anyway you look at it those who download mp3's without paying for them are stealing. Its that simple.
Nope. It's infringement of copyright.
The difference? If I walk into a store, and steal an album, that store can't sell that particular copy of the album anymore - as they don't have it.
If I download a ripped album, infringing copyright, does anyone "not have" something? Nope. Everything is exactly as it was, with the exception that a new digital copy of those files now exists. Noone has technically "lost" anything. (Not even a "potential sale", as I may have downloaded it to sample it, and may *still* end up purchasing it, as well as other albums. Will I? Well, that's not certain - but neither was the sale of the album in the first place, so that's a null argument.)
Let's assume my wife and I use a lot of 'net services:
We download ~3 game demos a week (PC/360, 1-4GB, let's say 2GB each on average, although this is generous, and varies widely by manufacturer/publisher) [6GB/week]
We also both play WoW. (Estimating 1GB/week, although I'm not sure exactly how much bandwidth this uses - weeks with large patches downloaded to multiple client computers would bloat this as well) [1GB/week]
We call friends and family often through Skype, and talk with guildmates via Ventrilo. (Let's estimate 1GB a week here as well) [1GB/week]
2 nights during the week, and once on weekends, we rent a HD movie through XBLM (5-7GB each, we'll say 6GB) [18GB/week]
My wife loves streaming video, and watches quite a bit on YouTube (Let's say 1GB a week, although I'm honestly not sure here) [1GB/week]
Allowing 2-3GB/week for miscellaneous stuff (misc browsing, email, work, etc...not a hard figure, just an estimate) [2-3GB/week]
That right there is just under 30GB/week, which in an average 4-week month works out to ~120GB, over the mystical 100GB "limit". Admittedly, the above isn't particularly sustainable (seldom are there multiple weeks with 3 worthwhile game demos, or 3 movies worth watching), but it is an example of how "regular" and most importantly *legal* use could indeed break this 100GB "limit" without too much trouble.
Electronic systems, even those with a paper trail, can be corrupted.
Who verifies that what is recorded in the database is the same thing printed on the receipt? It'd be easy enough for whomever deigns the software to have two "columns" in the database - one that's written with the "real" vote, and a second that's written with whatever they want. Cryptographic signing involved? Just store a second hash for the second column. Then they just have to have the "counting" system look at the second column rather than the first.
If the receipt is reverse-verifiable, who verifies that the result of the verification is the actual result that will be counted? Again, the system could indeed "verify" the vote to be for candidate X, but if that second column (the one that gets counted) is for candidate Y, the voter has no way of knowing it.
Who verifies the counting system is counting the correct votes - or is even counting votes at all? It's not hard to imagine a tiny bit of code that sits just before the final report, doing something along the lines of:
$total = $A_votes + $B_votes;
$A_votes = $total * 0.49;
$B_votes = $total * 0.51;
reportResults($total, $A_votes, $B_votes);...or alternatively, continuing to use the previous example of a double-column database, counting votes out of the second column rather than the first.
If the corruption occurs *internally* to the voting system, by even a semi-competant programmer, it won't be detectable except by a VERY thorough code-review on the machine in a secure environment directly prior to the actual counting. Given the commercial nature of voting-machine suppliers, that won't be something they allow the general populace to do.
This whole thing isn't about charging extra (although that'll surely happen on both sides of the equation), it's about *control*.
It's pretty reasonable, IMHO, that given this scenario, the standard will be a "You don't pay, you don't play" policy, where anything that isn't specifically paid for (at both ends, mind you) will, by default, get the slowest speeds possible.
Now folks who pay more to their ISP can "enable" the *possibility* of faster reception of certain services (mind you, only the ones their ISP has an interest in/selling/. Non-profitable content (in the eyes of the ISP's suits) won't even have the *option* of being delivered faster). However, unless the *provider* of that content is *also* paying the ISP extra, that won't happen. And, since the ISP is a private entity, they're under no obligation to allow any particular provider to have that option either.
So existing providers either pay more (potentially much, much more, if they're required to tithe to each and every ISP out there), or get screwed. Customers get screwed with higher prices (you think the base cost will go down?), in addition to being nickel and dimed for (potentially) every supported provider their ISP deems profitable - *AND* they get no option to opt for faster delivery of content that may be valuable to them, but not profitable to (or under the radar of) their ISP.
But who gets the even bigger shaft? *New* services that either don't fit into the "Premium Cable" model, or possibly "threaten" it. Without Net Neutrality, these services won't get a chance to take off. They'll simply be denied access to the higher-speed delivery systems, or worse be allowed to pay exorbitant amounts for it, but not be offered to the customer as an option (or priced so high by the ISP so as to quash any possibility that folks would pay for it).
So a lack of Net Neutrality screws everyone royally - except the ISPs, who gain a level of control over the 'net comparable to that which cable companies have over what premium channels they provide. They will control what technologies succeed, and which fail, as they will be the gatekeepers that decide which ones get "approved" for delivery, and which are relegated to the slowest delivery possible.
What I'd *really* like to see (which will, of course never happen), is for Congresscritters to receive a truly representative salary - one that reflects the mean salary of their state/district. Outlaw *all* sources of bribery - "campaign contributions" or otherwise, and strictly police that policy with harsh penalties for both the contributor and the contributee.
This would give the members of Congress a real incentive to make things better for their constituents. Make their salaries go up, get a raise. Make thier salaries go down, get a pay cut. Simple, easy, and brings Congress back to representing the people, rather than being so far removed financially that they can't relate. Tie their own well-being with that of the people they're supposed to be representing.
If you every want to kill a mac purchase, just specify need for Visio (flowcharts, diagrams, process charts), MS project and full access to an exchange server. Until the mac can check off all three, it's a long road to corporate acceptance.
Yes, tying yourself to proprietary applications and services developed by a vendor's competition is going to make switching difficult.
You cite Visio (MS), MS Project, and Exchange (MS). MS is a direct competitor to Apple. How is it Apple's fault MS doesn't support certain applications and technologies on the Mac platform - their direct competition?
Top posting is bad because, as others have stated, we read top-bottom. If you reply at the top, we have to scroll down to get context. That's silly, and wastes the reader's time.
Top-posting is common because people are freakin' lazy. Too lazy to properly prune their quotes to only what's necessary for context. Too lazy to position their reply to the quoted text below it to ensure the reader is able to read it properly, and in order.
And top-posters defend their practice by admitting they're lazy! Apparently it's too much work for them to scroll down to read a reply.
News flash: If folks would *properly* prune their quotes, there'd be less to scroll through. There's rarely a need to quote the entire email you're replying to. Generally 2-3 lines or a paragraph before each point you're responding to is enough. Oh, but that takes effort. Silly me.
Outlook is indeed partially to blame, because it *defaults* to quoting the entire message, and positioning the cursor above the quoted message. Since so many folks are forced to use Outlook, and never touch the default settings, they're *trained* by Outlook to think top-posting is proper.
However, placing the blame solely on Outlook is rather silly as well. We've become a lazy society. Lazy in our actions. Lazy in our communications. If it's effort, we eschew it in favor of convenience. Who cares that it's inconvenient for someone else when it's convenient to you, right? Since properly quoting and responding to an email takes more effort than top-posting and quoting the entire thing, that's what folks do. Outlook just compounds the problem by making it look like that's the way it's supposed to be.
Under all but the most expensive versions of Vista, you're correct. IIRC the "Ultimate" EULA allows for virtualization.
Running under BootCamp should be perfectly legal - BootCamp just handles partitioning the drive, and includes a set of drivers for the hardware. What you end up with is pretty much a dual-boot environment. No emulation whatsoever.
Unfortunately, the Blazing Sword requires a Morale of 130. Attacking with lesser attacks, getting beaten on, etc... increase Morale, so they have to go a few rounds before they can pull it out.
The DMCA basically says "If we put up a roadblock, you must stop. You may not attempt to find a way around it. Ever. Even if it interferes with your use. Even if your life depends on it. Even if noone else ever knows."
That having been said, unless you distribute information on how to do it, or advertise that you'll do it for other folks, there's very little chance anything would happen to you. However, in the eyes of the DMCA, it's still quite illegal.
But the way the public demonizes the entire industry is very unsettling...
Understandable, though.
From a pragmatic standpoint, it's in the drug companies best interest to keep prices high, because they want to recoup costs of their research.
It's in the insurance companies best interests to keep *drug* prices high, because therefore the patients *need* insurance to be able to afford treatment (IE: if treatment and drugs were cheap, why would insurance companies be necessary?).
It's in the doctor's best interests to keep their prices high, because otherwise the insurance companies won't pay them enough to stay in business (Insurance pays only a fraction of what the doctor submits).
The only one who *doesn't* benefit from high prices is the sick patient who needs treatment.
The real villains here are the insurance companies - but since the insurance "helps" the patient by "paying for" their treatment, folks don't see them as being part of the problem.
"Bingo!. This is just the attitude I am talking about. The Azureus application is written so it can run on any OS. The windows and linux users are appreciative. The Mac users piss on it and on the developers and constantly critize it without ever helping out."
So, critique of the UI isn't helping?
Mac users have perhaps the nicest looking standard GUI. They're used to apps that take advantage of that, and not only perform well, but look good, and are fairly intuitive to use. That's simply a much higher standard than Windows users are used to. Linux users, while appreciative of well-constructed UIs, are so used to absolutely horrid ones that they've been de-sensitized.
So it's no wonder it's the Mac folks who speak up when it comes to UI issues. Now I'll admit that some are a bit less tactful than others, but if you have a cross-platform app (like Azureus), that's feature-complete (like Azureus), and generally works pretty well (again, like Azureus, discounting it being a bit of a ram hog), then *lots* of folks are going to use it, regardless of the UI. Some of those folks are going to say "You know, this is a pretty darned good program, but gosh is it ugly! I really wish the developer would spend some time re-working the UI a bit to make it look as good as it works!"
And, in the case of a fairly mature application, that's not really a horrible idea either. Presentation isn't meaningless - if your app works well, and looks good doing it, you'll get more users than if it works well, but looks horrible (I'm looking at you, Mulberry. Best damn IMAP client out there, but ugly as sin.).
Space Quest 2 was the worst offender that I can recall. In the first scene of the game, if you don't notice a particular item and grab it, then at the end of the game you're screwed, with no idea why. You have to start over. From the beginning.
It had more than one "gotcha" too. Triggering a certain event, and not responding properly would lead to death much, much later in the game. If you hadn't saved before the "event", you were restarting.
However, back then it was part of the game to find all the various ways to die. An awful lot of them were quite entertaining.
I don't think it's the writing folks miss about Joel. I think it's the personality. Those of us who saw the Joel seasons first got used to his style and delivery. Mike's style (and especially his delivery) are a bit different. So, to those of us who have a certain "image" of how MST3K should be based on Joel, Mike seems...lacking. I've found lots of folks who saw Mike first feel the same way about the Joel seasons.
So it follows they should have very different names. Using the same name for a different product - even if the original product is your own - is confusing. It's no wonder many Mac users were/are confused!
More than half the votes go to the other guy. However, because of the Electoral College, that doesn't mean the candidate more Americans voted for gets it. Nope. It's the one who gets certain key states, who have a larger EC vote than others.
Now realize that many of the key states used electronic voting machines made by Diebold. These machines have no verifiable paper trail, nor any form of hard receipt. The CEO of Diebold promised publically to "deliver the presidency" to Bush. Exit polls (while not the picture of reliability, all we really have due to the Diebold machines) showed a strong leaning away from Bush. Many counties (in many states) had significantly more votes than they had registered voters, or other odd discrepancies that fell outside any sort of sane margin of error.
Yet, there was no investigation. No media outrage. Just acceptance of another 4 years of Bush. Why? Why did we impeach Clinton over an affair (that harmed only his reputation and family), while we haven't impeached Bush (who has committed IMHO much worse crimes - and even ADMITTED to them, although not admitting to their illegality...)?
It's obvious that *something* shady was, and possibly still is going on. As for what, or to what extent, I don't think we'll ever know. I'm just amazed at the complacency. Of course, it helps when anyone who points out stuff like this is dismissed as a crackpot, or worse called a traitor.;P
What I wouldn't give for someone in Congress to represent the people
Agree 100%, but the current system works to distance those who "represent" from those they supposedly serve. A couple of radical changes that might help:
1) Outlaw "campaign contributions" altogether, as this is pretty much legalized bribery. Companies or the rich should not have more power over the government than the average citizen. Removing the ability to leverage money as a means to influence is intended to balance the scales a bit. This would probably require some fairly intrusive monitoring of the finances of government officials, but since they're supposed to be representing *us*, I think it's fair to argue that their finances should be transparent.
2) Determine a congressperson's salary as the average salary of the state/district they represent. If they want a raise, they need to raise that average. Making life better for their constituants makes their life better. This is intended to encourage them to think about what's best for their constituants, not just what's best for themselves, by making the two one and the same.
Of course, we all know that'll never happen, but it would be a step closer to true representation of the *people*, rather than of the wealthy.
Basically a form of gambling in Japan, where outright gambling is illegal. How do they skirt it?
One company allows you to buy balls. You give them money, they give you balls. Then you take the balls over to the pachinko parlor, where you can use the balls to play. When you win, you receive more balls back. They don't allow you to buy/sell the balls there. No money changes hands. When you're done, you go back to the ball-vendor, who "buys" your balls back.
The ball-vendor and the pachinko parlor are two completely seperate businesses, legally. That way, you're not *technically* gambling. Because the transactions are abstracted, it gets around the anti-gambling laws.
I could see something similar happening with online gambling. Get an account with some "chip" vendor, where you buy online "chips", which are strictly defined as being worthless (EULA type stuff). Then go to a (legally seperate) gambling site which just *happens* to allow you to use those chips, but doesn't directly allow you to buy-in or cash-out, so no money is actually changing hands. When you're done, you cash-out your account with the chip-vendor.
You're very intolerant. Not everyone is a smart as you and not everyone cares to know the details of how systems work.
True enough, but they should be aware that some of us *do* know those details, and when we speak about them, we are speaking from experience, whther what we say is what they want to hear or not.
If the person is still asking the same question then either you haven't answered it so that they understand or they are so dumb that you need to simplify your answer.
Third possibility: They think asking again will get them a different answer, since they didn't get one they liked the first (second...third...) time. Doesn't matter how many times or how well you explain it. If it's not the answer they want to hear, they just ask again.
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anyway you look at it those who download mp3's without paying for them are stealing. Its that simple.
Nope. It's infringement of copyright.
The difference? If I walk into a store, and steal an album, that store can't sell that particular copy of the album anymore - as they don't have it.
If I download a ripped album, infringing copyright, does anyone "not have" something? Nope. Everything is exactly as it was, with the exception that a new digital copy of those files now exists. Noone has technically "lost" anything. (Not even a "potential sale", as I may have downloaded it to sample it, and may *still* end up purchasing it, as well as other albums. Will I? Well, that's not certain - but neither was the sale of the album in the first place, so that's a null argument.)
360 got the first HD Katamari game - came out this week, actually. Still as fun as the original, just looks a heckuva lot nicer.
Bah, Master Chief doesn't need to save - he's that good. ;P
Let's assume my wife and I use a lot of 'net services:
We download ~3 game demos a week (PC/360, 1-4GB, let's say 2GB each on average, although this is generous, and varies widely by manufacturer/publisher) [6GB/week]
We also both play WoW. (Estimating 1GB/week, although I'm not sure exactly how much bandwidth this uses - weeks with large patches downloaded to multiple client computers would bloat this as well) [1GB/week]
We call friends and family often through Skype, and talk with guildmates via Ventrilo. (Let's estimate 1GB a week here as well) [1GB/week]
2 nights during the week, and once on weekends, we rent a HD movie through XBLM (5-7GB each, we'll say 6GB) [18GB/week]
My wife loves streaming video, and watches quite a bit on YouTube (Let's say 1GB a week, although I'm honestly not sure here) [1GB/week]
Allowing 2-3GB/week for miscellaneous stuff (misc browsing, email, work, etc...not a hard figure, just an estimate) [2-3GB/week]
That right there is just under 30GB/week, which in an average 4-week month works out to ~120GB, over the mystical 100GB "limit". Admittedly, the above isn't particularly sustainable (seldom are there multiple weeks with 3 worthwhile game demos, or 3 movies worth watching), but it is an example of how "regular" and most importantly *legal* use could indeed break this 100GB "limit" without too much trouble.
Electronic systems, even those with a paper trail, can be corrupted.
...or alternatively, continuing to use the previous example of a double-column database, counting votes out of the second column rather than the first.
Who verifies that what is recorded in the database is the same thing printed on the receipt? It'd be easy enough for whomever deigns the software to have two "columns" in the database - one that's written with the "real" vote, and a second that's written with whatever they want. Cryptographic signing involved? Just store a second hash for the second column. Then they just have to have the "counting" system look at the second column rather than the first.
If the receipt is reverse-verifiable, who verifies that the result of the verification is the actual result that will be counted? Again, the system could indeed "verify" the vote to be for candidate X, but if that second column (the one that gets counted) is for candidate Y, the voter has no way of knowing it.
Who verifies the counting system is counting the correct votes - or is even counting votes at all? It's not hard to imagine a tiny bit of code that sits just before the final report, doing something along the lines of:
$total = $A_votes + $B_votes;
$A_votes = $total * 0.49;
$B_votes = $total * 0.51;
reportResults($total, $A_votes, $B_votes);
If the corruption occurs *internally* to the voting system, by even a semi-competant programmer, it won't be detectable except by a VERY thorough code-review on the machine in a secure environment directly prior to the actual counting. Given the commercial nature of voting-machine suppliers, that won't be something they allow the general populace to do.
This whole thing isn't about charging extra (although that'll surely happen on both sides of the equation), it's about *control*.
/selling/. Non-profitable content (in the eyes of the ISP's suits) won't even have the *option* of being delivered faster). However, unless the *provider* of that content is *also* paying the ISP extra, that won't happen. And, since the ISP is a private entity, they're under no obligation to allow any particular provider to have that option either.
It's pretty reasonable, IMHO, that given this scenario, the standard will be a "You don't pay, you don't play" policy, where anything that isn't specifically paid for (at both ends, mind you) will, by default, get the slowest speeds possible.
Now folks who pay more to their ISP can "enable" the *possibility* of faster reception of certain services (mind you, only the ones their ISP has an interest in
So existing providers either pay more (potentially much, much more, if they're required to tithe to each and every ISP out there), or get screwed. Customers get screwed with higher prices (you think the base cost will go down?), in addition to being nickel and dimed for (potentially) every supported provider their ISP deems profitable - *AND* they get no option to opt for faster delivery of content that may be valuable to them, but not profitable to (or under the radar of) their ISP.
But who gets the even bigger shaft? *New* services that either don't fit into the "Premium Cable" model, or possibly "threaten" it. Without Net Neutrality, these services won't get a chance to take off. They'll simply be denied access to the higher-speed delivery systems, or worse be allowed to pay exorbitant amounts for it, but not be offered to the customer as an option (or priced so high by the ISP so as to quash any possibility that folks would pay for it).
So a lack of Net Neutrality screws everyone royally - except the ISPs, who gain a level of control over the 'net comparable to that which cable companies have over what premium channels they provide. They will control what technologies succeed, and which fail, as they will be the gatekeepers that decide which ones get "approved" for delivery, and which are relegated to the slowest delivery possible.
Apparently so, in the current climate.
What I'd *really* like to see (which will, of course never happen), is for Congresscritters to receive a truly representative salary - one that reflects the mean salary of their state/district. Outlaw *all* sources of bribery - "campaign contributions" or otherwise, and strictly police that policy with harsh penalties for both the contributor and the contributee.
This would give the members of Congress a real incentive to make things better for their constituents. Make their salaries go up, get a raise. Make thier salaries go down, get a pay cut. Simple, easy, and brings Congress back to representing the people, rather than being so far removed financially that they can't relate. Tie their own well-being with that of the people they're supposed to be representing.
Yes, tying yourself to proprietary applications and services developed by a vendor's competition is going to make switching difficult.
You cite Visio (MS), MS Project, and Exchange (MS). MS is a direct competitor to Apple. How is it Apple's fault MS doesn't support certain applications and technologies on the Mac platform - their direct competition?
Top posting is bad because, as others have stated, we read top-bottom. If you reply at the top, we have to scroll down to get context. That's silly, and wastes the reader's time.
Top-posting is common because people are freakin' lazy. Too lazy to properly prune their quotes to only what's necessary for context. Too lazy to position their reply to the quoted text below it to ensure the reader is able to read it properly, and in order.
And top-posters defend their practice by admitting they're lazy! Apparently it's too much work for them to scroll down to read a reply.
News flash: If folks would *properly* prune their quotes, there'd be less to scroll through. There's rarely a need to quote the entire email you're replying to. Generally 2-3 lines or a paragraph before each point you're responding to is enough. Oh, but that takes effort. Silly me.
Outlook is indeed partially to blame, because it *defaults* to quoting the entire message, and positioning the cursor above the quoted message. Since so many folks are forced to use Outlook, and never touch the default settings, they're *trained* by Outlook to think top-posting is proper.
However, placing the blame solely on Outlook is rather silly as well. We've become a lazy society. Lazy in our actions. Lazy in our communications. If it's effort, we eschew it in favor of convenience. Who cares that it's inconvenient for someone else when it's convenient to you, right? Since properly quoting and responding to an email takes more effort than top-posting and quoting the entire thing, that's what folks do. Outlook just compounds the problem by making it look like that's the way it's supposed to be.
Same setup here. XBMC is extremely slick.
My gripe? The XBox just doesnt seem to have the grunt to playback x264/h264 stuff, and transcoding is a bit of a pain.
Under all but the most expensive versions of Vista, you're correct. IIRC the "Ultimate" EULA allows for virtualization.
Running under BootCamp should be perfectly legal - BootCamp just handles partitioning the drive, and includes a set of drivers for the hardware. What you end up with is pretty much a dual-boot environment. No emulation whatsoever.
Unfortunately, the Blazing Sword requires a Morale of 130. Attacking with lesser attacks, getting beaten on, etc... increase Morale, so they have to go a few rounds before they can pull it out.
;P )
(Yes, I play far too much SRW
The DMCA basically says "If we put up a roadblock, you must stop. You may not attempt to find a way around it. Ever. Even if it interferes with your use. Even if your life depends on it. Even if noone else ever knows."
That having been said, unless you distribute information on how to do it, or advertise that you'll do it for other folks, there's very little chance anything would happen to you. However, in the eyes of the DMCA, it's still quite illegal.
But the way the public demonizes the entire industry is very unsettling...
Understandable, though.
From a pragmatic standpoint, it's in the drug companies best interest to keep prices high, because they want to recoup costs of their research.
It's in the insurance companies best interests to keep *drug* prices high, because therefore the patients *need* insurance to be able to afford treatment (IE: if treatment and drugs were cheap, why would insurance companies be necessary?).
It's in the doctor's best interests to keep their prices high, because otherwise the insurance companies won't pay them enough to stay in business (Insurance pays only a fraction of what the doctor submits).
The only one who *doesn't* benefit from high prices is the sick patient who needs treatment.
The real villains here are the insurance companies - but since the insurance "helps" the patient by "paying for" their treatment, folks don't see them as being part of the problem.
So, critique of the UI isn't helping?
Mac users have perhaps the nicest looking standard GUI. They're used to apps that take advantage of that, and not only perform well, but look good, and are fairly intuitive to use. That's simply a much higher standard than Windows users are used to. Linux users, while appreciative of well-constructed UIs, are so used to absolutely horrid ones that they've been de-sensitized.
So it's no wonder it's the Mac folks who speak up when it comes to UI issues. Now I'll admit that some are a bit less tactful than others, but if you have a cross-platform app (like Azureus), that's feature-complete (like Azureus), and generally works pretty well (again, like Azureus, discounting it being a bit of a ram hog), then *lots* of folks are going to use it, regardless of the UI. Some of those folks are going to say "You know, this is a pretty darned good program, but gosh is it ugly! I really wish the developer would spend some time re-working the UI a bit to make it look as good as it works!"
And, in the case of a fairly mature application, that's not really a horrible idea either. Presentation isn't meaningless - if your app works well, and looks good doing it, you'll get more users than if it works well, but looks horrible (I'm looking at you, Mulberry. Best damn IMAP client out there, but ugly as sin.).
Space Quest 2 was the worst offender that I can recall. In the first scene of the game, if you don't notice a particular item and grab it, then at the end of the game you're screwed, with no idea why. You have to start over. From the beginning.
It had more than one "gotcha" too. Triggering a certain event, and not responding properly would lead to death much, much later in the game. If you hadn't saved before the "event", you were restarting.
However, back then it was part of the game to find all the various ways to die. An awful lot of them were quite entertaining.
I don't think it's the writing folks miss about Joel. I think it's the personality. Those of us who saw the Joel seasons first got used to his style and delivery. Mike's style (and especially his delivery) are a bit different. So, to those of us who have a certain "image" of how MST3K should be based on Joel, Mike seems...lacking. I've found lots of folks who saw Mike first feel the same way about the Joel seasons.
they are very different products
So it follows they should have very different names. Using the same name for a different product - even if the original product is your own - is confusing. It's no wonder many Mac users were/are confused!
Theories? I thought it was fairly obvious.
;P
More than half the votes go to the other guy. However, because of the Electoral College, that doesn't mean the candidate more Americans voted for gets it. Nope. It's the one who gets certain key states, who have a larger EC vote than others.
Now realize that many of the key states used electronic voting machines made by Diebold. These machines have no verifiable paper trail, nor any form of hard receipt. The CEO of Diebold promised publically to "deliver the presidency" to Bush. Exit polls (while not the picture of reliability, all we really have due to the Diebold machines) showed a strong leaning away from Bush. Many counties (in many states) had significantly more votes than they had registered voters, or other odd discrepancies that fell outside any sort of sane margin of error.
Yet, there was no investigation. No media outrage. Just acceptance of another 4 years of Bush. Why? Why did we impeach Clinton over an affair (that harmed only his reputation and family), while we haven't impeached Bush (who has committed IMHO much worse crimes - and even ADMITTED to them, although not admitting to their illegality...)?
It's obvious that *something* shady was, and possibly still is going on. As for what, or to what extent, I don't think we'll ever know. I'm just amazed at the complacency. Of course, it helps when anyone who points out stuff like this is dismissed as a crackpot, or worse called a traitor.
What I wouldn't give for someone in Congress to represent the people
Agree 100%, but the current system works to distance those who "represent" from those they supposedly serve. A couple of radical changes that might help:
1) Outlaw "campaign contributions" altogether, as this is pretty much legalized bribery. Companies or the rich should not have more power over the government than the average citizen. Removing the ability to leverage money as a means to influence is intended to balance the scales a bit. This would probably require some fairly intrusive monitoring of the finances of government officials, but since they're supposed to be representing *us*, I think it's fair to argue that their finances should be transparent.
2) Determine a congressperson's salary as the average salary of the state/district they represent. If they want a raise, they need to raise that average. Making life better for their constituants makes their life better. This is intended to encourage them to think about what's best for their constituants, not just what's best for themselves, by making the two one and the same.
Of course, we all know that'll never happen, but it would be a step closer to true representation of the *people*, rather than of the wealthy.
Pachinko.
Basically a form of gambling in Japan, where outright gambling is illegal. How do they skirt it?
One company allows you to buy balls. You give them money, they give you balls. Then you take the balls over to the pachinko parlor, where you can use the balls to play. When you win, you receive more balls back. They don't allow you to buy/sell the balls there. No money changes hands. When you're done, you go back to the ball-vendor, who "buys" your balls back.
The ball-vendor and the pachinko parlor are two completely seperate businesses, legally. That way, you're not *technically* gambling. Because the transactions are abstracted, it gets around the anti-gambling laws.
I could see something similar happening with online gambling. Get an account with some "chip" vendor, where you buy online "chips", which are strictly defined as being worthless (EULA type stuff). Then go to a (legally seperate) gambling site which just *happens* to allow you to use those chips, but doesn't directly allow you to buy-in or cash-out, so no money is actually changing hands. When you're done, you cash-out your account with the chip-vendor.
You're very intolerant. Not everyone is a smart as you and not everyone cares to know the details of how systems work.
True enough, but they should be aware that some of us *do* know those details, and when we speak about them, we are speaking from experience, whther what we say is what they want to hear or not.
If the person is still asking the same question then either you haven't answered it so that they understand or they are so dumb that you need to simplify your answer.
Third possibility: They think asking again will get them a different answer, since they didn't get one they liked the first (second...third...) time. Doesn't matter how many times or how well you explain it. If it's not the answer they want to hear, they just ask again.
I think he meant essentially integrating an Airport Express into the unit itself, not just providing an aux-in so it could be used with one.
It creates a file, yes, but that file contains nothing.
Actually...I just ran a quick test. Converted a little Daily Show clip. Seems to play back just fine.
Trackball.