I know that the scenes were filmed, and I seem to remember seeing the scenes with Luke's friends in Anchorhead, where Biggs told him he was joining the rebellion (leaving Luke behind on Tattooine). Sure, it's 29 years ago, and I was only nine years old at the time, but I can still remember later reports saying that it was in the original theater release (and the first victim of George's redacting desires). It was one of those things that Lucas didn't want to do, but added because he was told just having the 'droids would remind people of THX 1138 in a bad way.
I personally liked the scenes. It made it easier for the audience to feel Luke's feeling of being left behind while important things happened Elsewhere, and made Bigg's death in the trench more painful.
Oh, you misunderstand. I speak from a tendency, not an absolute. Of course Eruopeans like their ice cream, but it tastes different than what I've had in the USA. The same goes for the sugary sweets. SUV's, however, are a rarity in comparison to the USA. I think I've seen one and only one Hummer in all my travels through France, Germany, Austria and Italy. And of course there are air conditioners available in Europe, but the most dominant form of air circulation remains opening the window.
I think if you truly compare, you'll note that Americans are more prone to use additives than Europeans, mainly due to a conservative "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality amongst Europeans. Change is not as highly regarded in Europe as it was in America.
But again, it's not the false binary you pretend it is: it's a question of tendencies. Americans tend to favour the "improved", and Europeans tend to favour the "authentic".
This does fit well with the researchers' theory that Americans are under more stress. After all, stress does play an important part in how ready the immune system is.
Other subtle differences I've noticed travelling between Europe and America is that Americans expose themselves more to pollution: even things like noise pollution and air standards. Americans also rely more upon ventilation and air conditioning, whereas wherever I've gone in Europe people open their windows more often to let fresh air in. In the USA, though, the standard solution was to add perfumes to the air duct system. I grew up in the States, but when I go back everything just seems so garish and artificial. Like another commenter wrote, food in America is noticably sweeter, sometimes unpleasantly so to European palates.
So not only are Americans under more stress (and praise stress as something to strive for!), they also subject themselves to more artificial chemicals in their air and food.
There is another group involved that sometimes gets confused with the RIAA, namely ASCAP. They're the ones responsible for the royalties of American composers, and they get an obulus every time a song is played or purchased. They have agreements with similar royalty-clearinghouses around the world like Germany's GEMA, extending the reach of the composers (in theory).
Speaking only from personal experience, I suppose the answer boils down to two points:
1: it's good enough
2. it's more convenient
The songs that I buy on iTunes come in a quality that is good enough for my audio equipment. I don't have any high-end equipment, as I don't listen to music that carefully. The songs (or even albums) are ones where I am not interested in the physical media. Mind you, I don't exclusively buy my music online: I'll buy CD's if I like the album enough to want the higher quality and the print extras.
As to my second point, sometimes I'll want a song right away, or I can't find a CD version of it. iTunes has come to my rescue with old songs from Art of Noise and Tangerine Dream that I once owned on cassette. I find it a godsend in rebuilding my lost music files (the fact that I used to buy cassettes instead of LP's should reveal how little I cared about music fidelity as a teen/twen).
iTunes supplements my music purchasing habits, but it doesn't replace them. Television and videorecorders didn't kill off the theaters, and online music purchasing is an alternate, but not a 100% supplement.
I can see this happening. A screen like this would have several advantages over the more common touchscreen. For one thing, it would also be more robust, not as liable to wear out as the current system. It could behave more like a Wacom tablet, the sensors inferring pressure and brush angle from a stylus designed for that purpose. It could automatically adjust the screen brightness due to ambient light, or even the screen temperature according to the room lighting (important for print artists!). As the software improves, it could even allow for a virtual keyboard where you could press multiple keys faster than a touchscreen could react.
I don't see this as becoming a videocamera, except for primitive hacks. The sensors would be fixed, much like the eyes of an insect. There would be no way to focus or adjust for depth, and resolution would be too coarse for scanning. I suppose it could do some video-like functions, such as detecting if somebody is sitting in front of the screen through pattern recognition, but I don't expect it to deliver a good video image.
The difference is who is in control: if your data is stored on your personal computer, you can yank the cord, turn off the router, or otherwise keep your data where you and only you have access to it. With a web app, you have no way to access the information without that access. You can't just take it offline.
There is also an issue of trust here. It is much easier to "sandbox" your home computer. I still know people who keep their home office PC off of the Internet so that they don't get distracted. If they need something from the Net, they plug in the modem only for that task and unplug the cable as soon as they log out. One guy even keeps his personal files on an external hard drive he can keep it safe. Primitive and paranoid, but it's a more common mentality than you may realise.
There are some things we do in public, some things we do in smaller groups and some things we do alone. Web applications require you to do everything in a potentially open environment, one where you lose independence.
Now, I don't think Web-based applications are worthless. In fact, they are good for collaborative work, for documents that are created as a discussion or are open to be edited by a community. It is not the place, however, for private information. That is still best processed locally. I still keep most of my photos in iPhoto, but I also use flickr for those pictures that I don't mind others seeing. Why should my letters and other text documents be different?
The point about the 21 years is that the copyright would (after the artist's death) cover one generation, or be long enough for an heir to reach an age where (s)he could become independant of the copyright income. It is supposed to allow an artist to provide for his family in case of death, but not be long enough to create "professional heirs". The Berne convention raised the after-death time to fifty, due to lobbying from such heirs. Some wags suggest that keeping Hitler's Mein Kampf under copyright (and off the market) was the main concern.
Copyright was supposed to free artists from powerful patrons at one time, and allow them an alternate way to generate income instead of merely working for a comission. It was also supposed to ensure that a publisher could recoup costs before a rival could publish the book. Unfortunately, there seems to be little pressure to force publication, to prevent people from using copyrights to restrict information. In other words, if a work is not made available to the public within a set time, the copyright is lost. It could prevent families and corporations from sitting on copyrights out of spite, if only to a degree.
Copyrights were supposed to encuourage more arts, not cement art imperiums where professional heirs dictate who can see or hear their famous forbear's creations.
Right, and the point is that Microsoft also employs strong-arm tactics with developers and OEMs to exclude other media players from factory install or support. Microsoft would have made iTunes if it wasn't already popular. Now it's too late to pull the same stunt with it that they did with QuickTime. The horde of Windows-using iPod owners are now more likely to get a Mac Mini than switch to WMA.
Nomen est omen, eh? 'Cause that really was a bad analogy.
A better (but still incredibly weak) analogy would be so say that it would be like offering a brand new car to replace your old clunker, but with an option to use the old car's snow tyres, trailer hookup and other accessories until you can get ones made to better integrate with your new ride.
In other words, the best use for this is for somebody who has a tonne of Windows programmes that he can't just crossgrade to the Mac, either due to costs or because the developer hasn't made a Mac version yet. This will get that person over on to the Mac, and let them gradually give up Windows instead of making a radical swap.
I'm afraid you misunderstood me a little. Of course there are other, less well-known tricks to getting around with alt-tab switching, but that means using the keyboard as well as the mouse. As I use the mouse in the left hand, that means a clumsy grip. Or the same issue of seconds lost.
I think you also misunderstood the meaning of "the window is the program". In your average Windows program at least one window must be open, even if there is no document within. This clutters up the screen. Hiding it means an extra click, another extra movement. The other solution is the one I mentioned earlier, the "window in a window" solution. In Photoshop, for example, that means a title bar for the program and a title bar for the window. This also has the disadvantage that I often close the whole program when I just wanted to close the document, and it foces me make another one minute break while Photoshop reloads.
Otherwise our differences are in taste. I prefer the Mac OS X way of doing things, and you seem to prefer the Windows way.
Well, I personally prefer the menu bar at the top. I just "slam" the cursor up and choose the menu item I want. I also like the way it saves real estate with multiple windows open in Photoshop and Illustrator, and makes drag-and-drop between applications easier.
With Windows, I often have to drag to the task bar, wait for the target program to open, and then find the program I want. I seem to spend more time doing tasks on Windows machines than on Macintosh, due to the way the UI is made. I've even accidently renamed and deleted files because of the way the "open" dialogs inside Windows programs allow it. And the current finder, despite all of its warts, is still easier to navigate around than the Windows Explorer.
I think it's all a matter of taste, really. Apple's style evolved from the old pre-multitasking days, where screenspace was an issue. Apple's program philosophy is still that you don't need to have a window open for a program to be running, and that a program can have more than one window open. With Windows, the philosophy is that the program *is* the window, wich results in programs where you have document windows inside program windows.
From what I've read, Apple Corp's lawyers have more or less conceded that Apple Computer is allowed to run the iTMS and sell iPods, making their case that usage of an apple *logo* in the iTMS is the breach of trademark. Apple Computer is maintaining that their logo is unique, different enough from the Apple Corps logo to avoid confusion between the two companies. Apple is also using the "container, not content" argument. In theory Apple could have avoided this lawsuit by making the iTMS an owned subsidiary like Filemaker, but that would have cost them the "halo effect" they wanted.
The Register has a better summary, pointing out that the biggest difference is Apple Corps' "spirit of the agreement" versus Apple Computer's "letter of the agreement".
The main fallacy here is ignoring slow change. I can't answer the questions *now*, but the questions that interest me are:
Is Nike offering better conditions *in comparison to other area industries*? Are those conditions so good that academics are leaving to work at these plants (as a seperate post pointed out with an Intel plant)? The key here is to raise the bar, but not to be disruptive about it.
Is the condition around Nike's factories been improving? Are the employees seeing an improvement in their standard of living? The key here is to be an evolutionary factor, not a retarding one.
Is Nike "sweatshop-hopping" or are they comitted over longer periods of time? How responsible are they?
I'll admit to being a bleeding-heart optimist, and openly state that I feel sweatshops are a transient state. Living conditions and wage expectations improve, and sweatshop owners move on to different countries until the world reaches a homogeneous level. The downside is that this will take decades (if not centuries)...
1. This strategy puts open-source programmers at a disadvantage, as most authorisation companies would request a fee. After all, they have costs to maintain. Home users would balk at the costs, and think that if they don't "do stupid stuff", they'll be safe.
2. What you are suggesting is also vulnerable through blind trust. If phishers can get a security certificare, it's possible for an adware/spyware maker to get one just long enough to do damage.
No, the solution really is to lock down the way the OS lets programs hook into the OS itself. Programs shouldn't be able to hide from the user, neither in their operation nor in their storage on media. It shouldn't have to be a long and troublesome hunt to clean out every instance of that spyware.
You can't prevent spyware and keyloggers entirely; social engineering is all too pervasive, and the Sony rootkit fiasco shows that even "trusted" companies can cause lasting harm. Instead, it should be easy to recover from the damage done.
Let me put the mandate to help non-citizens in a self-serving light: if those people are helped where they are, they will have less incentive to migrate "here" and cause more expensive problems like crime, job loss and so on. It also generates good reputation, something that could help "our" companies when it comes to export competition.
It would help to remember that selfishness really does come back to bite you in the arse, as we really are an interdependant society. If you don't help others, then the community as a whole will soon refuse to help you. Short-sighted isolationism is a dangerous course.
You seem to be saying that entertainment is impossible without good graphics and sound. Well, the problem here is that you are mixing the container with the content. Just because I have a beer mug doesn't mean I can't drink orange juice from it.
There are plenty of entertainment options available for low-res devices, or have you forgotten how popular Infocom used to be? How fast a graphics card do you need to play Tetris? One of the popular online games out there today is the Kingdom of Loathing, a game with stick figures and no real animation (other than a couple of animated GIFs). To claim that the computers have to run games like we know them today shows a lack of imagination.
This frees the hardware and the software from the update cycle. It means you can keep using the Photoshop you have until you scrounge up enough dough to pay for a crossgrade (if you can find a crossgrade offer).
Everybody talks about games, but I see the thousands of dollars in software per computer in graphics, CAD and whatever also playing a role. Buying an upgrade for the platform you have is always less painful than trying to purchase all of those apps again. Then there is the issue of migrating things like Access databases to a Mac-friendlier product like FileMaker.
IIRC Macromedia was at least moving to a more agnostic state with their licenses, but if that will survive the Adobe takeover is questionable.
True: with all the brouhaha concentrating on the market leader (Apple), this will affect ALL music stores. They must now accept converting WMA or the DRM du jour into an iPod-acceptable format, and not just the iTMS allowing conversion of FairPlay files into a format other players can understand.
I doubt that this law, if passed, would affect the sales of iPods much, though it might help the competing stores if they swallow that bitter pill and distribute in a non-DRM'ed format the iPod can understand.
From my (admittedly weak) understanding of the law, it means that Fnac would have to offer their songs in a format that iPods can play as well, since iPods don't support the WMA format. Since Apple won't let them have FairPlay, that means a nonencrypted MP3 or AAC format.
There seems to be some confusion in the article between iTunes and the iPod. The law would not affect just Apple, but all online music retailers and digital music players. But since Apple is the leader in both, it gets singled out.
My guess is that Apple may be forced by the recording industry to close iTMS France (after all, Steve Jobs has gone on record as saying that DRM isn't the answer), but eventually returning after a backlash from French artists and music purchasers.
In other words, soldiers go to "liberal" sites more than "conservative" sites? Wonkette is more popular than Little Green Footballs? Al Franken was drawing heavy traffic, but nobody wants to see Rush Limbaugh's page?
You know, that makes sense to me. Definitely not something the Pentagon would want known, especially with their boneheaded program lineups on AFN...
I don't have enough time to disprove all of your dishonesty, lies and half-truths, but I suspect that was your point: pepper us with so many lies that a lot of them get through unchallenged.
For instance, the protest sign you mention is a myth, one I've never seen. I've seen a lot of protests, and I've yet to meet a "spit on the vets" type. In fact, I've met more and more fellow vets there (yes, I served in the US Army). Those who had military service under their belts have been the biggest opponents of this strategic blunder.
You also present a dishonest view of the evidence Bush had. We now know that he and Cheney went to the intelligence agencies and told them what answers they were supposed to give. Caveats and reservations were ignored, and foreign reports were taken out of context. The intelligence picture that we had then was that there was a slim chance that Saddam had forbidden weapons, but not likely. Even your vaunted photos of Syrian transports has been debunked TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
When even the United Nations reports that life was better under Saddam than under the US-led military occupation, when you realise that the US Army is facing a collapse soon due to equipment wear-and-tear, then it's time to admit that Bush was wrong to invade when he did, and is too incompetent to fix the mess he's caused.
Finally, you present your opinion as fact. My talks with returning vets and those in Iraq paint a different picture: the soldiers have become disillusioned to the point that all they care about is getting home in one piece. They feel that they are making no real contribution to helping Iraqis, and that it's all going to hell whether they're there or not. I personally feel we did them a disservice by sending them there, and are now doing them a disservice by leaving them there.
I actually prefer it the other way around, where the laptop doesn't attempt to charge unless it needs to be charged. Thus the default (correctly?) shows whether the battery is being charged or not.
Green as a colour signals that everything is OK, and amber has a slight warning connotation ("if you disconnect now, I won't be fully charged"). It makes sense to first show that the connection is OK (green) before showing that the connection is now charging (amber). It also suggests that the charger is thinking along, and not blindly trying to charge the battery (something that could scare some users).
You need to get that checked. Kneejerk responses because of perceived political slant is dangerous to your credibility.
Now, the point of the article isn't that it was a certain political party (in this case the GOP), but that it was an unannounced case of data collection, possibly even masquerading/playing down the data collection. If it were a liberal group doing the same, the concern would be as great, the outcry most likely even greater. I suspect you would be one of the loudest critics if it were (for example) California Democrats doing it.
This is unethical, no matter who does it. However, that the Republican party is doing it makes it even more serious, due to their recent history of abusing such data.
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I know that the scenes were filmed, and I seem to remember seeing the scenes with Luke's friends in Anchorhead, where Biggs told him he was joining the rebellion (leaving Luke behind on Tattooine). Sure, it's 29 years ago, and I was only nine years old at the time, but I can still remember later reports saying that it was in the original theater release (and the first victim of George's redacting desires). It was one of those things that Lucas didn't want to do, but added because he was told just having the 'droids would remind people of THX 1138 in a bad way.
I personally liked the scenes. It made it easier for the audience to feel Luke's feeling of being left behind while important things happened Elsewhere, and made Bigg's death in the trench more painful.
Oh, you misunderstand. I speak from a tendency, not an absolute. Of course Eruopeans like their ice cream, but it tastes different than what I've had in the USA. The same goes for the sugary sweets. SUV's, however, are a rarity in comparison to the USA. I think I've seen one and only one Hummer in all my travels through France, Germany, Austria and Italy. And of course there are air conditioners available in Europe, but the most dominant form of air circulation remains opening the window.
I think if you truly compare, you'll note that Americans are more prone to use additives than Europeans, mainly due to a conservative "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality amongst Europeans. Change is not as highly regarded in Europe as it was in America.
But again, it's not the false binary you pretend it is: it's a question of tendencies. Americans tend to favour the "improved", and Europeans tend to favour the "authentic".
This does fit well with the researchers' theory that Americans are under more stress. After all, stress does play an important part in how ready the immune system is.
Other subtle differences I've noticed travelling between Europe and America is that Americans expose themselves more to pollution: even things like noise pollution and air standards. Americans also rely more upon ventilation and air conditioning, whereas wherever I've gone in Europe people open their windows more often to let fresh air in. In the USA, though, the standard solution was to add perfumes to the air duct system. I grew up in the States, but when I go back everything just seems so garish and artificial. Like another commenter wrote, food in America is noticably sweeter, sometimes unpleasantly so to European palates.
So not only are Americans under more stress (and praise stress as something to strive for!), they also subject themselves to more artificial chemicals in their air and food.
There is another group involved that sometimes gets confused with the RIAA, namely ASCAP. They're the ones responsible for the royalties of American composers, and they get an obulus every time a song is played or purchased. They have agreements with similar royalty-clearinghouses around the world like Germany's GEMA, extending the reach of the composers (in theory).
Speaking only from personal experience, I suppose the answer boils down to two points:
1: it's good enough
2. it's more convenient
The songs that I buy on iTunes come in a quality that is good enough for my audio equipment. I don't have any high-end equipment, as I don't listen to music that carefully. The songs (or even albums) are ones where I am not interested in the physical media. Mind you, I don't exclusively buy my music online: I'll buy CD's if I like the album enough to want the higher quality and the print extras.
As to my second point, sometimes I'll want a song right away, or I can't find a CD version of it. iTunes has come to my rescue with old songs from Art of Noise and Tangerine Dream that I once owned on cassette. I find it a godsend in rebuilding my lost music files (the fact that I used to buy cassettes instead of LP's should reveal how little I cared about music fidelity as a teen/twen).
iTunes supplements my music purchasing habits, but it doesn't replace them. Television and videorecorders didn't kill off the theaters, and online music purchasing is an alternate, but not a 100% supplement.
I can see this happening. A screen like this would have several advantages over the more common touchscreen. For one thing, it would also be more robust, not as liable to wear out as the current system. It could behave more like a Wacom tablet, the sensors inferring pressure and brush angle from a stylus designed for that purpose. It could automatically adjust the screen brightness due to ambient light, or even the screen temperature according to the room lighting (important for print artists!). As the software improves, it could even allow for a virtual keyboard where you could press multiple keys faster than a touchscreen could react.
I don't see this as becoming a videocamera, except for primitive hacks. The sensors would be fixed, much like the eyes of an insect. There would be no way to focus or adjust for depth, and resolution would be too coarse for scanning. I suppose it could do some video-like functions, such as detecting if somebody is sitting in front of the screen through pattern recognition, but I don't expect it to deliver a good video image.
The difference is who is in control: if your data is stored on your personal computer, you can yank the cord, turn off the router, or otherwise keep your data where you and only you have access to it. With a web app, you have no way to access the information without that access. You can't just take it offline.
There is also an issue of trust here. It is much easier to "sandbox" your home computer. I still know people who keep their home office PC off of the Internet so that they don't get distracted. If they need something from the Net, they plug in the modem only for that task and unplug the cable as soon as they log out. One guy even keeps his personal files on an external hard drive he can keep it safe. Primitive and paranoid, but it's a more common mentality than you may realise.
There are some things we do in public, some things we do in smaller groups and some things we do alone. Web applications require you to do everything in a potentially open environment, one where you lose independence.
Now, I don't think Web-based applications are worthless. In fact, they are good for collaborative work, for documents that are created as a discussion or are open to be edited by a community. It is not the place, however, for private information. That is still best processed locally. I still keep most of my photos in iPhoto, but I also use flickr for those pictures that I don't mind others seeing. Why should my letters and other text documents be different?
The point about the 21 years is that the copyright would (after the artist's death) cover one generation, or be long enough for an heir to reach an age where (s)he could become independant of the copyright income. It is supposed to allow an artist to provide for his family in case of death, but not be long enough to create "professional heirs". The Berne convention raised the after-death time to fifty, due to lobbying from such heirs. Some wags suggest that keeping Hitler's Mein Kampf under copyright (and off the market) was the main concern.
Copyright was supposed to free artists from powerful patrons at one time, and allow them an alternate way to generate income instead of merely working for a comission. It was also supposed to ensure that a publisher could recoup costs before a rival could publish the book. Unfortunately, there seems to be little pressure to force publication, to prevent people from using copyrights to restrict information. In other words, if a work is not made available to the public within a set time, the copyright is lost. It could prevent families and corporations from sitting on copyrights out of spite, if only to a degree.
Copyrights were supposed to encuourage more arts, not cement art imperiums where professional heirs dictate who can see or hear their famous forbear's creations.
Right, and the point is that Microsoft also employs strong-arm tactics with developers and OEMs to exclude other media players from factory install or support. Microsoft would have made iTunes if it wasn't already popular. Now it's too late to pull the same stunt with it that they did with QuickTime. The horde of Windows-using iPod owners are now more likely to get a Mac Mini than switch to WMA.
Nomen est omen, eh? 'Cause that really was a bad analogy.
A better (but still incredibly weak) analogy would be so say that it would be like offering a brand new car to replace your old clunker, but with an option to use the old car's snow tyres, trailer hookup and other accessories until you can get ones made to better integrate with your new ride.
In other words, the best use for this is for somebody who has a tonne of Windows programmes that he can't just crossgrade to the Mac, either due to costs or because the developer hasn't made a Mac version yet. This will get that person over on to the Mac, and let them gradually give up Windows instead of making a radical swap.
I'm afraid you misunderstood me a little. Of course there are other, less well-known tricks to getting around with alt-tab switching, but that means using the keyboard as well as the mouse. As I use the mouse in the left hand, that means a clumsy grip. Or the same issue of seconds lost.
I think you also misunderstood the meaning of "the window is the program". In your average Windows program at least one window must be open, even if there is no document within. This clutters up the screen. Hiding it means an extra click, another extra movement. The other solution is the one I mentioned earlier, the "window in a window" solution. In Photoshop, for example, that means a title bar for the program and a title bar for the window. This also has the disadvantage that I often close the whole program when I just wanted to close the document, and it foces me make another one minute break while Photoshop reloads.
Otherwise our differences are in taste. I prefer the Mac OS X way of doing things, and you seem to prefer the Windows way.
Well, I personally prefer the menu bar at the top. I just "slam" the cursor up and choose the menu item I want. I also like the way it saves real estate with multiple windows open in Photoshop and Illustrator, and makes drag-and-drop between applications easier.
With Windows, I often have to drag to the task bar, wait for the target program to open, and then find the program I want. I seem to spend more time doing tasks on Windows machines than on Macintosh, due to the way the UI is made. I've even accidently renamed and deleted files because of the way the "open" dialogs inside Windows programs allow it. And the current finder, despite all of its warts, is still easier to navigate around than the Windows Explorer.
I think it's all a matter of taste, really. Apple's style evolved from the old pre-multitasking days, where screenspace was an issue. Apple's program philosophy is still that you don't need to have a window open for a program to be running, and that a program can have more than one window open. With Windows, the philosophy is that the program *is* the window, wich results in programs where you have document windows inside program windows.
From what I've read, Apple Corp's lawyers have more or less conceded that Apple Computer is allowed to run the iTMS and sell iPods, making their case that usage of an apple *logo* in the iTMS is the breach of trademark. Apple Computer is maintaining that their logo is unique, different enough from the Apple Corps logo to avoid confusion between the two companies. Apple is also using the "container, not content" argument. In theory Apple could have avoided this lawsuit by making the iTMS an owned subsidiary like Filemaker, but that would have cost them the "halo effect" they wanted.
The Register has a better summary, pointing out that the biggest difference is Apple Corps' "spirit of the agreement" versus Apple Computer's "letter of the agreement".
The main fallacy here is ignoring slow change. I can't answer the questions *now*, but the questions that interest me are:
Is Nike offering better conditions *in comparison to other area industries*? Are those conditions so good that academics are leaving to work at these plants (as a seperate post pointed out with an Intel plant)? The key here is to raise the bar, but not to be disruptive about it.
Is the condition around Nike's factories been improving? Are the employees seeing an improvement in their standard of living? The key here is to be an evolutionary factor, not a retarding one.
Is Nike "sweatshop-hopping" or are they comitted over longer periods of time? How responsible are they?
I'll admit to being a bleeding-heart optimist, and openly state that I feel sweatshops are a transient state. Living conditions and wage expectations improve, and sweatshop owners move on to different countries until the world reaches a homogeneous level. The downside is that this will take decades (if not centuries)...
There are two problems with this:
1. This strategy puts open-source programmers at a disadvantage, as most authorisation companies would request a fee. After all, they have costs to maintain. Home users would balk at the costs, and think that if they don't "do stupid stuff", they'll be safe.
2. What you are suggesting is also vulnerable through blind trust. If phishers can get a security certificare, it's possible for an adware/spyware maker to get one just long enough to do damage.
No, the solution really is to lock down the way the OS lets programs hook into the OS itself. Programs shouldn't be able to hide from the user, neither in their operation nor in their storage on media. It shouldn't have to be a long and troublesome hunt to clean out every instance of that spyware.
You can't prevent spyware and keyloggers entirely; social engineering is all too pervasive, and the Sony rootkit fiasco shows that even "trusted" companies can cause lasting harm. Instead, it should be easy to recover from the damage done.
Let me put the mandate to help non-citizens in a self-serving light: if those people are helped where they are, they will have less incentive to migrate "here" and cause more expensive problems like crime, job loss and so on. It also generates good reputation, something that could help "our" companies when it comes to export competition.
It would help to remember that selfishness really does come back to bite you in the arse, as we really are an interdependant society. If you don't help others, then the community as a whole will soon refuse to help you. Short-sighted isolationism is a dangerous course.
You seem to be saying that entertainment is impossible without good graphics and sound. Well, the problem here is that you are mixing the container with the content. Just because I have a beer mug doesn't mean I can't drink orange juice from it.
There are plenty of entertainment options available for low-res devices, or have you forgotten how popular Infocom used to be? How fast a graphics card do you need to play Tetris? One of the popular online games out there today is the Kingdom of Loathing, a game with stick figures and no real animation (other than a couple of animated GIFs). To claim that the computers have to run games like we know them today shows a lack of imagination.
This frees the hardware and the software from the update cycle. It means you can keep using the Photoshop you have until you scrounge up enough dough to pay for a crossgrade (if you can find a crossgrade offer).
Everybody talks about games, but I see the thousands of dollars in software per computer in graphics, CAD and whatever also playing a role. Buying an upgrade for the platform you have is always less painful than trying to purchase all of those apps again. Then there is the issue of migrating things like Access databases to a Mac-friendlier product like FileMaker.
IIRC Macromedia was at least moving to a more agnostic state with their licenses, but if that will survive the Adobe takeover is questionable.
True: with all the brouhaha concentrating on the market leader (Apple), this will affect ALL music stores. They must now accept converting WMA or the DRM du jour into an iPod-acceptable format, and not just the iTMS allowing conversion of FairPlay files into a format other players can understand.
I doubt that this law, if passed, would affect the sales of iPods much, though it might help the competing stores if they swallow that bitter pill and distribute in a non-DRM'ed format the iPod can understand.
From my (admittedly weak) understanding of the law, it means that Fnac would have to offer their songs in a format that iPods can play as well, since iPods don't support the WMA format. Since Apple won't let them have FairPlay, that means a nonencrypted MP3 or AAC format.
There seems to be some confusion in the article between iTunes and the iPod. The law would not affect just Apple, but all online music retailers and digital music players. But since Apple is the leader in both, it gets singled out.
My guess is that Apple may be forced by the recording industry to close iTMS France (after all, Steve Jobs has gone on record as saying that DRM isn't the answer), but eventually returning after a backlash from French artists and music purchasers.
In other words, quite similar to German sentences. Nothing in the language prevents shorter ones, but Germans sure love making page-long sentences!
In other words, soldiers go to "liberal" sites more than "conservative" sites? Wonkette is more popular than Little Green Footballs? Al Franken was drawing heavy traffic, but nobody wants to see Rush Limbaugh's page?
You know, that makes sense to me. Definitely not something the Pentagon would want known, especially with their boneheaded program lineups on AFN...
I don't have enough time to disprove all of your dishonesty, lies and half-truths, but I suspect that was your point: pepper us with so many lies that a lot of them get through unchallenged.
For instance, the protest sign you mention is a myth, one I've never seen. I've seen a lot of protests, and I've yet to meet a "spit on the vets" type. In fact, I've met more and more fellow vets there (yes, I served in the US Army). Those who had military service under their belts have been the biggest opponents of this strategic blunder.
You also present a dishonest view of the evidence Bush had. We now know that he and Cheney went to the intelligence agencies and told them what answers they were supposed to give. Caveats and reservations were ignored, and foreign reports were taken out of context. The intelligence picture that we had then was that there was a slim chance that Saddam had forbidden weapons, but not likely. Even your vaunted photos of Syrian transports has been debunked TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
When even the United Nations reports that life was better under Saddam than under the US-led military occupation, when you realise that the US Army is facing a collapse soon due to equipment wear-and-tear, then it's time to admit that Bush was wrong to invade when he did, and is too incompetent to fix the mess he's caused.
Finally, you present your opinion as fact. My talks with returning vets and those in Iraq paint a different picture: the soldiers have become disillusioned to the point that all they care about is getting home in one piece. They feel that they are making no real contribution to helping Iraqis, and that it's all going to hell whether they're there or not. I personally feel we did them a disservice by sending them there, and are now doing them a disservice by leaving them there.
I actually prefer it the other way around, where the laptop doesn't attempt to charge unless it needs to be charged. Thus the default (correctly?) shows whether the battery is being charged or not.
Green as a colour signals that everything is OK, and amber has a slight warning connotation ("if you disconnect now, I won't be fully charged"). It makes sense to first show that the connection is OK (green) before showing that the connection is now charging (amber). It also suggests that the charger is thinking along, and not blindly trying to charge the battery (something that could scare some users).
You need to get that checked. Kneejerk responses because of perceived political slant is dangerous to your credibility.
Now, the point of the article isn't that it was a certain political party (in this case the GOP), but that it was an unannounced case of data collection, possibly even masquerading/playing down the data collection. If it were a liberal group doing the same, the concern would be as great, the outcry most likely even greater. I suspect you would be one of the loudest critics if it were (for example) California Democrats doing it.
This is unethical, no matter who does it. However, that the Republican party is doing it makes it even more serious, due to their recent history of abusing such data.