It's not that Verizon didn't want to share your personal information with the RIAA, it's that Verizon didn't want to share your personal infomration with the RIAA for free. Big dif.
"In response to this Slashdot story I emailed my Member of Parlament."
Canada is a bilingual country, which gives you two correct ways to spell the name of your legislature. That right there isn't either one of them.
In all seriousness, I hope you ran your e-mail through a spell-checker, at least if you expect your message to be taken seriously. In fact, you should probably splurge the $0.48 for a real letter.
Yeah yeah, power to the people, down with The Man and all that...
I don't care how "environmentally friendly" this vehicle is, it doesn't belong on a sidewalk. They're called pedestrians for a reason.
If you want to be able to use the latest and greatest from the Sharper Image catalog, go to city hall and ask the council to consider dedicated lanes for these vehicles (or simply use existing bicycle lanes). The sidewalk is there for a reason, and it's not to be your personal slalom course.
"due to a 6.8% vs 12% import duty differential charged seven years ago, a duty that isn't even in effect anymore."
Let's see.. 5.2% on a $10.00 toy (yes, I know I'm being conservative), assuming they sold 1,000,000 of them during the time period in question comes out to be $520,000. Not exactly chump-change.
"our tax dollars being spent on the Government's lawyers"
DOJ only has a finite amount of time/money to spend on such cases. In order to justify next year's budget, they have to pick their cases carefully. Cases where, for example, the monetary amount in question more than justifies the amount of time/money spent prosecuting.
On a ballot that was publicized weeks ahead of the election.
"the Democratic voters that brother Jeb arbitrarily threw off the voter rolls"
The governor has no say in who is elected to the Florida Supreme Court. They are chosen by direct election.
The governor has no say in who is elected elections commissioner. They are chosen by direct election.
"The Supreme Court justified installing Bush by pointing to press accounts of the election."
The vast majority of the members of the US Supreme Court were approved of by a Democrat congress.
The Supreme Court did not pick the winning candidate. The deicision boiled down to "Not our problem" after looking at both the US and Florida consitutions. The popularly-elected Florida high court did what they felt was required by Florida law. The popularly-elected commissioner signed off on the results.
Was the deck stacked against Florida voters? Perhaps. But they did it to themselves.
"The take-home lesson: your vote doesn't count; what the media report counts."
No, the take-home lesson is what it always has been in democracy since its inception: caveat emptor
It means that one political party is in control of both your legislature and executive by definition. This gives one organization control over most of your government.
It means that you end up voting for political parties as much (if not more) than you vote for the individuals themselves. If the candidate that is otherwise the best choice for the legislative position isn't from the correct political party, they won't get elected.
Involvement in government requires membership in a political party. This both gives political parties much more power in government than they would otherwise while making the government less accessible by the common person.
Let's compare that system to the US:
One political party gains control of two branches of govenment only after voting specifically allows it. The majority of US voters vote on a cross-party ticket. This is how my home state of Louisiana voted for Bush in the 2000 elections but is still represented by two Democrats in the US Senate (even after last year's election).
Voters are free to vote for the candidate they feel is best for the job. While some voters do vote on straight party tickets, the majority of US voters do not. Membership in a political party need not enter the decision process at all.
While most people think of US politics being a "two-party system," the fact is that membership in a political party is not required to hold public office. There are several party-independent mebers of US Congress and many more at the state and local levels. This is a legal impossibility in most Euroepan countries (as well as other democracies around the world, such as Australia).
It's not the way you handle your parties' political power in government that concerns us, it's the way you give them such power to begin with.
By the way...
"If we'd don it that way then Thatcher would have stayed in power for ANOTHER two years before we could kick her out."
You assume she would have gotten a second term to begin with (or even a first term). You have literally no way of knowing who voted for her party directly and who voted for a candidate who happened to be a member of her party.
With an AM/FM radio, you get spoon-fed your daily dose of Clear Channel for free. With XM, you pay for it.
I'm sorry, but with all things being equal, I'm not going to pay money to the provider that carries Clear Channel. They're why I'm trying to get away from terrestrial radio to begin with.
"Bringing you the hits you've heard too many times during the 80's, 90's and today!"
Who's to say that their method of FTL communication doesn't involve tunneling radio waves through "something else," and the signals before and after the tunnel are just plain ol' radio waves?
(OK, so I've read too many BattleTech books)
Who is to say that they wouldn't want to announce their presence to us lesser life forms?
"Emulation" is an awfully strong word. Emulation is how NT handles DOS and Win16 apps. OS/2 has its own dedicated subsystem (what the config.sys file is for), just like Win32. The two are independent of each other.
"or shall we all start calling Linux a fork of Minix, because one shares a few design concepts with another?"
Linux was never marketed as "Minix NT." Before the success of Windows 3.x, the project name was "OS/2 NT."
"MS: Has spent a boatload of money copying and building there own versions of what everyone else already had. They are finally starting to get it right, and are making money hand over fist doing it"
So, what you're saying is that MS is just like the Linux community, except that they're making money?
"Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment,"
Moving to OS/2 (or at least pretending that they were for a while) was a huge investment. Microsoft's fork of the OS/2 kernel (which we now call "Windows XP*") has proven to be wildly successful (and profitable). So much so that they finally killed off the original Windows line (and DOS along with it).
They've done it before, there's no reason to believe they couldn't do it again.
*To be accurate, XP is is MS OS/2 5.1 running Windows 5.1 with networking done by LAN Manager (you guessed it) 5.1
"Oil, on the other hand, is not generally burned to produce electricity, but is refined into motor vehicle fuel."
Oil is refined to get the "more useful" hydrocarbon chains (like gasoline) out of it. What's left over is labelled "fuel oil" and used to power things like steamships and power plants.
And besides, oil is not the only thing peddled by the oil industry. Where do you think natural gas comes from? About the only fossil fuel not sold by the oil industry is coal.
"I can see the fights over the GNU/Mandrake/Debian (or is it GNU/Debian/Mandrake) name."
As if that would be the only fight. Do you realize how many LUG members will literally burst into flames if Debian hooked up with Mandrake?
"Debian is the one, true dist... er, wait... Avoid Mandrake like the plague! Download Debi... er... um... Windows Me? ARGH! NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANY MORE!"
My God, think of the carnage! It will make the GNOME/KDE flamewars look like... I don't know... vi/emacs...
"They figure the extra thrust efficiency outweighs the humongous development cost to deal with the volatile stuff, and the weight and expense of building refrigerated tanks."
First off, a high development cost is just that: You only have to pay it once. Once the infrastructure is there, it's cheaper to use it.
Secondly, I suspect that the added weight of the cryogenic storage is more than offset by the gain in energy and power output. If it weren't, then the Saturn V would have used kerosene in all the stages of the Saturn V instead of just the first. Even the Soviets ended up using LH2 in the upper stages of the N1.
Slashdot Mirror
"Plus, it has hardware acceleration of 9.81 m/s^2."
Even faster at the colder latitudes!
"Who the hell were Sony and Microsoft in the game industry ten years ago?"
Sony was the new kid on the block struggling against the poorly-deployed Sega Saturn until they managed to bag EA and Squaresoft.
Microsoft is currently using exclusive titles from Sega to keep its head above water. And that by itself can't save them in the long-term.
"Wow" factor only works with the kinds of people that have nothing else better to do with their money (see 'Segway').
"That person may be legally entitled to possess copies of those 600 tracks as they may already own the CDs."
Um... if Verizon can see that the person has 600 tracks, that means the person has those MP3s shared (read "distributed") over the internet.
That, or they should really consider a personal firewall...
It's not that Verizon didn't want to share your personal information with the RIAA, it's that Verizon didn't want to share your personal infomration with the RIAA for free. Big dif.
... until I get my own 64DD. In fact, I here there'll be a Robotech game for the N64 any day now...
But, see, this is no ordinary spelling mistake. This is two in the same word! Surely that deserves special mention!
"In response to this Slashdot story I emailed my Member of Parlament."
Canada is a bilingual country, which gives you two correct ways to spell the name of your legislature. That right there isn't either one of them.
In all seriousness, I hope you ran your e-mail through a spell-checker, at least if you expect your message to be taken seriously. In fact, you should probably splurge the $0.48 for a real letter.
"Troll. Or complete moron with no understanding of the Segway."
I know that a person on a Segway can go over twice as fast as even my own brisk walking and I know human nature. What else must I know?
Yeah yeah, power to the people, down with The Man and all that...
I don't care how "environmentally friendly" this vehicle is, it doesn't belong on a sidewalk. They're called pedestrians for a reason.
If you want to be able to use the latest and greatest from the Sharper Image catalog, go to city hall and ask the council to consider dedicated lanes for these vehicles (or simply use existing bicycle lanes). The sidewalk is there for a reason, and it's not to be your personal slalom course.
"in order to ensure there is a fair and unbiased populace from which to draw jurors,"
"Prospective juror 12345, how closely have you followed stories about the accused?"
"What kinds of opinions have you formed of the accused, if any?"
There's also the option of changing venues.
"For examples, see Gary Condid."
Closer to "He deliberately lied to the police in the course of an official investigation (and even admits it), string him up!"
"due to a 6.8% vs 12% import duty differential charged seven years ago, a duty that isn't even in effect anymore."
Let's see.. 5.2% on a $10.00 toy (yes, I know I'm being conservative), assuming they sold 1,000,000 of them during the time period in question comes out to be $520,000. Not exactly chump-change.
"our tax dollars being spent on the Government's lawyers"
DOJ only has a finite amount of time/money to spend on such cases. In order to justify next year's budget, they have to pick their cases carefully. Cases where, for example, the monetary amount in question more than justifies the amount of time/money spent prosecuting.
"Between the "Jews for Buchanan" vote"
On a ballot that was publicized weeks ahead of the election.
"the Democratic voters that brother Jeb arbitrarily threw off the voter rolls"
The governor has no say in who is elected to the Florida Supreme Court. They are chosen by direct election.
The governor has no say in who is elected elections commissioner. They are chosen by direct election.
"The Supreme Court justified installing Bush by pointing to press accounts of the election."
The vast majority of the members of the US Supreme Court were approved of by a Democrat congress.
The Supreme Court did not pick the winning candidate. The deicision boiled down to "Not our problem" after looking at both the US and Florida consitutions. The popularly-elected Florida high court did what they felt was required by Florida law. The popularly-elected commissioner signed off on the results.
Was the deck stacked against Florida voters? Perhaps. But they did it to themselves.
"The take-home lesson: your vote doesn't count; what the media report counts."
No, the take-home lesson is what it always has been in democracy since its inception: caveat emptor
We think it's a big deal because:
- It means that one political party is in control of both your legislature and executive by definition. This gives one organization control over most of your government.
- It means that you end up voting for political parties as much (if not more) than you vote for the individuals themselves. If the candidate that is otherwise the best choice for the legislative position isn't from the correct political party, they won't get elected.
- Involvement in government requires membership in a political party. This both gives political parties much more power in government than they would otherwise while making the government less accessible by the common person.
Let's compare that system to the US:- One political party gains control of two branches of govenment only after voting specifically allows it. The majority of US voters vote on a cross-party ticket. This is how my home state of Louisiana voted for Bush in the 2000 elections but is still represented by two Democrats in the US Senate (even after last year's election).
- Voters are free to vote for the candidate they feel is best for the job. While some voters do vote on straight party tickets, the majority of US voters do not. Membership in a political party need not enter the decision process at all.
- While most people think of US politics being a "two-party system," the fact is that membership in a political party is not required to hold public office. There are several party-independent mebers of US Congress and many more at the state and local levels. This is a legal impossibility in most Euroepan countries (as well as other democracies around the world, such as Australia).
It's not the way you handle your parties' political power in government that concerns us, it's the way you give them such power to begin with.By the way...
"If we'd don it that way then Thatcher would have stayed in power for ANOTHER two years before we could kick her out."
You assume she would have gotten a second term to begin with (or even a first term). You have literally no way of knowing who voted for her party directly and who voted for a candidate who happened to be a member of her party.
"These are hoaxes, but how do I convince the people that send me these, that this is the case?"
Remind them that the real UN only gets in touch with the general populace when they're looking for money (like UNICEF).
"DJs have stopped taking request (probably because they are owned by clear channel)."
The RIAA doesn't want you to know when you'll be able to record a particular song off the radio.
With an AM/FM radio, you get spoon-fed your daily dose of Clear Channel for free. With XM, you pay for it.
I'm sorry, but with all things being equal, I'm not going to pay money to the provider that carries Clear Channel. They're why I'm trying to get away from terrestrial radio to begin with.
"Bringing you the hits you've heard too many times during the 80's, 90's and today!"
EuroSeti? What's that, an organization dedicated to searching for intelligent life in Europe?
(Judging by the content and quality of the website I bet it's just another hoax.)
Who's to say that their method of FTL communication doesn't involve tunneling radio waves through "something else," and the signals before and after the tunnel are just plain ol' radio waves?
(OK, so I've read too many BattleTech books)
Who is to say that they wouldn't want to announce their presence to us lesser life forms?
Who is to say that they're more advanced than us?
We're already screwed. The aliens never upgraded to OSX and the virus has some compatability issues.
"It has an OS/2 emulation layer,"
"Emulation" is an awfully strong word. Emulation is how NT handles DOS and Win16 apps. OS/2 has its own dedicated subsystem (what the config.sys file is for), just like Win32. The two are independent of each other.
"or shall we all start calling Linux a fork of Minix, because one shares a few design concepts with another?"
Linux was never marketed as "Minix NT." Before the success of Windows 3.x, the project name was "OS/2 NT."
US Senate != state government. Especially after the seventeenth amendment.
"MS: Has spent a boatload of money copying and building there own versions of what everyone else already had. They are finally starting to get it right, and are making money hand over fist doing it"
So, what you're saying is that MS is just like the Linux community, except that they're making money?
"Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment,"
Moving to OS/2 (or at least pretending that they were for a while) was a huge investment. Microsoft's fork of the OS/2 kernel (which we now call "Windows XP*") has proven to be wildly successful (and profitable). So much so that they finally killed off the original Windows line (and DOS along with it).
They've done it before, there's no reason to believe they couldn't do it again.
*To be accurate, XP is is MS OS/2 5.1 running Windows 5.1 with networking done by LAN Manager (you guessed it) 5.1
"Oil, on the other hand, is not generally burned to produce electricity, but is refined into motor vehicle fuel."
Oil is refined to get the "more useful" hydrocarbon chains (like gasoline) out of it. What's left over is labelled "fuel oil" and used to power things like steamships and power plants.
And besides, oil is not the only thing peddled by the oil industry. Where do you think natural gas comes from? About the only fossil fuel not sold by the oil industry is coal.
"I can see the fights over the GNU/Mandrake/Debian (or is it GNU/Debian/Mandrake) name."
As if that would be the only fight. Do you realize how many LUG members will literally burst into flames if Debian hooked up with Mandrake?
"Debian is the one, true dist... er, wait... Avoid Mandrake like the plague! Download Debi... er... um... Windows Me? ARGH! NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANY MORE!"
My God, think of the carnage! It will make the GNOME/KDE flamewars look like... I don't know... vi/emacs...
"They figure the extra thrust efficiency outweighs the humongous development cost to deal with the volatile stuff, and the weight and expense of building refrigerated tanks."
First off, a high development cost is just that: You only have to pay it once. Once the infrastructure is there, it's cheaper to use it.
Secondly, I suspect that the added weight of the cryogenic storage is more than offset by the gain in energy and power output. If it weren't, then the Saturn V would have used kerosene in all the stages of the Saturn V instead of just the first. Even the Soviets ended up using LH2 in the upper stages of the N1.