But all this crap about "dominance in wealth" is -extremely- insulting. I'm attending college right now on student loans, I'm thousands of dollars in debt, and I work full time to make ends meet.
It really isn't my fault if you are so insecure in your own worth that you can't admit that some of your progress in life comes down to pure luck or the work of others.
You may not have received a cent from anyone since you turned 16, but what about before? Were you left to fend for yourself or raise your own brothers and sisters? Did you go to absolutely shit down town public city schools? Did you have parents who could hardly read themselves and who simply had no idea how to raise children? If not, consider yourself bloody, bloody lucky.
If you base your entire sense of self worth on the notion that you have worked for everything in your life, then please be my guest. But that does not make it any more true. Nobody has ever made it completely on their own, and the ones that come close are few and far between.
I was raised by a very capable but certainly not wealthy single mother with little income, I went to a reasonable school in a socialised education system.
Of course I've had to fund my own education through loans and work, but do you see me whining about it? No, I consider myself very lucky to have had a solid upbringing that put me into an excellent position for making my own way in life. Not everyone in this world has had it as easy as I have had it. We all have different starting points.
"Genetic disadvantages makes it more difficult for women to compete. It doesn't make it impossible."
Unfortunately in practical terms it makes it impossible. As an example: the world record for 100 meter sprint among women is 10.49. There are 69 male sprinters that have broken the 10 second barrier and certainly hundreds (if not thousands) male sprinters that have ran faster than 10.49. 10.49 would probably not even qualify you for any of the championships.
The same pattern is repeated in most physical sports. The high jump world record for instance is 2.09 meters for women and 2.45 for men, with a huge list of men that have jumped higher than 2.09.
For long jump, the longest ever woman still haven't beaten the male world record set in 1901, while the men have jumped more than 1 meter longer.
The fact is that among athletes, if you put the top top women in the world into the male junior championships, they still wouldn't have much luck (Flo Jo would have lost every single junior athletics world cup race since the start in 1986, and the lowest winner in junior high jumps was 2.21 in 1998).
This means that a merger of women and men's sports would basically obliterate top female athletics (and frankly most other sports). The female category exists so that we have top class sports featuring women at all.
"Like most blacks, they excel in sports... On the other hand whites excel in brain activities."
Excellent. Lets bring in some white supremacy bullshit into this discussion. First, there is no credible evidence that white people are better at 'brain activities'. While there certainly is a caucasian and asian dominance in science around the world, there is also a very hard to correct dominance in wealth coming from a very long history of economic and physical oppression. This means that black people on average have a much higher mountain to climb in terms of education.
Second. This sports advantage (which racists often use to justify their stance) is extremely minimal. It just happens that a tiny advantage in physical capability makes all the difference in certain sports. Also, this apparant advantage has absolutely no effect in real life.
Even if white people somehow had a tiny advantage in 'brain activities' it would be completely dwarfed by the massive advantage in wealth and access to education and it certainly would be moronic to base anything in our society on it.
I see the term "political correctness" being misused all the time when racist idiots want to justify their moronic opinions.
"A.) Not quite 2/3 of people never have a problem with thier 360. Of the unfortunate 39% who do...",
Your maths are still way off. 2/3 + 39% ~ 106%. 2/3 is not the same as 61% and it seems like your extremely inaccurate "rounding" to 2/3 is to trivialise the problem.
Also 39% is still an extremely high rate. It means that if you and four other friends buy an X-Box it is only around 8.5% chance that none of you will have an error. This is rather unheard of. You might as well use "fortunate" to describe the people that DON'T have hardware failures.
"B.) True, the warranty is only good for 3 years, but that's three times better than the PS3's and the Wii's one year warranty. That's right, one year and you're out of luck for the competition."
This was only to avoid loads of class action lawsuits and the 3 year warranty only covers a known design flaw in the XBox.
"So, PS3 for $300, or XBOX 360 for $250? Which is cheaper again?"
First, the XBox 360 Pro is $299. Buying the arcade and separate hard drive means you don't get component HD cables and you don't get the head set. Also if you play online you need to purchase the XBox live membership for $45 a year (online play is free on the PS3). Meaning over a year, the XBox is now the most expensive of these two consoles.
"Which has more games, including all of the best ones? Thought so."
I own an XBox 360, which I'm so far happy with. I am the only one among three friends who has yet to have a hardware problem.
You really are trying very hard to defend the inexcusable here. That is the true mark of a fanboy.
1. Essentially correct, but for the consumer simply means change of filter every so often as part of your service schedule. 2. This is no longer correct. A typical consumer turbo diesel engine is now fairly quiet. Perhaps a little more noisy at startup, but not when driving. 3. All consumer diesels comes with turbos these days and cost is significantly lower than it was. 4. I'm not sure how much heavier they are, but this could certainly lead to worse handling and worse tyre wear. However, the improved fuel economy is measured in real terms and takes into account any increased weight.
A disadvantage you don't mention is that Diesel cars tend to have shorter service intervals due to filter and oil changes, the engine oil gets really dirty in a diesel engine. However, Diesel engines normally reaches much higher mileages before they have to be replaced.
Since diesels carry a small price premium and have higher service costs Diesel engines doesn't make sense if you drive very little, but if you communte a decent distance to work, Diesel is definitely something to consider.
If you happen to have watched Top Gear, you must realise that their opinions extremely rarely are good consumer advice. It is an excellent programme and extremely entertaining, but damn near useless for deciding which car to buy.
Their distaste for Diesel engines is notorious, but it only ever makes sense in the context of the programme, which is about fast, entertaining sports cars and super cars, for which diesel engines may well be useless.
However, for regular car buyers, modern turbo diesel cars are absolutely competitive with similar class petrol cars, but has considerably better fuel economy. I drive a three year old typical European mid-size family hatchback (i.e. Ford Focus class) reasonably aggressively and still get 47 mpg. With a comparable petrol engine I'd be very lucky to get 35 mpg. Yet I've never, ever felt let down by the engine when accellerating or overtaking. There was a short period of time here (England) where Diesel was about 15% more expensive than petrol, but even then the fuel economy of the diesel more than made up for it.
That said. I hope Top Gear doesn't change. Their laddish and brash style is part of what makes it so entertaining.
While you provide some excellent examples of practical uses for augmented reality, you and I both know that it will mostly be used for entertainment (escaping zombies in your apartment block) or pr0n (that porn star now actually looks like she is in your bed).
That kind of mindset is likely to annoy the hell out of your wife after a while. Talk to her, ask her what she thinks, tell her when you are feeling a bit confused.
Second. Start listening to her and her signals. Pay attention and try to interpret them, but don't put too much weight on your interpretation until you know what you are doing. Women (and non-geeks) communicate far more with body language than what you might expect, so be prepared for this. This is extremely important, because after a while she WILL expect you to interpret most of her ambiguous communication in the correct way. What she is saying will give you part of what she means, her body language will give you the rest. Understanding her body language will be a signal to her that you care about her enough to pay attention.
Third, don't assume that talking is simply to solve problems or accomplishing something. Your wife will want to talk simply for the joy of talking. Unless you reciprocate and communicate simply for the joy of communicating, you might start drifting apart. And even if she comes to you with a problem, she may only want a bit of sympathy or a friendly ear. You may not be able to solve it, and she doesn't always want you to try.
Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K
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KDE 4.3 Released
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· Score: 1
"Plus, it's usually not that hard to figure out. A handful of exceptions aside, c (and g, for that matter) is generally hard except when proceeded by e or i (formerly the non-low front consonants of English"
As a non-native English speaker who has lived in England for years I have to say that it really is sometimes very hard to figure out. Especially with regards to names of places.
There are an enormous amounts of words in English which you actually have to know before you know how to spell them. Whenever I try to pronounce a new word/place I sometimes cringe a bit, because I'm afraid I'm getting it embarrassingly wrong.
Take the word Celtic for instance. This actually is pronounced in two different ways (Keltic or Seltic) depending on whether you are talking about the culture/language/people or the football team (Glasgow Celtic).
The reason for most of the problems is due to the enormous amounts of foreign influences in English. Roman, Saxon, Norman or Scandinavian place names for instance.
Re:Is this the KDE 4.0 we've all been waiting for?
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KDE 4.3 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Could someone mod this total asshole down instead of giving him +4 insightful?
The moderators that modded him up either did it without thinking, or lack the empathy to understand what it is like to be sight-impaired.
First; most people can read much faster than what it takes to read out loud. Just try it yourself. Read a paragraph silently and time yourself, then do the same thing while reading it out loud. Reading it out loud is going to take much longer.
This also means for many people, their natural reading speed is much faster than a typical audio book, meaning the typical speed of an audio book can get quite irritating after a while if you really want to know what is happening next, but your mind is left waiting for input as the reader progresses at his/her own speed.
Slowly speeding up audio and training your comprehension seems to me to be a very sensible way of getting the speed of an audio book up to your natural reading speed.
So fuck you very much, but I'm willing to bet that I (and the original poster) know perfectly well when to read and when to "savour" something.
There are literally millions of niche software projects that are in use in different parts of the economy. While being far less famous than 'MS Office', they are still absolutely crucial for business use.
Most of these products come in Windows versions only. This means that moving away from Windows for many, many businesses is either very painful or simply unfeasable.
"Explain how this is different than someone having purchased drm'd songs on iTunes"
First. As of April this year, I believe all songs on iTunes are DRM-free. Second. Nobody expects you to be able to play a Playstation 3 game you bought in an Xbox 360 or vice versa. Third. Apple actually offers you the option to upgrade your old music library to DRM-free iTunes plus.
Besides as I said in the original post (which you completely ignored when you asked about the differences): iTunes/iPods are not crucial business tools that major parts of our economy rely on. There several competitors as both music stores and players.
So the history and intent are irrelevant for the appreciation of a piece of art?:-D
So you've never heard song lyrics which sounded silly, but made perfect sense when you found out what the song writers intent was?
Or have you never wondered why some art or music seems almost 'timeless' while some songs sound incredibly dated just three years after they were produced? Hint, these two phenomenon are strongly related.
First. Apple does in no way have a monopoly on Music sales.
This should be obvious. There are lots of music resellers, both electronic and old-fashioned. All the old-fashioned ones sell music which will work on iPods or other music players after ripping. There are also big electronic competitors, such as Amazon, which sell music which will work on iPods and other music players.
Second. Apple does not have a monopoly on Portable Music Players.
While Apple may well have a 90% (?) market share on portable music players, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from buying a competitor, which are available in any electronics store.
You may ask: but Microsoft has a 90% market share on operating systems, why do they constitute a monopoly while Apple is not?
Unlike MS Windows, the iPod or iPhone is not (*) a crucial business tool that most businesses require in order to run the software they need. People can't just go ahead and purchase a product from a competitor of Microsoft, since their costly business software probably depends on Windows. But people absolutely can (and do) purchase a competitor of the iPod or iPhone.
Third. As long as Apple does not have a monopoly on either Music sales or Portable Music Players, there is legal boundaries stopping them from tying these together in an exclusive fashion. If you don't like the lock-in, don't buy Apple products.
(*) Watch this space, the iPhone is also a platform. This means that it is unlikely as long as good competitors exist, Apple could conceivably in the future become a monopoly on smart phones if they are big enough that third party software developers only develop for the iPhone. In this case, they would need to start playing by different rules.
"I'm not a fan of US companies enabling foreign governments to crack heads but this kind of retroactive grandstanding seems to be more about political positioning than genuine concern for the actions of US companies."
Nokia is a Finnish company. Siemens is a German company. Nokia Siemens is a cross-border Finnish/German joint venture. None of these players are "US companies". They simply sell to the US, just like they sell to Iran.
"wealth is more important than life itself to some people"
If you don't have enough of it, wealth equals life. Wealth provides food, shelter and medical treatment.
Madoff did not only scam rich people, he scammed charities and people out of their life savings. Madoff's scam will almost certainly result in people dying prematurely. For example due to suicide or lack of medical treatment which they otherwise might afford. For some, Madoff might as well have held a gun to their head and pulled the trigger.
This is one of the reasons the word evil was used in the sentencing.
He can still appeal the sentencing, by claiming it is unduly harsh. It will probably not work though.
From an WSJ interview with a lawyer specialising in federal sentencing:
The standard on that, generally speaking, is whether the sentence is sufficient "but not greater than necessary to achieve the purposes of sentencing." He's going to have to convince the Second Circuit of that, which I'd imagine might be tough.
Since this paraphrasing and linking might be illegal in a few years, I'd better get all the linking and paraphrasing I need for the rest of my life crammed in now.
"Well, from our point of view, it must suck to be that person. But are people with, say, Alzheimer's aware of what they are missing out on?"
I take it you have no experience with Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's is not instant. It happens over a long period with slow degradation of your memory. During this period, it is very hard on the person it happens to. They realise that something is not right, and they start to struggle with social situations.
They slowly start loosing grip on their own personality and they see what this is doing to their family and friends, making them even more distressed.
Even far into the condition, they sometimes have moments of clarity which mostly just serve to remind them of what they have lost.
"I didn't know FFMpeg could afford to employ a team of lawyers for years. Note that they cannot use FSF lawyers, because the FSF requires that you assign all copyright over to them before they will defend you."
I'm willing to bet that there would be at least some organisations willing to help fund this lawsuit. The EFF is a good bet.
"If you'll re-read what has been written I was simply pointing out that Somalia isn't a very good argument against anarchy since several of its peers with governments are doing significantly more poorly."
And I will simply point out that your argument that "Somalia is a poor argument", is in fact an absolutely awful argument.
On that same list, you'll find at least 30 African countries that do better than Somalia. Thus the overwhelming majority of their peers with governments are doing significantly better and only four countries are doing worse.
And even among those four countries, you'll find that Burundi and The Democratic Republic of Congo are actually in a similar situation to Somalia. They have both had many "competing governments" over the years and are completely decimated by lawless war. They are not examples of a countries with strong governments. So that leaves only two "countries with governments" that are worse than Somalia. Oh, but Liberia was in the same situation up until 2004-05 and have only recently been able to arrange democratic elections. So they may be only slightly further down the road than the other countries, but they are certainly still struggling with weak stability and security and the country is still in a state of anarchy because its government is still not able to uphold their laws to any great extent.
That leaves Zimbabwe, the country of the notorious Robert Mugabe.
In fact, if only one country with a government in the whole world is doing worse than you, and that country is run by Robert Mugabe, I'd say Somalia is a pretty fucking great argument against Anarchy.
"But the engineers and politicians are aware of other considerations when setting the speed limit"
Yes. Also knee jerk reactions, "concerned parents" and "opinion" (without evidence).
In many cases a lot of your arguments are completely irrelevant. On motorways for instance, there is no cyclists, pedestrians or concealed junctions, and if there is, they are likely to cause deaths regardless of whether people drive at 70 mph or 90 mph.
Slashdot Mirror
But all this crap about "dominance in wealth" is -extremely- insulting. I'm attending college right now on student loans, I'm thousands of dollars in debt, and I work full time to make ends meet.
It really isn't my fault if you are so insecure in your own worth that you can't admit that some of your progress in life comes down to pure luck or the work of others.
You may not have received a cent from anyone since you turned 16, but what about before? Were you left to fend for yourself or raise your own brothers and sisters? Did you go to absolutely shit down town public city schools? Did you have parents who could hardly read themselves and who simply had no idea how to raise children? If not, consider yourself bloody, bloody lucky.
If you base your entire sense of self worth on the notion that you have worked for everything in your life, then please be my guest. But that does not make it any more true. Nobody has ever made it completely on their own, and the ones that come close are few and far between.
I was raised by a very capable but certainly not wealthy single mother with little income, I went to a reasonable school in a socialised education system.
Of course I've had to fund my own education through loans and work, but do you see me whining about it? No, I consider myself very lucky to have had a solid upbringing that put me into an excellent position for making my own way in life. Not everyone in this world has had it as easy as I have had it. We all have different starting points.
"just ask her to show you her pussy. god damn, how hard is this really?"
I used to think that my fellow Slashdot geeks only struggled with confidence when it came to meeting women. So much for that theory.
"Genetic disadvantages makes it more difficult for women to compete. It doesn't make it impossible."
Unfortunately in practical terms it makes it impossible. As an example: the world record for 100 meter sprint among women is 10.49. There are 69 male sprinters that have broken the 10 second barrier and certainly hundreds (if not thousands) male sprinters that have ran faster than 10.49. 10.49 would probably not even qualify you for any of the championships.
The same pattern is repeated in most physical sports. The high jump world record for instance is 2.09 meters for women and 2.45 for men, with a huge list of men that have jumped higher than 2.09.
For long jump, the longest ever woman still haven't beaten the male world record set in 1901, while the men have jumped more than 1 meter longer.
The fact is that among athletes, if you put the top top women in the world into the male junior championships, they still wouldn't have much luck (Flo Jo would have lost every single junior athletics world cup race since the start in 1986, and the lowest winner in junior high jumps was 2.21 in 1998).
This means that a merger of women and men's sports would basically obliterate top female athletics (and frankly most other sports). The female category exists so that we have top class sports featuring women at all.
"Like most blacks, they excel in sports... On the other hand whites excel in brain activities."
Excellent. Lets bring in some white supremacy bullshit into this discussion. First, there is no credible evidence that white people are better at 'brain activities'. While there certainly is a caucasian and asian dominance in science around the world, there is also a very hard to correct dominance in wealth coming from a very long history of economic and physical oppression. This means that black people on average have a much higher mountain to climb in terms of education.
Second. This sports advantage (which racists often use to justify their stance) is extremely minimal. It just happens that a tiny advantage in physical capability makes all the difference in certain sports. Also, this apparant advantage has absolutely no effect in real life.
Even if white people somehow had a tiny advantage in 'brain activities' it would be completely dwarfed by the massive advantage in wealth and access to education and it certainly would be moronic to base anything in our society on it.
I see the term "political correctness" being misused all the time when racist idiots want to justify their moronic opinions.
"A.) Not quite 2/3 of people never have a problem with thier 360. Of the unfortunate 39% who do ...",
Your maths are still way off. 2/3 + 39% ~ 106%. 2/3 is not the same as 61% and it seems like your extremely inaccurate "rounding" to 2/3 is to trivialise the problem.
Also 39% is still an extremely high rate. It means that if you and four other friends buy an X-Box it is only around 8.5% chance that none of you will have an error. This is rather unheard of. You might as well use "fortunate" to describe the people that DON'T have hardware failures.
"B.) True, the warranty is only good for 3 years, but that's three times better than the PS3's and the Wii's one year warranty. That's right, one year and you're out of luck for the competition."
This was only to avoid loads of class action lawsuits and the 3 year warranty only covers a known design flaw in the XBox.
"So, PS3 for $300, or XBOX 360 for $250? Which is cheaper again?"
First, the XBox 360 Pro is $299. Buying the arcade and separate hard drive means you don't get component HD cables and you don't get the head set. Also if you play online you need to purchase the XBox live membership for $45 a year (online play is free on the PS3). Meaning over a year, the XBox is now the most expensive of these two consoles.
"Which has more games, including all of the best ones? Thought so."
I own an XBox 360, which I'm so far happy with. I am the only one among three friends who has yet to have a hardware problem.
You really are trying very hard to defend the inexcusable here. That is the true mark of a fanboy.
I'm not sure I fully agree on all your points.
1. Essentially correct, but for the consumer simply means change of filter every so often as part of your service schedule.
2. This is no longer correct. A typical consumer turbo diesel engine is now fairly quiet. Perhaps a little more noisy at startup, but not when driving.
3. All consumer diesels comes with turbos these days and cost is significantly lower than it was.
4. I'm not sure how much heavier they are, but this could certainly lead to worse handling and worse tyre wear. However, the improved fuel economy is measured in real terms and takes into account any increased weight.
A disadvantage you don't mention is that Diesel cars tend to have shorter service intervals due to filter and oil changes, the engine oil gets really dirty in a diesel engine. However, Diesel engines normally reaches much higher mileages before they have to be replaced.
Since diesels carry a small price premium and have higher service costs Diesel engines doesn't make sense if you drive very little, but if you communte a decent distance to work, Diesel is definitely something to consider.
If you happen to have watched Top Gear, you must realise that their opinions extremely rarely are good consumer advice. It is an excellent programme and extremely entertaining, but damn near useless for deciding which car to buy.
Their distaste for Diesel engines is notorious, but it only ever makes sense in the context of the programme, which is about fast, entertaining sports cars and super cars, for which diesel engines may well be useless.
However, for regular car buyers, modern turbo diesel cars are absolutely competitive with similar class petrol cars, but has considerably better fuel economy. I drive a three year old typical European mid-size family hatchback (i.e. Ford Focus class) reasonably aggressively and still get 47 mpg. With a comparable petrol engine I'd be very lucky to get 35 mpg. Yet I've never, ever felt let down by the engine when accellerating or overtaking. There was a short period of time here (England) where Diesel was about 15% more expensive than petrol, but even then the fuel economy of the diesel more than made up for it.
That said. I hope Top Gear doesn't change. Their laddish and brash style is part of what makes it so entertaining.
While you provide some excellent examples of practical uses for augmented reality, you and I both know that it will mostly be used for entertainment (escaping zombies in your apartment block) or pr0n (that porn star now actually looks like she is in your bed).
That kind of mindset is likely to annoy the hell out of your wife after a while. Talk to her, ask her what she thinks, tell her when you are feeling a bit confused.
Second. Start listening to her and her signals. Pay attention and try to interpret them, but don't put too much weight on your interpretation until you know what you are doing. Women (and non-geeks) communicate far more with body language than what you might expect, so be prepared for this. This is extremely important, because after a while she WILL expect you to interpret most of her ambiguous communication in the correct way. What she is saying will give you part of what she means, her body language will give you the rest. Understanding her body language will be a signal to her that you care about her enough to pay attention.
Third, don't assume that talking is simply to solve problems or accomplishing something. Your wife will want to talk simply for the joy of talking. Unless you reciprocate and communicate simply for the joy of communicating, you might start drifting apart. And even if she comes to you with a problem, she may only want a bit of sympathy or a friendly ear. You may not be able to solve it, and she doesn't always want you to try.
"Plus, it's usually not that hard to figure out. A handful of exceptions aside, c (and g, for that matter) is generally hard except when proceeded by e or i (formerly the non-low front consonants of English"
As a non-native English speaker who has lived in England for years I have to say that it really is sometimes very hard to figure out. Especially with regards to names of places.
There are an enormous amounts of words in English which you actually have to know before you know how to spell them. Whenever I try to pronounce a new word/place I sometimes cringe a bit, because I'm afraid I'm getting it embarrassingly wrong.
Take the word Celtic for instance. This actually is pronounced in two different ways (Keltic or Seltic) depending on whether you are talking about the culture/language/people or the football team (Glasgow Celtic).
The reason for most of the problems is due to the enormous amounts of foreign influences in English. Roman, Saxon, Norman or Scandinavian place names for instance.
Could someone mod this total asshole down instead of giving him +4 insightful?
The moderators that modded him up either did it without thinking, or lack the empathy to understand what it is like to be sight-impaired.
First; most people can read much faster than what it takes to read out loud. Just try it yourself. Read a paragraph silently and time yourself, then do the same thing while reading it out loud. Reading it out loud is going to take much longer.
This also means for many people, their natural reading speed is much faster than a typical audio book, meaning the typical speed of an audio book can get quite irritating after a while if you really want to know what is happening next, but your mind is left waiting for input as the reader progresses at his/her own speed.
Slowly speeding up audio and training your comprehension seems to me to be a very sensible way of getting the speed of an audio book up to your natural reading speed.
So fuck you very much, but I'm willing to bet that I (and the original poster) know perfectly well when to read and when to "savour" something.
There are literally millions of niche software projects that are in use in different parts of the economy. While being far less famous than 'MS Office', they are still absolutely crucial for business use.
Most of these products come in Windows versions only. This means that moving away from Windows for many, many businesses is either very painful or simply unfeasable.
"Explain how this is different than someone having purchased drm'd songs on iTunes"
First. As of April this year, I believe all songs on iTunes are DRM-free.
Second. Nobody expects you to be able to play a Playstation 3 game you bought in an Xbox 360 or vice versa.
Third. Apple actually offers you the option to upgrade your old music library to DRM-free iTunes plus.
Besides as I said in the original post (which you completely ignored when you asked about the differences): iTunes/iPods are not crucial business tools that major parts of our economy rely on. There several competitors as both music stores and players.
So the history and intent are irrelevant for the appreciation of a piece of art? :-D
So you've never heard song lyrics which sounded silly, but made perfect sense when you found out what the song writers intent was?
Or have you never wondered why some art or music seems almost 'timeless' while some songs sound incredibly dated just three years after they were produced? Hint, these two phenomenon are strongly related.
I agree with the other poster. You poor sod....
Doh. "there is no legal boundaries stopping them"
First. Apple does in no way have a monopoly on Music sales.
This should be obvious. There are lots of music resellers, both electronic and old-fashioned. All the old-fashioned ones sell music which will work on iPods or other music players after ripping. There are also big electronic competitors, such as Amazon, which sell music which will work on iPods and other music players.
Second. Apple does not have a monopoly on Portable Music Players.
While Apple may well have a 90% (?) market share on portable music players, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from buying a competitor, which are available in any electronics store.
You may ask: but Microsoft has a 90% market share on operating systems, why do they constitute a monopoly while Apple is not?
Unlike MS Windows, the iPod or iPhone is not (*) a crucial business tool that most businesses require in order to run the software they need. People can't just go ahead and purchase a product from a competitor of Microsoft, since their costly business software probably depends on Windows. But people absolutely can (and do) purchase a competitor of the iPod or iPhone.
Third. As long as Apple does not have a monopoly on either Music sales or Portable Music Players, there is legal boundaries stopping them from tying these together in an exclusive fashion. If you don't like the lock-in, don't buy Apple products.
(*) Watch this space, the iPhone is also a platform. This means that it is unlikely as long as good competitors exist, Apple could conceivably in the future become a monopoly on smart phones if they are big enough that third party software developers only develop for the iPhone. In this case, they would need to start playing by different rules.
"I'm not a fan of US companies enabling foreign governments to crack heads but this kind of retroactive grandstanding seems to be more about political positioning than genuine concern for the actions of US companies."
Nokia is a Finnish company. Siemens is a German company. Nokia Siemens is a cross-border Finnish/German joint venture. None of these players are "US companies". They simply sell to the US, just like they sell to Iran.
"The only real purpose cassettes have anymore is making mixtapes, but that firmly into the realm of cliche."
This has also been obsolete since writeable CDs.
"wealth is more important than life itself to some people"
If you don't have enough of it, wealth equals life. Wealth provides food, shelter and medical treatment.
Madoff did not only scam rich people, he scammed charities and people out of their life savings. Madoff's scam will almost certainly result in people dying prematurely. For example due to suicide or lack of medical treatment which they otherwise might afford. For some, Madoff might as well have held a gun to their head and pulled the trigger.
This is one of the reasons the word evil was used in the sentencing.
"No appeals--he pled guilty."
He can still appeal the sentencing, by claiming it is unduly harsh. It will probably not work though.
From an WSJ interview with a lawyer specialising in federal sentencing:
The standard on that, generally speaking, is whether the sentence is sufficient "but not greater than necessary to achieve the purposes of sentencing." He's going to have to convince the Second Circuit of that, which I'd imagine might be tough.
Since this paraphrasing and linking might be illegal in a few years, I'd better get all the linking and paraphrasing I need for the rest of my life crammed in now.
"Well, from our point of view, it must suck to be that person. But are people with, say, Alzheimer's aware of what they are missing out on?"
I take it you have no experience with Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's is not instant. It happens over a long period with slow degradation of your memory. During this period, it is very hard on the person it happens to. They realise that something is not right, and they start to struggle with social situations.
They slowly start loosing grip on their own personality and they see what this is doing to their family and friends, making them even more distressed.
Even far into the condition, they sometimes have moments of clarity which mostly just serve to remind them of what they have lost.
"Before the movie "50 First Dates", there was a sci-fi short story that posited this, with horrifying consequences"
It must suck that your example of this is a crappy rom-com with Adam Sandler rather than a brilliant film like Memento.
"I didn't know FFMpeg could afford to employ a team of lawyers for years. Note that they cannot use FSF lawyers, because the FSF requires that you assign all copyright over to them before they will defend you."
I'm willing to bet that there would be at least some organisations willing to help fund this lawsuit. The EFF is a good bet.
"If you'll re-read what has been written I was simply pointing out that Somalia isn't a very good argument against anarchy since several of its peers with governments are doing significantly more poorly."
And I will simply point out that your argument that "Somalia is a poor argument", is in fact an absolutely awful argument.
On that same list, you'll find at least 30 African countries that do better than Somalia. Thus the overwhelming majority of their peers with governments are doing significantly better and only four countries are doing worse.
And even among those four countries, you'll find that Burundi and The Democratic Republic of Congo are actually in a similar situation to Somalia.
They have both had many "competing governments" over the years and are completely decimated by lawless war. They are not examples of a countries with strong governments. So that leaves only two "countries with governments" that are worse than Somalia. Oh, but Liberia was in the same situation up until 2004-05 and have only recently been able to arrange democratic elections. So they may be only slightly further down the road than the other countries, but they are certainly still struggling with weak stability and security and the country is still in a state of anarchy because its government is still not able to uphold their laws to any great extent.
That leaves Zimbabwe, the country of the notorious Robert Mugabe.
In fact, if only one country with a government in the whole world is doing worse than you, and that country is run by Robert Mugabe, I'd say Somalia is a pretty fucking great argument against Anarchy.
"But the engineers and politicians are aware of other considerations when setting the speed limit"
Yes. Also knee jerk reactions, "concerned parents" and "opinion" (without evidence).
In many cases a lot of your arguments are completely irrelevant. On motorways for instance, there is no cyclists, pedestrians or concealed junctions, and if there is, they are likely to cause deaths regardless of whether people drive at 70 mph or 90 mph.