No, I know all about zoning laws, and aside from the fact that they're often wrong-headed and counter-productive (e.g. preventing small businesses from operating near their customers), I have no problem with them. It's just that the notion that ownership of swimming pools would be restricted like carrying concealed firearms, or operating motor vehicles on public roadways, or practicing medicine seemed a bit... out there.
And in other news, Joseph Goebbels has written a scathing denunciation of the Jews, and the threat they pose to German society.
Don't blame the Post (entirely) for this opinion piece; they merely published it. It was written by one of Bush and Rummy's chief apologists, an alarmist advocate of martial law.
I think it's safe to say that they're more concerned about what Wikileaks will publish in the future. This isn't about putting the cat back into the bag, but about prior restraint of future publication.
There are some Islamic-ruled countries with wrecked economies, but some of them (such as UAE and Saudi Arabia, the ones we're talking about here) are in pretty good shape, and as long as the petroleum holds out, their economies will remain pretty damn successful.
random old stuff that's been hand-painted by hippies
These would have to be the hands-down least-attractive targets for thieves. There about a dozen nutjob/hippy/artiste vehicles driving around my city, and I can't imagine a thief making the mistake of stealing a vehicle that almost literally screams "look at me" as it rolls down the street.
I'm not buying it. On a subatomic level, as you say, it's mostly space. On a molecular level, despite clumps such as planets and stars, the average distance between pieces of matter is much greater than the size of those pieces. On a stellar level, the space again outmeasures the stuff. Galaxies are much farther apart than they are big. Ditto galactic clusters.
The only scale on which there appears to be more more matter than space between objects is... ours. (And that's just locally; it looks very different just 100,000 miles from here.) You're right that we exist at an nonrepresentative scale, but it's the one that makes matter look common, not the other way around.
You can be sure that the mainstream media will fail to make the distinction between "Earth-size" and the more vaguely-defined (but more comprehensive sounding) "Earth-like". These planets are "Earth-like" in the same sense that noxious, caustic, stifling, lung-crushing Venus is "Earth-like"... if that.
The American people will listen to real information if it's presented to them; Ross Perot showed us that.
No, Ross Perot showed us that many American people will listen to information of whatever provnenance if it's what they want to hear. Kind of like you believing that Ross Perot could have won the election if people had simply voted for the person they really wanted. At the risk of reinforcing that belief: it's utterly insane.
This shouldn't be surprising at all. At least not if you understanding the concept of responsbility. Yes, the names and addresses of the magazine's subscribers and the sites users are an "asset"... but with that asset come responsibilities. There are strings attached to this data, and those strings are the terms under which it was originally gathered.
The DIY clones were a niche market, so I don't think the ability to pirate PC-DOS for them was very important to its success as a commercial operating system. IBM and the non-clone MS-DOS-compatibles (e.g. Sanyo, Tandy, DEC) were much more widely used, and it was these licensed copies, followed by the prefab clones (e.g. Compaq, Dell) that also came with licensed MS-DOS, that actually made it a standard.
I'm rather obviously talking about the decade before you came along, kid. By the time you started carrying your MS-DOS 3.3 diskette around, the OS's success and market dominance were established.
"included in the price" does *not* mean its for free.
No shit, Sherlock. My point was that most copies of MS-DOS in use in those days were legally paid for, not pirated.
MS-DOS's immense success had little - if anything - to do with piracy. In its very early years IBM wouldn't sell you a PC without either PC-DOS or CP/M, and CP/M was more expensive, so most buyers opted for the other one. Later, most large-scale vendors of PC-compatibles pre-installed a licensed copy of MS-DOS on the hard drive, and included it in the price. By the time MS-DOS upgrades became a stand-alone user purchase subject to large-scale piracy, the OS was heavily entrenched, and didn't benefit from the networking effects that piracy can offer.
There are software products out there that became successful from the promotional aspect of piracy. (MS-Windows is arguably one.) MS-DOS did not.
The question is inherently speculative. It isn't terribly difficult to find examples of, say a comic book series that was canceled because sales were 10% below what was needed to break even, or a movie that didn't quite make back the investment (even assuming non-Hollywood accounting). The number of creative endeavors which are just on the edge of financial solvency is pretty darn large. But what's essentially impossible to determine is what the actual impact of "sharing" on what-sales-would-have-been was in any given case. The best you could do would be to estimate a general range, and stipulate that any work that was within that range of being profitable "failed" because of it.
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No, I know all about zoning laws, and aside from the fact that they're often wrong-headed and counter-productive (e.g. preventing small businesses from operating near their customers), I have no problem with them. It's just that the notion that ownership of swimming pools would be restricted like carrying concealed firearms, or operating motor vehicles on public roadways, or practicing medicine seemed a bit... out there.
I find the phrase "unlicensed pool" a little... disturbing.
And in other news, Joseph Goebbels has written a scathing denunciation of the Jews, and the threat they pose to German society.
Don't blame the Post (entirely) for this opinion piece; they merely published it. It was written by one of Bush and Rummy's chief apologists, an alarmist advocate of martial law.
I think it's safe to say that they're more concerned about what Wikileaks will publish in the future. This isn't about putting the cat back into the bag, but about prior restraint of future publication.
"If that were the case /. would be full of retards...."
Have you been reading the comments here?
"India has always shown a greater commitment to democracy than China ever has."
That's... an understatement. In many ways, they do it better and with more commitment (e.g. higher voter turn-out) than the West does.
There are some Islamic-ruled countries with wrecked economies, but some of them (such as UAE and Saudi Arabia, the ones we're talking about here) are in pretty good shape, and as long as the petroleum holds out, their economies will remain pretty damn successful.
Saudi Arabia is blocking Blackberry as well.
These would have to be the hands-down least-attractive targets for thieves. There about a dozen nutjob/hippy/artiste vehicles driving around my city, and I can't imagine a thief making the mistake of stealing a vehicle that almost literally screams "look at me" as it rolls down the street.
I'm not buying it. On a subatomic level, as you say, it's mostly space. On a molecular level, despite clumps such as planets and stars, the average distance between pieces of matter is much greater than the size of those pieces. On a stellar level, the space again outmeasures the stuff. Galaxies are much farther apart than they are big. Ditto galactic clusters.
The only scale on which there appears to be more more matter than space between objects is... ours. (And that's just locally; it looks very different just 100,000 miles from here.) You're right that we exist at an nonrepresentative scale, but it's the one that makes matter look common, not the other way around.
I thought it was mostly empty space, not even close to full.
You can be sure that the mainstream media will fail to make the distinction between "Earth-size" and the more vaguely-defined (but more comprehensive sounding) "Earth-like". These planets are "Earth-like" in the same sense that noxious, caustic, stifling, lung-crushing Venus is "Earth-like"... if that.
If asked, I'm willing to serve.
Stoopid ethnic joke heard in my childhood (1970s):
Q: Why don't they have phone books in China?
A: Because there are so many Wings and Wongs, you'd probably wing the wong number.
No, the seating of a whole bunch of unfaithful electors was pretty much Perot's only chance of being elected.
No, Ross Perot showed us that many American people will listen to information of whatever provnenance if it's what they want to hear. Kind of like you believing that Ross Perot could have won the election if people had simply voted for the person they really wanted. At the risk of reinforcing that belief: it's utterly insane.
So apparently there are 9 planets after all! MVEMJJSUN
"The moral of the story is DON'T GIVE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO OTHERS."
It's rather difficult to have things delivered to you without giving them your name and address. They tend to want credit card info as well.
This shouldn't be surprising at all. At least not if you understanding the concept of responsbility. Yes, the names and addresses of the magazine's subscribers and the sites users are an "asset"... but with that asset come responsibilities. There are strings attached to this data, and those strings are the terms under which it was originally gathered.
Most copies of Windows are purchased with the hardware it runs on. At this point, copy protection wouldn't put much of a dent into its usage share.
The DIY clones were a niche market, so I don't think the ability to pirate PC-DOS for them was very important to its success as a commercial operating system. IBM and the non-clone MS-DOS-compatibles (e.g. Sanyo, Tandy, DEC) were much more widely used, and it was these licensed copies, followed by the prefab clones (e.g. Compaq, Dell) that also came with licensed MS-DOS, that actually made it a standard.
I'm rather obviously talking about the decade before you came along, kid. By the time you started carrying your MS-DOS 3.3 diskette around, the OS's success and market dominance were established.
No shit, Sherlock. My point was that most copies of MS-DOS in use in those days were legally paid for, not pirated.
You're referring to Gates (allegedly) stealing it? That's not piracy; it's plagiarism.
MS-DOS's immense success had little - if anything - to do with piracy. In its very early years IBM wouldn't sell you a PC without either PC-DOS or CP/M, and CP/M was more expensive, so most buyers opted for the other one. Later, most large-scale vendors of PC-compatibles pre-installed a licensed copy of MS-DOS on the hard drive, and included it in the price. By the time MS-DOS upgrades became a stand-alone user purchase subject to large-scale piracy, the OS was heavily entrenched, and didn't benefit from the networking effects that piracy can offer.
There are software products out there that became successful from the promotional aspect of piracy. (MS-Windows is arguably one.) MS-DOS did not.
The question is inherently speculative. It isn't terribly difficult to find examples of, say a comic book series that was canceled because sales were 10% below what was needed to break even, or a movie that didn't quite make back the investment (even assuming non-Hollywood accounting). The number of creative endeavors which are just on the edge of financial solvency is pretty darn large. But what's essentially impossible to determine is what the actual impact of "sharing" on what-sales-would-have-been was in any given case. The best you could do would be to estimate a general range, and stipulate that any work that was within that range of being profitable "failed" because of it.