win98 runs the same applications faster than the same machine running WinXP. I'm talking about 10x faster when double-clicking Word. And that's the honest truth. It seemed faster when I was in Win4Lin and that's when I popped the XP hard drive back in and got the stopwatch out, then popped the Linux/Win4Lin hard drive back in and checked it there. The proof was in the numbers in launching Word and VB6. Those are the two applications I timed. The other apps seemed faster and I suspect they were, but I didn't bother timing them all.
I was just surprised I didn't take a performance HIT. I was perfectly willing to do so. I didn't plan on using Windows that much anyway so I would be willing to put up with it being a bit sluggish. That's why I was so surprised when it actually ran faster.
Don't believe me? Doesn't bother me. I'm a happy camper anyway and that's what matters to me. I'm not going to lose any sleep over a few guys on Slashdot not believing me, ACs no less. :)
And you claim about moving from XP to Linux for performance, is a flat out bull faced lie. I dont like Microsoft, but linux is a rickety bucket of bolts and there is no way you can run Office and the other apps you are addicted to in a VM faster with Linux. Its not possible.
It is amusing when someone makes a fool of themselves, but it'd be even more amusing if you weren't an A.C.
Fact: Word 2000 and VisualStudio both run faster on my laptop under Win98 under Win4Lin under Linux than those same two applications under WinXP on the same laptop. That's a fact. I even took a stopwatch out and timed it. I'm talking "load times"--the time from when I double click the corresponding icon to when the app is loaded and ready to use.
Sorry, it's not impossible. It's my real world experience.
You probably sounded a lot smarter espousing here when you were a Windows Kiddie. You probably knew a fair amount about windows. Now you are a UNIX idiot. Congrats.
I'd rather be a UNIX idiot than a misinformed person that doesn't let reality get in the way of beliefs. Doesn't it suck when reality doesn't properly align with your view of how things should be?
Or, more likely, you are just a troll and I have just fed you. :)
At some point I look forward to Wine doing most of what I need. But I doubt it'll get to the point that I can adequately develop and test a VisualStudio 6.0 application there. But if it could handle my QuickBooks and Quicken needs then my excursions into Windows would be even more rare than they already are (I usually do my business and personal accounting once per month, so that's usually about as often as I have to get into Win4Lin).
VMWare is great for those that have to make their application work on different platforms. VMWare provides a great way to do that kind of testing without having to have a box (or a pluggable hard drive) for each platform. Just boot into Linux (or Windows, if that's your game) and then you can run entire operating systems within VMWare.
Win4Lin is EXCELLENT for those of us--and I think we're the majority of the emulation market--that just need to run some legacy Windows apps within Linux. I upgraded from WinXP to Linux for performances reasons in February and purchased Win4Lin for $89. It lets me run Windows under Linux and every single Windows application I've wanted to run has run fine under Win4Lin. That includes QuickBooks, Quicken, Microsoft Office 2000, VisualStudio 6.0, GoldWave, Paint Shop Pro, a number of 16-bit applications, IE, RealPlayer, etc. I have yet to find an application that doesn't work. Win4Lin does have limitations (USB support and you can't run XP within Win4Lin), but if you are really trying to migrate to Linux then this is not much of an issue. My USB devices work fine with Linux (scanner and camera) so I don't need them to work in Windows, and I don't have any legacy apps that require XP so that limitation isn't a factor either.
When I made my move to Linux I spent a week or two trying to decide which to buy--VMWare or Win4Lin. In the end, I went with Win4Lin. I just decided that what I really needed was some legacy Windows support and that's it. While I was tempted to get VMWare so I could do multi-platform testing, that was more of a "cool thing to be able to do" rather than something I really needed. So far I haven't needed that flexibility. And if what you want is to run Windows legacy apps in Win4Lin, you can't beat the speed. My Windows legacy apps run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than the same apps on the same computer under Windows XP!
Another factor is that Win4Lin uses the native file system whereas VMWare creates a "virtual disk" which ends up being a huge file on your drive somewhere. So Win4Lin runs out of a copy of Windows in my ~/win directory with a whole Windows file structure below it. I can copy/delete, etc. anything in my Windows installation from my Linux shell. And since it uses the native filesystem, it's fast. VMWare, on the other hand, creates a virtual disk which is a huge file somewhere in your filesystem. So you'll see your Windows installation as a 2GB file and the only way to get data out of it is to run VMWare, enter that environment, and then copy it out (using FTP, networking, etc.). Meanwhile, I can get to every file in my Win4Lin installation just by cd'ing to that directory. I don't actually have to run Win4Lin to get to my files.
Anyway, long rant... what I really meant to address is your statement "Why would they go to a subscription model? Because they CAN?" Well, maybe. But I think only a small percentage of the Win4Lin/VMWare market really NEEDS VMWare. For most companies migrating from Windows to Linux Win4Lin is a much cheaper, much faster solution. So I'm not so sure VMWare can really just decide to go subscription "because they can"--unless they plan on surviving on just the developer's market who very well may NEED VMWare. The rest of the market (which is huge) would be fine with Win4Lin.
That's a gross generalization. Yes, I'm sure you notice them more since they have big vehicles. But I've personally seen just as many--if not more--bad drivers driving smaller cars than SUVs. But when they do it you just honk your horn and flip them off and forget about it. When it happens with an SUV all the sudden it's some crusade.
They're just bad drivers that have big cars. Keep it in perspective.