...I *hate* the way they aggressively push that damned ripoff service plan...
The easy way to deal with that is to agree to the plan, then, right before the cashier rings you up, change your mind and have it taken off. Much less fighting. Of course, I don't shop at Best Buy anymore anyway.
...Entire industries depend on MS software. There is no excuse. Failure to do this is simply immoral and unethical, but we have come to expect this behavior from MS.
Remember, M$ is a corporation. Corporations have but one gole: profit. Morals come into play only when they affect profit. As M$ has a virtual desktop monopoly (for the moment), they have no need of morals.
Now if high level executives start doing hard time for the crimes the corporation(s) they run commit, morals will have a much greater influence.
...Law enforcement is political, it's not any sort of even or fair, it's whatever the elite class wants that season. They give the orders, their enforcers click heels and jump to it. If they are ordered to ignore certain crimes, they will do so, even if they are aware of them...
I used to work in (environmental) law enforcement for the state of Maryland, there was one case I remember where this one company was violating the state laws. However, the owner was a big contributor to the governor's campaign fun. The order came down from the governor's office that anyone who tried to enforce the law against this company would be fired.
Believe me that this order was very unpopular. But then, so was the governor.
...However, you have to wonder what the agenda was for the people who set up the tainted box mentioned in the article...
Usually it will be one of only a few things: creating zombies for a DDOS, creating spam relays, creating web/ftp/p2p hosts for materials that would be taken down quickly if hosted on a normal server (i.e. spam site, child porn, music, etc), or as a launching pad for attacks on other computer.
I was actually referring to any font so small as be difficult for a person with normal vision to read. That, IMHO, is deceptive (or attempting to be deceptive).
I love Window Maker -- it's great, and i prefer it to GNOME or KDE any day...
However, for someone switching over to Linux from Windows, GNOME or KDE would be a better choice. It's much closer to what they are used to than Window Maker. They will be having to learn enough new things. KDE and Gnome still have their place. Personally, I like KDE, but that's just me.
...prison isn't enough a deterrant to keep people from comitting crimes, therefore crimes that occur within the prison against individuals are permittable in lieu of government sactioned punishment. (Correct me if I'm wrong but that seems to be what you're saying)...
No, that's not what I'm saying. A crime is still a crime, even if occurs within a prison. However, if that's the best justice a victim can hope for, many will take it happily. Hence the posts. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be needed, but then in a perfect world, prisons wouldn't be needed either.
...those acts which are deemed to be unacceptable should be unacceptable across the board...
Not necessarily. It all depends on the circumstances. I could give lots of examples, but I won't. Instead, think about the various *criminal* classifications for killing someone. There's first degree murder (aka capital murder in some states), second degree murder, and manslaughter (some states have variations on this). It all depends on the circumstances.
...I include capital punishment as an unacceptable government sanction activity..
Many would disagree with you, including myself. Sometimes one must be sacrificed for the good of the group. Sucks if you are the one, but in this case, these people had a choice. They chose murder(s). They had more rights than they gave their victim(s).
...I see this as an argument to make society better...
...Are you people seriously telling me, that a suitable punishment for spamming is being fucked up the arse?
A lot of that talk is frustration. Our constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, many judges have interpreted that as forbiding any real punishment. Why else do so many keep going back to jail again and again?
China has a much lower prison population than the US, both in total number and in prisoners per 100,000 people (China: 119/100K, US: 701/100K; figures from http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/wo rld_brief.html). The China numbers include the so-called "political prisoners", so the number of true criminals is probably much lower.
While there are numerous reasons, one of them is life in a Chinese prison is bad. China has few repeat offenders (ok, partially because repeat offenders tend to get executed). While in the US, working is optional, yet you still get decent food, clothing, medical, and shelter. Convicted murderers have a better health care plan that I do! Many US criminals spend their time learning from others how to be better criminals.
If it wasn't for abuse by other prisoners, a lot more people (in the US) wouldn't care if they went to jail. It's the only real punishment some criminals get. Getting seriously abused is a powerful message not to screw up again.
My mother used to teach at an inner city school where her students getting sent to juv hall was a regular occurance. They would tell her that they didn't mind because it was better than their home life. When a 12 year old (repeat offender) pulls up to cop in a stolen car and asks him if he wants to drag race, it should tell you how much they care about being caught.
The talk you are referring to is just people wanting some punishment that make the offender (and others) not be a repeat offender. If it takes making the spammer someone's girlfriend to get the message across, then so be it.
...it is probably a net benefit economically to the taxpayers that fund the prison operations...
Prisons are economically a net loss. The people in those prisons contribute little to the enrichment of society, even if they do work. Now the prisons do create jobs, but if (in a magical world) we didn't need the prisons, then those jobs would be lost, but the money would remain to be spent elsewhere, thus creating different jobs (maybe even more).
Now don't misread this. I'm not saying prisons should be torn down. While they are a net loss, letting the criminals run free would create an even bigger net loss. They do serve a useful function. But never forget, they may be a lesser of two evils, but they are still "evil".
...if he were in control of the Arabian Peninsula, oil would trade at $144 a barrel...
Not for long. At that price, alternative energy sources, such as the one described in this article, would be put into commercial production real quick. And before long, the Arabian Peninsula would either have to drop it's price to a reasonable level, or no longer sell any product.
If the politicans (and oil company execs; sometimes they are both) would get off their butts and start pushing viable alternatives now, the pain would be a lot less if this ever happens.
...Our congressional representatives should be finacially secure...
They already earn more than 99% of all Americans, not counting the extremely generous pension plan. I'd call that financially secure.
In 2003, US Senators earned a base salary of $154,700. That's in addition to other priviledges like free staff, office space, free travel, great pension plan, medical, etc. In 2000(?), a US representative earned about $133,673/yr, plus benefits.
Now campaign costs are another story. There I can see the need to give some favors. That's why I always check the box on my tax return to contribute money to the presidental election campaign fund. In theory, if they owe those who give them money, then they should owe the American public. In reality, the more they can get campaign financing from this fund, the less favors they need to owe to special interests, which is good for the public.
...Person downloads rpm, clicks on it to install, gets a dependency error. Then what...
Umm...use apt or uprmi perhaps to install software. Mandrake has a slick gui for uprmi (but the command line is still easy to use) and I've heard of similar gui's for apt (although I haven't used any yet, only command line). Been a while since I had a dependency error.
Inertial and gravitational mass are equal, both in theory, and according to experiment (to within experimental precision). As far as we know, the equivalence principle is valid.
As I said, the differences are very small (at any temperature above absolute zero; at 0K they are the same). So small we don't have instruments with enough precision to measure the difference, but it is calculated to be there (in theory). I remember reading the doctoral dissertation on this subject (he passed BTW).
...they basically often settle on a theory that is "the most likely" - they, however, ALWAYS "leave the door open" to other possible explanations that may appear in future that are better...
While true in theory, my observations differ somewhat from your statement. "Radical" new ideas are often ridiculed for quite a while before the evidence mounts especially when made by a non famous scientist. Plate tectonics was first proposed by a meterologist, not a geologist, and he was ridiculed for his theory, even though it is now the accepted theory.
I remember reading articles about a meteor wiping out the dinosaur theory and how the author took quite a (figurative) beating over that theory.
Going back even farther, Galileo wasn't the first to challenge Aristole's(I think it was his) law that the heavier the object, the faster it falls. He was just the first to do it and live because he had protection from some noble. Earlier scientist were thought to be possessed by demons and had to be helped by being given a beating until the demons were driven out and they returned to their senses. (Side note: Technically, Galileo was wrong. Heavier objects in a vacuum will fall faster at any temperature above absolute zero. It has to do with differences between inertial and gravitational masses. The difference is *extremely* small however.)
Of course, not all "radical" new theories pan out, but many great advances have been made by those brave souls who propose new theories.
Even wrong theories can be benefical. Look at Columbus. The dispute Columbus fought was not round Earth versus flat Earth as is commonly believed. It was accepted that the Earth was round by that time. The dispute was over size. Columbus, as it turns out, thought the Earth was much smaller than it actually is, and did fail in his quest to sail to China (although he died still thinking he made it). But he did discover 2 unknown (to Europeans at that time) new continents. The atrocities commited on this new discovery is another story though.
...The only question up for discussion is whether not providing security updates for pirates will hurt people besides the pirates themselves.
I, for one, hope this does hurt the pirates. Why? Because anything that stops people from pirating software means they either have to pay for it or switch to something else (say GNU/Linux). Some will pay, but many will switch. I can't count how many times I've offered OpenOffice to people only to have them say they can get M$ Office for free (i.e. pirate it). Stop the pirating and I bet more would be interested.
...If they're not locked down, then the problem is with the admin, not the software...
In a perfect world, maybe. But, politics can make lockdowns rather difficult without hitting the unemployment line. Management doesn't always listen. Then think about when the lockdowns break some "critical" (probably poorly written) piece of software...
...only applies if you have the $$$ to contest the issue in court. Against a Microsoft, IBM, or IP litigation factory, you don't have a chance even if you are totally in the right.
Which is why we need a loser pays system. While it wouldn't be a total cure, it would stop a lot of these types of abuses (i.e. justice to the highest bidder).
...Of course, it's illegal to lie when you claim that it's your own invention, and we know that nobody would do that. And it's dangerous, because they might prove you wrong (which,as said earlier, would be illegal)...
Having been a juror on a patent infringement case (we invalidated the patent BTW), I remember the rules are if there are ANY false (may have applied to incorrect stuff too, I forget) statements on your application, the patent is void.
Yes, but according to the article, "...I'd advise to run your shower curtains through the clothes washer every few weeks...Better yet, get a glass door. Glass accumulates this biofilm slower.". I don't know about you, but I don't know many glass doors that fit in a clothes washer.:) I'll stick with vinyl.
...Suppose that Lexmark made a printer that looked for a certain string in a ROM on an ink cartridge. Let's say the string was "The manufacturer of this cartridge agrees to the terms of the ELL (Evil Lexmark License)." If the string is present, the printer works great; if the string is not present, the printer has undesirable behavior of some kind...
But this is a different situation. In your example, the string is required for compatibility reasons. The kernel module string is not required for compatibility reasons.
...For a very large sample (a year or so), these forcasts can be incredibly accurate...
If by accurate you mean hot in the summer, cold in the winter, then yes, they are accurate. However, if you take the current models (and I did this as part of my Master's thesis about 8 years ago; I got my degree, for all the good it did me) and pretend it's 50 years ago, they all predict much warmer temperatures than we have today.
I was actually more than a little shocked by my findings, but other researchers results concur with mine, so I doubt I used the models wrong.
Remember, we aren't talking major changes here. A few degrees in either direction could (in theory) plunge the earth into an ocean age or ice age.
Also, what is not mentioned in the newspaper articles is that most of the temperature rise that is actually being recorded is a night, not during the day. This is important! Frost (which normally occurs at night) is what limits the growing seasons. Warmer night temperatures mean longer growing seasons, and that means more food for both animals and humans.
...with online voting...Imagine a nice record of your voting history? That would seriously rock.
A record of your voting would be a very bad idea. Vote buying doesn't work too well now because there is no easy way to make sure the person votes as they were paid to do. This would change that. Then, what about repercussions against those that *DIDN'T* vote a particular way. Much easier to do now, and safer with your candidates in office to protect you from a police investigation. Such a record is going to cause lots problems. What do we really gain from such a record? Nothing important as far as I can see.
Political violence is rare right now in the US. I'd like to keep it that way thank you.
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The easy way to deal with that is to agree to the plan, then, right before the cashier rings you up, change your mind and have it taken off. Much less fighting. Of course, I don't shop at Best Buy anymore anyway.
Remember, M$ is a corporation. Corporations have but one gole: profit. Morals come into play only when they affect profit. As M$ has a virtual desktop monopoly (for the moment), they have no need of morals.
Now if high level executives start doing hard time for the crimes the corporation(s) they run commit, morals will have a much greater influence.
I used to work in (environmental) law enforcement for the state of Maryland, there was one case I remember where this one company was violating the state laws. However, the owner was a big contributor to the governor's campaign fun. The order came down from the governor's office that anyone who tried to enforce the law against this company would be fired.
Believe me that this order was very unpopular. But then, so was the governor.
Campaign contributions from the MPAA.
Usually it will be one of only a few things: creating zombies for a DDOS, creating spam relays, creating web/ftp/p2p hosts for materials that would be taken down quickly if hosted on a normal server (i.e. spam site, child porn, music, etc), or as a launching pad for attacks on other computer.
Until they tried to reach an "active X required" page...
Of course, it is generally advised to turn off activex for security reasons...Although there is a plugin to run activex in Mozilla ( http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm ).
I was actually referring to any font so small as be difficult for a person with normal vision to read. That, IMHO, is deceptive (or attempting to be deceptive).
IANAL, but I would interept this as an attempt at deception and fraud, and would treat that portion of the agreement as null and void.
I love Window Maker -- it's great, and i prefer it to GNOME or KDE any day...
However, for someone switching over to Linux from Windows, GNOME or KDE would be a better choice. It's much closer to what they are used to than Window Maker. They will be having to learn enough new things. KDE and Gnome still have their place. Personally, I like KDE, but that's just me.
No, that's not what I'm saying. A crime is still a crime, even if occurs within a prison. However, if that's the best justice a victim can hope for, many will take it happily. Hence the posts. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be needed, but then in a perfect world, prisons wouldn't be needed either.
Not necessarily. It all depends on the circumstances. I could give lots of examples, but I won't. Instead, think about the various *criminal* classifications for killing someone. There's first degree murder (aka capital murder in some states), second degree murder, and manslaughter (some states have variations on this). It all depends on the circumstances.
Many would disagree with you, including myself. Sometimes one must be sacrificed for the good of the group. Sucks if you are the one, but in this case, these people had a choice. They chose murder(s). They had more rights than they gave their victim(s).
No argument here.
A lot of that talk is frustration. Our constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, many judges have interpreted that as forbiding any real punishment. Why else do so many keep going back to jail again and again?
China has a much lower prison population than the US, both in total number and in prisoners per 100,000 people (China: 119/100K, US: 701/100K; figures from http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/wo rld_brief.html). The China numbers include the so-called "political prisoners", so the number of true criminals is probably much lower.
While there are numerous reasons, one of them is life in a Chinese prison is bad. China has few repeat offenders (ok, partially because repeat offenders tend to get executed). While in the US, working is optional, yet you still get decent food, clothing, medical, and shelter. Convicted murderers have a better health care plan that I do! Many US criminals spend their time learning from others how to be better criminals.
If it wasn't for abuse by other prisoners, a lot more people (in the US) wouldn't care if they went to jail. It's the only real punishment some criminals get. Getting seriously abused is a powerful message not to screw up again.
My mother used to teach at an inner city school where her students getting sent to juv hall was a regular occurance. They would tell her that they didn't mind because it was better than their home life. When a 12 year old (repeat offender) pulls up to cop in a stolen car and asks him if he wants to drag race, it should tell you how much they care about being caught.
The talk you are referring to is just people wanting some punishment that make the offender (and others) not be a repeat offender. If it takes making the spammer someone's girlfriend to get the message across, then so be it.
Prisons are economically a net loss. The people in those prisons contribute little to the enrichment of society, even if they do work. Now the prisons do create jobs, but if (in a magical world) we didn't need the prisons, then those jobs would be lost, but the money would remain to be spent elsewhere, thus creating different jobs (maybe even more).
Now don't misread this. I'm not saying prisons should be torn down. While they are a net loss, letting the criminals run free would create an even bigger net loss. They do serve a useful function. But never forget, they may be a lesser of two evils, but they are still "evil".
Not for long. At that price, alternative energy sources, such as the one described in this article, would be put into commercial production real quick. And before long, the Arabian Peninsula would either have to drop it's price to a reasonable level, or no longer sell any product.
If the politicans (and oil company execs; sometimes they are both) would get off their butts and start pushing viable alternatives now, the pain would be a lot less if this ever happens.
They already earn more than 99% of all Americans, not counting the extremely generous pension plan. I'd call that financially secure.
In 2003, US Senators earned a base salary of $154,700. That's in addition to other priviledges like free staff, office space, free travel, great pension plan, medical, etc. In 2000(?), a US representative earned about $133,673/yr, plus benefits.
Now campaign costs are another story. There I can see the need to give some favors. That's why I always check the box on my tax return to contribute money to the presidental election campaign fund. In theory, if they owe those who give them money, then they should owe the American public. In reality, the more they can get campaign financing from this fund, the less favors they need to owe to special interests, which is good for the public.
Umm...use apt or uprmi perhaps to install software. Mandrake has a slick gui for uprmi (but the command line is still easy to use) and I've heard of similar gui's for apt (although I haven't used any yet, only command line). Been a while since I had a dependency error.
Inertial and gravitational mass are equal, both in theory, and according to experiment (to within experimental precision). As far as we know, the equivalence principle is valid.
As I said, the differences are very small (at any temperature above absolute zero; at 0K they are the same). So small we don't have instruments with enough precision to measure the difference, but it is calculated to be there (in theory). I remember reading the doctoral dissertation on this subject (he passed BTW).
While true in theory, my observations differ somewhat from your statement. "Radical" new ideas are often ridiculed for quite a while before the evidence mounts especially when made by a non famous scientist. Plate tectonics was first proposed by a meterologist, not a geologist, and he was ridiculed for his theory, even though it is now the accepted theory.
I remember reading articles about a meteor wiping out the dinosaur theory and how the author took quite a (figurative) beating over that theory.
Going back even farther, Galileo wasn't the first to challenge Aristole's(I think it was his) law that the heavier the object, the faster it falls. He was just the first to do it and live because he had protection from some noble. Earlier scientist were thought to be possessed by demons and had to be helped by being given a beating until the demons were driven out and they returned to their senses. (Side note: Technically, Galileo was wrong. Heavier objects in a vacuum will fall faster at any temperature above absolute zero. It has to do with differences between inertial and gravitational masses. The difference is *extremely* small however.)
Of course, not all "radical" new theories pan out, but many great advances have been made by those brave souls who propose new theories.
Even wrong theories can be benefical. Look at Columbus. The dispute Columbus fought was not round Earth versus flat Earth as is commonly believed. It was accepted that the Earth was round by that time. The dispute was over size. Columbus, as it turns out, thought the Earth was much smaller than it actually is, and did fail in his quest to sail to China (although he died still thinking he made it). But he did discover 2 unknown (to Europeans at that time) new continents. The atrocities commited on this new discovery is another story though.
I, for one, hope this does hurt the pirates. Why? Because anything that stops people from pirating software means they either have to pay for it or switch to something else (say GNU/Linux). Some will pay, but many will switch. I can't count how many times I've offered OpenOffice to people only to have them say they can get M$ Office for free (i.e. pirate it). Stop the pirating and I bet more would be interested.
In a perfect world, maybe. But, politics can make lockdowns rather difficult without hitting the unemployment line. Management doesn't always listen. Then think about when the lockdowns break some "critical" (probably poorly written) piece of software...
Which is why we need a loser pays system. While it wouldn't be a total cure, it would stop a lot of these types of abuses (i.e. justice to the highest bidder).
Having been a juror on a patent infringement case (we invalidated the patent BTW), I remember the rules are if there are ANY false (may have applied to incorrect stuff too, I forget) statements on your application, the patent is void.
Just get a glass sliding glass shower/tub door...
Yes, but according to the article, "...I'd advise to run your shower curtains through the clothes washer every few weeks...Better yet, get a glass door. Glass accumulates this biofilm slower.". I don't know about you, but I don't know many glass doors that fit in a clothes washer. :) I'll stick with vinyl.
But this is a different situation. In your example, the string is required for compatibility reasons. The kernel module string is not required for compatibility reasons.
If by accurate you mean hot in the summer, cold in the winter, then yes, they are accurate. However, if you take the current models (and I did this as part of my Master's thesis about 8 years ago; I got my degree, for all the good it did me) and pretend it's 50 years ago, they all predict much warmer temperatures than we have today.
I was actually more than a little shocked by my findings, but other researchers results concur with mine, so I doubt I used the models wrong.
Remember, we aren't talking major changes here. A few degrees in either direction could (in theory) plunge the earth into an ocean age or ice age.
Also, what is not mentioned in the newspaper articles is that most of the temperature rise that is actually being recorded is a night, not during the day. This is important! Frost (which normally occurs at night) is what limits the growing seasons. Warmer night temperatures mean longer growing seasons, and that means more food for both animals and humans.
A record of your voting would be a very bad idea. Vote buying doesn't work too well now because there is no easy way to make sure the person votes as they were paid to do. This would change that. Then, what about repercussions against those that *DIDN'T* vote a particular way. Much easier to do now, and safer with your candidates in office to protect you from a police investigation. Such a record is going to cause lots problems. What do we really gain from such a record? Nothing important as far as I can see.
Political violence is rare right now in the US. I'd like to keep it that way thank you.