MAN...I wish I had some mod points left, I'd mod you up.
Mention ANYTHING about ANYONE NOT wanting to be subjected to porn or their children exposed to it and Slashdotters get their panties in a wad. You'd think they were being forcibly dragged down to the Jordan to get baptized!
1. It's NOT a mandate, it's a choice (I find it interesting that people who would argue for choices in other venues, don't want people to have one in this.)
2. It's NOT about blocking Michelangelo's David or Venus De Milo. Don't be stupid. It's about just mistyping a URL and suddenly having dozens of graphic and animated popups that won't close, not to mention spyware loaded in the cache so that the next time you start up your computer your new "favorite" site pops up too. Or trying to search on a word that comes up as a double-entandre and have all kinds of undesirable suggestions mixed in.
3. It's not workable. Well if it isn't, what do you care? It would be a lot easier if porn sites were restricted to using a specific set of domains, but gee--that would make it easy for people to block them. And just like with cigarettes, while they say the don't want under age viewers they make it damn easy for the kiddies to be confronted with all sorts of images. And like with cigarettes, the experimental kids of today are tomorrow's customers!
4. Yes we can all cite examples of otherwise acceptable forums being closed, like on Yahoo! (Although I wonder how many aren't just urban legends.) But that was not a filter, that was the idiots at Yahoo! who finally had to close down their news story commentary because they couldn't keep up with the racial and other slurs by the trolls. I find it interesting that Google and Yahoo! are fighting this. I presume it's because they're afraid they'll be blocked. (And Google itself has a pretty good filtering system that blocks violent or sexual items.)
I don't care if you want to look at porn. Look at all the porn you want. But let others decide how they want to view the web--it's not affecting you.
This case notwithstanding, am I the only one who has a problem with judges who throw out jury verdicts? I've been a jurist on a couple of cases, one civil and one criminal. Nobody in there was stupid or took their duty lightly. I take offense that when something like this comes up, the jury is labeled as being "stupid". A lot of times we don't hear evidence that everyone else reading the paper does, because it's not allowed. That's not our fault--blame the system. Or the opposite, we hear things that the paper isn't going to include if it doesn't fit their slant on the case.
If the judge thought the lawyers were going beyond their scope, why didn't he: A) Throw the case out; or B) Make his ruling before the jury went to deliberate?
It seems to me these judges want the jury to do the dirty work and when they don't rule the way the judge would, the judge just throws it out and rules the way he wants. It insults the jury (and you wonder why people don't want to serve) and wastes their time. No better example could be seen in the mauling case of Diane Whipple. Although the jury found neighbor and lawyer Marjorie Knoller guilty (IMO, rightfully so) of 2nd degree murder, the judge struck it down to involuntary manslaughter which meant 4 years instead of a possible 15 years--she served only 2 before being paroled. (The jury verdict in this case may seem extreme, but if you saw the case or read it at the link above, you'll see why the jury reached that verdict.) Now--if that judge thought that second degree murder sentence was too harsh or there was not enough evidence to convict on that, he could have removed it from the choices the jury had before they went to deliberate. But, once again, we had a judge who hoped the jury would do his dirty work for him.
And regarding people who don't want to serve on trials: Personally, if I was a defendant I sure would NOT want people on the jury who REALLY don't want to be there.
Because it would be oh so horrible and the baby jesus would cry if they kissed or god forbid, had sex? I'm sorry to tell you this but your arbitrary moral standards don't apply to everyone.
Also, my parents rarely set boundaries for me as a kid, instead they told me why it was a bad idea to do whatever it was I wanted to do, after the age of 13 or so they would just tell me I could do whatever I wanted but if I did something they had taught me not to do then I was on my own, but maybe raising your children to take responsibility isn't very popular these days?
And how many times have you been arrested? Just curious. It sounds to me like your parents are the ones that abdicated their responsibility. Until you are 18 in most states, they are still legally responsible for your behavior whether they feel that way or not.
My example you immediately took out of context was on how children WANT some boundaries. If her parents didn't care what she did, would she feel comfortable telling the boy "no" even if she didn't want to make out, have sex, whatever? A lot of girls that age don't have the self-esteem and will go along with things they wouldn't otherwise because they're afraid of losing the boyfriend. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them, if he pressures you, he's not worth it. They're IN LOVE. But (and I'm talking about today's maturity level), a 16 year-old is NOT emotionally mature enough to handle an adult relationship and it's consequences, whether they break up, she gets pregnant, gets an STD, etc. Most of these girls are not even mature enough to use birth control consistently. And if they're a minor--guess what--you the parent ARE responsible.
But my point is, it makes a child's life easier if they have parents they can fall back on. It's much easier for a kid to complain that their parents are soooo strict and they won't let them do X than for them to stand up to their friends.
Yes, you want children to take on *age appropriate* responsibility. But you've got to have some boundaries and consequences--that's how they learn responsibility. If there are no consequences then the boundaries are useless. And you can't expect a child to reason like an adult. They have to learn. Babies are all about me and mine. You have to teach them that everything doesn't belong to them and they are not the center of the universe. As they grow, you have to teach them to respect others and the rules to get along in society. To not do so is to end up with a selfish, anti-social adult.
Personally, I started to wonder if this whole story was a bunch of made up crap. What is a seven year old going to do--get a MySpace page? And what did her brother do that made the parents slap on the restricted Internet. Is she just hearing him grousing about it and so she immediately think it's something worse than what it is--that she won't be able to play her my pretty pony game without mom's okay?
And after they're 18, you don't get regular phone calls or visits, nor talks about their lives. You'll have denied them privacy for as long as it was legally possible for you to force that upon them, and the pendulum will swing back in full force, reacting to your actions with equal force in the opposite direction.
Maybe...until they have their own kids. But mostly that's crap. Children expect boundries...and they will keep pushing you until you establish some. Because, when there's no barriers, there's also nothing protecting you either. They may grouse at the time, but they will respect reasonable restrictions.
Boundries are the foundation that allows the now 16 year-old daughter to tell her boyfriend, "We can go in my room, but mom/dad will freak if I close the door."
I've got to wonder what this precocious 7 year-old wants to look at or do that she thinks is going to be foiled by her parents!
Apple does not have the resources that Microsoft does, at least in the way of a development team.
Yes, but OTOH, Apple does not have to deal with the miriad of hardware configurations that Microsoft does. Apple controls what hardware is out there to run their OS on. (And I could just hear the howls if MS annouced they were only going permit their OS on MS manufactured desktops and laptops that cost 2-3x more than the competition.)
Helecopter Pilot: Here he comes...they're tossing down the stop sticks...DIRECT HIT! No...wait...oh--that car he stole comes with self-mending tires; they'll have to find another way to take him out....
That being said, we are sexualizing our children at an alarming rate. What bothers me more than titillating (pun intended) headlines is when we, as a society, think it's okay, even cute, to let our daughters dress up like the little slut girl bands they admire. And I'm not sure why any parent would think it's okay to let their pre-teen (or teen) wear a shirt or pants that say things like "juicy" on them. Or sending babies out in beauty pageants made up like little adults. What message are we sending to both our children and to those who prey on children? Children are much more aware of things than they used to be. No wonder, we're throwing it in their face in every area of society and then saying, "Ignore this until you get older." Yes the fifth-grader might not be interested in the "housewife" magazines. But he will be sure to notice the anime girl on the latest gaming magazine that looks like she walked out of Penthouse.
That's pretty much what Microsoft does in its EULA, isn't it? IOW, it doesn't matter what damage this OS causes your files, we're not responsible. Don't be surprised if the ISP comes out with similar language.
How about things like balancing a checkbook, coming up with a household budget, figuring out how long it's going to take to pay off $10,000 credit card at 29% interest, why they shouldn't take out a private student loan for $45,000 if they're planning to be, say, a social worker, how much they will have for retirement if they start putting in $50 a month instead of wasting it at the bar or eating out.
Those, common sense scenarios seem to be totally missing in any form of education these days. We kick them out to the wolves and wonder why 5 years later they need to file for bankruptcy.
Except they were supposed to be "tech-oriented questions" (their idea, not mine!) What does legalizing pot have to do with that? (Or question 2 for that matter.) There are a lot of more relavent questions that could have been asked. Such as his position on stem cell research, global warming, Kayoto treaty, H1B workers, etc. They wonder why no one is answering the qustions? Personally, had I been a candidate and gotten this set of questions, I wouldn't have bother to answer them either!
My question was more of a spoof of the famous "boxers of briefs" question some idiot asked Clinton when he ran for office. But it would have been interesting if any candidate actually knows what Linux IS. Or hell, that he knows what a computer is. You certainly are not going to get a lot of support for the tech community if you elect some guy who, for example, doesn't know how to answer an email.
Can we then count on these ISPs proactively blocking all the ads since I don't want them contributing to my bandwidth usage? Oh and don't charge me for any spam that gets through either.
Didn't think so.
If it wasn't for the multimedia aspect of the web, which they helped to perpetuate, most would have never HAD to upgrade to the higher priced cable/broadband services. (Have you tried surfing the net with 56K dial-up...it's a nightmare! Now they want to get greedy and charge per bandwidth usage. They claim, "As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network." So?
First of all, how many of those are small-medium businesses, coffee bars and the like that are already paying through the nose for their business service? It's not like poor Joe Schmo can't join because all the bandwidth is used up! Don't fall into the trap--they just want to create a class of 'broadband enviers' to get users screaming for parity. But parity or "fairness" always ends up meaning EVERYONE's rate goes up. Who's to know if you're actually using as much bandwidth as they claim? It will be an easy way to raise rates...they'll just claim you're using more and so they need to upgrade your service.
Yes, I noticed that too--I actually saw the video the other day on one of those video shows on TV. She specfically went for the man, distinguishing him from the elephant, which shows a high intellegence. Also, the absolute rage--again, obvious the tiger is not hungry or hunting for food. I wondered who and how long ago they had found the cubs and if she could smell them on the humans.
I thought it would have been smarter to put the cubs in a cage where she could find them (but they were safe) and then just dart her when she came into the area.
The asian elephant in this is about 12' tall. Back story: A tiger escaped from a preserve in India (Kaziranga National Park) and had killed a couple of farm animals. She was training her cubs to hunt. Rangers had found the cubs and took them (which I find incredibly stupid because now she's stressed and looking for them). Riding elephants, they found the female in the brush and tried to tranquilize her, but the dart missed. What happened next should give you and idea what the jerks in the SF zoo saw.
The elephant trainer survived, but was badly wounded.
What if a child with a limp walks by the tiger enclosure? Or someone with a bandaged wound? Or a stray dog gets into the zoo and barks at the tiger?
What if these jerks had been teasing the tiger on a day when the zoo was full of people instead of a holiday when there was almost no one present?
And actually there WAS a case of a stray dog being attacked by a tiger in Tennessee. However that was because the dog (also not big on brains) swam across the moat. Apparently he didn't read the "objects are larger than they appear" sign. Fortunately for the dog, the tiger was young and inexperienced at hunting and keepers were able to distract it and get the dog out. The dog still required surgery for the puncture wounds it received.
I seriously doubt the tiger would have breeched the pen except that it was enraged. This was no prey drive in action--the tiger was not hunting for food (or a limping child). It was just very, VERY pissed off. That doesn't mean the zoo is not responsible, but I would put responsibility at 50-50 between the zoo and the jerks. If one or the other had not been doing the wrong thing, this attack wouldn't have occurred.
When I bought my laptop last summer, I was dreading having to deal with Vista. To the point I was researching how to wipe Vista and install XP. (What I found is the newer hard drives do not have driver on XP natively so XP might not recognize the drive and so you have to load those first....) Anyway, I decided to try Vista first to see if it was really worth going through a major headache of wiping the drive and starting over.
I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised...mostly. I don't know if it was the manufacturer (HP) doing a great install configuration or the version (Home Premium) or the fact it was built for Vista vs. just slapping an upgrade on a current computer, but I've had very few problems. Only thing I've done was upgrade the memory from 1 to 2 GB. I also turned off UAC which I found beyond annoying. The computer is used mostly at home and behind a firewall--not to mention that UAC can be foiled--and chances are most people are going to automatically approve something when they're installing a program (which is usually when a person gets a virus), so the UAC becomes useless.
If you're into voice recognition, the voice recognition that comes with Vista works surprisingly well--better than Dragon Naturally Speaking and with less training. (Just be sure and have a good microphone.) However you won't be able to use it with Open Office--you'll have to stick with MS Office, notepad, etc. Also I'm able to play even ancient DOS games with DOSBox and I've found very few programs I've had a problem running. Networking with my wireless router was a breeze.
Vista IS a Mac rip-off with eye candy--stick a few new screensavers and Yahoo! Widgets on your XP and you're 2/3s there. The most annoying thing is once again having to FIND where they hid the settings again--almost none of it is helpful or makes things smoother--especially if you want to just view ALL the programs. It's not as great as the fan boys praise, but it's not as horrible as the nay Sayers make out either. Personally I wouldn't upgrade from XP as long as possible, but if you're getting a computer with it installed, you might find it isn't as bad as you think.
But they're not going after small potatoes ClamAV for violating their patent. They're going after bigger potatoes, someone using a free service. This would be like if your computer uses an operating system, you've got to pay a fee to Microsoft no matter which OS you use--oh wait!
Seriously, it seems to me that this patent is another one of those overreaching ones. It's coming upon obvious technology, not created by itself and rushing to get a patent so that everyone who uses this technology to fight viruses has to pay a fee.
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Can we sue them for killing endangered species just so they can continue tribal traditions?
No, I guess that's not politically correct.
MAN...I wish I had some mod points left, I'd mod you up.
Mention ANYTHING about ANYONE NOT wanting to be subjected to porn or their children exposed to it and Slashdotters get their panties in a wad. You'd think they were being forcibly dragged down to the Jordan to get baptized!
1. It's NOT a mandate, it's a choice (I find it interesting that people who would argue for choices in other venues, don't want people to have one in this.)
2. It's NOT about blocking Michelangelo's David or Venus De Milo. Don't be stupid. It's about just mistyping a URL and suddenly having dozens of graphic and animated popups that won't close, not to mention spyware loaded in the cache so that the next time you start up your computer your new "favorite" site pops up too. Or trying to search on a word that comes up as a double-entandre and have all kinds of undesirable suggestions mixed in.
3. It's not workable. Well if it isn't, what do you care? It would be a lot easier if porn sites were restricted to using a specific set of domains, but gee--that would make it easy for people to block them. And just like with cigarettes, while they say the don't want under age viewers they make it damn easy for the kiddies to be confronted with all sorts of images. And like with cigarettes, the experimental kids of today are tomorrow's customers!
4. Yes we can all cite examples of otherwise acceptable forums being closed, like on Yahoo! (Although I wonder how many aren't just urban legends.) But that was not a filter, that was the idiots at Yahoo! who finally had to close down their news story commentary because they couldn't keep up with the racial and other slurs by the trolls. I find it interesting that Google and Yahoo! are fighting this. I presume it's because they're afraid they'll be blocked. (And Google itself has a pretty good filtering system that blocks violent or sexual items.)
I don't care if you want to look at porn. Look at all the porn you want. But let others decide how they want to view the web--it's not affecting you.
This case notwithstanding, am I the only one who has a problem with judges who throw out jury verdicts? I've been a jurist on a couple of cases, one civil and one criminal. Nobody in there was stupid or took their duty lightly. I take offense that when something like this comes up, the jury is labeled as being "stupid". A lot of times we don't hear evidence that everyone else reading the paper does, because it's not allowed. That's not our fault--blame the system. Or the opposite, we hear things that the paper isn't going to include if it doesn't fit their slant on the case.
If the judge thought the lawyers were going beyond their scope, why didn't he: A) Throw the case out; or B) Make his ruling before the jury went to deliberate?
It seems to me these judges want the jury to do the dirty work and when they don't rule the way the judge would, the judge just throws it out and rules the way he wants. It insults the jury (and you wonder why people don't want to serve) and wastes their time. No better example could be seen in the mauling case of Diane Whipple. Although the jury found neighbor and lawyer Marjorie Knoller guilty (IMO, rightfully so) of 2nd degree murder, the judge struck it down to involuntary manslaughter which meant 4 years instead of a possible 15 years--she served only 2 before being paroled. (The jury verdict in this case may seem extreme, but if you saw the case or read it at the link above, you'll see why the jury reached that verdict.) Now--if that judge thought that second degree murder sentence was too harsh or there was not enough evidence to convict on that, he could have removed it from the choices the jury had before they went to deliberate. But, once again, we had a judge who hoped the jury would do his dirty work for him.
And regarding people who don't want to serve on trials: Personally, if I was a defendant I sure would NOT want people on the jury who REALLY don't want to be there.
Because it would be oh so horrible and the baby jesus would cry if they kissed or god forbid, had sex? I'm sorry to tell you this but your arbitrary moral standards don't apply to everyone.
Also, my parents rarely set boundaries for me as a kid, instead they told me why it was a bad idea to do whatever it was I wanted to do, after the age of 13 or so they would just tell me I could do whatever I wanted but if I did something they had taught me not to do then I was on my own, but maybe raising your children to take responsibility isn't very popular these days?
And how many times have you been arrested? Just curious. It sounds to me like your parents are the ones that abdicated their responsibility. Until you are 18 in most states, they are still legally responsible for your behavior whether they feel that way or not.
My example you immediately took out of context was on how children WANT some boundaries. If her parents didn't care what she did, would she feel comfortable telling the boy "no" even if she didn't want to make out, have sex, whatever? A lot of girls that age don't have the self-esteem and will go along with things they wouldn't otherwise because they're afraid of losing the boyfriend. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them, if he pressures you, he's not worth it. They're IN LOVE. But (and I'm talking about today's maturity level), a 16 year-old is NOT emotionally mature enough to handle an adult relationship and it's consequences, whether they break up, she gets pregnant, gets an STD, etc. Most of these girls are not even mature enough to use birth control consistently. And if they're a minor--guess what--you the parent ARE responsible.
But my point is, it makes a child's life easier if they have parents they can fall back on. It's much easier for a kid to complain that their parents are soooo strict and they won't let them do X than for them to stand up to their friends.
Yes, you want children to take on *age appropriate* responsibility. But you've got to have some boundaries and consequences--that's how they learn responsibility. If there are no consequences then the boundaries are useless. And you can't expect a child to reason like an adult. They have to learn. Babies are all about me and mine. You have to teach them that everything doesn't belong to them and they are not the center of the universe. As they grow, you have to teach them to respect others and the rules to get along in society. To not do so is to end up with a selfish, anti-social adult.
Personally, I started to wonder if this whole story was a bunch of made up crap. What is a seven year old going to do--get a MySpace page? And what did her brother do that made the parents slap on the restricted Internet. Is she just hearing him grousing about it and so she immediately think it's something worse than what it is--that she won't be able to play her my pretty pony game without mom's okay?
And after they're 18, you don't get regular phone calls or visits, nor talks about their lives. You'll have denied them privacy for as long as it was legally possible for you to force that upon them, and the pendulum will swing back in full force, reacting to your actions with equal force in the opposite direction.
Maybe...until they have their own kids. But mostly that's crap. Children expect boundries...and they will keep pushing you until you establish some. Because, when there's no barriers, there's also nothing protecting you either. They may grouse at the time, but they will respect reasonable restrictions.
Boundries are the foundation that allows the now 16 year-old daughter to tell her boyfriend, "We can go in my room, but mom/dad will freak if I close the door."
I've got to wonder what this precocious 7 year-old wants to look at or do that she thinks is going to be foiled by her parents!
Apple does not have the resources that Microsoft does, at least in the way of a development team.
Yes, but OTOH, Apple does not have to deal with the miriad of hardware configurations that Microsoft does. Apple controls what hardware is out there to run their OS on. (And I could just hear the howls if MS annouced they were only going permit their OS on MS manufactured desktops and laptops that cost 2-3x more than the competition.)
Then we'd all have Linux ;-)
I'm still trying to figure if you're being sarcastic.
You're going through an airport serving one of the world's largest cities AT Christmas time, and you're complaining about 10 minutes wait??!
I guess everything is relative--you should try it over here, mate.
I figure the UK has gotten pretty good with security--they had many years of practice dealing with the IRA.
Helecopter Pilot: Here he comes...they're tossing down the stop sticks...DIRECT HIT! No...wait...oh--that car he stole comes with self-mending tires; they'll have to find another way to take him out....
Well she'd take out her chakram and....
Oops, my bad, I thought it said, "What would XENA do?"
Just remember this story when you next hear one of the mega-rich complaining that we don't NEED those tax breaks....
That being said, we are sexualizing our children at an alarming rate. What bothers me more than titillating (pun intended) headlines is when we, as a society, think it's okay, even cute, to let our daughters dress up like the little slut girl bands they admire. And I'm not sure why any parent would think it's okay to let their pre-teen (or teen) wear a shirt or pants that say things like "juicy" on them. Or sending babies out in beauty pageants made up like little adults. What message are we sending to both our children and to those who prey on children? Children are much more aware of things than they used to be. No wonder, we're throwing it in their face in every area of society and then saying, "Ignore this until you get older." Yes the fifth-grader might not be interested in the "housewife" magazines. But he will be sure to notice the anime girl on the latest gaming magazine that looks like she walked out of Penthouse.
To be fair it's apparently NOT hurting the kiddies that much. They're using the sound as a cell phone ring tone their parents/teachers can't hear!
That's pretty much what Microsoft does in its EULA, isn't it? IOW, it doesn't matter what damage this OS causes your files, we're not responsible. Don't be surprised if the ISP comes out with similar language.
How about things like balancing a checkbook, coming up with a household budget, figuring out how long it's going to take to pay off $10,000 credit card at 29% interest, why they shouldn't take out a private student loan for $45,000 if they're planning to be, say, a social worker, how much they will have for retirement if they start putting in $50 a month instead of wasting it at the bar or eating out.
Those, common sense scenarios seem to be totally missing in any form of education these days. We kick them out to the wolves and wonder why 5 years later they need to file for bankruptcy.
As the Patriot Act making me jump through hoops to buy Claritin-D is going to stop meth cookers.
Except they were supposed to be "tech-oriented questions" (their idea, not mine!) What does legalizing pot have to do with that? (Or question 2 for that matter.) There are a lot of more relavent questions that could have been asked. Such as his position on stem cell research, global warming, Kayoto treaty, H1B workers, etc. They wonder why no one is answering the qustions? Personally, had I been a candidate and gotten this set of questions, I wouldn't have bother to answer them either!
My question was more of a spoof of the famous "boxers of briefs" question some idiot asked Clinton when he ran for office. But it would have been interesting if any candidate actually knows what Linux IS. Or hell, that he knows what a computer is. You certainly are not going to get a lot of support for the tech community if you elect some guy who, for example, doesn't know how to answer an email.
How is question 3 a "tech-oriented question"?
Most of these questions were extremely slanted to the answer desired instead of being open-ended.
And why not a question like: Windows, Apple or Linux and why?
It would make for an interesting remake of "Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice."
Can we then count on these ISPs proactively blocking all the ads since I don't want them contributing to my bandwidth usage? Oh and don't charge me for any spam that gets through either.
Didn't think so.
If it wasn't for the multimedia aspect of the web, which they helped to perpetuate, most would have never HAD to upgrade to the higher priced cable/broadband services. (Have you tried surfing the net with 56K dial-up...it's a nightmare! Now they want to get greedy and charge per bandwidth usage. They claim, "As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network." So?
First of all, how many of those are small-medium businesses, coffee bars and the like that are already paying through the nose for their business service? It's not like poor Joe Schmo can't join because all the bandwidth is used up! Don't fall into the trap--they just want to create a class of 'broadband enviers' to get users screaming for parity. But parity or "fairness" always ends up meaning EVERYONE's rate goes up. Who's to know if you're actually using as much bandwidth as they claim? It will be an easy way to raise rates...they'll just claim you're using more and so they need to upgrade your service.
Yes, I noticed that too--I actually saw the video the other day on one of those video shows on TV. She specfically went for the man, distinguishing him from the elephant, which shows a high intellegence. Also, the absolute rage--again, obvious the tiger is not hungry or hunting for food. I wondered who and how long ago they had found the cubs and if she could smell them on the humans.
I thought it would have been smarter to put the cubs in a cage where she could find them (but they were safe) and then just dart her when she came into the area.
The asian elephant in this is about 12' tall. Back story: A tiger escaped from a preserve in India (Kaziranga National Park) and had killed a couple of farm animals. She was training her cubs to hunt. Rangers had found the cubs and took them (which I find incredibly stupid because now she's stressed and looking for them). Riding elephants, they found the female in the brush and tried to tranquilize her, but the dart missed. What happened next should give you and idea what the jerks in the SF zoo saw.
The elephant trainer survived, but was badly wounded.
What if a child with a limp walks by the tiger enclosure? Or someone with a bandaged wound? Or a stray dog gets into the zoo and barks at the tiger?
What if these jerks had been teasing the tiger on a day when the zoo was full of people instead of a holiday when there was almost no one present?
And actually there WAS a case of a stray dog being attacked by a tiger in Tennessee. However that was because the dog (also not big on brains) swam across the moat. Apparently he didn't read the "objects are larger than they appear" sign. Fortunately for the dog, the tiger was young and inexperienced at hunting and keepers were able to distract it and get the dog out. The dog still required surgery for the puncture wounds it received.
I seriously doubt the tiger would have breeched the pen except that it was enraged. This was no prey drive in action--the tiger was not hunting for food (or a limping child). It was just very, VERY pissed off. That doesn't mean the zoo is not responsible, but I would put responsibility at 50-50 between the zoo and the jerks. If one or the other had not been doing the wrong thing, this attack wouldn't have occurred.
When I bought my laptop last summer, I was dreading having to deal with Vista. To the point I was researching how to wipe Vista and install XP. (What I found is the newer hard drives do not have driver on XP natively so XP might not recognize the drive and so you have to load those first....) Anyway, I decided to try Vista first to see if it was really worth going through a major headache of wiping the drive and starting over.
I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised...mostly. I don't know if it was the manufacturer (HP) doing a great install configuration or the version (Home Premium) or the fact it was built for Vista vs. just slapping an upgrade on a current computer, but I've had very few problems. Only thing I've done was upgrade the memory from 1 to 2 GB. I also turned off UAC which I found beyond annoying. The computer is used mostly at home and behind a firewall--not to mention that UAC can be foiled--and chances are most people are going to automatically approve something when they're installing a program (which is usually when a person gets a virus), so the UAC becomes useless.
If you're into voice recognition, the voice recognition that comes with Vista works surprisingly well--better than Dragon Naturally Speaking and with less training. (Just be sure and have a good microphone.) However you won't be able to use it with Open Office--you'll have to stick with MS Office, notepad, etc. Also I'm able to play even ancient DOS games with DOSBox and I've found very few programs I've had a problem running. Networking with my wireless router was a breeze.
Vista IS a Mac rip-off with eye candy--stick a few new screensavers and Yahoo! Widgets on your XP and you're 2/3s there. The most annoying thing is once again having to FIND where they hid the settings again--almost none of it is helpful or makes things smoother--especially if you want to just view ALL the programs. It's not as great as the fan boys praise, but it's not as horrible as the nay Sayers make out either. Personally I wouldn't upgrade from XP as long as possible, but if you're getting a computer with it installed, you might find it isn't as bad as you think.
But they're not going after small potatoes ClamAV for violating their patent. They're going after bigger potatoes, someone using a free service. This would be like if your computer uses an operating system, you've got to pay a fee to Microsoft no matter which OS you use--oh wait!
Seriously, it seems to me that this patent is another one of those overreaching ones. It's coming upon obvious technology, not created by itself and rushing to get a patent so that everyone who uses this technology to fight viruses has to pay a fee.
You'll put your eye out!