If that's the wording, I can sort of see why it's hasn't come up much.
Either it means:
Putting up armed forces soldiers in the guestroom for the night
-or-
Tie each limb of a national guardsman to a horse and yell giddy up.
We're talking about hobby rockets here. The rockets are fairly small, and can't hold a lot of payload. You can build bigger rocket motors and bigger rockets, but then we're not talking about hobby rockets anymore. For terrorism events to be successful, you need something that can be deployed quickly with a large effect. It has to be something big enough to draw attention. Think national networks, not evening news. If you think a model rocket can do that sort of damage, you need to think bigger. National coverage requires Bond villian level evil. It has to have a higher body count, and greater property damage than your typical drive-by or arson.
As for using the components to make "deadly stuff". Check the net and you can find recipes for making your own solid rocket fuel. Some people make their own to save money or add effects like coloured smoke trails. You'll find the ingredients are probably already in your possession or obtainable within 30 minutes. Estes rocket packs, meanwhile are considerably more expensive, and even before 911, they were difficult to buy in any great numbers (the hobby isn't big enough to warrant that sort of production).
If that freaks you out, feel free to write your local representative about banning shit and diesel fuel. If you're creative in your wording, you might just do it.
Eventually everyone has a printer which is at the limit of the existing technology. Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on.
The printer business, at least as it concerns inkjets is very different from other components. With the other components you mentioned, it's a one time purchase. Once it's the component's sold, you don't make any further money off it, and you actually start to eat up the profit a bit as the component ages due to support costs. There, you have to innovate, because your money comes from having people buying new technology. When it comes to printers though, the real money's in the supplies. Even if nobody ever buys another printer, they'd still have a revenue stream via the cartridges -- and usually with considerably higher margins than on the printers themselves.
I can see this working for documents where a few words are blacked out, as one speed reading technique involves skipping words and whole passages and filling in the gaps through context. All things considered, I don't see why the US gov even bothers blacking anything out in those documents. Having a program that can guess the context based words there isn't a big deal. A variation on the concept is given at some schools as an undergrad project in introductory AI, the hardest part is getting your software to recognize the letters, and font, and have a big enough dictionary to search with. Sending out a press release on it and claiming it as a great and new accomplishment is about as lame as registering a patent on age old comp sci concepts.
However, I've also seen "declassified" US documents where the entire page is blacked out, and there's only 3 words visible on the entire page. I wonder how far he'd get using his virtual magic decoder ring on that! If he can accurately reconstruct those, THAT's an accomplishment.
That's not always the way it works. Any defensive weapon can give one side a tactical edge or be converted into an offensive weapon:
Scenario 1 ========== Coldwar condition: where we were 20 years ago. CountryA and B both have sufficient missiles to blast each other off the map at least once. Neither dares to attack the other, because it would be suicide. The attack would be detected, and a counterattack would be launched -- MAD (mutually assured destruction).
CountryA develops missile defense (presumably effective). Now, countryA is safe from missile attack from countryB. There's the possibility that some hawks in power might decide that it's in a position to attack countryB without threat of retaliation. To compensate, countryB will try to either develop ways around the defense, while developing their own, -or- simply build more missiles. The idea being to overwhelm the missile shield. Voila, you've just kick started an arms race.
Scenario 2 ========== A system which can shoot down missiles, can be retasked and/or recalibrated to shoot down aircraft. Move it into position near the enemy's airports, or even around their borders, and it's no longer just defensive anymore.
Even now, people are ripping and storing their DVDs on their hard drives for convenient access. It's illegal in the USA because they have a law against bypassing or removing the DSS protection, but it's legal in other countries so long as you own the DVD. At 6Gigabytes per commercial disc, that adds up quite quickly. That's, what, about 160 movies. That's assuming 1024Gigabytes per Terabyte, 6Gigs per commercial movie disc. 40-60 gigs left alone for installing the OS, drivers, whatever software you might need for a home entertainment PC, and whatever games you might want to play on this machine. Admittedly, that's a lot of movies, but it's not unheard of for a person to own that many if he/she's a real movie buff.
The trouble is that it wasn't the noise that killed the Concorde. Some companies will blame 9-11, but that only moved up its retirement a bit. The concorde was a really high maintenance aircraft. The concorde was a wicked gas guzzler. That, and the stresses of supersonic flight meant the planes had to be serviced considerably more often with more frequent parts replacements. The only aircraft that spends more time in maintenance vs flight might be the Sea King choppers in the CAF. All of this adds up to make for tickets that cost in the thousands, and that's for the cheap seats.
Unless they can make the plane much more fuel efficient, and a little easier to maintain, the cost of keeping a supersonic fleet flying is going to make it rather impractical.
...there are some really intelligent people in the Pentagon (and there are nimrods, just like any organization).
HeHe.
Kind of stating the obvious aren't you?
Nimrod in English means Hunter. It's also been used to mean Warrior. Since the Pentagon is a military organization, I should hope that there are at least a *few* Nimrods on site.
I guess there's also the American slang/Bugs Bunny definition too...
Not the *only* thing. If the land mines were the only deterrent, North & South Korea would have achieved "unification" some time ago.
Tactically, land mines are, at best a delaying weapon. They keep enemy troops busy doing mine clearing and caring for wounded (mine clearers) while you pick them off with more effective weapons. Without that backup, a mine field is just a road with extremely nasty speed bumps and potholes.
The OP's suggestion that it's the land mine manufacturing lobby that was preventing the US from banning them is open to interpretation.
The original point has some validity though. Though it's evil and short sighted, one method to force start a country's economy (in the short term) is to start a war. It artificially generates a heavy demand for a commodity (weapons) in a very short time, and it focuses economic growth on R&D and manufacturing. It's the sort of quick fix that the masses love to see, and the politicians even more so --if they can swing the manufacturing facilities and jobs into their own local ridings (or whatever you call them in the USA).
There is no way any government will willingly give up any revenue stream. We Canadians now pay a surcharge on the hard drives of devices like the iPod, which, like the CD-R tax, assumes that the average consumer is a copyright criminal and must be fined in advance.
Except that the "CD-R Tax" isn't technically a tax. If it were, it might actually be easier to swallow (though not much easier). It's a levy. It's collected by our government "on behalf of the music industry" and while government likely gets a percentage for collecting it, the majority of the money actually goes to the music industry. It's a revenue source, alright, but it's going towards padding the music labels' bottom line, not funding social programs.
Erm, no. That's not quite the analogy I'd go for. It's more akin to going to the video store, renting a movie, copying it, and returning it. There's a record that you rented the video, but that's it. There's no record that you made the copy, aside from the evidence under your VCR. Also, in the privacy of your own home, it really doesn't matter if you're naked, in daylight, or whatever. (ick. Makes me want to wash my hands before touching the popcorn...)
As far as the music service goes, their service only knows that a legit customer logged on and borrowed selection #45, #238, #2, from their library. Sure, they have your IP, credit card#, name and address, but so what? As far as the service goes, this is what you're supposed to do. They can't fault you for using the service they offered, and you paid for.
Considering the article talks about how the definition of profane is speech or conduct "irreverent to something held sacred"
So now the FCC is violating the constitutional seperation of church and state.
Not necessarily. Sacred doesn't have to have anything to do with religion. To hold something sacred, it means that it's something that everybody (or at least the official everybody) considers revered and untouchable.
For example, I think most people would consider free speech to be sacred. Of course, that would mean that the FCC ruling on the matter might be considered profane under the FCC ruling.
"People would be able to see writing in the skies from the Earth no worse than they see the stars," (Quote from the inventor, as given in the original article)
Kind of makes the whole concept pretty useless as an advertising delivery vehicle. As it is now, with all the light polution around urban centres, people in the cities and suburbs can't even see the stars at night. If the quote is true, doesn't that mean that the ads will only be visible in rural and unsettled areas? The only living things that will see the big orbiting coke can are going to be cows and caribou.
1. If you can, go to a supermarket or any store nearby that gives you cashback on your debit card. I can buy a pack of gum instead of paying stupid ATM fee AND get cashback with NO risk.
You then end up paying a debit fee instead. Admittedly, it's lower than a 3rd party ATM fee, but it's still more expensive than going to an ATM owned by your home bank. Further, a lot of stores don't want to do this, because:
a) In one small pissant purchase, you've cleared out the register of cash, which makes it difficult to give change to the next customer.
b) The store has to pay a debit fee with each transaction. Whoopie, you've bought an 80cent pack of gum (on which only 20 cents profit at most), and are asking the guy to incur 50cents to 75cents worth of debit fees on his end. This is why some stores have a minimum purchase requirement to use debit.
Also, your definition of "no risk" may not be the same as mine. There have been instances in Canada where some of these scammers have set up shop in a real shop. This is how it's done. The first time they swipe your card through, they swipe it through a slot near the real one, and claim the card was rejected or didn't read right. The second time, the card is swiped through the real one and a the real transaction happens. All the while, the "clerk" is watching you enter your PIN, and he's got a copy of your card now. Perhaps this is why the store doesn't have a problem with giving you a cash advance and being hit by the vendor debit fees on such a small item.
I'm not saying that every instance where your card gets rejected is a scam, since it does happen that a card will be unreadable or rejected. I'm just saying there's still some risk involved.
2. Use your credit card to withdraw cash (but make sure that you pay it in the next billing cycle as cash withdrawls have very high APR) as the liability on credit cards is very low.
What, do you work for a credit card company? Unlike credit card purchases which hit you with interest only if you pay late, cash advances put interest on what you owe the instant you get the cash. You've already mentioned the high interest rate. Even if you pay quickly and on time, a credit card advance will have a nasty surprise attached.
I suppose you could have the window glass replaced with Lexan. I don't know how well these will work with the LCD film, but baseballs will just bounce off.
As the director, the man's actually still pretty good. You may not like the plot, dialog, or weird tidbits that cheapen the mythology (miti-what?), but you've got to admit that the scenes themselves are fairly well organized and he's very good with the visuals. Just about everything that people have complained about in the movies (so far) involve his skills as a writer.
The man just needs to keep his hands out of the writer's cookie jar. He may be StarWar's father, but it's outgrown him in a lot of ways. The trouble is, in interviews and behind the scenes footage, he comes across as a bit of a control freak, and he actually does have enough clout to enforce it.
I admit, as a fan, the Thrawn (prime) trilogy has a lot of appeal. It has a lot of potential if it stays focussed on the subject matter. The major problem with doing Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy is the timing. All the principles are going to need a lot of make-up if they want to reprise their roles and I don't think anybody's going to buy it if Lucas hires look-alikes.
The fuel source is probably going to be in a sealed canister anyways, maybe something resembling a battery. I doubt they'd use an open design where you refill a fuel tank. That would be awkward and potentially dangerous. Remember this is a consumer electronics item. You want it simple and idiot proof. Having the fuel canisters sealed and of small size would limit their weapons potential -- molotov cocktails the size of a thimbel aren't going to intimidate anyone.
The question I have is where the water is going to go? All of the fuel cells that have been demoed, including the mini-methanol ones the size of 3 quarters stacked, pump out a fair bit of water for the size. Where is it going to go? Is there a resevoir where this water is going to slosh about that you have to empty periodically? or is your PDA just going to be peeing in your lap as you read your emails?
It's called marketing. Stores do what you describe all the time, at least ever since Walmarts started showing invading. Just because it's in a flyer doesn't necessarily mean it's being sold at a discount (ie. "on sale"). It does, however, mean that the store is stocking it, and you can buy it there at the price listed.
You can't really fault them for doing that. Unless they're actually claiming there's a discount when there's not, they're doing nothing wrong, or even remotely unethical.
You also made a comment about these stores being unfair to Apple's products:
"Stores guilty of this include Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and CompUSA. Why do stores do this? "
You should know that when a store puts something "on sale", it's usually because they were able to negotiate a better than normal price with the manufacturer. If Apple wanted their products sold at a holiday discount, they could certainly make it happen. However, when you think of discount hardware, Apple is never going to pop into anyone's mind.
Well, if the source includes the code to their controversial Steam thingy, that's going to nullify it as an antipiracy tool -- at least without some changes.
Further, they're going to have to do some extra work seeking out an patching security holes than normal in addition to the usual play game optimizing and bug squashing.
Normally, when a game gets released, you have security through obscurity for a week before people figure out how to exploit security holes and create cheat utilities. Imagine the first day the game's released, you get on a server to play a multiplayer game, and some "Uber-player" offs everyone on the server seconds after they log on. Oooh, fun...
new actor = regeneration = creative death
on
Doctor Who Comeback
·
· Score: 1
As previously mentioned, Atkinson has already played DW before.
If they go with him, it will be very cool, but I doubt BBC could afford him anymore. He's a bit of an international star these days. Though very nice if they had him as a DW in the official timeline -- he's got just the right amount of quirk for a memorable DW.
Of course, if they do go with a new actor, they'll have to kill off the old DW in the first few minutes to kick off the regeneration and keep the continuity straight. Might be interesting to see how they kill him off. I'm hoping for something comedic like dropping a piano on him, or something creative like in the Final Destination movies.
Unless you're God, you can't do that. You don't own the intellectual property.
I'm not a lawyer, but the case might be interesting to follow though, because first, you'd have to prove that your client is God. Not just any god, but the one that actually created man.
Then, you'd have to show that the IP copyright is still in effect -- we're talking about a few eons here since the work was originally created.
Celebrities have successfully sued impersonators and tabloids for illegal use of their personal image -- and that might be another option if the biblical references are assumed to be true.
The question that I didn't see answered, which is going to be very material to this case, was: what was she downloading? If it was music from independant artists or freeware, then she has done nothing wrong.
This would be true only if the artist released his/her work onto the sharing network. Just because an artist isn't backed up by the RIAA goonsquad doesn't mean that it's ok to rip him/her off.
So it would be ok to post civil defense plans, the locations of nuclear missile silos, and transponder codes and transmission freqs for airport control towers to alt.terrorists.alkeida ?
It's a bad move to rely solely on secrecy as the only means of security. However, to simply throw it away is probably not always a good idea either. Remember that whole "loose lips..." thing from WW2 movies?
Slashdot Mirror
"quartering soldiers in provate homes"
If that's the wording, I can sort of see why it's hasn't come up much. Either it means: Putting up armed forces soldiers in the guestroom for the night -or- Tie each limb of a national guardsman to a horse and yell giddy up.We're talking about hobby rockets here. The rockets are fairly small, and can't hold a lot of payload. You can build bigger rocket motors and bigger rockets, but then we're not talking about hobby rockets anymore. For terrorism events to be successful, you need something that can be deployed quickly with a large effect. It has to be something big enough to draw attention. Think national networks, not evening news. If you think a model rocket can do that sort of damage, you need to think bigger. National coverage requires Bond villian level evil. It has to have a higher body count, and greater property damage than your typical drive-by or arson. As for using the components to make "deadly stuff". Check the net and you can find recipes for making your own solid rocket fuel. Some people make their own to save money or add effects like coloured smoke trails. You'll find the ingredients are probably already in your possession or obtainable within 30 minutes. Estes rocket packs, meanwhile are considerably more expensive, and even before 911, they were difficult to buy in any great numbers (the hobby isn't big enough to warrant that sort of production). If that freaks you out, feel free to write your local representative about banning shit and diesel fuel. If you're creative in your wording, you might just do it.
Eventually everyone has a printer which is at the limit of the existing technology. Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on.
The printer business, at least as it concerns inkjets is very different from other components. With the other components you mentioned, it's a one time purchase. Once it's the component's sold, you don't make any further money off it, and you actually start to eat up the profit a bit as the component ages due to support costs. There, you have to innovate, because your money comes from having people buying new technology. When it comes to printers though, the real money's in the supplies. Even if nobody ever buys another printer, they'd still have a revenue stream via the cartridges -- and usually with considerably higher margins than on the printers themselves.
I can see this working for documents where a few words are blacked out, as one speed reading technique involves skipping words and whole passages and filling in the gaps through context. All things considered, I don't see why the US gov even bothers blacking anything out in those documents. Having a program that can guess the context based words there isn't a big deal. A variation on the concept is given at some schools as an undergrad project in introductory AI, the hardest part is getting your software to recognize the letters, and font, and have a big enough dictionary to search with. Sending out a press release on it and claiming it as a great and new accomplishment is about as lame as registering a patent on age old comp sci concepts.
However, I've also seen "declassified" US documents where the entire page is blacked out, and there's only 3 words visible on the entire page. I wonder how far he'd get using his virtual magic decoder ring on that! If he can accurately reconstruct those, THAT's an accomplishment.
That's not always the way it works. Any defensive weapon can give one side a tactical edge or be converted into an offensive weapon:
Scenario 1
==========
Coldwar condition: where we were 20 years ago.
CountryA and B both have sufficient missiles to blast each other off the map at least once. Neither dares to attack the other, because it would be suicide. The attack would be detected, and a counterattack would be launched -- MAD (mutually assured destruction).
CountryA develops missile defense (presumably effective). Now, countryA is safe from missile attack from countryB. There's the possibility that some hawks in power might decide that it's in a position to attack countryB without threat of retaliation. To compensate, countryB will try to either develop ways around the defense, while developing their own, -or- simply build more missiles. The idea being to overwhelm the missile shield. Voila, you've just kick started an arms race.
Scenario 2
==========
A system which can shoot down missiles, can be retasked and/or recalibrated to shoot down aircraft. Move it into position near the enemy's airports, or even around their borders, and it's no longer just defensive anymore.
Even now, people are ripping and storing their DVDs on their hard drives for convenient access. It's illegal in the USA because they have a law against bypassing or removing the DSS protection, but it's legal in other countries so long as you own the DVD. At 6Gigabytes per commercial disc, that adds up quite quickly. That's, what, about 160 movies. That's assuming 1024Gigabytes per Terabyte, 6Gigs per commercial movie disc. 40-60 gigs left alone for installing the OS, drivers, whatever software you might need for a home entertainment PC, and whatever games you might want to play on this machine. Admittedly, that's a lot of movies, but it's not unheard of for a person to own that many if he/she's a real movie buff.
The trouble is that it wasn't the noise that killed the Concorde. Some companies will blame 9-11, but that only moved up its retirement a bit. The concorde was a really high maintenance aircraft. The concorde was a wicked gas guzzler. That, and the stresses of supersonic flight meant the planes had to be serviced considerably more often with more frequent parts replacements. The only aircraft that spends more time in maintenance vs flight might be the Sea King choppers in the CAF. All of this adds up to make for tickets that cost in the thousands, and that's for the cheap seats.
Unless they can make the plane much more fuel efficient, and a little easier to maintain, the cost of keeping a supersonic fleet flying is going to make it rather impractical.
Not the *only* thing. If the land mines were the only deterrent, North & South Korea would have achieved "unification" some time ago.
Tactically, land mines are, at best a delaying weapon. They keep enemy troops busy doing mine clearing and caring for wounded (mine clearers) while you pick them off with more effective weapons. Without that backup, a mine field is just a road with extremely nasty speed bumps and potholes.
The OP's suggestion that it's the land mine manufacturing lobby that was preventing the US from banning them is open to interpretation.
The original point has some validity though. Though it's evil and short sighted, one method to force start a country's economy (in the short term) is to start a war. It artificially generates a heavy demand for a commodity (weapons) in a very short time, and it focuses economic growth on R&D and manufacturing. It's the sort of quick fix that the masses love to see, and the politicians even more so --if they can swing the manufacturing facilities and jobs into their own local ridings (or whatever you call them in the USA).
There is no way any government will willingly give up any revenue stream. We Canadians now pay a surcharge on the hard drives of devices like the iPod, which, like the CD-R tax, assumes that the average consumer is a copyright criminal and must be fined in advance.
Except that the "CD-R Tax" isn't technically a tax. If it were, it might actually be easier to swallow (though not much easier). It's a levy. It's collected by our government "on behalf of the music industry" and while government likely gets a percentage for collecting it, the majority of the money actually goes to the music industry. It's a revenue source, alright, but it's going towards padding the music labels' bottom line, not funding social programs.Erm, no. That's not quite the analogy I'd go for. It's more akin to going to the video store, renting a movie, copying it, and returning it. There's a record that you rented the video, but that's it. There's no record that you made the copy, aside from the evidence under your VCR. Also, in the privacy of your own home, it really doesn't matter if you're naked, in daylight, or whatever. (ick. Makes me want to wash my hands before touching the popcorn...)
As far as the music service goes, their service only knows that a legit customer logged on and borrowed selection #45, #238, #2, from their library. Sure, they have your IP, credit card#, name and address, but so what? As far as the service goes, this is what you're supposed to do. They can't fault you for using the service they offered, and you paid for.
So now the FCC is violating the constitutional seperation of church and state.
Not necessarily. Sacred doesn't have to have anything to do with religion. To hold something sacred, it means that it's something that everybody (or at least the official everybody) considers revered and untouchable.
For example, I think most people would consider free speech to be sacred. Of course, that would mean that the FCC ruling on the matter might be considered profane under the FCC ruling.
"People would be able to see writing in the skies from the Earth no worse than they see the stars,"
(Quote from the inventor, as given in the original article)
Kind of makes the whole concept pretty useless as an advertising delivery vehicle. As it is now, with all the light polution around urban centres, people in the cities and suburbs can't even see the stars at night. If the quote is true, doesn't that mean that the ads will only be visible in rural and unsettled areas? The only living things that will see the big orbiting coke can are going to be cows and caribou.
Actually, it's a people's republic of Canada thing...
1. If you can, go to a supermarket or any store nearby that gives you cashback on your debit card. I can buy a pack of gum instead of paying stupid ATM fee AND get cashback with NO risk.
You then end up paying a debit fee instead. Admittedly, it's lower than a 3rd party ATM fee, but it's still more expensive than going to an ATM owned by your home bank. Further, a lot of stores don't want to do this, because:
a) In one small pissant purchase, you've cleared out the register of cash, which makes it difficult to give change to the next customer.
b) The store has to pay a debit fee with each transaction. Whoopie, you've bought an 80cent pack of gum (on which only 20 cents profit at most), and are asking the guy to incur 50cents to 75cents worth of debit fees on his end. This is why some stores have a minimum purchase requirement to use debit.
Also, your definition of "no risk" may not be the same as mine. There have been instances in Canada where some of these scammers have set up shop in a real shop. This is how it's done. The first time they swipe your card through, they swipe it through a slot near the real one, and claim the card was rejected or didn't read right. The second time, the card is swiped through the real one and a the real transaction happens. All the while, the "clerk" is watching you enter your PIN, and he's got a copy of your card now. Perhaps this is why the store doesn't have a problem with giving you a cash advance and being hit by the vendor debit fees on such a small item.
I'm not saying that every instance where your card gets rejected is a scam, since it does happen that a card will be unreadable or rejected. I'm just saying there's still some risk involved.
2. Use your credit card to withdraw cash (but make sure that you pay it in the next billing cycle as cash withdrawls have very high APR) as the liability on credit cards is very low.
What, do you work for a credit card company? Unlike credit card purchases which hit you with interest only if you pay late, cash advances put interest on what you owe the instant you get the cash. You've already mentioned the high interest rate. Even if you pay quickly and on time, a credit card advance will have a nasty surprise attached.
I suppose you could have the window glass replaced with Lexan. I don't know how well these will work with the LCD film, but baseballs will just bounce off.
As the director, the man's actually still pretty good. You may not like the plot, dialog, or weird tidbits that cheapen the mythology (miti-what?), but you've got to admit that the scenes themselves are fairly well organized and he's very good with the visuals. Just about everything that people have complained about in the movies (so far) involve his skills as a writer.
The man just needs to keep his hands out of the writer's cookie jar. He may be StarWar's father, but it's outgrown him in a lot of ways. The trouble is, in interviews and behind the scenes footage, he comes across as a bit of a control freak, and he actually does have enough clout to enforce it.
I admit, as a fan, the Thrawn (prime) trilogy has a lot of appeal. It has a lot of potential if it stays focussed on the subject matter. The major problem with doing Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy is the timing. All the principles are going to need a lot of make-up if they want to reprise their roles and I don't think anybody's going to buy it if Lucas hires look-alikes.
The fuel source is probably going to be in a sealed canister anyways, maybe something resembling a battery. I doubt they'd use an open design where you refill a fuel tank. That would be awkward and potentially dangerous. Remember this is a consumer electronics item. You want it simple and idiot proof. Having the fuel canisters sealed and of small size would limit their weapons potential -- molotov cocktails the size of a thimbel aren't going to intimidate anyone.
The question I have is where the water is going to go? All of the fuel cells that have been demoed, including the mini-methanol ones the size of 3 quarters stacked, pump out a fair bit of water for the size. Where is it going to go? Is there a resevoir where this water is going to slosh about that you have to empty periodically? or is your PDA just going to be peeing in your lap as you read your emails?
It's called marketing. Stores do what you describe all the time, at least ever since Walmarts started showing invading. Just because it's in a flyer doesn't necessarily mean it's being sold at a discount (ie. "on sale"). It does, however, mean that the store is stocking it, and you can buy it there at the price listed. You can't really fault them for doing that. Unless they're actually claiming there's a discount when there's not, they're doing nothing wrong, or even remotely unethical. You also made a comment about these stores being unfair to Apple's products: "Stores guilty of this include Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and CompUSA. Why do stores do this? " You should know that when a store puts something "on sale", it's usually because they were able to negotiate a better than normal price with the manufacturer. If Apple wanted their products sold at a holiday discount, they could certainly make it happen. However, when you think of discount hardware, Apple is never going to pop into anyone's mind.
I don't see a paradox. Oxymoron, yes. Paradox, no.
Well, if the source includes the code to their controversial Steam thingy, that's going to nullify it as an antipiracy tool -- at least without some changes. Further, they're going to have to do some extra work seeking out an patching security holes than normal in addition to the usual play game optimizing and bug squashing. Normally, when a game gets released, you have security through obscurity for a week before people figure out how to exploit security holes and create cheat utilities. Imagine the first day the game's released, you get on a server to play a multiplayer game, and some "Uber-player" offs everyone on the server seconds after they log on. Oooh, fun...
As previously mentioned, Atkinson has already played DW before.
If they go with him, it will be very cool, but I doubt BBC could afford him anymore. He's a bit of an international star these days. Though very nice if they had him as a DW in the official timeline -- he's got just the right amount of quirk for a memorable DW.
Of course, if they do go with a new actor, they'll have to kill off the old DW in the first few minutes to kick off the regeneration and keep the continuity straight. Might be interesting to see how they kill him off. I'm hoping for something comedic like dropping a piano on him, or something creative like in the Final Destination movies.
Unless you're God, you can't do that. You don't own the intellectual property.
I'm not a lawyer, but the case might be interesting to follow though, because first, you'd have to prove that your client is God. Not just any god, but the one that actually created man.
Then, you'd have to show that the IP copyright is still in effect -- we're talking about a few eons here since the work was originally created.
Celebrities have successfully sued impersonators and tabloids for illegal use of their personal image -- and that might be another option if the biblical references are assumed to be true.
The question that I didn't see answered, which is going to be very material to this case, was: what was she downloading? If it was music from independant artists or freeware, then she has done nothing wrong. This would be true only if the artist released his/her work onto the sharing network. Just because an artist isn't backed up by the RIAA goonsquad doesn't mean that it's ok to rip him/her off.
So it would be ok to post civil defense plans, the locations of nuclear missile silos, and transponder codes and transmission freqs for airport control towers to alt.terrorists.alkeida ? It's a bad move to rely solely on secrecy as the only means of security. However, to simply throw it away is probably not always a good idea either. Remember that whole "loose lips..." thing from WW2 movies?