If the content-control mafia doesn't go on the warpath against every possible consumer aid, then consumers might get "convenient" access to the videos they purchase. It has nothing to do with piracy -- since that's done on a massive scale across the world where DVD's are duplicated and sold for a few-bucks -- it has everything with consumer control -- especially control of the lucrative US-consumer market. If they don't keep up the legal pressure to block all technical progress, you'd start seeing low-end, non-Windows (or non-Vista) based jukeboxes selling at Walmart for $200. The content industry didn't invest millions in getting Vista to have all their layers of protection and licensing only to let stupid consumers get devices that actually allow them to DO things with their purchased videos. The only way the content-mafia can continue to make higher and higher profits off of fewer and fewer hits, is by changing the way they do business -- instead of selling DVD's, they really would prefer to sell pay-per-view-per-viewer. That would be their "ideal", though to get there, they have to move very slowly and indirectly. If they bring the consumers to a boil too quickly then the consumers get upset and balk (DIVX), or complain to congress-critters who occasionally threaten to do things when these content-kings try step up their charges for content viewing too quickly.
Just like Kaleidescape got nailed because they were a bunch of engineers and not part of the 'content-mafia', and thought consumers (even though they'd pay dearly for the cutting edge) might enjoy increased convenience. It's very likely, that Real Networks, being a competitor of Microsoft, hasn't been given the green light to develop a sufficiently onerous DRM (their RealDVD product probably isn't restricted to Vista) that's tied in with the OS, and designed to work with content-controlled hardware on the user's PC (the TPM chip being installed in every consumer computer that will be able to hold appropriately blessed, time limited, or location limited, or view-limited licenses that can be easily 'lost', or remotely deactivated over the network connection that's required for these devices to 'verify' your 'license' every time you view content.
Of course knowing what you are watching, where and how many times you watch an old DVD will given them useful marketing and taste information about the consumers who will be monitored.
Allowing a 'rogue' program that just lets consumers 'view' their own video (DVD/BluRay) without all the content-restriction and obfuscation software might allow a user to view a video through a unlicensed or non-approved video playback device. Recently I needed to replace a simple DVD player in my bedroom -- only needed an inexpensive playback device, but the device, of course has up-sampling and high-end digital-output for digital screens (LCD/plasma, virtually all modern viewers) that is only available through the HDMI connector. The instruction book tells you that unless your HDMI monitor is also HDCP-secure, that 'snow' or 'noise' in the output picture is "normal".
If the content-mafia allowed even the smallest bit of 'freedom' in video viewing, it could undo all their plans to shift to a completely controlled digital experience.
Nightmare scenario for them. Customer could buy their video *once*, DVD/BluRay, then load it on their home media center. But that same media center could show the vid
It's a leak that they may release a "wiz-cool" OS, *cough*...let's see, last time they did that it got called "Vista", except that everything was dropped out except the 3D desktop and the DRM improvements. So now, they need to see another OS...question is, why? Is it really to further OS development, or is this another story to get us excited about tech that will never be, but will be replaced by yet further OS-support for remote control by content producers, law enforcement, and corporate interests who pay to buy in for a piece of the pie.
Already, the US is seeing the rewards 'reaped' on the deliberate vulnerabilities implanted in cell phones for law enforcement official (for the war on terror, for the new-bogus war to track down the national security threat of kiddy-porn (which americans and other nationalities are having their fear pumped up artificially, just like Cheney/Rove/Bush did with the daily 'threat level' for the war on terror) -- all methods to justify over-arching powers and privileges to spy and monitor all of our actions and communications. Computers -- PC's, are the new biggest 'threat' -- darknets that can completely hide networks of users, encrypted P2P nets are only the tip, with song and movie piracy as only additional legal 'excuses' for law-enforcement to get permanently open taps and backdoors available. Since the war on terror has now been mostly unmasked as entirely fabricated, with the only torture usage being shown to brainwash prisoners into giving bogus 'confessions' to give fabricated information to support the GOP-fascist agenda, the "LawEnforcement-Prison Machine" wants more methods to make their job of artificial political-enforcement easier.
They seem to not be making much progress in prosecuting real crime -- in fact they are losing their battle of control now that DNA evidence is proving even "eye-witness" testimony as reliable as memories recovered with hypnosis. With evidence building against fingerprints as people ask for proof of efficacy, and evidence leaking out that the Fed's DNA database can return many false positives when a "DNA-print" is run against their entire database, they need new tools so they can get back in power -- or gain power over the people that they never had. Having a closed-source OS with hooks available to law-enforcement to tap into, and control people's computers would be a big boon to the Law.Enf.+Prison "machine". They need to keep feeding the prisons with new criminals so 'Corrections' operations (of which Cheney is a major owner/player) can continue its upward trend as a growth industry.
Meanwhile, as corrections are privatized, you increasingly have a slave-labor workforce. No minimum wages required, minimal benefits -- time to make those "criminals" start "producing for the country." Don't believe it can happen here? Take a look at US 'territories' setup far from American roving investigative camera crews where Jack Abramoff did much of his entertaining of congressmen -- Saipan island, the largest island in the American territories. They ship in foreign workers with no rights on national soil -- force them to live in prison like conditions for manual labor and have the better 'behaved'/'trained' perform in the 'service industry' (the big new industry capitalism has been trying to sell to America as our new 'future'). But these particular servants got low wages, and had to be well mannered and obedient in all they did, or they'd be returned to the even worse conditions of their native countries. The females, of course were also their for 'servicing' the (from what I've read, exclusively male clientele/visitors -- all high political mucktymucks who are on the conservative 'payroll' system of (serve and be taken care of). If you wish to be depressed and understand the processes behind our recently departed regime (who is only out temporarily, but still quite actively planning their next take-over, with increasing the slave-labor force in the privately held priso
The cases seem to have little to do with each other. Copyright law in Sweden has little to do with regulations in the US. Google is still protected on the 'impartial traffic facilitator', who is required to remove copyrighted content as dictated by US law under the DMCA. To expect them to remove material in compliance with the DMCA (which says they are protected from payment), and then think that foreign law will supersede US law, would be expecting a complete reversal of US law an sovereignty.
Can you explain why you think a ruling in swedish court would override the restrictions (onerous as we complain about them being) and protections of US law? I don't believe Sweden had a DMCA where the operators were required to remove infringing content -- so they could legally, under some theories be held to be aid & abetting illegal activity, but the DMCA draw lines to protect neutral providers who follow the DMCA and hold them blameless if they follow the requirements that law.
Why do you think this would change? They are two different systems with two different methods of propagating 'blame' for infringement. A ruling under a different system wouldn't, in anyway, apply that the same principles hold under a different set of assigning blame and responsibility.
Dumb criminals are easier to catch, so they get lower sentence times? Sounds like republicans trying to put more democrats in jail - republican states - country bumpkins, not sophisticated, but "them 'city-dwellin' sophisticated types -- thems we got to put behind bars longer!"
A great deal of our laws and penalties are decided upon what group of people will be most targetted. They've targetted race and religions in the past, and they've gone after political affiliations in the past 30, most obviously under Bush, where they deliberately fired Liberal leaning attorneys, and tried to only place conservo-loyalists, under their summer intern program, where they filtered out anyone with liberal keywords in their name, and even based on, the now public campaign contribution lists, democratic-party donors were targetted by Bush in his first as well.
Too often liberals are all focused on their own issues and forget to watchout for their fellow "non-conservatives". Prison, sentencing, and penalties all need major reform at the Federal and in my state (CA). The sentencing is harmful to society as a whole and our country won't be able to support the ever increasing prison load in addition to our other financial burdens.
I don't know about nation-wide, but in California, a sizable junk of our state budget has to go to prison building and prison/prisoner maintenance, and CA is ALREADY guilty of prisoner abuse with the state operating prisons at 200% of holding capacity. It's been that way for years and has been getting worse. Don't even think about health care for prisoners. It took a federal judge ordering the state to spend money for health care for prisons to get it allocated, and another ruling has ordered CA to reduce it's prison population to "only" about 133% of capacity. Following the judges order would involve releasing 57,000 inmates.
Of course many of the prisoners are in for non-violent, mandatory drug offenses, which is probably the single largest part of the prison population these days (grown since Bush-I implemented 0-tolerance). The federal prison system doubled its population during the Clinton years due to the mandatory drug sentencing (another reneged promise), predominantly affects blacks, and liberals. I don't know if it is still true, but during the Clinton era, the fastest growing segment of prison population were women, because the male drug-dealers used their women-girlfriends as couriers, thinking they'd be less likely to get caught. That sure backfired. Dunno if the first-timer rate has declined for women or not.
It's a sucky and corrupt system along with other parts of our government.
Deflation hidden by a constant inflationary pressure from the fed is still Deflation -- and is likely to cause problems in other areas.
The same factors are not in place not as in the 1930's, especially since the current downturn is nowhere near the severity of the 1929 occurrence and is unlikely to hit those levels, as the stock market is giving hints of a recovery already. The recession ain't over, but right now, one of the 'noses of the dog', is pointing the right directly. Still have the rest of the body and the long tail to change direction as the wave of initial harm caused by the....no, NOT the collapse of the sub-market (though that was in the chain)....
The final straw that broke the camel's back that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is the price of gasoline that had jumped to $5.00/gallon in many places. Now it's down to half that (plus or minus). If fuel costs had remained low, the people at the 'edge' (the sub-prime market) wouldn't have been defaulting in large numbers. Only a small percentage of sub-prime loans were "ballooning payment" loans made to people who could never in their wildest dreams afford the monthly cost of the non-teaser rate. That very small percentage was the fraud that everyone is focusing on.
The larger problem was the fact that no one could go anywhere without it costing twice as much and many people have to travel some distance (be it driving a few blocks to a small downtown, or a long 1-2 hour, one-way commute). People had to get to work - drive the kids to needed locations. Some travel couldn't be easily cut and people were, perhaps, not fast enough to adjust their driving habits to compensate for the doubling of gas cost. Such a high cost, for a some large minority, went far beyond eating up discretionary spending and forced massive defaulting. It wasn't until the trigger had been pulled, that gas prices began to tumble.
But if real deflation is "occurring" because demand falls, the prices -- in a free-market system, should be allowed to fall. Otherwise you don't have the ability to match demand by prices -- instead, you have those at the top where the fed is injecting it's money, getting 'rich' by getting the 'new' dollars -- and anyone who has any money or is paid at some 'fixed' rate (most salaried, fixed-income, and hourly workers), those at the bottom -- on short or long term 'fixed-incomes (which is why I include anyone paid a salary or wage at a fixed amount), will be screwed, until they and their "employers" or "sources of fixed income", catch-up and raise salaries, wages and fixed-income benefits - with minimum hourly wages being usually being one of the slowest things to catch up.
The constant inflation will always benefit those at the top of the pile -- the closer to the Fed, the more they will profit. By the time benefits percolate down to the "working class" (anyone working for a living), the money-printing / making class has already printed up a new batch.
That's the biggest drawback to constantly keeping inflation at a minimum of 2% target -- it's a built in bias toward the money-printers, banks, and lenders at the top.
They didn't take any of your stuff -- they put their stuff into unused "pages". These were pages you left open, so that others could add things to your Wiki. Now someone adds something to your wiki and you are upset? Sure not clear how it's theft at this point.
Now it would be different if the active project was hosing your system, but I think they were doing research for a Proof-of-Concept type paper. I'd say their preliminary research indicates the concept may not be viable in its current form.:-)
You helped do research for a paper documenting how using "random" open wiki's for data storage would be a bad idea! Congratulations!:-)
First they sell 'unlimited internet' for a "lowish" monthly fee like $30. Then they collect a bunch of subscriptions and don't funnel sufficient amount into R&D, so they then create the idea of 'scarcity', so they can implement 'caps' (pre-emptive strike against being able to sub to an "on-demand" download HD movie service" for more than 1 movie). Now they re-introduce the old unlimited at the new shiny price of $150.
Like cell service. Reasonably usable plans were available for $29-$39 dollars. Then it was $49, now it's closer to $59 or $69 if you want, say 10 hours a month of unrestricted call-time.
Unlike computer services which used to be priced in 5-15$/minute of cpu time or hour of computer time that eventually fell to too small to be metered. This was the effect of innovation, competition and progress.
Now, we see the opposite effect of little or no competition and low innovation and low progress -- the companies divide up their current 'offerings' into smaller chunks to give smaller amounts for the same price while 'quintupling' the price for the old service.
Sounds like a ~ 400% price increase for the same old service, or "500% inflation". Someone asked for items that have increased by large amounts (much more than the published rate of 'inflation')...it's not all items at the same time, but a 5x jump for unlimited computer download access might qualify as an example of excessive inflation -- either that or gouging... Why? Because they can.
Free market capitalism becomes corrupt when a few people (or pseudopeople(Corps)) buy up the market. Seems like corruption is the natural consequence of capitalism. It's even being acknowledged that the pay-for-performance system in place for financial was one of the main factors leading to the systemic abuse, fraud and corruption that is slowly falling out as people's abuses are falling out of the woodwork as deleveraging and the Fed's mantra of "constant-inflation is good" mantra is running into problems.
It's unrealistic and a systemic abuse to constantly inflate the currency as the Fed has done and has stated as one of its guiding goals -- not keeping inflation 'in check', but always making sure there is some inflation around 2%/year. The idea of 'deflation', was so scary, recently, that the Federal Reserve "printed" hundreds of billions of dollars over last fall just to inject into the economy to stimulate inflation to counter the economy's contraction. Rather than allowing natural deflation to occur (as happened in the stock market to some extent), the dollar should have been allowed to contract by 3-4% as the economy contracted. Instead, they print more paper, so each dollar becomes worth less (inflation) to counter the natural contraction.
When the economy rebounds, there will be so much money in the economy, we risk an unpredictable rebound. Instead of providing stability, the Fed has its focus on constant low-level stimulation, regardless of economic conditions. Pretty stupid policy to leave in the hands of private enterprise.
You wouldn't say that QT creates a "fake" QT environment for applications like KDE so why would you say that WINE provides a "fake" WIN32 environment for DVDFab?
There is a difference when a problem comes up. If I'm running an app that uses Qt, I don't usually have the app person tell me "oh, that may be a problem in Qt, and emulating an undocumented behavior, so the Qt developers won't be able to tell you, either, what's really going on, so you're screwed." The developer deals with the bug in their app and chases down the stream back to the source (or using the source if so motivated).
With a bug in DVDFab, even if the company suppports running on Linux via WINE, if they reproduce the bug there, they might only have a Win Devel env, and well, they don't _really_ support it on linux -- just happens it worked -- because Wine worked for the calls they thought they were using, but..ooo...
That's a weird case, why would anyone do it that way? You shouldn't use the product that way, you should do something different that you wanted to do with our product and only use it in some other way you weren't thinking of (like the way we intended when we designed to work in our narrow test cases).
Even if they can push back to the Wine devels or fix it themselves in wine, they can ultimately get stuck with...Hmmm....... I wonder what that's doing?... "Hey Joe, we still have the reverse engineering team around to figure out this windows call?" "Um...what team?" "Oh, that's right, it was already done for us by volunteers who spent countless hours developing Wine in the first place...oh well". Back to customer...
[weeks later]... "sorry we don't support it being used that way on linux". ***
"a small bubble of spacetime containing a spacecraft could travel faster than the speed of light, at least in principle. What happens to the bubble when quantum mechanics is taken into account -- a team of physicists believeit's bad news: the bubble becomes unstable at superluminal speeds,"
Problem:
The bubble isn't moving relative to itself. It would be "us" that is unstable? The bubble can't destabilize because in its frame of reference it is not moving -- we are, thus wouldn't we equally likely to be 'unstable'?
Implication: a field moving through our universe faster than speed of light would cause instability of entire universe? Something seems wrong with some assumptions somewhere (could be FTL can't happen, but claiming instability seems an unlikely paradigm on the surface).
Is it possible our sense of what is 'real' or 'fair' has been pushed so far to the 'right' by the outrageous tactics of the RIAA and idea of creation of "Intellectual/Virtual" Property, that we are perhaps buying into some idea of "fairness" as defined in an unreasonable system?
I.e. -- It's generally human to try to be reasonable (in a non emotional/non rant state). A tactic of Republicans during Clinton's term was to present such outrageous demands, that in order to seem "moderate", he had to stand to the right of the line that would conventionally divide Republicans from Democrats.
In a similar way, if the media companies present some outrageous version of reality that what is imaginary or that which is 'thought' is now something that can be protected, then bought and sold -- that thoughts can be bought and sold, but they package it artfully enough, they might get people to buy into their version of reality and start creating a legal system to defend it. We might start thinking along the lines about what is fair and not fair within that 'created' system -- without seriously or critically thinking about the validity, or, invalidity, of the system created.
When a system starts needing such strong laws to protect it and massive threats of retaliation far out of proportion to the damage done or any sense of 'justice', one needs to look at why such harsh penalties are necessary to engender 'law abiding' behavior in a 'just and fair' society/system. Such outrageous penalties may be put in place out of fear of losing control -- because someone is trying to "legislate" something that is being artificially applied to society that goes contrary to human nature or contary to what is considered "innately" fair in that society.
It could easily be these problems arise because the new, 'created', 'imposed' is being seen as 'unfair' or not just by a significant percent of the population -- it's being forced upon the masses by those who can manipulate the media and legal system so that the average citizen unquestioningly accepts the premise and starts reasoning about 'fairness' within the newly created framework.
Perhaps someone with more advanced insight into the law and social-shaping by creating new "crimes" for new "virtual property" might have a view worth listening to?
"Standard" critical appraisal, like movie critics, book critics, product, software, or GUI critics, etc, are people who excel in analysis from *outside* the realm of the created item. Movie directors and actors are not cited as movie critics -- they are the creators.
The linux kernel et al. projects tend to resist criticism by anyone not able or willing to implement the code. Of those foolish enough to try, heaven help them getting it into a form acceptable for kernel inclusion.
Developers being critical don't qualify as 'critics'. That's just good software development practice.
Ya almost got me...sounds pseudo logical, but here's the rub... Starting from the original "justification".
The real "crime" is based on actual filming of children being forced to participate in sexual acts or being forced to submit to being posed in sexual or erotic positions.
Stage ONE) is going after the perps committing the crimes (including the filming). The crime(s) all these laws are based on addressing are supposed to be based upon real 'young adults' (sic] to be able to know enough to consent to what they are participating in.
Stage TWO) was to go after anyone who feeds the original "perps" -- i.e. anyone who views or trades in the images that the original perpetrators created. This stage, IMO, is already controversial, because, while it's true they are feeding the problem, they didn't do the original act, and I *strongly suspect* that most would never go so far as to actually participate, any more than the viewers of murders on 'news' or 'evening fictionalized crime dramas', would actually 'murder'.
Prosecution of stage two as 'equivalent' to the stage-one perps, will (and does) create "collateral damage". Hurting individuals that are otherwise productive members of society that would never have done such harm to children. I suspect that while going after Stage Two "perps" (violators of stage-two laws) may address the goal of drying up the market for the original 'Stage One' crime, the majority of Stage Two violators are not those who would actually commit stage one, nor pay for images of real stage-one violations if they knew for certainty that was going on.
It's one thing to watch depictions of murders that one knows are fictional -- its quite another to knowingly pay to watch an actual 'snuff film', where the victim (of any age) is really tortured, raped or killed. The fictional depictions we see every night on TV or at the movies. And pics of real victims are generally rare but considered 'news'. The actual filming of the event taking place only is seen by most as a fictionalized recreation. Filming and buying the real even would be morally reprehensible in that there was a real victim.
Now enter Stage THREE).... going after anyone who creates 'fiction' about 'stage one', and consumers of such fiction.
Stage Two was bad enough in that it inflicts wide 'collateral' damage as previously defined. Stage THREE targets a group that is nothing but 'collateral damage' (except by statistical random overlap of Stage ONE or TWO violators appearing in group THREE). There is no crime, but just to make sure we catch all of Stage TWO violators -- we extend the law to include the 'imaginary'/'fiction'. Stage THREE, to use a cliché, is prosecution of 'thought crime'. IMO, this goes well beyond addressing the original problem.
Now we are creating laws based on fantasies and images...which I see as complete bovine-excrement.
But it DOES further the goal of immoral governments to gain criminal and financial control over yet a wider range of citizens in order to further the government's own desire for unjust power over its people.
The progression of harmful laws is allowed because of the 'emotional', 'gut' reaction about how horrible stage one is -- like Bush's war on terrorism being an excuse to violate normal US constitutional law -- it's an immoral use of fear-based emotion to allow arbitrary expansion of government power against groups that not perpetrators of any original crime -- only 2nd, 3rd or more, derivative crimes.
The point is not to prevent anything, but to use the current 'witchhunt'-flavor of the day (or generation) to implement laws that enable government to 'optionally' criminalize everyone to allow selective enforcement.]
There is a threat that people might actually not break the law -- in which case, the power of a government is hampered in its ability to establish control through threat.
If there are few laws, then when the government wants to silence you, people ask why. If the law is so complex you that everyone is a law-breaker, then when asked why, they can mumble something about US or State, or City (or whatever gov) code clearly says the person they arrested is a law breaker. They'll get a swift & speedy court date within 5 years with a public defender -- don't worry "ma'am/sir", justice will prevail.
By creating a law that is subjective like 'looks young', they open a whole new avenue of silencing people they don't like. They also create new excuses to hunt for more 'violating items'. So how about we start treating all Japanese anime as 'suspicious', because they draw young looking sexualized characters in stories (even if the show is aimed at children, it's really all a cover for old perverts to look at forbidden drawings)...etc. blah blah blah.... Have to keep the laws up-to-date and current to go after 'technology', as drawings/computer art is looking more real all the time. The supposed reasoning for crackdown on child-porn, is that the children were exploited. But if the pics aren't real, where are the victimized children we have been hoodwinked into 'protecting'?
It becomes another way the government extends its license to interfere in consensual adult activity that prudes want to regulate and extinguish so everyone is under their thumbs and as unhappy as those pushing the laws.
*sigh* (what else is new...story of 'humanity'...) -l
Yeah -- I think that was it -- it wasn't really that violent -- certainly not more than many PG-13 movies. Must of been the blue flaccid barely-visible schlong...
What a hypocritical, fracked up morality this country has....
The real crimes are pleasure, love and sex. The issues on "drug abuse" are about people "getting high". That's what the euphemism "abuse" means. And getting 'high' a euphemism for getting into some type of pleasurable state. So our society calls 'pleasure', abuse and makes it illegal. Just the site of a flaccid representation of a source of pleasure they haven't yet figured out a way to make 'illegal' is enough to earn an 'R' rating. With sex, it gets put down, as dirty, disgusting, icky, filthy, perverted -- everything to counter the reality that it's the only legal source of pleasure. And even at that, the sick people in society do everything to make it problematic or troublesome -- forcing babies on pleasure seekers, or forcing pregnancy risks, or saying sex is only for procreation or every sexual actual act should have the potential for procreation.
Drugs are just another outlet to access 'pleasure', that doesn't have the pregnancy and STD risks -- but since it isn't necessary for life, we can make all such drugs illegal.
A flaccid blue is just oh so disruptive to our society.... Not like showing rapes killings and murders... no, those are just fine. Caught the end of a junkshow last night (ABC runs their programs slow). Last scene from lost: "You know, you were right" (Man to cute young kid(boy)). "I am a murder." Man pulls out a gun and shoots him with the kid. Kid is shocked, and holds his bloody chest with as he falls, dead to ground. Kid looked like "an innocent"..*blam*. End of story. Another death carved into my eyes before I knew what I was watching (was looking for "Life on Mars"...found death on earth instead).
Just great -- I went the whole evening avoiding graphic murder and death and then had it shockingly shoved right in my face -- thank you ABC. Killing like that -- that should be the real obscenity. Not a barely visible (you have to look really closely) flaccid member (it's mostly hidden in the blue glow).
Pegging CPU at 25% (or at 12.5% on a Dual-socket, quad-populated motherboard) is a Window-ism.
On Windows, an 8-cpu machine has 100% cpu total. Same as a 4, 2, or 1. 25% CPU peg'ed means 1 core is at 100%, 3 cores are idle. Not to do with disk I/O.
It's one of my standard complaints on some Windows forums.
I much prefer the unix/linux system of showing cpu usage as % of 1 CPU and allowing one to show 200, 400 or 800% CPU usage based on number of cores, but Windows has always tried to hide hardware and what's really going on from users, so it's consistent in that way...
So seems like complaint was about fees game-distributors might have to pay for user downloading a free-demo. If they have no other fees to pay, sounds like they are paying.80cents for a targetted demo 5GB demo 'advertisement'/person.
How does this compare to ad costs through other forms to targetted, on-request-by-potential-customer, ads?
The only series they've had that have been SciFi Originals (that were sci-fi) were BSG, a remake(or reboot), and Eureka.
Mostly it's the horror, monster, gross-out and scare fest channel...
It's not been good -- NBC has has more SciFi/Fantasy series (Heroes, Chuck, Knight Rider, Medium, all this season) than their 'SciFi' channel. It's been sad. At least if they change they name, maybe the name will open up for more of a sci-fi offering...
Sure...reruns abound -- but when was the last time you saw episodes of the TimeTunnel (available on Hulu, I know), or ST:Voyager (Available where?) or, Voyagers (cut due to actor death), Wonder Woman? Dr. Who? What other couldn't they show? I saw tons of Dr Who for the first time on PBS nearly 10-15 years after they were first on BBC. Torchwood a scifi'ish show never made it to an American network that I know of, but I don't get premium cable. Wonder
It's sad in a way to see the passing of an era, but it's been passed for a while...now have buy and own old DVD's... when, on shows I've loved on TV, I never seem to watch and they just take up space/collect dust. But neither do I want to pay 99 cents/view....
Broadband sucks for delivery in the US. Mixed feelings about the announcement...
So some anonymous person yells "bomb", or "he's got a gun" in a crowded venue, and it carries no weight. Right... I suppose you'll require his life history, education and resume before his statement holds weight -- just like everyone else will ignore him too.
Or...how about Anonymous Coward on/.? They seem to get people riled up every once in a while for someone that carries no weight...
Something doesn't have to carry weight or be true to influence people.
Books, magazines (especially cost of techmags now days), movies (like in going to the movie theater, matinee or evening prices), comics are ones that come to mind.
Sorry, not entirely clear -- commodity problems cause retail price hikes, justified by higher 'commodity' problem.
Gasoline, is technically a retail item compared to oil, but for most retailers, their fleet run on petrol or diesel, so for most retailers, they use the price of fuel as a commodity price to base prices on.
Here's a recent article concerning what I'm talking about. Retailer giants like General Mills recently (I think Kellog's) followed suit, downsized produce amounts in boxes, while keeping prices flat early last fall. 12-pack - fridge-ready packs were the standard 'unit' at all the retail stores in my area that had the widest selection and most sales. Last fall, all of the soda-vendors decreased the standard unit to an 8-pack last fall. Their "on sale" price is now about the same as what 12-packs went for last fall. That's a 50% price increase -- though tempered by more frequent, steeper sales, for now on the 8 packs while the public gets used to the new "unit" size.
The prices of ALOT of things jumped up after 9/11 on fear and during the gasoline crisis. They also take advantage of every weather crisis or flood to publish how it will cause a shortage and a price hike.
Ever notice -- when these things clear up, they don't go back down.
Everything needs to go through some deflation. The price of many things is just ridiculous.
Things going from 25-50 cents in the 70's to 6-10 bucks... That's a hell of alot of inflation -- alot more than the supposed 2-4% reported by government figures each year. Over 3 decades, 4% would be a 324% price inflation. Instead, I commonly see things more in line with 20x (2000%). It's not just housing.
$2.99 for a corrupted version of a song (a ringtone). vs. $4-6 for an album in the early 80's. The incremental cost to produce that ringtone: 0. An album might have ~10 songs... so as ring tones, that'd be $30. That's 7.5-5x and those aren't for the real song. The incremental profit margins are nearly incalculable. Piracy has hurt music companies sooooo much.....
But contrary to what 'should' happen -- the government is just manufacturing more money backed by nothing. It's like stock dilution -- but on a massive scale -- dollar dilution. Soon street bums will be begging $20's for a cup of joe.
Theoretically, we are so screwed...but for what really will happen? Good luck guessing!
What if the RIAA was there to harrass customers until enough customers had transitioned over to Vista and Win7 where the DRM is more substantial and more songs are getting sold on iTunes and cellphones -- again and again and again --.... its easier to download from the net to your phone that load up songs from your computer -- the purchase price is low enough that the songs purchases are have become what the music industry wants -- they want you to purchase the song each time for each device and form...2.99$ for a distorted ringtone version?
The RIAA maybe was never meant to stop song downloading/trading -- just run harassment and make online trading a bit more of a hassle than downloading a song directly onto your phone or your iTune player... Between the virii/malware, fake software and media data streams... just run harassment until the online pay-per-download-per-device is in place.
They played a part at a moment in time -- they may have been successful at their real mission -- now the economic downturn is bringing a swifter end to their mission, perhaps, but people are no longer buying new computers at the same rate...small devices are becoming more popular/prevalent. Perfect for the shrinking economy...
I dunno if I'd call their mission a complete failure...
Slashdot Mirror
You really don't get why they bother? If it became legal to move DVD images around -- even if restricted by CSS licenses, $30K jukeboxes that was introduced as new, high-end consumer "tech" and discussed, here, on /. OVER 4 years ago.
If the content-control mafia doesn't go on the warpath against every possible consumer aid, then consumers might get "convenient" access to the videos they purchase. It has nothing to do with piracy -- since that's done on a massive scale across the world where DVD's are duplicated and sold for a few-bucks -- it has everything with consumer control -- especially control of the lucrative US-consumer market. If they don't keep up the legal pressure to block all technical progress, you'd start seeing low-end, non-Windows (or non-Vista) based jukeboxes selling at Walmart for $200. The content industry didn't invest millions in getting Vista to have all their layers of protection and licensing only to let stupid consumers get devices that actually allow them to DO things with their purchased videos. The only way the content-mafia can continue to make higher and higher profits off of fewer and fewer hits, is by changing the way they do business -- instead of selling DVD's, they really would prefer to sell pay-per-view-per-viewer. That would be their "ideal", though to get there, they have to move very slowly and indirectly. If they bring the consumers to a boil too quickly then the consumers get upset and balk (DIVX), or complain to congress-critters who occasionally threaten to do things when these content-kings try step up their charges for content viewing too quickly.
Just like Kaleidescape got nailed because they were a bunch of engineers and not part of the 'content-mafia', and thought consumers (even though they'd pay dearly for the cutting edge) might enjoy increased convenience. It's very likely, that Real Networks, being a competitor of Microsoft, hasn't been given the green light to develop a sufficiently onerous DRM (their RealDVD product probably isn't restricted to Vista) that's tied in with the OS, and designed to work with content-controlled hardware on the user's PC (the TPM chip being installed in every consumer computer that will be able to hold appropriately blessed, time limited, or location limited, or view-limited licenses that can be easily 'lost', or remotely deactivated over the network connection that's required for these devices to 'verify' your 'license' every time you view content.
Of course knowing what you are watching, where and how many times you watch an old DVD will given them useful marketing and taste information about the consumers who will be monitored.
Allowing a 'rogue' program that just lets consumers 'view' their own video (DVD/BluRay) without all the content-restriction and obfuscation software might allow a user to view a video through a unlicensed or non-approved video playback device. Recently I needed to replace a simple DVD player in my bedroom -- only needed an inexpensive playback device, but the device, of course has up-sampling and high-end digital-output for digital screens (LCD/plasma, virtually all modern viewers) that is only available through the HDMI connector. The instruction book tells you that unless your HDMI monitor is also HDCP-secure, that 'snow' or 'noise' in the output picture is "normal".
If the content-mafia allowed even the smallest bit of 'freedom' in video viewing, it could undo all their plans to shift to a completely controlled digital experience.
Nightmare scenario for them. Customer could buy their video *once*, DVD/BluRay, then load it on their home media center. But that same media center could show the vid
It's a leak that they may release a "wiz-cool" OS, *cough*...let's see, last time they did that it got called "Vista", except that everything was dropped out except the 3D desktop and the DRM improvements. So now, they need to see another OS...question is, why? Is it really to further OS development, or is this another story to get us excited about tech that will never be, but will be replaced by yet further OS-support for remote control by content producers, law enforcement, and corporate interests who pay to buy in for a piece of the pie.
Already, the US is seeing the rewards 'reaped' on the deliberate vulnerabilities implanted in cell phones for law enforcement official (for the war on terror, for the new-bogus war to track down the national security threat of kiddy-porn (which americans and other nationalities are having their fear pumped up artificially, just like Cheney/Rove/Bush did with the daily 'threat level' for the war on terror) -- all methods to justify over-arching powers and privileges to spy and monitor all of our actions and communications. Computers -- PC's, are the new biggest 'threat' -- darknets that can completely hide networks of users, encrypted P2P nets are only the tip, with song and movie piracy as only additional legal 'excuses' for law-enforcement to get permanently open taps and backdoors available. Since the war on terror has now been mostly unmasked as entirely fabricated, with the only torture usage being shown to brainwash prisoners into giving bogus 'confessions' to give fabricated information to support the GOP-fascist agenda, the "LawEnforcement-Prison Machine" wants more methods to make their job of artificial political-enforcement easier.
They seem to not be making much progress in prosecuting real crime -- in fact they are losing their battle of control now that DNA evidence is proving even "eye-witness" testimony as reliable as memories recovered with hypnosis. With evidence building against fingerprints as people ask for proof of efficacy, and evidence leaking out that the Fed's DNA database can return many false positives when a "DNA-print" is run against their entire database, they need new tools so they can get back in power -- or gain power over the people that they never had. Having a closed-source OS with hooks available to law-enforcement to tap into, and control people's computers would be a big boon to the Law.Enf.+Prison "machine". They need to keep feeding the prisons with new criminals so 'Corrections' operations (of which Cheney is a major owner/player) can continue its upward trend as a growth industry.
Meanwhile, as corrections are privatized, you increasingly have a slave-labor workforce. No minimum wages required, minimal benefits -- time to make those "criminals" start "producing for the country." Don't believe it can happen here? Take a look at US 'territories' setup far from American roving investigative camera crews where Jack Abramoff did much of his entertaining of congressmen -- Saipan island, the largest island in the American territories. They ship in foreign workers with no rights on national soil -- force them to live in prison like conditions for manual labor and have the better 'behaved'/'trained' perform in the 'service industry' (the big new industry capitalism has been trying to sell to America as our new 'future'). But these particular servants got low wages, and had to be well mannered and obedient in all they did, or they'd be returned to the even worse conditions of their native countries. The females, of course were also their for 'servicing' the (from what I've read, exclusively male clientele/visitors -- all high political mucktymucks who are on the conservative 'payroll' system of (serve and be taken care of).
If you wish to be depressed and understand the processes behind our recently departed regime (who is only out temporarily, but still quite actively planning their next take-over, with increasing the slave-labor force in the privately held priso
The cases seem to have little to do with each other. Copyright law in Sweden has little to do with regulations in the US. Google is still protected on the 'impartial traffic facilitator', who is required to remove copyrighted content as dictated by US law under the DMCA. To expect them to remove material in compliance with the DMCA (which says they are protected from payment), and then think that foreign law will supersede US law, would be expecting a complete reversal of US law an sovereignty.
Can you explain why you think a ruling in swedish court would override the restrictions (onerous as we complain about them being) and protections of US law? I don't believe Sweden had a DMCA where the operators were required to remove infringing content -- so they could legally, under some theories be held to be aid & abetting illegal activity, but the DMCA draw lines to protect neutral providers who follow the DMCA and hold them blameless if they follow the requirements that law.
Why do you think this would change? They are two different systems with two different methods of propagating 'blame' for
infringement. A ruling under a different system wouldn't, in anyway, apply that the same principles hold under a different set of assigning blame and responsibility.
Dumb criminals are easier to catch, so they get lower sentence times? Sounds like republicans trying to put more democrats in jail - republican states - country bumpkins, not sophisticated, but "them 'city-dwellin' sophisticated types -- thems we got to put behind bars longer!"
A great deal of our laws and penalties are decided upon what group of people will be most targetted. They've targetted race and religions in the past, and they've gone after political affiliations in the past 30, most obviously under Bush, where they deliberately fired Liberal leaning attorneys, and tried to only place conservo-loyalists, under their summer intern program, where they filtered out anyone with liberal keywords in their name, and even based on, the now public campaign contribution lists, democratic-party donors were targetted by Bush in his first as well.
Too often liberals are all focused on their own issues and forget to watchout for their fellow "non-conservatives". Prison, sentencing, and penalties all need major reform at the Federal and in my state (CA). The sentencing is harmful to society as a whole and our country won't be able to support the ever increasing prison load in addition to our other financial burdens.
I don't know about nation-wide, but in California, a sizable junk of our state budget has to go to prison building and prison/prisoner maintenance, and CA is ALREADY guilty of prisoner abuse with the state operating prisons at 200% of holding capacity. It's been that way for years and has been getting worse. Don't even think about health care for prisoners. It took a federal judge ordering the state to spend money for health care for prisons to get it allocated, and another ruling has ordered CA to reduce it's prison population to "only" about 133% of capacity. Following the judges order would involve releasing 57,000 inmates.
Of course many of the prisoners are in for non-violent, mandatory drug offenses, which is probably the single largest part of the prison population these days (grown since Bush-I implemented 0-tolerance). The federal prison system doubled its population during the Clinton years due to the mandatory drug sentencing (another reneged promise), predominantly affects blacks, and liberals. I don't know if it is still true, but during the Clinton era, the fastest growing segment of prison population were women, because the male drug-dealers used their women-girlfriends as couriers, thinking they'd be less likely to get caught. That sure backfired. Dunno if the first-timer rate has declined for women or not.
It's a sucky and corrupt system along with other parts of our government.
Deflation hidden by a constant inflationary pressure from the fed is still Deflation -- and is likely to cause problems in other areas.
The same factors are not in place not as in the 1930's, especially since the current downturn is nowhere near the severity of the 1929 occurrence and is unlikely to hit those levels, as the stock market is giving hints of a recovery already. The recession ain't over, but right now, one of the 'noses of the dog', is pointing the right directly. Still have the rest of the body and the long tail to change direction as the wave of initial harm caused by the ....no, NOT the collapse of the sub-market (though that was in the chain)....
The final straw that broke the camel's back that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is the price of gasoline that had jumped to $5.00/gallon in many places. Now it's down to half that (plus or minus). If fuel costs had remained low, the people at the 'edge' (the sub-prime market) wouldn't have been defaulting in large numbers. Only a small percentage of sub-prime loans were "ballooning payment" loans made to people who could never in their wildest dreams afford the monthly cost of the non-teaser rate. That very small percentage was the fraud that everyone is focusing on.
The larger problem was the fact that no one could go anywhere without it costing twice as much and many people have to travel some distance (be it driving a few blocks to a small downtown, or a long 1-2 hour, one-way commute). People had to get to work - drive the kids to needed locations. Some travel couldn't be easily cut and people were, perhaps, not fast enough to adjust their driving habits to compensate for the doubling of gas cost. Such a high cost, for a some large minority, went far beyond eating up discretionary spending and forced massive defaulting. It wasn't until the trigger had been pulled, that gas prices began to tumble.
But if real deflation is "occurring" because demand falls, the prices -- in a free-market system, should be allowed to fall. Otherwise you don't have the ability to match demand by prices -- instead, you have those at the top where the fed is injecting it's money, getting 'rich' by getting the 'new' dollars -- and anyone who has any money or is paid at some 'fixed' rate (most salaried, fixed-income, and hourly workers), those at the bottom -- on short or long term 'fixed-incomes (which is why I include anyone paid a salary or wage at a fixed amount), will be screwed, until they and their "employers" or "sources of fixed income", catch-up and raise salaries, wages and fixed-income benefits - with minimum hourly wages being usually being one of the slowest things to catch up.
The constant inflation will always benefit those at the top of the pile -- the closer to the Fed, the more they will profit. By the time benefits percolate down to the "working class" (anyone working for a living), the money-printing / making class has already printed up a new batch.
That's the biggest drawback to constantly keeping inflation at a minimum of 2% target -- it's a built in bias toward the money-printers, banks, and lenders at the top.
I'd call that a corrupt system.
They didn't take any of your stuff -- they put their stuff into unused "pages". These were pages you left open, so that others could add things to your Wiki. Now someone adds something to your wiki and you are upset? Sure not clear how it's theft at this point.
Now it would be different if the active project was hosing your system, but I think they were doing research for a Proof-of-Concept type paper. I'd say their preliminary research indicates the concept may not be viable in its current form. :-)
You helped do research for a paper documenting how using "random" open wiki's for data storage would be a bad idea! Congratulations! :-)
First they sell 'unlimited internet' for a "lowish" monthly fee like $30. Then they collect a bunch of subscriptions and don't funnel sufficient amount into R&D, so they then create the idea of 'scarcity', so they can implement 'caps' (pre-emptive strike against being able to sub to an "on-demand" download HD movie service" for more than 1 movie). Now they re-introduce the old unlimited at the new shiny price of $150.
Like cell service. Reasonably usable plans were available for $29-$39 dollars. Then it was $49, now it's closer to $59 or
$69 if you want, say 10 hours a month of unrestricted call-time.
Unlike computer services which used to be priced in 5-15$/minute of cpu time or hour of computer time that eventually fell to
too small to be metered. This was the effect of innovation, competition and progress.
Now, we see the opposite effect of little or no competition and low innovation and low progress -- the companies divide up
their current 'offerings' into smaller chunks to give smaller amounts for the same price while 'quintupling' the price for
the old service.
Sounds like a ~ 400% price increase for the same old service, or "500% inflation". Someone asked for items that have increased
by large amounts (much more than the published rate of 'inflation')...it's not all items at the same time, but a 5x jump for
unlimited computer download access might qualify as an example of excessive inflation -- either that or gouging... Why?
Because they can.
Free market capitalism becomes corrupt when a few people (or pseudopeople(Corps)) buy up the market. Seems like corruption is the natural consequence of capitalism. It's even being acknowledged that the pay-for-performance system in place for financial was one of the main factors leading to the systemic abuse, fraud and corruption that is slowly falling out as people's abuses are falling out of the woodwork as deleveraging and the Fed's mantra of "constant-inflation is good" mantra is running into problems.
It's unrealistic and a systemic abuse to constantly inflate the currency as the Fed has done and has stated as one of its guiding goals -- not keeping inflation 'in check', but always making sure there is some inflation around 2%/year. The idea of 'deflation', was so scary, recently, that the Federal Reserve "printed" hundreds of billions of dollars over last fall just to inject into the economy to stimulate inflation to counter the economy's contraction. Rather than allowing natural deflation to occur (as happened in the stock market to some extent), the dollar should have been allowed to contract by 3-4% as the economy
contracted. Instead, they print more paper, so each dollar becomes worth less (inflation) to counter the natural contraction.
When the economy rebounds, there will be so much money in the economy, we risk an unpredictable rebound. Instead of providing
stability, the Fed has its focus on constant low-level stimulation, regardless of economic conditions. Pretty stupid policy to leave in the hands of private enterprise.
You wouldn't say that QT creates a "fake" QT environment for applications like KDE so why would you say that WINE provides a "fake" WIN32 environment for DVDFab?
There is a difference when a problem comes up. If I'm running an app that uses Qt, I don't usually have the
app person tell me "oh, that may be a problem in Qt, and emulating an undocumented behavior, so the Qt developers won't be able to tell you, either, what's really going on, so you're screwed." The developer deals with the bug in their app and chases down the stream back to the source (or using the source if so motivated).
With a bug in DVDFab, even if the company suppports running on Linux via WINE, if they reproduce the bug there, they might only have a Win Devel env, and well, they don't _really_ support it on linux -- just happens it worked -- because Wine worked for the calls they thought they were using, but ..ooo...
That's a weird case, why would anyone do it that way? You shouldn't use the product that way, you should do something different that you wanted to do with our product and only use it in some other way you weren't thinking of (like the way we intended when we designed to work in our narrow test cases).
Even if they can push back to the Wine devels or fix it themselves in wine, they can ultimately get stuck with ...Hmmm....... I wonder what that's doing? ...
"Hey Joe, we still have the reverse engineering team around to figure out this windows call?"
"Um...what team?"
"Oh, that's right, it was already done for us by volunteers who spent countless hours developing Wine in the first place...oh well". Back to customer...
[weeks later]... "sorry we don't support it being used that way on linux". ***
So back to the issue of a good ripper on Linux?
Doesn't sound like there is one.
-l
This is the nature of the problem.
You don't have inventions in software. You have ideas, and implementations. There is no in-between.
The idea of patenting a software algorithm is equivalent to patenting a mathematical expression.
original poster:
Problem:
The bubble isn't moving relative to itself. It would be "us" that is unstable? The bubble can't destabilize because in its frame of reference it is not moving -- we are, thus wouldn't we equally likely to be 'unstable'?
Implication: a field moving through our universe faster than speed of light would cause instability of entire universe? Something seems wrong with some assumptions somewhere (could be FTL can't happen, but claiming instability seems an unlikely paradigm on the surface).
Is it possible our sense of what is 'real' or 'fair' has been pushed so far to the 'right' by the outrageous tactics of the RIAA and idea of creation of "Intellectual/Virtual" Property, that we are perhaps buying into some idea of "fairness" as defined in an unreasonable system?
I.e. -- It's generally human to try to be reasonable (in a non emotional/non rant state). A tactic of Republicans during Clinton's term was to present such outrageous demands, that in order to seem "moderate", he had to stand to the right of the line that would conventionally divide Republicans from Democrats.
In a similar way, if the media companies present some outrageous version of reality that what is imaginary
or that which is 'thought' is now something that can be protected, then bought and sold -- that thoughts can be bought and sold, but they package it artfully enough, they might get people to buy into their version of reality and start creating a legal system to defend it. We might start thinking along the lines about what is fair and not fair within that 'created' system -- without seriously or critically thinking about the validity, or, invalidity, of the system created.
When a system starts needing such strong laws to protect it and massive threats of retaliation far out of proportion to the damage done or any sense of 'justice', one needs to look at why such harsh penalties are necessary to engender 'law abiding' behavior in a 'just and fair' society/system. Such outrageous penalties may be put in place out of fear of losing control -- because someone is trying to "legislate" something that is being artificially applied to society that goes contrary to human nature or contary to what is considered "innately" fair in that society.
It could easily be these problems arise because the new, 'created', 'imposed' is being seen as 'unfair' or not just by a significant percent of the population -- it's being forced upon the masses by those who can manipulate the media and legal system so that the average citizen unquestioningly accepts the premise and starts reasoning about 'fairness' within the newly created framework.
Perhaps someone with more advanced insight into the law and social-shaping by creating new "crimes" for new "virtual property" might have a view worth listening to?
"Standard" critical appraisal, like movie critics, book critics, product, software, or GUI critics, etc, are people who excel in analysis from *outside* the realm of the created item. Movie directors and actors are not cited as movie critics -- they are the creators.
The linux kernel et al. projects tend to resist criticism by anyone not able or willing to implement the code. Of those foolish enough to try, heaven help them getting it into a form acceptable for kernel inclusion.
Developers being critical don't qualify as 'critics'. That's just good software development practice.
Ya almost got me...sounds pseudo logical, but here's the rub... Starting from the original "justification".
The real "crime" is based on actual filming of children being forced to participate in sexual acts or being forced to submit to being posed in sexual or erotic positions.
Stage ONE) is going after the perps committing the crimes (including the filming).
The crime(s) all these laws are based on addressing are supposed to be based upon real 'young adults' (sic] to be able to know enough to consent to what they are participating in.
Stage TWO) was to go after anyone who feeds the original "perps" -- i.e. anyone who views or trades in the images that the original perpetrators created. This stage, IMO, is already controversial, because, while it's true they are feeding the problem, they didn't do the original act, and I *strongly suspect* that most would never go so far as to actually participate, any more than the viewers of murders on 'news' or 'evening fictionalized crime dramas', would actually 'murder'.
Prosecution of stage two as 'equivalent' to the stage-one perps, will (and does) create "collateral damage". Hurting individuals that are otherwise productive members of society that would never have done such harm to children. I suspect that while going after Stage Two "perps" (violators of stage-two laws) may address the goal of drying up the market for the original 'Stage One' crime, the majority of Stage Two violators are not those who would actually commit stage one, nor pay for images of real stage-one violations if they knew for certainty that was going on.
It's one thing to watch depictions of murders that one knows are fictional -- its quite another to knowingly pay to watch an actual 'snuff film', where the victim (of any age) is really tortured, raped or killed. The fictional depictions we see every night on TV or at the movies. And pics of real victims are generally rare but considered 'news'. The actual filming of the event taking place only is seen by most as a fictionalized recreation. Filming and buying the real even would be morally reprehensible in that there was a real victim.
Now enter Stage THREE).... going after anyone who creates 'fiction' about 'stage one', and consumers of such fiction.
Stage Two was bad enough in that it inflicts wide 'collateral' damage as previously defined. Stage THREE targets a group that is nothing but 'collateral damage' (except by statistical random overlap of Stage ONE or TWO violators appearing in group THREE).
There is no crime, but just to make sure we catch all of Stage TWO violators -- we extend the law to include the 'imaginary'/'fiction'. Stage THREE, to use a cliché, is prosecution of 'thought crime'. IMO, this goes well beyond addressing the original problem.
Now we are creating laws based on fantasies and images...which I see as complete bovine-excrement.
But it DOES further the goal of immoral governments to gain criminal and financial control over yet a wider range of citizens in order to further the government's own desire for unjust power over its people.
The progression of harmful laws is allowed because of the 'emotional', 'gut' reaction about how horrible stage one is -- like Bush's war on terrorism being an excuse to violate normal US constitutional law -- it's an immoral use of fear-based emotion to allow arbitrary expansion of government power against groups that not perpetrators of any original crime -- only 2nd, 3rd or more, derivative crimes.
*grrr*
-l
The point is not to prevent anything, but to use the current 'witchhunt'-flavor of the day (or generation) to implement laws that enable government to 'optionally' criminalize everyone to allow selective enforcement.]
There is a threat that people might actually not break the law -- in which case, the power of a government is hampered in its ability to establish control through threat.
If there are few laws, then when the government wants to silence you, people ask why. If the law is so complex you that everyone is a law-breaker, then when asked why, they can mumble something about US or State, or City (or whatever gov) code clearly says the person they arrested is a law breaker. They'll get a swift & speedy court date within 5 years with a public defender -- don't worry "ma'am/sir", justice will prevail.
By creating a law that is subjective like 'looks young', they open a whole new avenue of silencing people they don't like.
They also create new excuses to hunt for more 'violating items'. So how about we start treating all Japanese anime as 'suspicious', because they draw young looking sexualized characters in stories (even if the show is aimed at children,
it's really all a cover for old perverts to look at forbidden drawings)...etc. blah blah blah.... Have to keep the laws up-to-date and current to go after 'technology', as drawings/computer art is looking more real all the time. The supposed reasoning for crackdown on child-porn, is that the children were exploited. But if the pics aren't real, where are the victimized children we have been hoodwinked into 'protecting'?
It becomes another way the government extends its license to interfere in consensual adult activity that prudes want to regulate and extinguish so everyone is under their thumbs and as unhappy as those pushing the laws.
*sigh*
(what else is new...story of 'humanity'...)
-l
Yeah -- I think that was it -- it wasn't really that violent -- certainly not more than many PG-13 movies. Must of been the blue flaccid barely-visible schlong...
What a hypocritical, fracked up morality this country has....
The real crimes are pleasure, love and sex. The issues on "drug abuse" are about people "getting high". That's what the euphemism "abuse" means. And getting 'high' a euphemism for getting into some type of pleasurable state. So our society calls 'pleasure', abuse and makes it illegal. Just the site of a flaccid representation of a source of pleasure they haven't yet figured out a way to make 'illegal' is enough to earn an 'R' rating. With sex, it gets put down, as dirty, disgusting, icky, filthy, perverted -- everything to counter the reality that it's the only legal source of pleasure. And even at that, the sick people in society do everything to make it problematic or troublesome -- forcing babies on pleasure seekers, or forcing pregnancy risks, or saying sex is only for procreation or every sexual actual act should have the potential for procreation.
Drugs are just another outlet to access 'pleasure', that doesn't have the pregnancy and STD risks -- but since it isn't necessary for life, we can make all such drugs illegal.
A flaccid blue is just oh so disruptive to our society.... Not like showing rapes killings and murders...
no, those are just fine. Caught the end of a junkshow last night (ABC runs their programs slow). Last scene from lost: "You know, you were right" (Man to cute young kid(boy)). "I am a murder." Man pulls out a gun and shoots him with the kid. Kid is shocked, and holds his bloody chest with as he falls, dead to ground. Kid looked like "an innocent"..*blam*. End of story. Another death carved into my eyes before I knew what I was watching (was looking for "Life on Mars"...found death on earth instead).
Just great -- I went the whole evening avoiding graphic murder and death and then had it shockingly shoved right in my face -- thank you ABC. Killing like that -- that should be the real obscenity. Not a barely visible (you have to look really closely) flaccid member (it's mostly hidden in the blue glow).
Just completely fracked up.
Pegging CPU at 25% (or at 12.5% on a Dual-socket, quad-populated motherboard) is a Window-ism.
On Windows, an 8-cpu machine has 100% cpu total.
Same as a 4, 2, or 1. 25% CPU peg'ed means 1 core is at 100%, 3 cores are idle.
Not to do with disk I/O.
It's one of my standard complaints on some Windows forums.
I much prefer the unix/linux system of showing cpu usage as % of 1 CPU and allowing one to show
200, 400 or 800% CPU usage based on number of cores, but Windows has always tried to hide hardware
and what's really going on from users, so it's consistent in that way...
So seems like complaint was about fees game-distributors might have to pay for user downloading a free-demo. If they have no other fees to pay, sounds like they are paying .80cents for a targetted demo 5GB demo 'advertisement'/person.
How does this compare to ad costs through other forms to targetted, on-request-by-potential-customer, ads?
Worked for me....
What, you got a problem with an older vid format?
Kids.
SciFi has been MOSTLY non-scifi sometime.
The only series they've had that have been SciFi Originals (that were sci-fi) were BSG, a remake(or reboot), and Eureka.
Mostly it's the horror, monster, gross-out and scare fest channel...
It's not been good -- NBC has has more SciFi/Fantasy series (Heroes, Chuck, Knight Rider, Medium, all this season) than their 'SciFi' channel. It's been sad. At least if they change they name, maybe the name will open up for more of a sci-fi offering...
Sure...reruns abound -- but when was the last time you saw episodes of the TimeTunnel (available on Hulu, I know), or ST:Voyager (Available where?) or, Voyagers (cut due to actor death), Wonder Woman? Dr. Who? What other couldn't they show? I saw tons of Dr Who for the first time on PBS nearly 10-15 years after they were first on BBC. Torchwood a scifi'ish show never made it to an American network that I know of, but I don't get premium cable. Wonder
It's sad in a way to see the passing of an era, but it's been passed for a while...now have buy and own old DVD's...
when, on shows I've loved on TV, I never seem to watch and they just take up space/collect dust. But neither do I
want to pay 99 cents/view....
Broadband sucks for delivery in the US. Mixed feelings about the announcement...
Defined 'threatened'... cause I thought this was in offensive/defensive definition
guide somewhere in this situation:
If ( threat.type == 'lawsuit' ) then begin ...(decide to countersue or not...)
;
if ( threat.response.type == 'lawsuit' ) then ;endif
thread.response.qualifier = 'Defensive'; --
end.
---
Where have we heard this before? (Which instance are you referring to
so more exact parallels can be evaluated?)
So some anonymous person yells "bomb", or "he's got a gun" in a crowded venue, and it carries no weight. Right...
I suppose you'll require his life history, education and resume before his statement holds weight -- just like everyone else will ignore him too.
Or...how about Anonymous Coward on /.? They seem to get people riled up every once in a while for someone that carries no weight...
Something doesn't have to carry weight or be true to influence people.
Books, magazines (especially cost of techmags now days), movies (like in going to the movie theater, matinee or evening prices), comics are ones that come to mind.
Sorry, not entirely clear -- commodity problems cause retail price hikes, justified by higher 'commodity' problem.
Gasoline, is technically a retail item compared to oil, but for most retailers, their fleet run on petrol or diesel, so for most retailers, they use the price of fuel as a commodity price to base prices on.
Here's a recent article concerning what I'm talking about. Retailer giants like General Mills recently (I think Kellog's) followed suit, downsized produce amounts in boxes, while keeping prices flat early last fall. 12-pack - fridge-ready packs were
the standard 'unit' at all the retail stores in my area that had the widest selection and most sales. Last fall,
all of the soda-vendors decreased the standard unit to an 8-pack last fall. Their "on sale" price is now about the same as what 12-packs went for last fall. That's a 50% price increase -- though tempered by more frequent, steeper sales, for now on the 8 packs while the public gets used to the new "unit" size.
The prices of ALOT of things jumped up after 9/11 on fear and during the gasoline crisis. They also take advantage of every weather crisis or flood to publish how it will cause a shortage and a price hike.
Ever notice -- when these things clear up, they don't go back down.
Everything needs to go through some deflation. The price of many things is just ridiculous.
Things going from 25-50 cents in the 70's to 6-10 bucks... That's a hell of alot of inflation -- alot more than the
supposed 2-4% reported by government figures each year. Over 3 decades, 4% would be a 324% price inflation.
Instead, I commonly see things more in line with 20x (2000%). It's not just housing.
$2.99 for a corrupted version of a song (a ringtone). vs. $4-6 for an album in the early 80's. The incremental cost
to produce that ringtone: 0. An album might have ~10 songs... so as ring tones, that'd be $30. That's 7.5-5x and those aren't for the real song. The incremental profit margins are nearly incalculable. Piracy has hurt music companies sooooo much.....
But contrary to what 'should' happen -- the government is just manufacturing more money backed by nothing. It's like stock dilution -- but on a massive scale -- dollar dilution. Soon street bums will be begging $20's for a cup of joe.
Theoretically, we are so screwed...but for what really will happen? Good luck guessing!
What if the RIAA was there to harrass customers until enough customers had transitioned over to Vista and Win7 where the DRM is more substantial and more songs are getting sold on iTunes and cellphones -- again and again and again -- .... its easier to download from the net to your phone that load up songs from your computer -- the purchase price is low enough that the songs purchases are have become what the music industry wants -- they want you to purchase the song each time for each device and form...2.99$ for a distorted ringtone version?
The RIAA maybe was never meant to stop song downloading/trading -- just run harassment and make online trading a bit more of a hassle than downloading a song directly onto your phone or your iTune player... Between the virii /malware, fake software and media data streams... just run harassment until the online pay-per-download-per-device is in place.
They played a part at a moment in time -- they may have been successful at their real mission -- now the economic downturn is bringing a swifter end to their mission, perhaps, but people are no longer buying new computers at the same rate...small devices are becoming more popular/prevalent. Perfect for the shrinking economy...
I dunno if I'd call their mission a complete failure...
just thinking...