Because the Palestinians don't have the option of sending in helicopter gunships to assassinate Israeli politicians. I'm not condoning suicide bombings, but your comparison is laughable. In a conflict, each side will naturally make use of the means at its disposal. Moreover israel's "targeted assassinations" invariably kill many more people than just those being targeted -- but obviously a 6-year-old girl who happens to live next door to a Hamas leader doesn't matter as much as a 6-year-old killed in a suicide bombing.
You are totally missing the point! The Israelis never go after civilians just for the sake of going after civilians. Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers will attack innocent Israeli men, women and children for no good reason other than to kill as many of them as possible. Why else do you think they send suicide bombers onto busses and into nightclubs? How many Israeli soldiers and politicians do you they think they think they are going to get by setting a bomb off in those places? The answer is zero. They aren't after politicians or soldiers when they set off a bomb in a public place, they are after innocent civilians specifically.
Do the Israelis kill innocent civilians too? Yes, but it is always result of collateral damage. They never target a Palestinian bus or nightclub just so they can kill civilians. They target terrorist leaders and operatives. Sometimes innocent civilians die in the process and that is a horrible thing but it is a much different situation when civilians are dieing as a result of collateral damage than it is when civilians are being killed just for the hell of it!
If the Palestinians would quit sending suicide bombers to kill innocent Israeli's then they could have their own state. The bottom line is that there is a certain percentage of Palestinians who do not want Israel to exist and they will continue killing Israeli's in a futile attempt to drive them out of existence. These people need be eliminated or locked up for good and the only ones that are going to be able to do that successfully are the Palestinians. The Israeli's can't do it and the Israeli's don't want to do it but since the Palestinian leadership seems either unwilling or incapable of doing it themselves then it doesn't leave Israel with a whole lot of options.
Almost every country in the world, the USA included, would put enormous pressure on the Israeli to withdraw from the West Bank and Gazaa completely if suicide attacks stopped tomorrow and a substantial amount of time passed without any additional attacks. The problem is, as it stands now, when a cease fire is declared it just gives the terrorist's time to rebuild, regroup and re-arm and then launch more attacks. These groups must be dismantled and eliminated or they must agree to a permanent cease-fire and put down their weapons for good before there will ever be peace in the middle-east.
If the Palestinians show a good faith effort in trying to dismantle and disarm these groups then the Israeli's must give them whatever time and assistance they may need and not resort to military action is response to terrorists attacks but allow the Palestinians themselves to respond.
It's going to require a good faith effort from both sides. Right now though, Abbas is still trying to reason with these groups rather than dismantle them and Arafat, as far as I can tell, is probably either working with them or is totally complacent. This has to change before anyone can reasonably expect the Israeli's to try and work with the Palestinians.
20-25 percent of homeless people are seriously mentally ill.
...
They're sick, get sicker, and cause more problems for everyone around them, including other homeless, because they can't really get treatment for their diseases.
Ah, but therein lies the problem. We can only forcefully medicate people that are either a danger to themselves or others. If a person is neither a danger to himself nor to those around him, but is mentally ill and homeless and we can not force them to take medication. There will always be a percentage of the homeless who are mentally ill and choose to continue living that way and there is nothing that anyone can do about it.
If we're spending money to try and improve the situation of the homeless, making more free mental and medical help available will do a hell of a lot more than a tracking system.
I totally agree. While there will always be those that don't want help, the money would be much better spent helping those who want help rather than trying to track them. This just seems like a complete and total waste of tax dollars in addition to a total invasion of privacy. I wonder how many people might refuse to even go into a shelter if something like this was instituted.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ?
on
Blackout Week Continues
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Where to begin.....
What confuses me is how people are just taking this, from Bloomberg and the President down its "just one of those things" as if the rest of the first world has the same problems...
First let me start by saying that I live in Michigan and was without power for the weekend. Second, both of my parents work for the power company. No one is treating the blackout as "just one of those things" but there isn't a whole heck of a lot that anyone can do until there is a full investigastion. That investigation is going to take a while. Once the cause is known State goverments and Congress need to act and it is our responsibility as citizens to put the pressure on them to put partisanship aside and do something.
If the French can run a decent power grid for 60 million people, why can't the US ? Why is America's most populus city part of a 3rd world power grid ? It can't be due to lack of consumpion, hence it can't be because the power companies aren't making money... so that leads us to power companies and goverment wilfully and knowingly allowing a sub-standard power grid to be in operation.
Well in the US we have more than 240 million people to provide power for. Who is more likely to have problems, a country that has to provide power for 60 million or a country that has to provide power for over 240 million?
The problem in this country has to do with regulation. The power system in this country is regulated in certain areas (transmission and delivery) and deregulated in others (generation). The bottom line is that we have an old, outdated system in the US and it needs to be upgraded. The problem is that in most states the power companies are regulated and can only make a certain percent profit. There is no real incentive for them to upgrade their infrastructure. One of two things needs to happen. The government needs to step up to the plate and either help the power companies upgrade their infrastructe (by providing some of the dollars, or tax breaks for the companies that upgrade, etc.) or they need to mandate that the power companies upgrade their infrastructre and allow them to change consumers more so there will actually be an incentive for them to upgrade (i.e. they don't lose money when they do it... as is the case now).
That's what happens when deregulation is implemented in a half assed manner. Either deregulate an industry or don't, but evertime I've ever seen an essestial industry that is half regulated and half deregulated it always ends up a mess. With the power grid it's especially true since each state can regulate it's own power companies. You've got 50 different sets of rules in place and people are sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what the problem is. We need a more unified set of rules that allows the power companies to charge more (and perhaps make a little more profit) if they upgrade their infrastructe.
Easy solution. Don't buy cheap, crappy and/or incompatible hardware. Installation of hardware drivers under Windows 2000 / XP is a breeze. Most new 2000/XP compatbile hardware comes with an installation CD if 2000 or XP (whatever OS the hardware targets) doesn't have it's own drivers that work. You install the hardware, boot up the system, Windows detects the device and installs the necessary drivers. If Windows doesn't have it's own driver that works (or doesn't detect the hardware) you insert the installation CD that came with the hardware and run the install program.
Worst case scenario, you have to go into Device Manage, left click on the unidentified hardware and select Update Driver. We're not talking rocket science here. Harp on Windows all you want, it certainly has it's faults, but driver installation in most cases is easier under Windows than it is under Linux and this is an issue that needs to be addressed to further Linux's adoption on the desktop.
Thus I end this with a question... for anyone who owns a drive that supports both -r and +r, how frequently do you use one kind of media over another? I wouldn't be surprised if most people that own a -r/+r drive rarely use +r.
You're spot on. I've got a Sony DRU-500A that can burn DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW and 9 times out of 10 I use DVD-R/RW. I've got a few friends that have DVD players that won't play -R/RW so occasionally I'll burn +R/RW if I'm buring something for them.
I have to agree with all of the good things said about the Sony DRU models. I bought a DRU-500A for $249.95 about 6 months ago and the thing works like a charm. It can burn almost every format DVD+R[W]/DVD-R[W]/CD-R/CD-RW and I've never had it produce a coaster. Prices on the DRU models have dropped since then but I don't regret paying what I did because I'm so happy with the drive. I'd suggest that anyone thinking of getting a DVD burner should take a serious look at the Sony DRU burners. If you decide to pass on a Sony, make sure to get a burner that supports all 4 formats. It's not clear yet which standard is going to win out so if you're going to spend the money you should fork over a little extra to ensure that your drive can support whatever format emerges as the standard.
2. To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
3. To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
4. To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
Somebody needs to buy a dictionary.
Notice the "jointly" in #2. I'm all for P2P but it's not certainly not sharing. It would be sharing if other people could listen to my music while I was online and listening to it. That would be experiencing the music jointly. It would also be sharing (actually it would be lending) if other people could copy music that I have and listen to it for a period of time and during that period I could not listen to it.
It's not sharing if someone I don't know makes a copy of something I have and then can listen to that copy whenever he or she wishes if I can still do the same. That is copying. As I said above, I'm all for P2P but let's be honest about what it is we are doing. Calling P2P sharing is about as accurate as calling P2P stealing. P2P is not either of those things. If there is a copyright holder then P2P is perfectly legal if it's done with the copyright holders consent and it's copyright infringement if it's not.
No, we need to stop teaching them at an early age that America is a bastion of freedom and liberty in the world.
Actually, we need to stop teaching people that the Democratic party is a bastion of freedom. I find it to be pretty ironic that both sponsors of this bill happen to be Democrats... you know.... the "tolerant" party that is trying to prevent those mean Republicans from taking your freedom away and giving all of your money to the rich. People have to realize that party is irrelevant. There will always be those on either side of the isle that can be bought if the price is right.
Netflix will never have a monopoly. If they start charging too high a rate then people can always get off their lazy butts and go to the video store or order it via pay-per-view.
Just because the copyright owners do not give you what you want in the manner that you want it, does not mean that you have the right to goand take it anyway. Its called morals, and jsut because the person who you are "stealing" from doesnt follow the same morals as you, doesnt mean its ok.
"Stealing" isn't ok. Downloading music from Kazaa is copyright infringement, not stealing, there is a difference. But anyway, I never said it was ok to download music in my post. I was just explaining why so many people do it and how the music labels could have prevented it from becoming a problem if they would have taken proactive steps steps when the technology to distribute digitally, at a good quality and reasonable price, became available.
There is simply no denying that the major labels dug their own grave on this one. They had been screwing the consumer for so long and getting away with it that they thought they could continue doing it even after the technology become available that allowed for low cost digital distrubtion. If processing small transactions was the problem then they could have instituted a minimum purchase requirement (i.e. allow the user to buy whatever individual singles they want at a $1 a pop, but the the user must purchase 10 or more singles at a time).
Monopolistic - no, there are 5 different major label families (Vivendi, Warner, Sony, Philips, BMG - IIRC) and about a zillion indy labels. How is that monopolistic?
Altough there are 5 major lables, record companies do have a monopoly in that you can not a buy a CD from more than one label. If I want the lastest Metallica CD I don't have a choice who I buy it from. So in that sense, they do have a monopoly in most instances.
Another point I should have brought up in my post was price fixing. All of the major labels were recently found guility of price fixing. It was nice to see a judge finally confirm what we here at slash dot have been complaining about for the last few years. I can understand a CD costing $16 - $20 when CD's first came out. But it's been a long, long time since then and prices haven't come down much. We've been getting screwed by the labels for far to long.
Hahahaha.. yeah right. The movie studios and record companies are nowhere near bankrupt yet. Look the bottom line is there is no way to stop file sharing. It's here to stay.
The record labels could have cut the head right off of file sharing years ago by putting their catalog online and letting users pay a reasonable fee ($.50 - $1) to download an MP3. In fact, if they would have done it before MP3 caught on they probably could have introduced their own format with reasonable DRM and that format would have caught on instead of MP3(provided the DRM wasn't too limited). They didn't do that. Instead they continued selling CD's priced between $16 - $20 dollars and it has come back to bit them in the butt. There was, and still is, cleary a demand for cheap music downloads and when the labels themselves wouldn't fill that demand, others did. Digital distrubtion makes complete sense. It's cheaper and the consumers are going to be happier with the product since they can buy the tracks they want and don't have to pay $16 - 20 for 2 tracks they want and 10 tracks they don't.
The record labels are monopolistic and greedy and it's coming back to haunt them. Music piricy will continue to be a massive problem until a low cost alternative (like Apple iTunes) is made available to Windows users. There will still be piricy, and there's nothing the RIAA can do about it, but it will not be near as bad as it is today. If the movie studios and the RIAA think they can elimate piracy they are crazy. Software piricy has always been a problem and now that music and movies can be distributed digitally it will always be a problem for that type of media as well.
So basically, their ability to bundle and integrate the browser and OS saved their butts from a "war" that by all means they should have lost, and not their introduction a superior, albeit late-to-market, product.
Yeah, that and the fact that IE was free. Granted you didn't have to pay for Netscape, but you were supposed to. That is why I know that Linux will ultimately take off on the desktop. You just canâ(TM)t beat the price and the various distros are getting better and better with each release.
I made the switch from Netscape to IE when IE version 4 came out. IE 3 was a complete joke. Call me crazy, but I actually like some of the integration. I really like to have the ability to browse to webpage when I'm viewing files via My Computer by entering a URL into the Address bar. It's convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
You are totally missing the point! The Israelis never go after civilians just for the sake of going after civilians. Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers will attack innocent Israeli men, women and children for no good reason other than to kill as many of them as possible. Why else do you think they send suicide bombers onto busses and into nightclubs? How many Israeli soldiers and politicians do you they think they think they are going to get by setting a bomb off in those places? The answer is zero. They aren't after politicians or soldiers when they set off a bomb in a public place, they are after innocent civilians specifically.
Do the Israelis kill innocent civilians too? Yes, but it is always result of collateral damage. They never target a Palestinian bus or nightclub just so they can kill civilians. They target terrorist leaders and operatives. Sometimes innocent civilians die in the process and that is a horrible thing but it is a much different situation when civilians are dieing as a result of collateral damage than it is when civilians are being killed just for the hell of it!
If the Palestinians would quit sending suicide bombers to kill innocent Israeli's then they could have their own state. The bottom line is that there is a certain percentage of Palestinians who do not want Israel to exist and they will continue killing Israeli's in a futile attempt to drive them out of existence. These people need be eliminated or locked up for good and the only ones that are going to be able to do that successfully are the Palestinians. The Israeli's can't do it and the Israeli's don't want to do it but since the Palestinian leadership seems either unwilling or incapable of doing it themselves then it doesn't leave Israel with a whole lot of options.
Almost every country in the world, the USA included, would put enormous pressure on the Israeli to withdraw from the West Bank and Gazaa completely if suicide attacks stopped tomorrow and a substantial amount of time passed without any additional attacks. The problem is, as it stands now, when a cease fire is declared it just gives the terrorist's time to rebuild, regroup and re-arm and then launch more attacks. These groups must be dismantled and eliminated or they must agree to a permanent cease-fire and put down their weapons for good before there will ever be peace in the middle-east.
If the Palestinians show a good faith effort in trying to dismantle and disarm these groups then the Israeli's must give them whatever time and assistance they may need and not resort to military action is response to terrorists attacks but allow the Palestinians themselves to respond.
It's going to require a good faith effort from both sides. Right now though, Abbas is still trying to reason with these groups rather than dismantle them and Arafat, as far as I can tell, is probably either working with them or is totally complacent. This has to change before anyone can reasonably expect the Israeli's to try and work with the Palestinians.
Ah, but therein lies the problem. We can only forcefully medicate people that are either a danger to themselves or others. If a person is neither a danger to himself nor to those around him, but is mentally ill and homeless and we can not force them to take medication. There will always be a percentage of the homeless who are mentally ill and choose to continue living that way and there is nothing that anyone can do about it.
I totally agree. While there will always be those that don't want help, the money would be much better spent helping those who want help rather than trying to track them. This just seems like a complete and total waste of tax dollars in addition to a total invasion of privacy. I wonder how many people might refuse to even go into a shelter if something like this was instituted.
Where to begin .....
First let me start by saying that I live in Michigan and was without power for the weekend. Second, both of my parents work for the power company. No one is treating the blackout as "just one of those things" but there isn't a whole heck of a lot that anyone can do until there is a full investigastion. That investigation is going to take a while. Once the cause is known State goverments and Congress need to act and it is our responsibility as citizens to put the pressure on them to put partisanship aside and do something.
Well in the US we have more than 240 million people to provide power for. Who is more likely to have problems, a country that has to provide power for 60 million or a country that has to provide power for over 240 million?
The problem in this country has to do with regulation. The power system in this country is regulated in certain areas (transmission and delivery) and deregulated in others (generation). The bottom line is that we have an old, outdated system in the US and it needs to be upgraded. The problem is that in most states the power companies are regulated and can only make a certain percent profit. There is no real incentive for them to upgrade their infrastructure. One of two things needs to happen. The government needs to step up to the plate and either help the power companies upgrade their infrastructe (by providing some of the dollars, or tax breaks for the companies that upgrade, etc.) or they need to mandate that the power companies upgrade their infrastructre and allow them to change consumers more so there will actually be an incentive for them to upgrade (i.e. they don't lose money when they do it ... as is the case now).
That's what happens when deregulation is implemented in a half assed manner. Either deregulate an industry or don't, but evertime I've ever seen an essestial industry that is half regulated and half deregulated it always ends up a mess. With the power grid it's especially true since each state can regulate it's own power companies. You've got 50 different sets of rules in place and people are sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what the problem is. We need a more unified set of rules that allows the power companies to charge more (and perhaps make a little more profit) if they upgrade their infrastructe.
Easy solution. Don't buy cheap, crappy and/or incompatible hardware. Installation of hardware drivers under Windows 2000 / XP is a breeze. Most new 2000/XP compatbile hardware comes with an installation CD if 2000 or XP (whatever OS the hardware targets) doesn't have it's own drivers that work. You install the hardware, boot up the system, Windows detects the device and installs the necessary drivers. If Windows doesn't have it's own driver that works (or doesn't detect the hardware) you insert the installation CD that came with the hardware and run the install program.
Worst case scenario, you have to go into Device Manage, left click on the unidentified hardware and select Update Driver. We're not talking rocket science here. Harp on Windows all you want, it certainly has it's faults, but driver installation in most cases is easier under Windows than it is under Linux and this is an issue that needs to be addressed to further Linux's adoption on the desktop.
You're spot on. I've got a Sony DRU-500A that can burn DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW and 9 times out of 10 I use DVD-R/RW. I've got a few friends that have DVD players that won't play -R/RW so occasionally I'll burn +R/RW if I'm buring something for them.
I have to agree with all of the good things said about the Sony DRU models. I bought a DRU-500A for $249.95 about 6 months ago and the thing works like a charm. It can burn almost every format DVD+R[W]/DVD-R[W]/CD-R/CD-RW and I've never had it produce a coaster. Prices on the DRU models have dropped since then but I don't regret paying what I did because I'm so happy with the drive. I'd suggest that anyone thinking of getting a DVD burner should take a serious look at the Sony DRU burners. If you decide to pass on a Sony, make sure to get a burner that supports all 4 formats. It's not clear yet which standard is going to win out so if you're going to spend the money you should fork over a little extra to ensure that your drive can support whatever format emerges as the standard.
Notice the "jointly" in #2. I'm all for P2P but it's not certainly not sharing. It would be sharing if other people could listen to my music while I was online and listening to it. That would be experiencing the music jointly. It would also be sharing (actually it would be lending) if other people could copy music that I have and listen to it for a period of time and during that period I could not listen to it.
It's not sharing if someone I don't know makes a copy of something I have and then can listen to that copy whenever he or she wishes if I can still do the same. That is copying. As I said above, I'm all for P2P but let's be honest about what it is we are doing. Calling P2P sharing is about as accurate as calling P2P stealing. P2P is not either of those things. If there is a copyright holder then P2P is perfectly legal if it's done with the copyright holders consent and it's copyright infringement if it's not.
Actually, we need to stop teaching people that the Democratic party is a bastion of freedom. I find it to be pretty ironic that both sponsors of this bill happen to be Democrats ... you know .... the "tolerant" party that is trying to prevent those mean Republicans from taking your freedom away and giving all of your money to the rich. People have to realize that party is irrelevant. There will always be those on either side of the isle that can be bought if the price is right.
Netflix will never have a monopoly. If they start charging too high a rate then people can always get off their lazy butts and go to the video store or order it via pay-per-view.
LOL. I would hardly call anything that Madonna produces a work of art.
"Stealing" isn't ok. Downloading music from Kazaa is copyright infringement, not stealing, there is a difference. But anyway, I never said it was ok to download music in my post. I was just explaining why so many people do it and how the music labels could have prevented it from becoming a problem if they would have taken proactive steps steps when the technology to distribute digitally, at a good quality and reasonable price, became available.
There is simply no denying that the major labels dug their own grave on this one. They had been screwing the consumer for so long and getting away with it that they thought they could continue doing it even after the technology become available that allowed for low cost digital distrubtion. If processing small transactions was the problem then they could have instituted a minimum purchase requirement (i.e. allow the user to buy whatever individual singles they want at a $1 a pop, but the the user must purchase 10 or more singles at a time).
Altough there are 5 major lables, record companies do have a monopoly in that you can not a buy a CD from more than one label. If I want the lastest Metallica CD I don't have a choice who I buy it from. So in that sense, they do have a monopoly in most instances.
Another point I should have brought up in my post was price fixing. All of the major labels were recently found guility of price fixing. It was nice to see a judge finally confirm what we here at slash dot have been complaining about for the last few years. I can understand a CD costing $16 - $20 when CD's first came out. But it's been a long, long time since then and prices haven't come down much. We've been getting screwed by the labels for far to long.
Hahahaha .. yeah right. The movie studios and record companies are nowhere near bankrupt yet. Look the bottom line is there is no way to stop file sharing. It's here to stay.
The record labels could have cut the head right off of file sharing years ago by putting their catalog online and letting users pay a reasonable fee ($.50 - $1) to download an MP3. In fact, if they would have done it before MP3 caught on they probably could have introduced their own format with reasonable DRM and that format would have caught on instead of MP3(provided the DRM wasn't too limited). They didn't do that. Instead they continued selling CD's priced between $16 - $20 dollars and it has come back to bit them in the butt. There was, and still is, cleary a demand for cheap music downloads and when the labels themselves wouldn't fill that demand, others did. Digital distrubtion makes complete sense. It's cheaper and the consumers are going to be happier with the product since they can buy the tracks they want and don't have to pay $16 - 20 for 2 tracks they want and 10 tracks they don't.
The record labels are monopolistic and greedy and it's coming back to haunt them. Music piricy will continue to be a massive problem until a low cost alternative (like Apple iTunes) is made available to Windows users. There will still be piricy, and there's nothing the RIAA can do about it, but it will not be near as bad as it is today. If the movie studios and the RIAA think they can elimate piracy they are crazy. Software piricy has always been a problem and now that music and movies can be distributed digitally it will always be a problem for that type of media as well.
Blacklist all email from hotmail.com ... problem solved.
So basically, their ability to bundle and integrate the browser and OS saved their butts from a "war" that by all means they should have lost, and not their introduction a superior, albeit late-to-market, product. Yeah, that and the fact that IE was free. Granted you didn't have to pay for Netscape, but you were supposed to. That is why I know that Linux will ultimately take off on the desktop. You just canâ(TM)t beat the price and the various distros are getting better and better with each release. I made the switch from Netscape to IE when IE version 4 came out. IE 3 was a complete joke. Call me crazy, but I actually like some of the integration. I really like to have the ability to browse to webpage when I'm viewing files via My Computer by entering a URL into the Address bar. It's convenient.