Only a joke in the sense of being TRUE , but still funny.
While they might not have colluded in the legal sense, they have colluded in the practical sense.
Why the law defined it as "all of their CEOs had to get into one physical room at the same actual time and at least verbally and preferably written down on some kind of physical medium, they agreed to follow a common set of practices in order to screw the market over".
The end result is the same, The Banks have NO REAL COMPETITION and NO LEGAL ENFORCEMENT preventing them from SCREWING THEIR CUSTOMERS *to an unreasonable extent*.
Seriously folks, I'm all for "they're a business, they need to make a profit" but continuing to make *record profits* during the GFC AND still continuing to whine about HOW HARD IT IS BEING A BANK is just a tad unbelievable.
The problem with "copyright violation" and the prosecution there of is NOT the insanely excessive "punitive damages".
The problem is that THE INDUSTRY wants to HAVE ITS CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.
Sure we wanna prosecute copyright violation, BUT we also want to have extremely restrictive, relatively expensive, or even NONEXISTENT online sales of the same content.
You CANNOT pirate it, but you also CANNOT buy it online, or you cannot BUY IT ONLINE in YOUR COUNTRY (screw you, potential customer) or you CAN buy it online, but it costs AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN just "buying the physical format".
This is NEITHER fair nor reasonable.
If The Industry was both fair and reasonable, all their content would be available for purchase online, in *all* countries, at reasonable (specifically, "approximately equivalent" pricing everywhere, to anyone, via any system) pricing.Pricing which clearly reflects the fact that the costs associated with production and distribution of "physical format" content is *significantly* larger than the costs associated with digital-downloads.
Then and only then is it fair to BEAT SOMEONE WITH A LARGE AND HEAVY FINE when they still violate your copyright and pirate your content.
That's all well and good, fine for them to make that decision. NOT fine to claim 'this is open'. This is not "open" in any sense or the word other than "openly not open", it's "closed". You can't polish a turd and claim it's a diamond, it's a turd.
Oh yeah, and when I say "TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE" I mean that should be done to "thoughts, ideas, words, suggestions and recommendations" -> I do not mean we should do that to "people".
Seriously folks, if we TERMINATED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE anything which even vaguely tries to be rampantly abusive of our privacy and general freedoms on the internet the world would be a better place. People would STOP AND THINK before they showed how completely deficient their thinking has become.
At some point you need to call for the ROFLCOPTER and wait for the sanity-police to come to the rescue.
Kill it before it grows, nuke it from space. Cancel his internet subscription, fire him from his portfolio, he's a complete and utter muppet and obviously has trouble tying his own shoes in the morning.
... makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs
So by this statement I take it you would claim that they are not? I'd say that'll be a hard argument to prove. In fact I reckon it'd be easier to prove charges of treason against the vast overwhelming majority of them, than prove they were fit fir duty and competent for the position they hold.
Sure hindsight is 20/20, but how often can you consistently get it completely wrong and make things *worse* for your country before someone calls you out on it?
Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?
The answer is the same answer for the question "Does publicizing the contradiction of the charges INCREASE the levels of fear and/or paranoia amongst the general population?"
Seriously folks, the only terrorists are The Government, The Department of Homeland Security (theater) and The Media. All of whom have a blatantly obvious interest in Keeping The Fear Alive.
Given that governments are, to date, the only entities that have done so much as put human beings in LEO -- to say nothing of sending them to the Moon -- you're going to have do some fancy dancing to make the case that government is what's stopping us from achieving science fiction dreams.
Ok then, specifically: Government
Inertia
excessive beurocracy
incompetence
lack of foresight
ADHD
Piss Poor Planning
<cue fancy-dancing> Compare how long (and how much money) it took "the government" to be waving men-in-space vs insert-random-commercial-entity in the recent x-prize race(s).
Yeah Yeah Yeah you can rabbit on about "standing on the shoulders of giants" but today the biggest current roadblock to the successful leveraging of "outerspace" for the betterment of humankind is "The Government".
The *amazing achievements* in reaching the moon were *personally instigated by some dude who has been dead for many years now*. ONE (count'em folks, ONE) president made a significant committment to OuterSpace.
everything done since then is a pale shadow of a once bright future.
For the life of me it ASTOUNDS ME how big an issue this is for The United States of America.
Maybe y'all need to go back and HIT YOUR HISTORY BOOKS a little more.
If it were not for amazingly brave/fearless/reckless adventurers who KNEW BEYOND ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT that risking their life (and the lives of their crew) was worth it, to make such an amazing new discovery YOUR NATION WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY.
It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US.
From where I sit (somewhere *outside the US of A*) that does not seem entirely unlikely in the reasonably forseeable future.
Seriously folks - how long, hard, and deeply to you need to fuxor your economy before *even the retarded aussie dollar* is starting to look good? (clue: you've done enough, you can stop now)
Or are you claiming that any economy that outdoes Zimbabwe is "in good shape".
why would we A. be the only ones given his word and B. the only ones given the ability to comprehend it?
Because WE ARE THE CHOSEN FEW, GOD Loves US MORE Than YOU.
As claimed by *each and every* religion that worships *one deity*.
And given that http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html lists 22 religions (of which at lest one of them is "other mystery thingys" I'd say pretty much definitively they cannot possibly all be right.
In the exact same way that solar power is considered renewable, and hyrdo power is considered renewable, and wood burning power is considered renewable.
Or, more specifically, renewable in the sense of not CONSUMED OR DESTROYED by humans finding ways to exploit it. For example as opposed to Fossil Fuels which are (a) a finite resource (b) CONSUMED AND/OR DESTROYED in the process of "being used by humans".
My question exactly. Or almost exactly -- from the number of zeroes you're using the European "billion" (million million) rather than the North American (thousand million).
The words you're struggling to find are metric (ie The New Standard) vs imperial (ie that old shit pretty much nobody but America uses anymore).
Slashdot Mirror
Only a joke in the sense of being TRUE , but still funny.
While they might not have colluded in the legal sense, they have colluded in the practical sense.
Why the law defined it as "all of their CEOs had to get into one physical room at the same actual time and at least verbally and preferably written down on some kind of physical medium, they agreed to follow a common set of practices in order to screw the market over".
The end result is the same, The Banks have NO REAL COMPETITION and NO LEGAL ENFORCEMENT preventing them from SCREWING THEIR CUSTOMERS *to an unreasonable extent*.
Seriously folks, I'm all for "they're a business, they need to make a profit" but continuing to make *record profits* during the GFC AND still continuing to whine about HOW HARD IT IS BEING A BANK is just a tad unbelievable.
The problem with "copyright violation" and the prosecution there of is NOT the insanely excessive "punitive damages".
The problem is that THE INDUSTRY wants to HAVE ITS CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.
Sure we wanna prosecute copyright violation, BUT we also want to have extremely restrictive, relatively expensive, or even NONEXISTENT online sales of the same content.
You CANNOT pirate it, but you also CANNOT buy it online, or you cannot BUY IT ONLINE in YOUR COUNTRY (screw you, potential customer) or you CAN buy it online, but it costs AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN just "buying the physical format".
This is NEITHER fair nor reasonable.
If The Industry was both fair and reasonable, all their content would be available for purchase online, in *all* countries, at reasonable (specifically, "approximately equivalent" pricing everywhere, to anyone, via any system) pricing.Pricing which clearly reflects the fact that the costs associated with production and distribution of "physical format" content is *significantly* larger than the costs associated with digital-downloads.
Then and only then is it fair to BEAT SOMEONE WITH A LARGE AND HEAVY FINE when they still violate your copyright and pirate your content.
That's all well and good, fine for them to make that decision. NOT fine to claim 'this is open'. This is not "open" in any sense or the word other than "openly not open", it's "closed". You can't polish a turd and claim it's a diamond, it's a turd.
I'll add them to my list of "websites I will never visit, places I will never buy anything from", it's a steadily growing list.
When mega rich multinational megacorps stop STEALING ALL MY BANDWIDTH then maybe I'll think about buying their product.
MAYBE.
Actively going out of your way to piss off your customers is NOT a good business model - one day you will learn.
Oh yeah, and when I say "TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE" I mean that should be done to "thoughts, ideas, words, suggestions and recommendations" -> I do not mean we should do that to "people".
Seriously folks, if we TERMINATED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE anything which even vaguely tries to be rampantly abusive of our privacy and general freedoms on the internet the world would be a better place. People would STOP AND THINK before they showed how completely deficient their thinking has become.
At some point you need to call for the ROFLCOPTER and wait for the sanity-police to come to the rescue.
Kill it before it grows, nuke it from space. Cancel his internet subscription, fire him from his portfolio, he's a complete and utter muppet and obviously has trouble tying his own shoes in the morning.
And you need to control what they think.
Spoken like a true government representative.
Maybe not in America, but there are other countries out there, and their economies are not necessarily sucking as hard as yours is right now.
For bonus points make it something really odd.
Er, so you mean more odd than feet?
Last time I looked, "foot sex" was still considered to be a fetish rather than mainstream.
I just called the Cookie Monster, and let him deal with it.
In this neverending war of TIT for TAT, nobody will have either TITS or TATS left.
Or perhaps the whole world will be swamped with TITS (I'm not sure).
How does that score MINUS ONE?
Life imitates art.
Also, if you've not read it yet, then read it now - great story *and* relevant to todays news.
So by this statement I take it you would claim that they are not? I'd say that'll be a hard argument to prove. In fact I reckon it'd be easier to prove charges of treason against the vast overwhelming majority of them, than prove they were fit fir duty and competent for the position they hold.
Sure hindsight is 20/20, but how often can you consistently get it completely wrong and make things *worse* for your country before someone calls you out on it?
But, to answer your question:
Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?
The answer is the same answer for the question "Does publicizing the contradiction of the charges INCREASE the levels of fear and/or paranoia amongst the general population?"
Seriously folks, the only terrorists are The Government, The Department of Homeland Security (theater) and The Media. All of whom have a blatantly obvious interest in Keeping The Fear Alive.
The usage is a bit archaic now, but it's not incorrect.
Countries running a theocracy are *all* about archaic, so I guess that's appropriate, really.
Nuclear Weaponry?
OOPS, I mean peaceful generation of electricity for civillian uses, by nuclear means.
Government.
Given that governments are, to date, the only entities that have done so much as put human beings in LEO -- to say nothing of sending them to the Moon -- you're going to have do some fancy dancing to make the case that government is what's stopping us from achieving science fiction dreams.
Ok then, specifically: Government
<cue fancy-dancing> Compare how long (and how much money) it took "the government" to be waving men-in-space vs insert-random-commercial-entity in the recent x-prize race(s).
Yeah Yeah Yeah you can rabbit on about "standing on the shoulders of giants" but today the biggest current roadblock to the successful leveraging of "outerspace" for the betterment of humankind is "The Government".
The *amazing achievements* in reaching the moon were *personally instigated by some dude who has been dead for many years now*. ONE (count'em folks, ONE) president made a significant committment to OuterSpace.
everything done since then is a pale shadow of a once bright future.
For the life of me it ASTOUNDS ME how big an issue this is for The United States of America.
Maybe y'all need to go back and HIT YOUR HISTORY BOOKS a little more.
If it were not for amazingly brave/fearless/reckless adventurers who KNEW BEYOND ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT that risking their life (and the lives of their crew) was worth it, to make such an amazing new discovery YOUR NATION WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY.
It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US.
From where I sit (somewhere *outside the US of A*) that does not seem entirely unlikely in the reasonably forseeable future.
Seriously folks - how long, hard, and deeply to you need to fuxor your economy before *even the retarded aussie dollar* is starting to look good? (clue: you've done enough, you can stop now)
Or are you claiming that any economy that outdoes Zimbabwe is "in good shape".
why would we A. be the only ones given his word and B. the only ones given the ability to comprehend it?
Because WE ARE THE CHOSEN FEW, GOD Loves US MORE Than YOU.
As claimed by *each and every* religion that worships *one deity*.
And given that http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html lists 22 religions (of which at lest one of them is "other mystery thingys" I'd say pretty much definitively they cannot possibly all be right.
Real World aspirations approaching within 50 years of Science Fiction dreams.
You Have Been Warned!
Also: "WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO LONG"?
I went looking for Saturns Moon, and all I could find was Uranus.
In the exact same way that solar power is considered renewable, and hyrdo power is considered renewable, and wood burning power is considered renewable.
Or, more specifically, renewable in the sense of not CONSUMED OR DESTROYED by humans finding ways to exploit it. For example as opposed to Fossil Fuels which are (a) a finite resource (b) CONSUMED AND/OR DESTROYED in the process of "being used by humans".
My question exactly. Or almost exactly -- from the number of zeroes you're using the European "billion" (million million) rather than the North American (thousand million).
The words you're struggling to find are metric (ie The New Standard) vs imperial (ie that old shit pretty much nobody but America uses anymore).
Is Android.
Or did none of you watch Bicentennial Man?
At what point does this person lose all his "rights" because some-legal-eagle has him declared "not human enough"?