Personally, I have a nice bottle of champers laid down to celebrate when the old witch dies. I think a great many of us who grew up under her rule feel the same way.
Before this happens, some country in Continental Europe will have developed artificial oil; and when this happens, Britain will be unceremoniously dumped from the EU quicker than you can say "Keep the Pound". Not if we develop it first.
What I don't understand is why all you other countries allow our troops to be stationed on your land. Tell us to get the fuck out! We don't belong there; you should be defending yourself. The cold war has been over for years. There are a number of reasons depending on the country.
For instance in Japan they pay the US to maintain a presence and defend them from any would be foriegn invaders. This actually works out to be quite cost efficient compare to the cost of maintaining a modern well equipt standing army of your own.
Another reason is often the money provided by renting out a large area of otherwise low value land to the US millitary for a base. Quite often the US pay above the going local rent for the area and will take land that nobody else wants (ie - it is in the middle of nowhere.)
It is also worth remembering that the US usually where it would like to have a large base so it can have troops ready to deploy at a moments notice in that part of the world. In this instance the US Defence Dept can be very persuausive when encouraging the local government to sign a lease.
A similar case was Cyprus during the cold war. In that case the US wanted a listening post to eavesdrop on Russian communications. The Greek government refused to allow the base for fear of becomming a nuclear target. So the US made a behind the scenes deal with Turkey that allowed Turkey to invade half the island in return to the US being able to build the listening post on that half. Then when this invasion was being debated in the UN with regards to sanctions against Turkey the US used its veto to prevent this.
Start with the jittery oil speculators first and knock it down $30-40+. It's not quite that simple I'm afraid. True a large part of the price of Oil is probably due to the speculation on its price you mention.
However there is also the inconvenient fact that we are not discovering new fields as fast as we are depleting mature fields beyond the point it becomes cost efficient to extract. We are also becoming a lot more adept at extracting oil from very mature fields but it still doesn't change the fact that Oil is a finite resource and it will eventually run out.
Then there is China. The Chinese demand for oil is growing at a staggering rate, both from the peoples desire to drive their own car to work and the countries industrial growth. India is also crying our for more oil due to their economic growth. The fact is the world needs more and more oil as these countries develop but it has less and less.
The oil that is left is becoming more concentrated in fewer and fewer countries in the middle east. It will not be long (50-100 years, I believe) before the only oil left in the world is under Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Unsurprisingly these countries are demanding top dollar for their oil. As less and less countries have oil to sell the remaining ones that do are going to charge more and more.
I agree, I was expecting to be modded troll for my original post so am surprised. Must have been "lefty day" on slashdot:)
In reply to your other post:
I'd like to comment on your lefty reply. You forgot to mention that was a "Democratic" president (Clinton) that enhacted the DMCA Bill. I did not mention this because I did not feel it was relevant. I was trying to stear clear of bringing left or right into the discussion. I do appreciate you putting democratic in quotes though. Nice touch.
I only mentioned that Bush was leaving office, I did not suggest which lot I would prefer to win at the coming election because I don't really care. My point about him being unpopular in Europe was not meant to convey any dislike for him on my part, but merely how he is perceived in my part of the world. I was not saying that it was a valid perception.
All I was trying to get across was that the best way to achieve the aims of this bipartisan group of senators or whoever was not to try enforcing US laws overseas, but to persuade local officials to enforce local laws to towards the same end. If the locality in question does not have and similar laws then start by convincing a few politicians that they are needed.
I have no problem with tighter copyright laws, but I do dislike the idea of foreign nationals coming into my country and operating above the law. I would imagine that most US citizens would feel the same way if the situation was reversed.
The only reasons US troops should be on European soil (unless they're off-duty, on vacation) is if we're fighting another war in Europe, and then the troops would only be subject to US Military courts. Why should the troops only be subject to US Military courts? At the end of WW2 many German troops were tried at the Hague by a non-german court. By the US involvement in the Hague surely they should accept that it may be applied to their own troops in future?
The worst thing about this from my perspective is that the US has a record of refusing to follow any foriegn laws and not allowing their own officials to be extradited to other countries if they break local laws in the course of their work.
This mean that these copyright cops will have the ability to go into a foriegn country, stomp all over the local legal system and then escape back to the US before they can be forced to account for their actions. These are not the actions of a country that wants to earn the respect of the world community.
This will not help the US cause in the long run as it will just cause even greater resentment in the countries on the receiving end of such treatment.
The obvious example is the pirate bay. If they really want to close the pirate bay they need to convince Sweden to pass tighter copyright laws, not go in and bust it illegally like they did. The problem now is that after that stunt it has made it much harder for them to convince the swedish people that such a change in law is neccessary. It has also made many european politicians scared on enacting said laws for fear of being accused of being a lapdog of a deeply unpopular president (Bush).
Maybe some of this situation will change when he leaves office but at the moment no other politician wants to appear to cosy with someone who has made some very questionable decisions and is going to be out of office soon anyway.
If the US really wants to try and encourage europe to adopt their laws, a much better start would be make some sort of concession to the european community. A good start would be allowing US troops to be prosecuted by a european criminal court for crimes they commit in Europe. We are not really that bad in Europe, we are also democratic nations who have very similar outlooks in a great many ways. If the US trusted us a little more that would most likely be reciprocated.
No the seeds you talk about are always free. Unless I genetically redesign them into something else that is based on the original flower but is in fact so far removed it would have taken evolution 1000 years to get there without help.
We both came up with silly analogies, but mine supported my point of view and yours supported your own. Lets cut the bollock in this debate and stick to the facts please. I absolutely despise the "Free as in Beer" analogy because I think it is far worse than your own. If I buy beer, I am free to drink it or leave it. I am not free to brew it into something else as the yeast is already dead.
Physical analogies are trash in this debate as we are talking about something that has no physical presence, it is only a piece of information (code), albeit a very complex piece of information.
Code released into the public domain is as free as it is ever going to get. You can do anything you want to it.
Code released under a licence such as the GPL is restricted. The restriction might only be about ensuring that future modifications are also released under the same licence, but that is still a restriction.
Your point about the GPL being neccessary to ensure code remains free is bogus. The GPL ensures that some derivative works and all future modifications are also free. The original code was always going to remain free however after it was released into the public domain.
The GPL is about forcing everyone to give back modifications if they choose to take code from the open source community.
There is a big difference between Iraq and Maglev trains though. In the case of Iraq most of the money most goes to US businesses or servicemen so benefits the ecomony. In the case of maglev trains the money might benefit the US companies that make them, but it will harm the US automobile industry. This is why it will never happen, the US motor lobby will do it's best to prevent fast mass transit. I can't see the US airline industry being to happy about it either since it will cost them business too.
So the net result will be an awful lot of companies lobbying against it from the very beginning.
Thanks for the info, but the vulnerability you linked to would require me to go to a website that contained the cross site scripting attack. Almost every complicated site is vulnerable to XSS in one form or another if the user can be fooled in this matter. In order for you to read my email I need to click on a specially crafted link that you create that will take me to gmail.
The problem is that I already have link that takes me to gmail: http://www.google.com./ As soon as you make it any more complicated I will probably smell a rat. Why would I trust a link to gmail from anyone apart from google? If you could get your link to the top of the google search results for "gmail" you might be in with a chance.
If you know anything about web development and hacking you know that XSS is a nightmare to prevent if you have users that really are stupid enough to click on every random link to your site that they find.
The Hotmail hack could be executed by anyone with very little technical knowledge and no action on the part of the user of the email box you were trying to snoop on (Apart from the obvious issue of going to hotmail in the first place).
Please tell me you understand the difference between these two types of attack or you have no place taking place in a discussion of internet security.
Those means are, as I said, beating the piss out of you. They should not be anything of the kind. Here in Britain the police have the following: CS Spray, Metal Side Handled Extendable baton and some have a small metal extendable cosh (Called an ASP I believe). Very rarely do you see them use any of it.
Generally the preferred method of subduing a single suspect is to use their vast array of control and restraint procedures. This usually means the suspect suddenly finds himself face down on the floor with one arm held up behind his back. If you are any good there is no need to actually strike the suspect at all. You simply grab his arm and then use it to make him do what you want.
If the suspect has a knife, the easiest solution is to use the metal truncheon (or an ASP works even better) to smack the back of his hand. This hurts, a lot. They the drop knife. If they don't, you can do it again or choose to escalate to CS Spray. Using a truncheon on somebodies head is ineffective as the skull is too thick. It might hurt them, but it doesn't help you restrain them. Smashing their hand however does usually make it difficult to use it any manner, let alone to try hitting or stabbing someone with it.
Doesn't that make taking the piss out of Microsoft's security a lot hypocritical? Not for those of use with long memories. I remember that at one point someone worked out you could log in to any Hotmail acccount just by changing the querystring. It did not ask you for a password. This was a collosal fuckup that never should have happened. Here is a link for those who have forgotten:
I've always viewed the U.N as a corrupt orginization and an enemy of the US. I'm sure many agree. You do know that the US was a founding member of the UN don't you. It is not by accident that the United Nations headquarters is actually in America.
The problem is that nowadays we invite lots of other countries into the UN and seeing as most of the rest of the civilized world has at least one or two issues with the US it is not hard to find countries who will vote against them in issues like this.
I remember seeing footage of a police officer repeatedly tasering a guy who was already lieing on the ground. The problem stemmed from the fact that the officer was on patrol on his own, in the middle of nowhere with no backup. He was trying to arrest a drunk cretin who was a lot bigger than the officer in question. The cretin kept begging the officer to stop but he was trying to get up as he did so. The officer kept telling him to lie still but since the guy was drunk and in pain he kept moving. You try sticking your fingers in the mains and then staying still.
This went on for several minutes. If the officer was on patrol with a partner this could have been avoided in this case.
The big question is whether Insitu have build in the correct safety features.
For starters they must make sure they included a classified fourth directive regarding action against company executives. It is vitally important that the Insitu management can still drive there porches to work without worrying about niggling details like speeding tickets.
If Phil the packer gets your order at 16:55 the same day Spurs (thats his football team) are playing that evening. Do you think you are going to delay him getting out the Warehouse? No it will go under the counter until tommorrow. This is absolutely appalling. I could understand my order being delayed for something important, but just so he can go and watch Tottenham lose again does not count. Now if he was going to watch Chelsea or Palace this would be understandable.
First let me say I have never used Amazon although I might do at some point in the future.
I did used to use a much smaller online retailer (dabs.co.uk) quite frequently though to buy computer parts. When I first started using them they offered free delivery if you ordered online. The delivery was only 2-3 day though not next day. Most of the time this didn't bother me, of it did I always had the option to pay for the next day option.
At first when I ordered something that was out of stock so I had to wait for them to get it in I noticed they started sending it out by next day courier. After a while almost every order I placed started being sent out marked next day delivery regardless. Obviously this is not the sort of thing anyone complains about so all it did was make me even more loyal to them as a company.
The moral of this story is that this is something that every company does unofficially anyway. They treat high value clients better than low value clients. The difference here is that Amazon are applying for a patent and making it official. Maybe they want to use it as part of an advertising campaign and don't want their competitor doing the same thing.
Here in London we are all forced to take public transport to work everyday. This might be an alien concept in the US but here it is quite simply the most practical method of getting to work until you are rich enough that you can pay someone to drive you there and then find somewhere to park after you are in the office. I work in the City of London (EC1, Moorgate). That is that I work in the London equivalent of Wall Street.
When I travel around on the tube I see an awful lot of the trademark white Ipod earphones. I see the occasional pair of Sony Ericsson earphones that go with their Walkman brand of phones. I see no Zunes. Almost everyone listens to music while traveling into work on the Tube but almost nobody seems to own a Zune.
This is not a sign that the Zune is selling well in a culture where owning a personal music player is a prerequisite for maintaining your sanity.
I have seen more Linux based Archos players or PSP's.
I know twitter/erris posts regularly but not that often. What the hells has that got to do with anything?
Plenty of people call microsoft M$. Personally I prefer calling them MicroShite but that is my preference.
Twitter also occasionally makes some valid points in some of his posts but who cares about facts when you can just slag someone off without taking the time to exercise your brain.
I am not saying the Linux is perfect, it pisses me off just as regularly as Windows does but at least with Linux I can do something about it like commit a patch. With Windows I might as well just lump it as there is nothing I can do to help remedy the situation.
This is what a lot if Windows and Apple fan boys miss. Linux does not annoy as many coders as we feel we can remedy the things about said OS that annoy us, whereas with windows there is the feeling of complete powerlessness to fix problems even if you can isolate exactly what causes them. For anyone who programs computers, relies on them to work and encounters the same bug regularly this becomes tremendously frustrating as it prevents true self-reliance.
To come up with a car analogy it is like having to pay for a cab regularly because your car is constantly in the auto shop getting repaired for an issue you could fix if only it would not void your warranty.
In *theory* it should be able to recover from failed installs, in practice it's more of a 'hope and pray' approach. Oh that explains it. On the occasion I described above it was 1am in a datacentre so sods law pretty guaranteed the worst outcome. In this case that meant staying until 5am.
If I recall the DMCA letter correctly you have to assure under penalty of perjury that you are or represent the copyright holder. But does US law allow a company to be prosecuted for perjury? If not the individual can get out of it based on the fact that his employer told him something and he acted in good faith.
Service Packs back up everything they're changing before writing, so they can recover the system if broken mid-flow. Do they? Since when? I have seen Win2000 die during a service pack install (accidentally shutdown via start menu) and it never booted up again. Had to reinstall the OS from scratch.
His idea is still to sell you multiple copies of the same tracks in all these different places, and he thinks where his company went wrong was in not doing that early enough. The problem is that this is not without precedent. When CD's were first released a lot of people did go out and buy the same music they already owned on Vinyl on CD.
From his perspective they have managed to get the public to do this once before so why can't they do it again?
Most of the reasons why they will not get away with this again are technological and I would bet if anyone tried to explain them to him they go straight over his head. I would also bet that anyone trying to explain it to him would have a very tough time as it is probably not something he wants to hear.
Can you imagine trying to explain to your employer that his entire business model was not going work and may well bankrupt the company? Especially after he had publicly locked the company into a particular path. He would have to exercise such an about face it would end his career.
I do think that a CEO of a record company saying this is actually quite positive news though as it may be the start of a slow change of focus / direction where the executive is walking a fine line between losing shareholder confidence and completely alienating his customers. After engaging in the tactics that RIAA have been for the past 5 years can you imagine him saying that he has been wasting millions of pounds of the shareholders money on court cases that were ruining his companies public image? He would have to do a VERY good job of explaining why it has taken him so long to realise what he was doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Unplug it, plug it back in.
Problem solved.
For instance in Japan they pay the US to maintain a presence and defend them from any would be foriegn invaders. This actually works out to be quite cost efficient compare to the cost of maintaining a modern well equipt standing army of your own.
Another reason is often the money provided by renting out a large area of otherwise low value land to the US millitary for a base. Quite often the US pay above the going local rent for the area and will take land that nobody else wants (ie - it is in the middle of nowhere.)
It is also worth remembering that the US usually where it would like to have a large base so it can have troops ready to deploy at a moments notice in that part of the world. In this instance the US Defence Dept can be very persuausive when encouraging the local government to sign a lease.
A similar case was Cyprus during the cold war. In that case the US wanted a listening post to eavesdrop on Russian communications. The Greek government refused to allow the base for fear of becomming a nuclear target. So the US made a behind the scenes deal with Turkey that allowed Turkey to invade half the island in return to the US being able to build the listening post on that half. Then when this invasion was being debated in the UN with regards to sanctions against Turkey the US used its veto to prevent this.
http://www.therant.us/staff/phyrillas/07272007.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FD10Ak04.html
However there is also the inconvenient fact that we are not discovering new fields as fast as we are depleting mature fields beyond the point it becomes cost efficient to extract. We are also becoming a lot more adept at extracting oil from very mature fields but it still doesn't change the fact that Oil is a finite resource and it will eventually run out.
Then there is China. The Chinese demand for oil is growing at a staggering rate, both from the peoples desire to drive their own car to work and the countries industrial growth. India is also crying our for more oil due to their economic growth. The fact is the world needs more and more oil as these countries develop but it has less and less.
The oil that is left is becoming more concentrated in fewer and fewer countries in the middle east. It will not be long (50-100 years, I believe) before the only oil left in the world is under Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Unsurprisingly these countries are demanding top dollar for their oil. As less and less countries have oil to sell the remaining ones that do are going to charge more and more.
In reply to your other post: I'd like to comment on your lefty reply. You forgot to mention that was a "Democratic" president (Clinton) that enhacted the DMCA Bill. I did not mention this because I did not feel it was relevant. I was trying to stear clear of bringing left or right into the discussion. I do appreciate you putting democratic in quotes though. Nice touch.
I only mentioned that Bush was leaving office, I did not suggest which lot I would prefer to win at the coming election because I don't really care. My point about him being unpopular in Europe was not meant to convey any dislike for him on my part, but merely how he is perceived in my part of the world. I was not saying that it was a valid perception.
All I was trying to get across was that the best way to achieve the aims of this bipartisan group of senators or whoever was not to try enforcing US laws overseas, but to persuade local officials to enforce local laws to towards the same end. If the locality in question does not have and similar laws then start by convincing a few politicians that they are needed.
I have no problem with tighter copyright laws, but I do dislike the idea of foreign nationals coming into my country and operating above the law. I would imagine that most US citizens would feel the same way if the situation was reversed.
The worst thing about this from my perspective is that the US has a record of refusing to follow any foriegn laws and not allowing their own officials to be extradited to other countries if they break local laws in the course of their work.
This mean that these copyright cops will have the ability to go into a foriegn country, stomp all over the local legal system and then escape back to the US before they can be forced to account for their actions. These are not the actions of a country that wants to earn the respect of the world community.
This will not help the US cause in the long run as it will just cause even greater resentment in the countries on the receiving end of such treatment.
The obvious example is the pirate bay. If they really want to close the pirate bay they need to convince Sweden to pass tighter copyright laws, not go in and bust it illegally like they did. The problem now is that after that stunt it has made it much harder for them to convince the swedish people that such a change in law is neccessary. It has also made many european politicians scared on enacting said laws for fear of being accused of being a lapdog of a deeply unpopular president (Bush).
Maybe some of this situation will change when he leaves office but at the moment no other politician wants to appear to cosy with someone who has made some very questionable decisions and is going to be out of office soon anyway.
If the US really wants to try and encourage europe to adopt their laws, a much better start would be make some sort of concession to the european community. A good start would be allowing US troops to be prosecuted by a european criminal court for crimes they commit in Europe. We are not really that bad in Europe, we are also democratic nations who have very similar outlooks in a great many ways. If the US trusted us a little more that would most likely be reciprocated.
No the seeds you talk about are always free. Unless I genetically redesign them into something else that is based on the original flower but is in fact so far removed it would have taken evolution 1000 years to get there without help.
We both came up with silly analogies, but mine supported my point of view and yours supported your own. Lets cut the bollock in this debate and stick to the facts please. I absolutely despise the "Free as in Beer" analogy because I think it is far worse than your own. If I buy beer, I am free to drink it or leave it. I am not free to brew it into something else as the yeast is already dead.
Physical analogies are trash in this debate as we are talking about something that has no physical presence, it is only a piece of information (code), albeit a very complex piece of information.
Just to clarify:
Code released into the public domain is as free as it is ever going to get. You can do anything you want to it.
Code released under a licence such as the GPL is restricted. The restriction might only be about ensuring that future modifications are also released under the same licence, but that is still a restriction.
Your point about the GPL being neccessary to ensure code remains free is bogus. The GPL ensures that some derivative works and all future modifications are also free. The original code was always going to remain free however after it was released into the public domain.
The GPL is about forcing everyone to give back modifications if they choose to take code from the open source community.
There is a big difference between Iraq and Maglev trains though. In the case of Iraq most of the money most goes to US businesses or servicemen so benefits the ecomony. In the case of maglev trains the money might benefit the US companies that make them, but it will harm the US automobile industry. This is why it will never happen, the US motor lobby will do it's best to prevent fast mass transit. I can't see the US airline industry being to happy about it either since it will cost them business too.
So the net result will be an awful lot of companies lobbying against it from the very beginning.
Thanks for the info, but the vulnerability you linked to would require me to go to a website that contained the cross site scripting attack. Almost every complicated site is vulnerable to XSS in one form or another if the user can be fooled in this matter. In order for you to read my email I need to click on a specially crafted link that you create that will take me to gmail.
The problem is that I already have link that takes me to gmail: http://www.google.com./ As soon as you make it any more complicated I will probably smell a rat. Why would I trust a link to gmail from anyone apart from google? If you could get your link to the top of the google search results for "gmail" you might be in with a chance.
If you know anything about web development and hacking you know that XSS is a nightmare to prevent if you have users that really are stupid enough to click on every random link to your site that they find.
The Hotmail hack could be executed by anyone with very little technical knowledge and no action on the part of the user of the email box you were trying to snoop on (Apart from the obvious issue of going to hotmail in the first place).
Please tell me you understand the difference between these two types of attack or you have no place taking place in a discussion of internet security.
Generally the preferred method of subduing a single suspect is to use their vast array of control and restraint procedures. This usually means the suspect suddenly finds himself face down on the floor with one arm held up behind his back. If you are any good there is no need to actually strike the suspect at all. You simply grab his arm and then use it to make him do what you want.
If the suspect has a knife, the easiest solution is to use the metal truncheon (or an ASP works even better) to smack the back of his hand. This hurts, a lot. They the drop knife. If they don't, you can do it again or choose to escalate to CS Spray. Using a truncheon on somebodies head is ineffective as the skull is too thick. It might hurt them, but it doesn't help you restrain them. Smashing their hand however does usually make it difficult to use it any manner, let alone to try hitting or stabbing someone with it.
http://www.news.com/2100-1023-230411.html
Since I heard about this and followed Microsofts response I made a mental note to never get a Hotmail account.
As for scanning my emails to show me targeted adverts I don't really mind this providing the information is not sold on to other companies.
The problem is that nowadays we invite lots of other countries into the UN and seeing as most of the rest of the civilized world has at least one or two issues with the US it is not hard to find countries who will vote against them in issues like this.
I remember seeing footage of a police officer repeatedly tasering a guy who was already lieing on the ground. The problem stemmed from the fact that the officer was on patrol on his own, in the middle of nowhere with no backup. He was trying to arrest a drunk cretin who was a lot bigger than the officer in question. The cretin kept begging the officer to stop but he was trying to get up as he did so. The officer kept telling him to lie still but since the guy was drunk and in pain he kept moving. You try sticking your fingers in the mains and then staying still.
This went on for several minutes. If the officer was on patrol with a partner this could have been avoided in this case.
The big question is whether Insitu have build in the correct safety features.
For starters they must make sure they included a classified fourth directive regarding action against company executives. It is vitally important that the Insitu management can still drive there porches to work without worrying about niggling details like speeding tickets.
Do you think you are going to delay him getting out the Warehouse? No it will go under the counter until tommorrow. This is absolutely appalling. I could understand my order being delayed for something important, but just so he can go and watch Tottenham lose again does not count. Now if he was going to watch Chelsea or Palace this would be understandable.
First let me say I have never used Amazon although I might do at some point in the future.
I did used to use a much smaller online retailer (dabs.co.uk) quite frequently though to buy computer parts. When I first started using them they offered free delivery if you ordered online. The delivery was only 2-3 day though not next day. Most of the time this didn't bother me, of it did I always had the option to pay for the next day option.
At first when I ordered something that was out of stock so I had to wait for them to get it in I noticed they started sending it out by next day courier. After a while almost every order I placed started being sent out marked next day delivery regardless. Obviously this is not the sort of thing anyone complains about so all it did was make me even more loyal to them as a company.
The moral of this story is that this is something that every company does unofficially anyway. They treat high value clients better than low value clients. The difference here is that Amazon are applying for a patent and making it official. Maybe they want to use it as part of an advertising campaign and don't want their competitor doing the same thing.
Here in London we are all forced to take public transport to work everyday. This might be an alien concept in the US but here it is quite simply the most practical method of getting to work until you are rich enough that you can pay someone to drive you there and then find somewhere to park after you are in the office. I work in the City of London (EC1, Moorgate). That is that I work in the London equivalent of Wall Street.
When I travel around on the tube I see an awful lot of the trademark white Ipod earphones. I see the occasional pair of Sony Ericsson earphones that go with their Walkman brand of phones. I see no Zunes. Almost everyone listens to music while traveling into work on the Tube but almost nobody seems to own a Zune.
This is not a sign that the Zune is selling well in a culture where owning a personal music player is a prerequisite for maintaining your sanity.
I have seen more Linux based Archos players or PSP's.
Plenty of people call microsoft M$. Personally I prefer calling them MicroShite but that is my preference.
Twitter also occasionally makes some valid points in some of his posts but who cares about facts when you can just slag someone off without taking the time to exercise your brain.
I am not saying the Linux is perfect, it pisses me off just as regularly as Windows does but at least with Linux I can do something about it like commit a patch. With Windows I might as well just lump it as there is nothing I can do to help remedy the situation.
This is what a lot if Windows and Apple fan boys miss. Linux does not annoy as many coders as we feel we can remedy the things about said OS that annoy us, whereas with windows there is the feeling of complete powerlessness to fix problems even if you can isolate exactly what causes them. For anyone who programs computers, relies on them to work and encounters the same bug regularly this becomes tremendously frustrating as it prevents true self-reliance.
To come up with a car analogy it is like having to pay for a cab regularly because your car is constantly in the auto shop getting repaired for an issue you could fix if only it would not void your warranty.
From his perspective they have managed to get the public to do this once before so why can't they do it again?
Most of the reasons why they will not get away with this again are technological and I would bet if anyone tried to explain them to him they go straight over his head. I would also bet that anyone trying to explain it to him would have a very tough time as it is probably not something he wants to hear.
Can you imagine trying to explain to your employer that his entire business model was not going work and may well bankrupt the company? Especially after he had publicly locked the company into a particular path. He would have to exercise such an about face it would end his career.
I do think that a CEO of a record company saying this is actually quite positive news though as it may be the start of a slow change of focus / direction where the executive is walking a fine line between losing shareholder confidence and completely alienating his customers. After engaging in the tactics that RIAA have been for the past 5 years can you imagine him saying that he has been wasting millions of pounds of the shareholders money on court cases that were ruining his companies public image? He would have to do a VERY good job of explaining why it has taken him so long to realise what he was doing.