In the 90's it went the other way when the internet suddenly became "popular", flat rate monthly pricing was introduced, and suddenly all the plebs could afford it. Yes I remember things were quite civilized in the CompuServe forums, at $6/hour + connection charges. I used to play a MUD called "Island of Kesmai", and those of us who played it were very friendly and we helped each other out. Then Kesmai corp decided to "upgrade" their game to real graphics and host it on GameStorm for $10 a month. Almost instantly it was filled with trolls, beggars, thieves and other scoundrels who wanted your stuff for free or were prepared to break the rules of the game to get it. Flat rate may be a money-maker, but we went from a 5 star exclusive restaurant to McDonald's.
Tell that to US prosecutors. They're about to throw the book at a teenager who was "virtually" shooting classmates through an app on his phone that superimposed a FPS style "gun" on his camera output. The only thing the prosecution has to go on is "intent", because no one was actually shot, and no one was threatened. There wasn't even the possibility to carry out a threat or shooting, because there was no weapon involved. BUT the kid ends up in jail. So yeah I think the US thinks it CAN regulate or legislate intent. Take care lest you commit a thought crime, citizen.
If you want to be absolutely sure who the person is, maybe you can ask the NSA - maybe they will provide that government service for you, for a small fee:)
The terms of service do not have the full force of civil or criminal law - despite the providing company wanting them to. You can break the ToS all you want and I promise the SWAT team won't come and break down your door. Unless of course you're breaking the law as well.
Don't have a "mobile phone". Oh the alternative is sending it to a different email address - I think that's what either gmail or hotmail does not. Since I have a few websites, creating a temporary email account is rather simple.
Radical religious fundies from all denominations don't sit all day in front of keyboards. They sit in churches/temples/mosques/synagogues all day, reinforcing their BS beliefs to each other and doing what the priest/pastor/rabbi/imam tells them to do. Computers are generally viewed as "bad" and a source of "sin" by all these religious types because churches have always known that if the sheep don't come into the temple enough they stop believing in all the magic, so anything that keeps them away from worship (read that as servitude to the priest class) is evil. I know this because my ex wife turned into a radical christian loonie. And now she's my ex wife.
No, there are a whole bunch of people who, when exposed to "the world" and cultures that do things differently, want to destroy them and smash them, not understand them. They are seen as an immediate threat to their way of life. You've forgotten the Buddah statue in Afghanistan? How about all the other "World Heritage" sites that have been defaced or destroyed? How long do you think it would take for the internet to be blamed as the "root of all evil" and its users persecuted and beheaded? Hell there are some fundamentalists even in the west that have that attitude towards, say, video games.
Only liberals think that some diseases can be "cured" with a healthy dose of education and horizon broadening. YOU CANNOT SURRENDER TO A CROCODILE, IT WILL EAT YOU IF IT'S HUNGRY AND GET CLOSE ENOUGH. No matter if you have a "white flag" or not. You can even ask it very nicely not to, and it doesn't care. It is fulfilling its being. And some rabid humans fulfill theirs, smashing, destroying, and infecting others. It's been that way for thousands of years.
Glad to see people are focusing on the important issues... Yes after 12 years of non stop war, I'm sure facebook is a huge priority and twitter will stop all the violence.
No, they are implying that here on earth, scales measure weight not mass, and the unit for weight and mass is one and the same on this planet. Tell me who actually uses the Newton to express their weight, outside a physics/engineering context?
The price of French wine is already skyrocketing because the Chinese are buying up all the wine. There are lots and lots of Chinese, and lots and lots of them are getting wealthy enough to afford wine...
Yeah, is it really negative electrons moving around, or is it positive holes moving around in the opposite direction? Only when we manage to shrink ourselves down to subatomic size will we actually find out (the answer is probably "none of the above") lol.
In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary
How is a sphere two dimensional? Surely they meant circular?
You are all insane. At least please stop trying to tell people in other countries how to live their lives. We don't want to be as crazy as you. Seriously - criminal charges, terrorism?
Food is only part of it. Dogs are social creatures. They love their master because he is part of the social group, and usually the leader of the group. It's not just about food. And it is real love - if you've ever seen a sad, howling dog guarding his master's corpse, you'll understand that the dog isn't worried at all about what it's going to eat that night.
“This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog."
Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.
Since when does "vaporization" involve breaking chemical bonds inside a molecule? When you boil water you're not turning it into hydrogen and oxygen, you're just overcoming the vanderWaals bonds keeping the liquid together and giving them enough energy to float away. Likewise if you "vaporize" someone. You need enough energy to turn them from a solid/colloid state to a gaseous state, not the energy required to reduce the person to elemental atoms.
Privacy is a human right, as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United States signed. However it seems you are all to ready to give up your privacy. What you do with your rights is your business, but you don't decide what other people get to do with theirs. And the downside of privacy can be summed up in the following quote from one of France's more famous tyrants:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." --Richelieu
See the problem with having no privacy, and being able to cheaply record everything you say and do for all time, EVERYTHING YOU DO AND SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU. It's just a matter of someone making that decision - if you voted for the "wrong" party. If you're the "wrong" religion. If you do something that goes against the party line. If you say the "wrong" thing. At some point in the future. Now, how do you defend yourself from the future? How do you deny every little off color joke, every line of sarcasm, every politically incorrect thing you have ever said? Giving someone your private life puts you firmly in their control.
And in other news a major airline said that it would add a "fuel bill" on top of current ticket prices, because obviously you are not paying enough... When I pay $X per month, I am paying to have packets delivered. When I run a website, my "host" pays $X per month to have those packets delivered. The web is nothing without all of us and if Verizon pushes forward with that lunacy then the Verizon "subnet" will be a cold, dark place.
Slashdot Mirror
The rules are always for the little guy. Don't you get it yet?
In the 90's it went the other way when the internet suddenly became "popular", flat rate monthly pricing was introduced, and suddenly all the plebs could afford it. Yes I remember things were quite civilized in the CompuServe forums, at $6/hour + connection charges. I used to play a MUD called "Island of Kesmai", and those of us who played it were very friendly and we helped each other out. Then Kesmai corp decided to "upgrade" their game to real graphics and host it on GameStorm for $10 a month. Almost instantly it was filled with trolls, beggars, thieves and other scoundrels who wanted your stuff for free or were prepared to break the rules of the game to get it. Flat rate may be a money-maker, but we went from a 5 star exclusive restaurant to McDonald's.
Tell that to US prosecutors. They're about to throw the book at a teenager who was "virtually" shooting classmates through an app on his phone that superimposed a FPS style "gun" on his camera output. The only thing the prosecution has to go on is "intent", because no one was actually shot, and no one was threatened. There wasn't even the possibility to carry out a threat or shooting, because there was no weapon involved. BUT the kid ends up in jail. So yeah I think the US thinks it CAN regulate or legislate intent. Take care lest you commit a thought crime, citizen.
If you want to be absolutely sure who the person is, maybe you can ask the NSA - maybe they will provide that government service for you, for a small fee :)
The terms of service do not have the full force of civil or criminal law - despite the providing company wanting them to. You can break the ToS all you want and I promise the SWAT team won't come and break down your door. Unless of course you're breaking the law as well.
Don't have a "mobile phone". Oh the alternative is sending it to a different email address - I think that's what either gmail or hotmail does not. Since I have a few websites, creating a temporary email account is rather simple.
Facebook = real identities? Don't tell my dog, she has an account.
I happen to be a character in a book - well a series of books, actually :)
Radical religious fundies from all denominations don't sit all day in front of keyboards. They sit in churches/temples/mosques/synagogues all day, reinforcing their BS beliefs to each other and doing what the priest/pastor/rabbi/imam tells them to do. Computers are generally viewed as "bad" and a source of "sin" by all these religious types because churches have always known that if the sheep don't come into the temple enough they stop believing in all the magic, so anything that keeps them away from worship (read that as servitude to the priest class) is evil. I know this because my ex wife turned into a radical christian loonie. And now she's my ex wife.
No, there are a whole bunch of people who, when exposed to "the world" and cultures that do things differently, want to destroy them and smash them, not understand them. They are seen as an immediate threat to their way of life. You've forgotten the Buddah statue in Afghanistan? How about all the other "World Heritage" sites that have been defaced or destroyed? How long do you think it would take for the internet to be blamed as the "root of all evil" and its users persecuted and beheaded? Hell there are some fundamentalists even in the west that have that attitude towards, say, video games.
Only liberals think that some diseases can be "cured" with a healthy dose of education and horizon broadening. YOU CANNOT SURRENDER TO A CROCODILE, IT WILL EAT YOU IF IT'S HUNGRY AND GET CLOSE ENOUGH. No matter if you have a "white flag" or not. You can even ask it very nicely not to, and it doesn't care. It is fulfilling its being. And some rabid humans fulfill theirs, smashing, destroying, and infecting others. It's been that way for thousands of years.
Glad to see people are focusing on the important issues... Yes after 12 years of non stop war, I'm sure facebook is a huge priority and twitter will stop all the violence.
No, they are implying that here on earth, scales measure weight not mass, and the unit for weight and mass is one and the same on this planet. Tell me who actually uses the Newton to express their weight, outside a physics/engineering context?
So they only do cocaine?
The price of French wine is already skyrocketing because the Chinese are buying up all the wine. There are lots and lots of Chinese, and lots and lots of them are getting wealthy enough to afford wine...
Targeted ads on your wine glasses in the better restaurants? You know it's going to happen.
Yeah, is it really negative electrons moving around, or is it positive holes moving around in the opposite direction? Only when we manage to shrink ourselves down to subatomic size will we actually find out (the answer is probably "none of the above") lol.
Windows isn't an operating system, it's a remote login daemon.
In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary
How is a sphere two dimensional? Surely they meant circular?
You are all insane. At least please stop trying to tell people in other countries how to live their lives. We don't want to be as crazy as you. Seriously - criminal charges, terrorism?
Food is only part of it. Dogs are social creatures. They love their master because he is part of the social group, and usually the leader of the group. It's not just about food. And it is real love - if you've ever seen a sad, howling dog guarding his master's corpse, you'll understand that the dog isn't worried at all about what it's going to eat that night.
“This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog."
Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.
It's been a long, long time since I've done chemistry.
Since when does "vaporization" involve breaking chemical bonds inside a molecule? When you boil water you're not turning it into hydrogen and oxygen, you're just overcoming the vanderWaals bonds keeping the liquid together and giving them enough energy to float away. Likewise if you "vaporize" someone. You need enough energy to turn them from a solid/colloid state to a gaseous state, not the energy required to reduce the person to elemental atoms.
Privacy is a human right, as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United States signed. However it seems you are all to ready to give up your privacy. What you do with your rights is your business, but you don't decide what other people get to do with theirs. And the downside of privacy can be summed up in the following quote from one of France's more famous tyrants:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." --Richelieu
See the problem with having no privacy, and being able to cheaply record everything you say and do for all time, EVERYTHING YOU DO AND SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU. It's just a matter of someone making that decision - if you voted for the "wrong" party. If you're the "wrong" religion. If you do something that goes against the party line. If you say the "wrong" thing. At some point in the future. Now, how do you defend yourself from the future? How do you deny every little off color joke, every line of sarcasm, every politically incorrect thing you have ever said? Giving someone your private life puts you firmly in their control.
And in other news a major airline said that it would add a "fuel bill" on top of current ticket prices, because obviously you are not paying enough... When I pay $X per month, I am paying to have packets delivered. When I run a website, my "host" pays $X per month to have those packets delivered. The web is nothing without all of us and if Verizon pushes forward with that lunacy then the Verizon "subnet" will be a cold, dark place.
Yeah so awesome. Now try to get your astronauts off the international space station without using a Soyuz capsule. Awesome.