Gingrich himself used the "oral sex =! sex" defence before Clinton. They actually have the support of some religious fundamentalists (makes the celibacy thing a whole lot easier for priests) and sex educators (less pregnancy / STDs).
The ID requirement has been in place for many years, and has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. It's simply to stop people giving or reselling their tickets to someone else so that the airlines to have complete control of the market in plane tickets.
This means the airlines can increase prices dramatically for last-minute bookings, and overbook their flights in the knowledge that a certain proportion of the tickets sold are unlikeley actually be used.
All this is true in a free, competitive market. However, capitalism doesn't necessarilly imply that. It simply means that money rules everything. Left to their own devices, capitalists will happily collude to form monopolies and cartels that raise prices and screw the customer.
People often forget that the fiduciary responsibility to stockholders is just one of many government regulations that businesses must follow. Unfortunately, many executives are among the first to forget it: They call for deregulation in all other respects, yet venerate this particular regulation as a new Golden Rule.
Personally, I'd choose basic ethical principles over obeying the letter of a regulation designed to benefit the wealthy. But then, I'm not a CEO.
You've internalized a lie spread by the commercial software-publication industry.
Very true. Unfortunately, legal systems all around the world also seem to be internalizing the same lie. The software publishers have several strategies to ensure that that this happens, and which one they use depends on the gullibility or corruption of lawmakers and courts in each jurisdiction:
They argue that loading a program into memory or installing it on a hard disk is copying, therefore subject to copyright
They argue that using a program without clicking through the EULA violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention features
They buy laws like UCITA, which codifies the lie outright
They didn't really change the rules: They've always been allowed to do this. What it does show is that that the rules are extremely biased in favor of the Google and the people selling stock, but that shouldn't be a surprise.
The stock market in general is rigged to benefit insiders at the expense of small invetsors, and that's particularly true for IPOs. The only difference between Google's dutch auction and a regular IPO is the definition of "insider": Google wants all the cash to go the people who own it now, not Wall Street brokerages.
Because the RIAA is a cartel that demands online music stores pay its members about 80 cents for each song they sell, no matter what the cost to the end-user.
The remainder goes towards hosting, bandwidth and Superbowl commercials where innocent children are forced to confess to crimes on national TV, leaving little profit for Apple.
Unlike software patents, anti-gravity patents don't really do much damage. It's not like there's a thriving anti-gravity industry that will suddenly be shut down or forced to pay royalties.
As an added befit, patents granted now will probably be long-expired if anti-gravity is ever discovered.
Is Santorum next? The issues sound superficially similar.
Although more people probably know Santorum as a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex than a homophobic senator, Rick Santorum might still try to shut the Santorum site down.
Authors have very few rights when it comes to how their books are published. Publishers aren't yet quite as repressive as the RIAA, but the only way for an unknown author to get published is to sign away virtually all rights for a very small royalty.
Having said that, it looks like this repellant lawyer is actually representing the author, not just the publisher, though we can't be sure. And the book sold quite well, so the author does now have a bit more influence over Penguin.
One obvious solution it to enter your real zip or area code, but a made up name, address, phone number, etc. In fact, that's often the only way to obtain useful information anonymously from sites that provide things like weather or TV listings.
I sometimes feel a pang of guilt about entering a fake phone number, because there's a chance that it actually belongs to someone who will later be bugged by telemarketers. A good alternative (assuming that the site checks for "555" and there's no-one you hate enough to subject them to telemarketing) is to give the number of an automated switchboard.
The problem is that many hosts files block "c.moreover.com" because before newsbot it was only used for serving ads. I suppose that makes some sense from MS's perspective (they only want surfers who will actually view their ads) but it could backfire.
Many surfers will just assume that the site is broken, enhancing MS's reputation for bugs. Even if it does discourage some people from using hosts files, that is probably not in MS's long-term interests. A hosts file is a useful line of defense against IE spyware, ActiveX trojans, etc., so users who don't have one are could be more likely to suffer from IE's security holes and decide to switch to Firefox.
Veterans have no guarantee of health care. There are many homeless, sick vets sleeping on the streets of American cities.
This guy allegdely killed two people. If found guilty of murder (or more likely manslaughter, as the murder charge is probably just a tactic by the DA), he's a lot more deserving of prison than most of the people there. About half the people in U.S. prisons wer econvicted of cultivating or selling a naturally occurring and mostly harmless plant.
It's actually got worse since then: Clippy has migrated from Office to the OS itself, in WinXP's "Find" feature. Instead of Win95-style box with relatively useful options, we get an animated puppy. Yes, the options are still available, but they're buried beneath multiple menus.
Even many people within MS hate the "assistants". For a decade, Microsoft Research has been testing Bayesian filters that make Clippy less annoying. The researchers are quite open about criticizing MS for not including their algorithms in the actual product.
EasyCinema in the UK does exactly that, with online booking and seats starting at 20p (about 35 US cents), including all taxes. Unfortunately, a big cartel of greedy Hollywood studios wants people to pay a lot more, so the choice is quite limited. The MPAA would undoubtedly stop eBay or any other company doing something similar in the US.
Bizarrely, the DRM in Windows Media Player is partly optional: there's a dialog box that asks if you want to "copy protect" ripped songs (Tools menu, Options, Copy Music tab). It's checked by default, but you can avoid the DRM by unchecking it.
This is very true, but refusing to use any DRM-encumbred technology means boycotting all DVDs. Their CSS and region-coding is even worse than WMA, i-tunes, etc. They only seem good because the alternative was pay-per-view DivX.
This new plan actually sounds less evil than current DVDs. My guess is that it's mostly an attempt to stop people downloading DeCSS. Most laptops have massive amounts of unused HD space, and people want to be able to watch their legitimately-purchased movies without carrying around a stack of DVDs.
If it's popular and not too easy to crack, we'll probably see it used to sell downloads online (iMovies?).
There is a project to add ActiveX support to Firefox. Trouble is, ActiveX is the main reason for IE's security holes. (There are other reasons, like general MS sloppiness and the large installed base, but A-X is the really big one.)
I've been using RC2 for a few weeks on two separate PCs with no problems except a slightly longer boot time. (Well, fewer than with SP1.) The biggest improvement is the firewall.
This is Star Trek, where no-one even tries to look inside an aliens' suit. Remember the Breen? They appeared in many episodes throughout ST, even attacking Earth and destroying San Francisco in one episode of DS9.
Repeat fees for actors are normal. It's quite common even for commercials: Every time something is shown on TV or sold, the actor gets money.
The problem is that for many shows, the actual amounts aren't written into the actors' original contracts. Tracking down each actor and haggling over who gets what can be very expensive, accounting for a much larger slice of the budget than the actual repeat fees. It can also delay many releases, sometimes indefinitely.
You need multiple layers of defence: give everyone Firefox, but use a proxy server in case someone decides to use IE anyway. (Some sites still need it, and it's impossible to remove fully.)
If it's just a single Windows PC, update to XP SP2. Although it's still technically a beta, it's been fairly well tested by now (RC2), and the risks of running it are probably less than those of running an unpatched Windows system.
It's not a perfect example, because many people who rent out their houses or apartments do still have to work. So, going by the metaphor, almost all of us are tenants.
But a very small minority of people own most of the wealth: They don't have to work, as they own their mansions and palaces outright and have no rent or mortgage to pay. Additionally, they have extra income (dividends and interest) that keeps them in caviar, cocaine, private jets, etc. They're the real landlords.
The present economy is basically a large and ongoing redistribution from those of us who have to work for a living to those who don't. The majority of people are having to work harder and harder, while the super-rich are seeing their incomes and net worth increase.
Slashdot Mirror
Gingrich himself used the "oral sex =! sex" defence before Clinton. They actually have the support of some religious fundamentalists (makes the celibacy thing a whole lot easier for priests) and sex educators (less pregnancy / STDs).
The ID requirement has been in place for many years, and has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. It's simply to stop people giving or reselling their tickets to someone else so that the airlines to have complete control of the market in plane tickets.
This means the airlines can increase prices dramatically for last-minute bookings, and overbook their flights in the knowledge that a certain proportion of the tickets sold are unlikeley actually be used.
All this is true in a free, competitive market. However, capitalism doesn't necessarilly imply that. It simply means that money rules everything. Left to their own devices, capitalists will happily collude to form monopolies and cartels that raise prices and screw the customer.
People often forget that the fiduciary responsibility to stockholders is just one of many government regulations that businesses must follow. Unfortunately, many executives are among the first to forget it: They call for deregulation in all other respects, yet venerate this particular regulation as a new Golden Rule.
Personally, I'd choose basic ethical principles over obeying the letter of a regulation designed to benefit the wealthy. But then, I'm not a CEO.
Very true. Unfortunately, legal systems all around the world also seem to be internalizing the same lie. The software publishers have several strategies to ensure that that this happens, and which one they use depends on the gullibility or corruption of lawmakers and courts in each jurisdiction:
They didn't really change the rules: They've always been allowed to do this. What it does show is that that the rules are extremely biased in favor of the Google and the people selling stock, but that shouldn't be a surprise.
The stock market in general is rigged to benefit insiders at the expense of small invetsors, and that's particularly true for IPOs. The only difference between Google's dutch auction and a regular IPO is the definition of "insider": Google wants all the cash to go the people who own it now, not Wall Street brokerages.
It's because people still associate Real with low bitrate streams optimized for dial-up conections, not portable music at near-CD quality.
Apple does streaming too, of course, but more sites seem to use RealPlayer than Quicktime. And the iPod is the most well-known mp3 player.
Because the RIAA is a cartel that demands online music stores pay its members about 80 cents for each song they sell, no matter what the cost to the end-user.
The remainder goes towards hosting, bandwidth and Superbowl commercials where innocent children are forced to confess to crimes on national TV, leaving little profit for Apple.
Is there a major Windows program that doesn't try to run at startup? Even OpenOffice has its own system tray icon installed by default.
At least OpenOffice's is easy to disable, unlike Real and QuickTime.
Unlike software patents, anti-gravity patents don't really do much damage. It's not like there's a thriving anti-gravity industry that will suddenly be shut down or forced to pay royalties.
As an added befit, patents granted now will probably be long-expired if anti-gravity is ever discovered.
It's more than just coincidence that SCO and Hatch seem to have similar agendas. Hatch's son is actually SCO's lead attorney in the state courts.
Is Santorum next? The issues sound superficially similar.
Although more people probably know Santorum as a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex than a homophobic senator, Rick Santorum might still try to shut the Santorum site down.
Authors have very few rights when it comes to how their books are published. Publishers aren't yet quite as repressive as the RIAA, but the only way for an unknown author to get published is to sign away virtually all rights for a very small royalty.
Having said that, it looks like this repellant lawyer is actually representing the author, not just the publisher, though we can't be sure. And the book sold quite well, so the author does now have a bit more influence over Penguin.
It's because they're used to spell checkers and (even worse) autocorrect. My typing and spelling skills really atrophied when I started using MS Word.
One obvious solution it to enter your real zip or area code, but a made up name, address, phone number, etc. In fact, that's often the only way to obtain useful information anonymously from sites that provide things like weather or TV listings.
I sometimes feel a pang of guilt about entering a fake phone number, because there's a chance that it actually belongs to someone who will later be bugged by telemarketers. A good alternative (assuming that the site checks for "555" and there's no-one you hate enough to subject them to telemarketing) is to give the number of an automated switchboard.
The problem is that many hosts files block "c.moreover.com" because before newsbot it was only used for serving ads. I suppose that makes some sense from MS's perspective (they only want surfers who will actually view their ads) but it could backfire.
Many surfers will just assume that the site is broken, enhancing MS's reputation for bugs. Even if it does discourage some people from using hosts files, that is probably not in MS's long-term interests. A hosts file is a useful line of defense against IE spyware, ActiveX trojans, etc., so users who don't have one are could be more likely to suffer from IE's security holes and decide to switch to Firefox.
Veterans have no guarantee of health care. There are many homeless, sick vets sleeping on the streets of American cities.
This guy allegdely killed two people. If found guilty of murder (or more likely manslaughter, as the murder charge is probably just a tactic by the DA), he's a lot more deserving of prison than most of the people there. About half the people in U.S. prisons wer econvicted of cultivating or selling a naturally occurring and mostly harmless plant.
It's actually got worse since then: Clippy has migrated from Office to the OS itself, in WinXP's "Find" feature. Instead of Win95-style box with relatively useful options, we get an animated puppy. Yes, the options are still available, but they're buried beneath multiple menus.
Even many people within MS hate the "assistants". For a decade, Microsoft Research has been testing Bayesian filters that make Clippy less annoying. The researchers are quite open about criticizing MS for not including their algorithms in the actual product.
EasyCinema in the UK does exactly that, with online booking and seats starting at 20p (about 35 US cents), including all taxes. Unfortunately, a big cartel of greedy Hollywood studios wants people to pay a lot more, so the choice is quite limited. The MPAA would undoubtedly stop eBay or any other company doing something similar in the US.
Bizarrely, the DRM in Windows Media Player is partly optional: there's a dialog box that asks if you want to "copy protect" ripped songs (Tools menu, Options, Copy Music tab). It's checked by default, but you can avoid the DRM by unchecking it.
This is very true, but refusing to use any DRM-encumbred technology means boycotting all DVDs. Their CSS and region-coding is even worse than WMA, i-tunes, etc. They only seem good because the alternative was pay-per-view DivX.
This new plan actually sounds less evil than current DVDs. My guess is that it's mostly an attempt to stop people downloading DeCSS. Most laptops have massive amounts of unused HD space, and people want to be able to watch their legitimately-purchased movies without carrying around a stack of DVDs.
If it's popular and not too easy to crack, we'll probably see it used to sell downloads online (iMovies?).
There is a project to add ActiveX support to Firefox. Trouble is, ActiveX is the main reason for IE's security holes. (There are other reasons, like general MS sloppiness and the large installed base, but A-X is the really big one.)
I've been using RC2 for a few weeks on two separate PCs with no problems except a slightly longer boot time. (Well, fewer than with SP1.) The biggest improvement is the firewall.
This is Star Trek, where no-one even tries to look inside an aliens' suit. Remember the Breen? They appeared in many episodes throughout ST, even attacking Earth and destroying San Francisco in one episode of DS9.
Repeat fees for actors are normal. It's quite common even for commercials: Every time something is shown on TV or sold, the actor gets money.
The problem is that for many shows, the actual amounts aren't written into the actors' original contracts. Tracking down each actor and haggling over who gets what can be very expensive, accounting for a much larger slice of the budget than the actual repeat fees. It can also delay many releases, sometimes indefinitely.
You need multiple layers of defence: give everyone Firefox, but use a proxy server in case someone decides to use IE anyway. (Some sites still need it, and it's impossible to remove fully.)
If it's just a single Windows PC, update to XP SP2. Although it's still technically a beta, it's been fairly well tested by now (RC2), and the risks of running it are probably less than those of running an unpatched Windows system.
It's not a perfect example, because many people who rent out their houses or apartments do still have to work. So, going by the metaphor, almost all of us are tenants.
But a very small minority of people own most of the wealth: They don't have to work, as they own their mansions and palaces outright and have no rent or mortgage to pay. Additionally, they have extra income (dividends and interest) that keeps them in caviar, cocaine, private jets, etc. They're the real landlords.
The present economy is basically a large and ongoing redistribution from those of us who have to work for a living to those who don't. The majority of people are having to work harder and harder, while the super-rich are seeing their incomes and net worth increase.