I can't abide the crowds and long line ups on these "big sale" days. I value my time at $50/hour, so if it takes an extra 15 minutes to pay for it I have to save at least $12.50.
I find I can find good sale proces on less crowded days if I am patient. The cost of almost any consumer electronics drops every year. Just wait a year and it'll be cheaper.
A Klingon wrote Shakespear's play. Shakespear stole them using a primitive donkey powered time machine. This almost led to a diplimatic incident aboard Kirks ship. (ST VI)
Consumerism is a bit out of hand in my opinion. Too many people covet "stuff" that they don't realy need. Only a hundred years a go people were saying that everyone had to be farmers to keep the economy going. Now we have to be good little consumers? Personally I value free time over the money I earn from working. I need money, and I work enough to may the rent and buy luxuries, but I have never owned a new car, a designer anything, the latest video card, the latest game console, disposable mop, or any of a hundred different unnecessary "consumer items". Easy credit and "right now, me, me, me" culture leads many people into thinking if they just have that one more "thing" then they will be happy. In general it doesn't make them happy (but it sure makes the credit card companies happy).
The core, defining attribute of a governemnt is: a government has a monpoly on using FORCE to enforce its decisions over a defined geographic area.
Corporations are NOT sanctioned to use force by the government. If I break a MS license agreement they take me to court where the government FORCES me to make amends. If I don't pay my taxes the government just takes its cut.
Corporations have NO POWER. The problem is the government that passes laws that allows corporations to use their money to buy influence from the government which is the only source of actual power.
Get out and vote for ethical politicians (if you can find any).
You have to do both: educate your kids and trust them. The age of your kids makes a big difference. My 10 year old does not need as much privacy as my 14 year old. You also have to behave so that your kids trust you. If I walk in in (after the courtesy knock) and oldest son is chatting with friends I don't go and read what he is writing. I ask if he KNOWS the people he is chatting with.
I use simply rules, no pornography, no hate sites, no gory violence. Never give out any contact information. Don't chat with strangers. I will check the sites they have been visiting now and then.
Of course there have been incidents. Youngest child accidently went to a porn site and got a flurry of porn-pop ups. When I came in to say hi there was a very guilty reaction, but a nice barbie site in view. Hmmmm. Then I noticed that under the nice site were all these porn-pop ups. I closed them all, showed my youngest how to get rid of them, and had a little talk about appropriate material, and to call me if there was a problem. It wasn't bad to see this, just not appropriate at the childs current age.
Incident 2 got my oldest banned from the computer for a month (bios lock down on all the home PC's). There haven't been problems since. Sometimes I think the oldest was looking at some sites that were too violent, but you have to have some trust in their common sense.
Anyone who decides to murder innocents is evil. The point of view is immaterial. The circumstances are immaterial. The fact that you DO kill innocents makes you evil. Almost every government on the planet, past, present, and future, has been involved in evil acts. Every government had its "nice" reasons, but the real reason is always greed. Greed for power or wealth.
But what about all the heroic US soldiers liberating Iraq? Are they evil? By this narrow definition they are. Iraq had not directly attacked the USA when the USA invaded.
Actually, I think it is important to speak correctly and correct people when they misuse english. "Begs the question" is actually a technical term in formal logic. It has a special meaning that you should learn before USIBGthe term.
And "I could care less" is wrong, if you mean "I could NOT care less". I for one, am not going to speak sloppily and stupidly just because there are a large number of idiots in the world.
Horrible USA tax laws have killed real research into synthetic fuels (coal based, shale oil, tar sand, etc...) in the USA. Basiclly you take normal coal, spray with diesel fuel and you have a "synthetic fuel" that gets a whopping huge tax break when sold. This is such a great scam that it makes no sense to do real research into synthetic fuels in the USA. See this article Coal Tax scam. Time Magazine did an in depth article on this issue recently.
If your ex-employer had tried that in a civilized country, not only would ou have won, but you would have been awarded costs. SLAP suits still happen, but they are much less frequent in countries it is normal for the loser to pay the winners legal costs.
Copyright infringement should be a CIVIL not a criminal matter. You are breaking what amounts to a contract, you are not harming a person. That is why hitting someone is a criminal offence, but failing to pay a debt is a civil matter.
I don't think copyright infringement should be a criminal act unless money exchanges hands.
I disagree. If you are a "UTS information technology " student, taking a "information technology law course " you obviously DO have some knowledge of copyright law. This matters only if there are different penalties for "willful" infringement. While it is popular to bash lawyers they are very handy when you are charged, and I hope Ng has a good lawyer himself. Your misplaced ire should be directed at the politicians that passed these copyright laws, extended copyright so much that NOTHING published in my life will enter the public domain during my life, and seem quite happy to make criminals are people committing what should be civil matters.
Actually, most rain comes from the oceans evaperating, not resevoirs behind dams, or lakes used for drinking water. This would have a barely noticiable effect on the weather. Its meant to preserve drinking water.
This might have a small effect on very local weather, but it might have a big effect on anything living in the resorvoir due to the temperature going up, and the lack oxegenation at the surface.
"Abundance" will mean the end of captitalism/free markets one day. Why are free markets a goood idea? Free markets are good at allocating scarce resources. Nothing to allocate means no need for free markets and we all get to live in star trek-topia.
We already have replacements for oil. We don't use them because oil is CHEAP. As we run out of oil its price will go up, and the alternatives will become more competitive.
Using up all the oil isn't so bad, its the side effects of pollution, etc... that are bad. I also wonder what the plastics industry is going to use.
In city traffic speeding does no good. All that happens is you get to the next red light faster. Remember - even if you end up a few car lengths ahead of the non-speeder you are only a few SECONDS ahead.
Even if you shave 10 seconds off the trip, is it worth it? Jog across the parking lot instead. Its safer and you'll likely save more time.
This is just a small sample of people putting greed ahead of any sort of morality. Now, it is often moral for lawyers to do things that might seem immoral from an outsiders perspective, but it a lawyers obligation to best the best job possible for their client, no matter how slimy the client. After all, the client just might be right or innocent.
I place the blame squarley on the executive running SCO. the lawyers they hire are doing their job. Now, a moral lawyer might turn down the job, but as we all know, large corporations have no morals including large law firms. A large corporations only guiding principal is MAKE MONEY without breaking any laws (or at least not getting caught until you stole enough to stay out of jail).
I think the problem is that "5 pages or up to 20% of the book can be displayed". That is a bit more than fair use I think. If it showed a single paragragh it might not be such an issue.
When you drive your car on a public road your actions are public, not private. The police, courts, and public have every right to see the contents of your black box when driving on a public road.
Shorter, cheaper campaigns would help. Here in the Great White North political election campaign never last longer than about 4 weeks. An election is called, they campaign for 4 weeks, then there is an elelection. Much cheaper than this year round presidential campaign you have in the USA.
The MS monopoly is a godsend for small software houses. It is MUCH cheaper to develop ONE product for one very popular OS, than a hundred ports.
So while it is all so very popular here to bash MS (and they deserve it for the many boneheaded security blunders in some of their products) the fact is that if MS dissapeared today it would NOT create an IT renaissance. It would start the race for the next monopoly.
Juidges are generally very bright people, and I think some tech people hold themselves in too high regard. The basic concepts required to apply the law to something like the MS anti-trust case just are not that difficult to understand. Judges are quite use to both sides presenting "facts" that support their side and sorting out the truth.
Most court cases with what seem to be wierd outcomes are not due to stupid judges, but to stupid laws.
The UK, where the cheap books were bought, is not an impoverished third world country. The USA students are being gouged.
On top of that the "never ending new edition with three words different" is another scam to undercut the used book market. Just how much has calculas changed in the last 10 years?
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I find I can find good sale proces on less crowded days if I am patient. The cost of almost any consumer electronics drops every year. Just wait a year and it'll be cheaper.
A Klingon wrote Shakespear's play. Shakespear stole them using a primitive donkey powered time machine. This almost led to a diplimatic incident aboard Kirks ship. (ST VI)
Consumerism is a bit out of hand in my opinion. Too many people covet "stuff" that they don't realy need. Only a hundred years a go people were saying that everyone had to be farmers to keep the economy going. Now we have to be good little consumers? Personally I value free time over the money I earn from working. I need money, and I work enough to may the rent and buy luxuries, but I have never owned a new car, a designer anything, the latest video card, the latest game console, disposable mop, or any of a hundred different unnecessary "consumer items". Easy credit and "right now, me, me, me" culture leads many people into thinking if they just have that one more "thing" then they will be happy. In general it doesn't make them happy (but it sure makes the credit card companies happy).
Corporations are NOT sanctioned to use force by the government. If I break a MS license agreement they take me to court where the government FORCES me to make amends. If I don't pay my taxes the government just takes its cut.
Get out and vote for ethical politicians (if you can find any).
I use simply rules, no pornography, no hate sites, no gory violence. Never give out any contact information. Don't chat with strangers. I will check the sites they have been visiting now and then.
Of course there have been incidents. Youngest child accidently went to a porn site and got a flurry of porn-pop ups. When I came in to say hi there was a very guilty reaction, but a nice barbie site in view. Hmmmm. Then I noticed that under the nice site were all these porn-pop ups. I closed them all, showed my youngest how to get rid of them, and had a little talk about appropriate material, and to call me if there was a problem. It wasn't bad to see this, just not appropriate at the childs current age.
Incident 2 got my oldest banned from the computer for a month (bios lock down on all the home PC's). There haven't been problems since. Sometimes I think the oldest was looking at some sites that were too violent, but you have to have some trust in their common sense.
But what about all the heroic US soldiers liberating Iraq? Are they evil? By this narrow definition they are. Iraq had not directly attacked the USA when the USA invaded.
And "I could care less" is wrong, if you mean "I could NOT care less". I for one, am not going to speak sloppily and stupidly just because there are a large number of idiots in the world.
Horrible USA tax laws have killed real research into synthetic fuels (coal based, shale oil, tar sand, etc...) in the USA. Basiclly you take normal coal, spray with diesel fuel and you have a "synthetic fuel" that gets a whopping huge tax break when sold. This is such a great scam that it makes no sense to do real research into synthetic fuels in the USA. See this article Coal Tax scam. Time Magazine did an in depth article on this issue recently.
If your ex-employer had tried that in a civilized country, not only would ou have won, but you would have been awarded costs. SLAP suits still happen, but they are much less frequent in countries it is normal for the loser to pay the winners legal costs.
I don't think copyright infringement should be a criminal act unless money exchanges hands.
I disagree. If you are a "UTS information technology " student, taking a "information technology law course " you obviously DO have some knowledge of copyright law. This matters only if there are different penalties for "willful" infringement. While it is popular to bash lawyers they are very handy when you are charged, and I hope Ng has a good lawyer himself. Your misplaced ire should be directed at the politicians that passed these copyright laws, extended copyright so much that NOTHING published in my life will enter the public domain during my life, and seem quite happy to make criminals are people committing what should be civil matters.
The claim that every copy shared cost the copyright holder a full value retail sale is absurd.
This might have a small effect on very local weather, but it might have a big effect on anything living in the resorvoir due to the temperature going up, and the lack oxegenation at the surface.
"Abundance" will mean the end of captitalism/free markets one day. Why are free markets a goood idea? Free markets are good at allocating scarce resources. Nothing to allocate means no need for free markets and we all get to live in star trek-topia.
Using up all the oil isn't so bad, its the side effects of pollution, etc... that are bad. I also wonder what the plastics industry is going to use.
Even if you shave 10 seconds off the trip, is it worth it? Jog across the parking lot instead. Its safer and you'll likely save more time.
I place the blame squarley on the executive running SCO. the lawyers they hire are doing their job. Now, a moral lawyer might turn down the job, but as we all know, large corporations have no morals including large law firms. A large corporations only guiding principal is MAKE MONEY without breaking any laws (or at least not getting caught until you stole enough to stay out of jail).
I think the problem is that "5 pages or up to 20% of the book can be displayed". That is a bit more than fair use I think. If it showed a single paragragh it might not be such an issue.
When you drive your car on a public road your actions are public, not private. The police, courts, and public have every right to see the contents of your black box when driving on a public road.
Shorter, cheaper campaigns would help. Here in the Great White North political election campaign never last longer than about 4 weeks. An election is called, they campaign for 4 weeks, then there is an elelection. Much cheaper than this year round presidential campaign you have in the USA.
So while it is all so very popular here to bash MS (and they deserve it for the many boneheaded security blunders in some of their products) the fact is that if MS dissapeared today it would NOT create an IT renaissance. It would start the race for the next monopoly.
I find it funny that a country like the USA that seems to pride it self on its Christian Rightousness allows simple greed to trump all morality.
Most court cases with what seem to be wierd outcomes are not due to stupid judges, but to stupid laws.
On top of that the "never ending new edition with three words different" is another scam to undercut the used book market. Just how much has calculas changed in the last 10 years?