No, I wouldn't curb my internet usage, I'm an american, damnit, I take what I want, when I want it, and how I want it, and ain't nobody stoppin me.
You've obviously been listening to Dumbya and the "pre-emptive war" doctrine. It's a remarkable refelction of the US Government (as a slave of the capitalists) attitude. What's odd of course, is that it is completely at odds with the will of the American people.
Who is it here that has this wonderful siggy? "In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 2000s it triumphed over democracy."
Yeah - this makes fantastic sense! Every memory/storage/MP3 player retailer in Canada goes bust, while every Canadian consumer buys their products from eBay directly, to avoid the tax. In response, the Canadian government spends 900 Million dollars a year boosting the Customs and excise dept. in order to collect $101 million in taxes.
It's not the free speech, it's the hypocrisy. It's OK to bag Christianity, but not Islam? WTF is up with that?
I can tell you: Christianity is used to being harrassed, and Christianity has shown itself to be nothing, if not resilient to this kind of thing. Whereas Islam is extremely poor at handling criticism; you might find yourself dead, burned, having some bizarre rushdie-like death sentence on you, or being chased by a bunch of brainwashed muslims.
So no, you CAN'T make fun of Islam or point out the stupidity of living 14th century dogma in the 21st century.
It's telling too, because a confident religion doesn't care what is said about it. Witness what's been said about Christianity! No, it's only a scared religion which reacts poorly to criticism - and the main reason (I maintain) is because even "devout" Muslims KNOW that what they've been told is a load of stinking horse shit, but it is impossible to speak out against it.
Loud voices openly criticising Islam might start the tide against Islam, and that would result in the modernisation of that religion, and those who currently hold the power in Islam would see their power vanish almost instantly. So this issue continues to be about the power Islam wields over women, and other people. It's certainly got nothing to do with religion per se, in my view.
Am I right? The guy who spent $29,500 is now actually bankrupt, and he has split with his wife as a direct result of the downloading. Is that the story? Something like it.
So, it's probably not the best example to use, Steve.:P
Look, I keep beating this same drum over and over again - but the answer to this problem (and many others!) is to give http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ about a billion dollars to get themselves off the ground (no pun intended).
Corresponding with Liek Miyabo the company principle - he maintains that a pulsed 1 Gigawatt laser will put 1-ton payloads into orbit for cents per kilo. The same "laser beams" can be used to de-orbit space junk. As they come over the horizon, you blast the stuff with Laser light. The light pressure exerted on the junk slows it down, and drops its orbit. Major parts can be bought down quickly, other (smaller) bits can be bought down over months and years.
There is a global database of (known) space junk, and their orbits - so it should be simple math to program idle launch lasers to bombard space junk during down times.
Not only does the launch system allow for de-orbiting space junk, and launching hardy materiel into LEO, but it will also perform the following functsions:
1) Reflected from orbit not pulsed but defocused to illuminate search and rescue locations 2) Reflected form orbit, not defocused: surgical strike weapon capable of slagging your neighbours house without scorching your fence. 3) Bug eyed-alien tamer extra-ordinaire: several pulsed gigawatt class lasers say "Don't fuck with me" on a large scale. 4) Light-sail motor: boost interstallar probes to reletivistic velocities 5) Planet-killing Asteroid fixer: Only 2cm/s velocity change is required to change the orbit of an inbound asteroid such that it will miss the earth, even only 2 years out. Light pressure solves this one too. 6) Ballistic missile defence (REAL - as opposed to make-believe): this system will actually work, instead of merely providing employment for constituents of Senators in affected states.
So, this system actually does multiple things, and all for the same, low-low price, compared to Dubya's BMD program, which is a complete and utter waste of time and money.
Dunno of the author was too young to recall, but "Descent" is arguably responsible for developing P2P gaming, and for creating the first true 6DOF multiplayer environment. I think that counts for someting.
Plus, Descent 3, with its indoor-outdoor engine preceded Quake 3 by about 9 months - from memory.
Only two countries in the world allow Big Pharma to market D2C (Direct To Consumer): The USA and, stupidly, New Zealand. In most respects we (NZ) have a rational government, but in this one regard our politicians fell asleep at the wheel and let the Pharmas take over.
In my view, there can't be ANY advertising which is less helpful than the pushing of prescription medicines on TV. I'd rather see our local prostitutes get air time.
I simply do not understand why any government would tax lottery/prize winnings as income. It simply makes no sense, as the article shows: a poor person could not collect on any non-cash prize due to the taxes imposed on it.
Normally, one considers buying lottery tickets to be "a tax on stupid people". Simply because it's a very long shot gamble, and if those same poor people put their lottery money in a savings account, in a few years there's a non-trivial sum there awaiting the "winner".
Thankfully, here in New Zealand, there is no tax on prizes or winnings (even casino winnings) and there is also no capital gains tax. We need more citizens too.;)
You don't actually think there'd be any gold there do you? There might still be some today, but if human civilisation fails, the greedy stupid humans who remain will gut the place. No question.
Also, rubbish dumps will be a complete and utter waste of time as far as getting materials goes. The only thing rubbish dumps will provide is lots of interest for archealogists. But in 50 million years from now, plate techtonics will have moved the continents around so much that there will be plenty of raw materials lying around for easy extraction again. Unlike what would happen if human civilisation crashes soon: there's no easy source of raw materials out there now, nor easy sources of oil.
You can't just go out shooting for some food, and out of the ground comes some bubblin' crude. Oil that is. Texas Tea. Black Gold...;)
I believe you are mistaken! You can take a corporation to court over something, but no person is responsible for the company. Company killed your wife? Good luck trying to get a person held responsible. No - the COMPANY may be held accountable, and be fined, but no PERSON - regardless of how liable a person is, will end up taking the fall.
This is a major flaw in the US legal system in my view - that corporations are treated like people until someone has to stand up for it - then no one is to be found.
I would tend to argue this is why US corporations are so poorly behaved, and many US CEOs are so despicably dishonest: because the people at the top, who make the decisions, are not held liable for those decisions.
This guy's hysterical! He gave me a real giggle. An honest to god, little-girl giggle. I just can't believe how stupid this man can be - or why he wasted his time (and my 120 seconds - which I want back BTW!) doing this stuff.
Let's see why...
In 1422, I'm sure the best mathematicians of the day would be able to confidently predict that Intercontinental trade is "Next to Impossible" or "Only in non-perishable goods, due to the extreme delays in delivery". And that "Exploring the remainder of the Earth's surface will take a thousand years" based on similar knowledge of the day.
So, what this guy is trying to say, is that in 10 billion years, humanity (or any other technology based culture for that matter) can not invent something to get probes to relativistic velocities, or simply bypass "C" entirely, by folding space-time by using the entire output of a red-gaint star as a power source.
Hell, he doesn't even mention von Neumann machines (Which I believe will be one of the very few "DO NOTS" in a Galactic Culture) which could explore the entire galaxy remarkably quickly.
No, this article isn't worth the electrons used to push it: it assumes absolutely no movement of technology OVER A 10 BILLION YEAR TIME SCALE.
Holy Moly - he's wrong by a factor of a BILLION. Because in 10 years time we *could* well have already developed FTL, Fusion Power and Force Fields.
Thanks for the laugh, Rasmus Bjork, you truly are a useless Djork.
Descent 3: Yeah, this would be decent. I don't see why it needs to be so unlikely, as well.
Well, just go and spend $4.99 and buy the thing then. It was released in April of 1999.:P
You weren't much of a fan really were you? It is Descent 4 which has tried three times to get off the ground, but they have been cancelled each time. Volition's Descent 4 turned into the useless and annoying "Red Faction" and the fan-written Descent 4 stumbled over legal issues and team stupidity... Currently the rights belong to Matt Toschlog (Ex-Outrage owner).
Currently there's TWO Descent clones in the works: Into Cerberon is the "Descent into Doom" project using the Doom ]|[ engine. It looks damn good too. Current release is 0.03 "Coal" and if it supportede a Joystick I'd actually install it. But Descent without a joystick is like sex without penetration.
The other one is "Core Decision" by www.highoctanesoftware.com - but the new web site is not yet operational. They are both on schedule for a release date later this year.
That's obviously untrue, and must not go unchallenged.
Facts have no bias. You are perhaps talking about interpretation of the facts - and people will argue about that forever. It is impossible to argue against a fact.
You might be a believer of "Cultural truth" too - the idea that what is generally believed in a culture is true. That Papua New Guineans believe in many gods is at odds with the beliefs of other cultures. Clearly, two contradicting beliefs must leave at least one wrong.
Oh, and a network of these bad boys would make a handy defensive weapon, reflected from space to make a surgical strike weapon, defocused for search and rescue missions, light sail accelerator, bug-eyed alien tamer, asteroid deflection system and high quality extrasolar signalling aparatus.
Thanks to those of you who replied. I wasn't that interested in what VT is (I guessed in fact, correctly) - I was just trying to point out that OP is an idiot for using a UA.
However, the simple answer is to take the laptop back to the store and demand your money back. Simple.
If laws in the USA are similar to New Zealand, then inside the "Trades Description Act" or the "Sale of Goods Act" (or equivalent) there will be a paragraph which states "The goods must be of such a nature as to permit their intended use" or "Goods must be able to perform the tasks for which they are intended".
If HP has willingly disabled a feature on a chipset with a known feature, then they have violated the Sale Of Goods Act if a customer required VT as part of their purchase decision. There can be no argument about it whatsoever: the goods are NOT fit fo rthe purpose for which they were sold.
Btw I hope you enjoy piracy too, and I hope you don't mind anything you do gets ripped and sold there for pennies, devaluing your work to some, and losing your profit.
Aren't you forgetting that the USA was the biggest rip-off country during its formative years? The printing presses ran flat out all over the USA, stealing sheet music, and books for decades - ruining the authors and creators in Britain, rather than pay the royalties/copyright licencing. This activity was sanctioned by the government too.
So - it was OK when the US did it - but now it's YOU who are being ripped off - suddenly it's not OK?
Funny huh?
Well I say "What's good for the Goose it good for the Gander."
Also, seeing as the authors/creators in Britain/Europe did NOT lose a single penny due to the profligate piracy in the USA (i.e. the USA would simply have gone without, rather than pay propely) your argument has quite a few holes.
I think the whole copywrong law can be put right by the stipulation that any infringement that is NOT commercial is, Ipso Facto, NOT infringing.
This doesn't address the article however.
I read this far, EVERY SINGLE COMMENT, and thus far, NO ONE has made ANY comment about the veracity of his claims. Given that silence is ALWAYS interpreted as ascent, then we must assume he is correct in his technical assessment, and yes, I'm inclined to agree that it IS the longest suicide note in history.
Can people PLEASE start addressing the issue at hand, instead of the stupid red-herring about China, and the other stupid red-herring about IP law?
The writer mad a mistake in making ANY claim abotu China, except that he purchased a player made there. ACCEPTED - NOW MOVE ALONG!
Because Linux is stupidly tough to run/learn, does not run Windows software easily and isn't installed on your friend's PC. Oh, and if you don't know someone who is already a Linux Guru, then just forgetaboutit(tm).
Every 2 years or so, I try and install Linux, in the vain hope that it'll be smart, simple and ituitive. Guess what: IT NEVER IS, AND IT IS UNLIKELY EVER TO BE.
That is, unless Microsuck gets even stupider than it already is.
In New Zealand, it's actually impossible to buy a region-locked player. All DVD players here play all regions.
It's stunning to me, that in the USA things are different. Why would your consumers support defective/restricted products? Sure, you probably get 95% Region 1 DVDs, but what do you do when someone sends you a DVD from Britain or Australia?
I guess consumer ignorance is easy to blame (Given that the average American consumer couldn't distinguish his asshole from his elbow), but DVDs have been available now for a long time, and conventional wisdom must already have come down on the side of "You must have a region free DVD player", rather than "Let's just buy what's easily buyable."
Personally, I always take great care to tell businesses that I won't be buying their latest piece of DRM infected crap, and in many cases, I assert that I'll continue breaking the law by downloading copyrighted material, until such time as non-DRMed content is available for legitimate purchase.
If the manufacturers don't get this feedback from potential customers, then how can they ever hope to break out of the DRM cycle? Only by making it more costly to have it IN than to remove it, that's how.
Some years ago, after a client of ours had disobeyed our instructions and flown her paraglider into a tree, and then further disboeyed us by climbing out of the harness and falling to the ground, breaking her back in the process, we received a letter from her London-based solicitors.
They instructed US to send a cheque for 27,000 British Pounds (around 80,000 New Zealand dollars at the time) to pay for her hospital treatments (which were provided free by the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation under our Public Health system) and for her shortened holiday, and for her subsequent rehabilitation in Britain.
The fact we have native mammals (bats) in NZ hasn't really been discussed yet. How does that fit in with the observation of a mouse-sized land mammal 16 million years ago?
I find it annoyingly hard to reconcile, as we know that "Life will find a way" - and historically, land mammals have been particularly agressive in their expansion into new habitats, even going back to the sea (Ambulocetus) and taking on the birds (Bats et al).
Someone suggested volcanic activity - but this only applies to the North Island and the top of the South Island. The Taupo "eruption" og 86AD was reported by the chinese and the romans at the time. More than 30 cubic kilometres of matter was ejected in as little as 7 minutes.
However, this is dwarfed by the explosion 20,000 years ago, where over 2,000 cubic kilometres were ejected, as the magma chamber below Lake Taupo collapsed. The ferocity of this event is simply too large to imagine, and the landscape of the North Island was almost totally covered in ignumbrite, a gassy, fast flowing lava, expanding our from the crater at close to the speed of sound, in a wall some 200-300 metres tall...
The resulting Rhyolite domes from previosu explosions were actually topped by the outflow.
However, even as close as 5 kilomtres from the vent, some plant and animal life survived, and as the trillions of litres of water held loosely by the ignumbrite ran swiftly back to the lake area, and the remains of the North Island forests burned in one of the greatest fires in pre-history, and the rock cracked and cooled under muddy rain, the animals, birds, and plants made their way back into the landscape.
So - no - Taupo couldn't wipe out the land mammals of New Zealand, and the South of the South Island is almost entirely devoid of volcanos: Dunedin and Lyttleton volcanos were small, and not very violent in terms of the entire island.
There is an alternative available. The "Pukeko" is a common bird in New Zealand, and they are very poor flyers - certainly not capable of flying from Australia, where they evolved (They are the Australian "Swamp Hen") and yet they florish in New Zealand. They have only been here for a few thousand years. The best theory is that they came across on flotsam ejected from rivers during large storm events in Australia.
If Pukeko cxan arrive that way, then small mammals might also survive to arrive in New Zealand, but the number who arrived might not have been sufficient to maintain a good breeding pool, so the species might go extinct due to the lack of genetic diversity.
This would explain the discovery, the lack of other land mammals and the lack of fossils: if there were bugger all who ever floated over, then we are spectacularly lucky to even have found these ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Who is it here that has this wonderful siggy? "In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 2000s it triumphed over democracy."
Yeah - this makes fantastic sense! Every memory/storage/MP3 player retailer in Canada goes bust, while every Canadian consumer buys their products from eBay directly, to avoid the tax. In response, the Canadian government spends 900 Million dollars a year boosting the Customs and excise dept. in order to collect $101 million in taxes.
Yeah - this'll work out just great.
It's not the free speech, it's the hypocrisy. It's OK to bag Christianity, but not Islam? WTF is up with that?
I can tell you: Christianity is used to being harrassed, and Christianity has shown itself to be nothing, if not resilient to this kind of thing. Whereas Islam is extremely poor at handling criticism; you might find yourself dead, burned, having some bizarre rushdie-like death sentence on you, or being chased by a bunch of brainwashed muslims.
So no, you CAN'T make fun of Islam or point out the stupidity of living 14th century dogma in the 21st century.
It's telling too, because a confident religion doesn't care what is said about it. Witness what's been said about Christianity! No, it's only a scared religion which reacts poorly to criticism - and the main reason (I maintain) is because even "devout" Muslims KNOW that what they've been told is a load of stinking horse shit, but it is impossible to speak out against it.
Loud voices openly criticising Islam might start the tide against Islam, and that would result in the modernisation of that religion, and those who currently hold the power in Islam would see their power vanish almost instantly. So this issue continues to be about the power Islam wields over women, and other people. It's certainly got nothing to do with religion per se, in my view.
Am I right? The guy who spent $29,500 is now actually bankrupt, and he has split with his wife as a direct result of the downloading. Is that the story? Something like it.
:P
So, it's probably not the best example to use, Steve.
Look, I keep beating this same drum over and over again - but the answer to this problem (and many others!) is to give http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ about a billion dollars to get themselves off the ground (no pun intended).
Corresponding with Liek Miyabo the company principle - he maintains that a pulsed 1 Gigawatt laser will put 1-ton payloads into orbit for cents per kilo. The same "laser beams" can be used to de-orbit space junk. As they come over the horizon, you blast the stuff with Laser light. The light pressure exerted on the junk slows it down, and drops its orbit. Major parts can be bought down quickly, other (smaller) bits can be bought down over months and years.
There is a global database of (known) space junk, and their orbits - so it should be simple math to program idle launch lasers to bombard space junk during down times.
Not only does the launch system allow for de-orbiting space junk, and launching hardy materiel into LEO, but it will also perform the following functsions:
1) Reflected from orbit not pulsed but defocused to illuminate search and rescue locations
2) Reflected form orbit, not defocused: surgical strike weapon capable of slagging your neighbours house without scorching your fence.
3) Bug eyed-alien tamer extra-ordinaire: several pulsed gigawatt class lasers say "Don't fuck with me" on a large scale.
4) Light-sail motor: boost interstallar probes to reletivistic velocities
5) Planet-killing Asteroid fixer: Only 2cm/s velocity change is required to change the orbit of an inbound asteroid such that it will miss the earth, even only 2 years out. Light pressure solves this one too.
6) Ballistic missile defence (REAL - as opposed to make-believe): this system will actually work, instead of merely providing employment for constituents of Senators in affected states.
So, this system actually does multiple things, and all for the same, low-low price, compared to Dubya's BMD program, which is a complete and utter waste of time and money.
Dunno of the author was too young to recall, but "Descent" is arguably responsible for developing P2P gaming, and for creating the first true 6DOF multiplayer environment. I think that counts for someting.
Plus, Descent 3, with its indoor-outdoor engine preceded Quake 3 by about 9 months - from memory.
Only two countries in the world allow Big Pharma to market D2C (Direct To Consumer): The USA and, stupidly, New Zealand. In most respects we (NZ) have a rational government, but in this one regard our politicians fell asleep at the wheel and let the Pharmas take over.
In my view, there can't be ANY advertising which is less helpful than the pushing of prescription medicines on TV. I'd rather see our local prostitutes get air time.
I simply do not understand why any government would tax lottery/prize winnings as income. It simply makes no sense, as the article shows: a poor person could not collect on any non-cash prize due to the taxes imposed on it.
;)
Normally, one considers buying lottery tickets to be "a tax on stupid people". Simply because it's a very long shot gamble, and if those same poor people put their lottery money in a savings account, in a few years there's a non-trivial sum there awaiting the "winner".
Thankfully, here in New Zealand, there is no tax on prizes or winnings (even casino winnings) and there is also no capital gains tax. We need more citizens too.
You don't actually think there'd be any gold there do you? There might still be some today, but if human civilisation fails, the greedy stupid humans who remain will gut the place. No question.
;)
Also, rubbish dumps will be a complete and utter waste of time as far as getting materials goes. The only thing rubbish dumps will provide is lots of interest for archealogists. But in 50 million years from now, plate techtonics will have moved the continents around so much that there will be plenty of raw materials lying around for easy extraction again. Unlike what would happen if human civilisation crashes soon: there's no easy source of raw materials out there now, nor easy sources of oil.
You can't just go out shooting for some food, and out of the ground comes some bubblin' crude. Oil that is. Texas Tea. Black Gold...
I believe you are mistaken! You can take a corporation to court over something, but no person is responsible for the company. Company killed your wife? Good luck trying to get a person held responsible. No - the COMPANY may be held accountable, and be fined, but no PERSON - regardless of how liable a person is, will end up taking the fall.
This is a major flaw in the US legal system in my view - that corporations are treated like people until someone has to stand up for it - then no one is to be found.
I would tend to argue this is why US corporations are so poorly behaved, and many US CEOs are so despicably dishonest: because the people at the top, who make the decisions, are not held liable for those decisions.
This guy's hysterical! He gave me a real giggle. An honest to god, little-girl giggle. I just can't believe how stupid this man can be - or why he wasted his time (and my 120 seconds - which I want back BTW!) doing this stuff.
Let's see why...
In 1422, I'm sure the best mathematicians of the day would be able to confidently predict that Intercontinental trade is "Next to Impossible" or "Only in non-perishable goods, due to the extreme delays in delivery". And that "Exploring the remainder of the Earth's surface will take a thousand years" based on similar knowledge of the day.
So, what this guy is trying to say, is that in 10 billion years, humanity (or any other technology based culture for that matter) can not invent something to get probes to relativistic velocities, or simply bypass "C" entirely, by folding space-time by using the entire output of a red-gaint star as a power source.
Hell, he doesn't even mention von Neumann machines (Which I believe will be one of the very few "DO NOTS" in a Galactic Culture) which could explore the entire galaxy remarkably quickly.
No, this article isn't worth the electrons used to push it: it assumes absolutely no movement of technology OVER A 10 BILLION YEAR TIME SCALE.
Holy Moly - he's wrong by a factor of a BILLION. Because in 10 years time we *could* well have already developed FTL, Fusion Power and Force Fields.
Thanks for the laugh, Rasmus Bjork, you truly are a useless Djork.
You weren't much of a fan really were you? It is Descent 4 which has tried three times to get off the ground, but they have been cancelled each time. Volition's Descent 4 turned into the useless and annoying "Red Faction" and the fan-written Descent 4 stumbled over legal issues and team stupidity... Currently the rights belong to Matt Toschlog (Ex-Outrage owner).
Currently there's TWO Descent clones in the works: Into Cerberon is the "Descent into Doom" project using the Doom ]|[ engine. It looks damn good too. Current release is 0.03 "Coal" and if it supportede a Joystick I'd actually install it. But Descent without a joystick is like sex without penetration.
The other one is "Core Decision" by www.highoctanesoftware.com - but the new web site is not yet operational. They are both on schedule for a release date later this year.
"Facts have a liberal bias"
That's obviously untrue, and must not go unchallenged.
Facts have no bias. You are perhaps talking about interpretation of the facts - and people will argue about that forever. It is impossible to argue against a fact.
You might be a believer of "Cultural truth" too - the idea that what is generally believed in a culture is true. That Papua New Guineans believe in many gods is at odds with the beliefs of other cultures. Clearly, two contradicting beliefs must leave at least one wrong.
Your microsatelites will be launched by Laser Beams: http://lightcrafttechnologies.com/
Oh, and a network of these bad boys would make a handy defensive weapon, reflected from space to make a surgical strike weapon, defocused for search and rescue missions, light sail accelerator, bug-eyed alien tamer, asteroid deflection system and high quality extrasolar signalling aparatus.
Thanks to those of you who replied. I wasn't that interested in what VT is (I guessed in fact, correctly) - I was just trying to point out that OP is an idiot for using a UA.
However, the simple answer is to take the laptop back to the store and demand your money back. Simple.
If laws in the USA are similar to New Zealand, then inside the "Trades Description Act" or the "Sale of Goods Act" (or equivalent) there will be a paragraph which states "The goods must be of such a nature as to permit their intended use" or "Goods must be able to perform the tasks for which they are intended".
If HP has willingly disabled a feature on a chipset with a known feature, then they have violated the Sale Of Goods Act if a customer required VT as part of their purchase decision. There can be no argument about it whatsoever: the goods are NOT fit fo rthe purpose for which they were sold.
N.B. UA = Uncommon Acronym.
What is VT? That'd be nice to know.
At least the cartographers can now do an accurate job. They've been fuxorin' slack in the past, I say!
Arctic warming's a GOOD thing: the infamous North-West Passage should shortly open up for shipping.
I confess; I had to look up what a prion is.
A +prions%3F&btnG=Search
I'm so embarrassed.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3
Btw I hope you enjoy piracy too, and I hope you don't mind anything you do gets ripped and sold there for pennies, devaluing your work to some, and losing your profit.
Aren't you forgetting that the USA was the biggest rip-off country during its formative years? The printing presses ran flat out all over the USA, stealing sheet music, and books for decades - ruining the authors and creators in Britain, rather than pay the royalties/copyright licencing. This activity was sanctioned by the government too.
So - it was OK when the US did it - but now it's YOU who are being ripped off - suddenly it's not OK?
Funny huh?
Well I say "What's good for the Goose it good for the Gander."
Also, seeing as the authors/creators in Britain/Europe did NOT lose a single penny due to the profligate piracy in the USA (i.e. the USA would simply have gone without, rather than pay propely) your argument has quite a few holes.
I think the whole copywrong law can be put right by the stipulation that any infringement that is NOT commercial is, Ipso Facto, NOT infringing.
This doesn't address the article however.
I read this far, EVERY SINGLE COMMENT, and thus far, NO ONE has made ANY comment about the veracity of his claims. Given that silence is ALWAYS interpreted as ascent, then we must assume he is correct in his technical assessment, and yes, I'm inclined to agree that it IS the longest suicide note in history.
Can people PLEASE start addressing the issue at hand, instead of the stupid red-herring about China, and the other stupid red-herring about IP law?
The writer mad a mistake in making ANY claim abotu China, except that he purchased a player made there. ACCEPTED - NOW MOVE ALONG!
Because Linux is stupidly tough to run/learn, does not run Windows software easily and isn't installed on your friend's PC. Oh, and if you don't know someone who is already a Linux Guru, then just forgetaboutit(tm).
Every 2 years or so, I try and install Linux, in the vain hope that it'll be smart, simple and ituitive. Guess what: IT NEVER IS, AND IT IS UNLIKELY EVER TO BE.
That is, unless Microsuck gets even stupider than it already is.
In New Zealand, it's actually impossible to buy a region-locked player. All DVD players here play all regions.
It's stunning to me, that in the USA things are different. Why would your consumers support defective/restricted products? Sure, you probably get 95% Region 1 DVDs, but what do you do when someone sends you a DVD from Britain or Australia?
I guess consumer ignorance is easy to blame (Given that the average American consumer couldn't distinguish his asshole from his elbow), but DVDs have been available now for a long time, and conventional wisdom must already have come down on the side of "You must have a region free DVD player", rather than "Let's just buy what's easily buyable."
Personally, I always take great care to tell businesses that I won't be buying their latest piece of DRM infected crap, and in many cases, I assert that I'll continue breaking the law by downloading copyrighted material, until such time as non-DRMed content is available for legitimate purchase.
If the manufacturers don't get this feedback from potential customers, then how can they ever hope to break out of the DRM cycle? Only by making it more costly to have it IN than to remove it, that's how.
... and I see no evidence of diminishing penguin numbers.
I rang a buddy of mine who works with them south of here. He said "WTF?"
I concur.
Some years ago, after a client of ours had disobeyed our instructions and flown her paraglider into a tree, and then further disboeyed us by climbing out of the harness and falling to the ground, breaking her back in the process, we received a letter from her London-based solicitors.
They instructed US to send a cheque for 27,000 British Pounds (around 80,000 New Zealand dollars at the time) to pay for her hospital treatments (which were provided free by the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation under our Public Health system) and for her shortened holiday, and for her subsequent rehabilitation in Britain.
This was our two word, written response:
"Get Fucked."
We never heard another word.
Interesting.
The fact we have native mammals (bats) in NZ hasn't really been discussed yet. How does that fit in with the observation of a mouse-sized land mammal 16 million years ago?
I find it annoyingly hard to reconcile, as we know that "Life will find a way" - and historically, land mammals have been particularly agressive in their expansion into new habitats, even going back to the sea (Ambulocetus) and taking on the birds (Bats et al).
Someone suggested volcanic activity - but this only applies to the North Island and the top of the South Island. The Taupo "eruption" og 86AD was reported by the chinese and the romans at the time. More than 30 cubic kilometres of matter was ejected in as little as 7 minutes.
However, this is dwarfed by the explosion 20,000 years ago, where over 2,000 cubic kilometres were ejected, as the magma chamber below Lake Taupo collapsed. The ferocity of this event is simply too large to imagine, and the landscape of the North Island was almost totally covered in ignumbrite, a gassy, fast flowing lava, expanding our from the crater at close to the speed of sound, in a wall some 200-300 metres tall...
The resulting Rhyolite domes from previosu explosions were actually topped by the outflow.
However, even as close as 5 kilomtres from the vent, some plant and animal life survived, and as the trillions of litres of water held loosely by the ignumbrite ran swiftly back to the lake area, and the remains of the North Island forests burned in one of the greatest fires in pre-history, and the rock cracked and cooled under muddy rain, the animals, birds, and plants made their way back into the landscape.
So - no - Taupo couldn't wipe out the land mammals of New Zealand, and the South of the South Island is almost entirely devoid of volcanos: Dunedin and Lyttleton volcanos were small, and not very violent in terms of the entire island.
There is an alternative available. The "Pukeko" is a common bird in New Zealand, and they are very poor flyers - certainly not capable of flying from Australia, where they evolved (They are the Australian "Swamp Hen") and yet they florish in New Zealand. They have only been here for a few thousand years. The best theory is that they came across on flotsam ejected from rivers during large storm events in Australia.
If Pukeko cxan arrive that way, then small mammals might also survive to arrive in New Zealand, but the number who arrived might not have been sufficient to maintain a good breeding pool, so the species might go extinct due to the lack of genetic diversity.
This would explain the discovery, the lack of other land mammals and the lack of fossils: if there were bugger all who ever floated over, then we are spectacularly lucky to even have found these ones.
That's my story anyway.