You didn't get it. This is not a "tax". It's not collected by a governmental organization subordinate to the ministry of finance (who is responsible for collecting taxes over here). It is a _fee_ for watching public broadcast stations like ARD, ZDF, Deutsche Welle etc, who don't make most of their money by advertising. Want to watch a movie without advertising?
As far as the PCs, most of it has been said by others.
Nevertheless I consider this a bad idea, regarding the sometimes Gestapo-like behaviour of the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale, center for collecting TV fees) in the past. People who don't have a TV set or an internet connection but who do have a PC will certainly be queried by the GEZ folks. The point is that you have to pay the TV fees as soon as you have a functionable TV set, even if it is not connected to any antenna or power outlet, because you _could_ use it for watching TV with little additional effort.:-(
Why anyone would use an e-mail program that allows clicking on something is beyond me. All the comfortable features that come with clickability have their price -- which in in this case is far too high IMHO.
This concept kills the concept of thin clients and X terminals - that are way more in widespread use than most people think.
Letting the app take care of its own window borders is a bad idea as well. This is one of the worst parts in M$ Windows - once an app hangs, there is no way of closing or minimizing a window or simply of getting it out of the way. It's way better to have this handled by a separate process.
No, never will a German citizen be extradited. This is forbidden by German law. (Would the U.S. extradit U.S. spammers or virus authors to other countries? Worth considering I guess.) He will be charged for computer sabotage and maybe some more things. IANAL but IMHO he's unlikely not to spend some time from home - BUT - him being 18, he may be handled according to the criminal law for minors, depending on the outcome of a psychological test that is usually conducted _before_ the trial itself starts. Which means a long time in jail is not very likely.
So - forget about the idea of meeting him in Guantanamo. We are a constitutional state which even acts after the old principle "in dubio pro reo" (I still wonder what Binalshibh could possibly know that other countries' officials should not know. Very strange if you ask me ).
These FUDs against "fun bidding" are void, at least here in Germany. According to German law (Fernabsatzgesetz), you can devoid a remote buying contract within 14 days without any specific reason.
As far as eBay, these folks don't take their own terms and conditions serious. I don't remember how often I reported one specific seller due to duplicate auctions (still forbidden according to the German terms and conditions). All I get is form e-mails. A day or two later, the seller usually changes all but one of the dupes completely, and continues as usual. This specific seller also attempts to bully people in order to avoid negative feedback. eBay did nothing about it. The point is that eBay has a monopoly, and the lack of competition makes them talk not act.
No, sir, as long as you don't disclose the specs, and there is an open source driver, I am not going to a) take your Linux efforts seriously and b) buy any Centrino hardware. There's alternatives, forget?
why is it a stretch to believe we can make a containment system for fissile material that would survive even catastrophic launch failure?
Because there's no such thing like complete induction in technology, dumbass, and because a crashing spacecraft with nuclear material will very likely not hit the originating country (which would be okay if it did).
More specifically, all Unix is about is having small programs that do one thing very well, and that have standardized interfaces, and not large hunks of functionality that nobody ever uses. Combining all these little helpers on one machine is a nifty idea but it is trivial at best. But mainframers did that ages ago. Nothing new here.
LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2 - I wonder what the folks at the civil registry office said when his daddy came in to register him with that birth date. Errr - nevermind.
Exactly. This is the reason why I replaced my home-grown challenge-and-response system by Spamassassin more than one year ago. This is stupid. A spammer will almost never have a real return address. (This _may_ change with CAN_SPAM in effect but if, only for spam originating in the USA, for US recipients, not from or to other countries.) Hence, an automatic answer will almost always bounce back to myself or to an innocent third party, duplicating or even triplicating the e-mail traffic! And it will upset other people who try to legitimately send you e-mail. Such an ancient and unqualified method will simply turn many people away. Especially for businesses, this can be lethal. A company like M$ making up such ideas is outright dangerous to public safety because, hey, M$ is a large corporation and they know what they are saying, right?
This is not how you fight spam, except if you have an I.Q. in the low 70s.
How daft can a single person be? Is there an upper limit to stupidity, scientifically speaking? Are there negative I.Q. values? Has that ever been researched? What is stronger - stupidity or greed? Ohmygod.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein
It's strange that most people here seem to believe that SCO was actually under a DDoS attack. Who says they are telling the truth? And if they are, they are either totally clueless themselves (because they don't have any countermeasures against SYN flood attacks) or they suggest the people they address with the press release are totally clueless, and in case of Reuters, apparently successfully. And in case of the person who slashdotted this "news" as well, because the Reuters message was taken for granted. Duh.
STOP wasting money and resources on using incresingly sophisticated anti-spam techniques. Re-direct this money into basic education for users, including short courses on:
But while we're at it - why don't we set up a couple of opt-out master servers where users can send their spam, and some mechanism (maybe human) picks out the opt-out URLs. Users could then enter their e-mail address and spammer's e-mail addresses (they need to use real addresses now, right?) to have them sent to all the opt-out URLs automatically. Well, I would not send my address there, honestly. But I think this idea is fun, and far more reliable than the do-not-email-list that will never work. Because if it did, CAN-SPAM lost its primary purpose to legitimate and promote spam.
Far more fun than setting up more open relays. Although CAN-SPAM explicitly forbids the use of open relays now. But since an individual can't sue, this is bogus.
postscript: CAN-SPAM is an interesting, and unintendedly ironic name for a law that is supposed to limit the amount of spam. Another good example where corporate America eats up the world's resources.
Dummes Zeug. Christoph was never a SCO employee. He belonged to Caldera's Erlangen development team that was sold to SUSE. SUSE by the way has been offering XFS in their distros for ages now. So really folks: THERE IS NO NEWS HERE!. It's just that long existing and provenly stable SuSE patches are integrated into the stock 2.4 tree. Duh.
Ohmygod. When do people learn to read history before blahing around.
The Caldera development team in Erlangen was sold in its entirety to Su^HUSE when Caldera renamed itself SCO. But maybe this is news in good old America, Groklaw or not. Christoph was never a SCO employee. Duh. So stop using SCO for headlines.
Just for those who live behind the moon. XFS has been available in Su^HUSE Linux and UnitedLinux for quite a while now. Guess who Christoph Hellwig works for? So folks, there is no need to spread XFS FUD between the lines - I have been using it exclusively privately and for customers for ages (whatever is ages in the IT universe).
You mean - by blackmailing Europe into giving the US a back door into Galileo? This sounds like an offer Europe can't refuse.
Don't get me wrong. Basically I think the USA are a great country, and I know quite a few Americans who are great folks and fun to deal with. It's just that the current (and past) US politics is part of the problem, not the solution. As far as I'm concerned, I am far from being dumbly anti-American. But as a couple of US constitutional rights allow, I have the right to express my opinion, as everybody else who expresses their opinions these days.
Let's face what the actual military scenarios may be. Firstly: The likelyness of another country openly attacking the US is zero. Everybody knows about the sheer US military force. A second scenario is guerillas operating covertly. A back door into Galileo does not help much - these folks can operate freely within the country with street maps or the help of GPS itself if required. Stays the third scenario: foreign forces attacking US forces outside of the US territory. Well, what do US forces have to do outside of their own territory to begin with? This, as I said before, is part of the problem.
The USA operating a law-free zone in Guantanamo, practically a concentration camp, is part of the problem. US medical corporations refusing to make anti-AIDS drugs cheaper in Africa is part of the problem. Fighting a war against Irak and then instantiating Halliburton & Co. is part of the problem. USA supporting the current fascist and paranoid Israeli politics is part of the problem. The US denying to sign the Kyoto protocol is part of the problem.
Many people in the 96% of the world population who live outside the US borders (face it - the US is a 4% minority) think that it's no good if a single country dominates the world as the USA do right now. Sooner or later, they will start doing something about it. Or they did already.
On the other hand, the current spook will be over in 2008 or so.
So - coming back to topic - the US trying to get a back door into Galileo isn't actually motivated by logical military aspects. It's just like the old joke why a dog licks its balls.
Slashdot Mirror
You didn't get it. This is not a "tax". It's not collected by a governmental organization subordinate to the ministry of finance (who is responsible for collecting taxes over here). It is a _fee_ for watching public broadcast stations like ARD, ZDF, Deutsche Welle etc, who don't make most of their money by advertising. Want to watch a movie without advertising?
:-(
As far as the PCs, most of it has been said by others.
Nevertheless I consider this a bad idea, regarding the sometimes Gestapo-like behaviour of the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale, center for collecting TV fees) in the past. People who don't have a TV set or an internet connection but who do have a PC will certainly be queried by the GEZ folks. The point is that you have to pay the TV fees as soon as you have a functionable TV set, even if it is not connected to any antenna or power outlet, because you _could_ use it for watching TV with little additional effort.
Why anyone would use an e-mail program that allows clicking on something is beyond me. All the comfortable features that come with clickability have their price -- which in in this case is far too high IMHO.
Letting the app take care of its own window borders is a bad idea as well. This is one of the worst parts in M$ Windows - once an app hangs, there is no way of closing or minimizing a window or simply of getting it out of the way. It's way better to have this handled by a separate process.
I mean, nobody seems able to stop the NRA, eh? So they cure the symptom instead of the disease. Duh.
Buy a different product. Duh. What makes a PS so good that one must have it?
No, never will a German citizen be extradited. This is forbidden by German law. (Would the U.S. extradit U.S. spammers or virus authors to other countries? Worth considering I guess.) He will be charged for computer sabotage and maybe some more things. IANAL but IMHO he's unlikely not to spend some time from home - BUT - him being 18, he may be handled according to the criminal law for minors, depending on the outcome of a psychological test that is usually conducted _before_ the trial itself starts. Which means a long time in jail is not very likely.
So - forget about the idea of meeting him in Guantanamo. We are a constitutional state which even acts after the old principle "in dubio pro reo" (I still wonder what Binalshibh could possibly know that other countries' officials should not know. Very strange if you ask me ).
As far as eBay, these folks don't take their own terms and conditions serious. I don't remember how often I reported one specific seller due to duplicate auctions (still forbidden according to the German terms and conditions). All I get is form e-mails. A day or two later, the seller usually changes all but one of the dupes completely, and continues as usual. This specific seller also attempts to bully people in order to avoid negative feedback. eBay did nothing about it. The point is that eBay has a monopoly, and the lack of competition makes them talk not act.
No, sir, as long as you don't disclose the specs, and there is an open source driver, I am not going to a) take your Linux efforts seriously and b) buy any Centrino hardware. There's alternatives, forget?
Because there's no such thing like complete induction in technology, dumbass, and because a crashing spacecraft with nuclear material will very likely not hit the originating country (which would be okay if it did).
More specifically, all Unix is about is having small programs that do one thing very well, and that have standardized interfaces, and not large hunks of functionality that nobody ever uses. Combining all these little helpers on one machine is a nifty idea but it is trivial at best. But mainframers did that ages ago. Nothing new here.
Still better than having been slashdotted for 6 years.
LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2 - I wonder what the folks at the civil registry office said when his daddy came in to register him with that birth date. Errr - nevermind.
This is not how you fight spam, except if you have an I.Q. in the low 70s.
_NEVER_ _EVER_ _REPLY_ _TO_ _SPAM_
All of your four presents appear to suggest you have a bad breath. ;-) SCNR...
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein
Not exactly on a 1.5"x2" screen. That makes for about 0.3" tits -- in black and white, that is.
I mean the best content as far as blood and guns is available on CNN anyway.
It's strange that most people here seem to believe that SCO was actually under a DDoS attack. Who says they are telling the truth? And if they are, they are either totally clueless themselves (because they don't have any countermeasures against SYN flood attacks) or they suggest the people they address with the press release are totally clueless, and in case of Reuters, apparently successfully. And in case of the person who slashdotted this "news" as well, because the Reuters message was taken for granted. Duh.
Right, and maybe educating congressmen as well.
But while we're at it - why don't we set up a couple of opt-out master servers where users can send their spam, and some mechanism (maybe human) picks out the opt-out URLs. Users could then enter their e-mail address and spammer's e-mail addresses (they need to use real addresses now, right?) to have them sent to all the opt-out URLs automatically. Well, I would not send my address there, honestly. But I think this idea is fun, and far more reliable than the do-not-email-list that will never work. Because if it did, CAN-SPAM lost its primary purpose to legitimate and promote spam.
Far more fun than setting up more open relays. Although CAN-SPAM explicitly forbids the use of open relays now. But since an individual can't sue, this is bogus.
postscript: CAN-SPAM is an interesting, and unintendedly ironic name for a law that is supposed to limit the amount of spam. Another good example where corporate America eats up the world's resources.
Dummes Zeug. Christoph was never a SCO employee. He belonged to Caldera's Erlangen development team that was sold to SUSE. SUSE by the way has been offering XFS in their distros for ages now. So really folks: THERE IS NO NEWS HERE!. It's just that long existing and provenly stable SuSE patches are integrated into the stock 2.4 tree. Duh.
Ohmygod. When do people learn to read history before blahing around. The Caldera development team in Erlangen was sold in its entirety to Su^HUSE when Caldera renamed itself SCO. But maybe this is news in good old America, Groklaw or not. Christoph was never a SCO employee. Duh. So stop using SCO for headlines.
You don't want to run write-behind filesystems and a harddisk write cache at the same time.
Just for those who live behind the moon. XFS has been available in Su^HUSE Linux and UnitedLinux for quite a while now. Guess who Christoph Hellwig works for? So folks, there is no need to spread XFS FUD between the lines - I have been using it exclusively privately and for customers for ages (whatever is ages in the IT universe).
Assuming that Europe or Japan or anybody else might consider competing militarily with the US is paranoid - another part of the problem.
US defense spending is larger than the GDP of most countries on Earth
The US can really be proud of that.
Don't get me wrong. Basically I think the USA are a great country, and I know quite a few Americans who are great folks and fun to deal with. It's just that the current (and past) US politics is part of the problem, not the solution. As far as I'm concerned, I am far from being dumbly anti-American. But as a couple of US constitutional rights allow, I have the right to express my opinion, as everybody else who expresses their opinions these days.
Let's face what the actual military scenarios may be. Firstly: The likelyness of another country openly attacking the US is zero. Everybody knows about the sheer US military force. A second scenario is guerillas operating covertly. A back door into Galileo does not help much - these folks can operate freely within the country with street maps or the help of GPS itself if required. Stays the third scenario: foreign forces attacking US forces outside of the US territory. Well, what do US forces have to do outside of their own territory to begin with? This, as I said before, is part of the problem.
The USA operating a law-free zone in Guantanamo, practically a concentration camp, is part of the problem. US medical corporations refusing to make anti-AIDS drugs cheaper in Africa is part of the problem. Fighting a war against Irak and then instantiating Halliburton & Co. is part of the problem. USA supporting the current fascist and paranoid Israeli politics is part of the problem. The US denying to sign the Kyoto protocol is part of the problem.
Many people in the 96% of the world population who live outside the US borders (face it - the US is a 4% minority) think that it's no good if a single country dominates the world as the USA do right now. Sooner or later, they will start doing something about it. Or they did already.
On the other hand, the current spook will be over in 2008 or so.
So - coming back to topic - the US trying to get a back door into Galileo isn't actually motivated by logical military aspects. It's just like the old joke why a dog licks its balls.