I can't justify copying someone else's material, whether by P2P or by other means (because I haven't been given the right to do so), but I have quibbles.
1) Would digital song sales have come about independent of P2P network copying of music? People have been unhappy with the increasing price/good song ratio of albums for sometime (e.g., why buy the 1st big Lit album at $15 for "My Own Worst Enemy"?), yet until Napster and ilk came along, digital music distribution (particularly per song distribution methods) were almost nonexistent. (Virgin was supposed to allow users to go to its stores and put 10 songs on a CD for the cost of an album, which is close, but I never saw it happen.) Without the pressure of illegal copying, I don't think the record companies would have wanted to give up (in part) the lucrative album scheme, particularly for albums by 1st time artists with bad contracts that have one popular song.
2) I don't know if it played a major factor in inciting copying of music, but for me copy protection, "trusted computing"/Palladium, DRM, etc., is the infuriating development. In these cases rights given by copyright law and subsequent court decisions ("fair use", etc.) are taken not by the gov't (who has the authority to do so) but by the content providers who do not. Copy protection doesn't thwart either profit-making copiers nor even most standard copiers - thus one has to question its point. I suspect that copy protection (as also cited in a Mac article about DRM) is designed to increase the cost of CD by taking fair use rights (particularly device shifting) from the customer and selling (some of) them back at an increased cost to the user. Some of the rights the RIAA's component labels are trying to maintain via DRM, etc.,are rights they do not legally have; I doubt that this helped incite copying, but it didn't (and doesn't help) their cause. If they want me to respect copyrights (as the MPAA tells me), they could start by respecting mine.
I don't think copying someone's music without paying for it helps many of the problems it claims to be addressing - it is a product of people's desire to have something for nothing (and seeing that lots of others already have gotten that - just ask Gil Amelio) and of frustration with the music industry coupled with its collusion negating many legitimate methods of response. The music industry screwed its customers - now it's their turn. "When you have a tiger by the tail, don't let go." The music industry lost hold of the tail (through P2P) and the tiger doesn't care about right or wrong.
if I were an exec, it seems fairly reasonable what to do...
1) Don't screw your customers. Yes, everyone wants something for nothing, but not very many of them will take it unless you manage to anger them. How do you ager them? Jacking product prices up for worse product is a prety good stsrt. Trying to take their copyright protections (fair use, etc.) without compensation and advertising the crippled products as containing extra "features" is another. People have told the companies that do this that they don't want it (copy-"protected" CDs, DivX, etc.) - if you ignore it, they will get angry, and won't be your customers anymore.
2) Given that you haven't angered your customers, give them enough to be happy. Returnable rentals, nonreturnable rentals for a little bit more, or purchasable DVDs with as little restriction as possible are probably good (since they seem to be what your customers want).
Trust isn't an issue here unless you anger your customers or try to screw them, at which point they will return the favor. Trust becomes an issue for content providers only when they've screwed their customers - once they've done that, the customers don't feel any need to behave as if they were trusted (because they know they're not) and behave accordingly. There are always people who will take you product by physically stealing it or by copying it, and this segment won't go away - but it requires effort and overcoming conscience and so most people don't do it. Once you anger your customers, anything goes, and for many, anger provides enough motivation to take the time to screw you.
Nonreturnable rental is a choice for customers, but it restricts users activity significantly AND costs significantly more than rental. It isn't real suprising, then, that this is an unpopular choice. Combined with previous attempts to sell a "licensed" product where the user pays full price to buy the product but loses control over its use, it's understandable why people mistrust this method of sale.
after all, MS security holes can safely be called the bas%^&d spawn of stupidity and monopoly. Stupidity might have been culled from the gene pool much more quickly - monopoly helps to assure us that their stupidity won't go away no matter how hard we try.
Considering how many spawn there are, I'd have to say that MS is going for Wilt Chamberlain's record of achievement in procreation (or attempts thereof).
after all if they did, you could plan for them, etc., but Murphy's Law doesn't work in reverse.
besides, bugs from MSIE don't come out that rarely - if there's only serious flaw in MSIE found in a week, you'd have to say that it is actually a good week for MS users.
I'm tired of memorials for astronauts. They explored space because they (and ultimately, the public) thought that it was worthwhile to do so. However, it's not unreasonable to expect that we should value the lives of the people that do this; while they volunteered for risky jobs (just like soldiers who walk into harm's way, police, firefighters, etc.) and thus have to accept the risk that comes with their jobs, they should not have been viewed as expendable assets.
In both of the major disasters that have befallen NASA in the last twenty years (Challenger and Columbia), NASA management ignored (or was unwilling to obtain) information to minimize the risks to their astronauts in performing the misions they were assigned. In the 1st case, management knew that lanunches below 50F posed a threat to the solid rocket boosters but chose to launch. In 2nd case, people were aware that there might be problems with Columbia's heat shield integrity, but management was unwilling to get pictures of the orbiter to assess potential damage. When there is a decent chance of problems (rather than simple "blue-sky" contingency), management chose not to take simple steps to protect the astronauts and their mission.
If you think that the brakes in your car may not work, and yet you don't check them and kill yourself in the process, you can't have valued your own life much, because you were unwilling to take simple, cheap steps to preserve it (while maintaining your ability to live your life they way you wish). While we send soldiers to war, and sometimes send them into battle knowing they may die, we are supposed to at least try to make sure that their deaths are not meaningless (that their deaths had a purpose in achieving their mission) and that if they do not need to die to achieve their mission, we provide them with protection to maximize that chance. When astronauts are sent on mission while their management is unwilling to take simple steps to increase the chance of success of their mission (and of their survival), management cannot have valued either their mission or the people executing it very highly.
I don't value the lives of the astronauts enough to prevent them from doing dangerous things for me. I think that their lives should be valued enough that we should make good-faith efforts to preserve them. If we don't value the lives of those who take risks for us or the missions for which they take those risks enough to put our best effort to preserve both, there isn't a reason for them to go. Management at NASA showed a willingness to preserve its illusions over the mission that was supposed to be its primary job and over the people they sent to do that job.
Asking people to give their time and lives for goals we say are important but are unwilling to take even a modicum of care to achieve demeans us and sacrifices others for nothing but our illusions. The fact that the astronauts chose to take extraordinary risks does not negate the fact that we asked them to do so. We owe them (and their mission) some modicum of respect; when the people we ask to oversee the missions fail to respect either the mission or their people sufficiently, they need to be removed. If we are unwilling to take care with the lives and missions we ask others to give their lives to achieve, then perhaps we need to think about what we should be doing instead, or what we ought to be doing to care for them.
I do not mean to imply that you intended to be cavalier about the astronauts' lives, just to say that we asked them to take these risks for us, and ought to care enough for them and what we ask of them to try to make sure it doesn't happen again (or at least, doesn't happen because of our laziness, obtinacy, or contempt.)
1) seems to have a business plan predicated on lawsuits (their lawyers are likely to be web isolated and so not hurt by this) and press releases (which, while they probably are placed on the web, can also be sent to lots of other places and news organizations)
2) probably doesn't have many programmers now (they don't seem to make much of a product after all) and they probably would be isolated as well.
3) doesn't sell anything - see their revenue (if it weren't for M$ and Sun^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htwo unnamed Fortune 500 companies, they wouldn't have much in the way of revenue at all), so losing their web portal isn't exactly catastrophic.
A DDoS against SCO doesn't hurt them but could potentially hurt the reputation of Linux and OSS. If the virus was written by a Linux or OSS partisan, it was really misguided - like trying to hit Darl McBride's car with a pistol but only hitting the bumper and then getting hit by the ricochet. Of course, if the virus was written to attack SCO, the ports that the virus opens and other goodies contained in the virus which do not expire (unlike the DDoS on SCO) don't make any sense.
Spammers, however, are logical authors for this virus. they are, after all, malicious and evil. They likely wrote the virus on which this was based. The port opening and other functions fit well the MO of spammers. as a bonus, hurting Linux might helps spammers - while Linux does have vulnerabilities, it doesn't open functionality as root by default, and the diversity of Linux variants means that Linux boxes should be harder to attack en masse. Spammers would prefer an OS monoculture - even if MS improves its security, computers (90% of which run MS OSes) will still be easier to attack than a large number of computers with diversity of OSes.
and that's the problem. Most of the terrorism we've dealt with at home (in the US) has been US nationals, and people who might otherwise be difficult to characterize. Getting rid of all the Arab-looking people? Well, then, the Black Muslims will take their place. If it isn't them, it could be a militia member off his medication, an environmentalist going after housing, or an anti-abortion person shootting doctors or blowing up clinics. There is no one to kill, or rather, to get rid of the problem, you have to kill everyone. Which is not exactly a practical solution.
Conventional war usually has some delineation of ground - thus combatants are grouped (imperfectly) base on geography. In wars where this has not been the case (Vietnam, establishing the peace in Iraq), we have been unsuccessful precisely because of the inability to distinguish bad from good without killing a lot of good people because no such delineation exists. A war against terrorism is worse because it doesn't have to be motivated by any single distinguishing characteristic such as race - it is driven by ideas, and ideas can't be killed unless you kill everyone who has them. Since it's hard to know who has an idea (particularly if they are silent about it), fighting this war as a "kill them before they kill you" action on any sort of large scale is doomed to fail miserably, while destroying the freedoms it claims to preserve. On small scale, "kill them before they kill you" can work but only in the presence of specific knowledge on people and their intended acts and targets rather than vague assumptions about race and ideas. (I'm not impugning you as a racist or closed-minded - just that the selection criteria for such action will tend to be the easiest to use (and race has been one of those), while the ones that would actually be effective are so drastic as to be counterproductive.)
The US is supposed to defend freedom, not destroy it.
It quotes the same figures as jjohnson - it doesn't back it historically, however, so Posner's conclusions could still have been accurate (1985-1997). This, however, is recent (2002). The criticisms it levels are reasonable.
Is the Patriot Act written normally? i haven't read too many laws, but the PA is written differently (as a modifier to existing laws) that the few I have seen. Is this SOP?
as far as I know, interagency cooperation has always problematic because agencies compete for funding; agencies thus hoard information because it will help them get funding.
1) How does the PA ameliorate this? 2) How does killing the PA mean that the interagency cooperation provisions cannot be passed separately (what makes it unconstitutional on its own?)
I wasn't a fan of the previous administration (although I am liberal and dislike GWB fairly intensely), but the extra provisions in the PA overstep a lot of bounds. For example, the library provision also forbids the donors of information to notify you of a search, a provision that is not consistent with previous law. In addition, I don't believe that a search for library info. has to be approved by a judge, but only by a clerk - this significantly lowers the barrier to getting a warrant.
The admission (I don't have the pointer right now) that the PA is being used primarily to go after nonterrorist criminal activity doesn't give me any reason to accept the promise that the PA will not be misused with anything other than a large bag of rock salt. The evasion and doublespeak on the PA's support website doesn't make me trust the people responsible for enforcing it any better. The attempts to add powers to the PA under cover of secrecy do not amplify my (already miniscule) faith in the ability of the PA to achieve its designed goals.
Giving trustworthy people the sort of power embodied in the PA is questionable - eventually power corrupts (although absolute power is "pretty neat" (Clancy, from somewhere else). Giving that power to someone many consider untrustworthy is a mistake. The words, evasion, and untruthfulness of the current administration do not lead me to trust them with the power the PA invests in them. I trusted WJC more than I trust GWB, and I wouldn't trust either of them with the PA.
isn't that like choosing whether you'd rather have your whole body flayed (inch by inch) or have capsaicin (hot pepper)-covered bamboo sticks placed into extremities and vital organs over a period of days until you die? If this is what is happening (socialism vs. fascism), it doesn't seem like there is a winner here (though there are losers - like the tagline for Alien vs. Predator: "Whoever wins, we lose.")
He's been Democratic for awhile - longer than he spent scamming elderly women with credit card donations, but not as long as he's been a raving loon. He makes Kucinich look both sane and moderate. (he may in fact have some good ideas but I still can't get over either his credit card scam or being told by LaRouche campaign people how the proof of cold fusion was being systematically hidden by scientists and politicians.)
have been to actively discourage people to vote, taking money from large donors in direct exchange for policy while asserting federal government preminence over the people and the states. Sounds like mass-market fascism to me - flag waving for the people, policies for big business, and control for bureaucrats. How does this differ from your definition of Democrats? (let alone how it shows any less contempt for the people than you claim of Democrats)?
This isn't your grandparents' Republican party - unless your grandparents cloned a leader from Nixon and Mussolini's (taking only their "best" aspects) and put him in charge. At best the Republicans are selling what the Democrats have been - IMO they're selling something significantly worse.
Why shouldn't they compliment the ad? The RIAA wants the money they (and their component labels) get when you buy a CD. Since (as many others have noted) they also get a cut of the cost of a track downloaded through legal music services on the Internet (and have probably set their fee to divide out to the same amount per song), the RIAA has no reason to discourage downloads from which they get their appropriate payment (and the control they assert in what is offered).
RIAA labels still have preferential access to music on radio, they still control their supply chain, and they're getting paid. What's even better is that the while the ad might portray Apple as standing up to the RIAA, Apple (and its customers) are paying them for the music all the same. It's like beer ads that preach mass-market nonconformity as a panacea for conformity - it allows people to feel that they're hurting the RIAA by buying iTunes while giving RIAA precisely what it wants from them (control over music choice, and money).
The RIAA should be cheering - they negate some of their opposition and get paid if they just sit back and shut up. They haven't changed - they still want control over aspects of music they have already shown they can't be trusted with. They're just smarter about it.
Having manners does not require one to obscure or ignore the truth or any facts. Tact means to try to communicate with others in the least hurtful manner possible but communicating whatever may be at issue (if there is no point in doing so or doing so would only cause harm, tact might dictate that one say nothing).
In this case, SCO has attempted to threaten and bully others into ignoring the obvious - that they have not proven their assertions on contract or copyright law in any forum more meaningful than a weekend bong party involving LSD while inhaling Cheetos and watching QVC.
Stating the obvious in this case is both tactful (there is no point in addressing licensing until you prove your point in a court of law) and reasonable (it puts SCO on notice that their targets are less likely to be intimidated by claims without evidence to back them up). It prevents the issue from wasting any more time than it already has. Companies won't give SCO money until they have a legal claim (and the enforcement behind it). Until SCO has legal backing, the letters are a waste of time.
In a more base counter, when has SCO adhered to any standard of manners for the corporate environment (other than that championed by companies such as Bre-X and Enron)? SCO has illustrated with their words and actions that they will not adhere to standards applied to others; they are unworthy of either respect nor gentleness aimed at preserving their feelings. In fact, their misperception of their status indicates that they need to have their feelings (or their logic) altered in some fundamental way.
I read The Coming Plague (Laurie Garrett) when the disease craze came out, and it seems like there were an awful lot of monkey diseases that were not good for people (some sort of simian herpes that caused encephalitis and had a 20% survival rate?). Do they give you vaccines or teach you other ways to deal with the potential hazards?
while I disagree with GWB's policies on almost everything, he is not solely responsible for the debt. Somewhere around $ 700G (10^9) is due to spending that GWB's administration has made; you may count as well most of the $ 1.8T tax cut he signed (some of that is already included). Given this, GWB could be responsible for up to about $2.3T (?) of the national debt, which would probably be at close to $8 T; that would make the cost of the debt run by GWB about $ 10K/person; if you use only the debt run up by GWB up to now, the cost is probably more like $2000/person. (of course, that's a lot higher than the one-time $300 tax cut we all got here)
So, while GWB hasn't been fiscally responsible, the nat'l debt here isn't all his fault. Reagan and Bush Sr. ran up about $4 T of the debt, and I think Clinton added at least $ 1 T; with a smaller amount from before Reagan and the amount that GWB has added, this constitutes the US debt ( > $ 6T).
Unfortunately GWB had cooperation in the Patriot Act; it was a bipartisan act, which means (as George Carlin has said) that some larger-than-usual fraud was being perpetrated - thus the removal of our civil rights was not because of GWB alone, but nearly all of Congress as well (Ashroft is his fault, however). While GWB has been dishonest about Iraq (and has cost us a lot of respect from other countries), I don't know that the war in Iraq is illegal.
I don't like GWB, but he isn't entirely responsible for the problems in the US. Blaming him for what he has done is enough.
Others on this thread have cited the potential (or expressed capacity) of blocklists (BL) to block desired mail (false positives) as well as spam. If that's the case, doesn't that mean that you still have to use the resources that BL are supposed to save - you have to store the messages to be able to sort them, and so much of the infrastructure that you would require without BL is still required to sort BL mail. BL seem to be a good way to sort spam (and to more accurately assess whether an email is spam or not), but not as a first line of defense, because it still requires the same committment of resources that a lower-level spam blocker or filter would require.
...or the ones they've created^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlost here? Most people I know who have gotten jobs lately have gotten worse (lower-education and lower-paying) jobs now than previously, if they can get them. Considering that there is no place to go down from McD's, etc., the worsening of jobs during WJC (as opposed to GWB) is hard to support.
see Carville's book (yes, I know he's biased - a Democratic strategist) - he cites a table (source? since I don't have the book, I don't know where the numbers came from) that lists the last 14 presidents in order of rate of increase of jobs/year over their terms. The top eight are Democrats, the bottom six (including Reagan) are Republicans.
Since it's statistics, I don't know if any massaging was done, but if the numbers are accurate, than Carter did have a higher rate of job creation than any Republican President. GWB's rate is thirteenth (ahead of only Hoover, by a large margin), and only the second President from the last 14 with a negative rate of job growth.
W, didn't Dick tell you to STAY AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER? The last time you tried to use the computer, there was sticky stuff on the keyboard and tons of spyware and free porn spam. Go to your room until you can learn to play nicely with others.
SCO's income and "popularity" comes from harrassing and intimidating their customers (and people who might even have thought about being customers). Why would they have any customers left? I want to buy a (useful) product from someone, rather than purchasing a useless POS with the option of paying for further litigation at some time in the future. That more than anything shows SCO's contempt for their customer base, and is why SCO no longer has a customer base.
the whole of Darl's lies and misrepresentation to his customers and stockholders is icing on the cowpie that SCO is trying to force on its stockholders, customers, and anyone who owns a computer. The suits (and the "licensing fees" SCO hopes to extract) are the "cake".
Of course it doesn't circumvent the issue of why GWB ordered the invasion. If Iraq/Saddam broke an inspection deal that they had agreed to, and that they could not be trusted, (and so Saddam et al. had to be removed) it would have been an accurate reason for going - but it wouldn't necessarily have gotten the support for going to war in Iraq that was received when the "imminent" threat of WMDs was used. In that sense, it's somewhat like GWB's tax cut - after it becomes clear that the main recipients of tax relief are the wealthy, the response is "They're the ones who pay taxes, so they should receive the refunds", which would have been fine if GWB hadn't said precisely the opposite (the majority of benefits were going to the poorer half of the US). Had he said that reason, the tax cut would not have received the popular support it had. The war in Iraq would not have received nearly as much support for either GWB or WJC had the broken promise for inspections been the stated reason for going (I'm guessing that the people complaining would be reversed though - I'd like to think better of my politics but it is politics after all and I'm not as pure in practice as I should be).
is either vaporware or crack fumes. This wouldn't seem like a good idea (proprietary games, no publishers?, crippled PC) even if a more legitimate company were spawning it - considering for a long time Phantom seemed to describe the company as well as its game machine, this seems questionable. People might buy games that they like, but without publishers (and the assurance that there will actually be games to play and games people want to play), the incentive for either upfront costs and/or monthly fees is not there.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't justify copying someone else's material, whether by P2P or by other means (because I haven't been given the right to do so), but I have quibbles.
1) Would digital song sales have come about independent of P2P network copying of music? People have been unhappy with the increasing price/good song ratio of albums for sometime (e.g., why buy the 1st big Lit album at $15 for "My Own Worst Enemy"?), yet until Napster and ilk came along, digital music distribution (particularly per song distribution methods) were almost nonexistent. (Virgin was supposed to allow users to go to its stores and put 10 songs on a CD for the cost of an album, which is close, but I never saw it happen.) Without the pressure of illegal copying, I don't think the record companies would have wanted to give up (in part) the lucrative album scheme, particularly for albums by 1st time artists with bad contracts that have one popular song.
2) I don't know if it played a major factor in inciting copying of music, but for me copy protection, "trusted computing"/Palladium, DRM, etc., is the infuriating development. In these cases rights given by copyright law and subsequent court decisions ("fair use", etc.) are taken not by the gov't (who has the authority to do so) but by the content providers who do not. Copy protection doesn't thwart either profit-making copiers nor even most standard copiers - thus one has to question its point. I suspect that copy protection (as also cited in a Mac article about DRM) is designed to increase the cost of CD by taking fair use rights (particularly device shifting) from the customer and selling (some of) them back at an increased cost to the user. Some of the rights the RIAA's component labels are trying to maintain via DRM, etc.,are rights they do not legally have; I doubt that this helped incite copying, but it didn't (and doesn't help) their cause. If they want me to respect copyrights (as the MPAA tells me), they could start by respecting mine.
I don't think copying someone's music without paying for it helps many of the problems it claims to be addressing - it is a product of people's desire to have something for nothing (and seeing that lots of others already have gotten that - just ask Gil Amelio) and of frustration with the music industry coupled with its collusion negating many legitimate methods of response. The music industry screwed its customers - now it's their turn. "When you have a tiger by the tail, don't let go." The music industry lost hold of the tail (through P2P) and the tiger doesn't care about right or wrong.
if I were an exec, it seems fairly reasonable what to do...
1) Don't screw your customers. Yes, everyone wants something for nothing, but not very many of them will take it unless you manage to anger them. How do you ager them? Jacking product prices up for worse product is a prety good stsrt. Trying to take their copyright protections (fair use, etc.) without compensation and advertising the crippled products as containing extra "features" is another. People have told the companies that do this that they don't want it (copy-"protected" CDs, DivX, etc.) - if you ignore it, they will get angry, and won't be your customers anymore.
2) Given that you haven't angered your customers, give them enough to be happy. Returnable rentals, nonreturnable rentals for a little bit more, or purchasable DVDs with as little restriction as possible are probably good (since they seem to be what your customers want).
Trust isn't an issue here unless you anger your customers or try to screw them, at which point they will return the favor. Trust becomes an issue for content providers only when they've screwed their customers - once they've done that, the customers don't feel any need to behave as if they were trusted (because they know they're not) and behave accordingly. There are always people who will take you product by physically stealing it or by copying it, and this segment won't go away - but it requires effort and overcoming conscience and so most people don't do it. Once you anger your customers, anything goes, and for many, anger provides enough motivation to take the time to screw you.
Nonreturnable rental is a choice for customers, but it restricts users activity significantly AND costs significantly more than rental. It isn't real suprising, then, that this is an unpopular choice. Combined with previous attempts to sell a "licensed" product where the user pays full price to buy the product but loses control over its use, it's understandable why people mistrust this method of sale.
after all, MS security holes can safely be called the bas%^&d spawn of stupidity and monopoly. Stupidity might have been culled from the gene pool much more quickly - monopoly helps to assure us that their stupidity won't go away no matter how hard we try.
Considering how many spawn there are, I'd have to say that MS is going for Wilt Chamberlain's record of achievement in procreation (or attempts thereof).
after all if they did, you could plan for them, etc., but Murphy's Law doesn't work in reverse.
besides, bugs from MSIE don't come out that rarely - if there's only serious flaw in MSIE found in a week, you'd have to say that it is actually a good week for MS users.
I'm tired of memorials for astronauts. They explored space because they (and ultimately, the public) thought that it was worthwhile to do so. However, it's not unreasonable to expect that we should value the lives of the people that do this; while they volunteered for risky jobs (just like soldiers who walk into harm's way, police, firefighters, etc.) and thus have to accept the risk that comes with their jobs, they should not have been viewed as expendable assets.
In both of the major disasters that have befallen NASA in the last twenty years (Challenger and Columbia), NASA management ignored (or was unwilling to obtain) information to minimize the risks to their astronauts in performing the misions they were assigned. In the 1st case, management knew that lanunches below 50F posed a threat to the solid rocket boosters but chose to launch. In 2nd case, people were aware that there might be problems with Columbia's heat shield integrity, but management was unwilling to get pictures of the orbiter to assess potential damage. When there is a decent chance of problems (rather than simple "blue-sky" contingency), management chose not to take simple steps to protect the astronauts and their mission.
If you think that the brakes in your car may not work, and yet you don't check them and kill yourself in the process, you can't have valued your own life much, because you were unwilling to take simple, cheap steps to preserve it (while maintaining your ability to live your life they way you wish). While we send soldiers to war, and sometimes send them into battle knowing they may die, we are supposed to at least try to make sure that their deaths are not meaningless (that their deaths had a purpose in achieving their mission) and that if they do not need to die to achieve their mission, we provide them with protection to maximize that chance. When astronauts are sent on mission while their management is unwilling to take simple steps to increase the chance of success of their mission (and of their survival), management cannot have valued either their mission or the people executing it very highly.
I don't value the lives of the astronauts enough to prevent them from doing dangerous things for me. I think that their lives should be valued enough that we should make good-faith efforts to preserve them. If we don't value the lives of those who take risks for us or the missions for which they take those risks enough to put our best effort to preserve both, there isn't a reason for them to go. Management at NASA showed a willingness to preserve its illusions over the mission that was supposed to be its primary job and over the people they sent to do that job.
Asking people to give their time and lives for goals we say are important but are unwilling to take even a modicum of care to achieve demeans us and sacrifices others for nothing but our illusions. The fact that the astronauts chose to take extraordinary risks does not negate the fact that we asked them to do so. We owe them (and their mission) some modicum of respect; when the people we ask to oversee the missions fail to respect either the mission or their people sufficiently, they need to be removed. If we are unwilling to take care with the lives and missions we ask others to give their lives to achieve, then perhaps we need to think about what we should be doing instead, or what we ought to be doing to care for them.
I do not mean to imply that you intended to be cavalier about the astronauts' lives, just to say that we asked them to take these risks for us, and ought to care enough for them and what we ask of them to try to make sure it doesn't happen again (or at least, doesn't happen because of our laziness, obtinacy, or contempt.)
SCO:
1) seems to have a business plan predicated on lawsuits (their lawyers are likely to be web isolated and so not hurt by this) and press releases (which, while they probably are placed on the web, can also be sent to lots of other places and news organizations)
2) probably doesn't have many programmers now (they don't seem to make much of a product after all) and they probably would be isolated as well.
3) doesn't sell anything - see their revenue (if it weren't for M$ and Sun^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htwo unnamed Fortune 500 companies, they wouldn't have much in the way of revenue at all), so losing their web portal isn't exactly catastrophic.
A DDoS against SCO doesn't hurt them but could potentially hurt the reputation of Linux and OSS.
If the virus was written by a Linux or OSS partisan, it was really misguided - like trying to hit Darl McBride's car with a pistol but only hitting the bumper and then getting hit by the ricochet. Of course, if the virus was written to attack SCO, the ports that the virus opens and other goodies contained in the virus which do not expire (unlike the DDoS on SCO) don't make any sense.
Spammers, however, are logical authors for this virus. they are, after all, malicious and evil. They likely wrote the virus on which this was based. The port opening and other functions fit well the MO of spammers. as a bonus, hurting Linux might helps spammers - while Linux does have vulnerabilities, it doesn't open functionality as root by default, and the diversity of Linux variants means that Linux boxes should be harder to attack en masse. Spammers would prefer an OS monoculture - even if MS improves its security, computers (90% of which run MS OSes) will still be easier to attack than a large number of computers with diversity of OSes.
and that's the problem. Most of the terrorism we've dealt with at home (in the US) has been US nationals, and people who might otherwise be difficult to characterize. Getting rid of all the Arab-looking people? Well, then, the Black Muslims will take their place. If it isn't them, it could be a militia member off his medication, an environmentalist going after housing, or an anti-abortion person shootting doctors or blowing up clinics. There is no one to kill, or rather, to get rid of the problem, you have to kill everyone. Which is not exactly a practical solution.
Conventional war usually has some delineation of ground - thus combatants are grouped (imperfectly) base on geography. In wars where this has not been the case (Vietnam, establishing the peace in Iraq), we have been unsuccessful precisely because of the inability to distinguish bad from good without killing a lot of good people because no such delineation exists. A war against terrorism is worse because it doesn't have to be motivated by any single distinguishing characteristic such as race - it is driven by ideas, and ideas can't be killed unless you kill everyone who has them. Since it's hard to know who has an idea (particularly if they are silent about it), fighting this war as a "kill them before they kill you" action on any sort of large scale is doomed to fail miserably, while destroying the freedoms it claims to preserve. On small scale, "kill them before they kill you" can work but only in the presence of specific knowledge on people and their intended acts and targets rather than vague assumptions about race and ideas. (I'm not impugning you as a racist or closed-minded - just that the selection criteria for such action will tend to be the easiest to use (and race has been one of those), while the ones that would actually be effective are so drastic as to be counterproductive.)
The US is supposed to defend freedom, not destroy it.
it's biased, but....
l
www.moderateconservative.com/v1i19thcircuit.htm
It quotes the same figures as jjohnson - it doesn't back it historically, however, so Posner's conclusions could still have been accurate (1985-1997). This, however, is recent (2002). The criticisms it levels are reasonable.
Is the Patriot Act written normally? i haven't read too many laws, but the PA is written differently (as a modifier to existing laws) that the few I have seen. Is this SOP?
as far as I know, interagency cooperation has always problematic because agencies compete for funding; agencies thus hoard information because it will help them get funding.
1) How does the PA ameliorate this?
2) How does killing the PA mean that the interagency cooperation provisions cannot be passed separately (what makes it unconstitutional on its own?)
I wasn't a fan of the previous administration (although I am liberal and dislike GWB fairly intensely), but the extra provisions in the PA overstep a lot of bounds. For example, the library provision also forbids the donors of information to notify you of a search, a provision that is not consistent with previous law. In addition, I don't believe that a search for library info. has to be approved by a judge, but only by a clerk - this significantly lowers the barrier to getting a warrant.
The admission (I don't have the pointer right now) that the PA is being used primarily to go after nonterrorist criminal activity doesn't give me any reason to accept the promise that the PA will not be misused with anything other than a large bag of rock salt. The evasion and doublespeak on the PA's support website doesn't make me trust the people responsible for enforcing it any better. The attempts to add powers to the PA under cover of secrecy do not amplify my (already miniscule) faith in the ability of the PA to achieve its designed goals.
Giving trustworthy people the sort of power embodied in the PA is questionable - eventually power corrupts (although absolute power is "pretty neat" (Clancy, from somewhere else). Giving that power to someone many consider untrustworthy is a mistake. The words, evasion, and untruthfulness of the current administration do not lead me to trust them with the power the PA invests in them. I trusted WJC more than I trust GWB, and I wouldn't trust either of them with the PA.
isn't that like choosing whether you'd rather have your whole body flayed (inch by inch) or have capsaicin (hot pepper)-covered bamboo sticks placed into extremities and vital organs over a period of days until you die? If this is what is happening (socialism vs. fascism), it doesn't seem like there is a winner here (though there are losers - like the tagline for Alien vs. Predator: "Whoever wins, we lose.")
He's been Democratic for awhile - longer than he spent scamming elderly women with credit card donations, but not as long as he's been a raving loon. He makes Kucinich look both sane and moderate.
(he may in fact have some good ideas but I still can't get over either his credit card scam or being told by LaRouche campaign people how the proof of cold fusion was being systematically hidden by scientists and politicians.)
have been to actively discourage people to vote, taking money from large donors in direct exchange for policy while asserting federal government preminence over the people and the states. Sounds like mass-market fascism to me - flag waving for the people, policies for big business, and control for bureaucrats. How does this differ from your definition of Democrats? (let alone how it shows any less contempt for the people than you claim of Democrats)?
This isn't your grandparents' Republican party - unless your grandparents cloned a leader from Nixon and Mussolini's (taking only their "best" aspects) and put him in charge. At best the Republicans are selling what the Democrats have been - IMO they're selling something significantly worse.
Why shouldn't they compliment the ad? The RIAA wants the money they (and their component labels) get when you buy a CD. Since (as many others have noted) they also get a cut of the cost of a track downloaded through legal music services on the Internet (and have probably set their fee to divide out to the same amount per song), the RIAA has no reason to discourage downloads from which they get their appropriate payment (and the control they assert in what is offered).
RIAA labels still have preferential access to music on radio, they still control their supply chain, and they're getting paid. What's even better is that the while the ad might portray Apple as standing up to the RIAA, Apple (and its customers) are paying them for the music all the same. It's like beer ads that preach mass-market nonconformity as a panacea for conformity - it allows people to feel that they're hurting the RIAA by buying iTunes while giving RIAA precisely what it wants from them (control over music choice, and money).
The RIAA should be cheering - they negate some of their opposition and get paid if they just sit back and shut up. They haven't changed - they still want control over aspects of music they have already shown they can't be trusted with. They're just smarter about it.
Having manners does not require one to obscure or ignore the truth or any facts. Tact means to try to communicate with others in the least hurtful manner possible but communicating whatever may be at issue (if there is no point in doing so or doing so would only cause harm, tact might dictate that one say nothing).
In this case, SCO has attempted to threaten and bully others into ignoring the obvious - that they have not proven their assertions on contract or copyright law in any forum more meaningful than a weekend bong party involving LSD while inhaling Cheetos and watching QVC.
Stating the obvious in this case is both tactful (there is no point in addressing licensing until you prove your point in a court of law) and reasonable (it puts SCO on notice that their targets are less likely to be intimidated by claims without evidence to back them up). It prevents the issue from wasting any more time than it already has. Companies won't give SCO money until they have a legal claim (and the enforcement behind it). Until SCO has legal backing, the letters are a waste of time.
In a more base counter, when has SCO adhered to any standard of manners for the corporate environment (other than that championed by companies such as Bre-X and Enron)? SCO has illustrated with their words and actions that they will not adhere to standards applied to others; they are unworthy of either respect nor gentleness aimed at preserving their feelings. In fact, their misperception of their status indicates that they need to have their feelings (or their logic) altered in some fundamental way.
I read The Coming Plague (Laurie Garrett) when the disease craze came out, and it seems like there were an awful lot of monkey diseases that were not good for people (some sort of simian herpes that caused encephalitis and had a 20% survival rate?). Do they give you vaccines or teach you other ways to deal with the potential hazards?
while I disagree with GWB's policies on almost everything, he is not solely responsible for the debt. Somewhere around $ 700G (10^9) is due to spending that GWB's administration has made; you may count as well most of the $ 1.8T tax cut he signed (some of that is already included). Given this, GWB could be responsible for up to about $2.3T (?) of the national debt, which would probably be at close to $8 T; that would make the cost of the debt run by GWB about $ 10K/person; if you use only the debt run up by GWB up to now, the cost is probably more like $2000/person. (of course, that's a lot higher than the one-time $300 tax cut we all got here)
So, while GWB hasn't been fiscally responsible, the nat'l debt here isn't all his fault. Reagan and Bush Sr. ran up about $4 T of the debt, and I think Clinton added at least $ 1 T; with a smaller amount from before Reagan and the amount that GWB has added, this constitutes the US debt ( > $ 6T).
Unfortunately GWB had cooperation in the Patriot Act; it was a bipartisan act, which means (as George Carlin has said) that some larger-than-usual fraud was being perpetrated - thus the removal of our civil rights was not because of GWB alone, but nearly all of Congress as well (Ashroft is his fault, however). While GWB has been dishonest about Iraq (and has cost us a lot of respect from other countries), I don't know that the war in Iraq is illegal.
I don't like GWB, but he isn't entirely responsible for the problems in the US. Blaming him for what he has done is enough.
Others on this thread have cited the potential (or expressed capacity) of blocklists (BL) to block desired mail (false positives) as well as spam. If that's the case, doesn't that mean that you still have to use the resources that BL are supposed to save - you have to store the messages to be able to sort them, and so much of the infrastructure that you would require without BL is still required to sort BL mail. BL seem to be a good way to sort spam (and to more accurately assess whether an email is spam or not), but not as a first line of defense, because it still requires the same committment of resources that a lower-level spam blocker or filter would require.
Am I missing something here?
...or the ones they've created^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlost here? Most people I know who have gotten jobs lately have gotten worse (lower-education and lower-paying) jobs now than previously, if they can get them. Considering that there is no place to go down from McD's, etc., the worsening of jobs during WJC (as opposed to GWB) is hard to support.
see Carville's book (yes, I know he's biased - a Democratic strategist) - he cites a table (source? since I don't have the book, I don't know where the numbers came from) that lists the last 14 presidents in order of rate of increase of jobs/year over their terms. The top eight are Democrats, the bottom six (including Reagan) are Republicans.
Since it's statistics, I don't know if any massaging was done, but if the numbers are accurate, than Carter did have a higher rate of job creation than any Republican President. GWB's rate is thirteenth (ahead of only Hoover, by a large margin), and only the second President from the last 14 with a negative rate of job growth.
W, didn't Dick tell you to STAY AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER? The last time you tried to use the computer, there was sticky stuff on the keyboard and tons of spyware and free porn spam. Go to your room until you can learn to play nicely with others.
SCO's income and "popularity" comes from harrassing and intimidating their customers (and people who might even have thought about being customers). Why would they have any customers left? I want to buy a (useful) product from someone, rather than purchasing a useless POS with the option of paying for further litigation at some time in the future. That more than anything shows SCO's contempt for their customer base, and is why SCO no longer has a customer base.
the whole of Darl's lies and misrepresentation to his customers and stockholders is icing on the cowpie that SCO is trying to force on its stockholders, customers, and anyone who owns a computer. The suits (and the "licensing fees" SCO hopes to extract) are the "cake".
a clean mouth means a happy mouth...so they can smile while they lie.
If this is true, it'd be interesting.
Of course it doesn't circumvent the issue of why GWB ordered the invasion. If Iraq/Saddam broke an inspection deal that they had agreed to, and that they could not be trusted, (and so Saddam et al. had to be removed) it would have been an accurate reason for going - but it wouldn't necessarily have gotten the support for going to war in Iraq that was received when the "imminent" threat of WMDs was used. In that sense, it's somewhat like GWB's tax cut - after it becomes clear that the main recipients of tax relief are the wealthy, the response is "They're the ones who pay taxes, so they should receive the refunds", which would have been fine if GWB hadn't said precisely the opposite (the majority of benefits were going to the poorer half of the US). Had he said that reason, the tax cut would not have received the popular support it had. The war in Iraq would not have received nearly as much support for either GWB or WJC had the broken promise for inspections been the stated reason for going (I'm guessing that the people complaining would be reversed though - I'd like to think better of my politics but it is politics after all and I'm not as pure in practice as I should be).
is either vaporware or crack fumes. This wouldn't seem like a good idea (proprietary games, no publishers?, crippled PC) even if a more legitimate company were spawning it - considering for a long time Phantom seemed to describe the company as well as its game machine, this seems questionable. People might buy games that they like, but without publishers (and the assurance that there will actually be games to play and games people want to play), the incentive for either upfront costs and/or monthly fees is not there.