Most computer users are stupid. They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks." Never mind that the software was targetted at a specific hardware platform, that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user. Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is DESIGNED to work primarily with one specific hardware set, but would have nothing stopping them from running OSX into the ground with everyone they know.
I hate to break it to you, but Java beat them by a wide margin a long time ago. Java has been able to do the write once, run anywhere since around JDK 1.2. Yes, you still need to do testing on platforms you plan to officially support, but the big difference is that Sun has made incredible strides in making Java that reliable on all officially supported platforms.
Now, as a Java developer I see nothing wrong with this and even see a good place for Java in the development of widgets. It's an easy language to pick up and you have the applets concept which was the first attempt to create something similar to widgets. All things considered, Java is an asset, not a competitor, for widgets.
America is arguably free and most definitely not home of the brave on average. The country which produced a citizen army that defeated the British with French help is gone, and you can blame the civil war in part for ending our era of relying on a citizen army instead of a professional one.
The average American doesn't have any ability to use a gun, nor do they have the determination to act as a militiaman in defense of their country. This is why we are losing freedom so much. The government has to do this because most people while scream bloody murder if they don't in the face of a terrorist attack. Since most Americans have no connection to their freedoms, especially since they don't have the principle or courage to fight for them, we are essentially screwed.
But on the terrorist angle, let's be serious about something. This is a Muslim on everyone else problem and welcoming more Muslims from abroad into our country is just asking for trouble. Chinese Buddhists aren't attacking us, Hindus are by and large quite content to live in total peace with their neighbors, same thing for Jews, Christians, Shintos, Sikhs. It's the Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Pakistan that by and large want to blow up our women and children in gory displays of affection for Allah.
So instead of screwing our civil liberties, and those of our law-abiding immigrants from the rest of the world besides the heavily Muslim areas, why not simply deport all of the Middle Eastern and Pakistan Muslims from our country? Only a pathologically dishonest person can look at the history of Islam and call it a religion of peace. No, we shouldn't restrict our Muslim citizens, most of whom are very Americanized to the point that they are probably more closely connected to our culture than their religion's roots. However, let's be realistic. Deporting every single Saudi national from our country and ending our visa program with Saudi Arabia would do more to protect our country than the USA PATRIOT Act and these executive orders combined.
You be as understanding as possible with them when they need to take care of their families
How about accepting a little less profit as a price to pay for supporting good workers in your community (and companies need help defending and encouraging this practice)
How about getting rid of employees, especially managers, that are abusive and/or want to build little fiefdoms
Lastly, how about you take the bitter employees who like to complain about every little perceived slight and fire their asses ASAP for being disruptive. I know my girlfriend, who works as a softare developer and hates working for women, would back this wholeheartedly, but perhaps that's because it'd be the cause of most of her female peers getting fired on the spot.
Look, work is typically what we wouldn't do if given the choice not to do it. That's why it's called work, it's supposed to be laborious and when it's not, you've got something great going for you. The best way to keep good people is to protect them, challenge them and give them excellent opportunities to get rewarded for working hard for their employer. You can let them play Halo for an hour a day on company time, but if they still work for a typical good ol' boy network and/or hyper-PC office or a PHB with sociopathic tendencies, you'll never have the kind of work environment that can match the aforementioned environment that makes work be work, but makes people feel like they get something good and safe from their blood, sweat and tears.
I know Java and am fairly comfortable with C# as well, yet I put 90% of my effort into Java and C because my job market, Northern Virginia, relies heavily on federal contract work which is almost always standardized on J2EE. Be practical. If your area is very pro-Microsoft, don't waste your time with Java because it will make you less marketable. Focus your time instead on learning good OOP practices, take a few CS courses on things like data structures and algorithms and you'll be set.
This is of course coming from a recently graduated CS major, so take it for what it's worth.
He wants to be heard, but no one else is going to listen to him inside the company. A company that is willing to publish a game that is as pure of a target for regulation as GTA is not going to listen to a shareholder who might hold 0.001% of the company's assets.
Of course, if he really wanted to make a name for himself, he'd go after Wal-Mart, Target, etc. for not actually enforcing the rating system. What good is a mature rating on a game if the stores flat out refuse to fire employees for not enforcing the rating? As for the argument that more games should be AO, that's bullshit, and even GTA with its sex scenes wasn't AO. Anyone seen the movie Taking Lives? It had a full on sex scene with Angelina Jolie that was pretty damn explicit, yet it got a R rating which is analogous to a Mature rating.
AO really shouldn't even exist because Mature implies that your player can actually handle R-rated material in a movie. The difference between NC-17 and R is purely subjective, and quite frankly, any game that really does deserve an AO rating is probably over the top and should subjected to scrutiny as it is probably wantonly pornographic and violent in a way that would make Id blush and Take Two start furiously scribbling down notes.
I love Python, but...
on
Guido Goes Google
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I really do think it has been hampered by having a less rigorously standardized basic class library than Java or.NET. It would be great to see Python get some better documentation tools as well so that it'd be easy to generate documentation on par with the Java and.NET documentation.
And of course if Google wanted to really screw with both Sun and Microsoft, especially Microsoft, they could create their own cross-platform web and gui toolkits and a free RAD GUI builder a la Visual Studio for Python. If they could create a Python framework on par with Swing or Windows Forms, there'd be quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in both camps:)
I think it makes more sense for Google to buy them because of the close ties that Firefox and Opera have with them. Not only that, but it gives Google a credible product for mobile platforms and a way of pushing their search engine on mobile devices the way that Microsoft uses Internet Explorer to push MSN on desktop PC and laptop users that use Windows.
Besides, it would only add a lot of confusion for Microsoft's developers. Now, if Microsoft were to make it so that Opera's rendering engine became a replacement for Internet Explorer's that might be something else, but at this point, they've probably got too much money invested in IE for them to drop any part of it without a court order.
Fox is the poster child for why the movie studios have problems. They had an executive who "didn't get it" with Family Guy ruin the original series by actively sabotaging its timing slots. Then it sells over a million DVD sets after Cartoon Network picks it up and does reruns. With Firefly, they put the damn series out of order and wonder why it failed miserably. A little hard to follow a linear story line without a linear scheduling... assholes.
Some people think that a la carte cable is bad for consumers, but I'd gladly pay $30 for Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, the History Channel and MusicChoice. That'd be only $20 less than full digital cable, and if they'd throw in a "Sci-Fi 2, 3, 4" like they have with MTV, I'd glady go up to $40. The TV and movie studios are phenominally stupid, such as the case of Firefly where they spent obscene amounts of money producing it only to let some executive rip the sequence to shreds for shits and giggles.
Anyone who has ever taken a stab at playing guitar or another instrument that can be tabbed out knows how unreliable most online tabs are. Sometimes I cannot believe how wildly inaccurate they are, and I have a nearly dead ear when it comes to telling one chord from another with the exception of a few power chords. The groups that complain about this stuff ought to be snickering and saying, "if you want to actually, well, LEARN the song you have to buy us for the reliability that only we can provide."
Besides, here's a little shocker for them: most CDs have the lyrics inside the jewel case. Yes, fancy that. Anyone who is a good singer can listen to the rhythm of the vocals and pick it up, thus making it practically pointless to crack down on this when the bands and record labels are actively "enabling piracy" by giving away the lyrics as part of the package. Stick to the tabs, people, stick to the tabs for enforcement if they're blatant rip offs.
I never understood why the record labels don't see themselves at war with these publishing groups. The record labels should be actively encouraging local bands to cover popular songs as a way to not only discover new talent, but promote existing songs. Think about it, if a local band can cover a very big song very well, aren't they worth investigating? The label might have their next big act right there, and the songs that sell well are excellent benchmarks.
If the record labels were smart, they'd forget about the few million $s they could be making by licensing sheet music and instead be pushing free sheet music for popular songs as a way to promote their albums.
A follow up statute that adds "conspiracy to commit" as a penalty. Either make it a civil penalty that adds an extra twenty five to fifty percent cost to the fine to the true offending party, in this case DirecTV, and then fines the hell out of the outsource party or make it a criminal penalty with a charge of something like five minutes in prison for every complaint upon conviction. Yes, I know that in this case it'd send someone to prison for about thirteen years, but who cares?
The federal government should make it so that if foreigners contract out to do this sort of sleezy work, and then are caught on US soil that they are arrested and prosecuted immediately.
If we eliminated most of the fraud, waste and abuse in the government. With the Department of Education not being able to account for a majority of its budget, the Defense Department losing over $12B of tax dollars in Iraq and all of the pork that goes through Congress, I can't help but think that if the Congress didn't have the power to spend money on "internal improvements," we'd not be in this problem today.
The governments in this country waste so damn much of our GDP on pure bullshit that if we actually had fiscal responsibility, this would be non-issue. We have a GDP of $11T, does anyone actually think that if the costs associated with compliance, regulation, tax payments, etc. were much easier that corporate America would be bitching about this transition? It'd be just a drop in the bucket.
If and when Google does survive all of these attacks, they'll be a stronger company for it. Of course, the nearest term consequence could be a company whose eventual aggressiveness would make Microsoft look like a kitten. At least they won't sneak up and take everyone by surprise the way that Microsoft seemed to in the early 1990s with Windows 3.1, 95 and NT 4.0.
Of course, since they're in the business of storing and processing information, Google could end up being a greater threat than Microsoft ever could in the wrong hands.
This is the same New Orleans that had over 30% of its PD leave or actively engage in the unlawful activities plaguing it post-Katrina. This is the same New Orleans which is legendary for its corrupt local government and in a state that is almost synonymous with bad government to most southerners.
Yet it's going to do a "good job" running WiFi. One of these days, the starry-eyed true believers will come to the painful realization that "democracy" has no proven track record on keeping governments working for the people and that local governments are one of the last groups you'd want to trust to run your communication network.
Besides, let's just go ahead and put telescreens in our homes. It just blows my mind how anyone can in one breath whole-heartedly support government operation and/or ownership of the com. network and then complain about the Bush administration wiretapping us all a la 1984. Why not go ahead and put your toddler in a locked room with a dingo and then get self-righteously pissed off when your toddler gets mauled and eaten? Afterall, it's THEIR fault, right?
Bullshit. You give the government control over the com. network on that scale and when your precious civil liberties go out the window, you'll be one of the few victims of bad government to legitimately laughed at by succeeding generations. The government will assert its sovereignty and say, "it's our network, use it our way or get off." Then you'll look around and there won't be any competition because your tax dollars subsidize the network to the point that the private sector cannot compete.
All in the name of giving "poor" people (our poor are middle class by African standards) access to a network that all too often their volunary refusal to make use of their socialized education opportunities have rendered them incapable of exploiting.
He has systematically worked to centralize the federal government on a scale not seen since FDR, has worked to make the military an active component of civil government, instituted a much more massive welfare state and has found no shortage of reasons to give the government sweeping power to spy on us, deny us our basic rights and all that goes with that. Our border is still open during a "state of war," or is that a battle against violent extremism? I really wish that the Bush supporters and administration would get together and decide whether this is open war, thus justifying some war powers, or just an ideological battle that our enemies can simply wait until 2008 for it to end.
If there is another attack, especially a WMD attack, on our soil while he's still in office, the Congress should impeach him for failure to uphold Article IV, Section 4 which guarantees the states the protection of the federal government from invasion. We have wide open borders, MS-13 is actively working with several terrorist groups to smuggle people and materials in and yet Mr. "See no evil, hear no evil on the borders" calls the Minutemen vigilantes and extremists. The President won't even use his basic legal powers to take common sense precautions like clamping down on both borders so that people cannot easily sneak through, yet we need sweeping new surveillance powers?
Were he an engineer, not a politician, people would be demanding that Bush serve 10 years to life for his systematic failures. If his policies were judged by the same standards that our government judges the work of certified professionals, he'd be lucky if life in prison was the only thing he'd get in the face of a nuclear attack on our soil given how much he has actively undermined the core of our national security policies.
Do you honestly think that most people would pay $500 for a product that can be acquired for $25 if rebranded? Yes, many people would rather support the developers, but they'd also rather save a lot of money. In the end, if it saves a lot of money, people will tend to opt for the rebranded knock off.
Does anyone actually think that anyone but the party faithful would actually buy into a seemingly "independent blogger's" pro-candidate writings? Take for existance, Right Wing News. The site is blatantly pro-Republican, to the point that its owner won't even vote for a libertarian or constitution party candidate if the Republican is even farther to the left than the Democrat. Many "right wing bloggers" for example, are just Republican Party hacks.
I'd imagine that there are two broad sides in all of this: those who are independent regardless of ideology and those who shill for the bifactional ruling party know as the Republican and Democratic parties. Who cares if the RNC or DNC pays someone to sing the praises of their candidate? Unless they're outright lying, they'll just garner the attention of the party faithful. The bloggers in the first category and most of their friends and readers won't buy into it because they're on the opposite side of the philosophical fence.
But what is amusing here is that blogging is just a way of maintaining a website. Most bloggers are not journalists because of the simple fact that their work cannot be considered journalistic. Perhaps Michelle Malkin's blog should count, but it'd be a cold day in hell that I'd consider the average blogger to be a journalist. If you're not a professional jouralist, then you aren't one IMO. The concept of a "citizen journalist" is redundant. The point of using "citizen" as a modifier is to show that you are a civilian doing a government job. Hence "citizen soldier" for example. That's a miltiaman, a man who fights as part of a civilian army organized in a military-like hierarchy. He's a soldier, but not a government soldier thus he's a "citizen soldier." Since America has only a lame-brained attempt at state media (*cough*CPB*cough*) there is no way you can qualify as a "citizen journalist." Either journalism is your career or it is something you amateurishly ape.
The same stuff may happen in the US in one form or another, but at least we can point to the 4th amendment and say that the government cannot legally do that.
If you open a blog article in a new window in RSSOwl you can have the RSS feed, the actual article and your blog web app's new entry page open in the same neat little program. I love it, and wish that they'd include real built-in support for Movable Type and Wordpress.
I am for due process of law, but if a jury calls your case a SLAPP and the judge agrees with that, I think the amount you have sued for should be taken away as a fine and the right to appeal the ruling should be eliminated. Call it a fine for trying to turn the justice system into a tool of injustice.
Most states don't even really try to keep illegal immigrants from voting! The voter fraud in this country is getting out of hand and it has nothing to do with voting machines since it's a basic human problem. The bleeding hearts want the illegals to have a legal ability to drive or to pander for their illegal vote and the fat cats want the cheap labor.
Why don't we instead hear about them passing a new law that abolishes the old voter fraud statute and instead puts "intentionally false voting or aiding and abetting the same" as a possible condition for being prosectued for attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government? Seriously, what is voter fraud if not a low level attempt at a coup, especially if it actually changes the outcome of an election?
If there was any justice in this country, anyone convicted of organizing voter fraud would be given life in prison or, depending on the scale executed, and the regular plebes would be slapped with a minimum of a five year felony prison sentence. Of course part of the common excuses that the politicians and workers use is that people show up demanding their right to vote without having registered or that certain groups scream "disenfranchisement!" If you haven't registered to vote, tough luck and if you don't have an ID on you, I don't care what your skin color is, get out of the precinct as you have no right to participate if you won't prove that you're a citizen with the legal right to vote.
I'd recommend you move to Somalia then. No taxes, no regulation, property rights are entirely your responsibility, and everybody is free to do whatever they want.
This is a perfect example of left-wing extremism. I say that I want almost no taxes, virtually no regulation and private property rights that are nearly absolute, and this is the natural reaction of a lot of leftists to a libertarian statement of principle. It perfectly presents the false dichotomy inherent in left-wing thought: either we have a thorough and invasive government that taxes heavily, regulates heavily and on the surface keeps society moving smoothly, or we end up like a third world hell hole. Let's not forget that many of the problems in Africa can be traced back to the left-wing governments of Europe, such as France's whose enlightened elite saw fit to send in the foreign legion to fire on both rebel AND GOVERNMENT troops in the Ivory Coast not that long ago.
The very concept of nearly absolute property rights for all of society implies a government strong enough to keep the stronger members of society from taking the property of the weak, and that includes preventing yuppie scumbag white left-liberals from scheming up eminent domain abuse to help those "poor proles" in places like New London, Conn. The leftist response to Kelo, which was a blatant abuse of the weaker members of society was summed up by Nancy Pelosi's jubilant statement, "it was as if God has spoken." Leftist-leaning governments in the United States have systematically failed to protect life, liberty and property because the pursue some sort of social agenda.
And when those failed priorities of the leftist governments come home to roost, look at France for a good example of what to expect.
I am a hardcore libertarian on most political issues. My ideal society has no gun control except on those currently in a mental institute or a prison, almost no taxes, little regulation, nearly absolute property rights (including an elimination of eminent domain in most cases) and many of the other things you'd associate with the libertarian philosophy. I even support the RIAA suing the hell out of thousands of file sharers because I've lost all sympathy for people who want music but aren't willing to *gasp* pay for it.
What I cannot support is the poorly veiled vigilantism that passes for the concept of "self-help" in IP circles. It is not the same as sitting on your porch with a shotgun when looters are running rampant like in New Orleans, rather it's akin to hiring a private army to go through New Orleans and preemptively shoot anyone that looks like a looter without any sort of governmental or moral authority backing you. This is exactly what you get from that concept and it should now become apparent to everyone but the most academic copyright expansionists that "self-help" is anathema to a society that values the rule of law and private property rights.
It's also ironic that many supporters of this idea are enamored with John Locke who would have had a raving shit fit if someone tried to tie classical liberalism and "self-help." The very point of establishing a government in the first place according to classical liberal theory is "to make all men bound to one law." "Self-help," in liberal terms, is the opposite because it makes as Locke would have said, "every man a law unto himself."
Then again this is what happens when people limit themselves to voting for the corporatist party (Republicans) versus the socialist party (Democrats). Either way you get a system where big institutions are allowed to become laws unto themselves. *Cue some leftist to come tell me how socialism works, how no American understands Real Socialism(tm) and why Capitalism is absolutely identical in practice to Italian Fascism*
The only way that the court might have ruled for him was if they paid him also to rent the software from him rather than transfer the rights to them. From the sounds of this ruling, it would seem to me like he needs to really start covering his ass from a countersuit by his former employer. Can you imagine someone with the gall to write a custom app for a client and then disable it when they feel that it is time to end their relationship with the client, without a rental agreement in place?
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Most computer users are stupid. They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks." Never mind that the software was targetted at a specific hardware platform, that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user. Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is DESIGNED to work primarily with one specific hardware set, but would have nothing stopping them from running OSX into the ground with everyone they know.
I hate to break it to you, but Java beat them by a wide margin a long time ago. Java has been able to do the write once, run anywhere since around JDK 1.2. Yes, you still need to do testing on platforms you plan to officially support, but the big difference is that Sun has made incredible strides in making Java that reliable on all officially supported platforms.
Now, as a Java developer I see nothing wrong with this and even see a good place for Java in the development of widgets. It's an easy language to pick up and you have the applets concept which was the first attempt to create something similar to widgets. All things considered, Java is an asset, not a competitor, for widgets.
America is arguably free and most definitely not home of the brave on average. The country which produced a citizen army that defeated the British with French help is gone, and you can blame the civil war in part for ending our era of relying on a citizen army instead of a professional one.
The average American doesn't have any ability to use a gun, nor do they have the determination to act as a militiaman in defense of their country. This is why we are losing freedom so much. The government has to do this because most people while scream bloody murder if they don't in the face of a terrorist attack. Since most Americans have no connection to their freedoms, especially since they don't have the principle or courage to fight for them, we are essentially screwed.
But on the terrorist angle, let's be serious about something. This is a Muslim on everyone else problem and welcoming more Muslims from abroad into our country is just asking for trouble. Chinese Buddhists aren't attacking us, Hindus are by and large quite content to live in total peace with their neighbors, same thing for Jews, Christians, Shintos, Sikhs. It's the Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Pakistan that by and large want to blow up our women and children in gory displays of affection for Allah.
So instead of screwing our civil liberties, and those of our law-abiding immigrants from the rest of the world besides the heavily Muslim areas, why not simply deport all of the Middle Eastern and Pakistan Muslims from our country? Only a pathologically dishonest person can look at the history of Islam and call it a religion of peace. No, we shouldn't restrict our Muslim citizens, most of whom are very Americanized to the point that they are probably more closely connected to our culture than their religion's roots. However, let's be realistic. Deporting every single Saudi national from our country and ending our visa program with Saudi Arabia would do more to protect our country than the USA PATRIOT Act and these executive orders combined.
You be as understanding as possible with them when they need to take care of their families
How about accepting a little less profit as a price to pay for supporting good workers in your community (and companies need help defending and encouraging this practice)
How about getting rid of employees, especially managers, that are abusive and/or want to build little fiefdoms
Lastly, how about you take the bitter employees who like to complain about every little perceived slight and fire their asses ASAP for being disruptive. I know my girlfriend, who works as a softare developer and hates working for women, would back this wholeheartedly, but perhaps that's because it'd be the cause of most of her female peers getting fired on the spot.
Look, work is typically what we wouldn't do if given the choice not to do it. That's why it's called work, it's supposed to be laborious and when it's not, you've got something great going for you. The best way to keep good people is to protect them, challenge them and give them excellent opportunities to get rewarded for working hard for their employer. You can let them play Halo for an hour a day on company time, but if they still work for a typical good ol' boy network and/or hyper-PC office or a PHB with sociopathic tendencies, you'll never have the kind of work environment that can match the aforementioned environment that makes work be work, but makes people feel like they get something good and safe from their blood, sweat and tears.
I know Java and am fairly comfortable with C# as well, yet I put 90% of my effort into Java and C because my job market, Northern Virginia, relies heavily on federal contract work which is almost always standardized on J2EE. Be practical. If your area is very pro-Microsoft, don't waste your time with Java because it will make you less marketable. Focus your time instead on learning good OOP practices, take a few CS courses on things like data structures and algorithms and you'll be set.
This is of course coming from a recently graduated CS major, so take it for what it's worth.
He wants to be heard, but no one else is going to listen to him inside the company. A company that is willing to publish a game that is as pure of a target for regulation as GTA is not going to listen to a shareholder who might hold 0.001% of the company's assets.
Of course, if he really wanted to make a name for himself, he'd go after Wal-Mart, Target, etc. for not actually enforcing the rating system. What good is a mature rating on a game if the stores flat out refuse to fire employees for not enforcing the rating? As for the argument that more games should be AO, that's bullshit, and even GTA with its sex scenes wasn't AO. Anyone seen the movie Taking Lives? It had a full on sex scene with Angelina Jolie that was pretty damn explicit, yet it got a R rating which is analogous to a Mature rating.
AO really shouldn't even exist because Mature implies that your player can actually handle R-rated material in a movie. The difference between NC-17 and R is purely subjective, and quite frankly, any game that really does deserve an AO rating is probably over the top and should subjected to scrutiny as it is probably wantonly pornographic and violent in a way that would make Id blush and Take Two start furiously scribbling down notes.
I really do think it has been hampered by having a less rigorously standardized basic class library than Java or .NET. It would be great to see Python get some better documentation tools as well so that it'd be easy to generate documentation on par with the Java and .NET documentation.
:)
And of course if Google wanted to really screw with both Sun and Microsoft, especially Microsoft, they could create their own cross-platform web and gui toolkits and a free RAD GUI builder a la Visual Studio for Python. If they could create a Python framework on par with Swing or Windows Forms, there'd be quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in both camps
I think it makes more sense for Google to buy them because of the close ties that Firefox and Opera have with them. Not only that, but it gives Google a credible product for mobile platforms and a way of pushing their search engine on mobile devices the way that Microsoft uses Internet Explorer to push MSN on desktop PC and laptop users that use Windows.
Besides, it would only add a lot of confusion for Microsoft's developers. Now, if Microsoft were to make it so that Opera's rendering engine became a replacement for Internet Explorer's that might be something else, but at this point, they've probably got too much money invested in IE for them to drop any part of it without a court order.
Have the heat-related problems been resolved for the second shipment and if not, what is the timeframe for these problems to be fixed?
Fox is the poster child for why the movie studios have problems. They had an executive who "didn't get it" with Family Guy ruin the original series by actively sabotaging its timing slots. Then it sells over a million DVD sets after Cartoon Network picks it up and does reruns. With Firefly, they put the damn series out of order and wonder why it failed miserably. A little hard to follow a linear story line without a linear scheduling... assholes.
Some people think that a la carte cable is bad for consumers, but I'd gladly pay $30 for Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, the History Channel and MusicChoice. That'd be only $20 less than full digital cable, and if they'd throw in a "Sci-Fi 2, 3, 4" like they have with MTV, I'd glady go up to $40. The TV and movie studios are phenominally stupid, such as the case of Firefly where they spent obscene amounts of money producing it only to let some executive rip the sequence to shreds for shits and giggles.
Anyone who has ever taken a stab at playing guitar or another instrument that can be tabbed out knows how unreliable most online tabs are. Sometimes I cannot believe how wildly inaccurate they are, and I have a nearly dead ear when it comes to telling one chord from another with the exception of a few power chords. The groups that complain about this stuff ought to be snickering and saying, "if you want to actually, well, LEARN the song you have to buy us for the reliability that only we can provide."
Besides, here's a little shocker for them: most CDs have the lyrics inside the jewel case. Yes, fancy that. Anyone who is a good singer can listen to the rhythm of the vocals and pick it up, thus making it practically pointless to crack down on this when the bands and record labels are actively "enabling piracy" by giving away the lyrics as part of the package. Stick to the tabs, people, stick to the tabs for enforcement if they're blatant rip offs.
I never understood why the record labels don't see themselves at war with these publishing groups. The record labels should be actively encouraging local bands to cover popular songs as a way to not only discover new talent, but promote existing songs. Think about it, if a local band can cover a very big song very well, aren't they worth investigating? The label might have their next big act right there, and the songs that sell well are excellent benchmarks.
If the record labels were smart, they'd forget about the few million $s they could be making by licensing sheet music and instead be pushing free sheet music for popular songs as a way to promote their albums.
A follow up statute that adds "conspiracy to commit" as a penalty. Either make it a civil penalty that adds an extra twenty five to fifty percent cost to the fine to the true offending party, in this case DirecTV, and then fines the hell out of the outsource party or make it a criminal penalty with a charge of something like five minutes in prison for every complaint upon conviction. Yes, I know that in this case it'd send someone to prison for about thirteen years, but who cares?
The federal government should make it so that if foreigners contract out to do this sort of sleezy work, and then are caught on US soil that they are arrested and prosecuted immediately.
If we eliminated most of the fraud, waste and abuse in the government. With the Department of Education not being able to account for a majority of its budget, the Defense Department losing over $12B of tax dollars in Iraq and all of the pork that goes through Congress, I can't help but think that if the Congress didn't have the power to spend money on "internal improvements," we'd not be in this problem today.
The governments in this country waste so damn much of our GDP on pure bullshit that if we actually had fiscal responsibility, this would be non-issue. We have a GDP of $11T, does anyone actually think that if the costs associated with compliance, regulation, tax payments, etc. were much easier that corporate America would be bitching about this transition? It'd be just a drop in the bucket.
If and when Google does survive all of these attacks, they'll be a stronger company for it. Of course, the nearest term consequence could be a company whose eventual aggressiveness would make Microsoft look like a kitten. At least they won't sneak up and take everyone by surprise the way that Microsoft seemed to in the early 1990s with Windows 3.1, 95 and NT 4.0.
Of course, since they're in the business of storing and processing information, Google could end up being a greater threat than Microsoft ever could in the wrong hands.
This is the same New Orleans that had over 30% of its PD leave or actively engage in the unlawful activities plaguing it post-Katrina. This is the same New Orleans which is legendary for its corrupt local government and in a state that is almost synonymous with bad government to most southerners.
Yet it's going to do a "good job" running WiFi. One of these days, the starry-eyed true believers will come to the painful realization that "democracy" has no proven track record on keeping governments working for the people and that local governments are one of the last groups you'd want to trust to run your communication network.
Besides, let's just go ahead and put telescreens in our homes. It just blows my mind how anyone can in one breath whole-heartedly support government operation and/or ownership of the com. network and then complain about the Bush administration wiretapping us all a la 1984. Why not go ahead and put your toddler in a locked room with a dingo and then get self-righteously pissed off when your toddler gets mauled and eaten? Afterall, it's THEIR fault, right?
Bullshit. You give the government control over the com. network on that scale and when your precious civil liberties go out the window, you'll be one of the few victims of bad government to legitimately laughed at by succeeding generations. The government will assert its sovereignty and say, "it's our network, use it our way or get off." Then you'll look around and there won't be any competition because your tax dollars subsidize the network to the point that the private sector cannot compete.
All in the name of giving "poor" people (our poor are middle class by African standards) access to a network that all too often their volunary refusal to make use of their socialized education opportunities have rendered them incapable of exploiting.
He has systematically worked to centralize the federal government on a scale not seen since FDR, has worked to make the military an active component of civil government, instituted a much more massive welfare state and has found no shortage of reasons to give the government sweeping power to spy on us, deny us our basic rights and all that goes with that. Our border is still open during a "state of war," or is that a battle against violent extremism? I really wish that the Bush supporters and administration would get together and decide whether this is open war, thus justifying some war powers, or just an ideological battle that our enemies can simply wait until 2008 for it to end.
If there is another attack, especially a WMD attack, on our soil while he's still in office, the Congress should impeach him for failure to uphold Article IV, Section 4 which guarantees the states the protection of the federal government from invasion. We have wide open borders, MS-13 is actively working with several terrorist groups to smuggle people and materials in and yet Mr. "See no evil, hear no evil on the borders" calls the Minutemen vigilantes and extremists. The President won't even use his basic legal powers to take common sense precautions like clamping down on both borders so that people cannot easily sneak through, yet we need sweeping new surveillance powers?
Were he an engineer, not a politician, people would be demanding that Bush serve 10 years to life for his systematic failures. If his policies were judged by the same standards that our government judges the work of certified professionals, he'd be lucky if life in prison was the only thing he'd get in the face of a nuclear attack on our soil given how much he has actively undermined the core of our national security policies.
Do you honestly think that most people would pay $500 for a product that can be acquired for $25 if rebranded? Yes, many people would rather support the developers, but they'd also rather save a lot of money. In the end, if it saves a lot of money, people will tend to opt for the rebranded knock off.
Does anyone actually think that anyone but the party faithful would actually buy into a seemingly "independent blogger's" pro-candidate writings? Take for existance, Right Wing News. The site is blatantly pro-Republican, to the point that its owner won't even vote for a libertarian or constitution party candidate if the Republican is even farther to the left than the Democrat. Many "right wing bloggers" for example, are just Republican Party hacks.
I'd imagine that there are two broad sides in all of this: those who are independent regardless of ideology and those who shill for the bifactional ruling party know as the Republican and Democratic parties. Who cares if the RNC or DNC pays someone to sing the praises of their candidate? Unless they're outright lying, they'll just garner the attention of the party faithful. The bloggers in the first category and most of their friends and readers won't buy into it because they're on the opposite side of the philosophical fence.
But what is amusing here is that blogging is just a way of maintaining a website. Most bloggers are not journalists because of the simple fact that their work cannot be considered journalistic. Perhaps Michelle Malkin's blog should count, but it'd be a cold day in hell that I'd consider the average blogger to be a journalist. If you're not a professional jouralist, then you aren't one IMO. The concept of a "citizen journalist" is redundant. The point of using "citizen" as a modifier is to show that you are a civilian doing a government job. Hence "citizen soldier" for example. That's a miltiaman, a man who fights as part of a civilian army organized in a military-like hierarchy. He's a soldier, but not a government soldier thus he's a "citizen soldier." Since America has only a lame-brained attempt at state media (*cough*CPB*cough*) there is no way you can qualify as a "citizen journalist." Either journalism is your career or it is something you amateurishly ape.
The same stuff may happen in the US in one form or another, but at least we can point to the 4th amendment and say that the government cannot legally do that.
If you open a blog article in a new window in RSSOwl you can have the RSS feed, the actual article and your blog web app's new entry page open in the same neat little program. I love it, and wish that they'd include real built-in support for Movable Type and Wordpress.
I am for due process of law, but if a jury calls your case a SLAPP and the judge agrees with that, I think the amount you have sued for should be taken away as a fine and the right to appeal the ruling should be eliminated. Call it a fine for trying to turn the justice system into a tool of injustice.
Most states don't even really try to keep illegal immigrants from voting! The voter fraud in this country is getting out of hand and it has nothing to do with voting machines since it's a basic human problem. The bleeding hearts want the illegals to have a legal ability to drive or to pander for their illegal vote and the fat cats want the cheap labor.
Why don't we instead hear about them passing a new law that abolishes the old voter fraud statute and instead puts "intentionally false voting or aiding and abetting the same" as a possible condition for being prosectued for attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government? Seriously, what is voter fraud if not a low level attempt at a coup, especially if it actually changes the outcome of an election?
If there was any justice in this country, anyone convicted of organizing voter fraud would be given life in prison or, depending on the scale executed, and the regular plebes would be slapped with a minimum of a five year felony prison sentence. Of course part of the common excuses that the politicians and workers use is that people show up demanding their right to vote without having registered or that certain groups scream "disenfranchisement!" If you haven't registered to vote, tough luck and if you don't have an ID on you, I don't care what your skin color is, get out of the precinct as you have no right to participate if you won't prove that you're a citizen with the legal right to vote.
This is a perfect example of left-wing extremism. I say that I want almost no taxes, virtually no regulation and private property rights that are nearly absolute, and this is the natural reaction of a lot of leftists to a libertarian statement of principle. It perfectly presents the false dichotomy inherent in left-wing thought: either we have a thorough and invasive government that taxes heavily, regulates heavily and on the surface keeps society moving smoothly, or we end up like a third world hell hole. Let's not forget that many of the problems in Africa can be traced back to the left-wing governments of Europe, such as France's whose enlightened elite saw fit to send in the foreign legion to fire on both rebel AND GOVERNMENT troops in the Ivory Coast not that long ago.
The very concept of nearly absolute property rights for all of society implies a government strong enough to keep the stronger members of society from taking the property of the weak, and that includes preventing yuppie scumbag white left-liberals from scheming up eminent domain abuse to help those "poor proles" in places like New London, Conn. The leftist response to Kelo, which was a blatant abuse of the weaker members of society was summed up by Nancy Pelosi's jubilant statement, "it was as if God has spoken." Leftist-leaning governments in the United States have systematically failed to protect life, liberty and property because the pursue some sort of social agenda.
And when those failed priorities of the leftist governments come home to roost, look at France for a good example of what to expect.
I am a hardcore libertarian on most political issues. My ideal society has no gun control except on those currently in a mental institute or a prison, almost no taxes, little regulation, nearly absolute property rights (including an elimination of eminent domain in most cases) and many of the other things you'd associate with the libertarian philosophy. I even support the RIAA suing the hell out of thousands of file sharers because I've lost all sympathy for people who want music but aren't willing to *gasp* pay for it.
What I cannot support is the poorly veiled vigilantism that passes for the concept of "self-help" in IP circles. It is not the same as sitting on your porch with a shotgun when looters are running rampant like in New Orleans, rather it's akin to hiring a private army to go through New Orleans and preemptively shoot anyone that looks like a looter without any sort of governmental or moral authority backing you. This is exactly what you get from that concept and it should now become apparent to everyone but the most academic copyright expansionists that "self-help" is anathema to a society that values the rule of law and private property rights.
It's also ironic that many supporters of this idea are enamored with John Locke who would have had a raving shit fit if someone tried to tie classical liberalism and "self-help." The very point of establishing a government in the first place according to classical liberal theory is "to make all men bound to one law." "Self-help," in liberal terms, is the opposite because it makes as Locke would have said, "every man a law unto himself."
Then again this is what happens when people limit themselves to voting for the corporatist party (Republicans) versus the socialist party (Democrats). Either way you get a system where big institutions are allowed to become laws unto themselves. *Cue some leftist to come tell me how socialism works, how no American understands Real Socialism(tm) and why Capitalism is absolutely identical in practice to Italian Fascism*
The only way that the court might have ruled for him was if they paid him also to rent the software from him rather than transfer the rights to them. From the sounds of this ruling, it would seem to me like he needs to really start covering his ass from a countersuit by his former employer. Can you imagine someone with the gall to write a custom app for a client and then disable it when they feel that it is time to end their relationship with the client, without a rental agreement in place?