If when you buy an iPhone you are actually buying the ownership to the phone, you can do what the hell you like to it as its yours.
but...
If Apple are just selling a licence to use the iPhone (kinda like what Microsoft do with Windows) rather than actually selling the ownership of the iPhone itself, then they could legally and justifiably require you not to unlock it as they still own it.
Nice thought except in reality you (still) have to reinstall windows every 6 months or so otherwise tons of hardrive space just goes missing over time. This still seems to be the case, even with vista. Actually vista seems to be worse than XP for this. I installed vista in its own 20GB partition, originally there was 9 GB free. After 6 months there's now about 1GB free. Other than a few files on the desktop (maybe 200MB total ) I've put nothing on that drive.
I already bought it, then found out it did all this stuff. I wouldn't have bought the game in the first place had I have known. There should be a law that says the game's outer packaging has to carry a big label if they do this sort of stuff.
>> citing the example of Black Family Television, which was forced to go online-only because cable operators refused to carry it,
This reads like an accusation of racism in the article, but maybe cable companies are trying to eliminate racism or at least not reinforce it by not having programming only for certain racial group stereotypes.
I guess spanish-language TV is different because it is (primarily) breaking a language barrier, not a stereotype barrier.
Failing that, so where is my White Family Channel? (Before anyone says it... I don't go along with the notion that every channel except BFT is for whites)
What are you talking about? why is it you incorrectly assume I don't care about freedom when all I care about is my kids wellbeing? What about _my_ freedom and _my kids_ freedom to live in a drug-free environment?
>> What do we achieve when we turn a promising young man caught with marijuana into a criminal,
He already turned himself into a criminal.
So why is it that Americans avoid taking responsibility for their own actions and instead want to blame everyone else? Your whole rant is a perfect example.
You are an asshat without a clue. I hope you have kids someday then you might understand. Actually no I don't because I don't want your genes continuing.
I have a 2 year old son and I'm terrified for his wellbeing in this drug-riddled culture. Drug abuse is at epidemic proportions and is ubiquitous in all parts of society. Drug dealers are even targeting school areas.
I'm all for this technology and anything else we can do to remove this blight on our society. I hope this gets deployed everywhere as soon as possible and as far enough upstream as possible to identify individuals.
No you're not the only one. This REALLY worries me too. Mankind is not ready to be trusted with this sort of power and responsibility. We have a terrible record of allowing big corporations to screw up nature for their short-term financial gain, while we pay the long-term price.
American morality is sick if you're afraid of computer-generated characters with no clothes on.
In general in the US it seems nudity is considered terrible (its even the first thing you list) yet its OK to have tv and movies that graphically depict people being blown apart, hacked to death, etc. Like its OK to see the inside of a body smeared across your screen, but not to just look at the outside.
Its like your censors think violence is more natural than what god has given us. wierd.
The difference between a home-build PC and a PC from (say) Dell is little enough that the OS wouldn't be able to tell.
If there is a difference, its that you get more standard and higher quality components if you buy/build it yourself. Pre-build companies use the cheapest shit they can find (profit margin) and make stuff non-standard on purpose so you have to buy their overpriced servicing and replacements. On example is Dell's cross-wired power connector. All the same wires as a standard power-supply and same connector, just wired on different pins. Replace your Dell's blown PSU with an off-the-shelf one and its goodbye PC.
Actually I would expect a home-build PC to be more likely to run Vista properly than a pre-built PC, not less.
The only real power consumers have is the "I'll take my ball and go home defense" as you call it.
I'm not sure what you mean by ISP's accepting abusers, but dumping bad service companies isn't abusing them. Nor is expecting them to give you the download speed you paid for, regardless of its use, unless they made it clear they were throttling up-front before you signed.
How come they don't enforce judgments against large corporations in the US?
Surely the fact that the RIAA has to pay is not at question as a court of law has already determined they should, so forcing them to pay is not a matter for needing another judgement, just enforcement.
why should the defendant have to appeal for another judgement after the RIAA didn't pay, and why do the RIAA now have an opportunity to back out of an already decided case?
Here are 4 crazy things that companies do with their phone systems. I have experienced them all. whenever any of these happen to me I try hard to avoid ever doing business with them again.
1) Those voice menu things, especially if they have no paths to speak to a human, or make you key in some arcane reference number to speak to a human. Score bonus points if the human asks for it again even though you just know they've already got your records on their screen.
2) Getting some message that tells you the wait will be long as they are experiencing abnormal call volume yet that happens any/every time you call, even at 3am. Score bonus points for providing automated wait time estimates that are wildly inaccurate.
3) Hiring phone operators that can hardly speak English, or have a very heavy accent. Score bonus points if they are overseas themselves or have had their common sense surgically removed.
4) Assume its OK to keep customers waiting on hold for 20 minutes just to talk to someone. Score bonus points if the person you finally speak to just redirects you to another 20 minute wait to speak to someone else. Score mega points if any person you speak to redirects you back to an earlier person you have already been redirected by.
Yes people will get screwed if they represent themselves. No the system isn't fair, especially in the USA where lawyers cost a fortune. Thats the reason why people defend themselves. They basically have no choice because they have no money.
I really like Google's page simplicity. Its the main reason I use them. I hate pages that agregate all sorts of redundant stuff and advertising when you're just looking for a search page.
it allows for binary large objects (BLOBS) of undefined format so doesn't actually solve the problem at all. Its not hard to guess that Microsoft will just go on using their old closed proprietary formats, just as a BLOB encapsulated in a thin OOXML wrapper. OOXML used this way would be a quick solution to give a fake legal veneer of openness rather than a real attempt at an actually open format.
Just another selfish American taking the easy way out by claiming global warming isn't real rather than accepting any responsibility to change. No news here. Move on.
>> So a trace gas in the atmosphere is directly responsible for environmental damage?
Yes. It increases global warming. Oh wait, are you one of those die-hard Americans who refuse to believe that global warming is caused by human activity because it means you'd have to take responsibility to do something?
Who cares? The planet is not short of energy. The sun keeps giving us gazillions of jiggawatts for free. The important issue here is reducing CO2 to stop the environmental damage we're doing, not making travel cheaper to the end-user.
So what if females aren't as likely to do engineering as males? We don't need 'strategies for coping'. Thats ridiculous. Its equivalent to saying we need 'strategies for coping' because most of our workforce is black or some other equally insulting comment.
All that stuff about 'lockerroom mentality' is by and large bullcrap. In nearly 30 years of software development I've worked in many different software dev. shops in many differnet countries and never seen any place that isn't appropriately professional and even overly anal about gender equality. In fact in most cases actually females tend to get an easier ride because companies tend to err on the side of positive discrimination, and also geek men (including managers) are pushovers when faced with a female.
>> "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
Well gee... welcome to the business world. Having to work hard and deserve your place has nothing to do with gender. Women are now realising the grass isn't greener on the other side, and are now starting to realise what men have been silently putting up with for years.
how after all the many serious screw-ups and warnings that Diebold has had in the past couple of years, this report shows they still didn't do anything at all to improve the situation.
I often wondered how managers and CEO's that don't even have a clue get given companies to control. This level of obvious incompetence makes me wonder even more.
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I guess it comes down to who owns the phone.
If when you buy an iPhone you are actually buying the ownership to the phone, you can do what the hell you like to it as its yours.
but...
If Apple are just selling a licence to use the iPhone (kinda like what Microsoft do with Windows) rather than actually selling the ownership of the iPhone itself, then they could legally and justifiably require you not to unlock it as they still own it.
Why most Americans think that US law trumps other countries laws even inside those countries?
How would Americans feel if some Chinese company doing buisness in the US claimed chinese law should be upheld in the US?
Nice thought except in reality you (still) have to reinstall windows every 6 months or so otherwise tons of hardrive space just goes missing over time. This still seems to be the case, even with vista. Actually vista seems to be worse than XP for this. I installed vista in its own 20GB partition, originally there was 9 GB free. After 6 months there's now about 1GB free. Other than a few files on the desktop (maybe 200MB total ) I've put nothing on that drive.
I already bought it, then found out it did all this stuff. I wouldn't have bought the game in the first place had I have known.
There should be a law that says the game's outer packaging has to carry a big label if they do this sort of stuff.
>> citing the example of Black Family Television, which was forced to go online-only because cable operators refused to carry it,
This reads like an accusation of racism in the article, but maybe cable companies are trying to eliminate racism or at least not reinforce it by not having programming only for certain racial group stereotypes.
I guess spanish-language TV is different because it is (primarily) breaking a language barrier, not a stereotype barrier.
Failing that, so where is my White Family Channel? (Before anyone says it... I don't go along with the notion that every channel except BFT is for whites)
What are you talking about? why is it you incorrectly assume I don't care about freedom when all I care about is my kids wellbeing? What about _my_ freedom and _my kids_ freedom to live in a drug-free environment?
>> What do we achieve when we turn a promising young man caught with marijuana into a criminal,
He already turned himself into a criminal.
So why is it that Americans avoid taking responsibility for their own actions and instead want to blame everyone else? Your whole rant is a perfect example.
You are an asshat without a clue. I hope you have kids someday then you might understand.
Actually no I don't because I don't want your genes continuing.
I have a 2 year old son and I'm terrified for his wellbeing in this drug-riddled culture. Drug abuse is at epidemic proportions and is ubiquitous in all parts of society. Drug dealers are even targeting school areas.
I'm all for this technology and anything else we can do to remove this blight on our society. I hope this gets deployed everywhere as soon as possible and as far enough upstream as possible to identify individuals.
No you're not the only one.
This REALLY worries me too. Mankind is not ready to be trusted with this sort of power and responsibility. We have a terrible record of allowing big corporations to screw up nature for their short-term financial gain, while we pay the long-term price.
American morality is sick if you're afraid of computer-generated characters with no clothes on.
In general in the US it seems nudity is considered terrible (its even the first thing you list) yet its OK to have tv and movies that graphically depict people being blown apart, hacked to death, etc. Like its OK to see the inside of a body smeared across your screen, but not to just look at the outside.
Its like your censors think violence is more natural than what god has given us. wierd.
The difference between a home-build PC and a PC from (say) Dell is little enough that the OS wouldn't be able to tell.
If there is a difference, its that you get more standard and higher quality components if you buy/build it yourself. Pre-build companies use the cheapest shit they can find (profit margin) and make stuff non-standard on purpose so you have to buy their overpriced servicing and replacements. On example is Dell's cross-wired power connector. All the same wires as a standard power-supply and same connector, just wired on different pins. Replace your Dell's blown PSU with an off-the-shelf one and its goodbye PC.
Actually I would expect a home-build PC to be more likely to run Vista properly than a pre-built PC, not less.
The only real power consumers have is the "I'll take my ball and go home defense" as you call it.
I'm not sure what you mean by ISP's accepting abusers, but dumping bad service companies isn't abusing them. Nor is expecting them to give you the download speed you paid for, regardless of its use, unless they made it clear they were throttling up-front before you signed.
good example of what I was talking about. I don't want news headlines on my search page.
How come they don't enforce judgments against large corporations in the US?
Surely the fact that the RIAA has to pay is not at question as a court of law has already determined they should, so forcing them to pay is not a matter for needing another judgement, just enforcement.
why should the defendant have to appeal for another judgement after the RIAA didn't pay, and why do the RIAA now have an opportunity to back out of an already decided case?
Here are 4 crazy things that companies do with their phone systems. I have experienced them all. whenever any of these happen to me I try hard to avoid ever doing business with them again.
1) Those voice menu things, especially if they have no paths to speak to a human, or make you key in some arcane reference number to speak to a human. Score bonus points if the human asks for it again even though you just know they've already got your records on their screen.
2) Getting some message that tells you the wait will be long as they are experiencing abnormal call volume yet that happens any/every time you call, even at 3am. Score bonus points for providing automated wait time estimates that are wildly inaccurate.
3) Hiring phone operators that can hardly speak English, or have a very heavy accent. Score bonus points if they are overseas themselves or have had their common sense surgically removed.
4) Assume its OK to keep customers waiting on hold for 20 minutes just to talk to someone. Score bonus points if the person you finally speak to just redirects you to another 20 minute wait to speak to someone else. Score mega points if any person you speak to redirects you back to an earlier person you have already been redirected by.
Yes people will get screwed if they represent themselves. No the system isn't fair, especially in the USA where lawyers cost a fortune. Thats the reason why people defend themselves. They basically have no choice because they have no money.
I really like Google's page simplicity. Its the main reason I use them.
I hate pages that agregate all sorts of redundant stuff and advertising when you're just looking for a search page.
it allows for binary large objects (BLOBS) of undefined format so doesn't actually solve the problem at all.
Its not hard to guess that Microsoft will just go on using their old closed proprietary formats, just as a BLOB encapsulated in a thin OOXML wrapper.
OOXML used this way would be a quick solution to give a fake legal veneer of openness rather than a real attempt at an actually open format.
Just another selfish American taking the easy way out by claiming global warming isn't real rather than accepting any responsibility to change.
No news here. Move on.
>> So a trace gas in the atmosphere is directly responsible for environmental damage?
Yes. It increases global warming.
Oh wait, are you one of those die-hard Americans who refuse to believe that global warming is caused by human activity because it means you'd have to take responsibility to do something?
Doesn't this set a precendent for individuals to defend themselves against the RIAA too?
Who cares? The planet is not short of energy. The sun keeps giving us gazillions of jiggawatts for free.
The important issue here is reducing CO2 to stop the environmental damage we're doing, not making travel cheaper to the end-user.
Its because the chance of you just exploding is a lot higher.
So what if females aren't as likely to do engineering as males? We don't need 'strategies for coping'. Thats ridiculous. Its equivalent to saying we need 'strategies for coping' because most of our workforce is black or some other equally insulting comment.
... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
All that stuff about 'lockerroom mentality' is by and large bullcrap. In nearly 30 years of software development I've worked in many different software dev. shops in many differnet countries and never seen any place that isn't appropriately professional and even overly anal about gender equality. In fact in most cases actually females tend to get an easier ride because companies tend to err on the side of positive discrimination, and also geek men (including managers) are pushovers when faced with a female.
>> "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre
Well gee... welcome to the business world. Having to work hard and deserve your place has nothing to do with gender. Women are now realising the grass isn't greener on the other side, and are now starting to realise what men have been silently putting up with for years.
how after all the many serious screw-ups and warnings that Diebold has had in the past couple of years, this report shows they still didn't do anything at all to improve the situation.
I often wondered how managers and CEO's that don't even have a clue get given companies to control. This level of obvious incompetence makes me wonder even more.