Isn't the famous conservative economics creed: "a rising tide lifts all boats"?
I prefer Mr Bush's version - "we ought to make the pie higher."
(I'm still not sure why people ridicule that one. Increasing the height of a pie will surely increase the volume of each slice just as effectively as increasing its radius will...)
And to be true to the facts, the US has never been invaded by land, air or sea
Was it really never invaded at all during its various wars with Mexico, Canada, and so forth? I guess it's possible, if you discount raids where the enemy forces pillaged without attempting to capture and hold territory.
And before anybody starts saying that without the USAs help in WW2, the British would all be speaking German
That's bollocks anyway. Germany was doomed with or without America. What would have happened without the USA's help is that the whole of Germany would have joined the Soviet empire, instead of just half of it. (I observe, incidentally, that even after spending the whole Cold War under Soviet domination, the East Germans do not speak Russian.)
Linux, not gona happen, OS X, most probably will happen.
You're kidding, right? Apple isn't going to let anyone else sell OS X machines any time soon, and they don't have the manufacturing capacity to increase their market share significantly themselves. OS X can't take over, because Apple won't let it. And that's probably wise. Niche markets can be as profitable as mass markets, if the customers are loyal enough.
The English language reached its pre-eminent world status largely due to the United States
Make that "partly", not "largely". It's hard to judge how the credit should be divided, so it's best if both sides avoid claiming too much. This little thing called the British Empire did have something to do with it too, you know, by establishing English as a national language in countries like India where the USA has historically had very little influence.
Note that I'm not swinging to the opposite extreme here; it took both Britain and the USA to give English the momentum required to establish it as the global language, by making it the language used in two of the world's largest economies. If the USA had spoken, oh, German, for example, then most likely when the British Empire fell in the mid-20th century another language would have taken over... but it could easily have been Russian, or Mandarin, or Spanish.
If one simply mentions "English", it's appropriate to assume that they're talking about American English today, not British English.
I'm a bit disappointed that you said that, particularly considering that you quite correctly go on to point out that the really important thing is the context. If someone says "English is one of the official languages of South Africa", it is most certainly not appropriate to assume that the speaker is referring to American English!
In practice, if someone says something ambiguous like "Juan has been learning English", it is reasonable for you to assume Juan has been learning American English, but it is also reasonable for me to assume that he has been learning British English. It is, as you say, down to context, which includes the location of the speaker, the location in which the activity referred to is taking place (were Juan's lessons in LA or in London?), etc.
in the US we consider a corporation to be a "corporate personhood". So a corporation is practically indistinguishable from a person under our laws.
Actually, there are many differences:
Corporations cannot be sentenced to death or sent to jail. Humans cannot be ordered to be split up.
Corporations do not have the vote.
Corporations pay different taxes.
Corporations cannot hold passports or driving licenses.
Corporations cannot marry or adopt children.
Corporations do not have to have been incorporated for 21 years before they are permitted to purchase alcohol, nor do they have to have been incorporated for 14-18 years before they are permitted to screw their customers.
it seems that space simulators have pretty much died. Gone are the days of Tie Figher, xwing, Wing commander.
That was the era when every gamer had a joystick. You just can't pilot a spaceship properly with a mouse (however bravely Freelancer tried), nor with a console controller.
(Though Elite did a damn good job with just a keyboard back in the day. Of course, its control scheme was somewhat different from the one that became standard - no yaw, just pitch and roll. Surprisingly effective.)
My question is, will this allow me to read and write to my XP partition (can only read now), or will it allow me to access the XP partition over the network, without being booted up in XP mode?
It gives you full read/write access to NTFS. You simply mount your Windows partition just like any other drive. No network involved. It's stable and safe. There are some minor performance issues with very large files, but if you do stuff like movie editing you probably do that in OS X anyway, right?
If you have Windows installed on the same computer as OS X, then you want this program, period.
(Caveat: I'm a Linux user, so my usage of "simple" may not agree with yours...)
Suppose that the use of some DRM today could prevent the use of a much much larger amount of DRM in the future. Further suppose that there is not any other way to prevent the use of that large amount of future DRM which is not ruled out by other concerns (for instance, destroying the planet in order to prevent DRM rather defeats the purpose). Now, do you oppose the use of the small amount of DRM today? If you do, it would seem that your opposition implies support of the large amount of DRM in the future.
Suppose a woman is kidnapped by two men, and one of them says "I wish to have sex with you. You are welcome to refuse, but if you do, my friend here will use violence to force you to have sex with him." If the woman refuses, and the man's friend duly does as threatened, has she been raped?
By this example we can see that refusing to choose the lesser of two evils in no way implies support for the greater. It may sometimes prove to be be unwise, but it is not logically inconsistent. Not least because there is no certainty about the future outside contrived scenarios. In my scenario, the men might have been bluffing. And in yours, a convenient change in government might mean that the apparent certainty of draconian DRM in the future could fade overnight.
Would you oppose murder if we had the ability to raise the dead? Doubtless an interesting question, but not of any real relevance, because we don't have that ability.
Would I oppose DRM if it didn't restrict any legitimate activities? An equally interesting question, but given that it seems to be as impossible as raising the dead...
Ahh, but the metric person will walk 5000 metres, or 500,000 centimeters in that hour, whereas the imperial person will walk how many inches again?
196850.394, though I'm not sure exactly who's meant to want to know such a thing.:)
Where's my calculator...
Assuming you're using a recent version of Firefox, just type "5000m in in" into the Google search box at the top right of the window, and it'll pop up the answer without you even needing to press return. Calculators? Who needs 'em?
(Note that my tongue is firmly in my cheek, and I am not asking for a lecture on potential workplaces where there might be a need to perform such calculations without actually having access to the internet.)
You can do all the legalese mumbojumbo you want, but you are still depriving someone of their rightful income.
Very true, but unfortunately "depriving someone of their rightful income" does not always equal theft.
For example, if a racist discovers that an employee had a black grandfather, and fires him on the spot, then that is an illegal act that deprives the employee of his rightful income, and the racist can be sued for unlawful dismissal. But that does not mean that unlawful dismissal is theft.
Or if a computer manufacturer announces that it will release a range of PCs with Red Hat Linux installed on them, and Microsoft exerts its monopoly position to force them to abandon that plan, then that is an illegal act that deprives Red Hat of rightful income, and Microsoft may be investigated for unfair competition. But that does not mean that abusing a monopoly is theft.
Or if a thug gets drunk and picks a fight with a plumber, and breaks both the said plumber's arms so that he cannot work for a month, then that is an illegal act that deprives the plumber of rightful income, and the thug may well go to jail. But that does not mean that assault is theft.
Or if a teenager downloads the latest hit single from The Pirate Bay instead of buying the CD, then that is an illegal act that deprives the record company of rightful income, and the teenager may be sued for copyright infringement. But that does not mean that copyright infringement is theft.
That some of us still use the word steal, instead of your newspeak and backpatting wording, is your problem.
How, exactly, is it "newspeak" to call a spade a spade, and to complain when someone else calls a spade a drill?
(I'm not sure what "backpatting wording" is supposed to mean, so I can't comment on that.)
Maybe you should try to create and make money of some content yourself?
Been there, done that, and while I am quite convinced that copyright infringement is wrong, I still don't believe that it is remotely similar to theft.
Nonsense. They still have all the rights over their creation (that's why they can sue you!). Moreover, you still have no rights over their creation. Ergo, you cannot have stolen their rights, QED.
What you have done is infringed their rights. That's why this particular immoral act is called "copyright infringement", see?
And the fact that nothing is taken in the process of infringing the copyright-holder's rights is why this is different from theft, where property is actually taken. Copyright infringement is more akin to trespassing. (Are you going to argue that trespassing is also theft, because you are "stealing" someone's right to control who enters their land?)
Parent: "Copyright infringement and theft are not the same thing." You: "Quite frankly, it's really appalling how all the pirates out there assume that what they do doesn't affect other people."
Would you like to address the actual point, or do you enjoy flogging straw men too much to bother?
You: "I believe that it's blatant disrespect for what I do when people download songs."
I believe it's blatant disrespect for truth and accuracy when people twist language to pretend that two totally different things are the same. Yes, copyright infringement is illegal and immoral; no, it's not stealing. (For example, theft is always a criminal offence, while copyright infringement is usually a civil offence. BIG difference.)
If you find "copyright infringement" too much of a mouthful and want to use a short snappy word with emotional connotations, please just stick to "piracy", which has been being used to mean "copyright infringement" for hundreds of years.
By the way, I would also appreciate it if you did not conflate "download" with "download illegally". If I download a free song, I am not disrespecting musicians. If I download a song I have bought from the ITMS, I am not disrespecting musicians. Yet you have just said that I am, which is utterly nonsensical.
I admit that there was doubt about whether nsakey was actually nefarious. I don't remember that issue ever really being resolved.
Sure, some people think NSAKEY was nefarious. Some people also think that they personally have been anally probed by extraterrestrial beings. It is quite true to say that neither issue has ever really been resolved. However, while the jury's still out on alien anal fetishes, common-sense does rather suggest that NSAKEY was totally innocent, given the complete failure of the conspiracy theorists to identify any remotely suspicious thing about it other than the fact that its name contains the letters "NSA".
(So, incidentally, does the word "iNSAne". Coincidence? I think not!)
Please explain to me in the most civil terms possible why is it okay that businesses even as large as Dell should be afraid of Microsoft's disapproval?
Please explain to me in the most civil terms possible why it is okay for you to beat your wife.
Hint: Dell simply is not afraid of Microsoft's disapproval, which is why they have been selling PCs with Linux on them for some time -- certainly in the UK, at least, I can't speak for America. This is a non-story.
I believe that (under UK copyright law at least) copyright of a photograph is owned by the subject of that photograph.
Why do people persist in posting speculative "I think copyright law says such-and-such" comments when literally five seconds on Google can produce an authoritative answer, which often differs considerably from what they assumed? Unfounded speculation on questions of law serves only to spread confusion and misinformation. It's not some kind of arcane secret - the law is a public thing that the government goes to great lengths to educate people about, and yet people inexplicably continue to rely on urban myths, inaccurate memories of what some guy said in the pub once, and what they think the law ought to say, instead of taking five seconds to look it up and find out what it really says!
In this case, the claim made here - "copyright in a photograph belongs to the subject" - is wholly incorrect. According to the UK Patent Office,
the general rule about first ownership of copyright is that the author is the first owner. The 'author' is the person who created a copyright work so in the case of photographs will usually be the photographer.
As anyone who's ever been involved in organising a wedding will be all too aware...
It's quite hard to find OS-less Dells, I'll grant you, but it was easy enough to find plenty of Dells that come with Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than Windows, which makes it rather unlikely that Microsoft has forced them to buy a Windows license for every PC they sell.
(The Linux machines are slightly more expensive than an equivalent with Windows preinstalled, but that's probably more because they get paid to dump a whole pile of shovelware on Windows PCs than because Microsoft is forcing them to make Linux an undesirable option. Also, Red Hat is hardly known for being a cheap option.)
Every person I've met with writing talent throws lots of stuff away. They do it without a second thought, and the next attempt is almost always better. Why should writing software be any different?
It isn't. If, while developing a software application, part of the application is found to be defective or to have great scope for improvement, many developers will discard it without a second thought and write a new module in its place, building on their experience the first time round.
However, this isn't about development: this is about updating systems that were written and put into operation many years ago. While it is absolutely true that all talented authors rewrite bad chapters etc, very few authors are likely to go back to successful novels they wrote 20 years ago and publish new versions with fundamental plot changes! So your analogy falls somewhat short.
The only really analogous thing in the publishing world would be those books that are successful when published but must thereafter be regularly updated, such as scientific textbooks. It would be very interesting to know how frequently those are actually updated by rewriting them, and how frequently they're actually treated in the same way as programs, and updated by merely making incremental changes within the existing structure.
Gaming 10 years ago (specifically for Windows) had online communities. Remember DOOM? Duke Nukem? The Star Wars games?
I'll give you Star Wars, but which 10-year-old DOOM or Duke Nukem game are you thinking of that was for Windows? The ones I remember were specifically for DOS, and a nightmare to get networked games running it was too -- though there was eventually a slow and buggy Windows 95 port of DOOM that hardly anyone bothered with.
That is part of its culture and I do not think unique to the present-day communist regime.
If that is really the case, which I'm in no position to judge, then its culture needs changing. The point of universal human rights is that they're universal, not a pick-and-mix bag that changes depending on which part of the world you were unlucky enough to be born into. "It's part of my culture" does not justify any abuse of human rights, be it slavery, forced marriage, execution, genital mutilation, religious persecution, or any of the other many abhorrent practices that are regrettably still all too common in our supposedly enlightened modern age.
50,000 people could get Widget 3 for free at no cost and no harm to anyone. Instead, because of ridiculous laws, they are forced to purchase it at $25 a pop. That's $1.25 million that's going into the pocket of someone who's not providing any useful service.
Where, pray tell, do you suppose Widget 3 is going to come from, if the people who write these things are not providing any useful service? Have you perhaps discovered a magic portal to the Wonderful Land of Foo, where software grows on trees and programmers gain all their sustenance from light and air?
That money is, in essence, stolen.
Congratulations. You win the 2006 Troll of the Year award for the craziest leap of what for want of a better word we will describe as logic.
Slashdot Mirror
(I'm still not sure why people ridicule that one. Increasing the height of a pie will surely increase the volume of each slice just as effectively as increasing its radius will...)
Unless you meant "quickest" as in "most alive"?
Note that I'm not swinging to the opposite extreme here; it took both Britain and the USA to give English the momentum required to establish it as the global language, by making it the language used in two of the world's largest economies. If the USA had spoken, oh, German, for example, then most likely when the British Empire fell in the mid-20th century another language would have taken over... but it could easily have been Russian, or Mandarin, or Spanish. I'm a bit disappointed that you said that, particularly considering that you quite correctly go on to point out that the really important thing is the context. If someone says "English is one of the official languages of South Africa", it is most certainly not appropriate to assume that the speaker is referring to American English!
In practice, if someone says something ambiguous like "Juan has been learning English", it is reasonable for you to assume Juan has been learning American English, but it is also reasonable for me to assume that he has been learning British English. It is, as you say, down to context, which includes the location of the speaker, the location in which the activity referred to is taking place (were Juan's lessons in LA or in London?), etc.
(Though Elite did a damn good job with just a keyboard back in the day. Of course, its control scheme was somewhat different from the one that became standard - no yaw, just pitch and roll. Surprisingly effective.)
If you have Windows installed on the same computer as OS X, then you want this program, period.
(Caveat: I'm a Linux user, so my usage of "simple" may not agree with yours...)
By this example we can see that refusing to choose the lesser of two evils in no way implies support for the greater. It may sometimes prove to be be unwise, but it is not logically inconsistent. Not least because there is no certainty about the future outside contrived scenarios. In my scenario, the men might have been bluffing. And in yours, a convenient change in government might mean that the apparent certainty of draconian DRM in the future could fade overnight.
Would you oppose murder if we had the ability to raise the dead? Doubtless an interesting question, but not of any real relevance, because we don't have that ability.
Would I oppose DRM if it didn't restrict any legitimate activities? An equally interesting question, but given that it seems to be as impossible as raising the dead...
196850.394, though I'm not sure exactly who's meant to want to know such a thing.
Assuming you're using a recent version of Firefox, just type "5000m in in" into the Google search box at the top right of the window, and it'll pop up the answer without you even needing to press return. Calculators? Who needs 'em?
(Note that my tongue is firmly in my cheek, and I am not asking for a lecture on potential workplaces where there might be a need to perform such calculations without actually having access to the internet.)
Very true, but unfortunately "depriving someone of their rightful income" does not always equal theft.
For example, if a racist discovers that an employee had a black grandfather, and fires him on the spot, then that is an illegal act that deprives the employee of his rightful income, and the racist can be sued for unlawful dismissal. But that does not mean that unlawful dismissal is theft.
Or if a computer manufacturer announces that it will release a range of PCs with Red Hat Linux installed on them, and Microsoft exerts its monopoly position to force them to abandon that plan, then that is an illegal act that deprives Red Hat of rightful income, and Microsoft may be investigated for unfair competition. But that does not mean that abusing a monopoly is theft.
Or if a thug gets drunk and picks a fight with a plumber, and breaks both the said plumber's arms so that he cannot work for a month, then that is an illegal act that deprives the plumber of rightful income, and the thug may well go to jail. But that does not mean that assault is theft.
Or if a teenager downloads the latest hit single from The Pirate Bay instead of buying the CD, then that is an illegal act that deprives the record company of rightful income, and the teenager may be sued for copyright infringement. But that does not mean that copyright infringement is theft.
How, exactly, is it "newspeak" to call a spade a spade, and to complain when someone else calls a spade a drill?
(I'm not sure what "backpatting wording" is supposed to mean, so I can't comment on that.)
Been there, done that, and while I am quite convinced that copyright infringement is wrong, I still don't believe that it is remotely similar to theft.
What you have done is infringed their rights. That's why this particular immoral act is called "copyright infringement", see?
And the fact that nothing is taken in the process of infringing the copyright-holder's rights is why this is different from theft, where property is actually taken. Copyright infringement is more akin to trespassing. (Are you going to argue that trespassing is also theft, because you are "stealing" someone's right to control who enters their land?)
Parent: "Copyright infringement and theft are not the same thing."
You: "Quite frankly, it's really appalling how all the pirates out there assume that what they do doesn't affect other people."
Would you like to address the actual point, or do you enjoy flogging straw men too much to bother?
You: "I believe that it's blatant disrespect for what I do when people download songs."
I believe it's blatant disrespect for truth and accuracy when people twist language to pretend that two totally different things are the same. Yes, copyright infringement is illegal and immoral; no, it's not stealing. (For example, theft is always a criminal offence, while copyright infringement is usually a civil offence. BIG difference.)
If you find "copyright infringement" too much of a mouthful and want to use a short snappy word with emotional connotations, please just stick to "piracy", which has been being used to mean "copyright infringement" for hundreds of years.
By the way, I would also appreciate it if you did not conflate "download" with "download illegally". If I download a free song, I am not disrespecting musicians. If I download a song I have bought from the ITMS, I am not disrespecting musicians. Yet you have just said that I am, which is utterly nonsensical.
(So, incidentally, does the word "iNSAne". Coincidence? I think not!)
Hint: Dell simply is not afraid of Microsoft's disapproval, which is why they have been selling PCs with Linux on them for some time -- certainly in the UK, at least, I can't speak for America. This is a non-story.
In this case, the claim made here - "copyright in a photograph belongs to the subject" - is wholly incorrect. According to the UK Patent Office,As anyone who's ever been involved in organising a wedding will be all too aware...
(The Linux machines are slightly more expensive than an equivalent with Windows preinstalled, but that's probably more because they get paid to dump a whole pile of shovelware on Windows PCs than because Microsoft is forcing them to make Linux an undesirable option. Also, Red Hat is hardly known for being a cheap option.)
However, this isn't about development: this is about updating systems that were written and put into operation many years ago. While it is absolutely true that all talented authors rewrite bad chapters etc, very few authors are likely to go back to successful novels they wrote 20 years ago and publish new versions with fundamental plot changes! So your analogy falls somewhat short.
The only really analogous thing in the publishing world would be those books that are successful when published but must thereafter be regularly updated, such as scientific textbooks. It would be very interesting to know how frequently those are actually updated by rewriting them, and how frequently they're actually treated in the same way as programs, and updated by merely making incremental changes within the existing structure.
Gaming 10 years ago (specifically for Windows) had online communities. Remember DOOM? Duke Nukem? The Star Wars games?
I'll give you Star Wars, but which 10-year-old DOOM or Duke Nukem game are you thinking of that was for Windows? The ones I remember were specifically for DOS, and a nightmare to get networked games running it was too -- though there was eventually a slow and buggy Windows 95 port of DOOM that hardly anyone bothered with.
If that is really the case, which I'm in no position to judge, then its culture needs changing. The point of universal human rights is that they're universal, not a pick-and-mix bag that changes depending on which part of the world you were unlucky enough to be born into. "It's part of my culture" does not justify any abuse of human rights, be it slavery, forced marriage, execution, genital mutilation, religious persecution, or any of the other many abhorrent practices that are regrettably still all too common in our supposedly enlightened modern age.
Congratulations. You win the 2006 Troll of the Year award for the craziest leap of what for want of a better word we will describe as logic.