After all, what's the problem with Microsoft making available the Best and Fastest Operating System it can produce?
If all you're concerned about is speed, then download FreeDOS. Just because XP is faster at certain tasks does *not* automatically make it a better experience. The reason that Vista is so much slower than XP is because of all the protection that has been implemented to make it harder to get a malware infection. Yes, it's still possible to get a malware infection in Vista, just as it's still possible in 7, but it's a damned sight harder. Considering the amount of spam we all get, not to mention the intrusion attempts that my servers see from botnets, I'd think you'd rather that people have better protection against that crap.
And don't give me that "linux is immune to viruses" bullshit. The only reason Linux is any better with viruses is Linux's relative obscurity. It's not a mainstream OS at the moment, and most of its users tend to be power/advanced computer users at that. This makes it not a viable target for a virus writer. However if a virus writer wanted, he could very easily write something that could zombie a Linux box. You could even write a virus that's capable of rooting a system via e-mail infection, even if the user runs in userland...
Use basic social engineering. Make something enticing for users to open up, some executable or flash video or something. User opens it, gets his 5s of reward, closes it, deletes the e-mail. Meanwhile, the program has added a silent keylogger to ~/.xinitrc, which watches ps for sudo and gksudo threads... when those are running, it logs all input until a mouseclick or [enter] is pressed. Now it's got your root password, and can set itself up as a startup service, affecting other accounts. And thanks to the wonders of the graphical boot screens that most distros have on them, the user will probably never notice that a new service is running.
Call me when Ubuntu can play a Blu-Ray movie direct to my TV via HDMI, with audio, at 1080p. Until then, I'm going to have to keep using Windows on my HTPC.
Once more in English? I think there's a verb tense issue, but even with that, you're still wrong....
XP can actually use 4GB of RAM. The problem is that your virtual memory (swap) counts towards that limit. If you have 768MB of swap enabled on a system with 4GB of physical memory, then you're only going to see 3.25GB of physical RAM being used. Disable swap, and you'll find it uses 4GB of RAM.
Last year, we lost about half of our lawn to grubs (and skunks digging for grubs), and reseeded with thyme. Requires virtually no watering at all, and doesn't grow higher than ankle height, so doesn't need to be cut. It also smells better, and is a lot more comfortable on bare feet if you choose to walk around barefooted... About the only down side is that following the spring thaw, it stays brown for a little longer than grass (about 4 days longer this year), but that shouldn't be an issue at all for California.
That's why I turn T9 predictive text on when I use SMS. People I send messages to get nice, clear, concise English, and people who don't have the courtesy to try to spell things properly to me get ignored.
If I'm not mistaken, I think most airlines have signs all over the place informing you NOT to put laptops in your checked luggage (in addition to leaving them out of any x-rayed carry-ons). They could fairly easily deny responsibility at that point.
You're not mistaken. I'm also not aware of any airline that would count your laptop against your carry-on limit, either.
There's actually several devices that support computer control, either via wireless or powerline ethernet, and a great many examples out there on the Internet of automated houses.
A quick Google search also reveals several outfits like these folks who make a living at selling stuff for so-called smart houses. While I can't remember the link off the top of my head, there was even a story here on Slashdot a few years ago about a guy who'd hooked up his Christmas lights to a compupter, and put that computer on the Internet along with a live webcam of the lights; he set up an interface allowing people to turn his lights on/off and was inviting the world to try it out.
Yes, I know I shouldn't really be replying to an AC, but when said AC is calling somebody a 'tard and is clearly ignorant of what the OP was talking about... >.
Yeah, most airlines don't assume liability for electronic equipment, but that really irks me. Carry-on requirements are getting so restrictive I've started checking bags regularly (often paying for even one bag), something I thought I'd never do.
Airlines don't assume liability for damaged electronics that were checked at all. I'm not aware of any airline that'll accept liability for your broken laptop, broken camera, etc. I'm also not aware of any airline that would count a laptop computer against your carry-on limit, either. Purses/handbags also don't count against your carry-on limit. And I do a fair amount of flying, too...
One of my first thougts was to set it up as an HTPC, actually. Relatively small form factor, you can hook up a TV tuner through USB, and it's got a built-in DVD player. Most laptops also have some form of TV out, either in the form of an S-Video or HDMI, or your TV might support VGA-in. Laptops are usually a fair amount quieter than desktops as well, making them a better choice for HTPC unless you're purpose-building a system for it.
In that case, however, it's entirely reasonable to ask how powerful the laptop in question is, and what kind of accressories it has.
Choosing an option without a webcam isn't why you had to wait for your Mini 9. When I ordered one (64GB HDD, Ubuntu, 2GB of RAM, no webcam) I got it inside of a week. Chances are the reason you had to wait was because you chose a common configuration that everybody else was ordering.
You could also look at a larger screen size of a notebook. Again with Dells, you can quite easily specify no webcam option. It's actually a charged upgrade for them to get the webcam. I'm fairly sure that other manufacturers can also sell you a notebook without a webcam, but HP doesn't sell a consumer laptop with Linux preinstalled.:)
Boeing isn't selling airplanes for less than it costs them to make it. Boeing is also not in the business of bribing airlines to buy the 777 over, say, the A380.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that Intel is an American company, and everything to do with the fact that Intel is selling its products at a loss in an attempt to drive the competition out of business, which is illegal, even in the US, when you control the dominant share of the market.
Strictly speaking, 100m is a fuzzy limit. More of a rule of thumb than anything, and largely due to signal degradation and reduction causing you to leech bandwidth. It's true that high bandwidth connections are better over short distances, and it's true that you're better off running switches every so often to repeat/rebroadcast the signal, but when modern computers are coming with gigabit ethernet cards soldered onto the motherboard (and it's nearly impossible to find a mainstream mobo that doesn't have one), you can quite easily get away with installing long runs of > 100m without the users noticing a significant loss of quality. It'll still be there, but they're getting so much bandwidth that they probably won't care if they lose 15% of it.
Back when the fastest you could get was 10mbit, and even before then when you were looking at 1mbit connections, it was a little more important to keep the runs short.
All that said, you're still better off with a switch to repeat the signal every so often. But you might not have the budget for it.
I haven't set foot in the US since 2001, actually, and I've never called it my home. I've lived in Europe and the Americas, and spent a lot of time travelling in some of the poorer parts of the world, including countries where US citizens are not allowed to go, like Cuba. In places that are less US-friendly, they don't see the US as a land of opportunity, they see it as an imperialist power trying to extend its influence over people who don't want it.
And why do I need to keep repeating myself when people take a statement about criminals and extend it to a generalization about everybody who lives in poverty? Did you actually read what's been said? Nowhere does it say that this sense of entitlement extends to the general populace. Not once. Because it doesn't. It applies to the people actually committing the piracy.
Actually, the three round limit serves to provide a more controlled ammo consumption than anything else.
Yah. The tendency of soldiers was to panic and hold the trigger back until their magazine was spent, wasting large amounts of ammunition firing at nothing because the recoil of the weapon, while significantly smaller than older weapons like the M1 Garand, was still enough to get the barrel pointing at nothing. Spray and Pray. The 3-round limit was introduced to force the soldiers to release the trigger, re-aim, and continue firing, limiting the amount of ammunition wasted in panic situations like that.
The proper firing position for any fully automatic weapon is to place one hand over the top of the weapon just forward of the feed tray/ejection port and rest your arm on it. The weight naturally holds the weapon in place, stops barrel climb, and doesn't affect accuracy like stiffly holding it down would.
That actually depends on the weapon. The proper firing position on the FN MAG (C6 in Canada, M240 in the US) is with your right-hand on the grip, and your left hand resting on the stock, holding it into the fleshy part of your shoulder so you don't hurt yourself with recoil when firing the weapon.
Similarly, the FN MINIMI (C9 in Canada, M249 in the US) also uses a left-hand position on the stock when firing with a bipod.
When did I say that everyone feels that way? I said it explains the mentality behind people who commit piracy, not that it reflects the mentality of the whole country. They feel they're entitled to it, and they're driven by greed. Can you offer a better explanation of why piracy still happens?
If everyone felt that way, there'd be 10 million pirates in Somalia's waters, as opposed to the relatively small number that there actually are.
Well, how much training do you 'really' need? Shooting a gun is pretty easy.
Shooting a gun is pretty easy. Hitting what you're shooting at, not so much. It takes a lot of practice, and even with that practice, if you can't stay calm when you're under the wire, you're still screwed. I've heard many cases of people unloading entire magazines from 15' away and hitting nothing. And when you put a fully automatic weapon into somebody's hands it gets even worse... the first bullet *might* be on target, but anything beyond that is a dice roll.
I think you're *hugely* overestimating the ability of merchant sailors to use weapons to adequately defend themselves. There's a reason that the US Army redesigned the M16 during the Vietnam conflict to prevent it from firing more than 3 bullets without letting go of the trigger.
And I say that as somebody who classed marksman, with both pistol and rifle, when I was in the Canadian army.
Oh give me a fucking break. "Global inequality" doesn't give you the right to start holding human beings hostage for ransom money.
No. It doesn't. It does, however, explain why it happens. A person grows up in abject poverty, and thanks to mass media's portrayal of the western world, he realizes just how much poverty he's got to deal with. He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
That sense of entitlement is what, he feels, gives him the right to hold a person hostage demanding ransom.
As you well know, however, potential does not equate actual presence. As long as the conflict of interest is declared, it's still possible to carry on without replacing the players. As I said before, there've been cases in the past where judges had conflicts of interest and were still able to render a fair and appropriate judgement based on what the law actually says. Another case, one that's much more recent, that jumps immediately to mind is the one that was very well documented on Nova, in the episode "Intelligent Design on Trial". You can watch the episode here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/. Judge John Jones, who heard the case, had a history and background that suggested he may have unfairly ruled against the plaintiffs, but with the potential conflict of interest in the open, the case was still heard by him, and he still rendered a fair judgement based on the facts and the law, and not his personal bias.
And if the defendants were aware of the potential conflict and chose to go through with the trial without raising any questions, then it's tacit acceptance of the potential bias, and of the consequences.
Give him some points... 5.56 comes in boxes of 30, each of which contains 3 clips of 10. You can put those clips into a speed loader to load the mag...:)
Probably be better off with a long gun... but the message I got from TFA and TFS was that they wanted to avoid using firearms, and wanted non-lethal methods. Running with a military escort isn't always an option, nor is running armed.
I like the water cannon best. It's dead simple, and it wouldn't be hard to set up a computer-aimed automated defense system... set yourself up with dozens of these, pumping out seawater, and reinforce the bow to withstand a ramming. In the event of pirate attack, go to full throttle and use water cannons to deter boarders.
I know this will probably get modded down, but it's worth pointing out that his membership in the organization does not necessarily mean that it biased his decision.
If a situation like TPB were to happen in Canada, for example, it would have been illegal. While filesharing is perfectly legal in Canada, and there've been numerous cases where hosting a torrent site does not constitute actual filesharing, the fact that TPB was turning a massive profit off advertising revenues and other services would make it illegal. There's that ever-so-important clause in Canadian copyright law that says it's fine, as long as it's not for commercial purposes or profit.
I'm not an expert on Swedish copyright law. I'm not really an expert on Canadian copyright law, either, but I would be very surprised to find that Sweden's take on it is significantly different from Canada's on that point.
There've been many many cases in the past where judges have belonged to organizations or had practices that could have biased their opinion, and they were still able to pass a fair judgement based on what the law actually says. The judge who freed the slaves in England, for example, owned slaves himself.
His membership in the organization does not automatically mean that it biased his opinion.
The latter, at the extreme, cut off their genitalia. This is a group I have a little more trouble viewing as "normal". Or am I just too hung up on the extreme?
Strictly speaking, they don't actually cut off the genitalia. The surgery to turn an outie into an innie actually reuses most of the physical matter and rewires the nerves to allow for sexual stimulation and orgasm....
As for why T is still in the acronym, it's because an awful lot of transgenders are actually queer as well. Most of the late-life transsexuals that I know (people who transitioned after they were 20 or so) went through their early years thinking that either A) they were homosexual themselves, or B) that they were heterosexual, but didn't fit into the socially established norm. After they realize that they're trans, that label changes, but their attraction to either males or females remains the same. Probably every single transgender I've known has uttered the words "I've tried being a (guy/girl) and it's just not working. It feels wrong."
It's something you won't ever really understand until you meet somebody who's trans... but once you do, you get it. They're a very stark example of the neurochemical differences between male and female brains, and how it's possible, thanks to messed up biochemistry early in life, to develop a brain that doesn't have the same sex as the body. Usually, it's not possible to reverse that development once the damage is done. For all intents and purposes, a person who actually *is* trans is their identified sex, regardless of what their body looks like... and that person may or may not be homosexual.
You also need to understand that the suicide rate among pre-operative transgenders is about 50%. That's the highest of *any* demographic. A large part of that is because of people who lack experience/knowledge with them, and treat them like social pariahs.... They're shunned away, abused, threatened with physical violence, and treated as the butt of peoples' jokes all because of something that they see as a cosmic mistake... it's also the only "illness" within psychiatry that has a single treatment that's about 97% effective in helping the person to become a productive and stable member of society. Most other single treatments within the field are happy to see a success rate of 5-10%. By contrast the suicide rate among post-op transgenders is lower than the national average for society at large.
Take with a grain, yadda yadda. Most of my experience is with people going male-to-female, and I've actually only ever known one person going the other way. It's worth noting, however, that in my experience about half of the transgenders who go into it identifying as a lesbian end up deciding that guys aren't actually that bad once they're further down the road, and taking hormones, and working towards reassignment.
There's stations elsewhere that do that, too... Live 88.5 in Ottawa, Ontario, for example. They play tons of local and indie music, and even do an annual battle of the bands-type contest with $5000 in funding in the first round, $40,000 the second, and $250,000 the final. They also own a club where they've been known to have concerts for indie bands, as well as to host some bigger names for surprise and invitational concerts.
The power of P2P is not in having "pirates" share music. It is allowing fans to freely share and promote artists. This is not something that can be done today without fear of retribution from an industry that doesn't care about facts or truths.
Ah. But in order to be a fan in the first place, you have to know the band exists. That means you have to have heard their stuff. How many Clearchannel-owned radio stations play indie music? (How many of you even know which stations aren't Clearchannel?) Aside from some of the really big names who are currently unsigned (or who are signed to their own label), like the Rolling Stones, and The Offspring, have you ever even heard of some of the indie groups, or the ones who are signed to smaller labels entirely?
If I were to mention, for example, the band Spiral Beach, how many here have heard of them? Some, I'm sure. But a great many who haven't, because they're signed to a small Canadian label, and don't tend to get played on Clearchannel stations, even the ones that broadcast in Canada and have to meet the CanCon regulations.
The essay's point is this: Most people don't go looking for stuff they haven't heard of. As a result, P2P and download sites don't tend to have the hidden gems and indie productions on their top 100 list. Because of that, a lot of people will never hear of the band. Rinse. Repeat.
How many people only ever listen to stations named Z, or The Fox, or Bob, or KISS, or Hot, etc? P2P has replaced the old way of spreading bands around: making a mix for somebody. Because you can do it yourself, you're only ever going to make a mix of people you've heard of. The result? Sign onto a big label who can/will get your name out, or risk being stuck with a total fan base of 1000 people.
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If all you're concerned about is speed, then download FreeDOS. Just because XP is faster at certain tasks does *not* automatically make it a better experience. The reason that Vista is so much slower than XP is because of all the protection that has been implemented to make it harder to get a malware infection. Yes, it's still possible to get a malware infection in Vista, just as it's still possible in 7, but it's a damned sight harder. Considering the amount of spam we all get, not to mention the intrusion attempts that my servers see from botnets, I'd think you'd rather that people have better protection against that crap.
And don't give me that "linux is immune to viruses" bullshit. The only reason Linux is any better with viruses is Linux's relative obscurity. It's not a mainstream OS at the moment, and most of its users tend to be power/advanced computer users at that. This makes it not a viable target for a virus writer. However if a virus writer wanted, he could very easily write something that could zombie a Linux box. You could even write a virus that's capable of rooting a system via e-mail infection, even if the user runs in userland...
Use basic social engineering. Make something enticing for users to open up, some executable or flash video or something. User opens it, gets his 5s of reward, closes it, deletes the e-mail. Meanwhile, the program has added a silent keylogger to ~/.xinitrc, which watches ps for sudo and gksudo threads... when those are running, it logs all input until a mouseclick or [enter] is pressed. Now it's got your root password, and can set itself up as a startup service, affecting other accounts. And thanks to the wonders of the graphical boot screens that most distros have on them, the user will probably never notice that a new service is running.
Call me when Ubuntu can play a Blu-Ray movie direct to my TV via HDMI, with audio, at 1080p. Until then, I'm going to have to keep using Windows on my HTPC.
Once more in English? I think there's a verb tense issue, but even with that, you're still wrong....
XP can actually use 4GB of RAM. The problem is that your virtual memory (swap) counts towards that limit. If you have 768MB of swap enabled on a system with 4GB of physical memory, then you're only going to see 3.25GB of physical RAM being used. Disable swap, and you'll find it uses 4GB of RAM.
Last year, we lost about half of our lawn to grubs (and skunks digging for grubs), and reseeded with thyme. Requires virtually no watering at all, and doesn't grow higher than ankle height, so doesn't need to be cut. It also smells better, and is a lot more comfortable on bare feet if you choose to walk around barefooted... About the only down side is that following the spring thaw, it stays brown for a little longer than grass (about 4 days longer this year), but that shouldn't be an issue at all for California.
That's why I turn T9 predictive text on when I use SMS. People I send messages to get nice, clear, concise English, and people who don't have the courtesy to try to spell things properly to me get ignored.
You're not mistaken. I'm also not aware of any airline that would count your laptop against your carry-on limit, either.
There's actually several devices that support computer control, either via wireless or powerline ethernet, and a great many examples out there on the Internet of automated houses.
A quick Google search also reveals several outfits like these folks who make a living at selling stuff for so-called smart houses. While I can't remember the link off the top of my head, there was even a story here on Slashdot a few years ago about a guy who'd hooked up his Christmas lights to a compupter, and put that computer on the Internet along with a live webcam of the lights; he set up an interface allowing people to turn his lights on/off and was inviting the world to try it out.
Yes, I know I shouldn't really be replying to an AC, but when said AC is calling somebody a 'tard and is clearly ignorant of what the OP was talking about... >.
Airlines don't assume liability for damaged electronics that were checked at all. I'm not aware of any airline that'll accept liability for your broken laptop, broken camera, etc. I'm also not aware of any airline that would count a laptop computer against your carry-on limit, either. Purses/handbags also don't count against your carry-on limit. And I do a fair amount of flying, too...
One of my first thougts was to set it up as an HTPC, actually. Relatively small form factor, you can hook up a TV tuner through USB, and it's got a built-in DVD player. Most laptops also have some form of TV out, either in the form of an S-Video or HDMI, or your TV might support VGA-in. Laptops are usually a fair amount quieter than desktops as well, making them a better choice for HTPC unless you're purpose-building a system for it.
In that case, however, it's entirely reasonable to ask how powerful the laptop in question is, and what kind of accressories it has.
Choosing an option without a webcam isn't why you had to wait for your Mini 9. When I ordered one (64GB HDD, Ubuntu, 2GB of RAM, no webcam) I got it inside of a week. Chances are the reason you had to wait was because you chose a common configuration that everybody else was ordering.
You could also look at a larger screen size of a notebook. Again with Dells, you can quite easily specify no webcam option. It's actually a charged upgrade for them to get the webcam. I'm fairly sure that other manufacturers can also sell you a notebook without a webcam, but HP doesn't sell a consumer laptop with Linux preinstalled. :)
Boeing isn't selling airplanes for less than it costs them to make it. Boeing is also not in the business of bribing airlines to buy the 777 over, say, the A380.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that Intel is an American company, and everything to do with the fact that Intel is selling its products at a loss in an attempt to drive the competition out of business, which is illegal, even in the US, when you control the dominant share of the market.
Strictly speaking, 100m is a fuzzy limit. More of a rule of thumb than anything, and largely due to signal degradation and reduction causing you to leech bandwidth. It's true that high bandwidth connections are better over short distances, and it's true that you're better off running switches every so often to repeat/rebroadcast the signal, but when modern computers are coming with gigabit ethernet cards soldered onto the motherboard (and it's nearly impossible to find a mainstream mobo that doesn't have one), you can quite easily get away with installing long runs of > 100m without the users noticing a significant loss of quality. It'll still be there, but they're getting so much bandwidth that they probably won't care if they lose 15% of it.
Back when the fastest you could get was 10mbit, and even before then when you were looking at 1mbit connections, it was a little more important to keep the runs short.
All that said, you're still better off with a switch to repeat the signal every so often. But you might not have the budget for it.
If your server's Internet connection goes down, you have bigger things to worry about than updating.
I haven't set foot in the US since 2001, actually, and I've never called it my home. I've lived in Europe and the Americas, and spent a lot of time travelling in some of the poorer parts of the world, including countries where US citizens are not allowed to go, like Cuba. In places that are less US-friendly, they don't see the US as a land of opportunity, they see it as an imperialist power trying to extend its influence over people who don't want it.
And why do I need to keep repeating myself when people take a statement about criminals and extend it to a generalization about everybody who lives in poverty? Did you actually read what's been said? Nowhere does it say that this sense of entitlement extends to the general populace. Not once. Because it doesn't. It applies to the people actually committing the piracy.
Yah. The tendency of soldiers was to panic and hold the trigger back until their magazine was spent, wasting large amounts of ammunition firing at nothing because the recoil of the weapon, while significantly smaller than older weapons like the M1 Garand, was still enough to get the barrel pointing at nothing. Spray and Pray. The 3-round limit was introduced to force the soldiers to release the trigger, re-aim, and continue firing, limiting the amount of ammunition wasted in panic situations like that.
That actually depends on the weapon. The proper firing position on the FN MAG (C6 in Canada, M240 in the US) is with your right-hand on the grip, and your left hand resting on the stock, holding it into the fleshy part of your shoulder so you don't hurt yourself with recoil when firing the weapon.
Similarly, the FN MINIMI (C9 in Canada, M249 in the US) also uses a left-hand position on the stock when firing with a bipod.
When did I say that everyone feels that way? I said it explains the mentality behind people who commit piracy, not that it reflects the mentality of the whole country. They feel they're entitled to it, and they're driven by greed. Can you offer a better explanation of why piracy still happens?
If everyone felt that way, there'd be 10 million pirates in Somalia's waters, as opposed to the relatively small number that there actually are.
Shooting a gun is pretty easy. Hitting what you're shooting at, not so much. It takes a lot of practice, and even with that practice, if you can't stay calm when you're under the wire, you're still screwed. I've heard many cases of people unloading entire magazines from 15' away and hitting nothing. And when you put a fully automatic weapon into somebody's hands it gets even worse... the first bullet *might* be on target, but anything beyond that is a dice roll.
I think you're *hugely* overestimating the ability of merchant sailors to use weapons to adequately defend themselves. There's a reason that the US Army redesigned the M16 during the Vietnam conflict to prevent it from firing more than 3 bullets without letting go of the trigger.
And I say that as somebody who classed marksman, with both pistol and rifle, when I was in the Canadian army.
No. It doesn't. It does, however, explain why it happens. A person grows up in abject poverty, and thanks to mass media's portrayal of the western world, he realizes just how much poverty he's got to deal with. He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
That sense of entitlement is what, he feels, gives him the right to hold a person hostage demanding ransom.
As you well know, however, potential does not equate actual presence. As long as the conflict of interest is declared, it's still possible to carry on without replacing the players. As I said before, there've been cases in the past where judges had conflicts of interest and were still able to render a fair and appropriate judgement based on what the law actually says. Another case, one that's much more recent, that jumps immediately to mind is the one that was very well documented on Nova, in the episode "Intelligent Design on Trial". You can watch the episode here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/. Judge John Jones, who heard the case, had a history and background that suggested he may have unfairly ruled against the plaintiffs, but with the potential conflict of interest in the open, the case was still heard by him, and he still rendered a fair judgement based on the facts and the law, and not his personal bias.
And if the defendants were aware of the potential conflict and chose to go through with the trial without raising any questions, then it's tacit acceptance of the potential bias, and of the consequences.
Give him some points... 5.56 comes in boxes of 30, each of which contains 3 clips of 10. You can put those clips into a speed loader to load the mag... :)
Probably be better off with a long gun... but the message I got from TFA and TFS was that they wanted to avoid using firearms, and wanted non-lethal methods. Running with a military escort isn't always an option, nor is running armed.
I like the water cannon best. It's dead simple, and it wouldn't be hard to set up a computer-aimed automated defense system... set yourself up with dozens of these, pumping out seawater, and reinforce the bow to withstand a ramming. In the event of pirate attack, go to full throttle and use water cannons to deter boarders.
I know this will probably get modded down, but it's worth pointing out that his membership in the organization does not necessarily mean that it biased his decision.
If a situation like TPB were to happen in Canada, for example, it would have been illegal. While filesharing is perfectly legal in Canada, and there've been numerous cases where hosting a torrent site does not constitute actual filesharing, the fact that TPB was turning a massive profit off advertising revenues and other services would make it illegal. There's that ever-so-important clause in Canadian copyright law that says it's fine, as long as it's not for commercial purposes or profit.
I'm not an expert on Swedish copyright law. I'm not really an expert on Canadian copyright law, either, but I would be very surprised to find that Sweden's take on it is significantly different from Canada's on that point.
There've been many many cases in the past where judges have belonged to organizations or had practices that could have biased their opinion, and they were still able to pass a fair judgement based on what the law actually says. The judge who freed the slaves in England, for example, owned slaves himself.
His membership in the organization does not automatically mean that it biased his opinion.
Strictly speaking, they don't actually cut off the genitalia. The surgery to turn an outie into an innie actually reuses most of the physical matter and rewires the nerves to allow for sexual stimulation and orgasm....
As for why T is still in the acronym, it's because an awful lot of transgenders are actually queer as well. Most of the late-life transsexuals that I know (people who transitioned after they were 20 or so) went through their early years thinking that either A) they were homosexual themselves, or B) that they were heterosexual, but didn't fit into the socially established norm. After they realize that they're trans, that label changes, but their attraction to either males or females remains the same. Probably every single transgender I've known has uttered the words "I've tried being a (guy/girl) and it's just not working. It feels wrong."
It's something you won't ever really understand until you meet somebody who's trans... but once you do, you get it. They're a very stark example of the neurochemical differences between male and female brains, and how it's possible, thanks to messed up biochemistry early in life, to develop a brain that doesn't have the same sex as the body. Usually, it's not possible to reverse that development once the damage is done. For all intents and purposes, a person who actually *is* trans is their identified sex, regardless of what their body looks like... and that person may or may not be homosexual.
You also need to understand that the suicide rate among pre-operative transgenders is about 50%. That's the highest of *any* demographic. A large part of that is because of people who lack experience/knowledge with them, and treat them like social pariahs.... They're shunned away, abused, threatened with physical violence, and treated as the butt of peoples' jokes all because of something that they see as a cosmic mistake... it's also the only "illness" within psychiatry that has a single treatment that's about 97% effective in helping the person to become a productive and stable member of society. Most other single treatments within the field are happy to see a success rate of 5-10%. By contrast the suicide rate among post-op transgenders is lower than the national average for society at large.
Take with a grain, yadda yadda. Most of my experience is with people going male-to-female, and I've actually only ever known one person going the other way. It's worth noting, however, that in my experience about half of the transgenders who go into it identifying as a lesbian end up deciding that guys aren't actually that bad once they're further down the road, and taking hormones, and working towards reassignment.
There's stations elsewhere that do that, too... Live 88.5 in Ottawa, Ontario, for example. They play tons of local and indie music, and even do an annual battle of the bands-type contest with $5000 in funding in the first round, $40,000 the second, and $250,000 the final. They also own a club where they've been known to have concerts for indie bands, as well as to host some bigger names for surprise and invitational concerts.
http://www.livelifelive.fm/
Ah. But in order to be a fan in the first place, you have to know the band exists. That means you have to have heard their stuff. How many Clearchannel-owned radio stations play indie music? (How many of you even know which stations aren't Clearchannel?) Aside from some of the really big names who are currently unsigned (or who are signed to their own label), like the Rolling Stones, and The Offspring, have you ever even heard of some of the indie groups, or the ones who are signed to smaller labels entirely?
If I were to mention, for example, the band Spiral Beach, how many here have heard of them? Some, I'm sure. But a great many who haven't, because they're signed to a small Canadian label, and don't tend to get played on Clearchannel stations, even the ones that broadcast in Canada and have to meet the CanCon regulations.
The essay's point is this: Most people don't go looking for stuff they haven't heard of. As a result, P2P and download sites don't tend to have the hidden gems and indie productions on their top 100 list. Because of that, a lot of people will never hear of the band. Rinse. Repeat.
How many people only ever listen to stations named Z, or The Fox, or Bob, or KISS, or Hot, etc? P2P has replaced the old way of spreading bands around: making a mix for somebody. Because you can do it yourself, you're only ever going to make a mix of people you've heard of. The result? Sign onto a big label who can/will get your name out, or risk being stuck with a total fan base of 1000 people.