RTFA. They're not dropping incoming attachments, but attachments you received, stored, and yourself chose not to delete. At some point, if the message goes unaccessed for a while, HotMail is deleting the attachments to save space. This is not fraud or tampering in any way, but a condition of service. Apparently, they give you 2GB of storage, but i guess to USE it, all your mail has to be current mail. They're not giving you an unlimited inbox to store whatever you want forever.
Perfectly legal. Also very stingy of them. I'll stick with gmail on Firefox. They'd probably have a serious problem if everyone filled up their own 2GB quota at once. You know they don't have the actual space for that, which is why they're pulling this asshole tactic.
No actually it's not. Prejudice is if you decide that because the guy is an 11 year-old kid he must not be all that great of a player and is really not worth playing with. In this case, it seems the writer simply found the player's voice annoying and distracting - he was not using this to make a judgment about the player.
Also, preferring to play games with people your own age is not prejudice either: it's a preference, nothing more. Notice that the parent doesn't imply that younger players aren't as good or worthwhile because they're younger.
Personally, I have no problem playing with gamers of any age. I've played with people all the way from age 7 to 50+. But I have to say that if I was playing with someone and having a good time, then got on VOIP with that player and found his/her voice to be extremely annoying it really would kill the mood for me.
I have to agree about the prejudice part. Preference to play with someone his own age is in no way a predjudice. Thinking that the 11yr old couldn't possibily know what he's doing (which the poster has already established that he DID know) and not wanting to listen to him after that is another story.
I also joined a guild when I played WoW, and they also used ventrillo. A RL friend of mine and I were on, and someone else from the guild that we didn't know very well joined our channel, and he turned out to be young, probably 11-14 or so if I had to guess. The three of us still played, however while I wasn't uncomfortable with the situation, I was slightly annoyed (very slightly) that I couldn't "be myself" and use all the regular language that the two of us RL friends were used to using. I didn't feel comfortable saying things like 'I just F---ed that guy up' or whatever in front of someone who might still be in middle school. The kid knew how to play and he pulled his weight, so I didn't say anything. My RL friend and I sent/whispers in game a few times about various things that we didn't want a kid to hear, but that was basically the extent of the annoyance. We both had a preference for playing with people our own age, just like I have a preference for women with long hair. I don't have a prejudice towards short-haired women, but I just prefer the ones with long hair. It's the same thing.
Now all they need to do is figure out how to get the old people in Buicks to explode in the same manner, then maybe they'll stop driving 35 in a 65!
Seriously though, that's very interesting news. I'd like to know though, how do they know it was only 99.999% the speed of light? Could that be a measuring error, or some point-of-view discrepancy? With all of the constants in the Universe, it seems silly to me that something would be travelling at 99.9999% the speed of light (or however many 9s there were.)
The sign on the pump that I frequent says that 44 cents of each gallon goes towards fuel tax. If I don't buy any of that gas, why should I still need to pay that fuel tax? That would be like charging me sales tax on items I have not purchased.
Just goes to show you how bad it is in this country. Someone tries to do something good for the economy, the environment, and foreign export dependencies, and they get fined. I guess Bush is in OPEC's pockets too. I can't say I'm surprised, him being a Good 'Ole Boy from Texas after all.
I used to think that my friend who moved to Canada was kinda foolish for leaving the U.S. Now I envy him like crazy.
If a burglar can effectively sue a home owner for bodily injury suffered why burglarizing said home
I'm pretty sure that's an urban legend, unless you're talking of cases where the burglar is shot by the owner while making his escape or something.
I used to live just outside of city limits in a not-so-great part of town, so we didn't have local city police, but rather township police. They were very nice people, and I got to know them relatively well in the time I lived there because we had people trying to get into our house on a regular basis, as there was some kind of trail behind our house that people used for whatever nefarious purposes. I made a point to ask two of these officers exactly what my right was (I own(ed) a shotgun, and was several times fearful of my life and my wife's life) if someone were to enter the house. He explained it to me in very clear terms what the law says (I noticed he also seemed to make it very unbiased). He also told me (mentioned that this should be off the record, hence the township and officer's name is obviously not displayed) that if I was going to shoot an intruder, shoot to kill. He then told me why. The story he told sounded like an urban legend story, but he assured me that he was part of the trial so he was there in court the day the verdict was shown. An elderly couple was burglarized one night, and the thief chose to enter through a high window (like something you'd see in a loft-style house, where the front window almost spans two stories) and in the process, fell and landed on a dresser that was placed in the middle of the room since the couple was in the middle of painting the room. The burglar broke his leg and arm in several places, and sued the elderly homeowners for a ridiculous placement of furniture that caused his injuries. I couldn't fathom what moronic jury (yes it was a jury trial) would actually award this burglar several million dollars for his injuries, when he admitted, in court, that he burglarized their house with the intent of stealing everything he could. Somehow it was twisted in his favor, and the elderly couple lost their house and every penny to their name. Now I know its possible that this police officer was telling a fable, but under the circumstances he had absolutely no reason to, so I believe it. I also believe that some people are just that stupid (re: the jury) to believe some crap that a good lawyer might spout at them.
It's a sad world we live in when the criminals have more rights than the innocent.
The law here says that you are allowed to kill an intruder when you believe that your life (or life of your spouse, kids, etc) is in danger. A burglar escaping from the scene obviously does not qualify, but I have heard several law enforcement officers say that all you need to do is drag the body back into your doorway, and you'll receive no complaint by them, because it is one less criminal off the street. Perhaps its wrong, but that's just what I have heard them say.
As far as filming the police, comments I've seen earlier are conflicting. I'll have to look this up, but IIRC the wiretapping law prohibits recording the conversation between two individuals while one party does not know that it is being recorded. If someone has a video camera in your face, its obvious that the conversation is being recorded. Then I don't believe that you need their consent, because it is "public" knowledge that it is being recorded. Also if the event occurs in public, as also mentioned before, video taken in public of a public place/event is legal. If person filming the video posts that video somewhere, then people (who did not consent to being videotaped, and are clearly identifiable) can ask to have it removed, or have themselves removed (blurred, etc) from the video, and the videographer needs to comply. However for personal uses, I can take pictures of whatever I want to take as long it is of public scenes or events.
Knowing how much I enjoyed the RE series, and that we recently got a Wii, my wife bought me the GC version of RE4, plus a GC controller to play it on. Had I known it was coming out for the Wii I would have suggested she delay the present for a bit. Now what chance do I have of trading it in or returning it (its been almost a month, hmm) and getting the Wii version instead?
Too bad they don't have some kind of upgrade program for games that are available for both GC and Wii. (Or maybe they do, I don't know.)
The first day I got to this job, I started looking around for an extra monitor, and I'll never be without it again. I don't know about any professional research studies, but I know there is no way I could be as productive as I am without my dual monitor setup. I have too many things going on once to flip back and forth, and it just makes things so much faster and so much easier. If inventory/audit was a problem here, I'd simply bring in my own personal monitor (or pick one up for $100 or whatever, they're cheap) and use it.
Even has I'm writing this, I have two major projects grinding in the other window, watching the progress of both. If it needs attention, I'll find out immediately and not 10 minutes later when I'm done perusing Slashdot.;-)
Strange... The only problem I ever had with porting VB6 code to VB.NET was the use of the printer object, but even that has been resolved in the latest update to VB.NET 2005.
Interesting, maybe your applications didn't do much then, because I had to rewrite tons of applications porting from VB6 to.NET. Even the App.Path variable "broke". Things which, in my opinion, should have been made backwards compatible forever were immediately deprecated and caused tons of build errors. (I won't say compile errors, I just won't!)
I have to agree with some of the previous posts though... I went into VB.NET thinking "Well, I already know VB, how hard could it be?" I would have been better off porting it to a more robust (platform-wise) language, because I had to rewrite the whole damn thing anyway.
You are correct as far as you go, but a business has no legal obligation to refund you money that I'm aware of. It comes down to contract law I suspect (plus complications due to consumer protection laws, but IANAL).
That's the biggest crock I've heard in a long time. Have you ever heard of a little thing called 'False Advertising'? They can not advertise something for $x then sell it for $x+10 blatantly. Sure they can try to add in fees and what have you, but the fact remains, they can not advertise one thing then not hold up to that side of the bargin. If they overcharge you, they are, by law, required to refund the overpayment. Sometimes they will fight it, usually they will make you produce some proof or evidence, but they just can't change their minds on a price after it was agreed upon then refuse to refund your money. If that was the case, every company in the country would start pulling that stuff, and there wouldn't be anything we could do about it.
When you click on that link that says you agree to pay the $0.00, that is all you are legally authorizing them to collect from your credit card account. If they take more than that, they are in violation of the contract that was agreed upon by both parties.
Unfortunately, however, these companies have the ability (granted they probably shouldn't always have the power, big difference) to charge your credit card, then the burden is on you, the consumer, to fight that charge. It is ridiculous, but without adequate legislation to regulate and quash this kind of stuff, it will continue. Amazon isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and its a big enough company that I'm sure it has plenty of full-time legal staff on the payroll.
That my friend is what the fiends at the CCRA wants you to do.
Wrong, they want you to spend money and pay taxes.
Think of the companies that will lose enormous amounts of money because of that attitude
Maybe the companies would then realize that their stuff is too damned expensive, and become more competitive.
Think of them recouping their loss in sales by bumping up the prices further
If you don't buy one, they can raise it to a bajillion dollars and it won't matter, you still wouldn't buy one. I fail to see the logic in this argument.
Think of the loss of interest in digital distribution, no MP3/WMA/M4a players, will you buy CD's? Well thats all that is left
If you think there will ever be a loss of interest in digital distribution, I weep for your future. A tax imposed by one country could not possibly overthrow the entire digital revolution. Don't give the governments that much credit.
he next thing you know, they'll be taxing products like gasoline or tobacco at different (and much higher) rates for no apparent reason
And they don't do this already? Ever noticed that little sticker on the gas pump that says how much of your cost-per-gallon goes towards taxes? Last time I remember looking, it was well over 45 cents per gallon, so that $2.20 we're paying right now is almost 1/4 for tax.
We're taxed when we earn it, we're taxed when we save it, we're taxed when we spend it, we're taxed when we die and give it to our family, and then they're taxed when they spend it, etc. No taxation without representation? Its the representation that's doing all of the damn taxing!
If this goes into effect it wouldn't be long until people start offering a 1.9GB iPod and a 9.99GB iPod, etc. Its the same way commercials can advertise "Blah for under $10,000". You get there and "blah" costs $9,999.99. (Tax of course will shoot you over, but hey.)
Now is the time for these people to make theories that give them media/press attention, because there is no way those theories could ever been proven, even if they are indeed true.
You can hypothesis out the arse about a neverending birth sequence of an infinite number of alternate universes (universi?) but since we'll more than likely not be able to explore those theories before the fall of mankind (hey, between global warming and American Idol, this planet isn't going to last too much longer!), so we might as well make up some really extraordinary shit.
"Hey guys, I have the answer. A cosmic balloon containing our universe is about to burst, creating a pletora of new universes (multiverse? can we still call them universe if there's more than one?) each to suffer the same fate?" Sounds a lot like dividing cells of a fetus. Maybe all these universes splitting off will make a giant Voltron or Tranzor-Z that we can use to battle all the other multiverses for inter-stellar domination!!!
"So that means, that our universe can be one tiny cell in the fingernail of some other giant being" (name that movie?)
Certainly we want Blizzard's 'World Of Warcraft' [currently the most popular massive multiplayer online game] to work flawlessly on day one of Vista because 8 million tech support calls would be a very bad thing.
You'd only have at the most, 7,999,999 tech support calls. I'll never upgrade to Vista, and I'm a WoW player. I don't see the need to upgrade something when it's finally relatively stable, especially when it comes with a hefty pricetag. "New features and security" doesn't interest me at all when it already took several years for the appropriate patches/updates to surface to fix the XP vulnerabilities. Now all of the script kiddies will be exploiting the Vista holes, so maybe they'll leave XP alone for a while (but I doubt it.)
I'd like to see some evidence of people actually labeled "sex offenders" by a court in the US for peeing in public or "mooning" someone (now waving your wang around I can understand), because, frankly, I don't believe you.
There have been documented cases of parents being arrested and having to register as sex offenders for publishing pictures of their newborn children (in the delivery room, etc) for friends and family to see, if those pictures included "the full view". There are a bunch of knee-jerk whistle blowers out there just dying to see someone go down for something whether they actually "did it" or not (intent-wise, or whatever).
Unfortunately that's the way society has gone, and it would take a lot of time (generations at least) for the tide to turn in the other direction. Lots of states have laws where if any part of the "private parts" are exposed for any reason (streaking, public mooning/urination, etc) then its technically labelled a sexual offense. Those are usually the ultra-conservative "red" states though, and luckily not all of them. Hell for those states that still allow public toplessness or nudity staring at someone making them feel uncomfortable could be considered a sexual offense. People are just stupid.
Hell, some U.S. states still outlaw oral and/or anal sex, even between two consenting (and even married) adults. How would you like to be arrested for getting a hummer from your wife of 20 years and labelled a sex offender?
Computers getting too "smart", we've seen it before.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Incredibles (even though it turned out to be something different, the idea was still there) Superman 3 Wargames Terminator 1/2/3
All of these movies depict computers getting too smart then at some point start "thinking" for themselves. One of these days I'll finally get to publish my theory on how to prevent this. I'll give a short summary belo...
Short term effects: The city's economy is bankrupted because it probably costs $10,000 per cubic yard of this stuff
Long term effects: It probably causes cancer, sterility, senility, lucidity, frugality, and a bunch of other -ity's that I can't think of right now.
__OR__
Five to ten years after it's reached its absorption limit, we get people who walk to work on a daily basis falling down dead from inhaling all of the pollutants that this material is spewing back into the air. What's that you say? Replace it every 5 years to prevent this? I can't say 'CHA-CHING' loud enough.
Using Internet explorer (on windows...) go onto hotmail and read a few emails. Then go into your internet cache and find the pages.
They exist.
You're wrong, thank you, drive through.
I explicitly turn off all web caches the second after I install them, because I always want to make sure I have a fresh copy of whatever I am browsing. No cache here, don't assume everyone is as big of an idiot as you are.
No matter the circumstances, no matter the election, people will always cry fraud, because they realize now thats an outlet for them to try to change the things they don't like.
It took me several months (and lots of persuasion from RL friends) to even spend the money on the game and the monthly fee, but I'll be damned if they'll get me to buy some useless card game just so I can get some useless pet that 1) does nothing, 2) takes up inventory space, and 3) ensures I can't enable any OTHER pet I've got wasting inventory space if I activate it.
It's bad enough they make us do cartwheels for months to get adequate bag space (wtf buying a bank slot for 100g, when its just as much extra space as the 10s one, with NO free bag?) But now they're offering a card game (as if they don't already offer enough addictive stuff) that you can use to "get the edge" in WoW by having some useless thing follow you around, or a turtle mount that doesn't increase your speed or do anything more than just "look cool". A computer game, a card game, and now a table-top board game. Its obvious that Blizzard is milking the franchise for every penny they can get out of it, and good for them. It's paying off big time. I don't blame them at all, but I do think the enticement of useless in-game stuff for a serious amount of real money is ridiculous. I would just never buy it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
RTFA. They're not dropping incoming attachments, but attachments you received, stored, and yourself chose not to delete. At some point, if the message goes unaccessed for a while, HotMail is deleting the attachments to save space. This is not fraud or tampering in any way, but a condition of service. Apparently, they give you 2GB of storage, but i guess to USE it, all your mail has to be current mail. They're not giving you an unlimited inbox to store whatever you want forever.
Perfectly legal. Also very stingy of them. I'll stick with gmail on Firefox. They'd probably have a serious problem if everyone filled up their own 2GB quota at once. You know they don't have the actual space for that, which is why they're pulling this asshole tactic.
Here's one guy who's been doing this for years!!
No actually it's not. Prejudice is if you decide that because the guy is an 11 year-old kid he must not be all that great of a player and is really not worth playing with. In this case, it seems the writer simply found the player's voice annoying and distracting - he was not using this to make a judgment about the player.
/whispers in game a few times about various things that we didn't want a kid to hear, but that was basically the extent of the annoyance. We both had a preference for playing with people our own age, just like I have a preference for women with long hair. I don't have a prejudice towards short-haired women, but I just prefer the ones with long hair. It's the same thing.
Also, preferring to play games with people your own age is not prejudice either: it's a preference, nothing more. Notice that the parent doesn't imply that younger players aren't as good or worthwhile because they're younger.
Personally, I have no problem playing with gamers of any age. I've played with people all the way from age 7 to 50+. But I have to say that if I was playing with someone and having a good time, then got on VOIP with that player and found his/her voice to be extremely annoying it really would kill the mood for me.
I have to agree about the prejudice part. Preference to play with someone his own age is in no way a predjudice. Thinking that the 11yr old couldn't possibily know what he's doing (which the poster has already established that he DID know) and not wanting to listen to him after that is another story.
I also joined a guild when I played WoW, and they also used ventrillo. A RL friend of mine and I were on, and someone else from the guild that we didn't know very well joined our channel, and he turned out to be young, probably 11-14 or so if I had to guess. The three of us still played, however while I wasn't uncomfortable with the situation, I was slightly annoyed (very slightly) that I couldn't "be myself" and use all the regular language that the two of us RL friends were used to using. I didn't feel comfortable saying things like 'I just F---ed that guy up' or whatever in front of someone who might still be in middle school. The kid knew how to play and he pulled his weight, so I didn't say anything. My RL friend and I sent
Now all they need to do is figure out how to get the old people in Buicks to explode in the same manner, then maybe they'll stop driving 35 in a 65!
Seriously though, that's very interesting news. I'd like to know though, how do they know it was only 99.999% the speed of light? Could that be a measuring error, or some point-of-view discrepancy? With all of the constants in the Universe, it seems silly to me that something would be travelling at 99.9999% the speed of light (or however many 9s there were.)
The sign on the pump that I frequent says that 44 cents of each gallon goes towards fuel tax.
If I don't buy any of that gas, why should I still need to pay that fuel tax? That would be like
charging me sales tax on items I have not purchased.
Just goes to show you how bad it is in this country. Someone tries to do something good for the economy, the environment, and foreign export dependencies, and they get fined. I guess Bush is in OPEC's pockets too. I can't say I'm surprised, him being a Good 'Ole Boy from Texas after all.
I used to think that my friend who moved to Canada was kinda foolish for leaving the U.S. Now I envy him like crazy.
If a burglar can effectively sue a home owner for bodily injury suffered why burglarizing said home
I'm pretty sure that's an urban legend, unless you're talking of cases where the burglar is shot by the owner while making his escape or something.
I used to live just outside of city limits in a not-so-great part of town, so we didn't have local city police, but rather township police. They were very nice people, and I got to know them relatively well in the time I lived there because we had people trying to get into our house on a regular basis, as there was some kind of trail behind our house that people used for whatever nefarious purposes. I made a point to ask two of these officers exactly what my right was (I own(ed) a shotgun, and was several times fearful of my life and my wife's life) if someone were to enter the house. He explained it to me in very clear terms what the law says (I noticed he also seemed to make it very unbiased). He also told me (mentioned that this should be off the record, hence the township and officer's name is obviously not displayed) that if I was going to shoot an intruder, shoot to kill. He then told me why. The story he told sounded like an urban legend story, but he assured me that he was part of the trial so he was there in court the day the verdict was shown. An elderly couple was burglarized one night, and the thief chose to enter through a high window (like something you'd see in a loft-style house, where the front window almost spans two stories) and in the process, fell and landed on a dresser that was placed in the middle of the room since the couple was in the middle of painting the room. The burglar broke his leg and arm in several places, and sued the elderly homeowners for a ridiculous placement of furniture that caused his injuries. I couldn't fathom what moronic jury (yes it was a jury trial) would actually award this burglar several million dollars for his injuries, when he admitted, in court, that he burglarized their house with the intent of stealing everything he could. Somehow it was twisted in his favor, and the elderly couple lost their house and every penny to their name. Now I know its possible that this police officer was telling a fable, but under the circumstances he had absolutely no reason to, so I believe it. I also believe that some people are just that stupid (re: the jury) to believe some crap that a good lawyer might spout at them.
It's a sad world we live in when the criminals have more rights than the innocent.
The law here says that you are allowed to kill an intruder when you believe that your life (or life of your spouse, kids, etc) is in danger. A burglar escaping from the scene obviously does not qualify, but I have heard several law enforcement officers say that all you need to do is drag the body back into your doorway, and you'll receive no complaint by them, because it is one less criminal off the street. Perhaps its wrong, but that's just what I have heard them say.
As far as filming the police, comments I've seen earlier are conflicting. I'll have to look this up, but IIRC the wiretapping law prohibits recording the conversation between two individuals while one party does not know that it is being recorded. If someone has a video camera in your face, its obvious that the conversation is being recorded. Then I don't believe that you need their consent, because it is "public" knowledge that it is being recorded. Also if the event occurs in public, as also mentioned before, video taken in public of a public place/event is legal. If person filming the video posts that video somewhere, then people (who did not consent to being videotaped, and are clearly identifiable) can ask to have it removed, or have themselves removed (blurred, etc) from the video, and the videographer needs to comply. However for personal uses, I can take pictures of whatever I want to take as long it is of public scenes or events.
Knowing how much I enjoyed the RE series, and that we recently got a Wii, my wife bought me the GC version of RE4, plus a GC controller to play it on. Had I known it was coming out for the Wii I would have suggested she delay the present for a bit. Now what chance do I have of trading it in or returning it (its been almost a month, hmm) and getting the Wii version instead?
Too bad they don't have some kind of upgrade program for games that are available for both GC and Wii. (Or maybe they do, I don't know.)
The first day I got to this job, I started looking around for an extra monitor, and I'll never be without it again. I don't know about any professional research studies, but I know there is no way I could be as productive as I am without my dual monitor setup. I have too many things going on once to flip back and forth, and it just makes things so much faster and so much easier. If inventory/audit was a problem here, I'd simply bring in my own personal monitor (or pick one up for $100 or whatever, they're cheap) and use it.
;-)
Even has I'm writing this, I have two major projects grinding in the other window, watching the progress of both. If it needs attention, I'll find out immediately and not 10 minutes later when I'm done perusing Slashdot.
For making a giant block of swiss cheese?
Seriously though, all you'd need is a tracking system and a large spinning mirror
and you could vaporize a human target from space.
Kent's tracking system is gone!!!
Strange... The only problem I ever had with porting VB6 code to VB.NET was the use of the printer object, but even that has been resolved in the latest update to VB.NET 2005.
.NET. Even the App.Path variable "broke". Things which, in my opinion, should have been made backwards compatible forever were immediately deprecated and caused tons of build errors. (I won't say compile errors, I just won't!)
Interesting, maybe your applications didn't do much then, because I had to rewrite tons of applications porting from VB6 to
I have to agree with some of the previous posts though... I went into VB.NET thinking "Well, I already know VB, how hard could it be?" I would have been better off porting it to a more robust (platform-wise) language, because I had to rewrite the whole damn thing anyway.
Regrowing of lost teeth? Wow, I bet that's fantastic news to some of the sufferers of the horrific disease known as Meth Mouth.
You are correct as far as you go, but a business has no legal obligation to refund you money that I'm aware of. It comes down to contract law I suspect (plus complications due to consumer protection laws, but IANAL).
That's the biggest crock I've heard in a long time. Have you ever heard of a little thing called 'False Advertising'? They can not advertise something for $x then sell it for $x+10 blatantly. Sure they can try to add in fees and what have you, but the fact remains, they can not advertise one thing then not hold up to that side of the bargin. If they overcharge you, they are, by law, required to refund the overpayment. Sometimes they will fight it, usually they will make you produce some proof or evidence, but they just can't change their minds on a price after it was agreed upon then refuse to refund your money. If that was the case, every company in the country would start pulling that stuff, and there wouldn't be anything we could do about it.
When you click on that link that says you agree to pay the $0.00, that is all you are legally authorizing them to collect from your credit card account. If they take more than that, they are in violation of the contract that was agreed upon by both parties.
Unfortunately, however, these companies have the ability (granted they probably shouldn't always have the power, big difference) to charge your credit card, then the burden is on you, the consumer, to fight that charge. It is ridiculous, but without adequate legislation to regulate and quash this kind of stuff, it will continue. Amazon isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and its a big enough company that I'm sure it has plenty of full-time legal staff on the payroll.
That my friend is what the fiends at the CCRA wants you to do.
Wrong, they want you to spend money and pay taxes.
Think of the companies that will lose enormous amounts of money because of that attitude
Maybe the companies would then realize that their stuff is too damned expensive, and become
more competitive.
Think of them recouping their loss in sales by bumping up the prices further
If you don't buy one, they can raise it to a bajillion dollars and it won't matter, you still wouldn't buy one. I fail to see the logic in this argument.
Think of the loss of interest in digital distribution, no MP3/WMA/M4a players, will you buy CD's? Well thats all that is left
If you think there will ever be a loss of interest in digital distribution, I weep for your future. A tax imposed by one country could not possibly overthrow the entire digital revolution. Don't give the governments that much credit.
he next thing you know, they'll be taxing products like gasoline or tobacco at different (and much higher) rates for no apparent reason
And they don't do this already? Ever noticed that little sticker on the gas pump that says how much of your cost-per-gallon goes towards taxes? Last time I remember looking, it was well over 45 cents per gallon, so that $2.20 we're paying right now is almost 1/4 for tax.
We're taxed when we earn it, we're taxed when we save it, we're taxed when we spend it, we're taxed when we die and give it to our family, and then they're taxed when they spend it, etc. No taxation without representation? Its the representation that's doing all of the damn taxing!
If this goes into effect it wouldn't be long until people start offering a 1.9GB iPod and a 9.99GB iPod, etc. Its the same way commercials can advertise "Blah for under $10,000". You get there and "blah" costs $9,999.99. (Tax of course will shoot you over, but hey.)
Now is the time for these people to make theories that give them media/press attention, because there is no way those theories could ever been proven, even if they are indeed true.
You can hypothesis out the arse about a neverending birth sequence of an infinite number of alternate universes (universi?) but since we'll more than likely not be able to explore those theories before the fall of mankind (hey, between global warming and American Idol, this planet isn't going to last too much longer!), so we might as well make up some really extraordinary shit.
"Hey guys, I have the answer. A cosmic balloon containing our universe is about to burst, creating a pletora of new universes (multiverse? can we still call them universe if there's more than one?) each to suffer the same fate?" Sounds a lot like dividing cells of a fetus.
Maybe all these universes splitting off will make a giant Voltron or Tranzor-Z that we can
use to battle all the other multiverses for inter-stellar domination!!!
"So that means, that our universe can be one tiny cell in the fingernail of some other giant being" (name that movie?)
C'mon people, making shit up is fun!
Certainly we want Blizzard's 'World Of Warcraft' [currently the most popular massive multiplayer online game] to work flawlessly on day one of Vista because 8 million tech support calls would be a very bad thing.
You'd only have at the most, 7,999,999 tech support calls. I'll never upgrade to Vista, and I'm a WoW player. I don't see the need to upgrade something when it's finally relatively stable, especially when it comes with a hefty pricetag. "New features and security" doesn't interest me at all when it already took several years for the appropriate patches/updates to surface to fix the XP vulnerabilities. Now all of the script kiddies will be exploiting the Vista holes, so maybe they'll leave XP alone for a while (but I doubt it.)
I'd like to see some evidence of people actually labeled "sex offenders" by a court in the US for peeing in public or "mooning" someone (now waving your wang around I can understand), because, frankly, I don't believe you.
There have been documented cases of parents being arrested and having to register as sex offenders for publishing pictures of their newborn children (in the delivery room, etc) for friends and family to see, if those pictures included "the full view". There are a bunch of knee-jerk whistle blowers out there just dying to see someone go down for something whether they actually "did it" or not (intent-wise, or whatever).
Unfortunately that's the way society has gone, and it would take a lot of time (generations at least) for the tide to turn in the other direction. Lots of states have laws where if any part of the "private parts" are exposed for any reason (streaking, public mooning/urination, etc) then its technically labelled a sexual offense. Those are usually the ultra-conservative "red" states though, and luckily not all of them. Hell for those states that still allow public toplessness or nudity staring at someone making them feel uncomfortable could be considered a sexual offense. People are just stupid.
Hell, some U.S. states still outlaw oral and/or anal sex, even between two consenting (and even married) adults. How would you like to be arrested for getting a hummer from your wife of 20 years and labelled a sex offender?
Well, I for one welcome our new human-eating robotic overlords
;-)
Damn you beat me to it, should have known it would have been an early reply.
I'll say mine anyway:
I for one welcome our new manbacon eating robotic overlords.
Computers getting too "smart", we've seen it before.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Incredibles (even though it turned out to be something different, the idea was still there)
Superman 3
Wargames
Terminator 1/2/3
All of these movies depict computers getting too smart then at some point start "thinking" for themselves. One of these days I'll finally get to publish my theory on how to prevent this. I'll give a short summary belo...
<Connection terminated by remote host>
Short term effects: The city's economy is bankrupted because it probably costs $10,000 per cubic yard of this stuff
Long term effects: It probably causes cancer, sterility, senility, lucidity, frugality, and a bunch of other -ity's that I can't think of right now.
__OR__
Five to ten years after it's reached its absorption limit, we get people who walk to work on a daily basis falling down dead from inhaling all of the pollutants that this material is spewing back into the air. What's that you say? Replace it every 5 years to prevent this? I can't say 'CHA-CHING' loud enough.
Using Internet explorer (on windows...) go onto hotmail and read a few emails.
Then go into your internet cache and find the pages.
They exist.
You're wrong, thank you, drive through.
I explicitly turn off all web caches the second after I install them, because I always want to make sure I have a fresh copy of whatever I am browsing. No cache here, don't assume everyone is as big of an idiot as you are.
I'm never shocked when a non-idiot complains about the Microsoft licensing scheme, even though I agree that more choice is better.
I fixed it for you. Anyone who doesn't complain when they're forced to spend money on something they won't use is an idiot.
No matter the circumstances, no matter the election, people will always cry fraud, because they realize now thats an outlet for them to try to change the things they don't like.
It took me several months (and lots of persuasion from RL friends) to even spend the money on the game and the monthly fee, but I'll be damned if they'll get me to buy some useless card game just so I can get some useless pet that 1) does nothing, 2) takes up inventory space, and 3) ensures I can't enable any OTHER pet I've got wasting inventory space if I activate it.
It's bad enough they make us do cartwheels for months to get adequate bag space (wtf buying a bank slot for 100g, when its just as much extra space as the 10s one, with NO free bag?)
But now they're offering a card game (as if they don't already offer enough addictive stuff) that you can use to "get the edge" in WoW by having some useless thing follow you around, or a turtle mount that doesn't increase your speed or do anything more than just "look cool". A computer game, a card game, and now a table-top board game. Its obvious that Blizzard is milking the franchise for every penny they can get out of it, and good for them. It's paying off big time. I don't blame them at all, but I do think the enticement of useless in-game stuff for a serious amount of real money is ridiculous. I would just never buy it myself.