Americans will ask "So, how do the Darwinists explain this? This proves that evolution is just a theory", and "Born in Africa? Where is its long-form birth certificate?"
" Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write... ",
Sounds good, but you can do anything within the bounds of the law. Here's an equivalent sentence I just made up...
And what country on this planet has completely unrestricted "free speech"? None.
Let me guess: You're American?
Let me demonstrate my Australian free speech: Fuck off.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but I'll take it at face value.
As far as I know ".azw" files are in MOBI format. Encrypted ones can only be read by Amazon software with the password. Probably generic MOBI readers can read unencrypted ones, but may need to be persuaded to try if it has a different extension.
Also Amazon has recently updated their format, adding some features, so older MOBI readers might not read them properly, though they should still display the text, if not formatting such as tables correctly.
"I have had a handful of requests that the Arch Linux Handbook be made available for the Kindle platform. It seemed like an odd request, given that the latest version of the Beginnersâ(TM) Guide is already freely available in electronic format online. However, I had some free time this week and tried the conversion. It wasnâ(TM)t difficult and I uploaded a version of the Handbook to the Kindle app store"
This seems entirely reasonable, and absolutely nothing like the spamming you describe.
It is exactly the same as many "Kindle spammers" do. Copy slabs of text from a wiki, Project Gutenberg, wherever, convert to Kindle format (quick and dirty), upload to Amazon, write a description that entices the reader to buy it (the only creative part of the process), sell for 99 cents.
Amazon seems to search for the text online and found it. Quite likely actually a bunch of real spammers had already tried to upload exactly the same text earlier and been blocked.
because Apple, despite massively misbehaving, hasn't succeeded yet in killing off its competition.
A company can dominate an industry and "kill off" competition quite legally. It's only when they cross the line and abuse their position that "intervention" is warranted.
But Microsoft only has a monopoly on desktops. They hold less than 1% marketshare of mobiles. On the other hand, Apple does have a majority marketshare of mobiles (when counting ipod touches, iphones, and ipads -- as they are mobile, run apps, and browse the web)
MS Windows doesn't run on mobiles (a different OS with a similar name might.)
Apple sells hardware, including the OS.
They're not selling the OS to OEMs and (effectively) preventing other software vendors from entering the market, as Microsoft has been doing for the last 30 years.
If Apple prevented retailers or phone companies from selling other mobile devices, they could be prosecuted for abuse of their monopoly position in that market.
Apple's iOS blocks people from changing default browser off Safari, But MS gets sued
Every fucking time this issue is mentioned someone says this. And every fucking time the answer is still "By the legal definition, Microsoft is a monopoly; Apple isn't".
Apple has a few percent of the PC market. And virtually everyone else who sells PCs bundles Microsoft Windows. MS prevents other software makers from getting a foothold into selling to OEMs by anti-competitive actions like this.
No, common sense says that a device with these specs would cost more without the ads.
Because companies always simply price their goods at cost plus a small profit and not what the market will bear, or trying to undercut the competition. The Free Market is perfect in every way. We all love the Free Market.
Google did not kill Usenet; AOL killed Usenet in 1993, when they started sending millions of rude and uneducated users to Usenet without bothering to explain basic Usenet conventions or etiquette.
AOL users were idiots but not bulk spammers and it was easy to filter them out, and the other ISPs weren't about to let AOL replace their own services. But they were happy to give it all to Google and so we were fucked.
The fact remains that after Google Groups" appeared usenet was drowned in shit.
As I remember, UseNet spam was a huge problem before Google Groups came along. UseNet had a way to delete spam from the entire network, but they had a rule against using content-based filters to decide which messages were spam.
There was no "rule" at all.
Almost all ISPs had usenet servers and filtered spam. The ones that didn't were blacklisted by the others. Until Google came along. Then many ISPs stopped providing usenet feeds and told their users to use Google. And Google didn't filter spam. It enabled spammers to use throwaway accounts. Didn't matter that the account was deleted later, they could get a new one immediately and keep going. Some premium hosts blocked Google posts, but that also blocked many legitimate posters who didn't want to pay form a usenet feed.
Anyway, where before you could filter out all the crap from Russia, China, India, etc, now the biggest usenet host of all in the world was generating the most spam. Those cunts killed usenet. .
You want to know how to do something elegantly, sensibly, or just at all. In the 90s, this meant typing in your search string and unless you were looking for something completely outlandish, altavista usually offered you some university page where that problem was discussed by some students.
Or you used Dejavu usenet search and found the technical group that either already had the answer, or was the right place to ask it.
Then Google bought Dejavu, and mixed its own "Googlegroups" forums in with it inextricably, and allowed any Google user to send unlimited amounts of spam to usenet. So every single fucking newsgroup was full of ads for knockoff Chinese sports shoes, Rolex, pyramid scams, porn, etc, etc. The signal to noise ratio became so bad that almost everyone abandoned usenet. Seemed to be Google's idea, after all they can very effectively filter spam from GMail, but did absolutely nothing to prevent spam -- mostly from their own users -- going into usenet. A wonderful resource was destroyed so Google could try to promote their own forums, which never took off, so we don't even have that as a alternative. Now you have to search and find the right web forum. And when that forum goes offline, all its accumulated knowledge just disappears.
"no transcript for this video since we only have permission to embed it, not to alter or add to it."
Bollocks.You don't need "permission" to describe something in a news story. If they want to give you a hard time, tell them to fuck off and promote their video somewhere else.
the UK government protects its local artists/authors by not allowing imports unless registered under UK copyrights.
What? What?
Bullshit.
I've exported plenty of books to the UK, (when I worked for a publisher) never heard of this requirement.
Maybe you're thinking of North Korea or wherever it is you live, because "copyright registration" is not a requirement" to sell books in any civilised country.
However, I'm sure publishers do want to restrict the marketing regions. They will have contractual arrangement with Amazon to do so. But that's nothing to do with either copyright or the UK government.
When did it become correct to use the word "thin" to mean "thick"?
If that's right, then why isn't it "7.5 ounces light"?
Why mix imperial and metric units in the same sentence?
Please note: these are rhetorical questions, feel free to respond, but try not to imply I'm too dumb to work out the answer in all cases is "marketing".
Takedowns have a legitimate purpose. As an extreme example, what if it's child porn? What if it's a bootleg of your favorite movie that just came out on DVD?
The first case is nothing about copyright at all. It shouldn't be the same mechanism. Only a complete idiot would even try to put child porn on the open Internet now. It'd be like walking into an airport with a bomb vest. To suggest that it's somehow in the same category as streaming a Hollywood movie is really stupid and inflammatory, though I'm sure politicians and media companies would do so without blinking.
In any case, both cases would clearly be criminal acts so they should not be "taken down" by a bot but the relevant agency (probably FBI) should track down the source and prosecute, and blocking it might make that harder.
As I recall, they didn't just nuke everything as the nuke missiles were easy to identify and shoot apart.
Which didn't make any sense. We even saw a warhead on BSG, it fitted in a suitcase and destroyed a large ship, and damaged several others. (We can make smaller ones now, in the real world.) So you only need one to get through. Launch three and game over.
There is a reason we haven't had a big war since 1945. Nothing can stop a nuke, and if both sides have them, as WOPR deduced, both sides will be destroyed.
If you engaged at millions of miles, you would have time to maneuver and/or jump out of the way of incoming missiles. If guided missiles, as you suggested, you would have defenses set up a great distance away from your ship which would intercept the missiles.
A missile should be much faster and more manouevrable than a manned craft. If it can't get through the defences, what hope does a manned craft have?
Engaging at close range is the only way to insure you are hitting your target
Yes, if you're throwing rocks. Not if you have missiles with the capabilities we had in the 1960s.
We all know that the real reason was to make it more dramatic. They wanted an excuse for hot dog piloting and heroics. There really isn't any role for a "fighter" in a space battle given any halfway consistent technology. If you have had spaceships for thousands of years, you must have missiles with automatic guidance and targeting systems that are much faster, cheaper, and more accurate than humans. Also they can send the missiles at tens of Gs that would turn a pilot into jam.
Slashdot Mirror
ETA there would be indefinite but quite possibly less than a decade. Still, imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!
Like my 5 year old Motorola C168i?
Americans will ask "So, how do the Darwinists explain this? This proves that evolution is just a theory", and "Born in Africa? Where is its long-form birth certificate?"
" Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write ... ",
Sounds good, but you can do anything within the bounds of the law. Here's an equivalent sentence I just made up...
And what country on this planet has completely unrestricted "free speech"? None.
Let me guess: You're American?
Let me demonstrate my Australian free speech: Fuck off.
hence we should change the laws to allow interventions earlier.
So, you're talking about changing the law. I was talking about what the law actually is now.
As far as I know ".azw" files are in MOBI format. Encrypted ones can only be read by Amazon software with the password. Probably generic MOBI readers can read unencrypted ones, but may need to be persuaded to try if it has a different extension.
Also Amazon has recently updated their format, adding some features, so older MOBI readers might not read them properly, though they should still display the text, if not formatting such as tables correctly.
Is a DRM-free .azw file the same as a .mobi file or will it only work on a Kindle?
I think you can just rename it to .mobi and mobi readers can then read it.
"I have had a handful of requests that the Arch Linux Handbook be made available for the Kindle platform. It seemed like an odd request, given that the latest version of the Beginnersâ(TM) Guide is already freely available in electronic format online. However, I had some free time this week and tried the conversion. It wasnâ(TM)t difficult and I uploaded a version of the Handbook to the Kindle app store" This seems entirely reasonable, and absolutely nothing like the spamming you describe.
It is exactly the same as many "Kindle spammers" do. Copy slabs of text from a wiki, Project Gutenberg, wherever, convert to Kindle format (quick and dirty), upload to Amazon, write a description that entices the reader to buy it (the only creative part of the process), sell for 99 cents.
Amazon seems to search for the text online and found it. Quite likely actually a bunch of real spammers had already tried to upload exactly the same text earlier and been blocked.
because Apple, despite massively misbehaving, hasn't succeeded yet in killing off its competition.
A company can dominate an industry and "kill off" competition quite legally. It's only when they cross the line and abuse their position that "intervention" is warranted.
--30--
But Microsoft only has a monopoly on desktops. They hold less than 1% marketshare of mobiles. On the other hand, Apple does have a majority marketshare of mobiles (when counting ipod touches, iphones, and ipads -- as they are mobile, run apps, and browse the web)
MS Windows doesn't run on mobiles (a different OS with a similar name might.)
Apple sells hardware, including the OS.
They're not selling the OS to OEMs and (effectively) preventing other software vendors from entering the market, as Microsoft has been doing for the last 30 years.
If Apple prevented retailers or phone companies from selling other mobile devices, they could be prosecuted for abuse of their monopoly position in that market.
Apple clearly engages in anti-competitive and monopolistic practices at least as bad as anything Microsoft has ever done.
"Clearly?
Funny how none of the government regulators can see this then.
Yeah, they do a lot of not nice stuff, but they're not a monopoly, so different rules apply.
So wouldn't the ipad be effected
No, because Apple doesn't have an effective monopoly of tablet PCs.
Apple's iOS blocks people from changing default browser off Safari, But MS gets sued
Every fucking time this issue is mentioned someone says this. And every fucking time the answer is still "By the legal definition, Microsoft is a monopoly; Apple isn't".
Apple has a few percent of the PC market. And virtually everyone else who sells PCs bundles Microsoft Windows. MS prevents other software makers from getting a foothold into selling to OEMs by anti-competitive actions like this.
No, common sense says that a device with these specs would cost more without the ads.
Because companies always simply price their goods at cost plus a small profit and not what the market will bear, or trying to undercut the competition. The Free Market is perfect in every way. We all love the Free Market.
Google did not kill Usenet; AOL killed Usenet in 1993, when they started sending millions of rude and uneducated users to Usenet without bothering to explain basic Usenet conventions or etiquette.
AOL users were idiots but not bulk spammers and it was easy to filter them out, and the other ISPs weren't about to let AOL replace their own services. But they were happy to give it all to Google and so we were fucked.
The fact remains that after Google Groups" appeared usenet was drowned in shit.
There was no "rule" at all.
Almost all ISPs had usenet servers and filtered spam. The ones that didn't were blacklisted by the others. Until Google came along. Then many ISPs stopped providing usenet feeds and told their users to use Google. And Google didn't filter spam. It enabled spammers to use throwaway accounts. Didn't matter that the account was deleted later, they could get a new one immediately and keep going. Some premium hosts blocked Google posts, but that also blocked many legitimate posters who didn't want to pay form a usenet feed.
Anyway, where before you could filter out all the crap from Russia, China, India, etc, now the biggest usenet host of all in the world was generating the most spam. Those cunts killed usenet. .
You want to know how to do something elegantly, sensibly, or just at all. In the 90s, this meant typing in your search string and unless you were looking for something completely outlandish, altavista usually offered you some university page where that problem was discussed by some students.
Or you used Dejavu usenet search and found the technical group that either already had the answer, or was the right place to ask it.
Then Google bought Dejavu, and mixed its own "Googlegroups" forums in with it inextricably, and allowed any Google user to send unlimited amounts of spam to usenet. So every single fucking newsgroup was full of ads for knockoff Chinese sports shoes, Rolex, pyramid scams, porn, etc, etc. The signal to noise ratio became so bad that almost everyone abandoned usenet. Seemed to be Google's idea, after all they can very effectively filter spam from GMail, but did absolutely nothing to prevent spam -- mostly from their own users -- going into usenet. A wonderful resource was destroyed so Google could try to promote their own forums, which never took off, so we don't even have that as a alternative. Now you have to search and find the right web forum. And when that forum goes offline, all its accumulated knowledge just disappears.
Except for syphilis (from South America) that had a big impact on Europeans.
Bollocks.You don't need "permission" to describe something in a news story. If they want to give you a hard time, tell them to fuck off and promote their video somewhere else.
the UK government protects its local artists/authors by not allowing imports unless registered under UK copyrights.
What? What?
Bullshit.
I've exported plenty of books to the UK, (when I worked for a publisher) never heard of this requirement.
Maybe you're thinking of North Korea or wherever it is you live, because "copyright registration" is not a requirement" to sell books in any civilised country.
However, I'm sure publishers do want to restrict the marketing regions. They will have contractual arrangement with Amazon to do so. But that's nothing to do with either copyright or the UK government.
The device weighs 7.5 ounces and is 9.1mm thin
When did it become correct to use the word "thin" to mean "thick"?
If that's right, then why isn't it "7.5 ounces light"?
Why mix imperial and metric units in the same sentence?
Please note: these are rhetorical questions, feel free to respond, but try not to imply I'm too dumb to work out the answer in all cases is "marketing".
Takedowns have a legitimate purpose. As an extreme example, what if it's child porn? What if it's a bootleg of your favorite movie that just came out on DVD?
The first case is nothing about copyright at all. It shouldn't be the same mechanism. Only a complete idiot would even try to put child porn on the open Internet now. It'd be like walking into an airport with a bomb vest. To suggest that it's somehow in the same category as streaming a Hollywood movie is really stupid and inflammatory, though I'm sure politicians and media companies would do so without blinking.
In any case, both cases would clearly be criminal acts so they should not be "taken down" by a bot but the relevant agency (probably FBI) should track down the source and prosecute, and blocking it might make that harder.
Take a purely speculative story and give it a headline stating something likely to excite your readership as a simple fact. result page hits.
As I recall, they didn't just nuke everything as the nuke missiles were easy to identify and shoot apart.
Which didn't make any sense. We even saw a warhead on BSG, it fitted in a suitcase and destroyed a large ship, and damaged several others. (We can make smaller ones now, in the real world.) So you only need one to get through. Launch three and game over.
There is a reason we haven't had a big war since 1945. Nothing can stop a nuke, and if both sides have them, as WOPR deduced, both sides will be destroyed.
If you engaged at millions of miles, you would have time to maneuver and/or jump out of the way of incoming missiles. If guided missiles, as you suggested, you would have defenses set up a great distance away from your ship which would intercept the missiles.
A missile should be much faster and more manouevrable than a manned craft. If it can't get through the defences, what hope does a manned craft have?
Engaging at close range is the only way to insure you are hitting your target
Yes, if you're throwing rocks. Not if you have missiles with the capabilities we had in the 1960s.
We all know that the real reason was to make it more dramatic. They wanted an excuse for hot dog piloting and heroics. There really isn't any role for a "fighter" in a space battle given any halfway consistent technology. If you have had spaceships for thousands of years, you must have missiles with automatic guidance and targeting systems that are much faster, cheaper, and more accurate than humans. Also they can send the missiles at tens of Gs that would turn a pilot into jam.