I remember learning about DeBeers and having this bit of information come up at some point.... lots of people in Russia dying mysterious deaths surrounding the topic of diamonds in Russia.
Diamonds are fairly plentiful and common. That they are expensive and considered valuable is marketing... or racketeering... whatever you want to call it.
Think about it. If you paid for insurance for your car and had a deductible of 8.3% but a payment rate which is about 17% the value of the phone for the predicted duration of ownership or less... guaranteed to get refurbished crap...
Sorry, but I think I'd rather roll the dice, save money and buy bumpers and simply be careful. At least when/if I break my expensive phone, I wil be able to comfort myself with a brand new perfectly shiny latest version of whatever is out there.
I have never actually broken a phone before, so I can't say if this is a good deal for other people but definitely for me it would be a loss of at least $100.
Actually appeasement is better than the intended response.
I would like to qualify something before I say something that follows:
Without exception, every Jewish person I have ever personally known has been an exceptional person. Every one... okay... not every one... (there was this particular female, but... well... female... ) But the other 90+% all triple-A as far as I am concerned. And it's not because I always agreed with them or aything of the sort. Just that they were people of admirable attributes. Before I get painted as "anti-semite" I want to make it clear that I blame individuals for the actions of individuals. And when I say "the jews" I mean only a select few.
When I compare the evidence presented after WW2 in the nazi trials (which by today's standards would be ridiculously flimsy and would never result in a conviction) to the rest of Hollywood media propaganda and this ridiculous insulting video, I see similarities in that intelligent people should be able to see through it too easily and that it's targetted to a low-brow, prejudiced demographic who are already prepared to believe what they are told. And I mean this for BOTH sides of the demographic -- the arab side and the xtian side. The video was clearly designed to get stupid people hating each other in a way not unlike that Mel Gibson Jesus movie did. I see it as ridiculous and yet very effective.
I say it is obvious who is behind this and what their intentions are. I also say the actors were voiced over so often that I have little doubt they were not willing participants in the END production. And it's not like they even tried hard at all.
So I say again. Appeasement is better than the obviously intended result. When you get two stupid people fighting, the winners are the audience.
It's amazing how much and how often things that "incite violence" are held responsible, but the people doing the violence aren't responsible?
Sorry, but forget the "cause" because this is merely an insult at best. Nothing excuses killing and destruction in response to a mere insult. If you can't contain yourself after being angered in this way, you should be destroyed in the most literal sense of the word.
A "recall" can come in many forms. When there is a recall on a "defective product" it is not always "users must return this to the manufacturer." In fact, it almost never means that. It usually means "users are advised to bring this thing in for a fix or update." And this is usually voluntary on the part of the users and a requirement of support by the vendor.
A recall is probably the most appropriate remedy. A bad on a product is probably the least appropriate remedy since we're talking about software where features can be changed or removed with an update.
Wait? Aren't methods no longer patentable? Well, business method patents anyway. But a method, a way of doing something, should be equally disallowed. And in the case of software, it's still a method... a way of doing something... as directed by a set of instructions readable by a computer/processor device.
If I were to create an index of books and movies and told people where they can BUY them, am I guilty of infringing on copyrights?
Clearly, no. We call this "advertising" and it's big business.
"Contributing to the deliquency of..." is not the same as being a delinquent minor is it? We have similar laws which fill similar needs. Why don't they just push for a law which describes what is actually happening rather than harm the law twisting it out of proportion and purpose?
I think it is beyond reason to argue that links to copyrighted works does not aid in the distribution of such materials. But it goes at least equally beyond reason to argue that providing hyperlinks is the same as infringement.
Long, long ago, I was married to a woman who ridiculously accused me a cheating on her at every turn. At first I thought "cute jealousy" but it persisted. Then it became unreasonable and unrealistic... then disturbing. Turned out that she was a cheater. She was the one cheating and she simply projected her tendencies upon me. And that's when it occured to me how many people see things. Most people tend to see others as they see themselves.
Ben Folds did a song "Trusted" that goes like "It seems to me if you can't trust You can't be trusted" which neatly puts into words how I have come to understand certain bits of individual human behavior. A person who is suspicious of others is a person who is likely to take advantage of others... and on and on and on.
What I'm getting at is all these weird child porn related laws where stories and accounts and other things generated from the minds of people are to be banned, limited, prohibited and criminalized must surely arise from the minds of pedophiles. I realize it seems naive to see things as I do -- that pedophiles need help, and all that, but we are criminalizing thought here. And the legislation is surely coming from the minds of people who would think to think of these things because frankly, it never would have occurred to me that such things would become "erotic material" for someone else.
Surely these legislators are or are connected with pedophiles themselves.
I'm going to go with "this should be common sense NOT to do this without local government approval and fore knowledge in today's charged political climate."
It should be ESPECIALLY obvious since this is a war/battle/fighting simulation where the setting is a specific (not imaginary/fantasy) location being simulated.
I feel sorry for the people who were arrested -- they were probably not the decision makers. If they were the decision makers, they deserve what they got. If they are not the decision makers, whatever trouble they experience should be the basis of a law suit against the decision makers for being stupid and negligent.
What am I missing here? More importantly, what is new? Perhaps the more this is repeated, the more people will realize what they are supporting and voting for.
This isn't news. It's an "awareness" piece. Useful and important.
I know that in all cases, the threat of DMCA action is really what is at stake here. The DMCA is a damaging piece of one-sided legislation that no only hurts people in the US but all over the planet.
It's time this is brought before a judge I think. What is stopping this from happening?
Seems obvious to me we're talking about a group of people who are willing to believe what they are told to believe or give in to ideas because one makes them feel better or less uncomfortable.
It kind of describes a lot of people, but primarily, it describes the religious faithful.
I should be able to compile and run any program I want. The kernel, the Window system and the desktop environment should not limit me. If I were using KDE, I would be able to compile any version of GiMP I wanted and it would have had fewer if any ill effects.
Or to say this another way: I can run GiMP 2.8.2, the latest version, under Microsoft Windows XP or up. Are you saying that it is because the Windows distro supports it or because Windows isn't preventing it?
The issue is the use of GTK i the desktop environment. It shouldn't be.
I think you are confusing its properties with some of the cause and effect going on around here.
The US Treasury doesn't have any treasure. What we have is debt. When the government wants money, it asks the Federal Reserve bank to extend more credit.
I read through some of this and I am a user of Japanese language input. (Output too) In my recent experience with trying to get GiMP 2.8.x compiled and running on CentOS 6.x, I learned that when I was successful, I could only accomplish this feat by compiling many of GNOME's core libraries because the GIMP toolkit (you know, the GUI toolkit intended for use with GIMP) ended up as part of GNOME against the advice of the larger community. The result is that if I try to run a GTK based application in an environment which uses a different GTK, I lose theming... not the end of the world. But ALSO I loose access to my input method! Since I lose GNOME integration, input methods are also lost among other things.
This is GNOME's fault. They simply aren't mature in their development philosophies.
And what did I read in the article describing the new changes? "more tightly integrated IME!!" Uh... no. That's a bad idea. If there's one thing I learned from my experiences in breaking GNOME integration, it's that input is something of a low enough level that it should be handled by X, not by GNOME.
GNOME marches forward ruining things. If they want "a direction" they need to consider moving in a mature direction that unifies the desktop experience with X and with that other thing that is closer to the hardware... freeland or something like that?
And what was that "GNOME-OS" thing I heard about? Oh crap. Every app and environment thinks they should be an OS. Uh... no. Please no,
I have heard from a source I cannot disclose that these attacks *might be* government sponsored.
The notion here is that if governments actively attempted to outlaw, ban or block the use of this alternative currency, people would backlash and buckle down even tighter. (You can see how well the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" has been working out.) Making this currency illegal will only create more criminals.
Instead, it has been said that there is an extremely active initiative to discredit the risk and reliability of the currency.
Personally, I am not sure whether this will work or not, but the purpose and the methods seem reasonable.
Sure, the hardware is a thing. But it's only a thing that supports better software and performance. The main thing is the things people can do with it.
The "wow" about iPhone, and later Android, was "look at all the things I can do with it! And the number of things I can do with it is growing like crazy!"
The thing about Android is "look at all the things I can do with it! with fewer restrictions! and cheaper!"
What does Blackberry bring? Developers? Apps? Freedom?
They bring business maturity. That's about it. Is it enough?
Why do I get this feeling it's Apple trying to get some anti-Samsung feelings out there? After all, the iPhone factory stories of suicides and crap like that really got some talk time before. If this is what it was supposed to be, it's weak. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is new or interesting about this story.
We're talk about fair shares. Presently, the burdens are dreadfully imbalanced. Take away the priviledges and loopholes and all the extra crap and let's all get some equality. Then we can talk about wanting to hold onto what we "earn."
And seriously. "Income" is money which comes through commerce. Wages are NOT income. They are an equal trade of work for pay. You want to talk about "earning" don't talk about people doing commerce. They didn't work for it -- their employees did and they got paid for their services. The rest is income which should be taxable... payroll should not be.
What bugs me more than the wealthy who want to keep their money (I totally understand that) are the people who are not wealthy who want to protect the interests of the wealthy because they hope to somehow be wealthy one day. (A very poor chance of that happening statistically speaking.)
People should keep what they earn. Investment money is not earned money. Money through running a business? Somewhere in betweenm but there's a LOT of grey area in there isn't there?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember learning about DeBeers and having this bit of information come up at some point.... lots of people in Russia dying mysterious deaths surrounding the topic of diamonds in Russia.
Diamonds are fairly plentiful and common. That they are expensive and considered valuable is marketing... or racketeering... whatever you want to call it.
Think about it. If you paid for insurance for your car and had a deductible of 8.3% but a payment rate which is about 17% the value of the phone for the predicted duration of ownership or less... guaranteed to get refurbished crap...
Sorry, but I think I'd rather roll the dice, save money and buy bumpers and simply be careful. At least when/if I break my expensive phone, I wil be able to comfort myself with a brand new perfectly shiny latest version of whatever is out there.
I have never actually broken a phone before, so I can't say if this is a good deal for other people but definitely for me it would be a loss of at least $100.
Actually appeasement is better than the intended response.
I would like to qualify something before I say something that follows:
Without exception, every Jewish person I have ever personally known has been an exceptional person. Every one... okay... not every one... (there was this particular female, but... well... female... ) But the other 90+% all triple-A as far as I am concerned. And it's not because I always agreed with them or aything of the sort. Just that they were people of admirable attributes. Before I get painted as "anti-semite" I want to make it clear that I blame individuals for the actions of individuals. And when I say "the jews" I mean only a select few.
When I compare the evidence presented after WW2 in the nazi trials (which by today's standards would be ridiculously flimsy and would never result in a conviction) to the rest of Hollywood media propaganda and this ridiculous insulting video, I see similarities in that intelligent people should be able to see through it too easily and that it's targetted to a low-brow, prejudiced demographic who are already prepared to believe what they are told. And I mean this for BOTH sides of the demographic -- the arab side and the xtian side. The video was clearly designed to get stupid people hating each other in a way not unlike that Mel Gibson Jesus movie did. I see it as ridiculous and yet very effective.
I say it is obvious who is behind this and what their intentions are. I also say the actors were voiced over so often that I have little doubt they were not willing participants in the END production. And it's not like they even tried hard at all.
So I say again. Appeasement is better than the obviously intended result. When you get two stupid people fighting, the winners are the audience.
It's amazing how much and how often things that "incite violence" are held responsible, but the people doing the violence aren't responsible?
Sorry, but forget the "cause" because this is merely an insult at best. Nothing excuses killing and destruction in response to a mere insult. If you can't contain yourself after being angered in this way, you should be destroyed in the most literal sense of the word.
Who modded this funny? Mod it +5 Insightful / +5 Informative.
A "recall" can come in many forms. When there is a recall on a "defective product" it is not always "users must return this to the manufacturer." In fact, it almost never means that. It usually means "users are advised to bring this thing in for a fix or update." And this is usually voluntary on the part of the users and a requirement of support by the vendor.
A recall is probably the most appropriate remedy. A bad on a product is probably the least appropriate remedy since we're talking about software where features can be changed or removed with an update.
Wait? Aren't methods no longer patentable? Well, business method patents anyway. But a method, a way of doing something, should be equally disallowed. And in the case of software, it's still a method... a way of doing something... as directed by a set of instructions readable by a computer/processor device.
If I were to create an index of books and movies and told people where they can BUY them, am I guilty of infringing on copyrights?
Clearly, no. We call this "advertising" and it's big business.
"Contributing to the deliquency of..." is not the same as being a delinquent minor is it? We have similar laws which fill similar needs. Why don't they just push for a law which describes what is actually happening rather than harm the law twisting it out of proportion and purpose?
I think it is beyond reason to argue that links to copyrighted works does not aid in the distribution of such materials. But it goes at least equally beyond reason to argue that providing hyperlinks is the same as infringement.
Define the crime better and we can talk.
Long, long ago, I was married to a woman who ridiculously accused me a cheating on her at every turn. At first I thought "cute jealousy" but it persisted. Then it became unreasonable and unrealistic... then disturbing. Turned out that she was a cheater. She was the one cheating and she simply projected her tendencies upon me. And that's when it occured to me how many people see things. Most people tend to see others as they see themselves.
Ben Folds did a song "Trusted" that goes like "It seems to me if you can't trust You can't be trusted" which neatly puts into words how I have come to understand certain bits of individual human behavior. A person who is suspicious of others is a person who is likely to take advantage of others... and on and on and on.
What I'm getting at is all these weird child porn related laws where stories and accounts and other things generated from the minds of people are to be banned, limited, prohibited and criminalized must surely arise from the minds of pedophiles. I realize it seems naive to see things as I do -- that pedophiles need help, and all that, but we are criminalizing thought here. And the legislation is surely coming from the minds of people who would think to think of these things because frankly, it never would have occurred to me that such things would become "erotic material" for someone else.
Surely these legislators are or are connected with pedophiles themselves.
Samsung is singing "We didn't start the fire..."
Apple is the one who went on the warpath of destruction. Had they not done that, we would not see Samsung fighting back.
Yes, but does the Qualcomm patent list "...in a mobile phone or computing device"? I didn't think so.
I'm going to go with "this should be common sense NOT to do this without local government approval and fore knowledge in today's charged political climate."
It should be ESPECIALLY obvious since this is a war/battle/fighting simulation where the setting is a specific (not imaginary/fantasy) location being simulated.
I feel sorry for the people who were arrested -- they were probably not the decision makers. If they were the decision makers, they deserve what they got. If they are not the decision makers, whatever trouble they experience should be the basis of a law suit against the decision makers for being stupid and negligent.
The risks are to the public.
The rewards are to the 1%.
What am I missing here? More importantly, what is new? Perhaps the more this is repeated, the more people will realize what they are supporting and voting for.
This isn't news. It's an "awareness" piece. Useful and important.
I know that in all cases, the threat of DMCA action is really what is at stake here. The DMCA is a damaging piece of one-sided legislation that no only hurts people in the US but all over the planet.
It's time this is brought before a judge I think. What is stopping this from happening?
C'mon Google. You've got a dog in this race too!
Seems obvious to me we're talking about a group of people who are willing to believe what they are told to believe or give in to ideas because one makes them feel better or less uncomfortable.
It kind of describes a lot of people, but primarily, it describes the religious faithful.
I didn't hose my system. It works fine. I satisfied GiMP's dependencies in /opt/... so that it could find what it needed to run.
GiMP is an application. It should run under ALL desktop environments. And it does... except for older GNOMEs. KDE? Yup. All the rest? Yup.
And my beef with GNOME is that the problems didn't raise their heads to my notice until recently after years and years of use.
I should be able to compile and run any program I want. The kernel, the Window system and the desktop environment should not limit me. If I were using KDE, I would be able to compile any version of GiMP I wanted and it would have had fewer if any ill effects.
Or to say this another way: I can run GiMP 2.8.2, the latest version, under Microsoft Windows XP or up. Are you saying that it is because the Windows distro supports it or because Windows isn't preventing it?
The issue is the use of GTK i the desktop environment. It shouldn't be.
I think you are confusing its properties with some of the cause and effect going on around here.
The US Treasury doesn't have any treasure. What we have is debt. When the government wants money, it asks the Federal Reserve bank to extend more credit.
Screenshots are not encouraging...
I read through some of this and I am a user of Japanese language input. (Output too) In my recent experience with trying to get GiMP 2.8.x compiled and running on CentOS 6.x, I learned that when I was successful, I could only accomplish this feat by compiling many of GNOME's core libraries because the GIMP toolkit (you know, the GUI toolkit intended for use with GIMP) ended up as part of GNOME against the advice of the larger community. The result is that if I try to run a GTK based application in an environment which uses a different GTK, I lose theming... not the end of the world. But ALSO I loose access to my input method! Since I lose GNOME integration, input methods are also lost among other things.
This is GNOME's fault. They simply aren't mature in their development philosophies.
And what did I read in the article describing the new changes? "more tightly integrated IME!!" Uh... no. That's a bad idea. If there's one thing I learned from my experiences in breaking GNOME integration, it's that input is something of a low enough level that it should be handled by X, not by GNOME.
GNOME marches forward ruining things. If they want "a direction" they need to consider moving in a mature direction that unifies the desktop experience with X and with that other thing that is closer to the hardware... freeland or something like that?
And what was that "GNOME-OS" thing I heard about? Oh crap. Every app and environment thinks they should be an OS. Uh... no. Please no,
I wonder if a SIM card slot would also defile the phone?
Microsoft? Nokia? Do you really think people will buy this excuse? Do you really think people will buy this excuse of a phone?
I have heard from a source I cannot disclose that these attacks *might be* government sponsored.
The notion here is that if governments actively attempted to outlaw, ban or block the use of this alternative currency, people would backlash and buckle down even tighter. (You can see how well the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" has been working out.) Making this currency illegal will only create more criminals.
Instead, it has been said that there is an extremely active initiative to discredit the risk and reliability of the currency.
Personally, I am not sure whether this will work or not, but the purpose and the methods seem reasonable.
Sure, the hardware is a thing. But it's only a thing that supports better software and performance. The main thing is the things people can do with it.
The "wow" about iPhone, and later Android, was "look at all the things I can do with it! And the number of things I can do with it is growing like crazy!"
The thing about Android is "look at all the things I can do with it! with fewer restrictions! and cheaper!"
What does Blackberry bring? Developers? Apps? Freedom?
They bring business maturity. That's about it. Is it enough?
Why do I get this feeling it's Apple trying to get some anti-Samsung feelings out there? After all, the iPhone factory stories of suicides and crap like that really got some talk time before. If this is what it was supposed to be, it's weak. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is new or interesting about this story.
Human capital is slavery. I can't see another possible interpretation. To have capital, it must be owned. Who owns these humans he refers to?
We're talk about fair shares. Presently, the burdens are dreadfully imbalanced. Take away the priviledges and loopholes and all the extra crap and let's all get some equality. Then we can talk about wanting to hold onto what we "earn."
And seriously. "Income" is money which comes through commerce. Wages are NOT income. They are an equal trade of work for pay. You want to talk about "earning" don't talk about people doing commerce. They didn't work for it -- their employees did and they got paid for their services. The rest is income which should be taxable... payroll should not be.
What bugs me more than the wealthy who want to keep their money (I totally understand that) are the people who are not wealthy who want to protect the interests of the wealthy because they hope to somehow be wealthy one day. (A very poor chance of that happening statistically speaking.)
People should keep what they earn. Investment money is not earned money. Money through running a business? Somewhere in betweenm but there's a LOT of grey area in there isn't there?