I don't want to flame you, but nobody wants your shitty music. I've heard your band, they are shit. People demand McDonalds, cigarettes, and Britney Spears because they like them. They're not necessarily good food/music. A couple of dweebs with an electric guitar just doesn't cut it
I don't want to flame you, but Kazaa et al are popular because you can share what you like, even in the old IRC/FTP days it was popular music that ruled the FTP Serv-U's
I bought the CDs, ripped them to my computer, then I had an argument with my ex-girlfriend, she stole my CDs and I haven't seen her since, I didn't ask her name or address or anything, I just had sex with her. Her description - she's white and has big breasts.
Only geeks argue over stupid unenforceable stuff, look at how the Jocks live, we live under their laws after all.
Is it in the interests of the United States to look Islam-friendly?
Think about it - which muslim countries are tolerant of outsiders, and which Muslim countries have succesfully resisted the creep of Wahabbishm?
Turkey doesn't count because it just elected an Islamic Government which due to *strong* international pressure is sheathing its sword for the moment, Singapore and Malaysia are collapsing under Islamic subversion, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Indonesia, Nigeria and Somalia don't even need mentioning due to recent events. Islamic Cyprus is constantly threatening war with non-Islamic Cyprus. Dark powers are gathering.
Are there any countries in the world with a significant Muslim population which are pacifist and tolerant of outsiders? Dubai is the only one that springs to mind, but it's surrounded by Wahabbism on all sides.
So is the USA evil? Well is it a crime to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again?
The majority of Indians are peasant rice farmers with no education, however teh H-1Bs are the best of the best. Trouble is a lot of H-1Bs are unproductive in the United States because of the imposition of culture. That's why when I manage my H-1Bs (I'm a Hindu Brahmin) I give them blessed fruits in the morning, lakshmi's blessings whenever a project starts, and a sprinkling of holy water with flowers at the end of the day. Plus, I turned off the air conditioning to make it HOT.
I have the most productive H-1Bs in the company.
I mean - imagine send an American to work in Afghanistan, visiting is OK, but actually living there with a full-time job will be hard, especially if you have kids. A church and McDonalds would at least add some sense of normalcy.
Whats wrong with Child Porn? Its a act of nature, and should not be banned. If God didnt intend for us to sleep with 13 14 and 15 year old children then he would of made them different.
An interesting point, there must be some human caveman instinct that would make it feel good to take care of children (look at any Mother). Trouble is it's also human caveman instinct to kill people who have stolen from us and/or we couldn't steal form.
I think there's a more fundamental problem in that Parents believe their children are their "their possession" and molecoddle them causing an over-individualised society. Whether or not the Government should interfere with this, I don't know.
you assume that the only way to make money from music/film is exclusive control of distribution channels
All businesses make their money this way - give us your money, now here is the product.
People will pay for things other than basic content
Nope, how many Micro$oft CDs does China buy? (Micro$oft's prices are irrelevant, if the product's too expensive then don't buy it)
If, for example, a service was setup by the big 5 music companies, providing access to their entire back catalogue, so you could download any mix of tracks, unrestricted by DRM, for a reasonable per track fee (no shipping costs, or physical media, and probably lower quality than the CD track), many would signup in a heartbeat.
True, they'd make some money, but not as much as they're making now which may make their business non-viable.
With the exception of Elvis, better off. I'd rather have a 100 artists making a good living than 1 artist making a mega living and 99 being stiffed by the record industry because of their monpoly on distribution... What about the hordes of people doing it for nothing? For the love of it?
Why advertise and glamourise? I mean $10,000 for a Gucci handbag!!! The magic of Hollywood must dazzle otherwise nobody will buy it just to see a bunch of stupid unglamorous actors walking around doing stupid stuff with some explosions and machine-guns.
Our software company is diversifying into catering, and even with a 200% profit margin on goods, the distribution and catering services costs are MASSIVE giving us only 1% profit, abysmal.
And I don't care how many bad quality rips of films turn up, they don't beat going to see a good film with a bunch of friends in a good quality cinema.
You betcha!
What about the hordes of people doing it for nothing? For the love of it?
If you work for nothing, who pays your bills? Yup, that's it the Government pays your welfare bills and gives you food stamps and you write software - you're being pushed around and made to work for free, especially if the first question an employer asks you is, "Do you write Free Software?" translation: "Are you a sucker?"
The Free Software movement has shown that people don't only work for money, quite often they only do it because they want to, and any money they make is incidental.
Who's made more money - Oracle or mySQL? Who's going to pay the mySQL developers? What if mySQL is unsucceful like a hoard of other databases such as TinySQL, who's going to pay their salaries then? Welfare and food stamps.
How many people do you know jamming with their band in their mum's basement, or in their local pub? Some of those do it because they like to play, yes?
Bwa ha ha!!! Try to make people play for free, see how many bands come along after hours of rehearsing. I believe Socialism is a superior system, but we aren't ready for that yet (go drive through the Projects if you want to see how REAL people live).
Personally, I'd quite like to see music move back towards entertaining people, and being something done for the love of it, rather than a life of virtual indentured slavery in the hopes of one day making it big, while company execs make millions in stock options
Me too. The artists shouldn't have to be forced to work for free though. Bush is over-favouring large monopoloes such as Exxon and Micro$oft so EMI/Sony's hold over Hollywood glamour makes EMI/Sony a monopsony, same as cocoa bean farmers must sell cocoa to Starbucks/Nescafe at the prices and terms that Starbucks/Nescafe sets. The Government needs to make it illegal for EMI/Sony to set harsh terms on artists
As a coder, I hate admitting it, but AMD is right. The entire computer industry is shot to hell, they should diversify into catering like my company.
We shouldn't hate AMD for doing this, they have to look *realistically* at where the market is going. I don't want to see AMD go the same way as BeOS, I've seen too many good companies disappear.
Of course the CEO of AMD can't say, "Yeah we're coredumping that entire market"
Before AMD got into high-end desktop CPUs, Intel was edging the CPU price up towards $1000. After AMD started beating Intel now and then, CPU prices dropped to the $100-$200 range for anything below the latest and greatest
Yes true! I think the Government should support AMD so that the buying public don't get SHAFTED by $1000 Intel CPUs. Plus from what I've heard Intel treats its employees like shit. So much for Libertarian non-interfering Government. Capitalism sux
Trying to stop any popular activity brings more problems than intended. I'll use as an example Prohibition of Alcohol in the USA. It was a big boost to Organized Crime.
OK. Let's do a proper balanced analysis here.
For DRM Any and all music will be available to everybody for free at the click of a Kazaa button. Impossible to make money out of this, even for artists, unsigned artists don't have expensive mixing equipment nor gay extroverts with pink-haired poodles Creating "popular" music/movies that all your customers like won't make you money, sending a message that success is not rewarded financially, nobody in the United States/World will want to get a job, therefore Capitalism will collapse and Sharia Law may be imposed by a replacement power (I'm not joking) When the ROI on making songs and forming bands becomes zero, there will be no new music, radio stations will constantly repeat 60's music. Where would we be without Britney/Madonna/MichaelJackson/ElvisPresley? Piracy extends to movies, the majority of movies are flops, paid for by the big hyped up "standard" movies like Titanic, which is exactly what'll be affected by piracy (how many Chinese big budget $200million movies are there?) causing a collapse in the special effects and computer industries (AliasWavefront will go bankrupt) If for 10 years no new "popular" music nor movies are created, there'll be a massive spread in depression and suicide rates - PEOPLE WILL DIE! In Civilisation 3 remove all Entertainment and see what happens
Against DRM Stifles computer innovation, DRM-hardware allows monopolical tyranny, and impedes legitimate computer uses Difficult to make transparent, therefore necessitates Comp Ed lessons and licensing of computer users "It's illegal to use a computer unless..." Damages First Amendment freedoms RIAA/MPAA not forced to explore more efficient distribution mechanisms No incentive for musicians/moviemakers to add extras to movies such as theaters with laser shows and smell-a-vision
As much as everyone complains about spam, it's not going anywhere
Incorrect. The Government can change the law to force opt-in only and make spam illegal. These large corporations performing spamming will be shut down, and an American business which knowingly pays a foreign company to spam can be massively fined (such as IBM paying a Chinese corporation to kill US citizens).
Torment of Tantalus - he has a million dollars and a beautiful house. Now he can't spend the money and his home is his prison. What else is there for this man to do but uhhh make more money? He should watch the movie, "American Dream", he can definitely learn something from it.
In my eyes a whino is richer than this man, as he can walk freely, even through the Projects.
Yes, but that was restricted to only the media sector, especially writers. This time it's against American citizens in general which makes it much more sinister.
I've noticed a significant increase in the level of force that the US police forces use against innocent US citizens. This seems to be causing a buildup of resentment in the intelligencia of the US, the results of which will be interesting to see. Unfortunately the general American public (trailer trash) seems to put a misplaced trust in the State forces which the Founding Forefathers wouldn't be too happy with.
A non-fascist democracy becoming a police state is something I haven't yet seen in my limited reading of the history books, we're in uncharted territory here. If the FBI can be convinced that uncapping a modem is terrorist cybersabotage, where does it end? In my mind, those police might as well have "Disney stormtroopers" tattooed on their foreheads. Regrettably Star Wars Episode III where Emperor Palpatine seizes control of the Senate and imposes stormtrooper rule, might be mirrored in reality in the United States.
Censorship doesnt change the fact that the majority are evil, they'd still be evil if censored, we'd just have no way of knowiung who these evil people are
Yes, I think you're right, yes probably.
Evil people in the world are the most motivated while intelligent people in the world are the least motivated
EXACTLY! And so the democratic system must be staffed by intelligent people, but then if there's a socialist economic system then the intelligent people will not rise to financial power. In a capitalist-democratic system the heads of the democratic system must be intelligent/enlightened (Clinton was, Bush ain't), and the heads of the capitalist system must be intelligent/enlightened (CEO of Exxon, CEO of ? Rupert Murdoch, etc.)
Problem is if these people become stupid or are replaced by people that are stupid, the system would collapse and must be redesigned or hardened (via shadow CEOs/Presidents).
perhaps open source is an example of intelligent people motivated
NO! Most open source people, after they've seen the same source code a million times over get sick of the project they're on. That's why most of the stuff on Sourceforge is in pre-alpha and Trillian still doesn't support anywhere near the full features of every IM it supports.
Until we have real leaders who are intelligent we cannot easily prevent war, its funny these kids who go to harvard, people with PHDs, scientists, and so on are all anti war, the most intelligent people in society are also the least aggressive
Even if we had leaders who were intelligent, why would they want to prevent war? Suppose WTC attacks never happened, those WTC stockbrokers would still be saying, "NOW is the time to invest" which would cause more bad debts and a stagnation until mass Investor disillusionment, which would cause a dramatic collapse in the economy perhaps destroying Capitalism itself (in Economics if I=Investment dropped to zero). People would believe the stockbrokers and would put all the spending on their credit cards. Then when everybody has a million dollars in debt, the economy would implode. Think about it, does any stockbroker say, "Yeah, there's gonna be a crash now, sell all your shares, and cash in your 401k within the next 6 months"?
but intelligent people because of their lack of aggression usually dont end up as president or any high up positions because it takes a killer instinct and aggressive attitude to get to the top, ask bill gates, george bush, or any war general how they got to their rank, it wasnt because they were the smartest, or most intelligent, they just happened to be the most motivated
Yes, and trust me, the killer instinct is real. My Uncle works for an accounting firm and says many of the businessmen that he does the accounts for have had people killed, and that the police are running around gathering evidence on them. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Gates bumped off one or two of his competitors (really). Honest people cannot become businessmen in a world where your customers are evil.
Umm, what does "secure and hardened" have to do with backups?
Secure is meant in the "safe and secure" sense, not the "securely encrypted" sense. Hardened is used in the sense that the Internet is hardened, having been designed to survive a nuclear war.
Dual language is also used in various religous texts - e.g. "convince the non-believers" can mean talk to them, or it can mean kill them all.
If you need references to believe allegations of corruption in India, it's clear that you've never been to India. It's present in Indian society on all levels,
I know corruption is epidemic there. The difference is the media in Europe and the US uncovers the large scale conspiracies, and the people listen. In India the media is ineffective - journalists that ask too many questions ARE shot and therefore news of corruption is spread via rumours and whispers like the Dark Ages. This makes the need for references vital, this is my point.
To put out a fire you must first know where to start. Peronsally I've heard (these are rumours - I cannot provide references, which is my main point) I've heard of an Indian Federal active military Delta Force which is deployed by the Central Indian Government in areas with overly violent political corruption. This force murders politicians that are overly corrupt (tyrannical) or don't follow the party line.
I had a personal friend in India who spoke out against the CPI local Government in Bengal, the next day a truck was charged directly at him in a busy market square, killing him and some others. Obviously this didn't appear in any newspaper. So hey all you have is my word. India is the perfect example of the results of the destruction of the fourth pillar of democracy. Any H-1Bs willing to speak up here? This is why Indians generally love talking about religion and politics, but they don't want to bring these issues out into the open.
Sorry to any Indian readers but from what horror stories my subcontinental friends have given me it just seems the most likely reason they have for going M$
It's OK, the truth wants to be free. There is a massive lack of documentation on these issues.
Just take a look at past corruption allegations towards the Indian government and you will get an idea why the opportunity is so tasty to India
Free software enthusiasts termed Gates' visit an over-hyped nonevent. They say Microsoft's policy of regaling developing countries with millions of dollars worth of free software and training is blatantly self-serving and counterproductive if the stated goal is diminishing the digital divide
Bwa ha ha! Monsanto is trying to do the same by planting GM seeds everywhere and then charging royalties, or forcing farmers to burn their crop. Eventually farmers will just pay the annual royalty, not wanting to see their crop destroyed. Micro$oft is using exactly the same tactic, and India's computers are fertile land for Micro$oft to spread its seed and then charge royalties for. Nothing that you say will make any difference for the next few decades, I know the Indian people. I can see what Micro$oft is doing, the Central Government is the only entity that can intervene, but being a poor country they have no choice - if they reject Micro$oft then all these workers will be forced either into call centres, or into harvesting crops. India has no social security system so the alternative is starvation. Imagine that, if fired Software Engineers in the United States HAD to find another job within 3 days in McDonalds/toilet cleaner or starve to death. Unemployment benefits are a luxury that we in the US and Western Europe enjoy.
In India, always. Even the compensation money from the Bhopal incident which killed thousands of Indians was embezzled by the local politician ? Singh. In India becoming a politician means you will become a millionaire, and 95% of the police are constantly openly bribed in the street - the plaintiff suddenly becomes a defendant. My Uncle was murdered by the Indian police. Indian culture doesn't change overnight.
If Microsoft is supporting India's many languages out of the box, I could understand the decision. If on the other hand the Indians have to compute in English anyway, it makes no sense
The majority of literate Indians speak English (at least a little) because of being a former British colony. The majority of Indians are farm laborers, the country exports massive amounts of tea and rice. There are roughly 50 million Indians that can speak English, are very intelligent and able to work white collar when I last checked a few years back. They are very hard workers (by culture - this can change) and so some US employers can actually be sued by forcing H-1Bs to work for low wages and 15 hour per day without overtime. The H-1Bs will not bite the hand that feeds them, neither will the Indians in India. The employment laws in India are nowhere near as strong as the employment laws in the United States, Indian employees in India can be forced to work like slaves.
As a matter of fact in India women are bought and sold all the time (like in Afghanistan) in the poorer regions. But then hookers from the Projects in the United States and Western Europe perform similar actions so we're not any better. East European and former Russian colony immigrants often end up as prostitutes. I won't insult anybody's intelligence by suggesting that you're not clever enough to use Google to verify my facts.
Don't worry, when Micro$oft increases Indian licence prices and sets up BSA-India, then RMS can go there and preach to some illiterate starving villagers that they should switch to OSS, not before (I've been to India and my parents are Indian so I know what I'm talking about).
If Micro$oft states it will never charge for Indian site licenses, etc. then I'll kick my own ass (somehow).
Before that happens anyway all the development farms in India will shut down and move to China. Micro$oft has no loyalty here.
Now we can find out how secure and hardened Debian really is. You are as good as your latest backup. BACKUPS BACKUPS BACKUPS Off-site! I've had enough of people who are talking about RAID-5 because 5TB tape drive arrays are too slow. Always keep your BACKUPS!
Some people however arent selfish and are ready for socialism, yes these people arent the majority, but theres good people in the world who arent selfish, socialism cannot work until people are all on this level and I never said we were ready for socialism, but pure capitalism cannot work either for the same exact reason.
EXACTLY!
Yes the majority of humanity is selfish, the majority of humanity is also evil, hateful, and cruel
Yes. How can this be changed without censoring the media of programs that the majority want (which is violence)?
If DRM is introduced then maybe it would be good because people don't have infinite money, and so would pay for very popular and famous movies such as Steven Spielberg's ET and Star Wars which have very positive messages. Then the Government can allow good movies to have DRM protection so they'd make more money and all movies would become nice. But what Government can perform this action without manipulating the system to its own selfish wishes? Right now crappy killing murdering and action movies come on cable all the time and people watch them because they're free and people want to be entertained.
The problem is that I've also watched many violent movies and I don't hate too many people (I hope), so this tacit censorship might not have an effect. It might have an effect on an evil/selfish person I'm not sure. Should the Rights of evil/selfish people be protected? If not, then we'll have to put the majority in prison. Oh crap!
Stop being silly, how would I know the diffrence between a normal person in a chair and a disabled person? I wouldnt really help either of them unless they specifically asked for help
What if there's a dead guy lying in the street with a knife in his chest? Would you call the police, or ignore it? If you notice that he's dead, then how can you not notice his colour/sex/religion also? If you see Osama binLaden will you recognise him? How did you recognise him? You'll have to see his facial features, and his colour/sex/religion to fully recognise him.
I judge people based on how they treat me. Based on character not outside appearance
I don't believe you, the first thing you notice about somebody is their sex, height and colour. If this was not true, then you wouldn't know anybody was there, you'd be walking into walls and people all the time, and falling over. The eyes have the highest bandwidth connection to the brain that's available, so much so that the optic nerve is made of pure brain tissue.
The only person that can ignore someone's race/colour/sex/creed is a blind man, or someone so enlightened that even if he's in the middle of an orgasm he will actually be in a serene meditative state (ignoring all sensory input like an Intel processor in a HALT state).
The best you can do is have your conscious mind actively try to override your preconceptions about their race/colour/sex/creed of the person. For example if you saw a man in a wheelchair trying to stand up, you would think about helping him, whereas somebody normally sitting in a chair and getting up you wouldn't help. YOU WOULD HELP THE DISABLED PERSON STAND UP, BUT NOT THE NORMAL PERSON - how did you notice the disabled person was disabled? You couldn't help discriminating for him, your high badwidth link from your eyes to your brain totally overrides everything. That's why Buddha closes his eyes when he meditates.
By the way I must disagree with you about Socialism/Capitalism. I worked briefly in the food industry, and I was shocked and very sad with what happened to me. This is my story,
We cooked enough food for 200 people, we brought the food and then found 400 people had arrived. So I weighed the food and gave out half what we were supposed to give. Everybody would just have to eat a little less. Problem is the first customer looks disappointed at getting less food and asks for more. The next one also, all of them ask for more food, at this rate we would run out of food fast.
To make sure everybody could get some food, I gave less, and when the customer asked for more food I told them to take a hike. The customer became unhappy and complained to the President of the society, I was fired and somebody else took my place who would give out whatever food the customers wanted.
With half the customers served, we ran out of food as I expected, because we gave too much. I tried to give less but the people just kept asking for more. When I tried to be fair they got rid of me. So half of the people went hungry, just like the real world where Ethiopeans are starving and nobody cares. Capitalism is our nature and it makes me feel very very bad. Socialism is too advanced for us, you can see that I tried Socialism and the customers overthrew me.
So you see Socialism is idealism, it won't work in reality because human beings are not perfect, we are selfish. Money allows us to turn these selfish and greedy desires into something that by accident does some good like creating jobs so that we can make more money as a Director of a big company. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm saying it's a terrible thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to flame you, but Kazaa et al are popular because you can share what you like, even in the old IRC/FTP days it was popular music that ruled the FTP Serv-U's
Only geeks argue over stupid unenforceable stuff, look at how the Jocks live, we live under their laws after all.
Think about it - which muslim countries are tolerant of outsiders, and which Muslim countries have succesfully resisted the creep of Wahabbishm?
Turkey doesn't count because it just elected an Islamic Government which due to *strong* international pressure is sheathing its sword for the moment, Singapore and Malaysia are collapsing under Islamic subversion, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Indonesia, Nigeria and Somalia don't even need mentioning due to recent events. Islamic Cyprus is constantly threatening war with non-Islamic Cyprus. Dark powers are gathering.
Are there any countries in the world with a significant Muslim population which are pacifist and tolerant of outsiders? Dubai is the only one that springs to mind, but it's surrounded by Wahabbism on all sides.
So is the USA evil? Well is it a crime to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again?
I have the most productive H-1Bs in the company.
I mean - imagine send an American to work in Afghanistan, visiting is OK, but actually living there with a full-time job will be hard, especially if you have kids. A church and McDonalds would at least add some sense of normalcy.
I think there's a more fundamental problem in that Parents believe their children are their "their possession" and molecoddle them causing an over-individualised society. Whether or not the Government should interfere with this, I don't know.
Our software company is diversifying into catering, and even with a 200% profit margin on goods, the distribution and catering services costs are MASSIVE giving us only 1% profit, abysmal.
You betcha!If you work for nothing, who pays your bills? Yup, that's it the Government pays your welfare bills and gives you food stamps and you write software - you're being pushed around and made to work for free, especially if the first question an employer asks you is, "Do you write Free Software?" translation: "Are you a sucker?"Who's made more money - Oracle or mySQL? Who's going to pay the mySQL developers? What if mySQL is unsucceful like a hoard of other databases such as TinySQL, who's going to pay their salaries then? Welfare and food stamps.Bwa ha ha!!! Try to make people play for free, see how many bands come along after hours of rehearsing. I believe Socialism is a superior system, but we aren't ready for that yet (go drive through the Projects if you want to see how REAL people live).Me too. The artists shouldn't have to be forced to work for free though. Bush is over-favouring large monopoloes such as Exxon and Micro$oft so EMI/Sony's hold over Hollywood glamour makes EMI/Sony a monopsony, same as cocoa bean farmers must sell cocoa to Starbucks/Nescafe at the prices and terms that Starbucks/Nescafe sets. The Government needs to make it illegal for EMI/Sony to set harsh terms on artistsWe shouldn't hate AMD for doing this, they have to look *realistically* at where the market is going. I don't want to see AMD go the same way as BeOS, I've seen too many good companies disappear.
Of course the CEO of AMD can't say, "Yeah we're coredumping that entire market"
For DRM
Any and all music will be available to everybody for free at the click of a Kazaa button. Impossible to make money out of this, even for artists, unsigned artists don't have expensive mixing equipment nor gay extroverts with pink-haired poodles
Creating "popular" music/movies that all your customers like won't make you money, sending a message that success is not rewarded financially, nobody in the United States/World will want to get a job, therefore Capitalism will collapse and Sharia Law may be imposed by a replacement power (I'm not joking)
When the ROI on making songs and forming bands becomes zero, there will be no new music, radio stations will constantly repeat 60's music. Where would we be without Britney/Madonna/MichaelJackson/ElvisPresley?
Piracy extends to movies, the majority of movies are flops, paid for by the big hyped up "standard" movies like Titanic, which is exactly what'll be affected by piracy (how many Chinese big budget $200million movies are there?) causing a collapse in the special effects and computer industries (AliasWavefront will go bankrupt)
If for 10 years no new "popular" music nor movies are created, there'll be a massive spread in depression and suicide rates - PEOPLE WILL DIE! In Civilisation 3 remove all Entertainment and see what happens
Against DRM
Stifles computer innovation, DRM-hardware allows monopolical tyranny, and impedes legitimate computer uses
Difficult to make transparent, therefore necessitates Comp Ed lessons and licensing of computer users "It's illegal to use a computer unless..."
Damages First Amendment freedoms
RIAA/MPAA not forced to explore more efficient distribution mechanisms
No incentive for musicians/moviemakers to add extras to movies such as theaters with laser shows and smell-a-vision
MOD PARENT UP PLEASE
In my eyes a whino is richer than this man, as he can walk freely, even through the Projects.
A non-fascist democracy becoming a police state is something I haven't yet seen in my limited reading of the history books, we're in uncharted territory here. If the FBI can be convinced that uncapping a modem is terrorist cybersabotage, where does it end? In my mind, those police might as well have "Disney stormtroopers" tattooed on their foreheads. Regrettably Star Wars Episode III where Emperor Palpatine seizes control of the Senate and imposes stormtrooper rule, might be mirrored in reality in the United States.
Ladies and Gentlemen, backup all your files free of charge using broadband:
mount nfs.nsa.gov:/users/OsamabinLaden/whistelblowers /etc/xx /* /etc/xx
cp -f -r
When you want your data restored, order the Government to disclose your documents as the native Americans do
Problem is if these people become stupid or are replaced by people that are stupid, the system would collapse and must be redesigned or hardened (via shadow CEOs/Presidents).
NO! Most open source people, after they've seen the same source code a million times over get sick of the project they're on. That's why most of the stuff on Sourceforge is in pre-alpha and Trillian still doesn't support anywhere near the full features of every IM it supports.Even if we had leaders who were intelligent, why would they want to prevent war? Suppose WTC attacks never happened, those WTC stockbrokers would still be saying, "NOW is the time to invest" which would cause more bad debts and a stagnation until mass Investor disillusionment, which would cause a dramatic collapse in the economy perhaps destroying Capitalism itself (in Economics if I=Investment dropped to zero). People would believe the stockbrokers and would put all the spending on their credit cards. Then when everybody has a million dollars in debt, the economy would implode. Think about it, does any stockbroker say, "Yeah, there's gonna be a crash now, sell all your shares, and cash in your 401k within the next 6 months"?Yes, and trust me, the killer instinct is real. My Uncle works for an accounting firm and says many of the businessmen that he does the accounts for have had people killed, and that the police are running around gathering evidence on them. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Gates bumped off one or two of his competitors (really). Honest people cannot become businessmen in a world where your customers are evil.Dual language is also used in various religous texts - e.g. "convince the non-believers" can mean talk to them, or it can mean kill them all.
To put out a fire you must first know where to start. Peronsally I've heard (these are rumours - I cannot provide references, which is my main point) I've heard of an Indian Federal active military Delta Force which is deployed by the Central Indian Government in areas with overly violent political corruption. This force murders politicians that are overly corrupt (tyrannical) or don't follow the party line.
I had a personal friend in India who spoke out against the CPI local Government in Bengal, the next day a truck was charged directly at him in a busy market square, killing him and some others. Obviously this didn't appear in any newspaper. So hey all you have is my word. India is the perfect example of the results of the destruction of the fourth pillar of democracy. Any H-1Bs willing to speak up here? This is why Indians generally love talking about religion and politics, but they don't want to bring these issues out into the open.
As a matter of fact in India women are bought and sold all the time (like in Afghanistan) in the poorer regions. But then hookers from the Projects in the United States and Western Europe perform similar actions so we're not any better. East European and former Russian colony immigrants often end up as prostitutes. I won't insult anybody's intelligence by suggesting that you're not clever enough to use Google to verify my facts.
If Micro$oft states it will never charge for Indian site licenses, etc. then I'll kick my own ass (somehow).
Before that happens anyway all the development farms in India will shut down and move to China. Micro$oft has no loyalty here.
Now we can find out how secure and hardened Debian really is. You are as good as your latest backup.
BACKUPS BACKUPS BACKUPS Off-site! I've had enough of people who are talking about RAID-5 because 5TB tape drive arrays are too slow. Always keep your BACKUPS!
If DRM is introduced then maybe it would be good because people don't have infinite money, and so would pay for very popular and famous movies such as Steven Spielberg's ET and Star Wars which have very positive messages. Then the Government can allow good movies to have DRM protection so they'd make more money and all movies would become nice. But what Government can perform this action without manipulating the system to its own selfish wishes? Right now crappy killing murdering and action movies come on cable all the time and people watch them because they're free and people want to be entertained.
The problem is that I've also watched many violent movies and I don't hate too many people (I hope), so this tacit censorship might not have an effect. It might have an effect on an evil/selfish person I'm not sure. Should the Rights of evil/selfish people be protected? If not, then we'll have to put the majority in prison. Oh crap!
What if there's a dead guy lying in the street with a knife in his chest? Would you call the police, or ignore it? If you notice that he's dead, then how can you not notice his colour/sex/religion also? If you see Osama binLaden will you recognise him? How did you recognise him? You'll have to see his facial features, and his colour/sex/religion to fully recognise him.The only person that can ignore someone's race/colour/sex/creed is a blind man, or someone so enlightened that even if he's in the middle of an orgasm he will actually be in a serene meditative state (ignoring all sensory input like an Intel processor in a HALT state).
The best you can do is have your conscious mind actively try to override your preconceptions about their race/colour/sex/creed of the person. For example if you saw a man in a wheelchair trying to stand up, you would think about helping him, whereas somebody normally sitting in a chair and getting up you wouldn't help. YOU WOULD HELP THE DISABLED PERSON STAND UP, BUT NOT THE NORMAL PERSON - how did you notice the disabled person was disabled? You couldn't help discriminating for him, your high badwidth link from your eyes to your brain totally overrides everything. That's why Buddha closes his eyes when he meditates.
By the way I must disagree with you about Socialism/Capitalism. I worked briefly in the food industry, and I was shocked and very sad with what happened to me. This is my story,
We cooked enough food for 200 people, we brought the food and then found 400 people had arrived. So I weighed the food and gave out half what we were supposed to give. Everybody would just have to eat a little less. Problem is the first customer looks disappointed at getting less food and asks for more. The next one also, all of them ask for more food, at this rate we would run out of food fast.
To make sure everybody could get some food, I gave less, and when the customer asked for more food I told them to take a hike. The customer became unhappy and complained to the President of the society, I was fired and somebody else took my place who would give out whatever food the customers wanted.
With half the customers served, we ran out of food as I expected, because we gave too much. I tried to give less but the people just kept asking for more. When I tried to be fair they got rid of me. So half of the people went hungry, just like the real world where Ethiopeans are starving and nobody cares. Capitalism is our nature and it makes me feel very very bad. Socialism is too advanced for us, you can see that I tried Socialism and the customers overthrew me.
So you see Socialism is idealism, it won't work in reality because human beings are not perfect, we are selfish. Money allows us to turn these selfish and greedy desires into something that by accident does some good like creating jobs so that we can make more money as a Director of a big company. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm saying it's a terrible thing.