How you moronic piece of trash when no shop carries it? Can you actually read, the distributor for the benelux does NOT distribute it. My god, you the most stupid person so far.
Okay, the restriction, cannot pass state lines. So what if he gets on an vehicle that goes across state lines as part of its route, that is okay then? NO. HE is a criminal who has been given restrictions. If those restrictions restrict him, well, that is the whole idea. Sucks then if he can't use the bus because it goers over the line on the way to its destination.
So the restrictions mean he can't use the web or at least parts of it. So? There most likely is a reason for it (could he have been using the internet to buy/sell stolen bikes?)
What next, an area restriction doesn't count when you really want to go there? A restriction on contacting someone only counts if you don't want to see that person? Jail doors are only locked if the person doesn't want to go out?
You (and frankly far to many others here) seem to think the court cares he can't order from amazon. They don't. I hope you are NEVER arrested, because you will be in for a hell of shock about how many rights you take for granted, you no longer have. That is the way the legal system works. I wish people would inform themselves, because right now 99% of calls for reform are done by people who have no idea and to an audience who thinks it is never going to happen to them and they don't even know what would happen to them, if it happened to them.
Either you think criminals should be punished and that means they can't do many things normal free people can or that criminals should go unpunished.
It already starts bad when an editor doesn't know the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle. Yes, the work bike is used to describe them both and the US is NOT alone in this (in Holland the term is "fiets" and this can be used for a motorcycle) BUT in both English in Dutch this is ONLY done if there is no possibility of confusion.
In this case there is.
Further more, there is NO such thing as being MERELY in possesion of stolen property. If you are found guilty it is because you are a criminal, typically because you stole it directly OR obtained it at an unlikely price. That is, if you buy a bike for 10 dollars, you are expected to know that means it is stolen. No court will convict you of being in possesion of stolen property if you can show that you couldn't have known, buy a 100 dollar value bike for 50 might be reasonable. Buying something you could reasonably suspect of being stolen is what fences do, which is illegal.
Then there is the case of the this "kid" having committed other offences. This is no "innocent" teen who just happened to think he got lucky on a deal.
Finally, when you are convicted and sentenced in court, a lot of the rights you assume were natural are taken from you. Criminals can have all sorts of sanctions imposed. From restrictions were they can go, to how far they can travel, from leaving the country, to have to report regurlary, to not drinking, not causing a further nuisance (probation), not talking to people, not talking to certain people (offence for all criminals released from jail after serving their sentence to associate with known felons) etc etc. And YES, the system DOES take account of new developments and the crime and the tools used in it.
A child rapist might be forbidden to come near childeren, but a criminal businessman can be forbidden from running a business. If you scam people over the phone, you can be forbidden from using one, just a drunk driver may not drive a car.
Now, slashdot editor, is it THAT hard to imagine that as criminals use the internet and encryption that they are then forbidden to use it?
Gosh, this sounds a lot like those cry stories where a person is banned from driving for being drunk and then claim they really need the car and is it fair to deprive them of said car... HELLO? Punishment is SUPPOSED to hurt. Probation is supposed to send the message, we are watching you. If you don't want more restriction, behave AND behave better then a NORMAL citizen who has NOT been convicted and sentenced.
Newsflash, criminal punishment is punishing criminals. OMG! The horrorz!
Exactly. Take Fallout 3, PC, Collectors Edition. Good deal? Yes. Did I want to buy it? Yes. Did I try to order it? Yes. Can I? No.
Why not? Benelux distributor does not carry it. It does for the PS3 and the 360 but NOT the PC version. Why? Other CE's are carried but not this on.
So, I am going to pirate the game. That way I get all the extra's, all the special packs from various shops, and zero cost and zero hassle to me.
FUCK YOU content industry, when you actually make it impossible to buy products, my limit is reached.
And yes, it is the game companies that are to blame for the distributor. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to give exclusivity for a region? How are market forces supposed to act with monopolies? No competition, single supplier, no choice. My hard earned money should support this? Nope.
Stop fucking up your customers and maybe people like me would actually buy stuff. But if you don't even put it in the stuff, what am I supposed to do?
And if you claim I should import, you just don't get it do you, why should I jump through hoops, to give someone else money? It would be like the supermarket putting up a moat, daring me to come in and spend anything at pain of death.
Music is entertainment. If we can feel for an trash compacter or a deer, then why not for an animated human being? Not real? TV/Movies ain't real. Every pop-star opens a concert with "I am so happy to be here, you [insert locale here] are the greatest". Can't be true so the sentiment is false, fake, a performance.
Is the best singer selected, or the one with the prettiest face. Sometimes the producers get lucky and get both and then she turns into a publishity disaster because she can't keep mouth shut or her legs closed.
Remember "My fair lady"? You can clearly hear that the singing is dubbed over. But it works because Hepburn is pretty and acts the part out well but can't sing. Well, not good enough. We all were so happy for Susan Boyle, but lets face it, the reaction initially is what keeps any producer from attempting this for real with an unknown. Do not like it? Then change human nature. Even opera stars got to look the part these days. Used to be fat old women singing the parts of beautiful young girls and nobody cared if it was the bearded lady as long as she had shaved recently.
So, these producers got the perfect star. She won't cause a sex scandal, won't get sick, won't refuse to sign a new contract, can perform in two places at the same time, doesn't need rest, won't forget her underwear unless scripted etc etc.
Yes, some of you may hate the fakeness and prefer "real", but as said, what is real? Most music gets polished before release and is written to be sold. So the artists writes what he thinks will sell. Only a tiny handful produce music absolutely only because they want to with not a single thought for the audience. And even if that audience is a non-paying one, pandering for regonizition makes the product just as "fake". That is why so many people complain about the Tate. Why does every piece of non-commerical art have to to be so bloody big? Status? If you produce art for the status, you are no different then when you make something for the mass market.
If you do not like this type of music, don't listen to it. There will be other types produced, so why begrudge those that like this their own music? It is still written, still performed, still sung. What is fake about it? I think a lot of people are upset because they can see the mechanism in the Turk they thought was real. All pop music is fake, this one is just a bit more obvious about it.
So you would tell the wright bothers not to bother, because someone is sure to come along with a better design soon, a better design based on... oh wait.
I don't think you got how science works. For the next generation X, you need the current generation. This ain't a game of Civ were you can cheat your way from the stone age to the exodus.
Because of course once it has become accepted that access to certain parts of the net should be slower because they don't pay, the next step of not providing access if they don't pay for it, or maybe don't meet the approval process... well that just won't enter anybody's head who ain't... oops who ain't the sexiest man alive that all women crave to have sex with and men want to buy free beers.
As for, as long as the backbone remains free somebody else comments...
Yeah, because printing presses ain't restricted in anyway but it is SO easy to start up a new newspaper. Or a television channel.
We already lost the radio and the newspapers and the tv to mightly commercial intrests. But sure, this won't happen to the internet. Because the powers that be will just sit back this time and let the public run free.
Supression of free speech can be done with a bullet through the neck. That is easy but costly. Far easier to have people restrict themselves.
Compare the US and France. Could the US mount such a massive protest against the government? Hell no. Everyone is to worried about missing a day at work because nobody would pay them and the credit card bills and mortage got to be payed. Make everyone a home and car owner and their loan payments will keep them nice and quiet. Well known tactics. Why do you think conversative right wing governments hate renters? Mobile workforce that isn't tied down to a house. Renters can loose their job and simply move somewhere cheaper. Buyers are locked in.
No, supression of free speech won't happen with a bang, it will happen with a wimper. Everyone locked in to speedy facebook and then all of sudden the internet has turned into yet another medium controlled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and those that fund him. How do think the first public run radio stations turned into the current commerical crap? Nobody thought it could happen and then it did.
Holland comes 2nd in agri-cultural exports after the US. Look it up on a map. Can't find it? No, it is that small. Yet 2nd. How can this be?
Because figures don't mean shit. We dutch export bull sperm and embryo's. I helped my uncle jack of a bull is a full time job here. But not for many. High revenue, low employement.
Australia has sheep. A lot. It exports a LOT of whool. But that ain't worth much. But it employs far more people.
It is very difficult to compare trade figures and even then, what they mean to a local economy varies a lot. The US does indeed produce things. Caterpillar anyone? Made in the US, sold world-wide. BUT the US is a nation that needs to export a lot. But where do you count an iPhone? US company, produced in China. If I buy one in Holland does it count as a Chinese export or a US export? What part of it is counted, were? And how many people in the US/China made their daily living with it. Oh very nice that Steve Jobs made some money on it, but 100 chinese workers made minimum wage with it as well. Trickle down economy does not work. Trickly up does. Where is the greatest amount of money flow (not amount of money, but the most people earning money from an event) occuring from an iPhone sale?
The world is ruled by the elite who look down on the common man. Assembly line jobs are not worthy, mining coal is despicable, being a truck driver just one step above being a common criminal. Working class? Might as well gas the lot, unworthy of breathing air. It is the MIDDLE class everyone talks about. But how many managers in the US are needed to sign a piece of paper to ship an iPhone from China to Holland. Meanwhile miners are employed in China, countless truckers are employed in China, assembly line workers are employed in China, managers are employed in China.
There was yesterday an article about Apple, 100 man was said by Jobs to be the max-size of a team. So does that mean 100 people designed the iPhone? 100 high salaries to be sure, but how many low salaries did it create in China? And how many people live of those salaries in turn? 100 rich people need 1 luxery catering truck. 10.000 poor people need 100 cheapo restaurants.
Slashdot has a population that tends to be middle class making its living in the city, it might give us the impression that is all there is to the economy. Surely everyone works in an office, behind a computer screen. Surely it is the rich that pay the majority in taxes to keep the country going...
Nope. It is the lower incomes who pay the majority in taxes, it is they that power the army, they that police the streets, educate your kids. If this lower working class can no longer be funded, society collapses. You can already see this in the US with its crumbling infrastructure and this is happening all through the west. As income for the state dries up because there are fewer and fewer decent low income jobs, the state can't maintain the infrastructure needed to get the high paying jobs. No education? No new engineers to design the next bit of tech to be produced in China. Chinese students might soon be designing the next iPhone.
Proof? Japan. It was once the place for outsourcing, that produced cheap crap on demand. Now they consider the iPhone to be a nice prestige item but hopelessly outclassed by its own phones. Westerners drool over Japanese gadgets and often the cry is hear, why don't we get japanese phones/laptops/etc over here. You have to be very old to remember that once, japanese made meant... well what Chinese made meant (except remember, iPhone, chinese made). That once Japanese cars were NOT super reliable.
Can China do what Japan and Korea have done? Why not? Because China is not a democracy? Japan was hardly a western style democracy and Korea sure as hell wasn't. And Japan and Korea depend on foreing imports for raw materials and their military might means the US dominates them.
Meanwhile, you claim the US does not need cheap consumer goods... it doesn't? Maybe YOU with your middle class inco
Is reading that hard? DISASTER relief. You can't go around digging wells in a hurry. This system is designed to be put aboard an aircraft and flown to a disaster zone in a hurry to be used until normal operations can be resumed.
It is NOT a permanent solution.
Maybe if you could grasp this from the summary YOU could have gone to MIT and wouldn't be so upset.
What really is so hard to understand about the difference between disaster relief techonology and permanent solutions?
Or are you that alienated from the real world that you think people in disasters zones first priority is a daily long hot shower and flushing toilets?
Yes, we use a LOT of water in the west because... well because we can. When the shit hits the fan, 3-5 liters a day can and must be enough. And that is actually a rather liberal amount. Enough to drink, do some cleaning and cook. No it won't give you a life of comfort but guess what, it isn't. It is disaster relief. Not disaster go away. That comes when the normal systems are replaced. If they ever were there in the first place.
You do know that some people have to carry their water for miles by hand? Do you REALLY think these people carry 30 liters a day for every person? What next, you are going to complain a disaster relief food package doesn't contain Ben & Jerry icecream and that just won't do? Entitled, you sure seem to think you are.
Say this battle happened. How do we know for certain? Because X number of people wrote about it or wrote about people having told them about it or having being told about people who heard it from others. If X is large enough, we accept it as fact. If not, well then it becomes myth or religion.
Now, imagine a battle. Ships are going to attack an harbor. Ships ain't easily destroyed by the weapons of the age and worse, if you can hit them, they can hit you. They might be unable to hide, but neither can you, you are on the walls of the defences and the enemy knows this.
So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.
How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?
The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.
Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.
THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?
Take the pycrete "myth". Why the paper substitution? THAT is not what the myth is about. And I still don't know how such a ship could have set sail. After all I presumed WW2 admirals were smart enough to ask "won't it melt". So why wouldn't it have melted?
Or the Jaws myth. "We are going to examine wether a very large movie monster can ram a ship, but we are going to use a smaller shark because sharks ain't that large in real life..." No shit sherlock. And sharks also don't ram ships in real life.
What next, I am going to test if my cat likes tuna by feeding it dog shit. If it doesn't like that that proofs it doesn't like tuna?
As for the movie myths. Can a pen explode, kill a room of baddies but leave the hero intact... NO. If you think James Bond has myths, you REALLY need to get out more.
The program was okay but has rapidly gone in the general direction of Discovery. Here is a hint. Gay fat guys building bling-bling bikes is NOT science. Mind you, they can go lower. Cakes? Tatoo shops? Why not just relabel it Oprahs Channel and be done with it.
So cool, they are once again going to proof a couple of overweight Americans can't build something that is highly unlike to have ever existed and if it did, not have been able to destroy and entire fleet before the soldiers landed (or swam ashore) and destroyed it. That is supposed to encourage Americans back to science? Fat chance.
We know what Americans think about science. We can see it in the nose-dive the science content on Myth-busters has taken. Unless it goes boom, not intrested. Note the increasing lack of myths that do not go boom.
Sorry to disappoint, but wrote this using Opera. Shows what closed source does eh? Or maybe English is neither my first or second language, how many do you speak AC? Oh... wait. All... damn.
Bad news, I guess I got to remove it again and give her back the OS that allows her to install every bit of crap that wants her attention. She is a nice woman but has a low IQ. She "gets" that there are scammers around but can't resist to click on stuff. Endless problems on windows even on limited accounts. Zero under Ubuntu and the relocation of the close window and the start menu? Not a problem. "Oh, this has the close windows on the left..." and that was it. No problems because nobody ever told her it was supposed to be a problem. Close button on the left.
She is very happy with it and now it is dead...
And I wonder how her desktop counts. Because it is a Compaq and so came with windows. So does this work desktop. So did my home computer. None of which run Windows.
But Linux has its problems. But it is like that cute redhead girl who loves you so much. Sure, she has a temper and her hair springs every which way when it is wet and she freckles like mad at even a hint of sunshine and... but you will NEVER ever replace her for the blond bimbo that everyone else has had because despite all her quirks, deep down she is right for you.
There are three kind of linux users. Those that hate MS, those that want to be different for difference sake and those that just want to get stuff done without constant bugs or corporate motives getting in the way. Last time I used windows I suddenly ended up with a ghost network card, complete duplicate of the regular one but kept messing every thing up. Then it went away again. Just no thanks. Linux may have its moments, but I can always fix it. It is handable. Windows isn't.
And as for the dream being dead. It ain't windows on mobile phones or tablets so far. The dream could just be taking a different form. And if you see MS reacting so badly to Open Office, I think MS clearly has not counted opensource out yet. Because they fear loosing office less then the idea that with Word gone, Windows could so easily follow.
The dream is still there, but only for people who use Linux because they like it. Not because they want to see Bill Gates stumble. The lovers remain, the haters will always hate.
This idea that MS will come around to fix your broken Word install is so ludicrous, so totally beside the daily reality you have to wonder how it ever got started.
When you buy from MS, you are NOT buying from IBM. Yes, when you buy from IBM you buy a large amount of support (how large? just see how many of your accounts drop dead when the bill arrives). When you buy from MS... oh wait. You DON'T. You buy from Dell and your support comes from India and is "re-boot and re-install". MS barely acknowledges security threats that affect ALL its customers. The idea that they will an issue that only affects you on demand is insane. They won't. Never have, never will.
Open Source, you got the code and developing software is NOT all that expensive. Not for companies that develop aircraft or build oil rigs. And you can coast on their efforts. And that SCARES MS. They live not just on the myth that they will fix your problems, but that software is hard and only a billion dollar company can do it.
I have had a couple of discussions with open source developers about issues in beta code. NEVER EVER had a talk with a MS employee about the countless issues with MS software.
Where is this mythical MS support? Is it the great manual that comes with Windows or Office? Is it the direct line to MS development or at least bug testing? Nah... it is through Dell or countless forums. Sure, most Linux support is through forums as well, but at least forums run by the Linux distro and I don't pay through the nose for my Linux software.
And you know the strange thing. OpenOffice has become accepted, the days when you HAD to run MS office are gone at least in my field. Now the un-official company policy is that all documents must be readible by everyone and this includes people running Linux and OSX without jumping through hoops.
This means using older formats and not all the bells and whistles and lockin of MS products... and that scares MS. A non-upgrading Word user is almost as bad as a FOSS user. MS gains the majority of its income from the endless upgrade cycle. It NEEDS this money to fund its numerous loss making programs. If that revenue stream dries up, it will loose the status of must have stock and have to actually economize on its spendings. That would very quickly end MS as it is. No more Vista's or ME. These failures would then wrack the company like they would a real company.
MS fears Opensource. Not because it is better or even equal in its own eyes, but because it is good enough and an awful lot cheaper. And once enough switch, then its lockin breaks down for everyone else. No more "Needs Office 2050" if companies run into "resend that file, can't read it" to often.
Why don't you tell part 2 of this story? Of the mighty Japanese economy taking a nose dive. Of the ancient and destroyed American car companies buying shares in the asian giants.
Yes, Detroit was arrogant, but they hung on and won the battle. Now with the recent down turn they are down again. But I wouldn't count them out yet. Not when everyone is buying bigger and bigger cars regardless of whether they can afford them. As long as cars are penisses, Detroit has a future. After all, you don't want to say to the world "My penis is Japanese sized" do you?
Don't count the oldies out until you have desecrated their rotting corpses.
It amazes me when people keep bringing up that old Detroit example and then forget the return of the American car industry. Oh, not with the massive factories located in a single city so the local population can through unions exert control over the industry and ensure a fair distribution of wealth... no. Very handy the collapse of Detroit. it means any area that still has a car factory will do a LOT to keep it. Tax breaks, union busting, no pollution laws... very handy indeed.
The price of Freedom is eternal vigilance. Sit back thinking the internet is safe from the likes of Murdoch and soon you may find that it isn't. He is smarter then you are, or you would be the one rolling in cash. When you got so much money, you can afford to change how things happen. And you can do it because average punters like you think that such an old fart who has run a successful business for longer then you have been alive must not know anything about business.
He can indeed close of his content, that is not the point. The point is, can he through buying ISP's, controlling large amounts of content, force a change on the net? Him alone? No. But he is hardly the only content owner who would like to change the open nature of the net. Microsoft has tried it. Disney and the likes would love it. That is an awful lot of money. And the average punter has shown in the past to have about the resistance capability of a sick mosquito. Tell me, how many copies does Disney sell of its DVD's with unskippable ads? That is how safe the internet is. Offer people a cheap ISP and they will switch. Then you show them ads, and they will stay. After all such things have been pulled before. With no significant backlash. It is a slow process, but if you think just because it is slow it ain't happening. Well, just don't come complaing in twenty years and ask where the internet has gone.
You assume a LOT about the future. You assume that advertisers will continue to want to be on slashdot. That a new generation of users will want to continue to visit a text only site. That slashdot editors will want to continue as is. That the cost of running slashdot will not change.
BUT, what about net neutrality? What is slashdot has to start paying for access to an ISP's customers? That is after all very much what the traditional content industry wants. They are used to it, delivery costs of magazines and transmission costs of radio signals. This "new" fangled "everyone can transmit for free" thingy of the Internet is very much a case of "do not want" as far as traditional media are concerned.
There is also a generation growing up, or failing to grow up, for who even this rant is already far to long. They can barely deal with a sentence let alone several paragraphs. Flashy full media sites appeal to them. See how big Youtube has become with what exactly?
And slashdot won't remain the same, it has steadily been increasing the fluff factor to attract new punters.
No, this article is NOT about TV on the internet. It is about the attempt once again to stop the open nature of the internet and get back to what AOL and MSN were supposed to be originally. Back to the ISP portal, where content was sold through the ISP. Remember them? You might not if you are young, but the ISP execs remember and the dreams of riches that came with them.
The open, anyone can start a website 100% accesible to anyon with no special privileges, internet is an accident. It happened while big companies looked away or failed to contain enough of it but that does NOT mean its future is ensured. Very powerful intrests are aligned against it and we might scoff at the likes of Murdoch but he got the money to change things, however slowly. Run an ISP, offer cheaper service, then when he controls the ISP market, change the rules. Ever so slightly until one day you find your ISP has become worse then AOL could ever have dreamed of being. All because you thought this article was about TV on the internet.
If I flash my privates in house but have the curtains open and so anyone from the street can see, I cannot complain about people looking and might indeed be arrested myself.
If I do the same in a house seperated from the road by a high fence and you put a ladder on the street and use nightvision goggles to look at my dangler, YOU are going to be arrested.
What is privacy? Is it the absolute letter of the law OR does EXPECTATION of privacy come into play?
You can follow me night and day. BUT that is very expensive and so you don't. So my actions in public are private simply because logging them would be far to costly. So I have come to expect that my actions in public are not constantly logged. Should this now change just because it has become possible to log them all? Should it be legal to record my every movement just because total CCTV surveilance has become feasable?
I do NOT know the answer to this question. On the one hand, I think that if you misbehave in public you should not have the right to complain "but I didn't expect anyone to catch me, so I should be free" BUT I also think that private companies being able to trace everyone constantly would be a REALLY bad idea.
If I ask on a forum about a health issue, should my insurance company be able to use this? I think not. Sure, if I am breaking the law, making false claims. But to deny people access because they think they might have a probem? No, that is going way to far.
Privacy is about more then things being recorded, it is about the idea that NOT everyone should constantly want to check up on everyone else. Just because I wrote a poem to a girl does NOT mean it has to be recorded by every private company in the world and be sold to the highest bidder.
France has regular riots with minorities, an economy down the drain, one hell of a reputation with the deportation of Roma and now it gives a 200 million euro subsidy to the music industry?
Just WTF?
Is his wife payed for by the music lobby? And it still requires people that in the plan are claimed to be unwilling to pay for music, to pay for music. Just not so much. Once...
And why does the state have to pay for this? Can't the music industry itself offer a discount action? Why must the average french taxpayer pay for 50% off for some kid for an American song with the money going abroad?
This isn't even corruption anymore. It shows a level of detachment from reality in the French government that is closer to insanity. "Let them eat cake", at least showed an awareness that the issue was related to food. This proposal doesn't even grasp. "42, beezlebug for I am, bibble", Marie Antoinette was heard to say, just before her head came off. Insanity.
Crime does NOT pay all that well. Your car is NOT worth the money you paid for it. The moment you drive it out of the shop, it looses a lot of its value. Same with that gold ring. To a thief, it is even worth less because these things can only be sold to fences.
2nd hand copper is a legit trade. Tons of the stuff gets processed all the time, so if I show up with a ton claiming I was demoloshing a factory and dug it up, who is going to ask questions.
It may not be worth all that much, but I get market price for it, not what some fence is willing to pay.
And most criminals never become rich anyway. Yes, stealing a ton of copper is hard work, but so is regular work for that level of education/skill. These aren't smart criminals. Just greedy. That is why so many of them end up paying the ultimate price. Death as they cut a life wire.
What other metals you can easily sell large quantities of do you know are lying around unguarded? People might notice if you start dismanting power pylons and ripping out railroad tracks takes far more effort then the overhead power cables.
Gosh, the Russian army better give up. Some slashdot geek has thought of the ultimate hole in their camouflage. Tracks! Who would have thought!
Except that they already knows this, and use weedwhackers and torches to create the various effects of a tank on the landscape. Very clever those military people. Almost like they know what they are doing.
That is why they also forbid the local kids from using them as bouncy castles. Would ruin the effect.
This government has ruled now for over half a century. In that time they have gone from backwards nation easily overrun by Japan to an economic powerhouse that controls the global economy and an army that is... well that is actually a great unknown. Nobody knows what would happen in China were go on a war path. With the US? No, with Russia. Siberia is what China needs, natural resources in abundance. It got the people to fight the russians the one thing every other attempt has lacked. Nobody could beat Mother Russia who could always throw more sons into the killing fields. But China has far more sons, especially now that girls are killed or adopted out because of the one child policy. Hell, a good war would even sort that problem out. Kill a couple of million chinese sons and their will be plenty of girls for the survivors.
And as for existence being hard in China? Sorry, but that just isn't the case. Most people never need the supposed freedoms they have. The freedoms they WANT are to speed, drive drunk and do drugs while nobody else can if it annoys them. I can speed, but you can't marry someone of the same sex etc etc. Freedom to many people is overrated and many in China lead content lives under the chinese government, never really running into the repression. Do you think the nazi's went around beating up EVERYONE? Nope. It comes down to "Then they came for X, and I said nothing, because I wasn't X". What usually follows then is a long list BUT China has been VERY smart in NOT making a long list. China in a lot of ways is pretty liberal. Don't oppose the on party state and you won't get any attention.
Take homo-sexuality. There is repression, even from the state through harrasment by the police. BUT there are only a handful of nations were gay-rights are protected by law. So, for a gay person, living in China or in a handful of western nations isn't that different. People get used very easily to not offend the powers that be. It is what allows us to survive from day to day.
This is something that is VERY hard to understand if you happen to believe YOU are free. You MIGHT be, because YOUR government has chosen not to oppress what YOU care about at this moment. For instance, a US citizen is free to carry a gun openly near the president! Nobody will arrest him for that. But if he marries another man? Ah! Not so clear cut, this freedom thing is it? What if I have no desire to openly carry a gun but am gay? Which country is more free then? Holland (no guns but legal gay marriage) or the US (Guns but no legal gay marriage)?
And if I neither want a gun or marry a guy, what do either of these freedoms then matter to me?
China is kept alive because the majority of its population have no pressing reason to risk their lives to change it. All real people driven revolutions have started AND finished because the population had a choice between certain death and making a change. China doesn't give its people, at least not enough, that choice. For China to have a revolt, 1 billion people would need to be upset. That is hard to achieve especially when the economy is booming.
Why risk getting locked up when I just got a promotion and got downpayments on my car? At the current rate, I wouldn't bet on the Chinese government falling anytime soon.
The western governments on the other hand... just look at the mess most countries are having right now.
Because when I think of pushing the boundaries, of reaching into space, exploring new techonolgies. I think google...
Someone here sees the web as FAR to important.
The INTERNET was a major technological development. Google is NOT. Oracle and Red Hat and Microsoft, none of them make anything real or research anything real. Producing another database is NOT what the knowledge economy should be about. Knowledge is stuff like new solar cells, bacteria that can produce oil, silkworms that poop spider thread. Not a new video codec.
The space race isn't going to be won by who has the best search engine but who can create the next generation rocket engine.
This research STILL happens in the US, but then turning it into production, the job of NASA, is being thrown away.
You are basically the same as the people who think: Banking is a large part of the economy, oh therefor it must be THE economy, ergo Wallstreet is all we need.
Honestly, if you think these companies are proof the US still has plenty of intellectual might (I think it does, but not because of these companies) then you are sadly mistaken.
Most countries use the sensible, human readable and most important information first format of DAY-MONTH-YEAR. This is sensible, which is why Americans have nothing to do with it.
YEAR-MONTH-DAY is easier for machines to sort. But forces the human mind to read the least important information first, after all, if I make an appointment with my doctor for 2010-10-11, the year and even the month are given. I want to know the DAY.
MONTH-DAY-YEAR is just silly. No sensible country or civilization uses it. So no sense in wasting time discussing why it is so silly, everyone with a brain knows why this is so.
Cue flamebait moderation from a silly part of the world:)
Note that such moderation handily points out WHY we can't just switch to a global standard that would avoid a hell of lot of confusion.
Politicians are NOT a large cost to the tax payer. They are not that highly paid and there are not that many of them. Now if you start talking about public sector workers. THEN you might be able to make some cuts especially at the top. But then you just won't get the people OR they will be contract workers instead and get paid even more.
Cost cutting is extremely hard and doesn't help if people think cutting a million on a budget of billions is worth it.
I don't understand cost cutting anyway. It is such a Wallstreet attitude. Oh, lets cut costs and increase profit. When has this ever worked longterm? A country isn't something you can buy up, cut it up and sell it off again. You are STUCK with Manchester. Cutting off useless people? France did that with the Roma... oopsie! Even just saying this is a big no-no. And it cost the Germans far more to kill a Jew then it ever saved them, even with recycling (harsh? But that is what traditional cost cutting applied to a country would be, you can't fire a population without firing up the ovens).
I think the entire problem is that some people are convinced you can run a country at a profit/as a business.
But countries are to big, to unwieldy and to long term for that. And it seems amazing to me that the business method to be followed is the western one (follow on core business, outsource everything else) when the real powerhouses in the business world are the (asian) conglomerates that do EVERYTHING. So, do we sell off the railways or keep them? I think I know what Siemens or Yamaha would say.
The problem for the UK is NOT the amount of money it spends, but that this money ain't being generated. IF the UK still had a working production industry, still mattered with agri-culture, then the amount of spending doesn't matter. But if you outsource everything, close mines and hope to survive on oil benefits and selling of national industries, then you won't have anything to fall back on when the well has run dry.
And if you cut public sector salaries then you only get the people who have no choice but to work for a reduced paycheck. Or are YOU volunteering to work for less pay in a thankless job?
The UK needs to re-vitalize itself in all sectors. This requires SPENDING, not cost cutting. All the current government will do is posture, delay investments without making any meaningful savings and hand over the country in a worse state to the next unlucky bastard to win the election.
Simple solution:
A: Cut management layers in all sectors controlled by the state: Result, mass cost savings, tories lose the elections because their voter base is management.
B: Cut foreign military procurement, buy local or keep old stuff around. Result: US president won't shake hands with the prime-minister.
C: Ban closing and outsourcing of any further production, put serious tariffs on foreign goods to encourage local production. Result: Prime-minister will not be able to shake any hands, champagne prices go up.
D: Invest in infra-structure and schooling, stop looking down on jobs like farmer, plumber and bricklayer, these are the jobs the economy runs on. You can't make people buy a locally made iPad, but you can make them use locally build walls.
E: Tax the financial industry and regulate the hell out of it because it has never benefitted anyone but the filthy rich. Result: all those silly enough to think they are the filthy rich and that a tax on inheriticance of more then a million will ever affect the, will not vote for you.
Oh these things are a bit simple, but smarter people then me have reasoned them out AND shown why no party, especially a right wing party can run with them. Sensible government isn't electable.
Slashdot Mirror
How you moronic piece of trash when no shop carries it? Can you actually read, the distributor for the benelux does NOT distribute it. My god, you the most stupid person so far.
Okay, the restriction, cannot pass state lines. So what if he gets on an vehicle that goes across state lines as part of its route, that is okay then? NO. HE is a criminal who has been given restrictions. If those restrictions restrict him, well, that is the whole idea. Sucks then if he can't use the bus because it goers over the line on the way to its destination.
So the restrictions mean he can't use the web or at least parts of it. So? There most likely is a reason for it (could he have been using the internet to buy/sell stolen bikes?)
What next, an area restriction doesn't count when you really want to go there? A restriction on contacting someone only counts if you don't want to see that person? Jail doors are only locked if the person doesn't want to go out?
You (and frankly far to many others here) seem to think the court cares he can't order from amazon. They don't. I hope you are NEVER arrested, because you will be in for a hell of shock about how many rights you take for granted, you no longer have. That is the way the legal system works. I wish people would inform themselves, because right now 99% of calls for reform are done by people who have no idea and to an audience who thinks it is never going to happen to them and they don't even know what would happen to them, if it happened to them.
Either you think criminals should be punished and that means they can't do many things normal free people can or that criminals should go unpunished.
It already starts bad when an editor doesn't know the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle. Yes, the work bike is used to describe them both and the US is NOT alone in this (in Holland the term is "fiets" and this can be used for a motorcycle) BUT in both English in Dutch this is ONLY done if there is no possibility of confusion.
In this case there is.
Further more, there is NO such thing as being MERELY in possesion of stolen property. If you are found guilty it is because you are a criminal, typically because you stole it directly OR obtained it at an unlikely price. That is, if you buy a bike for 10 dollars, you are expected to know that means it is stolen. No court will convict you of being in possesion of stolen property if you can show that you couldn't have known, buy a 100 dollar value bike for 50 might be reasonable. Buying something you could reasonably suspect of being stolen is what fences do, which is illegal.
Then there is the case of the this "kid" having committed other offences. This is no "innocent" teen who just happened to think he got lucky on a deal.
Finally, when you are convicted and sentenced in court, a lot of the rights you assume were natural are taken from you. Criminals can have all sorts of sanctions imposed. From restrictions were they can go, to how far they can travel, from leaving the country, to have to report regurlary, to not drinking, not causing a further nuisance (probation), not talking to people, not talking to certain people (offence for all criminals released from jail after serving their sentence to associate with known felons) etc etc. And YES, the system DOES take account of new developments and the crime and the tools used in it.
A child rapist might be forbidden to come near childeren, but a criminal businessman can be forbidden from running a business. If you scam people over the phone, you can be forbidden from using one, just a drunk driver may not drive a car.
Now, slashdot editor, is it THAT hard to imagine that as criminals use the internet and encryption that they are then forbidden to use it?
Gosh, this sounds a lot like those cry stories where a person is banned from driving for being drunk and then claim they really need the car and is it fair to deprive them of said car... HELLO? Punishment is SUPPOSED to hurt. Probation is supposed to send the message, we are watching you. If you don't want more restriction, behave AND behave better then a NORMAL citizen who has NOT been convicted and sentenced.
Newsflash, criminal punishment is punishing criminals. OMG! The horrorz!
Why not? Benelux distributor does not carry it. It does for the PS3 and the 360 but NOT the PC version. Why? Other CE's are carried but not this on.
So, I am going to pirate the game. That way I get all the extra's, all the special packs from various shops, and zero cost and zero hassle to me.
FUCK YOU content industry, when you actually make it impossible to buy products, my limit is reached.
And yes, it is the game companies that are to blame for the distributor. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to give exclusivity for a region? How are market forces supposed to act with monopolies? No competition, single supplier, no choice. My hard earned money should support this? Nope.
Stop fucking up your customers and maybe people like me would actually buy stuff. But if you don't even put it in the stuff, what am I supposed to do?
And if you claim I should import, you just don't get it do you, why should I jump through hoops, to give someone else money? It would be like the supermarket putting up a moat, daring me to come in and spend anything at pain of death.
Music is entertainment. If we can feel for an trash compacter or a deer, then why not for an animated human being? Not real? TV/Movies ain't real. Every pop-star opens a concert with "I am so happy to be here, you [insert locale here] are the greatest". Can't be true so the sentiment is false, fake, a performance.
Is the best singer selected, or the one with the prettiest face. Sometimes the producers get lucky and get both and then she turns into a publishity disaster because she can't keep mouth shut or her legs closed.
Remember "My fair lady"? You can clearly hear that the singing is dubbed over. But it works because Hepburn is pretty and acts the part out well but can't sing. Well, not good enough. We all were so happy for Susan Boyle, but lets face it, the reaction initially is what keeps any producer from attempting this for real with an unknown. Do not like it? Then change human nature. Even opera stars got to look the part these days. Used to be fat old women singing the parts of beautiful young girls and nobody cared if it was the bearded lady as long as she had shaved recently.
So, these producers got the perfect star. She won't cause a sex scandal, won't get sick, won't refuse to sign a new contract, can perform in two places at the same time, doesn't need rest, won't forget her underwear unless scripted etc etc.
Yes, some of you may hate the fakeness and prefer "real", but as said, what is real? Most music gets polished before release and is written to be sold. So the artists writes what he thinks will sell. Only a tiny handful produce music absolutely only because they want to with not a single thought for the audience. And even if that audience is a non-paying one, pandering for regonizition makes the product just as "fake". That is why so many people complain about the Tate. Why does every piece of non-commerical art have to to be so bloody big? Status? If you produce art for the status, you are no different then when you make something for the mass market.
If you do not like this type of music, don't listen to it. There will be other types produced, so why begrudge those that like this their own music? It is still written, still performed, still sung. What is fake about it? I think a lot of people are upset because they can see the mechanism in the Turk they thought was real. All pop music is fake, this one is just a bit more obvious about it.
So you would tell the wright bothers not to bother, because someone is sure to come along with a better design soon, a better design based on... oh wait.
I don't think you got how science works. For the next generation X, you need the current generation. This ain't a game of Civ were you can cheat your way from the stone age to the exodus.
Because of course once it has become accepted that access to certain parts of the net should be slower because they don't pay, the next step of not providing access if they don't pay for it, or maybe don't meet the approval process... well that just won't enter anybody's head who ain't ... oops who ain't the sexiest man alive that all women crave to have sex with and men want to buy free beers.
As for, as long as the backbone remains free somebody else comments...
Yeah, because printing presses ain't restricted in anyway but it is SO easy to start up a new newspaper. Or a television channel.
We already lost the radio and the newspapers and the tv to mightly commercial intrests. But sure, this won't happen to the internet. Because the powers that be will just sit back this time and let the public run free.
Supression of free speech can be done with a bullet through the neck. That is easy but costly. Far easier to have people restrict themselves.
Compare the US and France. Could the US mount such a massive protest against the government? Hell no. Everyone is to worried about missing a day at work because nobody would pay them and the credit card bills and mortage got to be payed. Make everyone a home and car owner and their loan payments will keep them nice and quiet. Well known tactics. Why do you think conversative right wing governments hate renters? Mobile workforce that isn't tied down to a house. Renters can loose their job and simply move somewhere cheaper. Buyers are locked in.
No, supression of free speech won't happen with a bang, it will happen with a wimper. Everyone locked in to speedy facebook and then all of sudden the internet has turned into yet another medium controlled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and those that fund him. How do think the first public run radio stations turned into the current commerical crap? Nobody thought it could happen and then it did.
The builder made a colossal mistake. He included a design readable by the machine to build itself. This is how Skynet REALLY got started!
We are doomed!
Holland comes 2nd in agri-cultural exports after the US. Look it up on a map. Can't find it? No, it is that small. Yet 2nd. How can this be?
Because figures don't mean shit. We dutch export bull sperm and embryo's. I helped my uncle jack of a bull is a full time job here. But not for many. High revenue, low employement.
Australia has sheep. A lot. It exports a LOT of whool. But that ain't worth much. But it employs far more people.
It is very difficult to compare trade figures and even then, what they mean to a local economy varies a lot. The US does indeed produce things. Caterpillar anyone? Made in the US, sold world-wide. BUT the US is a nation that needs to export a lot. But where do you count an iPhone? US company, produced in China. If I buy one in Holland does it count as a Chinese export or a US export? What part of it is counted, were? And how many people in the US/China made their daily living with it. Oh very nice that Steve Jobs made some money on it, but 100 chinese workers made minimum wage with it as well. Trickle down economy does not work. Trickly up does. Where is the greatest amount of money flow (not amount of money, but the most people earning money from an event) occuring from an iPhone sale?
The world is ruled by the elite who look down on the common man. Assembly line jobs are not worthy, mining coal is despicable, being a truck driver just one step above being a common criminal. Working class? Might as well gas the lot, unworthy of breathing air. It is the MIDDLE class everyone talks about. But how many managers in the US are needed to sign a piece of paper to ship an iPhone from China to Holland. Meanwhile miners are employed in China, countless truckers are employed in China, assembly line workers are employed in China, managers are employed in China.
There was yesterday an article about Apple, 100 man was said by Jobs to be the max-size of a team. So does that mean 100 people designed the iPhone? 100 high salaries to be sure, but how many low salaries did it create in China? And how many people live of those salaries in turn? 100 rich people need 1 luxery catering truck. 10.000 poor people need 100 cheapo restaurants.
Slashdot has a population that tends to be middle class making its living in the city, it might give us the impression that is all there is to the economy. Surely everyone works in an office, behind a computer screen. Surely it is the rich that pay the majority in taxes to keep the country going...
Nope. It is the lower incomes who pay the majority in taxes, it is they that power the army, they that police the streets, educate your kids. If this lower working class can no longer be funded, society collapses. You can already see this in the US with its crumbling infrastructure and this is happening all through the west. As income for the state dries up because there are fewer and fewer decent low income jobs, the state can't maintain the infrastructure needed to get the high paying jobs. No education? No new engineers to design the next bit of tech to be produced in China. Chinese students might soon be designing the next iPhone.
Proof? Japan. It was once the place for outsourcing, that produced cheap crap on demand. Now they consider the iPhone to be a nice prestige item but hopelessly outclassed by its own phones. Westerners drool over Japanese gadgets and often the cry is hear, why don't we get japanese phones/laptops/etc over here. You have to be very old to remember that once, japanese made meant... well what Chinese made meant (except remember, iPhone, chinese made). That once Japanese cars were NOT super reliable.
Can China do what Japan and Korea have done? Why not? Because China is not a democracy? Japan was hardly a western style democracy and Korea sure as hell wasn't. And Japan and Korea depend on foreing imports for raw materials and their military might means the US dominates them.
Meanwhile, you claim the US does not need cheap consumer goods... it doesn't? Maybe YOU with your middle class inco
Is reading that hard? DISASTER relief. You can't go around digging wells in a hurry. This system is designed to be put aboard an aircraft and flown to a disaster zone in a hurry to be used until normal operations can be resumed.
It is NOT a permanent solution.
Maybe if you could grasp this from the summary YOU could have gone to MIT and wouldn't be so upset.
What really is so hard to understand about the difference between disaster relief techonology and permanent solutions?
My god man, your bladder must be made of steel.
Or are you that alienated from the real world that you think people in disasters zones first priority is a daily long hot shower and flushing toilets?
Yes, we use a LOT of water in the west because... well because we can. When the shit hits the fan, 3-5 liters a day can and must be enough. And that is actually a rather liberal amount. Enough to drink, do some cleaning and cook. No it won't give you a life of comfort but guess what, it isn't. It is disaster relief. Not disaster go away. That comes when the normal systems are replaced. If they ever were there in the first place.
You do know that some people have to carry their water for miles by hand? Do you REALLY think these people carry 30 liters a day for every person? What next, you are going to complain a disaster relief food package doesn't contain Ben & Jerry icecream and that just won't do? Entitled, you sure seem to think you are.
Say this battle happened. How do we know for certain? Because X number of people wrote about it or wrote about people having told them about it or having being told about people who heard it from others. If X is large enough, we accept it as fact. If not, well then it becomes myth or religion.
Now, imagine a battle. Ships are going to attack an harbor. Ships ain't easily destroyed by the weapons of the age and worse, if you can hit them, they can hit you. They might be unable to hide, but neither can you, you are on the walls of the defences and the enemy knows this.
So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.
How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?
The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.
Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.
THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?
Take the pycrete "myth". Why the paper substitution? THAT is not what the myth is about. And I still don't know how such a ship could have set sail. After all I presumed WW2 admirals were smart enough to ask "won't it melt". So why wouldn't it have melted?
Or the Jaws myth. "We are going to examine wether a very large movie monster can ram a ship, but we are going to use a smaller shark because sharks ain't that large in real life..." No shit sherlock. And sharks also don't ram ships in real life.
What next, I am going to test if my cat likes tuna by feeding it dog shit. If it doesn't like that that proofs it doesn't like tuna?
As for the movie myths. Can a pen explode, kill a room of baddies but leave the hero intact... NO. If you think James Bond has myths, you REALLY need to get out more.
The program was okay but has rapidly gone in the general direction of Discovery. Here is a hint. Gay fat guys building bling-bling bikes is NOT science. Mind you, they can go lower. Cakes? Tatoo shops? Why not just relabel it Oprahs Channel and be done with it.
So cool, they are once again going to proof a couple of overweight Americans can't build something that is highly unlike to have ever existed and if it did, not have been able to destroy and entire fleet before the soldiers landed (or swam ashore) and destroyed it. That is supposed to encourage Americans back to science? Fat chance.
We know what Americans think about science. We can see it in the nose-dive the science content on Myth-busters has taken. Unless it goes boom, not intrested. Note the increasing lack of myths that do not go boom.
Sorry to disappoint, but wrote this using Opera. Shows what closed source does eh? Or maybe English is neither my first or second language, how many do you speak AC? Oh... wait. All... damn.
Bad news, I guess I got to remove it again and give her back the OS that allows her to install every bit of crap that wants her attention. She is a nice woman but has a low IQ. She "gets" that there are scammers around but can't resist to click on stuff. Endless problems on windows even on limited accounts. Zero under Ubuntu and the relocation of the close window and the start menu? Not a problem. "Oh, this has the close windows on the left..." and that was it. No problems because nobody ever told her it was supposed to be a problem. Close button on the left.
She is very happy with it and now it is dead...
And I wonder how her desktop counts. Because it is a Compaq and so came with windows. So does this work desktop. So did my home computer. None of which run Windows.
But Linux has its problems. But it is like that cute redhead girl who loves you so much. Sure, she has a temper and her hair springs every which way when it is wet and she freckles like mad at even a hint of sunshine and... but you will NEVER ever replace her for the blond bimbo that everyone else has had because despite all her quirks, deep down she is right for you.
There are three kind of linux users. Those that hate MS, those that want to be different for difference sake and those that just want to get stuff done without constant bugs or corporate motives getting in the way. Last time I used windows I suddenly ended up with a ghost network card, complete duplicate of the regular one but kept messing every thing up. Then it went away again. Just no thanks. Linux may have its moments, but I can always fix it. It is handable. Windows isn't.
And as for the dream being dead. It ain't windows on mobile phones or tablets so far. The dream could just be taking a different form. And if you see MS reacting so badly to Open Office, I think MS clearly has not counted opensource out yet. Because they fear loosing office less then the idea that with Word gone, Windows could so easily follow.
The dream is still there, but only for people who use Linux because they like it. Not because they want to see Bill Gates stumble. The lovers remain, the haters will always hate.
This idea that MS will come around to fix your broken Word install is so ludicrous, so totally beside the daily reality you have to wonder how it ever got started.
When you buy from MS, you are NOT buying from IBM. Yes, when you buy from IBM you buy a large amount of support (how large? just see how many of your accounts drop dead when the bill arrives). When you buy from MS... oh wait. You DON'T. You buy from Dell and your support comes from India and is "re-boot and re-install". MS barely acknowledges security threats that affect ALL its customers. The idea that they will an issue that only affects you on demand is insane. They won't. Never have, never will.
Open Source, you got the code and developing software is NOT all that expensive. Not for companies that develop aircraft or build oil rigs. And you can coast on their efforts. And that SCARES MS. They live not just on the myth that they will fix your problems, but that software is hard and only a billion dollar company can do it.
I have had a couple of discussions with open source developers about issues in beta code. NEVER EVER had a talk with a MS employee about the countless issues with MS software.
Where is this mythical MS support? Is it the great manual that comes with Windows or Office? Is it the direct line to MS development or at least bug testing? Nah... it is through Dell or countless forums. Sure, most Linux support is through forums as well, but at least forums run by the Linux distro and I don't pay through the nose for my Linux software.
And you know the strange thing. OpenOffice has become accepted, the days when you HAD to run MS office are gone at least in my field. Now the un-official company policy is that all documents must be readible by everyone and this includes people running Linux and OSX without jumping through hoops.
This means using older formats and not all the bells and whistles and lockin of MS products... and that scares MS. A non-upgrading Word user is almost as bad as a FOSS user. MS gains the majority of its income from the endless upgrade cycle. It NEEDS this money to fund its numerous loss making programs. If that revenue stream dries up, it will loose the status of must have stock and have to actually economize on its spendings. That would very quickly end MS as it is. No more Vista's or ME. These failures would then wrack the company like they would a real company.
MS fears Opensource. Not because it is better or even equal in its own eyes, but because it is good enough and an awful lot cheaper. And once enough switch, then its lockin breaks down for everyone else. No more "Needs Office 2050" if companies run into "resend that file, can't read it" to often.
Why don't you tell part 2 of this story? Of the mighty Japanese economy taking a nose dive. Of the ancient and destroyed American car companies buying shares in the asian giants.
Yes, Detroit was arrogant, but they hung on and won the battle. Now with the recent down turn they are down again. But I wouldn't count them out yet. Not when everyone is buying bigger and bigger cars regardless of whether they can afford them. As long as cars are penisses, Detroit has a future. After all, you don't want to say to the world "My penis is Japanese sized" do you?
Don't count the oldies out until you have desecrated their rotting corpses.
It amazes me when people keep bringing up that old Detroit example and then forget the return of the American car industry. Oh, not with the massive factories located in a single city so the local population can through unions exert control over the industry and ensure a fair distribution of wealth... no. Very handy the collapse of Detroit. it means any area that still has a car factory will do a LOT to keep it. Tax breaks, union busting, no pollution laws... very handy indeed.
The price of Freedom is eternal vigilance. Sit back thinking the internet is safe from the likes of Murdoch and soon you may find that it isn't. He is smarter then you are, or you would be the one rolling in cash. When you got so much money, you can afford to change how things happen. And you can do it because average punters like you think that such an old fart who has run a successful business for longer then you have been alive must not know anything about business.
He can indeed close of his content, that is not the point. The point is, can he through buying ISP's, controlling large amounts of content, force a change on the net? Him alone? No. But he is hardly the only content owner who would like to change the open nature of the net. Microsoft has tried it. Disney and the likes would love it. That is an awful lot of money. And the average punter has shown in the past to have about the resistance capability of a sick mosquito. Tell me, how many copies does Disney sell of its DVD's with unskippable ads? That is how safe the internet is. Offer people a cheap ISP and they will switch. Then you show them ads, and they will stay. After all such things have been pulled before. With no significant backlash. It is a slow process, but if you think just because it is slow it ain't happening. Well, just don't come complaing in twenty years and ask where the internet has gone.
You assume a LOT about the future. You assume that advertisers will continue to want to be on slashdot. That a new generation of users will want to continue to visit a text only site. That slashdot editors will want to continue as is. That the cost of running slashdot will not change.
BUT, what about net neutrality? What is slashdot has to start paying for access to an ISP's customers? That is after all very much what the traditional content industry wants. They are used to it, delivery costs of magazines and transmission costs of radio signals. This "new" fangled "everyone can transmit for free" thingy of the Internet is very much a case of "do not want" as far as traditional media are concerned.
There is also a generation growing up, or failing to grow up, for who even this rant is already far to long. They can barely deal with a sentence let alone several paragraphs. Flashy full media sites appeal to them. See how big Youtube has become with what exactly?
And slashdot won't remain the same, it has steadily been increasing the fluff factor to attract new punters.
No, this article is NOT about TV on the internet. It is about the attempt once again to stop the open nature of the internet and get back to what AOL and MSN were supposed to be originally. Back to the ISP portal, where content was sold through the ISP. Remember them? You might not if you are young, but the ISP execs remember and the dreams of riches that came with them.
The open, anyone can start a website 100% accesible to anyon with no special privileges, internet is an accident. It happened while big companies looked away or failed to contain enough of it but that does NOT mean its future is ensured. Very powerful intrests are aligned against it and we might scoff at the likes of Murdoch but he got the money to change things, however slowly. Run an ISP, offer cheaper service, then when he controls the ISP market, change the rules. Ever so slightly until one day you find your ISP has become worse then AOL could ever have dreamed of being. All because you thought this article was about TV on the internet.
If I flash my privates in house but have the curtains open and so anyone from the street can see, I cannot complain about people looking and might indeed be arrested myself.
If I do the same in a house seperated from the road by a high fence and you put a ladder on the street and use nightvision goggles to look at my dangler, YOU are going to be arrested.
What is privacy? Is it the absolute letter of the law OR does EXPECTATION of privacy come into play?
You can follow me night and day. BUT that is very expensive and so you don't. So my actions in public are private simply because logging them would be far to costly. So I have come to expect that my actions in public are not constantly logged. Should this now change just because it has become possible to log them all? Should it be legal to record my every movement just because total CCTV surveilance has become feasable?
I do NOT know the answer to this question. On the one hand, I think that if you misbehave in public you should not have the right to complain "but I didn't expect anyone to catch me, so I should be free" BUT I also think that private companies being able to trace everyone constantly would be a REALLY bad idea.
If I ask on a forum about a health issue, should my insurance company be able to use this? I think not. Sure, if I am breaking the law, making false claims. But to deny people access because they think they might have a probem? No, that is going way to far.
Privacy is about more then things being recorded, it is about the idea that NOT everyone should constantly want to check up on everyone else. Just because I wrote a poem to a girl does NOT mean it has to be recorded by every private company in the world and be sold to the highest bidder.
France has regular riots with minorities, an economy down the drain, one hell of a reputation with the deportation of Roma and now it gives a 200 million euro subsidy to the music industry?
Just WTF?
Is his wife payed for by the music lobby? And it still requires people that in the plan are claimed to be unwilling to pay for music, to pay for music. Just not so much. Once...
And why does the state have to pay for this? Can't the music industry itself offer a discount action? Why must the average french taxpayer pay for 50% off for some kid for an American song with the money going abroad?
This isn't even corruption anymore. It shows a level of detachment from reality in the French government that is closer to insanity. "Let them eat cake", at least showed an awareness that the issue was related to food. This proposal doesn't even grasp. "42, beezlebug for I am, bibble", Marie Antoinette was heard to say, just before her head came off. Insanity.
Crime does NOT pay all that well. Your car is NOT worth the money you paid for it. The moment you drive it out of the shop, it looses a lot of its value. Same with that gold ring. To a thief, it is even worth less because these things can only be sold to fences.
2nd hand copper is a legit trade. Tons of the stuff gets processed all the time, so if I show up with a ton claiming I was demoloshing a factory and dug it up, who is going to ask questions.
It may not be worth all that much, but I get market price for it, not what some fence is willing to pay.
And most criminals never become rich anyway. Yes, stealing a ton of copper is hard work, but so is regular work for that level of education/skill. These aren't smart criminals. Just greedy. That is why so many of them end up paying the ultimate price. Death as they cut a life wire.
What other metals you can easily sell large quantities of do you know are lying around unguarded? People might notice if you start dismanting power pylons and ripping out railroad tracks takes far more effort then the overhead power cables.
Gosh, the Russian army better give up. Some slashdot geek has thought of the ultimate hole in their camouflage. Tracks! Who would have thought!
Except that they already knows this, and use weedwhackers and torches to create the various effects of a tank on the landscape. Very clever those military people. Almost like they know what they are doing.
That is why they also forbid the local kids from using them as bouncy castles. Would ruin the effect.
This government has ruled now for over half a century. In that time they have gone from backwards nation easily overrun by Japan to an economic powerhouse that controls the global economy and an army that is... well that is actually a great unknown. Nobody knows what would happen in China were go on a war path. With the US? No, with Russia. Siberia is what China needs, natural resources in abundance. It got the people to fight the russians the one thing every other attempt has lacked. Nobody could beat Mother Russia who could always throw more sons into the killing fields. But China has far more sons, especially now that girls are killed or adopted out because of the one child policy. Hell, a good war would even sort that problem out. Kill a couple of million chinese sons and their will be plenty of girls for the survivors.
And as for existence being hard in China? Sorry, but that just isn't the case. Most people never need the supposed freedoms they have. The freedoms they WANT are to speed, drive drunk and do drugs while nobody else can if it annoys them. I can speed, but you can't marry someone of the same sex etc etc. Freedom to many people is overrated and many in China lead content lives under the chinese government, never really running into the repression. Do you think the nazi's went around beating up EVERYONE? Nope. It comes down to "Then they came for X, and I said nothing, because I wasn't X". What usually follows then is a long list BUT China has been VERY smart in NOT making a long list. China in a lot of ways is pretty liberal. Don't oppose the on party state and you won't get any attention.
Take homo-sexuality. There is repression, even from the state through harrasment by the police. BUT there are only a handful of nations were gay-rights are protected by law. So, for a gay person, living in China or in a handful of western nations isn't that different. People get used very easily to not offend the powers that be. It is what allows us to survive from day to day.
This is something that is VERY hard to understand if you happen to believe YOU are free. You MIGHT be, because YOUR government has chosen not to oppress what YOU care about at this moment. For instance, a US citizen is free to carry a gun openly near the president! Nobody will arrest him for that. But if he marries another man? Ah! Not so clear cut, this freedom thing is it? What if I have no desire to openly carry a gun but am gay? Which country is more free then? Holland (no guns but legal gay marriage) or the US (Guns but no legal gay marriage)?
And if I neither want a gun or marry a guy, what do either of these freedoms then matter to me?
China is kept alive because the majority of its population have no pressing reason to risk their lives to change it. All real people driven revolutions have started AND finished because the population had a choice between certain death and making a change. China doesn't give its people, at least not enough, that choice. For China to have a revolt, 1 billion people would need to be upset. That is hard to achieve especially when the economy is booming.
Why risk getting locked up when I just got a promotion and got downpayments on my car? At the current rate, I wouldn't bet on the Chinese government falling anytime soon.
The western governments on the other hand... just look at the mess most countries are having right now.
Because when I think of pushing the boundaries, of reaching into space, exploring new techonolgies. I think google...
Someone here sees the web as FAR to important.
The INTERNET was a major technological development. Google is NOT. Oracle and Red Hat and Microsoft, none of them make anything real or research anything real. Producing another database is NOT what the knowledge economy should be about. Knowledge is stuff like new solar cells, bacteria that can produce oil, silkworms that poop spider thread. Not a new video codec.
The space race isn't going to be won by who has the best search engine but who can create the next generation rocket engine.
This research STILL happens in the US, but then turning it into production, the job of NASA, is being thrown away.
You are basically the same as the people who think: Banking is a large part of the economy, oh therefor it must be THE economy, ergo Wallstreet is all we need.
Honestly, if you think these companies are proof the US still has plenty of intellectual might (I think it does, but not because of these companies) then you are sadly mistaken.
Most countries use the sensible, human readable and most important information first format of DAY-MONTH-YEAR. This is sensible, which is why Americans have nothing to do with it.
YEAR-MONTH-DAY is easier for machines to sort. But forces the human mind to read the least important information first, after all, if I make an appointment with my doctor for 2010-10-11, the year and even the month are given. I want to know the DAY.
MONTH-DAY-YEAR is just silly. No sensible country or civilization uses it. So no sense in wasting time discussing why it is so silly, everyone with a brain knows why this is so.
Cue flamebait moderation from a silly part of the world :)
Note that such moderation handily points out WHY we can't just switch to a global standard that would avoid a hell of lot of confusion.
Politicians are NOT a large cost to the tax payer. They are not that highly paid and there are not that many of them. Now if you start talking about public sector workers. THEN you might be able to make some cuts especially at the top. But then you just won't get the people OR they will be contract workers instead and get paid even more.
Cost cutting is extremely hard and doesn't help if people think cutting a million on a budget of billions is worth it.
I don't understand cost cutting anyway. It is such a Wallstreet attitude. Oh, lets cut costs and increase profit. When has this ever worked longterm? A country isn't something you can buy up, cut it up and sell it off again. You are STUCK with Manchester. Cutting off useless people? France did that with the Roma... oopsie! Even just saying this is a big no-no. And it cost the Germans far more to kill a Jew then it ever saved them, even with recycling (harsh? But that is what traditional cost cutting applied to a country would be, you can't fire a population without firing up the ovens).
I think the entire problem is that some people are convinced you can run a country at a profit/as a business.
But countries are to big, to unwieldy and to long term for that. And it seems amazing to me that the business method to be followed is the western one (follow on core business, outsource everything else) when the real powerhouses in the business world are the (asian) conglomerates that do EVERYTHING. So, do we sell off the railways or keep them? I think I know what Siemens or Yamaha would say.
The problem for the UK is NOT the amount of money it spends, but that this money ain't being generated. IF the UK still had a working production industry, still mattered with agri-culture, then the amount of spending doesn't matter. But if you outsource everything, close mines and hope to survive on oil benefits and selling of national industries, then you won't have anything to fall back on when the well has run dry.
And if you cut public sector salaries then you only get the people who have no choice but to work for a reduced paycheck. Or are YOU volunteering to work for less pay in a thankless job?
The UK needs to re-vitalize itself in all sectors. This requires SPENDING, not cost cutting. All the current government will do is posture, delay investments without making any meaningful savings and hand over the country in a worse state to the next unlucky bastard to win the election.
Simple solution:
A: Cut management layers in all sectors controlled by the state: Result, mass cost savings, tories lose the elections because their voter base is management.
B: Cut foreign military procurement, buy local or keep old stuff around. Result: US president won't shake hands with the prime-minister.
C: Ban closing and outsourcing of any further production, put serious tariffs on foreign goods to encourage local production. Result: Prime-minister will not be able to shake any hands, champagne prices go up.
D: Invest in infra-structure and schooling, stop looking down on jobs like farmer, plumber and bricklayer, these are the jobs the economy runs on. You can't make people buy a locally made iPad, but you can make them use locally build walls.
E: Tax the financial industry and regulate the hell out of it because it has never benefitted anyone but the filthy rich. Result: all those silly enough to think they are the filthy rich and that a tax on inheriticance of more then a million will ever affect the, will not vote for you.
Oh these things are a bit simple, but smarter people then me have reasoned them out AND shown why no party, especially a right wing party can run with them. Sensible government isn't electable.