One of the best things Apple did with the iPhone is to ensure that Apple is responsible for distribution of update and that the carriers have no say in when updates are released.
Depending on how its presented, there is a good chance people (who would normally only use IE) might see Google Chrome and go "I know Google, I use it to find stuff all the time, I am going to pick the Google option"
I have never written a cheque in my life and the last time I received a cheque was as a present from the grandparents. Even the government was able to transfer my income tax refund directly into my bank account.
If retailers hate cheques so much, why do they bother to keep accepting them. Either pay with cash or pay with a credit or debit card (here un Australia, most retailers accept EFTPOS which means you can use your bank card and bank account to pay for stuff directly)
I agree cheques are usefull for the likes of plumbers, builders, tradespeople and others who cant really accept credit/debit cards or EFTPOS but for normal retail stores it makes no sense anymore.
And if you argue that cheques are a better option for those who run stores that are too far away to get a decent network link for credit/debit/EFTPOS machines, I counter that by saying that I paid for petrol at a petrol station/roadhouse in the middle of the Australian outback 300kms from the nearest town and the EFTPOS machine worked just fine.
Is there ANY country that one could move to that has no civil liberties or human rights violations? Many of the things that western governments are doing in the name of fighting terrorists/child porn/drugs/criminals/etc are just as evil as the likes of the GESTAPO, STASI, KGB or any of the other major secret police organizations of the 20th century's great dictatorships.
Pirate Party Australia seems like a good place to start. Especially as you dont have to worry about whether their issues on health care, the environment, taxation, abortion or the like align with your views or not.
I said "mostly" I didnt even think to check the policies of Optus or Telstra, mostly because I (like you) have completly blacklisted all products from Optus and everything from Telstra except the minimum home phone I need to get my ADSL
Traffic shaping IS an important part of what most "net neutrality" advocates would consider important. Deliberate efforts to interfere with traffic (like Comcast BitTorrent reset packets issue) should be prohibited. Also, any ISP that specifically limits a certain protocol (BitTorrent for example) to some amount less than your total bandwidth should be prohibited. If I am being sold 20Mbps, I should be able to GET 20Mbps no matter what protocol I am using if all the other network links between me and the other end are able to handle that at that point in time.
The ISPs should be limited to the following: 1.Giving latency sensitive protocols priority over other protocols (as long as all VoIP protocols for example get the same priority) 2.Giving you fixed amounts of bandwidth per month and throttling your entire connection for the rest of the month if you exceed it (that's if they choose not to simply charge you extra for extra usage) and 3.If the ISPs network is congested, they should be able to temporarily throttle the entire internet connection of the user who is using the most. (in the ideal world we would ban this last item entirely and force the ISPs to stop overselling their networks and e.g. ensuring that if a cable segment has 10 customers at 20Mbps each, it HAS 200Mbps worth of capacity but we dont live in an ideal world and overselling of bandwidth will continue for the foreseeable future)
ISPs should only be allowed to limit your connection to less than the 20Mbps you paid for if one of the above 3 things is true.
There ARE people who pirate rather than buying because its easier or because it gets them the content now instead of needing to wait.
Take the recent Ghostbusters game for example. In Europe/Australia, thanks to greed by Sony, Atari and others, it was released on the Playstation in June 2009 but the PC and XBOX 360 versions were delayed until later in the year. By pulling this crap, it encouraged fans to seek other ways to acquire the title. Some people would have imported it from the US where it was already available on PC and 360. But I expect a large number of fans simply pirated it (especially the PC version).
There are plenty of other situations where content (not just games but movies and TV shows too) are available from pirates but are NOT available to purchase legitimately in some part of the world. Or content that is available to download but not purchase anywhere (e.g. content recorded off cable/sattelite/other source and pirated but not made available to buy officially or content that was available at one point but is now out-of-print)
Crap like this (content available to pirate but NOT to purchase) is one big reason why people pirate.
iv. If the individual's photo ID is a passport issued by the Government of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria, refer the individual for selectee screening unless the individual has been exempted from selectee screening by the FSD or aircraft operator.
This section proves that the US Government and the TSA DO target certain groups (in this case people from certain countries) for extra screening (regardless of the individuals who may be members of these groups)
Are people with a Lebanese or Algerian passport more of a risk than other people? Or is it that these passports are easier for the bad guys to legitimately obtain than any other one?
According to a statement from ID software, there is a non-infringing workaround for that patent that comes at a performance cost. So ID would be able to release the code with the non-infringing workaround in place.
The FCC should just mandate that the broadcast networks can not charge any cable company when said cable company wants to carry said broadcast network. And that the broadcast networks cannot refuse to allow a cable company to carry them.
Electronic Arts is not all that evil either in that they have allowed all kinds of liberal use of the IP for the Command & Conquer series including its use for the Red Alert: A Path Beyond mod and (more notably) the RenegadeX mod for UT3.
Microsoft (as owner of the Halo franchise) will go hard on anyone making any kind of game that uses anything from the Halo IP.
Nintendo are one of the worst in the industry and will shut down anything that even smells like an IP violation.
Vivendi Universal Games (owners of Blizzard and Activision plus former studios like Sierra) seem to be negative against fan mods based on the way they have shut down fan-made Space Quest games (for example)
ID Software seem to be friendly to modders from what I have seen (they even released source code to many of their games and I expect the Doom III engine will follow suit once its no longer in use and assuming any legal issues can be resolved)
All the evidence I have seen suggests that Volkswagen are profitably selling Diesels in the US market and are selling more than enough to offset the costs of "Americanizing" the cars. Given this, why are the other automakers (especially GM and Ford) not willing to follow VW with Diesels? Like the Diesel version of the new Chevrolet Cruze that is sold in the rest of the world.
I have already blacklisted Optus for other reasons (including their crappy ads and the fact that at the time I was looking, they didnt include data in their caps but Vodafone did) and this block is even more reason not to purchase anything through these idiots (their fixed line and internet services arent any better either)
The #1 problem with biofuels is, as you mentioned, that people are growing the WRONG crops for biofuels.
Fact is, if you take pretty much ANY field currently used to grow corn for ethanol production, you can grow something else on that same plot of land that requires LESS chemical and other input than the corn and produces MORE energy output when used as a biofuel. (exactly which crop works best to replace the corn depends on the exact area)
Biofuels in the US are less about "energy independence" and more about lining the pockets of Monsanto and co (through sales of chemicals, GM seeds etc)
I can agree that a cellphone camera can be usefull in the rare cases where you want to take a photo and dont have a regular camera. But even the best cellphone cameras (and I have seen/used some of the top quality ones myself) cant match my entry-level-ish Canon P&S with optical zoom (if you increase the number of pixels on the sensor without making the sensor or lens bigger, you end up with less photons hitting each pixel which reduces the image quality)
The laws of physics as applied to light and optics mean that no matter what you do, you wont get quality as good as even the entry level P&S camera (with a proper lens) from a cellphone.
Given how sucky cellphone cameras are, why do manufacturers continue to bother putting them in? Who is driving this? Are the manufacturers doing this for their benefit? At the behest of the carriers? Because consumers actually (gasp) WANT a crappy camera in their cellphone and dont care that its crap?
Considering the number of attempts to pass video game regulation legislation in various states (all of which have so far been struck down as unconstitutional AFAIK) I dont think the "war on video games" is dead by a long shot.
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One of the best things Apple did with the iPhone is to ensure that Apple is responsible for distribution of update and that the carriers have no say in when updates are released.
Depending on how its presented, there is a good chance people (who would normally only use IE) might see Google Chrome and go "I know Google, I use it to find stuff all the time, I am going to pick the Google option"
I have never written a cheque in my life and the last time I received a cheque was as a present from the grandparents. Even the government was able to transfer my income tax refund directly into my bank account.
If retailers hate cheques so much, why do they bother to keep accepting them. Either pay with cash or pay with a credit or debit card (here un Australia, most retailers accept EFTPOS which means you can use your bank card and bank account to pay for stuff directly)
I agree cheques are usefull for the likes of plumbers, builders, tradespeople and others who cant really accept credit/debit cards or EFTPOS but for normal retail stores it makes no sense anymore.
And if you argue that cheques are a better option for those who run stores that are too far away to get a decent network link for credit/debit/EFTPOS machines, I counter that by saying that I paid for petrol at a petrol station/roadhouse in the middle of the Australian outback 300kms from the nearest town and the EFTPOS machine worked just fine.
Is there ANY country that one could move to that has no civil liberties or human rights violations?
Many of the things that western governments are doing in the name of fighting terrorists/child porn/drugs/criminals/etc are just as evil as the likes of the GESTAPO, STASI, KGB or any of the other major secret police organizations of the 20th century's great dictatorships.
Pirate Party Australia seems like a good place to start.
Especially as you dont have to worry about whether their issues on health care, the environment, taxation, abortion or the like align with your views or not.
I said "mostly"
I didnt even think to check the policies of Optus or Telstra, mostly because I (like you) have completly blacklisted all products from Optus and everything from Telstra except the minimum home phone I need to get my ADSL
Not all Aussie ISPs are doing it. Mostly its the smaller ISPs that are doing it, the big boys like Internode and iiNet and TPG dont.
Traffic shaping IS an important part of what most "net neutrality" advocates would consider important.
Deliberate efforts to interfere with traffic (like Comcast BitTorrent reset packets issue) should be prohibited.
Also, any ISP that specifically limits a certain protocol (BitTorrent for example) to some amount less than your total bandwidth should be prohibited.
If I am being sold 20Mbps, I should be able to GET 20Mbps no matter what protocol I am using if all the other network links between me and the other end are able to handle that at that point in time.
The ISPs should be limited to the following:
1.Giving latency sensitive protocols priority over other protocols (as long as all VoIP protocols for example get the same priority)
2.Giving you fixed amounts of bandwidth per month and throttling your entire connection for the rest of the month if you exceed it (that's if they choose not to simply charge you extra for extra usage)
and 3.If the ISPs network is congested, they should be able to temporarily throttle the entire internet connection of the user who is using the most. (in the ideal world we would ban this last item entirely and force the ISPs to stop overselling their networks and e.g. ensuring that if a cable segment has 10 customers at 20Mbps each, it HAS 200Mbps worth of capacity but we dont live in an ideal world and overselling of bandwidth will continue for the foreseeable future)
ISPs should only be allowed to limit your connection to less than the 20Mbps you paid for if one of the above 3 things is true.
There ARE people who pirate rather than buying because its easier or because it gets them the content now instead of needing to wait.
Take the recent Ghostbusters game for example. In Europe/Australia, thanks to greed by Sony, Atari and others, it was released on the Playstation in June 2009 but the PC and XBOX 360 versions were delayed until later in the year. By pulling this crap, it encouraged fans to seek other ways to acquire the title. Some people would have imported it from the US where it was already available on PC and 360. But I expect a large number of fans simply pirated it (especially the PC version).
There are plenty of other situations where content (not just games but movies and TV shows too) are available from pirates but are NOT available to purchase legitimately in some part of the world. Or content that is available to download but not purchase anywhere (e.g. content recorded off cable/sattelite/other source and pirated but not made available to buy officially or content that was available at one point but is now out-of-print)
Crap like this (content available to pirate but NOT to purchase) is one big reason why people pirate.
iv. If the individual's photo ID is a passport issued by the Government of Cuba, Iran, North
Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria, refer
the individual for selectee screening unless the individual has been exempted from selectee
screening by the FSD or aircraft operator.
This section proves that the US Government and the TSA DO target certain groups (in this case people from certain countries) for extra screening (regardless of the individuals who may be members of these groups)
Are people with a Lebanese or Algerian passport more of a risk than other people? Or is it that these passports are easier for the bad guys to legitimately obtain than any other one?
But it doesn't support the frequencies used by AT&T therefore you cant use the HSPA on the AT&T network.
According to a statement from ID software, there is a non-infringing workaround for that patent that comes at a performance cost. So ID would be able to release the code with the non-infringing workaround in place.
The FCC should just mandate that the broadcast networks can not charge any cable company when said cable company wants to carry said broadcast network.
And that the broadcast networks cannot refuse to allow a cable company to carry them.
Electronic Arts is not all that evil either in that they have allowed all kinds of liberal use of the IP for the Command & Conquer series including its use for the Red Alert: A Path Beyond mod and (more notably) the RenegadeX mod for UT3.
Microsoft (as owner of the Halo franchise) will go hard on anyone making any kind of game that uses anything from the Halo IP.
Nintendo are one of the worst in the industry and will shut down anything that even smells like an IP violation.
Vivendi Universal Games (owners of Blizzard and Activision plus former studios like Sierra) seem to be negative against fan mods based on the way they have shut down fan-made Space Quest games (for example)
ID Software seem to be friendly to modders from what I have seen (they even released source code to many of their games and I expect the Doom III engine will follow suit once its no longer in use and assuming any legal issues can be resolved)
All the evidence I have seen suggests that Volkswagen are profitably selling Diesels in the US market and are selling more than enough to offset the costs of "Americanizing" the cars. Given this, why are the other automakers (especially GM and Ford) not willing to follow VW with Diesels? Like the Diesel version of the new Chevrolet Cruze that is sold in the rest of the world.
I have already blacklisted Optus for other reasons (including their crappy ads and the fact that at the time I was looking, they didnt include data in their caps but Vodafone did) and this block is even more reason not to purchase anything through these idiots (their fixed line and internet services arent any better either)
It depends on the country.
Here in Australia you can report IMEI to your phone carrier and it will be blocked nationwide on all carriers.
The #1 problem with biofuels is, as you mentioned, that people are growing the WRONG crops for biofuels.
Fact is, if you take pretty much ANY field currently used to grow corn for ethanol production, you can grow something else on that same plot of land that requires LESS chemical and other input than the corn and produces MORE energy output when used as a biofuel. (exactly which crop works best to replace the corn depends on the exact area)
Biofuels in the US are less about "energy independence" and more about lining the pockets of Monsanto and co (through sales of chemicals, GM seeds etc)
Of course, if you go to a pub and ask for a Beer, they will probably give you something that looks more like Crude Oil than a beverage...
Except that lead containers show up just fine on other scanners they already use.
I can agree that a cellphone camera can be usefull in the rare cases where you want to take a photo and dont have a regular camera. But even the best cellphone cameras (and I have seen/used some of the top quality ones myself) cant match my entry-level-ish Canon P&S with optical zoom (if you increase the number of pixels on the sensor without making the sensor or lens bigger, you end up with less photons hitting each pixel which reduces the image quality)
The laws of physics as applied to light and optics mean that no matter what you do, you wont get quality as good as even the entry level P&S camera (with a proper lens) from a cellphone.
Given how sucky cellphone cameras are, why do manufacturers continue to bother putting them in? Who is driving this? Are the manufacturers doing this for their benefit? At the behest of the carriers? Because consumers actually (gasp) WANT a crappy camera in their cellphone and dont care that its crap?
Considering the number of attempts to pass video game regulation legislation in various states (all of which have so far been struck down as unconstitutional AFAIK) I dont think the "war on video games" is dead by a long shot.