As harsh as the OP put it, I think this is basically true. Most of the people that I know that have Macs or Linux on the desktop* have given up on using their desktop for games. They tend to either not play games, or more commonly, play consoles. It's been pretty clear for many years now that Windows rules PC gaming and Macs and Linux are not going to dethrone this dominance, at least not anytime soon, mainly because neither platform has anything to compete with DirectX. I think the trend toward virtualization is the nail in the coffin for native Mac/Linux gaming.
* A lot of people I know have Windows desktops and are using Linux for some specialty purposes. I happen to have a Windows desktop and laptop, but I've got a Kuro-Box running a modified Linux image doing NAS duties and I've stareted playing around with GentooX on my XBOX (not good for much at the moment).
Except that these offices are completely toothless, even in California they're useless and Cali has some of the best consumer protection laws around. He's also in Canada.
Seeing as how neither Skilling nor Lay have yet to be sentenced, I'm presuming that you're getting your info from your palantir. What did The Eye tell you about revealing such info to mere mortals, hmmm?
Or you have a basic inability to read English. He said: "will get". He was predicting that billion-thief CEOs WILL GET 6 months based on past experience that this is what these guys typically get (they might get a sentance of several years, but suspended). So based on those past realities it's quite likely that MOST of those involved in the recent scandals will get little jail time. Lay is high-profile, insisted on his innocence, and spent something like $17 million on his defense forcing the gov't to spend a similar amount (I'm told much more) to convict him. Lay is likely to get about 15 years in federal prison, which is almost a slap on the wrist given the extent of this crimes. Most other Enron officials were either aquitted, plead to extremely minor offences with little jail or penalty, or simply were not charged.
No effort has been made by the feds to recover ANY of the money Enron swindled out of people. So even if Ken Lay (an old man) gets enough time to die in prison (this simply will not happen), his heirs will inherit very penny of the money he stole. This is why he fought, for those not paying attention. All the deals he was offer involved giving some of the money back.
Why didn't they invoke RICO? This was obviously racketeering. They'll invoke it for petty drug cases but not the biggest corprate crime in the history of America? They didn't, because it would set a precedent that would scare the shit out of corporate America. "Engage in wrongdoing and we'll take all your money".
Sorry, it is YOU guys that are misunderstanding the use of common terms.
Take the classic medevial example: the sword and shield.
The sword is obviously a OFFENSIVE tool, it is use to hack people up. The shield is obviously a DEFENSIVE tool, you use it to block other people's weapons so you don't get hacked up.
Now let's translate this to a modern context: handgun and bullet-resistant vest
The handgun is OFFENSIVE, you use it to shoot people. The vest is DEFENSIVE, you use it to reduce injury when you're shot.
Now yes, you certainly could use your firearm (particularly something large, like an assault rifle) to block someone trying to stab you or something. But in this role it would be not be particularly effective.
None of this negates the legal and ethical concept of "self defense", the idea that you may use force (including deadly force) to protect yourself from immeadate threat. But that's what it is, using OFFENSIVE force. You are attacking because you believe that your target either: A) has already attacked you and clearly intends to attack again and thereby poses a certain threat or B) the attacker poses a likely threat, but that does not change the fact that you ARE attacking. A purely DEFENSIVE response would be to hide, or to run away, or possibly to barricade yourself.
I'd also like to point out that Taimoor was probably assuming the mugger was also armed that that pulling out your pistol and having a gunfight was a good way to get shot. And he's right. A much more sensible thing to do would be to shoot him in the back as he ran off.:-)
This http://www.cappuccinopc.com/expando-f154p.asp seems to be what you are looking for. For inputs I'd go with the smallest LCD monitor you can find (a 10" should do) and a small mouse and keyboard. You could go with a small LCD touchscreen, but it would be annoying.
Just put the OS installation on the flash (you don't need 8GB for that, 4GB will do for XP or Ubundu with room to spare, be sure to disable swap and have enough RAM to make up for it).
Just be aware that the MTBF on CF drives, when used in this fashion, is a lot higher than a regular disk drive. CF has relatively limited read/writes before it craps out, and OS's like Linux and Windows access and write to the drive more than you think, even if you disable swap. Though hinestly I don't know how long it would last, a year or two tops I would think.
As long as you backup the CF regularly and are prepared to accept swapping it out relatively often it's not such a big deal.
No, I don't like cops. I don't think anyone does, except their colleagues and possibly their mothers. However, most cops over here are pretty decent, so it's not that much of a deal. It's more like "look over there, the assholes who enjoy giving us tickets for parking wrong".
Yup, you don't fear the police the way many Americans do because the police in Europe are generally not as abusive. At least not yet.
As to the Nazi reference, ignoring the obvious flirtation with Godwins Law, the problem with Nazi cops was not that they could ask you for your ID, but the other things they did. I don't mind a cop asking me for my ID; I do mind a cop harassing me and possibly throwing me in jail because I happen to be a Jew (which I'm not, but hypothetically speaking). Asking for an ID was not evil in 1940, and still isn't today.
No, it WAS evil in 1940 and that was what was specifically argued at the time. Basically, power is always abused. Therefore, the best way to prevent the abuse of power is to limit it. The police should only have a need to identify you if you have commited a crime. You shouldn't be required to carry your ID at all times, and be forced to present it whenever asked by an officer. Let's put it another way: Should NOT having your identification on your person be a crime? Should police have the power to arrest you (at any time, in any place) if you forgot your wallet?
These "Privacy Policies", pack-in "licences" and other arbitrary contracts corporations try to cram down your throat have no REAL legal weight at all and quickly collapse when challenged in court, which is almost never because the lawyers who write these things KNOW how meaningless they are. These agreements DO NOT allow corporations to break federal, state, and local laws which is what AT&T has done. They're just intimidation, pure in simple.
So what can we do?
The answer is pretty simple. Corporations are obliged to follow the law, not arbitrary policies they assign to themselves. The answer to stop these shenanigans is to lobby Congress to pass a comprehensive Privacy Act, and then lobby the White House to enforce it. Private lawsuits like EFF's help too, give them money.
Indie movies: Life ain't fair, and it ain't never gonna be, let's not make laws pretending it will. Making "Consumer choices" that are more fairer to everybody is fine, but the only way to make things fair for little producers would be a law giving them equal status at a table that they aren't currently even sitting at.
What you're saying, literally, is: "We shouldn't bother changing the laws to benefit end users and smaller content producers because the current market is soley the result of market forces and changing the laws will do nothing to help smaller cintent producers."
Read a book. Yes, back in the days when there was no home video available (the 1970s) independent film producers struggled. Not to produce their films, but to get distribution in movie theatres. Then home video came along and small producers had a way to distributed their movies more easily. The big studios fought the sale of home video players/recorders tooth and nail, but eventually they lost in court and laws we passed to protect VCRs. Consequently, we saw a HUGE explosion in small content from independent film studios, documentarians, etc. So here we have an example of a combination od new technology AND legislation that encouraged small film producers and greatly expanded that market. Imagine that.
As long as Joe Not That Good Of A Six String is allowed to post unencumbered music to his website, DRM isn't affecting him, not enough to matter anyway.
And if he's not allowed to because the new players will only play DRM music and he can't (or they won't give him) the DRM license, what then? This is the situation the DVD producers are in RIGHT NOW as I described.
The author of the article didn't investigate anything. She saw fit to report the accusations in the lawsuit as fact. The relavent text from the article:
"In May, after a series of e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie, then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin, where he sexually assaulted her, police said. He was arrested May 19."
The actual Austin police press release:
"Austin Police Department child abuse detectives have filed charges against a suspect in connection with a sexual assault of a child case.
Pete I. Solis, 19, has been charged with Sexual Assault of a Child, a second-degree felony. He is in custody.
During the investigation detectives learned the suspect made contact with the 14-year-old female victim through her online web page. They continued to communicate using email and cell phones. The victim was sexually assaulted in the suspect's vehicle in the 6800 block of West Gate Boulevard.
The age of consent in Texas is 17. Notice that he is NOT being charged with Rape. "Sexual Assault of a Child" is essentially a "statutory rape" charge, which strongly implies that she DID consent. Of course, since Mr. Solis is apparently poorer than his "victim", he'll almost certainly end up in jail. http://www.ageofconsent.com/texas.htm
1) the girl alone is to blame for getting raped (as is usually the argument in this kind of a situation: a lot of guys seem to be _very_ quick to join in the chorus that there must have been something the woman said, or wore, or just being at the guy's house, or just being in a park alone, or whatever, that _clearly_ absolves the guy of any fault and makes rape entirely the woman's fault.)
The issue here isn't whether or not the girl was raped. That's irrelavent. The question is whether or not MySpace was irresponsible for allowing her to communicate with someone who (may) have raped her. An analogy would be suing AT&T because she arranged the date with the guy on the telephone. Which, in fact, she did. So why isn't her mom suing AT&T? Because that is obviously ridiclous. Her lawyer hopes the novelty of the internet and MySpace will allow him to screw MySpace by manipulating a gullible judge and jury who aren't familiar with the internet (or, MUCH more likely, prodive leverage for a settlement).
And think about the rules the plaintiff wishes to implement. They want to MySpace to require age verification of all users. Assuming this works, it means minors will simply not be able to use the service anymore. So we prevent children from using the telephone because a sexual predator MIGHT contact them? And it's not like this would affect any of the OTHER free homepage providers.
The fact remains that the girl was not kidnapped, and MySpace did not aid in that kidnapping. Everything that happened (according to both parties) was consentual up until a certain point in Mr. Solis' car. Are you saying that MySpace should SOMEHOW have monitored what was going on in that car?
Fundamentally, this has nothing to do with children. An adult woman (or man) could make exactly the same claim with the same rationale, and it would be just as bogus.
Man, you people are paranoid. WTH is wrong with a country requiring their citizens to carry an ID with them all the time? I've had mine since I was 12, and only *one* time did somebody require me to show it to them.
You're a European. In general, Europeans treat police as a bad joke. They're the "idiots who couldn't get better jobs". The "average" European thinks that police are somehow "beneath" them, that police are basically servants. You can deny this if you want, but I saw it all over Northern Europe. This is despite the fact that European police are easily the least corrupt that I've seen. I've found that the European public is generally hostile to the idea that they should defer to police, that police should be "in charge" and that if an officer tells you to do something you MUST do it. And the police just can't shoot you if you don't do what they say.
This is not the case in the United States. Here, the police are much more corrupt, are much more prone to abuse their authority (authority that European police really don't have) and most important, they see abusing people AS their job. Due to the unions and other factors, police are insulated from accountablity to the public. Example: Imagine if you will a police officer in your town got scared during a traffic stop and decided to shoot an entire family of four in their car (husband, wife, 2 kids), all completely unarmed and innocent. What would happen to him? He would almost certainly be fired and he would probably face serious criminal charges and jail time. In the United States? Absolutely nothing, MAYBE a small reprimand. And such incidents happen almost every day in the US. Consequently, Americans are justifiably wary of giving these people any MORE authority over their lives.
I haven't brought up race yet, but I'd bet money you're white. I seriously doubt the many Muslim immigrants (for example) in Europe share the same rosy view you do of the police.
Frankly, you've gotten soft and trusting. During the run up to WWII one of the great evils of the Nazis was that they required everyone to have identity papers, police could check them at any time, and if you didn't have them "in order" you could be arrested. Why was this evil in 1940 but not evil now?
The DVD spec never requires you to purchase a DVD player. It's a choice, one that many many many many people made. *If you want to watch DVD's* you must fix your content to the US or Europe.
And people would buy DVD players with the intention of NOT playing any DVDs?
But I was mainly referring to content PRODUCERS, and the fact that since you can't distribute the same pressing of a DVD worldwide, this creates major hurdles for small content producers who must do a seperate pressing for each region. You CAN master "region-free" discs, but they don't work in many players.
So how does this work? It means that if you're an indie film producer you will have to do seperate small pressings of your DVDs rather than one large pressing wiich drives up your costs. That's why many "indie" movies are more expensive at retail than (much more expensive to produce) Hollywood movies.
As far as music goes, I have so far chosen not to purchase any drm music. My point was that I don't give a shit what a company sells to other people.
You don't seem to realize that YOU are one of those "other people". DRM music restrictions affect everyone: ALL music listeners and ALL music producers. That's the whole point.
You have some company information stored on file servers, other information stored in Outlook folders (or maybe the proper terminology is Exchange folders). None of it is indexed in any way so that it can be found without a brute force search. Some of these folders are out of date and pretty much read-only because they don't want to hire a team of gatekeepers to ensure that it is otherwise. Other folders are more up to date by allowing just about anybody to update them, which occasionally leads to them being updated with bad info or being wiped out altogether: "Let's see, was the last backup done recently? Did any important changes happen after that? Oh well, maybe it wasn't that important. Just to be safe, I'll load a copy of everything I might ever want to use onto my company laptop and take it home, leaving it in plain view in the back seat of my car for a few weeks. Ooops, now where did that laptop get to? I wonder if it would be better to report it stolen or just forget about it. Those company inventories aren't very reliable anyway, after all, they keep the results in a public Exchange folder. HAHA!"
I BARELY understood what the fuck you were taking about here. What you're complaining about is the (relative) lack of security on public shares on Exchange servers. A complaint that has nothing whatsoever to do with reliability and is completely stupid. The folders you're taking about are just aliases to shared Windows folders (in 2000 and later) that use Active Directory ACLs for permissions. So basically you're complaining about the security model for shares in Windows in general. A model that is superior to the Unix model in every conceivable way.
Exchange might have it's problems, but share security isn't one of them. Microsoft does it better than anyone else.
Any high school statistics student can tell you that's more than enough to produce meaningful estimates for any size population.
If the sample is carefully weighed to reflect the demographics of the population it's trying to represent, then this is true. This is NOT the case with Neilsen ratings. Unless you believe that (for example) single urban black men watch exactly the same kind of television white suburban nuclear families do. My understanding is that 90%+ of those metered households are white suburban nuclear families, which is hardly consistent with their representation in the population. Single people and (especially) "minorities" (blacks, asians, latinos, etc.) are grossly underrepresented by Neilsen.
As least, this is how all the people I know that work in TV advertising see it.
So if the provider of a video doesn't want to show it in the EU, Google should refuse to host it at all?
Absolutely. By giving people the OPTION to censor, you are indirectly endorsing censorship. And eventually the "option" to censor, will turn into a mandatory requirement.
An example: Region coding on DVDs.
The spec on DVDs REQUIRES to you fix both your DVD and player to a region, so even if you wanted to distribute a "region-free" DVD you CAN'T, because it won't work in many players. You you MUST fix your content to the US or Europe, not both. This is done soley to fuck small content producers (who have to do different printings and packaging if they want to distribute worldwide) and to gouge customers.
And speaking of digital music, you do know (if they haven't already) they're going to start including region restrictions so the can change availability and pricing. They also want tracks to self-destruct after 30 days. You think any of this is for the customer?
So that's how you get rich. And here I was thinking Bill Gates and Sam Walton got rich by selling shit to people!
Bill Gates' parents were wealthy. Bill Gates got rich by manipulating IBM, which manipulated the government to make most of it's money. The fact is that there is a government-industrial complex in the United States (and it is much the same elsewhere) where it is a vastly easer to get ahead if you have the right connections, and family connections are often the most important. Only a fool would fail to recognize that being born with wealth and/or with family connections doesn't confer enormous social advantages.
My personal opinion about the addictive qualities of pronography is based on my understanding of the physical reactions to sexual content and my observations of myself and others in reaction to pornography. If you want to call that flame bait, so be it. However, the fact remains that the porn industry works off of what I describe. Maybe it is not addictive in your sense of the word, but I don't see you clarifying that issue at all or providing any input to repudiate my claim.
Sure. Addiction, which is related to substance abuse, results in serious dependency, and physical withdrawal symptoms. Alcohol is addictive. Opiates are addictive. Advertising is not addictive. Neither is porn. Neither is popular entertainment in general.
The most important two words of your entire post there:
"their money."
This is called a "sense of entitlement". "They" don't really own anything. "Private" real estate is really just leased from the government. "Money" is really just promissory notes from the government. Rich people have simply manipulated the government to give them a lot more money than other people, primarily by exploiting family connections.
Get rich yourself and be nicer. Let me know when your doing that, so I know who to ask for the check.
Rich people don't put their money in pillow cases. (Well, maybe some do.) Rich people put their money into ventures which will allow their wealth to not only grow at a pace which matches or exceeds inflation, but also allows them to live off the profits & interest without dipping in to the principal. Any rich person would be foolish to live any other way.
Unless they fear losing part of the principal. As you pointed out, some DO "put their money in pillow cases" or IOW in very conservative investments. So if rich people choose not to invest relatively recklessly, they can easily strangle the economy. This was clearly in evidence during the tech boom.
This investment is what makes a healthy economy even possible.
Exactly. The problem in this case is the entire health of the economy is then tied to the investment whims, and that's what they are, of this upper class. If they panic or experience a sudden shift in perception, markets can easily collapse. See 1929 and 1987. And the greater concentration of wealth if the hands of a few, the more likely this is to happen. Is it wise policy to concentrate so much power in the hands of so few people (who have no accountability to the public at large whatsoever)?
Of course, the upper classes are very well aware of these facts. As you pointed out, they want to make money. In fact, they want to make as much money as possible, which means great risks, but they need to minimize thier risks. So they seek to trasfer that risk to other people, poor people (since everyone is poor relative to them), by manipulating the government. For example, the recent bankruptcy legislation. In practice, this doesn't work. Poor people simply do not have the money to offset the risks of of the upper class, especially when the vast majority of the wealth of concentrated in the hands of the upper class (as it is in the United States).
Eventually the upper classes will panic again, and if supply-siders succeed in changing ALL the legislation passed since the Great Depression to prevent it, we'll have another depression. Most supply-siders I talk to say we should just "get used to volitility".
The main difference I see is that porn is an addictive substance. Don't you remember the playground pushers motto, "The first one is always free"?
You have a pretty strange definition of "addictive". I'd call it "flamebait".
Most consumers of porn are feshitists of some kind. They enjoy seeing activity "x" over seeing position "y", etc. This selectivity leads to the consumer model of porn. Cater to the individual tastes. Then, if you make it they will come. Sometimes on your face.
A fetishist can't achieve orgasm without their particular fetish, a porn fetishist could ONLY climax when watching porn. What you're referring to is called "asthetics". Different people have different tastes in food, clothing, entertainment, and yes, in sex. Since "pornography", despite all the bullshit out there, is simply visual depictions of sexual activity, it shouldn't be suprising that it reflects a broad range of sexual interests. If you do a little research you'll find this has been the case since the beginning. The oldest artistic/religious artifacts discovered, over 100,000 years old, are sexual in nature.
If you hate sex so much go join a monastary, start prostrating yourself, and leave the rest of us alone.
A AC posted this earlier and it deserves a repost since it's the best answer I've heard so far.
To properly restrict access to files, you'll need to write a filesystem filter driver. This is how most antivirus programs work. More information here:
Writing a FS filter requires the IFSKit, which is expensive and does not come with an MSDN license. To filter network access, you would use a TDI filter driver. I don't know of any way of filtering calls to DeviceIoControl other than by hooking CreateFile and doing filtering there, unless there is a facility in the ifskit to fiter those "fake" filesystems.
If we placed a trade embargo with China, we cripple ourselves because, at this point, so much is imported from China from American companies that offshored their manufacturing plants there.
Almost all of those plants are owned by the Chinese, not by American companies. They make goods on contract. American companies could shift production elsewhere quite easily, though not CHEAPLY because of the advantages of the Chinese market.
All this Chinese crap is new. Was the USA in an economic abyss 15 years ago before we started pumping money into China? I dont think so. We could just as easily pour money into other nations and have them make our crap. Like Russia, or India, or Taiwan. Y'know, actual democracies.
But you are right, the USA would definitely take an economic hit from a trade embargo or sanctions. I think it's worth it to end the slavery of millions of people, and to help the economies of non-slave nations. But that's just me.
BTW, The PRC certainly takes a trade embargo seriously. They have publically stated on numerous occasions that they would consider a US trade embargo (or even trade sanctions) as an "act of war" and have threatened dire consequences (like invasions of Taiwan, Korea, and Japan) if the US were to make such a move.
Think about your logic for a minute. Here's your premises:
P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause P2. The universe began to exist
C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause
I could stop right here and attack the premises, like why you use the odd phrasing "begins to exist". But let's move on to the next part of your argument.
P1. The universe has a cause. P2. The cause of the universe is timeless and nonspatial. P3. God is timeless and nonspatial.
C2. Therefore, God is the cause of the universe.
Looking at this structure the obvious flaw should leap out at you. Even if we accept all the premises, P3 is not exclusionary. In other words, the argument does not put forward why God should be the "cause" as opposed to any other abstract concept (the attributes timeless and nonspatial cover a lot of groud).
What I meant when I said "our argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past" - was the philosophical meaning of the word 'knowledge'. We certainly possess more knowledge of the writings of philosophers than our ancestors. But do we have more 'knowledge' in the sense of justified true beliefs?
There is no such thing. Either rational argument is a method of aquiring knowledge, or it isn't. Many logical fallacies date back thousands of years, should philosophers have to reinvent the wheel every time they put forward an argument? Either logic works, or it doesn't. And long experience has shown that logic works.
Because it seems to me that we humans differ in our beliefs as much as we ever have. If philosophy had advanced since the times of our ancients, we should abound in more knowledge. And we still disagree even on the basics (is there a God?).
You're quite wrong about that. For example, rational philosophy has given Western thinkers a solid foundation on which to base what would eventually become modern science. Nobody seriously questions Kepler's laws of motion, Newton's physics, calculus, plate tectonics, atomic theory, germ theory, DNA, Big Bang cosmology, evolution, etc.
Most reasonably well-educated people (West and East) hold to a consensous view based on Western materialism. Those that don't almost always lack Western-style education.
I can also conceive of circumstances where a lack of knowledge about something does not mean that the "something" lacks power. For example, not knowing God's reasons for creating us does not mean that those reasons lack power. Not knowing the motives of your leader in a battle does not mean that his motives lack power.
I do not know what you mean by "lacks power". What I said is that is literally lacks meaning. If you don't know what the motivations are, it doesn't matter what they are from YOUR perspective. Your leader might have a good reason for not telling you the reason for battle, but that doesn't help you fight it very much.
Common sense also factors in here. Why should you follow a leader who won't telly you what his plans are? Following "mysterious leaders" tends to lead to disaster.
Christianity teaches that humans were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
Christianity does NOT teach that, at least not orthodox Christianity. Christianity teaches that we should obey God, as embodied in Jesus Christ on Earth, by attempting to follow the example set by Jesus during his time on Earth. "Worship" per se is of no particular importance in Christianity. Humans can't "mimick" God, the very notion is blasphemy (death penalty blasphemy in Judism and Islam).
I'm sure that you can imagine the practical outcomes of the belief that we were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
You mean concentration camps, witch hunts, crusades, etc? Sorry, cheap shot.
But again, I think this discussion is less important until you and I have established, first of all, that there even is a God that exists.
You're unlikely to find anything much smaller than thishttp://www.cappuccinopc.com/mochae7042b.asp. It doesn't support the new dual-core chips though. Cooling would likely be a problem.
The Dual Shock was originally seen as a competitor to the N64's analog control. Originally Sony was going to just tack one joystick onto the controller (the left one), but tests with prototypes showed this arrangement was terribly unbalanced, so they added another stick to balance it out. Wah. That's why it looks the way it does today.
You seem to be forgetting about the fact that during the PS2's lifetime an increaing number of titles depended on the symmetical positioning of the sticks, Katamari Damachi comes to mind. I suspect you'll see more of these games on the PS3.
But basically, you're right. I prefer the Xbox Controller S for this reason, and I like the 360 controller with is extremely similar.
However, if this really pisses you off I'm sure 3rd parties will happily meet your needs with alternative controllers or adapters.
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As harsh as the OP put it, I think this is basically true. Most of the people that I know that have Macs or Linux on the desktop* have given up on using their desktop for games. They tend to either not play games, or more commonly, play consoles. It's been pretty clear for many years now that Windows rules PC gaming and Macs and Linux are not going to dethrone this dominance, at least not anytime soon, mainly because neither platform has anything to compete with DirectX. I think the trend toward virtualization is the nail in the coffin for native Mac/Linux gaming.
* A lot of people I know have Windows desktops and are using Linux for some specialty purposes. I happen to have a Windows desktop and laptop, but I've got a Kuro-Box running a modified Linux image doing NAS duties and I've stareted playing around with GentooX on my XBOX (not good for much at the moment).
Except that these offices are completely toothless, even in California they're useless and Cali has some of the best consumer protection laws around. He's also in Canada.
Seeing as how neither Skilling nor Lay have yet to be sentenced, I'm presuming that you're getting your info from your palantir. What did The Eye tell you about revealing such info to mere mortals, hmmm?
Or you have a basic inability to read English. He said: "will get". He was predicting that billion-thief CEOs WILL GET 6 months based on past experience that this is what these guys typically get (they might get a sentance of several years, but suspended). So based on those past realities it's quite likely that MOST of those involved in the recent scandals will get little jail time. Lay is high-profile, insisted on his innocence, and spent something like $17 million on his defense forcing the gov't to spend a similar amount (I'm told much more) to convict him. Lay is likely to get about 15 years in federal prison, which is almost a slap on the wrist given the extent of this crimes. Most other Enron officials were either aquitted, plead to extremely minor offences with little jail or penalty, or simply were not charged.
No effort has been made by the feds to recover ANY of the money Enron swindled out of people. So even if Ken Lay (an old man) gets enough time to die in prison (this simply will not happen), his heirs will inherit very penny of the money he stole. This is why he fought, for those not paying attention. All the deals he was offer involved giving some of the money back.
Why didn't they invoke RICO? This was obviously racketeering. They'll invoke it for petty drug cases but not the biggest corprate crime in the history of America? They didn't, because it would set a precedent that would scare the shit out of corporate America. "Engage in wrongdoing and we'll take all your money".
Sorry, it is YOU guys that are misunderstanding the use of common terms.
:-)
Take the classic medevial example: the sword and shield.
The sword is obviously a OFFENSIVE tool, it is use to hack people up. The shield is obviously a DEFENSIVE tool, you use it to block other people's weapons so you don't get hacked up.
Now let's translate this to a modern context: handgun and bullet-resistant vest
The handgun is OFFENSIVE, you use it to shoot people. The vest is DEFENSIVE, you use it to reduce injury when you're shot.
Now yes, you certainly could use your firearm (particularly something large, like an assault rifle) to block someone trying to stab you or something. But in this role it would be not be particularly effective.
None of this negates the legal and ethical concept of "self defense", the idea that you may use force (including deadly force) to protect yourself from immeadate threat. But that's what it is, using OFFENSIVE force. You are attacking because you believe that your target either: A) has already attacked you and clearly intends to attack again and thereby poses a certain threat or B) the attacker poses a likely threat, but that does not change the fact that you ARE attacking. A purely DEFENSIVE response would be to hide, or to run away, or possibly to barricade yourself.
I'd also like to point out that Taimoor was probably assuming the mugger was also armed that that pulling out your pistol and having a gunfight was a good way to get shot. And he's right. A much more sensible thing to do would be to shoot him in the back as he ran off.
This http://www.cappuccinopc.com/expando-f154p.asp seems to be what you are looking for. For inputs I'd go with the smallest LCD monitor you can find (a 10" should do) and a small mouse and keyboard. You could go with a small LCD touchscreen, but it would be annoying.
Just put the OS installation on the flash (you don't need 8GB for that, 4GB will do for XP or Ubundu with room to spare, be sure to disable swap and have enough RAM to make up for it).
Just be aware that the MTBF on CF drives, when used in this fashion, is a lot higher than a regular disk drive. CF has relatively limited read/writes before it craps out, and OS's like Linux and Windows access and write to the drive more than you think, even if you disable swap. Though hinestly I don't know how long it would last, a year or two tops I would think.
As long as you backup the CF regularly and are prepared to accept swapping it out relatively often it's not such a big deal.
No, I don't like cops. I don't think anyone does, except their colleagues and possibly their mothers. However, most cops over here are pretty decent, so it's not that much of a deal. It's more like "look over there, the assholes who enjoy giving us tickets for parking wrong".
Yup, you don't fear the police the way many Americans do because the police in Europe are generally not as abusive. At least not yet.
As to the Nazi reference, ignoring the obvious flirtation with Godwins Law, the problem with Nazi cops was not that they could ask you for your ID, but the other things they did. I don't mind a cop asking me for my ID; I do mind a cop harassing me and possibly throwing me in jail because I happen to be a Jew (which I'm not, but hypothetically speaking). Asking for an ID was not evil in 1940, and still isn't today.
No, it WAS evil in 1940 and that was what was specifically argued at the time. Basically, power is always abused. Therefore, the best way to prevent the abuse of power is to limit it. The police should only have a need to identify you if you have commited a crime. You shouldn't be required to carry your ID at all times, and be forced to present it whenever asked by an officer. Let's put it another way: Should NOT having your identification on your person be a crime? Should police have the power to arrest you (at any time, in any place) if you forgot your wallet?
These "Privacy Policies", pack-in "licences" and other arbitrary contracts corporations try to cram down your throat have no REAL legal weight at all and quickly collapse when challenged in court, which is almost never because the lawyers who write these things KNOW how meaningless they are. These agreements DO NOT allow corporations to break federal, state, and local laws which is what AT&T has done. They're just intimidation, pure in simple.
9
So what can we do?
The answer is pretty simple. Corporations are obliged to follow the law, not arbitrary policies they assign to themselves. The answer to stop these shenanigans is to lobby Congress to pass a comprehensive Privacy Act, and then lobby the White House to enforce it. Private lawsuits like EFF's help too, give them money.
Or, for a more practical solution, consider assassinating AT&T's Board of Directors. Here's a list: http://att.sbc.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=562
Indie movies: Life ain't fair, and it ain't never gonna be, let's not make laws pretending it will. Making "Consumer choices" that are more fairer to everybody is fine, but the only way to make things fair for little producers would be a law giving them equal status at a table that they aren't currently even sitting at.
What you're saying, literally, is: "We shouldn't bother changing the laws to benefit end users and smaller content producers because the current market is soley the result of market forces and changing the laws will do nothing to help smaller cintent producers."
Read a book. Yes, back in the days when there was no home video available (the 1970s) independent film producers struggled. Not to produce their films, but to get distribution in movie theatres. Then home video came along and small producers had a way to distributed their movies more easily. The big studios fought the sale of home video players/recorders tooth and nail, but eventually they lost in court and laws we passed to protect VCRs. Consequently, we saw a HUGE explosion in small content from independent film studios, documentarians, etc. So here we have an example of a combination od new technology AND legislation that encouraged small film producers and greatly expanded that market. Imagine that.
As long as Joe Not That Good Of A Six String is allowed to post unencumbered music to his website, DRM isn't affecting him, not enough to matter anyway.
And if he's not allowed to because the new players will only play DRM music and he can't (or they won't give him) the DRM license, what then? This is the situation the DVD producers are in RIGHT NOW as I described.
The author of the article didn't investigate anything. She saw fit to report the accusations in the lawsuit as fact. The relavent text from the article:
/ blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2006/05/19/police_man _sexually_assaulted_1.html
"In May, after a series of e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie, then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin, where he sexually assaulted her, police said. He was arrested May 19."
The actual Austin police press release:
"Austin Police Department child abuse detectives have filed charges against a suspect in connection with a sexual assault of a child case.
Pete I. Solis, 19, has been charged with Sexual Assault of a Child, a second-degree felony. He is in custody.
During the investigation detectives learned the suspect made contact with the 14-year-old female victim through her online web page. They continued to communicate using email and cell phones. The victim was sexually assaulted in the suspect's vehicle in the 6800 block of West Gate Boulevard.
This case remains under investigation by APD child abuse detectives."
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen
The age of consent in Texas is 17. Notice that he is NOT being charged with Rape. "Sexual Assault of a Child" is essentially a "statutory rape" charge, which strongly implies that she DID consent. Of course, since Mr. Solis is apparently poorer than his "victim", he'll almost certainly end up in jail.
http://www.ageofconsent.com/texas.htm
1) the girl alone is to blame for getting raped (as is usually the argument in this kind of a situation: a lot of guys seem to be _very_ quick to join in the chorus that there must have been something the woman said, or wore, or just being at the guy's house, or just being in a park alone, or whatever, that _clearly_ absolves the guy of any fault and makes rape entirely the woman's fault.)
The issue here isn't whether or not the girl was raped. That's irrelavent. The question is whether or not MySpace was irresponsible for allowing her to communicate with someone who (may) have raped her. An analogy would be suing AT&T because she arranged the date with the guy on the telephone. Which, in fact, she did. So why isn't her mom suing AT&T? Because that is obviously ridiclous. Her lawyer hopes the novelty of the internet and MySpace will allow him to screw MySpace by manipulating a gullible judge and jury who aren't familiar with the internet (or, MUCH more likely, prodive leverage for a settlement).
And think about the rules the plaintiff wishes to implement. They want to MySpace to require age verification of all users. Assuming this works, it means minors will simply not be able to use the service anymore. So we prevent children from using the telephone because a sexual predator MIGHT contact them? And it's not like this would affect any of the OTHER free homepage providers.
The fact remains that the girl was not kidnapped, and MySpace did not aid in that kidnapping. Everything that happened (according to both parties) was consentual up until a certain point in Mr. Solis' car. Are you saying that MySpace should SOMEHOW have monitored what was going on in that car?
Fundamentally, this has nothing to do with children. An adult woman (or man) could make exactly the same claim with the same rationale, and it would be just as bogus.
Man, you people are paranoid. WTH is wrong with a country requiring their citizens to carry an ID with them all the time? I've had mine since I was 12, and only *one* time did somebody require me to show it to them.
You're a European. In general, Europeans treat police as a bad joke. They're the "idiots who couldn't get better jobs". The "average" European thinks that police are somehow "beneath" them, that police are basically servants. You can deny this if you want, but I saw it all over Northern Europe. This is despite the fact that European police are easily the least corrupt that I've seen. I've found that the European public is generally hostile to the idea that they should defer to police, that police should be "in charge" and that if an officer tells you to do something you MUST do it. And the police just can't shoot you if you don't do what they say.
This is not the case in the United States. Here, the police are much more corrupt, are much more prone to abuse their authority (authority that European police really don't have) and most important, they see abusing people AS their job. Due to the unions and other factors, police are insulated from accountablity to the public. Example: Imagine if you will a police officer in your town got scared during a traffic stop and decided to shoot an entire family of four in their car (husband, wife, 2 kids), all completely unarmed and innocent. What would happen to him? He would almost certainly be fired and he would probably face serious criminal charges and jail time. In the United States? Absolutely nothing, MAYBE a small reprimand. And such incidents happen almost every day in the US. Consequently, Americans are justifiably wary of giving these people any MORE authority over their lives.
I haven't brought up race yet, but I'd bet money you're white. I seriously doubt the many Muslim immigrants (for example) in Europe share the same rosy view you do of the police.
Frankly, you've gotten soft and trusting. During the run up to WWII one of the great evils of the Nazis was that they required everyone to have identity papers, police could check them at any time, and if you didn't have them "in order" you could be arrested. Why was this evil in 1940 but not evil now?
The DVD spec never requires you to purchase a DVD player. It's a choice, one that many many many many people made. *If you want to watch DVD's* you must fix your content to the US or Europe.
And people would buy DVD players with the intention of NOT playing any DVDs?
But I was mainly referring to content PRODUCERS, and the fact that since you can't distribute the same pressing of a DVD worldwide, this creates major hurdles for small content producers who must do a seperate pressing for each region. You CAN master "region-free" discs, but they don't work in many players.
So how does this work? It means that if you're an indie film producer you will have to do seperate small pressings of your DVDs rather than one large pressing wiich drives up your costs. That's why many "indie" movies are more expensive at retail than (much more expensive to produce) Hollywood movies.
As far as music goes, I have so far chosen not to purchase any drm music. My point was that I don't give a shit what a company sells to other people.
You don't seem to realize that YOU are one of those "other people". DRM music restrictions affect everyone: ALL music listeners and ALL music producers. That's the whole point.
You have some company information stored on file servers, other information stored in Outlook folders (or maybe the proper terminology is Exchange folders). None of it is indexed in any way so that it can be found without a brute force search. Some of these folders are out of date and pretty much read-only because they don't want to hire a team of gatekeepers to ensure that it is otherwise. Other folders are more up to date by allowing just about anybody to update them, which occasionally leads to them being updated with bad info or being wiped out altogether: "Let's see, was the last backup done recently? Did any important changes happen after that? Oh well, maybe it wasn't that important. Just to be safe, I'll load a copy of everything I might ever want to use onto my company laptop and take it home, leaving it in plain view in the back seat of my car for a few weeks. Ooops, now where did that laptop get to? I wonder if it would be better to report it stolen or just forget about it. Those company inventories aren't very reliable anyway, after all, they keep the results in a public Exchange folder. HAHA!"
I BARELY understood what the fuck you were taking about here. What you're complaining about is the (relative) lack of security on public shares on Exchange servers. A complaint that has nothing whatsoever to do with reliability and is completely stupid. The folders you're taking about are just aliases to shared Windows folders (in 2000 and later) that use Active Directory ACLs for permissions. So basically you're complaining about the security model for shares in Windows in general. A model that is superior to the Unix model in every conceivable way.
Exchange might have it's problems, but share security isn't one of them. Microsoft does it better than anyone else.
Any high school statistics student can tell you that's more than enough to produce meaningful estimates for any size population.
If the sample is carefully weighed to reflect the demographics of the population it's trying to represent, then this is true. This is NOT the case with Neilsen ratings. Unless you believe that (for example) single urban black men watch exactly the same kind of television white suburban nuclear families do. My understanding is that 90%+ of those metered households are white suburban nuclear families, which is hardly consistent with their representation in the population. Single people and (especially) "minorities" (blacks, asians, latinos, etc.) are grossly underrepresented by Neilsen.
As least, this is how all the people I know that work in TV advertising see it.
So if the provider of a video doesn't want to show it in the EU, Google should refuse to host it at all?
Absolutely. By giving people the OPTION to censor, you are indirectly endorsing censorship. And eventually the "option" to censor, will turn into a mandatory requirement.
An example: Region coding on DVDs.
The spec on DVDs REQUIRES to you fix both your DVD and player to a region, so even if you wanted to distribute a "region-free" DVD you CAN'T, because it won't work in many players. You you MUST fix your content to the US or Europe, not both. This is done soley to fuck small content producers (who have to do different printings and packaging if they want to distribute worldwide) and to gouge customers.
And speaking of digital music, you do know (if they haven't already) they're going to start including region restrictions so the can change availability and pricing. They also want tracks to self-destruct after 30 days. You think any of this is for the customer?
So that's how you get rich. And here I was thinking Bill Gates and Sam Walton got rich by selling shit to people!
Bill Gates' parents were wealthy. Bill Gates got rich by manipulating IBM, which manipulated the government to make most of it's money. The fact is that there is a government-industrial complex in the United States (and it is much the same elsewhere) where it is a vastly easer to get ahead if you have the right connections, and family connections are often the most important. Only a fool would fail to recognize that being born with wealth and/or with family connections doesn't confer enormous social advantages.
My personal opinion about the addictive qualities of pronography is based on my understanding of the physical reactions to sexual content and my observations of myself and others in reaction to pornography. If you want to call that flame bait, so be it. However, the fact remains that the porn industry works off of what I describe. Maybe it is not addictive in your sense of the word, but I don't see you clarifying that issue at all or providing any input to repudiate my claim.
Sure. Addiction, which is related to substance abuse, results in serious dependency, and physical withdrawal symptoms. Alcohol is addictive. Opiates are addictive. Advertising is not addictive. Neither is porn. Neither is popular entertainment in general.
The most important two words of your entire post there:
"their money."
This is called a "sense of entitlement". "They" don't really own anything. "Private" real estate is really just leased from the government. "Money" is really just promissory notes from the government. Rich people have simply manipulated the government to give them a lot more money than other people, primarily by exploiting family connections.
Get rich yourself and be nicer. Let me know when your doing that, so I know who to ask for the check.
You don't get rich by being nice.
Rich people don't put their money in pillow cases. (Well, maybe some do.) Rich people put their money into ventures which will allow their wealth to not only grow at a pace which matches or exceeds inflation, but also allows them to live off the profits & interest without dipping in to the principal. Any rich person would be foolish to live any other way.
Unless they fear losing part of the principal. As you pointed out, some DO "put their money in pillow cases" or IOW in very conservative investments. So if rich people choose not to invest relatively recklessly, they can easily strangle the economy. This was clearly in evidence during the tech boom.
This investment is what makes a healthy economy even possible.
Exactly. The problem in this case is the entire health of the economy is then tied to the investment whims, and that's what they are, of this upper class. If they panic or experience a sudden shift in perception, markets can easily collapse. See 1929 and 1987. And the greater concentration of wealth if the hands of a few, the more likely this is to happen. Is it wise policy to concentrate so much power in the hands of so few people (who have no accountability to the public at large whatsoever)?
Of course, the upper classes are very well aware of these facts. As you pointed out, they want to make money. In fact, they want to make as much money as possible, which means great risks, but they need to minimize thier risks. So they seek to trasfer that risk to other people, poor people (since everyone is poor relative to them), by manipulating the government. For example, the recent bankruptcy legislation. In practice, this doesn't work. Poor people simply do not have the money to offset the risks of of the upper class, especially when the vast majority of the wealth of concentrated in the hands of the upper class (as it is in the United States).
Eventually the upper classes will panic again, and if supply-siders succeed in changing ALL the legislation passed since the Great Depression to prevent it, we'll have another depression. Most supply-siders I talk to say we should just "get used to volitility".
The main difference I see is that porn is an addictive substance. Don't you remember the playground pushers motto, "The first one is always free"?
You have a pretty strange definition of "addictive". I'd call it "flamebait".
Most consumers of porn are feshitists of some kind. They enjoy seeing activity "x" over seeing position "y", etc. This selectivity leads to the consumer model of porn. Cater to the individual tastes. Then, if you make it they will come. Sometimes on your face.
A fetishist can't achieve orgasm without their particular fetish, a porn fetishist could ONLY climax when watching porn. What you're referring to is called "asthetics". Different people have different tastes in food, clothing, entertainment, and yes, in sex. Since "pornography", despite all the bullshit out there, is simply visual depictions of sexual activity, it shouldn't be suprising that it reflects a broad range of sexual interests. If you do a little research you'll find this has been the case since the beginning. The oldest artistic/religious artifacts discovered, over 100,000 years old, are sexual in nature.
If you hate sex so much go join a monastary, start prostrating yourself, and leave the rest of us alone.
A AC posted this earlier and it deserves a repost since it's the best answer I've heard so far.
f ault.mspx
To properly restrict access to files, you'll need to write a filesystem filter driver. This is how most antivirus programs work. More information here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/filterdrv/de
Writing a FS filter requires the IFSKit, which is expensive and does not come with an MSDN license. To filter network access, you would use a TDI filter driver. I don't know of any way of filtering calls to DeviceIoControl other than by hooking CreateFile and doing filtering there, unless there is a facility in the ifskit to fiter those "fake" filesystems.
If we placed a trade embargo with China, we cripple ourselves because, at this point, so much is imported from China from American companies that offshored their manufacturing plants there.
Almost all of those plants are owned by the Chinese, not by American companies. They make goods on contract. American companies could shift production elsewhere quite easily, though not CHEAPLY because of the advantages of the Chinese market.
All this Chinese crap is new. Was the USA in an economic abyss 15 years ago before we started pumping money into China? I dont think so. We could just as easily pour money into other nations and have them make our crap. Like Russia, or India, or Taiwan. Y'know, actual democracies.
But you are right, the USA would definitely take an economic hit from a trade embargo or sanctions. I think it's worth it to end the slavery of millions of people, and to help the economies of non-slave nations. But that's just me.
BTW, The PRC certainly takes a trade embargo seriously. They have publically stated on numerous occasions that they would consider a US trade embargo (or even trade sanctions) as an "act of war" and have threatened dire consequences (like invasions of Taiwan, Korea, and Japan) if the US were to make such a move.
On first cause:
Think about your logic for a minute. Here's your premises:
P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
P2. The universe began to exist
C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause
I could stop right here and attack the premises, like why you use the odd phrasing "begins to exist". But let's move on to the next part of your argument.
P1. The universe has a cause.
P2. The cause of the universe is timeless and nonspatial.
P3. God is timeless and nonspatial.
C2. Therefore, God is the cause of the universe.
Looking at this structure the obvious flaw should leap out at you. Even if we accept all the premises, P3 is not exclusionary. In other words, the argument does not put forward why God should be the "cause" as opposed to any other abstract concept (the attributes timeless and nonspatial cover a lot of groud).
What I meant when I said "our argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past" - was the philosophical meaning of the word 'knowledge'. We certainly possess more knowledge of the writings of philosophers than our ancestors. But do we have more 'knowledge' in the sense of justified true beliefs?
There is no such thing. Either rational argument is a method of aquiring knowledge, or it isn't. Many logical fallacies date back thousands of years, should philosophers have to reinvent the wheel every time they put forward an argument? Either logic works, or it doesn't. And long experience has shown that logic works.
Because it seems to me that we humans differ in our beliefs as much as we ever have. If philosophy had advanced since the times of our ancients, we should abound in more knowledge. And we still disagree even on the basics (is there a God?).
You're quite wrong about that. For example, rational philosophy has given Western thinkers a solid foundation on which to base what would eventually become modern science. Nobody seriously questions Kepler's laws of motion, Newton's physics, calculus, plate tectonics, atomic theory, germ theory, DNA, Big Bang cosmology, evolution, etc.
Most reasonably well-educated people (West and East) hold to a consensous view based on Western materialism. Those that don't almost always lack Western-style education.
I can also conceive of circumstances where a lack of knowledge about something does not mean that the "something" lacks power. For example, not knowing God's reasons for creating us does not mean that those reasons lack power. Not knowing the motives of your leader in a battle does not mean that his motives lack power.
I do not know what you mean by "lacks power". What I said is that is literally lacks meaning. If you don't know what the motivations are, it doesn't matter what they are from YOUR perspective. Your leader might have a good reason for not telling you the reason for battle, but that doesn't help you fight it very much.
Common sense also factors in here. Why should you follow a leader who won't telly you what his plans are? Following "mysterious leaders" tends to lead to disaster.
Christianity teaches that humans were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
Christianity does NOT teach that, at least not orthodox Christianity. Christianity teaches that we should obey God, as embodied in Jesus Christ on Earth, by attempting to follow the example set by Jesus during his time on Earth. "Worship" per se is of no particular importance in Christianity. Humans can't "mimick" God, the very notion is blasphemy (death penalty blasphemy in Judism and Islam).
I'm sure that you can imagine the practical outcomes of the belief that we were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
You mean concentration camps, witch hunts, crusades, etc? Sorry, cheap shot.
But again, I think this discussion is less important until you and I have established, first of all, that there even is a God that exists.
I'm happily willing
You're unlikely to find anything much smaller than thishttp://www.cappuccinopc.com/mochae7042b.asp. It doesn't support the new dual-core chips though. Cooling would likely be a problem.
The Dual Shock was originally seen as a competitor to the N64's analog control. Originally Sony was going to just tack one joystick onto the controller (the left one), but tests with prototypes showed this arrangement was terribly unbalanced, so they added another stick to balance it out. Wah. That's why it looks the way it does today.
You seem to be forgetting about the fact that during the PS2's lifetime an increaing number of titles depended on the symmetical positioning of the sticks, Katamari Damachi comes to mind. I suspect you'll see more of these games on the PS3.
But basically, you're right. I prefer the Xbox Controller S for this reason, and I like the 360 controller with is extremely similar.
However, if this really pisses you off I'm sure 3rd parties will happily meet your needs with alternative controllers or adapters.