No, I doubt this will help Verizon one bit. In fact, it may be more useful against them that it is for them. In this decision, the judge cites the fact that the defendents (Streamcast & Grokster) do not have much control over the networks themselves, nor do the have the right or ability to simply remove someone from the network. In the case of Verizon, they do have the right and ability to disconnect someone. Its going to be a rather diffenet fight for Verizon since Verizon:
A) Knew of the infringent, the RIAA letter
B) Could have taken unilateral action to disconnect the infringing person. Disconnect the account.
C) Had the right to disconnect the infringing user. They can disconnect a user at will, its in the TOS.
D) Is likey to gain finanacially by allowing this type of action to continue, by the draw it will create. Free stuff and verizon will protect me, hell ya I'm there.
In the case of StreamCast/Grokster, the judge found that the defendents were not in a position, in which, B and C were applicable, therefore they could not be held liable for contributory or vicarious infringment.
I have to give the judge credit in this case, I doubt he was much of a computer specialist, but he seems to have grasped the underlying concepts rather firmly. He is very clear about the distiction between Napster's centralized network, with one lynchpin (Napster's Servers) and the Gnutella and FastTrack networks decentralized structure. If it wasn't for this, I think the headline would have been very different.
On a last note, this doesn't get Streamcast/Grokster completely off the hook yet. The judge made comment in the conclusion that, there might still be something in this that could be attacked later, but the current law does not provide a clear enough provision for it. This is, that the defendants may have specifically designed their systems to skirt the contributory infringment laws, while still planning to use the draw of copyright infringment to make money. But since there is nothing in the law that provides against it, he is not in a position to expand the breadth of copyright law to include it, that, he says, is a matter for congress to deal with.
So we might see this get brought up again, after the RIAA buys a law that specifically states that creating a de-centralized network, in order to use copyright infringment as a draw, but not be inside the bounds of contributory copyright infringment, is still within the bounds of contributory copyright infringment.
So, for now we will call this a victory for the P2P methodology, but the war isn't over.
And, of course, IANAL but I did at least RTFJ.
I apologize, I misunderstood you on the opt-in/out part. And yes, I do agree that there needs to be some sort of regulation on email marketing, as it isn't going to go away. The can's open, the worms are gone. I'm am even willing to go so far as to try and let the industry regulate itself, and am happy to see it starting to do so, but until a good structure is in place, I am going to keep making noise about this, if its allowed to just quitely slip away it will never get done.
They're just trying to get the release date of the movie to coincide with the release date of Duke Nukem: Forever, a.k.a. a few days after the universe implodes.
Sadly, of all the games you listed in the "Direct Conversions" list only one was any good. And that was Clue, which was really good. As for the rest of it, most of them I had managed to block out of my reality, now I have to go back to therapy, thank you so much.
On a seriuos note, I think part of the problem with the video-game to movie conversion, is that the movie studios don't have a clue about their target audience for these sorts of things. Its almost as if they assume that the name and genere are all the people who watch it want, and to hell with the rest of it. Moreover, some of the complex subtilties that get portraied in a game get cut from the big screen as too boring or too long. Same tends to happen in book to movie conversions, but to a lesser degree.
I think the quality of these things might start getting better, when they start actually targeting the late-teenage/young-adult geek, instead of either children and/or the general populous.
God forbid that you, as an individual, forget to uncheck a box when you bought your last DVD or CD or book or whatever online. God forbid that you own up to your own impatience and your click click click lifestyle that results in you glazing over or not even caring about the terms and conditions of your latest purchase.
There is, in this, a large part of the problem why UCE is viewed in such a dim light. I have highlighted the applicable section. These things should always be opt-in, always and without exception. It really is just a sneaky method of getting people to agree. If it is known that most people will fall into the next-next-next mode when going through a series of forms, and you don't want to send emails people don't want, then your design should plan for this. Have the box unchecked by default, and allow those users who want the email, to check it. You are simply lying to yourself and us if you belive that an opt-out methadology can ever co-exist with the desire to only send email to those that really want it.
Well you know what? These people that do email for a living ARE trying to do something about it and what do we hear on/. ??? The classic "(insert name here) is trying to take our rights away and make money off of us and they suck. Open source forever and Linus rules my world and does email suck so much when blogging is the communication method of the future".
I agree with you here, it would appear that the companies involved in this are making a valid attempt to get the real spam under control. Though, I think this could be better solved by creating a huge opt-in list (which is not sold or publicly printed) such that, if a company wished to send a bulk email campaign, they send it through this list, and it then gets forwarded on to the intended and willing recipients. Probably also have some preference settings, which a recipent selects during sign-up, that allow for filtering based on interests, thus making the ads more targeted. And lastly, allow for immediate remove, by a user, of their email address from a list. Oh, and the hard part, give some sort of value for allowing one's self to be marketed to.
Of course, there would still be those abusers, you will never be rid of them. We will still get our "Enlarge Your Penis and Keep It Up Forever with Viagra" ads, but then we could start working on this problem, and not bother people who run legitamte mail-lists.
E-mail offers one feature that a phone doesn't: a paper trail. This may just be me, but way too often I have had to deal with some weasle who won't give me information in writing. Instead, they want to just tell me over the phone really quick, and then they bitch that what I did was wrong. As such, I am now a real bastard when it comes to getting a written scope of work, the verbal, over the phone spec has two problems:
1 - I don't have a photographic memory, so yes, I do occasionally get things wrong.
2 - The person telling me either gets it wrong, or changes their mind after telling me, and uses the lack of documentation to blame me.
Using email just makes sense in a business environment. It has a much better memory than I do, and it keeps the weasles honest, or at least catches them when they aren't.
Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain?
on
The Rights of GM Humans
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If a certain gene-combination improves inteligence (of whatever metric used at the time...) then I find it highly unlikely that most (responsible, caring) parents will not wish for their child to have that combination; the result, genetically wize, will be a monoculture in terms of that gene combination.
I don't think this is a necessary conclusion at all. What parents see as desirable traits in a child will vary greatly. If I may use a couple of sterotypes for a moment to illustrate my point, while they are over-gerenerlizations, I think there is enough truth behind them to make this point.
Consider a child from Texas, what would the parents view as most desierable? What would they want little Billy to grow up to be? Probably a football quarterback, so they are going to get him traits that are benificial to that, he'll be tall, a bit broader in the sholders, athletic and have good eyesight. They probably would not care as much about logic and math skills, so may not worry about that.
Contrast this with parents from, say San Francisco. They are not going to care about a football carrer for their kid. They will probably be more interested in a kid who is capable in fine arts. So will get genes that promote artistic ability, hand eye coordination. They might not care a whole lot about math and logic skills, though possibly more than the football player's parents.
My point is, people have different ideas of what an ideal person is. This will be reflected in the choices made about their children's genetic code. Will there be some loss in diversity? Sure, I wouldn't argue that, but I don't think we would end up with a monoculture, people just don't have that much of a concensus on what a "perfect" human being is. Add to that the fact that you will never eliminate natural births (sex is just too much fun), and we should still have a good bit of diversity running around.
Again, as I said in other posts, I am not all pro or con GM, but I am pro ethics. It is a system which enables the decision-makers (Doctors, Scientists, Engineers...) to interact with society in a positive manner.
The problem with ethics, is that they are not very concrete. Consider for a moment what you base your ethics upon. For most people it comes down to something akin to religion, in the broadest sense. Its a set of belifs, which have no factual or logical basis, but we hold on to them, because without them, society would degenerate into a quagmire of hedonism. Thus arguing that something is unethical is really just an emotional plea, but has no logical basis. To base an argument on them, is silly, as what one person sees as ethical might not be so for another person. You can argue ethics till you are blue in the face, but it will get you nowhere, there is nothing which can prove or disprove any argument. The closest thing we can have to ethics is a stong concensus between people as to what is "right" or "wrong". In the case of GM people, there is not enough of a consensus as to what is "right" and "wrong" for it be very clear cut. For you to claim to be pro-ethics is really just a fallacious ploy to try and argue from the moral high-ground. Its an old trick, though I grant, one that still fools a lot of people.
Of course, one of the best things to have going for a species, when the Darwinian shit hits the fan, is a diverse gene pool to draw from. And, by keeping more people alive, through minor disasters, we are promoting a very diverse gene pool. So, while I agree that we have affected natural selection to some extent, really, I think, that all we have done is put ourselves in a good position, genetically, for the next disater to hit.
Easy. You ask users for their date of birth, and then restrict features appropriately.
Hahahahahahaa.....
My god, man, are you trying to kill me, I laughed so hard at that I nearly had a heart attack.
They tried this back in the day of the BBS, if you wanted to access an adult area, it asked you for your birthday. Guess how many tries it took me to figure that out and get around it. A 13 year old kid may be a bag of raging hormones, but he isn't stupid. As far as most BBS's were concerned I was born in the mid 60's, and had full access to their porn pics (sure, they were usually grainy, and not too many good ones in one place, but that was enough for a horny teenager.)
It wouldn't really matter anyway, some other people would simply step up to fill in the void.
As for what, "spirited off internet" means, I think it involves a.45 caliber handgun and about 180 loud bangs. Most of the anti-spam groups seem to view spam as equivilent to rape.
I do agree, there are some instances where a reduction of a previous crime is probably not a bad idea, the example you provided, for instance. But, I would say that any criminal who has a history of violent crime needs to have a bullet put in them, and be done with it.
I really believe that some people can not be rehabilitated, and should not be among the general population, am I alone on that?
Not at all, that is why we here in California passed that whole "Three Strikes" law. Its supposed to work kinda like baseball, you commit three felonies, and we lock you up and throw away the key. Nice idea, sadly our judges have neutered it. They will often reduce a previous conviction of a person, facing this sort of thing, to a misdemeanor, thus allowing them to avoid the life imprisonment. Further, I wonder why are are spending the $40K/year on these sorts of people, they have proven themselvs to be a parasite on society, treat them as such, three strikes and you face a firing squad.
You missed my favorite option. Do the homework while the teacher is lecturing.
Because of some stupid decision by a clueless administrator, I had the joy of taking Algebra 1 twice in Junior High. They didn't offer anything higher, even though there were enough of us to fill a class. So the second time around, the teacher actually gave us higher level work and problems (he was a damn good teacher). Not to mention that he got the advanced students together to go to a Math competition, we placed 5th, not bad for a first time showing by our school. So, come Algebra 2 the same group of us were far enough ahead that we just did the homework during lecture, then pulled out cards or dice or whatnot and relaxed at the back of the class in the few minutes we were supposed to use to start on our homework. The teacher gave up on questioning us after about the fifth time we handed in the homework on the same day.
You are right though, the education system has very little to do with learning these days, and more about repetative busy work and babysitting. Sadly, if you make this realization too soon, it really makes the rest of high school suck.
umm, despite the propaganda to the contrary, I don't recall hearing that France fell apart anytime recently, and from what I gather, they are pretty much a socialistic society. Perhaps, if we have any French people left on this board, they can confirm/deny this, but I think that they are pretty much a functional socialist society.
I don't think they were doing that bad of job before 9/11/01. All in all, how many terrorist acts have occured on US soil in the past decade? 2 pop to mind, Oklahoma City, and the destruction of the WTC. Other than that, I don't remeber much in the way of terrorist acts happening in the US. Before that we had the first WTC bombing, but really, not much else. The current govenment has sold the people a bunch of lies, we are not in that much danger from terrorists. And certainly not in enough danger to authoize secret arrests, and holding people indifinatly with publicly charging them with a crime. Fact is, statistically, you're more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist. Remove the pillow from your head, go out and enjoy your life.
The "War on Terror" is nothing more than a propaganda war meant to drive patriotism and allow the govenment to do somethings that we might otherwise not allow. Personally I'm not buying, this whole thing is a crock. Yes, terrorism happens, and its going to continue to happen, no matter how many civil rights are striped from us.
An in order to head off the people decrying me as a liberal Bush hater, I voted for the guy, he scared me less than Gore. But, I'm damn well not making that mistake twice.
Small nitpick. Democracy never got started in America, we're a Republic. Have been, probably will be for a while. This is why we elect leaders to make decisions for us, problem is, it requires an educated population and a transparancy of government, both of which are lacking of late.
This was my experiance with RH 7.0, yes I tried the RPM's, some worked great, others had this problem. Might have changed since. Not to mention that it was my first foray into the Linux world, so I really didn't know what I was doing. Still, it didn't exactly help my perception of Linux as anything other than a toy for programmers.
How many more reasons do companies need to dump Microsoft and go with unix/linux
1 and only 1. The problem is, that 1 reason has to be that Linux/Unix/etc. have a similar level business app that just runs on them. None of this silly, get the source, modify if for a company's purpose, and then complie it. Ah, shit, ok, go find dependancies, complie. Damn, missed one, get that one, compile. Crap, that one had 4 more, ok get those, complie. Hey, we have an app that looks like hell and really doesn't do what we need.
The *nix community needs to get some serious developer support before companies will really start to look at it seriously. Also the whole RTFM attitude is doing tons of harm to the movement as well. When the only support you can get for an OS is found on the web, and half the responses are along the lines of "RTFM 1d10t, y0ur a 1user, and 1m 37337" this does not instill confidence in that OS.
Sadly, in the end, the things that make Linux attractive are going to be the same things that hold it back from taking more of the business desktop market.
- It's free - Which usually means there isn't a company behind it that will support it.
- It's open source - So you can modify it to do what you want it to do. This, of course, takes time and money, and there isn't a company you can go to and pay them to do it.
Businesses like fire and forget solutions, they don't care about the politics of it. And for all its flaws, Windows is quick and easy to get going.
For right or wrong manufactuers have the right to set limits on the goods they sell. They must balance there own interets verses possible negative effects on sales. You made an agreement with the manufacturer when you purchased it to play by there rules. If you don't want to, then don't buy it.
Please show me the document that I signed to this affect. In no way have I made any sort of agreement, verbal, written, or otherwise when I purchased a physical product. If I buy a DVD player, I have not, in any way, given my consent to any sort of agreement that I won't disable the Region Encoding. To assume otherwise is silly. Along the same lines, the manufacturer of the product cannot be held responsible for my actions, unless it is shown that he was negligent.
If Microsoft, Sony, whoever wants to make these kinds of restrictions, that's there right. I will decide if it works for me, and if it dosn't, I won't buy.
Microsoft, maybe, if I am buying a license, then I am agreeing to certain terms. If I buy an XBox, then I am buying a physical product, not a license. Though there could be a license attached to the game/BIOS, etc. Though these must be clearly defined.
Sony, not so likely, they tend to sell physical products as well, with no agreement what-so-ever with me about how I use the product. Again, BIOS etc. are covered by copyright law, but this is a wholy different can of worms.
Now, as for the current case at hand, this guy is probably violating copyright laws, selling copies of the XBox BIOS, in whole or part is such a violation. But that should be more than enough, by itself, we don't need this DMCA crap. I would really hope that the EFF, EPIC, or someother large group picks this up and uses it as a platform to fight the DMCA on, though I doubt it.
I've had no luck getting anyone to call me "The Great and Terrible Root".
Yes, but that is because you are square.
Seriously though, I go in for the title of "Miracle Worker", cause with the stuff some people do to computers, its a miracle to even get their documents out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, its just a matter of using a mousetrap, a tack, and a bit of imagination. It'd harder, but still do-able.
No, I doubt this will help Verizon one bit. In fact, it may be more useful against them that it is for them. In this decision, the judge cites the fact that the defendents (Streamcast & Grokster) do not have much control over the networks themselves, nor do the have the right or ability to simply remove someone from the network. In the case of Verizon, they do have the right and ability to disconnect someone. Its going to be a rather diffenet fight for Verizon since Verizon:
A) Knew of the infringent, the RIAA letter
B) Could have taken unilateral action to disconnect the infringing person. Disconnect the account.
C) Had the right to disconnect the infringing user. They can disconnect a user at will, its in the TOS.
D) Is likey to gain finanacially by allowing this type of action to continue, by the draw it will create. Free stuff and verizon will protect me, hell ya I'm there.
In the case of StreamCast/Grokster, the judge found that the defendents were not in a position, in which, B and C were applicable, therefore they could not be held liable for contributory or vicarious infringment.
I have to give the judge credit in this case, I doubt he was much of a computer specialist, but he seems to have grasped the underlying concepts rather firmly. He is very clear about the distiction between Napster's centralized network, with one lynchpin (Napster's Servers) and the Gnutella and FastTrack networks decentralized structure. If it wasn't for this, I think the headline would have been very different.
On a last note, this doesn't get Streamcast/Grokster completely off the hook yet. The judge made comment in the conclusion that, there might still be something in this that could be attacked later, but the current law does not provide a clear enough provision for it. This is, that the defendants may have specifically designed their systems to skirt the contributory infringment laws, while still planning to use the draw of copyright infringment to make money. But since there is nothing in the law that provides against it, he is not in a position to expand the breadth of copyright law to include it, that, he says, is a matter for congress to deal with.
So we might see this get brought up again, after the RIAA buys a law that specifically states that creating a de-centralized network, in order to use copyright infringment as a draw, but not be inside the bounds of contributory copyright infringment, is still within the bounds of contributory copyright infringment.
So, for now we will call this a victory for the P2P methodology, but the war isn't over.
And, of course, IANAL but I did at least RTFJ.
I apologize, I misunderstood you on the opt-in/out part. And yes, I do agree that there needs to be some sort of regulation on email marketing, as it isn't going to go away. The can's open, the worms are gone. I'm am even willing to go so far as to try and let the industry regulate itself, and am happy to see it starting to do so, but until a good structure is in place, I am going to keep making noise about this, if its allowed to just quitely slip away it will never get done.
They're just trying to get the release date of the movie to coincide with the release date of Duke Nukem: Forever, a.k.a. a few days after the universe implodes.
Sadly, of all the games you listed in the "Direct Conversions" list only one was any good. And that was Clue, which was really good. As for the rest of it, most of them I had managed to block out of my reality, now I have to go back to therapy, thank you so much.
On a seriuos note, I think part of the problem with the video-game to movie conversion, is that the movie studios don't have a clue about their target audience for these sorts of things. Its almost as if they assume that the name and genere are all the people who watch it want, and to hell with the rest of it. Moreover, some of the complex subtilties that get portraied in a game get cut from the big screen as too boring or too long. Same tends to happen in book to movie conversions, but to a lesser degree.
I think the quality of these things might start getting better, when they start actually targeting the late-teenage/young-adult geek, instead of either children and/or the general populous.
God forbid that you, as an individual, forget to uncheck a box when you bought your last DVD or CD or book or whatever online. God forbid that you own up to your own impatience and your click click click lifestyle that results in you glazing over or not even caring about the terms and conditions of your latest purchase.
/. ??? The classic "(insert name here) is trying to take our rights away and make money off of us and they suck. Open source forever and Linus rules my world and does email suck so much when blogging is the communication method of the future".
There is, in this, a large part of the problem why UCE is viewed in such a dim light. I have highlighted the applicable section. These things should always be opt-in, always and without exception. It really is just a sneaky method of getting people to agree. If it is known that most people will fall into the next-next-next mode when going through a series of forms, and you don't want to send emails people don't want, then your design should plan for this. Have the box unchecked by default, and allow those users who want the email, to check it. You are simply lying to yourself and us if you belive that an opt-out methadology can ever co-exist with the desire to only send email to those that really want it.
Well you know what? These people that do email for a living ARE trying to do something about it and what do we hear on
I agree with you here, it would appear that the companies involved in this are making a valid attempt to get the real spam under control. Though, I think this could be better solved by creating a huge opt-in list (which is not sold or publicly printed) such that, if a company wished to send a bulk email campaign, they send it through this list, and it then gets forwarded on to the intended and willing recipients. Probably also have some preference settings, which a recipent selects during sign-up, that allow for filtering based on interests, thus making the ads more targeted. And lastly, allow for immediate remove, by a user, of their email address from a list. Oh, and the hard part, give some sort of value for allowing one's self to be marketed to.
Of course, there would still be those abusers, you will never be rid of them. We will still get our "Enlarge Your Penis and Keep It Up Forever with Viagra" ads, but then we could start working on this problem, and not bother people who run legitamte mail-lists.
E-mail offers one feature that a phone doesn't: a paper trail. This may just be me, but way too often I have had to deal with some weasle who won't give me information in writing. Instead, they want to just tell me over the phone really quick, and then they bitch that what I did was wrong. As such, I am now a real bastard when it comes to getting a written scope of work, the verbal, over the phone spec has two problems:
1 - I don't have a photographic memory, so yes, I do occasionally get things wrong.
2 - The person telling me either gets it wrong, or changes their mind after telling me, and uses the lack of documentation to blame me.
Using email just makes sense in a business environment. It has a much better memory than I do, and it keeps the weasles honest, or at least catches them when they aren't.
If a certain gene-combination improves inteligence (of whatever metric used at the time...) then I find it highly unlikely that most (responsible, caring) parents will not wish for their child to have that combination; the result, genetically wize, will be a monoculture in terms of that gene combination.
...) to interact with society in a positive manner.
I don't think this is a necessary conclusion at all. What parents see as desirable traits in a child will vary greatly. If I may use a couple of sterotypes for a moment to illustrate my point, while they are over-gerenerlizations, I think there is enough truth behind them to make this point.
Consider a child from Texas, what would the parents view as most desierable? What would they want little Billy to grow up to be? Probably a football quarterback, so they are going to get him traits that are benificial to that, he'll be tall, a bit broader in the sholders, athletic and have good eyesight. They probably would not care as much about logic and math skills, so may not worry about that.
Contrast this with parents from, say San Francisco. They are not going to care about a football carrer for their kid. They will probably be more interested in a kid who is capable in fine arts. So will get genes that promote artistic ability, hand eye coordination. They might not care a whole lot about math and logic skills, though possibly more than the football player's parents.
My point is, people have different ideas of what an ideal person is. This will be reflected in the choices made about their children's genetic code. Will there be some loss in diversity? Sure, I wouldn't argue that, but I don't think we would end up with a monoculture, people just don't have that much of a concensus on what a "perfect" human being is. Add to that the fact that you will never eliminate natural births (sex is just too much fun), and we should still have a good bit of diversity running around.
Again, as I said in other posts, I am not all pro or con GM, but I am pro ethics. It is a system which enables the decision-makers (Doctors, Scientists, Engineers
The problem with ethics, is that they are not very concrete. Consider for a moment what you base your ethics upon. For most people it comes down to something akin to religion, in the broadest sense. Its a set of belifs, which have no factual or logical basis, but we hold on to them, because without them, society would degenerate into a quagmire of hedonism. Thus arguing that something is unethical is really just an emotional plea, but has no logical basis. To base an argument on them, is silly, as what one person sees as ethical might not be so for another person. You can argue ethics till you are blue in the face, but it will get you nowhere, there is nothing which can prove or disprove any argument. The closest thing we can have to ethics is a stong concensus between people as to what is "right" or "wrong". In the case of GM people, there is not enough of a consensus as to what is "right" and "wrong" for it be very clear cut. For you to claim to be pro-ethics is really just a fallacious ploy to try and argue from the moral high-ground. Its an old trick, though I grant, one that still fools a lot of people.
Of course, one of the best things to have going for a species, when the Darwinian shit hits the fan, is a diverse gene pool to draw from. And, by keeping more people alive, through minor disasters, we are promoting a very diverse gene pool. So, while I agree that we have affected natural selection to some extent, really, I think, that all we have done is put ourselves in a good position, genetically, for the next disater to hit.
Easy. You ask users for their date of birth, and then restrict features appropriately.
Hahahahahahaa.....
My god, man, are you trying to kill me, I laughed so hard at that I nearly had a heart attack.
They tried this back in the day of the BBS, if you wanted to access an adult area, it asked you for your birthday. Guess how many tries it took me to figure that out and get around it. A 13 year old kid may be a bag of raging hormones, but he isn't stupid. As far as most BBS's were concerned I was born in the mid 60's, and had full access to their porn pics (sure, they were usually grainy, and not too many good ones in one place, but that was enough for a horny teenager.)
It wouldn't really matter anyway, some other people would simply step up to fill in the void. .45 caliber handgun and about 180 loud bangs. Most of the anti-spam groups seem to view spam as equivilent to rape.
As for what, "spirited off internet" means, I think it involves a
I do agree, there are some instances where a reduction of a previous crime is probably not a bad idea, the example you provided, for instance. But, I would say that any criminal who has a history of violent crime needs to have a bullet put in them, and be done with it.
Step 1. Replace all of the glass windows with 6 inch thick steel plates, after all glass can be broken...
I really believe that some people can not be rehabilitated, and should not be among the general population, am I alone on that?
Not at all, that is why we here in California passed that whole "Three Strikes" law. Its supposed to work kinda like baseball, you commit three felonies, and we lock you up and throw away the key. Nice idea, sadly our judges have neutered it. They will often reduce a previous conviction of a person, facing this sort of thing, to a misdemeanor, thus allowing them to avoid the life imprisonment. Further, I wonder why are are spending the $40K/year on these sorts of people, they have proven themselvs to be a parasite on society, treat them as such, three strikes and you face a firing squad.
You missed my favorite option. Do the homework while the teacher is lecturing.
Because of some stupid decision by a clueless administrator, I had the joy of taking Algebra 1 twice in Junior High. They didn't offer anything higher, even though there were enough of us to fill a class. So the second time around, the teacher actually gave us higher level work and problems (he was a damn good teacher). Not to mention that he got the advanced students together to go to a Math competition, we placed 5th, not bad for a first time showing by our school. So, come Algebra 2 the same group of us were far enough ahead that we just did the homework during lecture, then pulled out cards or dice or whatnot and relaxed at the back of the class in the few minutes we were supposed to use to start on our homework. The teacher gave up on questioning us after about the fifth time we handed in the homework on the same day.
You are right though, the education system has very little to do with learning these days, and more about repetative busy work and babysitting. Sadly, if you make this realization too soon, it really makes the rest of high school suck.
umm, despite the propaganda to the contrary, I don't recall hearing that France fell apart anytime recently, and from what I gather, they are pretty much a socialistic society. Perhaps, if we have any French people left on this board, they can confirm/deny this, but I think that they are pretty much a functional socialist society.
I don't think they were doing that bad of job before 9/11/01. All in all, how many terrorist acts have occured on US soil in the past decade? 2 pop to mind, Oklahoma City, and the destruction of the WTC. Other than that, I don't remeber much in the way of terrorist acts happening in the US. Before that we had the first WTC bombing, but really, not much else. The current govenment has sold the people a bunch of lies, we are not in that much danger from terrorists. And certainly not in enough danger to authoize secret arrests, and holding people indifinatly with publicly charging them with a crime. Fact is, statistically, you're more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist. Remove the pillow from your head, go out and enjoy your life.
The "War on Terror" is nothing more than a propaganda war meant to drive patriotism and allow the govenment to do somethings that we might otherwise not allow. Personally I'm not buying, this whole thing is a crock. Yes, terrorism happens, and its going to continue to happen, no matter how many civil rights are striped from us.
An in order to head off the people decrying me as a liberal Bush hater, I voted for the guy, he scared me less than Gore. But, I'm damn well not making that mistake twice.
Small nitpick. Democracy never got started in America, we're a Republic. Have been, probably will be for a while. This is why we elect leaders to make decisions for us, problem is, it requires an educated population and a transparancy of government, both of which are lacking of late.
So what does it take for a current US citizen to emigrate and become a Canadian citizen in those territories?
This was my experiance with RH 7.0, yes I tried the RPM's, some worked great, others had this problem. Might have changed since. Not to mention that it was my first foray into the Linux world, so I really didn't know what I was doing. Still, it didn't exactly help my perception of Linux as anything other than a toy for programmers.
How many more reasons do companies need to dump Microsoft and go with unix/linux
1 and only 1. The problem is, that 1 reason has to be that Linux/Unix/etc. have a similar level business app that just runs on them. None of this silly, get the source, modify if for a company's purpose, and then complie it. Ah, shit, ok, go find dependancies, complie. Damn, missed one, get that one, compile. Crap, that one had 4 more, ok get those, complie. Hey, we have an app that looks like hell and really doesn't do what we need.
The *nix community needs to get some serious developer support before companies will really start to look at it seriously. Also the whole RTFM attitude is doing tons of harm to the movement as well. When the only support you can get for an OS is found on the web, and half the responses are along the lines of "RTFM 1d10t, y0ur a 1user, and 1m 37337" this does not instill confidence in that OS.
Sadly, in the end, the things that make Linux attractive are going to be the same things that hold it back from taking more of the business desktop market.
- It's free - Which usually means there isn't a company behind it that will support it.
- It's open source - So you can modify it to do what you want it to do. This, of course, takes time and money, and there isn't a company you can go to and pay them to do it.
Businesses like fire and forget solutions, they don't care about the politics of it. And for all its flaws, Windows is quick and easy to get going.
For right or wrong manufactuers have the right to set limits on the goods they sell. They must balance there own interets verses possible negative effects on sales. You made an agreement with the manufacturer when you purchased it to play by there rules. If you don't want to, then don't buy it.
Please show me the document that I signed to this affect. In no way have I made any sort of agreement, verbal, written, or otherwise when I purchased a physical product. If I buy a DVD player, I have not, in any way, given my consent to any sort of agreement that I won't disable the Region Encoding. To assume otherwise is silly. Along the same lines, the manufacturer of the product cannot be held responsible for my actions, unless it is shown that he was negligent.
If Microsoft, Sony, whoever wants to make these kinds of restrictions, that's there right. I will decide if it works for me, and if it dosn't, I won't buy.
Microsoft, maybe, if I am buying a license, then I am agreeing to certain terms. If I buy an XBox, then I am buying a physical product, not a license. Though there could be a license attached to the game/BIOS, etc. Though these must be clearly defined.
Sony, not so likely, they tend to sell physical products as well, with no agreement what-so-ever with me about how I use the product. Again, BIOS etc. are covered by copyright law, but this is a wholy different can of worms.
Now, as for the current case at hand, this guy is probably violating copyright laws, selling copies of the XBox BIOS, in whole or part is such a violation. But that should be more than enough, by itself, we don't need this DMCA crap. I would really hope that the EFF, EPIC, or someother large group picks this up and uses it as a platform to fight the DMCA on, though I doubt it.
No, GOD only works as a title during a good LAN party.
G.O.D. - Games Operations Director
na, I always liked:
Computer Jockey
I've had no luck getting anyone to call me "The Great and Terrible Root".
Yes, but that is because you are square.
Seriously though, I go in for the title of "Miracle Worker", cause with the stuff some people do to computers, its a miracle to even get their documents out.