That's my biggest worry. That at the end of it, even with evidence pointing specifically to the Conservatives, that they'll get away with some wrist-slap fine and letting go a couple of people to be sacrificed to the court wolves.
But I can tell you this: The Harper government will not let go of power without fighting through every possible appeal in the courts that they can, even if this investigation doesn't take longer than their term of office. Mindless political party animal that it is, it's equivalent to the survival instinct is the instinct to seek power. Power is the food of the political animal, money is just the handler's proffered carrots.
There have to be more severe penalties for this kind of blatant interference with the government and electoral processes. In light of the Conservatives previous conviction for funding fraud which is what led to an election in the first place, I posit that the Conservatives should be stripped not only of office, but of their federal party status, officially and permanently disbanded.
We neither need nor want the Canadian Reform Alliance Party under any banner or name.
It would seem that a good deal of Canada did not agree with you upon that last point in the previous election.
I don't see why the CPC government would even fathom any shift in their governing status because someone working on a campaign in some corner of the country decided to do something stupid and illegal. That person, and anyone else implicated should most certainly be held to full account - but when you look to paint entire swaths of Canadians with guilt for the actions of others it's only your own sense of justice you're distorting.
For what it's worth, I believe the penalty for electoral fraud is actually quite stiff - and I hope the people involved in this debacle get no leniency.
No trolling intended. And no, I can't say that's how people often end their conversations with me... Though I suspect that were I having this conversation in person, the respondent to the OPs post likely wouldn't be spewing out the insults quite so liberally - funny how that works, actual facetime being a pre-req for civility in this day and age.
And to tell you the truth, I fully expect that he will take a position somewhere outside Canada in the near future - I likely would, given his credentials. I don't see anything wrong with that. I find it interesting that others do, certainly. Even more interesting is that people who would defend him would consider such an 'accusation' a 'smear' in the first place. Seems a bit of an inherent admission to it being something disagreeable, doesn't it?
Besides that, if anyone wanted to highlight a misstatement of fact in the OP's post, they could have easily pointed out that it was not the NDP who were behind the 'vikileaks' account, it was a Liberal staffer. That was much more blatant than the ambiguous statement about 'here again, back to america tomorrow antics'.
If you're calling someone a liar who has not in fact lied...
The implication was that Ignatieff had returned to the United States following his failed leadership stint. Since he hasn't, really, the implication was false.
Indeed, you are correct, he has not returned to the United States. Though that event could certainly still happen in the future - and at that point the implication would be true.
The OP's comments could also be viewed more broadly to refer to time Ignatieff spent outside of Canada prior to his election bid, and I would most certainly say that his lengthy (and impressive) CV did not appear to do him or his party any favours with the Canadian electorate in the last election... much like the OP pointed out.
Either way, I personally didn't read the OP's comment as a statement of fact - it's quite well known in Canada that Ignatieff accepted a job at UofT, and so the anger laden tirade that followed it seemed to warrant comment.
And if he were to accept a position in the U.S. tomorrow, would that then make you the fucking liar?
Of course not. To paraphrase Babbage, I cannot even conceive of the mental confusion that would lead to that question.
If you're calling someone a liar who has not in fact lied, then that would in turn make you the liar. I would have thought that was pretty easily understood, but I'll try and spell things out for you a bit better from here on in.
Or is it just convenient to your argument to fling self righteous remarks about?
I don't think that word means whatever you seem to think it means.
'adjective confident of one's own righteousness, especially when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others' - I think that describes both your original comment and your response to a T.
Seems you and politicians may have more in common than you think.
WTF does that even mean? Politicians are people. I have that in common with them, yes. No one that knows me would call me a lying power-seeking egotist, if that's your definition of politician.
Idiot.
It means that politicians are often self righteous as well, and many of them would probably be just as confused as yourself if anyone ever pointed it out to them. Coincidentally, I've read through a few of your posts, and I suspect it probably wouldn't be a stretch to find a few people who would call you a lying egotist - I'm not sure about the power seeking portion though, I really didn't want to read your drivel any further than I had to.
I think people like yourself should actually be forced to be involved in politics, much like required military service in other countries. Not so that you can see what politicians are really like - but so that you can see what people like YOU are like.
p.s., I like your new signature - you should keep it.
Many elected representatives vote in a way that represents their constituents more-so than one that represents their party, or their own personal views. For a recent example of this in Canadian politics, you can see the NDP members who voted to eliminate the long gun registry - against the wishes of their own party, and most definitely WITH the consent of a good number of their own constituents. This is just a convenient example, but I'm sure you could find others from all political parties.
And if he were to accept a position in the U.S. tomorrow, would that then make you the fucking liar?
Or is it just convenient to your argument to fling self righteous remarks about? Seems you and politicians may have more in common than you think.
Should everyone stop voting for the party they felt to represent them the best, because of a couple of bad apples?
If you are represented best by a bunch of criminal thugs, then feel free to continue voting for them. Your apologetics are every bit as disgusting as their tactics.
Who would you vote for given the only choices you have are politicians? Can you show me any party from which no representative has ever faced criminal charges?
So, if we find out that a handful of corrupted people employed a
dirty tactic, what should follow? Sure, let's convict those guys but after
that... Should everyone stop voting for the party they felt to represent them
the best, because of a couple of bad apples?
"A couple of bad apples"? Are you serious? You might want to study some recent history. It's always the conservatives spying on people and generally pulling dirty tricks. They're the scum of this world.
Indeed... eliminating mandatory long form census, disposing of the long gun registry, clearly these are just ploys to spy on people further, and pull more dirty tricks! Next thing you know they'll lower taxes! Or allow farmers to actually choose whom they sell the fruits of their labor to! Stop this madness!
You know, there's a little option right beside the search box to turn 'google instant' off. You can also turn it off in settings. And, it also appears to default to off if you're not signed in.
I think he means that Opera already has a torrent client built in.
There is no new protocol necessary really. I have already seen this implemented to some degree - Rogers in Canada throttles torrent connections to outside of their network, but it often works fine inside the network. While illicit torrents go slow as dirt for me 99% of the time, actual legal content from sites like Vuze goes at a good speed. It seems to me that this is because a lot of the people I am connecting to are on my (ISPs) own network, but I could be wrong.
The point is, that all of the tech exists to implement this now.
The lobbying efforts of these various content industries are going to continue regardless of which party is in power. Take the time to write your MP, and CC each of the major political parties as well:
Make it known that Canadians will not support any government pandering to the one-sided arguments of content publishers. DRM is doomed to failure and propping it up with legislation is just another step towards criminalizing fair-use.
There doesn't seem to be any video out (other than a sometimes flashing screen) on Vista. 0.8.5 works fine when I uninstall/reinstall though. Anyone else have this issue? I'd check their forums, but.../.'d
I had this same problem with the final version of Vista Ultimate for a while. It would go into sleep mode just fine but when it woke my network connection was always dead. Trying to disable and re-enable it would result in a blue screen. In the end it was my Cisco VPN client that was mucking it up. The newest beta version of the client works much better, although there are still a few issues (to be expected with beta software).
One thing that I found interesting - when I went to install the production version of the VPN client that my org typically uses, Vista warned that there were compatibility issues with it. I don't expect that they can do the same with beta versions, but it was a useful warning/feature nonetheless.
Production runs also play a factor in pricing. Obviously if 1,000,000 copies were pressed as opposed to the 100,000 in the example given, then the cost of things like recording/engineering of the actual album remain the same and you have a larger profit margin. My experience has been that music clubs have a tendency to only carry albums that go through large production runs. Since it is direct mail sales they also don't have multiple levels of middle-men taking their cut down the line, further increasing the profit margins. There are probably other factors as well, but the point is that its allowing for lower prices than your local record store.
I certainly don't mean to come off as defending the 'big biz music industry' either, but there always seems to be a lot of strange comparisons in these threads that bug me. I know of several indy bands that end up taking a hit selling their albums at prices similar to what the big four charge. If it means getting people to their shows then it's worth it for them, not because they make that much money off the shows - they just enjoy doing it. Most of these same people are financing their 'music careers' from their day jobs, not making money. None of the smaller bands I know are able to live off their music, unless on tour - and that's often a far cry from what you and I would call living.
You'll see CDs priced in the range of some movie DVDs because movies make the majority of their money back when you're getting gouged at the theatre, not when you buy the DVD. If a movie hasn't paid production costs and made a decent profit by the time it gets out of the theatre then it is generally considered a failure. Everything from DVD sales is typically just icing on the cake, there are far fewer production costs to recoup by that time.
I don't much care about the price of downloadable music either, to me a physical CD is still a better value - in fact, most CDs I purchase would end up costing me more to download.
I believe that France collects blank media levies, similar to Canada. Perhaps they also have something relating to private copying in their copyright law.
In Canada, downloading of musical works from the internet was in fact covered under private copying last I checked. It is perfectly legal as far as I know, provided you are not also uploading or otherwise distributing. That may have changed recently though - I haven't been paying much attention to it lately and I don't have time to search for more recent sources. This is the most recent I had.
I do know that the recording industry associations here were on the same all-out assault they are elsewhere to nullify any private copying rights that Canadians may have. They are also introducing the same copy protection schemes and digital restriction mechanisms to musical CDs that are sold here (e.g., Sony BMG-Rootkit). They also lobby to have the levies raised at every chance they get, despite the fact that they continue to try and make it impossible to perform the copying that the levies are supposed to reimburse them for. So from my point of view it looks an awful lot like it's the recording industry that doesn't believe in copyright - at least not as it has been interpreted by the Canadian judicial system.
I guess the lack of class must not extend to using slang and shorthand such as '/.' and 'n00bs' then. How very convenient for you.
I personally like to think of Slashdot as a football mob, with folks 'running the gamut' from hypocrites to trolls, grammar-nazis to the self-righteous-anonymity-empowered! It's fun to see someone saying something relevant to the discussion get shouted down by one of the aforementioned groups, especially for something as petty and inane to a technical discussion as prose. Alas, the mob does love a good beat down - even if it doesn't add to the game... err, discussion.
I know for at least Planetside that doesn't seem to have been the case for me. A while back they offered the game for free as a Win XP extra with 1 month or something of free play as well. Due to the easy access to the game I had 6 friends playing it before my free subscription time ran out, and all of us ended up paying for at least a few months as well.
Coincidentally, I also own WoW - but have grown extremely bored of it and cancelled my subscription months ago. I'm not playing any MMO games right now, but I've been looking at Planetside again. I would have to say if it was as simple to get into the game as it was when I first played it I would probably have had a subscription the second the urge hit.
Mind you, Planetside was a bit different from the MMORPG's as well - you didn't have as much of a commitment factor to whatever character you played, and it was very easy to sit and play it for 15 minutes OR hours on end and still have fun either way.
Streaming the data to your computer would have to be slower than to a localized web server, since it has to traverse the net. I think there is probably more optional data involved in the streaming version as well (topography, etc).
Ok, stolen? We can't have it both ways. If it isn't stealing music, but copyright infringment instead, how is this any different? Just cause it's not the **AA being ripped off it's stealing now? Gimme a break.
If I were claiming that I wrote the music that I download off the net and reselling it then maybe I could see the comparison you are trying to make between the two. It's the credit of the author that is being stolen here though, not the code - that is already freely distributable, and thus difficult to steal. Had the GPL agreement been honored and source code provided this would otherwise just be a not-so-useful fork.
Offtopic, but coincidentally, the latest album I have 'stolen' from the net was provided by the drummer of the band that wrote/recorded it. I plan on burning it to a CD for which I paid a 'media levy', money which goes to recording industry groups that this band is not a part of. These are groups that continually lobby to have similar levies imposed on every piece of computer hardware or internet connection imaginable if it even has the remotest possibility of being involved in copying any form of digital media. So who's stealing from who there?
Slashdot Mirror
That's my biggest worry. That at the end of it, even with evidence pointing specifically to the Conservatives, that they'll get away with some wrist-slap fine and letting go a couple of people to be sacrificed to the court wolves.
But I can tell you this: The Harper government will not let go of power without fighting through every possible appeal in the courts that they can, even if this investigation doesn't take longer than their term of office. Mindless political party animal that it is, it's equivalent to the survival instinct is the instinct to seek power. Power is the food of the political animal, money is just the handler's proffered carrots.
There have to be more severe penalties for this kind of blatant interference with the government and electoral processes. In light of the Conservatives previous conviction for funding fraud which is what led to an election in the first place, I posit that the Conservatives should be stripped not only of office, but of their federal party status, officially and permanently disbanded.
We neither need nor want the Canadian Reform Alliance Party under any banner or name.
It would seem that a good deal of Canada did not agree with you upon that last point in the previous election.
I don't see why the CPC government would even fathom any shift in their governing status because someone working on a campaign in some corner of the country decided to do something stupid and illegal. That person, and anyone else implicated should most certainly be held to full account - but when you look to paint entire swaths of Canadians with guilt for the actions of others it's only your own sense of justice you're distorting.
For what it's worth, I believe the penalty for electoral fraud is actually quite stiff - and I hope the people involved in this debacle get no leniency.
No trolling intended. And no, I can't say that's how people often end their conversations with me... Though I suspect that were I having this conversation in person, the respondent to the OPs post likely wouldn't be spewing out the insults quite so liberally - funny how that works, actual facetime being a pre-req for civility in this day and age.
And to tell you the truth, I fully expect that he will take a position somewhere outside Canada in the near future - I likely would, given his credentials. I don't see anything wrong with that. I find it interesting that others do, certainly. Even more interesting is that people who would defend him would consider such an 'accusation' a 'smear' in the first place. Seems a bit of an inherent admission to it being something disagreeable, doesn't it?
Besides that, if anyone wanted to highlight a misstatement of fact in the OP's post, they could have easily pointed out that it was not the NDP who were behind the 'vikileaks' account, it was a Liberal staffer. That was much more blatant than the ambiguous statement about 'here again, back to america tomorrow antics'.
The implication was that Ignatieff had returned to the United States following his failed leadership stint. Since he hasn't, really, the implication was false.
Indeed, you are correct, he has not returned to the United States. Though that event could certainly still happen in the future - and at that point the implication would be true.
The OP's comments could also be viewed more broadly to refer to time Ignatieff spent outside of Canada prior to his election bid, and I would most certainly say that his lengthy (and impressive) CV did not appear to do him or his party any favours with the Canadian electorate in the last election... much like the OP pointed out.
Either way, I personally didn't read the OP's comment as a statement of fact - it's quite well known in Canada that Ignatieff accepted a job at UofT, and so the anger laden tirade that followed it seemed to warrant comment.
And if he were to accept a position in the U.S. tomorrow, would that then make you the fucking liar?
Of course not. To paraphrase Babbage, I cannot even conceive of the mental confusion that would lead to that question.
If you're calling someone a liar who has not in fact lied, then that would in turn make you the liar. I would have thought that was pretty easily understood, but I'll try and spell things out for you a bit better from here on in.
Or is it just convenient to your argument to fling self righteous remarks about?
I don't think that word means whatever you seem to think it means.
'adjective confident of one's own righteousness, especially when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others' - I think that describes both your original comment and your response to a T.
Seems you and politicians may have more in common than you think.
WTF does that even mean? Politicians are people. I have that in common with them, yes. No one that knows me would call me a lying power-seeking egotist, if that's your definition of politician.
Idiot.
It means that politicians are often self righteous as well, and many of them would probably be just as confused as yourself if anyone ever pointed it out to them. Coincidentally, I've read through a few of your posts, and I suspect it probably wouldn't be a stretch to find a few people who would call you a lying egotist - I'm not sure about the power seeking portion though, I really didn't want to read your drivel any further than I had to.
I think people like yourself should actually be forced to be involved in politics, much like required military service in other countries. Not so that you can see what politicians are really like - but so that you can see what people like YOU are like.
p.s., I like your new signature - you should keep it.
Many elected representatives vote in a way that represents their constituents more-so than one that represents their party, or their own personal views. For a recent example of this in Canadian politics, you can see the NDP members who voted to eliminate the long gun registry - against the wishes of their own party, and most definitely WITH the consent of a good number of their own constituents. This is just a convenient example, but I'm sure you could find others from all political parties.
WTF? Reason on slashdot? Armageddon cannot be far behind...
And if he were to accept a position in the U.S. tomorrow, would that then make you the fucking liar? Or is it just convenient to your argument to fling self righteous remarks about? Seems you and politicians may have more in common than you think.
Should everyone stop voting for the party they felt to represent them the best, because of a couple of bad apples?
If you are represented best by a bunch of criminal thugs, then feel free to continue voting for them. Your apologetics are every bit as disgusting as their tactics.
Who would you vote for given the only choices you have are politicians? Can you show me any party from which no representative has ever faced criminal charges?
"A couple of bad apples"? Are you serious? You might want to study some recent history. It's always the conservatives spying on people and generally pulling dirty tricks. They're the scum of this world.
Indeed... eliminating mandatory long form census, disposing of the long gun registry, clearly these are just ploys to spy on people further, and pull more dirty tricks! Next thing you know they'll lower taxes! Or allow farmers to actually choose whom they sell the fruits of their labor to! Stop this madness!
You know, there's a little option right beside the search box to turn 'google instant' off. You can also turn it off in settings. And, it also appears to default to off if you're not signed in.
...just sayin!
Trust me, you don't really want Fox viewers to become self aware... haven't you seen the Terminator series?!?
I was almost willing to donate up until the last part, you sandbagging son of a bitch!
Seriously though, where do I sign up for your newsletter??
It could be done similar to streaming. You could just break the media up into chapters/tracks and set the priority appropriately.
I think he means that Opera already has a torrent client built in.
There is no new protocol necessary really. I have already seen this implemented to some degree - Rogers in Canada throttles torrent connections to outside of their network, but it often works fine inside the network. While illicit torrents go slow as dirt for me 99% of the time, actual legal content from sites like Vuze goes at a good speed. It seems to me that this is because a lot of the people I am connecting to are on my (ISPs) own network, but I could be wrong.
The point is, that all of the tech exists to implement this now.
The lobbying efforts of these various content industries are going to continue regardless of which party is in power. Take the time to write your MP, and CC each of the major political parties as well:
http://www.conservative.ca/EN/1045/
http://www.liberal.ca/contact_e.aspx
http://www.ndp.ca/contact
http://www.green.ca/en/contact
Make it known that Canadians will not support any government pandering to the one-sided arguments of content publishers. DRM is doomed to failure and propping it up with legislation is just another step towards criminalizing fair-use.
There doesn't seem to be any video out (other than a sometimes flashing screen) on Vista. 0.8.5 works fine when I uninstall/reinstall though. Anyone else have this issue? I'd check their forums, but... /.'d
I had this same problem with the final version of Vista Ultimate for a while. It would go into sleep mode just fine but when it woke my network connection was always dead. Trying to disable and re-enable it would result in a blue screen. In the end it was my Cisco VPN client that was mucking it up. The newest beta version of the client works much better, although there are still a few issues (to be expected with beta software).
One thing that I found interesting - when I went to install the production version of the VPN client that my org typically uses, Vista warned that there were compatibility issues with it. I don't expect that they can do the same with beta versions, but it was a useful warning/feature nonetheless.
Production runs also play a factor in pricing. Obviously if 1,000,000 copies were pressed as opposed to the 100,000 in the example given, then the cost of things like recording/engineering of the actual album remain the same and you have a larger profit margin. My experience has been that music clubs have a tendency to only carry albums that go through large production runs. Since it is direct mail sales they also don't have multiple levels of middle-men taking their cut down the line, further increasing the profit margins. There are probably other factors as well, but the point is that its allowing for lower prices than your local record store.
I certainly don't mean to come off as defending the 'big biz music industry' either, but there always seems to be a lot of strange comparisons in these threads that bug me. I know of several indy bands that end up taking a hit selling their albums at prices similar to what the big four charge. If it means getting people to their shows then it's worth it for them, not because they make that much money off the shows - they just enjoy doing it. Most of these same people are financing their 'music careers' from their day jobs, not making money. None of the smaller bands I know are able to live off their music, unless on tour - and that's often a far cry from what you and I would call living.
You'll see CDs priced in the range of some movie DVDs because movies make the majority of their money back when you're getting gouged at the theatre, not when you buy the DVD. If a movie hasn't paid production costs and made a decent profit by the time it gets out of the theatre then it is generally considered a failure. Everything from DVD sales is typically just icing on the cake, there are far fewer production costs to recoup by that time.
I don't much care about the price of downloadable music either, to me a physical CD is still a better value - in fact, most CDs I purchase would end up costing me more to download.
I believe that France collects blank media levies, similar to Canada. Perhaps they also have something relating to private copying in their copyright law.
In Canada, downloading of musical works from the internet was in fact covered under private copying last I checked. It is perfectly legal as far as I know, provided you are not also uploading or otherwise distributing. That may have changed recently though - I haven't been paying much attention to it lately and I don't have time to search for more recent sources. This is the most recent I had.
I do know that the recording industry associations here were on the same all-out assault they are elsewhere to nullify any private copying rights that Canadians may have. They are also introducing the same copy protection schemes and digital restriction mechanisms to musical CDs that are sold here (e.g., Sony BMG-Rootkit). They also lobby to have the levies raised at every chance they get, despite the fact that they continue to try and make it impossible to perform the copying that the levies are supposed to reimburse them for. So from my point of view it looks an awful lot like it's the recording industry that doesn't believe in copyright - at least not as it has been interpreted by the Canadian judicial system.
I guess the lack of class must not extend to using slang and shorthand such as '/.' and 'n00bs' then. How very convenient for you.
I personally like to think of Slashdot as a football mob, with folks 'running the gamut' from hypocrites to trolls, grammar-nazis to the self-righteous-anonymity-empowered! It's fun to see someone saying something relevant to the discussion get shouted down by one of the aforementioned groups, especially for something as petty and inane to a technical discussion as prose. Alas, the mob does love a good beat down - even if it doesn't add to the game... err, discussion.
Go Team!
I know for at least Planetside that doesn't seem to have been the case for me. A while back they offered the game for free as a Win XP extra with 1 month or something of free play as well. Due to the easy access to the game I had 6 friends playing it before my free subscription time ran out, and all of us ended up paying for at least a few months as well.
Coincidentally, I also own WoW - but have grown extremely bored of it and cancelled my subscription months ago. I'm not playing any MMO games right now, but I've been looking at Planetside again. I would have to say if it was as simple to get into the game as it was when I first played it I would probably have had a subscription the second the urge hit.
Mind you, Planetside was a bit different from the MMORPG's as well - you didn't have as much of a commitment factor to whatever character you played, and it was very easy to sit and play it for 15 minutes OR hours on end and still have fun either way.
Streaming the data to your computer would have to be slower than to a localized web server, since it has to traverse the net. I think there is probably more optional data involved in the streaming version as well (topography, etc).
...could be a bit of the slashdot effect too.
Ok, stolen? We can't have it both ways. If it isn't stealing music, but copyright infringment instead, how is this any different? Just cause it's not the **AA being ripped off it's stealing now? Gimme a break.
If I were claiming that I wrote the music that I download off the net and reselling it then maybe I could see the comparison you are trying to make between the two. It's the credit of the author that is being stolen here though, not the code - that is already freely distributable, and thus difficult to steal. Had the GPL agreement been honored and source code provided this would otherwise just be a not-so-useful fork.
Offtopic, but coincidentally, the latest album I have 'stolen' from the net was provided by the drummer of the band that wrote/recorded it. I plan on burning it to a CD for which I paid a 'media levy', money which goes to recording industry groups that this band is not a part of. These are groups that continually lobby to have similar levies imposed on every piece of computer hardware or internet connection imaginable if it even has the remotest possibility of being involved in copying any form of digital media. So who's stealing from who there?
p.s. You are hereby granted a break!