Unfortunatly, I doubt we'll ever see benevolent monopolies (or even corporations) ever again.
Well, government-regulated monopolies tended to work OK, here, at least, in Ontario.
Things were pretty good with Ontario Hydro before the Conversative Government deregulated electricity. Then the prices went through the roof.
As I understand it Califorina had it even worse.
However, without government regulation I'm sure monopolies would go completely out of control every time (i.e. American telcos, Microsoft..). I know government regulation doesn't really jive with the American ideal of no gonverment interference, but it works..
Look. I'm not saying that copyright infringement isn't bad or shouldn't be illegal, I'm just saying I don't think it should be "Justice Department Raids Homes of File Swappers" illegal.
I'm not sure about this, however:
Copyright infringement illegally reduces the potential benefit that the work's creator might otherwise receive from the work's distribution. LIkewise, someone who steals CD's from a store illegally reduces that store's potential benefit derived from selling those CD's.
I agree with the first part. Copyright infringement does reduce the potential benefit to the work's creator. However, not only does stealing the CD from a record store "reduce [the] potential benefit [from selling them]", it actually costs the record store real, physical money -- the money it cost them to purchase that CD from the distributor.
There was a Atari 2600 product that claimed to use your brain waves (well, actually it worked by eye movement or something) to control the game. Sorry I don't have a link. Atarihq.com might have something.
It didn't really work, though. Hope this is better!
Come now.. you are deliberately mixing up two terms to to further your point.
We are talking about copyright infringement. This is clearly bad, but when somebody infringes on your copyright by downloading music, you haven't lost money, you just haven't made it.
When someone walks into a record store and steals a few albums they have actually caused a loss to the record store.
We had a SyQuest SparQ 1GB drive. What a piece of shit! You stuck these cartridge-like things (which rattled when you shook them) which cost CDN$40 a piece into the drive, which was itself poorly designed; you push the cartridge in manually, but to eject you are supposed to push the button on the outside, which, after 20-30 seconds of noises is supposed to pop the cartridge out. Except it never did, and you would have to open the flap and pull it out manually.
The thing spontaneously died 6 months after purchase.
There's some irony in that since the case is about the French court system pushing their law on a US site on US soil meant for a US audience.
No.. it is the French court system pushing their law on a French-language site meant for a French audience, from a company with business set up in France..
This has nothing to do with Yahoo.com.
From the outside (i.e. the rest of the world) it is really difficult for us to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
They both seem to have very similar platforms.. they both are owned by big business.. and members of both parties can't go 30 seconds without saying "the American People(tm)" or "the Real Issues(tm)".
I say the only feasible option (and it wouldn't please everybody) would be to remove the concept of "marriage" from the realm of secular law, and in its place build a new definition of a legally binding contract between any number of people of any number of diversities, in order to support each other emotionally and financially and be liable for any breach of that contract.
You might get by with differentiating between holy matrimony and civil matrimony.
You want to get married, fine go to your type of clergy and get married. You want to be involved in a legal arrangement in order to share insurance plans, then get to the couthouse and file the appropriate paperwork in triplicate.
You CAN do one without the other, but a religious wedding would have nothing to do with legal rights, you would be married but not bound by contract.
Sorry for the lenghty comment.
Why is religion in the US so rigid and backward, anyway?
Maybe those are the only feasable options due to the religious climate in the US, but here in Canada steps are being made to simply legalize gay marriage.
AFAIK, BC and Ontario (and one other province which I can't remember), by provincial supreme court decision allow gay marriage. In general, the other court cases are going in favour of it. There is continual talk of putting it to Parliament and finally dealing with it nationally once and for all.
I would be lying if I said that everyone didn't have a problem with it, but among the general population for/against is roughly 50/50, and among organized religion two of the largest groups, the United Church has approved of homosexuality officially since 1988, and the Anglicans are currently split 50/50 over the issue.
Do any of the major American groups support gay marriage?
Implement a basic set of widgets, including a few of the more important ones you mention (WTF? Audio libraries?), put in a strong system OLE/dynamic linking type thing and leave the rest up to the individual apps.
This is pretty much the way it is in Windows, and aside from the horrendous mess that the API appearantly is (though this is the fault of poor coding, I think), it seems to work pretty well.
And there aren't 15 different widget libraries that each do the same basic functions.(*COUGH*QTGTKwxWindowsAthenaMotifFLTK*CO UGH*)
If 15 page PDFs are that large and cant be cut and pasted from then the fault is the idiot who created it -- many manuals are created by scanning a series of images and sticking them in a PDF. This offers all the benefits you can imagine over a series of images; none.
If you, however, take a Word document and create a PDF from it using decent software it will be reasonably small, since the PDF will actually contain the text and the instructions on how to draw it, instead of an image of it.
Don't forget, however, that size of computer data files tends to increase somewhat proportionally to bandwidth. (It seems the bandwidth is starting to jump ahead of file size at the moment, however that is a seperate topic)
On a 1.5mbit connection, your example would download in a little under 6 minutes. Most connections now (at least in Ontario.. CDN$34.95 for 3mbit/640kbit DSL, similar price for 3-5mbit cable. Yay!) are at least 3mbit, so cut that in half.
Clever strategies could be employed to reduce noticable download time (download only as necessary, in background, etc) as well.
While I appreciate the response, that's absolutely crazy!
I didn't have this problem, we had a large antenna that was on the roof of the house and picked up all stations in the area really well.
This is what I have.. but it needs to be oriented in the right direction to prevent ghosting (on Toronto signals, they are very strong) or static noise (on the Buffalo stations, which do not come in so well unless the antenna is pointed towards Buffalo, at which point they come in perfectly.).
I would need AT LEAST another three antennas on my roof (in addition to the one already up there).
If I actually happen across enough money to afford that I think I would pay Rogers to extend cable service to my house!:)
Um.. you do realize that people have been saying that children are being poorly parented and the world is going to hell in a handbasket for at LEAST several generations, if not since the beginning of time, right?
I think the reason the parent says it isn't very useful is because they may be in a situation like I am..
I live near Toronto, Ontario. No cable service where I am (service ends only 200 metres away! Bastards!), so we get our TV over-the-air and a few channels (7-8, the only ones we watch) by C-band satellite.
There is a huge number of channels on broadcast TV here (at least 26, not counting stations we receive on multiple channels), but this is because we are smack dab in the middle of several different broadcasting areas.
A rotor is required for the antenna, since the programming is split mostly between Toronto (to the west) and Buffalo (to the south-west), with some in the Rochester area (south) and Barrie (north-west). Almost all of the channels come in very clearly (better than cable), except for the REALLY distant stuff (Rochester and Barrie), but all channel come in poorly or not at all unless the antenna is tuned to the correct position.
It may be somewhat of a moot point since TiVO is not available in Canada, but if I wanted to build a MythTV box I would have a lot of trouble recording programming.
Anyone know if MythTV is extensible enough to control an IR blaster to control the rotor box?
Slashdot Mirror
Just FYI.
Things were pretty good with Ontario Hydro before the Conversative Government deregulated electricity. Then the prices went through the roof.
As I understand it Califorina had it even worse.
However, without government regulation I'm sure monopolies would go completely out of control every time (i.e. American telcos, Microsoft..). I know government regulation doesn't really jive with the American ideal of no gonverment interference, but it works..
I'm not sure about this, however:
I agree with the first part. Copyright infringement does reduce the potential benefit to the work's creator. However, not only does stealing the CD from a record store "reduce [the] potential benefit [from selling them]", it actually costs the record store real, physical money -- the money it cost them to purchase that CD from the distributor.There was a Atari 2600 product that claimed to use your brain waves (well, actually it worked by eye movement or something) to control the game. Sorry I don't have a link. Atarihq.com might have something.
It didn't really work, though. Hope this is better!
We are talking about copyright infringement. This is clearly bad, but when somebody infringes on your copyright by downloading music, you haven't lost money, you just haven't made it.
When someone walks into a record store and steals a few albums they have actually caused a loss to the record store.
A rather serious difference..
Actually, just for accuracy's sake, drivers ARE required under Windows 98. Built-in USB Mass Storage support starts in Windows 2000.
Fun.
We had a SyQuest SparQ 1GB drive. What a piece of shit! You stuck these cartridge-like things (which rattled when you shook them) which cost CDN$40 a piece into the drive, which was itself poorly designed; you push the cartridge in manually, but to eject you are supposed to push the button on the outside, which, after 20-30 seconds of noises is supposed to pop the cartridge out. Except it never did, and you would have to open the flap and pull it out manually.
The thing spontaneously died 6 months after purchase.
Ahh, the memories!
..err.. maybe it does. Nevermind.
From the outside (i.e. the rest of the world) it is really difficult for us to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
They both seem to have very similar platforms.. they both are owned by big business.. and members of both parties can't go 30 seconds without saying "the American People(tm)" or "the Real Issues(tm)".
Maybe those are the only feasable options due to the religious climate in the US, but here in Canada steps are being made to simply legalize gay marriage.
AFAIK, BC and Ontario (and one other province which I can't remember), by provincial supreme court decision allow gay marriage. In general, the other court cases are going in favour of it. There is continual talk of putting it to Parliament and finally dealing with it nationally once and for all.
I would be lying if I said that everyone didn't have a problem with it, but among the general population for/against is roughly 50/50, and among organized religion two of the largest groups, the United Church has approved of homosexuality officially since 1988, and the Anglicans are currently split 50/50 over the issue.
Do any of the major American groups support gay marriage?
News flash: MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD HAS THE SAME FREEDOMS YOU DO!!
Most of the countries in Europe are either constitutional monarchies or other sorts of democracies, in which the same basic freedoms are guaranteed.
Honestly, by some comments made by Americans you would think that the Cold War was still on and Europe was behind the Iron Curtain.
(Burn, Angelfire, Burn!)
May as well just get CentOS or White Box..
Implement a basic set of widgets, including a few of the more important ones you mention (WTF? Audio libraries?), put in a strong system OLE/dynamic linking type thing and leave the rest up to the individual apps.
This is pretty much the way it is in Windows, and aside from the horrendous mess that the API appearantly is (though this is the fault of poor coding, I think), it seems to work pretty well.
And there aren't 15 different widget libraries that each do the same basic functions.(*COUGH*QTGTKwxWindowsAthenaMotifFLTK*CO UGH*)
If you, however, take a Word document and create a PDF from it using decent software it will be reasonably small, since the PDF will actually contain the text and the instructions on how to draw it, instead of an image of it.
On a 1.5mbit connection, your example would download in a little under 6 minutes. Most connections now (at least in Ontario.. CDN$34.95 for 3mbit/640kbit DSL, similar price for 3-5mbit cable. Yay!) are at least 3mbit, so cut that in half.
Clever strategies could be employed to reduce noticable download time (download only as necessary, in background, etc) as well.
No one is going to set up a private hospital in the Northwest Territories -- it wouldn't be profitable; not enough patients.
Private health care will follow the money; the private clinics and hospitals would all be in major cities, where they could actaully turn a profit.
I would need AT LEAST another three antennas on my roof (in addition to the one already up there).
If I actually happen across enough money to afford that I think I would pay Rogers to extend cable service to my house! :)
Um.. you do realize that people have been saying that children are being poorly parented and the world is going to hell in a handbasket for at LEAST several generations, if not since the beginning of time, right?
I live near Toronto, Ontario. No cable service where I am (service ends only 200 metres away! Bastards!), so we get our TV over-the-air and a few channels (7-8, the only ones we watch) by C-band satellite.
There is a huge number of channels on broadcast TV here (at least 26, not counting stations we receive on multiple channels), but this is because we are smack dab in the middle of several different broadcasting areas.
A rotor is required for the antenna, since the programming is split mostly between Toronto (to the west) and Buffalo (to the south-west), with some in the Rochester area (south) and Barrie (north-west). Almost all of the channels come in very clearly (better than cable), except for the REALLY distant stuff (Rochester and Barrie), but all channel come in poorly or not at all unless the antenna is tuned to the correct position.
It may be somewhat of a moot point since TiVO is not available in Canada, but if I wanted to build a MythTV box I would have a lot of trouble recording programming.
Anyone know if MythTV is extensible enough to control an IR blaster to control the rotor box?
Yes, the UI was great until up to around version 6, then it got bloated until version 7.50, at which they fixed it up a great deal.
Mozilla = Netscape.
The latest versions of Mozilla and Netscape are virtually identical, except Netscape has extra crap (like AOL IM).
You are using a beta version of Firefox. Not the same.
The DVD CCA probably makes it a condition of licensing CSS. No CSS, no encrypted (read: commercial) DVD playback.