You need to stop and think about what you have just written. in order to stick it to states that apply sale tax to closed source proprietary software including digital downloads you want to refuse to sell closed source proprietary software to those states, hmm, you want to force them to use free open source software, so exactly how do you win as a seller of closed source proprietary software.
Of course as a supporter of FOSS, I think your idea is fantastic and heartily recommend it but I doubt it is for the same reasons as you do;D.
Quite simply patents and copyright should adhere to the law that grants them. The either further the science and arts and should get protection for the investment or they do not further the science and arts and as per the law get no protection. A review board needs to be implemented to ensure all copyrights and patents do in fact achieve the intended goal and where they do not those protections should not be granted and even stripped away.
Now let's look at the reality. M$ admits finally the faults in Vista that it has spent the last two years lying about. M$'s attitude, so what, we lied for two years, so what, companies have been burdened with thousands of dollars attempting to make a faulty OS work, so what. Believe them now, you have got to be kidding. They have routinely as a matter their idea of normal business practice that they will lie to the customer, not once but virtually every time they launch a new advertising campaign.
How about some refunds, how about they pay for the costs incurred by those lies, tens of thousands of dollars wasted by companies in keeping a faulty OS running. M$ delivers nothing but lies, pay for the privilege beta testing for products that should never have been released, M$ delivers bugs and security flaws that it lies about and keeps hidden and of course M$ delivers M$=B$ endless marketing in every place they can.
Yes, it is true, M$ has reliably been delivering lies in marketing for decades, the old version that we said was really good and that we said was more secure, more stable and more reliable, well 'er', actually sucks but, hey, the new version is really great and it is more secure, more reliable and more stable than the previous version, we promise (except where it is excluded by the no-warranty EULA, warning our program is crap and we guarantee nothing, absolutely nothing).
Nokia 800 75mm x 144mm x 20mm 0.2 kg in my top pocket all day, no way not even for 10 to 20 minutes, side pocket bend over, forget it, back pocket hmm, is it bendy. So big enough to be useful, screen real estate and it doesn't really fit in your pocket like the normal accepted average size of a mobile phone which of course has been specifically sized to fit in nearly any pocket size.
Of course if they are a military librarian then those big baggy thigh pockets are just the go, tablets, netbooks whatever;D.
Ahh, the wonderful world of statistics. Now do you think that it might just be possible that people suffering from terminal illnesses who have limited mobility and are very restricted in the activities they can participate in, might just possibly be playing computer games and accessing the internet, to improve the quality their quality of life and to provide a measure of escape from the reality of their life, nahh, that could just not possibly be true;D.
The worst part is a whole bunch of governments who don't have access to long range nuclear bombers, ICBMs, aircraft carriers and satelities can now target those facilities with, 'er', what exactly;D.
Perhaps the military wants to reserve the right to gouge the eyes out of any civilian who accidentally sees the facility when they go past on public roads or waterways. Damn, could you image what would have happened in the google street view vehicle had driven down that public road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulport (I suppose this link would be considered naughty too) across the loch from the base.
Yeah, we all know the truth, it as all about keeping secrets from the general public, about keeping citizen protesters at bay and, about not reminding the local community that should something fuck up at the base, every man, woman, child, kitten and puppy in the community and the surrounding district for hundreds of square kilometres will be wiped out along with the base and all of it's obscene nuclear weapons.
In actual fact high quality digital transmissions are what YouTube choose not to deliver due to bandwidth limits and cost. TV versus the internet and computers is all about different delivery and publishing techniques. TV, predefined, limited choice, very limited interaction, basically an empty passive experience. Computer and the internet, well, you choose, it can be fully interactive, it can be creative (upload rather than download) and it of course can be an empty passive experience - watching a video stream.
For existing TV broadcasters it is simply all about shifting transmission techniques, from over wireless to wired and avoiding monopoly controls enforced by wired transmission providers who will inevitably screw them over and push them out of business to take over that business segment and profit. No net neutrality and all the existing TV broadcaster will be wiped out, why buy them, when it is cheaper to bankrupt them through inflated fees and corrupted services and cheaply buy up the bits and pieces in a fire sale.
So TV broadcasters, sell, stream, with or with out commercials all on demand. Piracy, meh, most people are too lazy and will simply buy what ever delivery methods suits as long as it is effectively priced. Those that pirate are neither here nor their, they either would never buy services because they can not afford them (keep in mind that is digital content and now one is denied possession or use unlike actual products) or if they are selling, it would simply be much the same price and far safer to get it from the legally approved distributor.
The TV broadcaster just need to expand their service delivery capabilities.
Keyboard or nor keyboard, not really the driver in the most appropriate selection. The main driver is how do you comfortably carry the device. Leaving the counter, carrying books, walking around the stacks tidying up etc. So obviously the most useful and cost effective device will be a typical netbook, getting it to the spot where it will be used, keeping in charged up between uses are the problem to be solved.
So small enough to fit comfortable in a pocket will end up generally speaking to small to be really useful, large enough and with suitable input devices is awkward to carry in your hands while you want to do other things and certainly doesn't fit in a typical pocket. So netbook stored in some kind of comfortable wearable pouch, shoulder holster, apron, bumpack etc. combined with a docking station for quick convenient recharging now add in a pen styled, optical scanner/bar code reader and you are done.
It is a shame they did not do Firefox on Linux, Firefox on windows XP and Firefox on windows Vista, all on the same hardware. It would have been interesting to see how the underlying OS affects the performance of the browser. Then further compare IE on Vista vs Firefox on Ubuntu.
With netbooks final end user experience is driven by the application on top of an OS and the interface that is used access and control that application.
At a guess it was most likely broken on purpose as a quick way of removing an embarrassing bias likely added in by an external contractor who in turn likely picks up 'er' supplier preference points by inserting blatant marketing bits into other peoples web sites.
Perhaps you really desperately need to understand the principle behind waiving your rights, it only last as long as you choose to allow it to last. The second, the very second you say 'NO' regardless of how many times you said yes, wrote yes, signed yes or even nodded your head, the 'NO' takes force. So you change your mind and whoa, miracle or miracles your full rights are back, as if they never left you, which in reality is the truth.
BS like that agreement are all about legal bluff and threats, attempting to threaten you with the costs of fighting for your rights in civil court ie. making you pay thousands of dollars to prove what is already in law. Of course you could still loose in court thanks to corrupt judges and incompetent lawyers (who often as it turns out, go on to be corrupt political appointee judges).
If you had 'enough money to buy a house' why would you get a loan? If you can afford to pay rent, you can afford to buy the house you are renting, it is obviously an investment and the required returns on that investment are at a minimum what you could have obtained for the capital invested as bank interest. B$ is B$, your house payments, your car payments, you medical insurance, your food , your utilities, your clothing, you employment expenses, and maybe after all that some entertainment expenses.
When people borrow they borrow up to that portion of income that they can set aside and still make the other payments. That reduction is a gross reduction in their overall pay not a reduction in the portion of pay use to make house payments. When you are talking around 20% that is a deep cut that they can not simply make up because none of their other expenses are reducing.
When it comes to buying a house you buy the maximum you can afford, the two basic reasons are, inflation should raise your salary hence making house payments more affordable within one year etc. and the cost of trading up when you can afford it is prohibitive basically throwing away tens of thousands of dollars. So in reality stepping away from the knee jerk bullshit you are forced to take a risk in order to make a sound investment and that is based upon the information you have available for most people that is based on B$=PR produced by mass media to favour those who did they damage.
I think this has been covered well and truly before. Don't claim to sell what you haven't got to sell. Either sell the bandwidth you have available or sell data download limits. Don't sell lies. Don't wind down a persons connections when they are using content you don't like behind their back. Don't wipe out a persons connection when they are using services you want to charge for at monopoly rates. More important no private corporation can be trusted as the internet censor when it's only goals are profits and any claims of benefit to society are just so much marketing bullshit.
In Australia when I first had broadband the connection would slow down when connecting to competing ISPs web sites to 22kb, it was faster to use dial up than use the broadband connection. Those that tell the most egregious lies about broadband are interested in one thing and one thing only, establishing a content delivery monopoly. Want to sell digital content, they will simply price you out of business on the uploads and combine that with slowing down the end users download rate and even break the connection. Want to create and sell digital content, no show unless you want to sell it via monopoly ISPs and pay them their middle man markup for doing nothing.
The ultimate goal is to sell digital content for just under the price of buying the hard copy at a store, with the bulk of the money going as profit to the content 'publishing' monopoly ISP, don't like the idea and your opinions will only ever meet dark fibre. The most dangerous element of all, corporation have a well documented history or involving themselves in politics and not for the public benefit but purely for their own benefit. Don't like the other parties politics stance, watch their connections die, traffic slow, intermittent access faults, even redirected traffic to pro corporate party all behind the mask of 'er' weather conditions, overall demand, customer's computer, customer's software, customer's system configuration, customers internal wiring and of course any other bullshit they can come up with.
The reason those laws come into place to force communications neutrality was because the system was getting blatantly abused, those laws weren't an accident they can out of necessity as a result of the inherent corruptive greed of corporations and the people who run them.
Climate change will not destroy the planet, in fact all environmental change generated by humanity will not destroy the planet. The logical target of all environmental protections is not to preserve the planet but to preserve the conditions under which we evolved. The further those conditions change from what our bodies have adapted to the more problematic and difficult our survival becomes. The more new chemicals we introduce into the environment that we have not evolved protections against the more we will suffer.
Climate change has it greatest impact not directly upon people but upon the infrastructure of society. So destroyed coastal cities, rural economies disrupted due to climatic shifts and, of course unpredictable weather extremes, will all cause significant disruption to society. People of course being the short haired, cranky, rock throwing monkeys that they are will not react well to those disruptions and start killing each other (not that they need much excuse to do that) passing around the blame and the violence for the damage done to the environment.
The planet and all life on it will continue to grow and evolve long after the minor dip of humanity in life value of the planet has disappeared. Meanwhile the minority rich and greedy will continue to exploit the planet at the expense of future generations, with a complete lack of feeling, remorse or any guilt, why, because they are hard wired that way, they really do lack any shared measure of empathy for the harm and suffering they cause. It is really amazing that such a mentally ill minority in fact just minor percentage points can lead the rest of human society down such a destructive path, literally thousands killing hundreds of millions.
What this really does point out is that copyright is all about greed and has absolutely nothing to do with further the arts and sciences. It is always the way, that those that what to charge the most are also the ones who complain the most when it comes to paying for anything. Copyright is a defining example of that, they want to get every ones content for free and then sell it to everyone else for the maximum legally forced cost they can get away.
They call this case and other similar cases fiascos, they are not, they a just a clear demonstration of the self serving venal greed behind modern excessive copyright laws, nothing to do with politics beyond the corrupt abuse of the political system to enrich a psychopathic minority at the expense of the majority.
People from the US should feel relieved, obviously other democratic countries are quite capable of electing, self serving, egotistical, corrupt, politicians who abuse the position, in this case though I strongly doubt they will repeat the mistake;D.
People will always become used to what ever visual clues you apply. Random sudden deaths just become annoying not scary and boss monster where you have to go through some stupid repetitive rigmarole to kill them is lame.
Scary is all about hardware not software. Hardware that creates a fully immersive environment, the controls everything you see, hear and for the ultimate shock factor feel. Really want scare people, then provide a usb electro shock adapter which you attach to various portions of your anatomy so that when you get hit, whoah, you get a jolt, get killed and it's major spark time.
Fear, you will know real fear as you walk down that darkened corridor, waiting for that shock to sensitive parts of your anatomy, multilayer first person shooters would rapidly become a totally different gaming experience as players are no longer quite so willing to go running and jumping around a map;D.
Fear in game play, what, scaring children, now is that really a worth while gaming goal?
An enormously bad idea, in fact one of the very worst I have heard in a long time. Directors, executives and investors already get away with the most heinous crimes all while hiding behind corporate facades and in the end only the shareholders get fined. The whole concept that directors and the executive team can routinely escape the responsibility for their decisions, whilst they earn millions of dollars as a result of them is obscene.
In fact legislation should be going in the opposite directions, directors and the executive team should be made criminally liable for all the actions of the companies they run, let alone attempting to introduce disgusting legislation to end their civil liabilities in any way or form, what a terrible precedent to set.
Let's see which other industries industries have benefited, pharmaceuticals have knowingly killed thousands with no criminal penalty for murder, cigarette have knowingly killed millions with no criminal penalty for murder, junk food companies have knowingly killed millions with no criminal penalty for murder (oddly enough ex-cigarette companies who know all about addictive additives), security companies knowingly murdering thousands of people in overseas conflicts with no criminal penalty for murder and, oh yeah, car manufacturers have killed people when they sold cars with known defects with no criminal penalty for murder.
Every time a penalty is applied against a corporation it should also be applied to the people within the corporation who made the decision break the law and those people in that organisation who actually broke the law.
The problem you really seem to have is that somehow you believe you whole country comes to a stop when a president dies. They are just another elected official, they whole idea of commander in chief is crazy. The whole power base should be distributed with clear areas of responsibility and liability, less focus on the president and much more focus on all the other positions, positions which in reality should be by individuals who have been elected to a position of trust by the people.
The whole idea of random political appointments with only limited oversight is not really all that healthy and is readily abuses. At the very least all major positions within the administration should be filled by sitting members from the house of representatives, you are already paying them enough, why employ additional political hanger ons.
All decisions by the administration should be subject to to continual review by the supposedly 'representative' houses and in reality should reflect the views of many people rather than just one. You are no electing a King or Queen and in many countries the 'president' is just a figure head whose power is basically limited to ensuring that the rest of governments sticks to the legislated rules.
So lose a president should basically be just a 'whoops', replace them with another and the system keeps ticking along fine, where one person can have such a profound influence over everybody else's lives even for just eight years is really wrong and people will suffer for it, as the recent past has clearly demonstrated.
E-reader, hmm, ever sat on a paperback you where looking, or the TV remote, or even a cell phone. At $359 an e-reader is just way to expensive, it has to achieve disposable prices to survive let alone get past the issue of just way too many devices. The closest in reality that most people will get to an e-reader is a netbook with a rotating touch screen display along the lines of http://www.cnet.com.au/laptops/laptops/0,239035649,339294108,00.htm.
In a depression a mass market product like a newspaper has to be sufficiently cheap that it reaches the majority of it's target audience and make that audience available to advertisers, prices range from free to at most a couple of dollars ie. pocket change. An e-reader for the majority on a very limited income is completely unrealistic and sounds more like a desperate bid by the current executive team to bleed off as much of the shareholders remaining value in the company before the doors are finally shut or the shareholders wake up and remove the current way overpaid executive team and replace them with people who can adapt to internet publishing.
Oddly enough the print industry is likely to do a little better in the depression even in light of falling advertising revenues. As people wind back on their expenditures, cut back on internet access fees, don't buy a new computer, cancel cable TV, avoid expensive software and end up spending on the news the only thing they can afford, pocket change. After all newspaper often has many diverse money saving uses after you have read it, perhaps they are better off promoting those uses than spending money on expensive digital readers.
In this case it is far worse. This is a 10% cut in the rate to the employment agency, so they have to cut the employees wage even further, on costs, insurance, profit etc, employees themselves are likely to get around double that cut.
I see that you have some problem with economics. Reduced pay for employees results in reduced spending, which generates lay-offs. A lot of people base their debt payments upon the salary level with out much gap between them. A 20% pay cut will often result in bankruptcy, as the employees can not just whip up a quick letter telling their creditors they will now be paying them 20% less and if they don't like it, they wont pay them anything.
Now is the pay cut to enable M$ to survive or is it to allow M$ to maintain it's current profit margin or even increase them. M$ has a history of having a total disregard for the costs of it's actions upon other people and companies as long their own profits keep increasing.
'ER', fucking yes. You are now an elected representative and the business of your office is the business of the people. You can go back to your previous email provider when you are no longer in public office. They choose to take up the position now they should take up the responsibilities of the position not just it's perks.
The criticism is well justified and to be blunt some people are just too stupid to be politicians, 'Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Justice), that is his area of responsibility and the boob is using a hotmail account for it, at the very least perhaps some time in a less demanding position is called for.
During times of depression publishing companies suffer major drops in revenue, this motivates them to push governments to pursue people not spending money on copyright licences. Governments are then forced to choose, should they pursue families pirating content and choosing to spend that money on essentials like food clothing and accommodation or should they wake up and realise that people spending money on essentials is far more important that making a bunch of greedy pigopolists even richer.
The reality is during a depression copyright is a luxury and ensuring families can get food, clothing accommodation and of course medical services is far more important, than making a minority rich even richer. Governments had better wake up to themselves otherwise things will get really messy, it is time for them to tell the publishers to 'shut the fuck up', people who are fearful and desperate will not like seeing government continuing to favour the rich. Publishers should forget about being copyright freaks during this time, when things get better than they can leap back on the greed is god bandwagon but now is not the appropriate time for it.
Take what little pleasure people can get during this period and there will be a terrible price to pay for it.
In this case a politician got behind the scheme because they felt it increased their popularity in their electorate. As they invested more time and effort and further pushed the idea, not because they found it to be good but because if the scheme died it would make them look like a failure. Not that the control freaks who become politicians would receive immense personal pleasure by being able to control what people hear, see, read or put up on the internet. Also the private companies involved in net censorship, hmm, 10 million odd annual compulsory licence fees, what kind of sales commission would they be willing pay on that.
If anything deserves to be censored it is all those off shore tax havens and secret bank accounts, censored right out of existence. Then it would be interesting to see how the nature of politicians and the laws they implement change.
During depression all net based companies are suffering already and all of them will suffer a lot more in the near future. Yahoo is floundering, compared to what, MSN. Ballmer was desperate to buy Yahoo in order to try to repair the disaster that he created out of MSN. While Ballmer said yes and even begged Newscorp for help when the price went up, others behind M$ obviously said no. MSN loses money hand over fist, the depression is killing the M$ upgrade market and driving a shift to open source in government purchases, for how much longer will the other M$ shareholders be willing to bleed hundreds of millions of dollars before MSN is the one on the market.
Now keep in mind that MSN was losing hundreds of millions of dollars during good times, how much do you think it will start to lose during this depression perhaps as much as 10 to 20 percent of M$'s annual profit. Just to make things a bit more interesting out comes cheap netbooks with free open source software, how many families will choose that over a game console, a toy they will continue to waste the families diminishing and threatened income, live service subscription costs and licence fee burden on top of very expensive games.
What you are really seeing here is the ramifications of all those political appointments. Incompetent people put in positions where they do not belong simply because the supported one political party over the other. How could any person in this position be so ignorant. You never ever give up your rights, your rights are guaranteed by law, all you do is choose to ignore them for as long as you choose to do so.
The grossly incompetent judge is basically saying is that once you choose to ignore your rights, you have now 'waived' your rights for ever. As a part of the legal system, it is the judge's responsibility to protect peoples rights, rights guaranteed by law, not to arbitrarily opine that they can now judges can choose who gets those rights and who loses them.
Ultimately you are still stuck with a problem, 'I forgot the password', now prove that statement false. I assume that same incompetent judge would cavalierly imprison a person who made that statement because 'no one ever forgets their password'. I wonder what the new criminal penalty will be for forgetting something, for not having perfect recall, perhaps it will be left up to the judges discretion and they will decide to you should have remembered all based upon their 'er' hunch.
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You need to stop and think about what you have just written. in order to stick it to states that apply sale tax to closed source proprietary software including digital downloads you want to refuse to sell closed source proprietary software to those states, hmm, you want to force them to use free open source software, so exactly how do you win as a seller of closed source proprietary software.
Of course as a supporter of FOSS, I think your idea is fantastic and heartily recommend it but I doubt it is for the same reasons as you do ;D.
Quite simply patents and copyright should adhere to the law that grants them. The either further the science and arts and should get protection for the investment or they do not further the science and arts and as per the law get no protection. A review board needs to be implemented to ensure all copyrights and patents do in fact achieve the intended goal and where they do not those protections should not be granted and even stripped away.
Now let's look at the reality. M$ admits finally the faults in Vista that it has spent the last two years lying about. M$'s attitude, so what, we lied for two years, so what, companies have been burdened with thousands of dollars attempting to make a faulty OS work, so what. Believe them now, you have got to be kidding. They have routinely as a matter their idea of normal business practice that they will lie to the customer, not once but virtually every time they launch a new advertising campaign.
How about some refunds, how about they pay for the costs incurred by those lies, tens of thousands of dollars wasted by companies in keeping a faulty OS running. M$ delivers nothing but lies, pay for the privilege beta testing for products that should never have been released, M$ delivers bugs and security flaws that it lies about and keeps hidden and of course M$ delivers M$=B$ endless marketing in every place they can.
Yes, it is true, M$ has reliably been delivering lies in marketing for decades, the old version that we said was really good and that we said was more secure, more stable and more reliable, well 'er', actually sucks but, hey, the new version is really great and it is more secure, more reliable and more stable than the previous version, we promise (except where it is excluded by the no-warranty EULA, warning our program is crap and we guarantee nothing, absolutely nothing).
Nokia 800 75mm x 144mm x 20mm 0.2 kg in my top pocket all day, no way not even for 10 to 20 minutes, side pocket bend over, forget it, back pocket hmm, is it bendy. So big enough to be useful, screen real estate and it doesn't really fit in your pocket like the normal accepted average size of a mobile phone which of course has been specifically sized to fit in nearly any pocket size.
Of course if they are a military librarian then those big baggy thigh pockets are just the go, tablets, netbooks whatever ;D.
Ahh, the wonderful world of statistics. Now do you think that it might just be possible that people suffering from terminal illnesses who have limited mobility and are very restricted in the activities they can participate in, might just possibly be playing computer games and accessing the internet, to improve the quality their quality of life and to provide a measure of escape from the reality of their life, nahh, that could just not possibly be true ;D.
The worst part is a whole bunch of governments who don't have access to long range nuclear bombers, ICBMs, aircraft carriers and satelities can now target those facilities with, 'er', what exactly ;D.
Perhaps the military wants to reserve the right to gouge the eyes out of any civilian who accidentally sees the facility when they go past on public roads or waterways. Damn, could you image what would have happened in the google street view vehicle had driven down that public road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulport (I suppose this link would be considered naughty too) across the loch from the base.
Yeah, we all know the truth, it as all about keeping secrets from the general public, about keeping citizen protesters at bay and, about not reminding the local community that should something fuck up at the base, every man, woman, child, kitten and puppy in the community and the surrounding district for hundreds of square kilometres will be wiped out along with the base and all of it's obscene nuclear weapons.
For existing TV broadcasters it is simply all about shifting transmission techniques, from over wireless to wired and avoiding monopoly controls enforced by wired transmission providers who will inevitably screw them over and push them out of business to take over that business segment and profit. No net neutrality and all the existing TV broadcaster will be wiped out, why buy them, when it is cheaper to bankrupt them through inflated fees and corrupted services and cheaply buy up the bits and pieces in a fire sale.
So TV broadcasters, sell, stream, with or with out commercials all on demand. Piracy, meh, most people are too lazy and will simply buy what ever delivery methods suits as long as it is effectively priced. Those that pirate are neither here nor their, they either would never buy services because they can not afford them (keep in mind that is digital content and now one is denied possession or use unlike actual products) or if they are selling, it would simply be much the same price and far safer to get it from the legally approved distributor.
The TV broadcaster just need to expand their service delivery capabilities.
Keyboard or nor keyboard, not really the driver in the most appropriate selection. The main driver is how do you comfortably carry the device. Leaving the counter, carrying books, walking around the stacks tidying up etc. So obviously the most useful and cost effective device will be a typical netbook, getting it to the spot where it will be used, keeping in charged up between uses are the problem to be solved.
So small enough to fit comfortable in a pocket will end up generally speaking to small to be really useful, large enough and with suitable input devices is awkward to carry in your hands while you want to do other things and certainly doesn't fit in a typical pocket. So netbook stored in some kind of comfortable wearable pouch, shoulder holster, apron, bumpack etc. combined with a docking station for quick convenient recharging now add in a pen styled, optical scanner/bar code reader and you are done.
It is a shame they did not do Firefox on Linux, Firefox on windows XP and Firefox on windows Vista, all on the same hardware. It would have been interesting to see how the underlying OS affects the performance of the browser. Then further compare IE on Vista vs Firefox on Ubuntu.
With netbooks final end user experience is driven by the application on top of an OS and the interface that is used access and control that application.
At a guess it was most likely broken on purpose as a quick way of removing an embarrassing bias likely added in by an external contractor who in turn likely picks up 'er' supplier preference points by inserting blatant marketing bits into other peoples web sites.
Perhaps you really desperately need to understand the principle behind waiving your rights, it only last as long as you choose to allow it to last. The second, the very second you say 'NO' regardless of how many times you said yes, wrote yes, signed yes or even nodded your head, the 'NO' takes force. So you change your mind and whoa, miracle or miracles your full rights are back, as if they never left you, which in reality is the truth.
BS like that agreement are all about legal bluff and threats, attempting to threaten you with the costs of fighting for your rights in civil court ie. making you pay thousands of dollars to prove what is already in law. Of course you could still loose in court thanks to corrupt judges and incompetent lawyers (who often as it turns out, go on to be corrupt political appointee judges).
If you had 'enough money to buy a house' why would you get a loan? If you can afford to pay rent, you can afford to buy the house you are renting, it is obviously an investment and the required returns on that investment are at a minimum what you could have obtained for the capital invested as bank interest. B$ is B$, your house payments, your car payments, you medical insurance, your food , your utilities, your clothing, you employment expenses, and maybe after all that some entertainment expenses.
When people borrow they borrow up to that portion of income that they can set aside and still make the other payments. That reduction is a gross reduction in their overall pay not a reduction in the portion of pay use to make house payments. When you are talking around 20% that is a deep cut that they can not simply make up because none of their other expenses are reducing.
When it comes to buying a house you buy the maximum you can afford, the two basic reasons are, inflation should raise your salary hence making house payments more affordable within one year etc. and the cost of trading up when you can afford it is prohibitive basically throwing away tens of thousands of dollars. So in reality stepping away from the knee jerk bullshit you are forced to take a risk in order to make a sound investment and that is based upon the information you have available for most people that is based on B$=PR produced by mass media to favour those who did they damage.
I think this has been covered well and truly before. Don't claim to sell what you haven't got to sell. Either sell the bandwidth you have available or sell data download limits. Don't sell lies. Don't wind down a persons connections when they are using content you don't like behind their back. Don't wipe out a persons connection when they are using services you want to charge for at monopoly rates. More important no private corporation can be trusted as the internet censor when it's only goals are profits and any claims of benefit to society are just so much marketing bullshit.
In Australia when I first had broadband the connection would slow down when connecting to competing ISPs web sites to 22kb, it was faster to use dial up than use the broadband connection. Those that tell the most egregious lies about broadband are interested in one thing and one thing only, establishing a content delivery monopoly. Want to sell digital content, they will simply price you out of business on the uploads and combine that with slowing down the end users download rate and even break the connection. Want to create and sell digital content, no show unless you want to sell it via monopoly ISPs and pay them their middle man markup for doing nothing.
The ultimate goal is to sell digital content for just under the price of buying the hard copy at a store, with the bulk of the money going as profit to the content 'publishing' monopoly ISP, don't like the idea and your opinions will only ever meet dark fibre. The most dangerous element of all, corporation have a well documented history or involving themselves in politics and not for the public benefit but purely for their own benefit. Don't like the other parties politics stance, watch their connections die, traffic slow, intermittent access faults, even redirected traffic to pro corporate party all behind the mask of 'er' weather conditions, overall demand, customer's computer, customer's software, customer's system configuration, customers internal wiring and of course any other bullshit they can come up with.
The reason those laws come into place to force communications neutrality was because the system was getting blatantly abused, those laws weren't an accident they can out of necessity as a result of the inherent corruptive greed of corporations and the people who run them.
Climate change will not destroy the planet, in fact all environmental change generated by humanity will not destroy the planet. The logical target of all environmental protections is not to preserve the planet but to preserve the conditions under which we evolved. The further those conditions change from what our bodies have adapted to the more problematic and difficult our survival becomes. The more new chemicals we introduce into the environment that we have not evolved protections against the more we will suffer.
Climate change has it greatest impact not directly upon people but upon the infrastructure of society. So destroyed coastal cities, rural economies disrupted due to climatic shifts and, of course unpredictable weather extremes, will all cause significant disruption to society. People of course being the short haired, cranky, rock throwing monkeys that they are will not react well to those disruptions and start killing each other (not that they need much excuse to do that) passing around the blame and the violence for the damage done to the environment.
The planet and all life on it will continue to grow and evolve long after the minor dip of humanity in life value of the planet has disappeared. Meanwhile the minority rich and greedy will continue to exploit the planet at the expense of future generations, with a complete lack of feeling, remorse or any guilt, why, because they are hard wired that way, they really do lack any shared measure of empathy for the harm and suffering they cause. It is really amazing that such a mentally ill minority in fact just minor percentage points can lead the rest of human society down such a destructive path, literally thousands killing hundreds of millions.
What this really does point out is that copyright is all about greed and has absolutely nothing to do with further the arts and sciences. It is always the way, that those that what to charge the most are also the ones who complain the most when it comes to paying for anything. Copyright is a defining example of that, they want to get every ones content for free and then sell it to everyone else for the maximum legally forced cost they can get away.
They call this case and other similar cases fiascos, they are not, they a just a clear demonstration of the self serving venal greed behind modern excessive copyright laws, nothing to do with politics beyond the corrupt abuse of the political system to enrich a psychopathic minority at the expense of the majority.
People from the US should feel relieved, obviously other democratic countries are quite capable of electing, self serving, egotistical, corrupt, politicians who abuse the position, in this case though I strongly doubt they will repeat the mistake ;D.
People will always become used to what ever visual clues you apply. Random sudden deaths just become annoying not scary and boss monster where you have to go through some stupid repetitive rigmarole to kill them is lame.
Scary is all about hardware not software. Hardware that creates a fully immersive environment, the controls everything you see, hear and for the ultimate shock factor feel. Really want scare people, then provide a usb electro shock adapter which you attach to various portions of your anatomy so that when you get hit, whoah, you get a jolt, get killed and it's major spark time.
Fear, you will know real fear as you walk down that darkened corridor, waiting for that shock to sensitive parts of your anatomy, multilayer first person shooters would rapidly become a totally different gaming experience as players are no longer quite so willing to go running and jumping around a map ;D.
Fear in game play, what, scaring children, now is that really a worth while gaming goal?
An enormously bad idea, in fact one of the very worst I have heard in a long time. Directors, executives and investors already get away with the most heinous crimes all while hiding behind corporate facades and in the end only the shareholders get fined. The whole concept that directors and the executive team can routinely escape the responsibility for their decisions, whilst they earn millions of dollars as a result of them is obscene.
In fact legislation should be going in the opposite directions, directors and the executive team should be made criminally liable for all the actions of the companies they run, let alone attempting to introduce disgusting legislation to end their civil liabilities in any way or form, what a terrible precedent to set.
Let's see which other industries industries have benefited, pharmaceuticals have knowingly killed thousands with no criminal penalty for murder, cigarette have knowingly killed millions with no criminal penalty for murder, junk food companies have knowingly killed millions with no criminal penalty for murder (oddly enough ex-cigarette companies who know all about addictive additives), security companies knowingly murdering thousands of people in overseas conflicts with no criminal penalty for murder and, oh yeah, car manufacturers have killed people when they sold cars with known defects with no criminal penalty for murder.
Every time a penalty is applied against a corporation it should also be applied to the people within the corporation who made the decision break the law and those people in that organisation who actually broke the law.
The problem you really seem to have is that somehow you believe you whole country comes to a stop when a president dies. They are just another elected official, they whole idea of commander in chief is crazy. The whole power base should be distributed with clear areas of responsibility and liability, less focus on the president and much more focus on all the other positions, positions which in reality should be by individuals who have been elected to a position of trust by the people.
The whole idea of random political appointments with only limited oversight is not really all that healthy and is readily abuses. At the very least all major positions within the administration should be filled by sitting members from the house of representatives, you are already paying them enough, why employ additional political hanger ons.
All decisions by the administration should be subject to to continual review by the supposedly 'representative' houses and in reality should reflect the views of many people rather than just one. You are no electing a King or Queen and in many countries the 'president' is just a figure head whose power is basically limited to ensuring that the rest of governments sticks to the legislated rules.
So lose a president should basically be just a 'whoops', replace them with another and the system keeps ticking along fine, where one person can have such a profound influence over everybody else's lives even for just eight years is really wrong and people will suffer for it, as the recent past has clearly demonstrated.
E-reader, hmm, ever sat on a paperback you where looking, or the TV remote, or even a cell phone. At $359 an e-reader is just way to expensive, it has to achieve disposable prices to survive let alone get past the issue of just way too many devices. The closest in reality that most people will get to an e-reader is a netbook with a rotating touch screen display along the lines of http://www.cnet.com.au/laptops/laptops/0,239035649,339294108,00.htm.
In a depression a mass market product like a newspaper has to be sufficiently cheap that it reaches the majority of it's target audience and make that audience available to advertisers, prices range from free to at most a couple of dollars ie. pocket change. An e-reader for the majority on a very limited income is completely unrealistic and sounds more like a desperate bid by the current executive team to bleed off as much of the shareholders remaining value in the company before the doors are finally shut or the shareholders wake up and remove the current way overpaid executive team and replace them with people who can adapt to internet publishing.
Oddly enough the print industry is likely to do a little better in the depression even in light of falling advertising revenues. As people wind back on their expenditures, cut back on internet access fees, don't buy a new computer, cancel cable TV, avoid expensive software and end up spending on the news the only thing they can afford, pocket change. After all newspaper often has many diverse money saving uses after you have read it, perhaps they are better off promoting those uses than spending money on expensive digital readers.
In this case it is far worse. This is a 10% cut in the rate to the employment agency, so they have to cut the employees wage even further, on costs, insurance, profit etc, employees themselves are likely to get around double that cut.
I see that you have some problem with economics. Reduced pay for employees results in reduced spending, which generates lay-offs. A lot of people base their debt payments upon the salary level with out much gap between them. A 20% pay cut will often result in bankruptcy, as the employees can not just whip up a quick letter telling their creditors they will now be paying them 20% less and if they don't like it, they wont pay them anything.
Now is the pay cut to enable M$ to survive or is it to allow M$ to maintain it's current profit margin or even increase them. M$ has a history of having a total disregard for the costs of it's actions upon other people and companies as long their own profits keep increasing.
'ER', fucking yes. You are now an elected representative and the business of your office is the business of the people. You can go back to your previous email provider when you are no longer in public office. They choose to take up the position now they should take up the responsibilities of the position not just it's perks.
The criticism is well justified and to be blunt some people are just too stupid to be politicians, 'Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Justice), that is his area of responsibility and the boob is using a hotmail account for it, at the very least perhaps some time in a less demanding position is called for.
During times of depression publishing companies suffer major drops in revenue, this motivates them to push governments to pursue people not spending money on copyright licences. Governments are then forced to choose, should they pursue families pirating content and choosing to spend that money on essentials like food clothing and accommodation or should they wake up and realise that people spending money on essentials is far more important that making a bunch of greedy pigopolists even richer.
The reality is during a depression copyright is a luxury and ensuring families can get food, clothing accommodation and of course medical services is far more important, than making a minority rich even richer. Governments had better wake up to themselves otherwise things will get really messy, it is time for them to tell the publishers to 'shut the fuck up', people who are fearful and desperate will not like seeing government continuing to favour the rich. Publishers should forget about being copyright freaks during this time, when things get better than they can leap back on the greed is god bandwagon but now is not the appropriate time for it.
Take what little pleasure people can get during this period and there will be a terrible price to pay for it.
In this case a politician got behind the scheme because they felt it increased their popularity in their electorate. As they invested more time and effort and further pushed the idea, not because they found it to be good but because if the scheme died it would make them look like a failure. Not that the control freaks who become politicians would receive immense personal pleasure by being able to control what people hear, see, read or put up on the internet. Also the private companies involved in net censorship, hmm, 10 million odd annual compulsory licence fees, what kind of sales commission would they be willing pay on that.
If anything deserves to be censored it is all those off shore tax havens and secret bank accounts, censored right out of existence. Then it would be interesting to see how the nature of politicians and the laws they implement change.
During depression all net based companies are suffering already and all of them will suffer a lot more in the near future. Yahoo is floundering, compared to what, MSN. Ballmer was desperate to buy Yahoo in order to try to repair the disaster that he created out of MSN. While Ballmer said yes and even begged Newscorp for help when the price went up, others behind M$ obviously said no. MSN loses money hand over fist, the depression is killing the M$ upgrade market and driving a shift to open source in government purchases, for how much longer will the other M$ shareholders be willing to bleed hundreds of millions of dollars before MSN is the one on the market.
Now keep in mind that MSN was losing hundreds of millions of dollars during good times, how much do you think it will start to lose during this depression perhaps as much as 10 to 20 percent of M$'s annual profit. Just to make things a bit more interesting out comes cheap netbooks with free open source software, how many families will choose that over a game console, a toy they will continue to waste the families diminishing and threatened income, live service subscription costs and licence fee burden on top of very expensive games.
What you are really seeing here is the ramifications of all those political appointments. Incompetent people put in positions where they do not belong simply because the supported one political party over the other. How could any person in this position be so ignorant. You never ever give up your rights, your rights are guaranteed by law, all you do is choose to ignore them for as long as you choose to do so.
The grossly incompetent judge is basically saying is that once you choose to ignore your rights, you have now 'waived' your rights for ever. As a part of the legal system, it is the judge's responsibility to protect peoples rights, rights guaranteed by law, not to arbitrarily opine that they can now judges can choose who gets those rights and who loses them.
Ultimately you are still stuck with a problem, 'I forgot the password', now prove that statement false. I assume that same incompetent judge would cavalierly imprison a person who made that statement because 'no one ever forgets their password'. I wonder what the new criminal penalty will be for forgetting something, for not having perfect recall, perhaps it will be left up to the judges discretion and they will decide to you should have remembered all based upon their 'er' hunch.