Weep for the millions of human tragedies that must have taken place to lead so many to this extreme of loneliness and general patheticness
My uncle was a man of virture,
When he became quite old and sick, He sought respect and tried to teach me, His only heir, verte and weak. He had the fun, I had the sore, But grecious goodness! what a bore!
To sit by bedplace day and night, Not doing even step aside, And what a cheep and cunning thing To entertain the sad, To serve around, make his bed, To fetch the pills, to mourn and grim, To sigh outloud, think along: `God damn old man, why ain't you gone?'
Because if they disclosed the list it would become obvious that there is little or no child porn sites listed there. It just so happens that for half a decade already there is almost no child porn on the Web or Usenet (it's still on the Internet, but mostly on P2P, private FTPs, etc.). So the list either blocks questionable sites, which aren't child porn, or it blocks sites that are merely discussion boards, or it blocks sites that don't exist already. In any case, neither the list creators, nor BT are interested in anyone learning the truth, because that would undermine their excellent publicity ("BT is protecting our children").
The probability theory can easily explain this. In a sufficiently large pool of $1bn+ companies there are bound to be some that had good experience with Windows. Another factor is that when you don't do much with Windows it works fine.
But please, stop pretending that you don't have problems because you are smart, when the real reason is that you are an outlier. Windows machines don't die every day, you were just lucky to never have serious problems. Eventually there might be a virus outbreak, corrupt data and anything else. Of course, it's possible to minimize the bad consequences and I hope you did it, but you can't escape the fact that Windows machines tend to sometimes spontaneously go nuts.
I just had Win2k kill me a few HDD partitions a week ago for no apparent reason. Interestingly, Knoppix could read everything just fine, but Windows kept getting weirder and weirder, until it finally fucked up enough of my data that I decided to stop resisting.:) Of course, those Windows machines that are not used for much stuff usually work better, but I am fed up with that. After working with DOS/Windows for almost 20 years I personally tired of this - my next computers (and those in my family) will be Macs with a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine for fun/gaming.
This was stupid, but apparently mods chose to ignore this fact. You don't buy a P2 for a "missing critical" security sensitive computer. Where would you get a replacement CPU, ISA card, 150Watt power supply and other old stuff when your computer breaks? Not to mention the fact that many applications may be developed for the browser platform (which sadly means you need a relatively modern PC to run it and a stable OS) and many other factors.
Just the day before yesterday I saw a PC that was responsible for radiactive material video control (client workstation) on a Russian-Finnish border. Apparently, someone succumbed to the temptation to get an el cheapo brand of P2 (or was it Pentium?), and let me tell you - it wasn't pretty.
Low-end system is theoretically feasible, but in practice you face so many different requirements, problems and issues, that buying a standard modern medium-range PC is a smart decision, even if that means paying a few hundreds extra for each. The cost of commodity computer hardware is rarely the biggest factor in any organisation or business.
Full disclosure: this post was typed on Intel Pentium MMX 200MGhz computer with 192Mb of RAM (it costed about 1000$, AFAIR) using Opera 7.54 on Windows 98. It's sluggish, even though perfectly functional.
I didn't have time to RTFA, but I don't think anyone would use it - it was proven time and time again, that inventors and tinkerers are so ahead of their time.:(
The problem of smaller publishers generally is not that their works are pirated, but that they can't generate enough interest in them at all. There are a few examples of niche publishers driven out of business because their books/whatever are widely copied, but this is much rarer than small publishers going out of business, because they don't have the marketing muscle needed to push a product in competition with the big guys.
RTFA. The logistical problems consist of launching 7 tons of kevlar cable to the L1 point 250 000 km from Earth. I am not saying there are no technological obstacles to overcome, but compared with Cassini probe or Mars rovers this is a piece of cake. There are existing rockets with that launch capacity, it doesn't take long to get there, it's cheap, easy and we get to test the space elevator prototype. There is simply no reason not to do it in the next few years.
You are hopelessly naive. The real world is very different from what you may believe about it. There is so much written about the real world, start with reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for example.
It goes like this: US government, through organisations it openly controls like CIA and those it controls (to a large extent, not absolutely) indirectly (World Bank, WTO, etc.) pressures developing countries into opening the economy, privatizing state enterprises, allowing American corporations to operate there outside American laws and prevents the local governments from interfering too much.
Consider how the US government pressed Bolivian government through the World Bank to privatise even the water supplies and what that led to.
Most of the damage done to the world is done in the name of US interests and either by US directly, US corporate machine or US-sponsored puppets.
What you know is just the public consumption version of "How world economy works". This version was prepared by countless PR specialists serving their corporate masters (and corporate-controlled US government). This isn't paranoia on my part, it's just harsh reality. Read/watch/listen to anything created by "dissidents", open your mind, eyes and ears and try to dig a bit deeper into their concerns. I guarantee, when you learn the facts, you would no longer accept the standard-issue rose-colored glasses you were given.
Re:Elena was debunked a while ago.
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 1
I too have a preference for 100% absolute honesty. This is what somewhat puts me off of various documentary films (including the most popular ones by a certain fat filmmaker). I may like the author, I may agree with his main point, share his feelings, but when I see them twist the truth, that's annoying.
But at the same time I realise that they have the right to present a story in the way the like. In some cases it's unethical, but in case of Elena I don't think it's her fault. It would be nice to live in a world, where everyone holds the truth in highest regard, but we don't live in such a world.
P.S. Not to mention the fact that it's natural to forget some things and distort the picture - all humans do it, because it's how our brains work. It is not impossible (though may be unlikely) that when Elena made the gallery, she believed she rode the motorcycle in some of the areas she filmed.
The author of that article, Andrey Illarionov, is hardly a trusted source. He doesn't give a shit about truth, only about his interests (and interests of those who pay him).
He was accused (although no proof was found) in getting a 3 million USD bribe from Exxon (some evidence that 240000$ was paid to him was found, though).
The head of the Institute for Energy Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yury Israel (who actually opposes Kyoto protocol) flatly accuses Illarionov of lying through his teeth.
So you can't trust that bastard, even when FT prints his ramblings. He has an agenda and it has nothing to do with reality.
the fact that corporations make money also means that most people in the country are making money
The problem is that this isn't true. Salaries (in real terms) were not growing in the past decades, while corporate profits were. What fool would give the money to the workers? Capitalism is not about it, it's about exploitation. That's why corporations choose to pay 3 cents/hour to workers abroad when they can manage it. They don't want to share the wealth with workers and they never do, unless they have no other choice.
The principle of "good for corporations - good for people" is blatantly wrong. Watch The Corporation or read the book, or something similar to counteract the traditional corporate sponsored PR.
That's bullshit. The Congress (if motivated by the pres administration sufficiently strongly) can easily pass a law, obliging US companies to enforce strict labour and environmental standards in their subsidiaries and subcontractors abroad. That would immediately: 1) Stop sweatshops, turning them from vehicles of exploitation into seeds of economic growth. 2) Make it possible for US companies to compete by reducing (though not diminishing) the cost advantage of undeveloped countries. 3) Solve a bunch of environmental problems. 4) Create loads of good PR for the USA.
Why isn't this done? Because corporations enjoy moving jobs overseas to earn bigger profits. And at the same time they enjoy polluting the USA (and the world) to earn bigger profits. Both positions are consistent with bigger profits for corporations.
Faked is a wrong term. She just made a personal photo gallery for friends, she didn't submit the/. story for publicity. So she has absolutely no responsibility for being factual, just like I don't have that for my LJ diary. I mean, I can write there about my fantasies of having sex with Natalie Portman without adding disclaimers that "this is a work of fiction". I can even intersperse these stories with real facts. There would be nothing wrong with it, and if that diary was featured on Slashdot, I would not be responsible for people thinking it is 100% true. And I would not deserve the "liar" label for that.
Internet doesn't have a single standard for integrity, truthfulness and lack of fantasies. NEWS.BBC.CO.UK has one standard for truthfulness, WIKIPEDIA.ORG has another, SLASHDOT.ORG yet another, THEONION.COM has another standard too and my personal blog (if I had one) would have yet another. And there is nothing wrong with that, it's not like The Onion is somehow "worse" than The Economist. So it is silly to approach Elena's story with the same standards you have for Reuters. You don't have the right to be upset about anything other than your own gullibility.
Re:Elena was debunked a while ago.
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
She was not a journalist writing for a news publication. She had absolutely no responsibility to present facts and facts only. This is Internet, I can write about my dreams, about my aspirations, fantasies, etc. If I wanted, I could make a photo-gallery of me making a trip to the center of the Earth without any sort of disclaimers and that would not be unethical, that would not be misleading people. You are responsible for judging the validity of the content on the Net, not the author.
And note that Elena didn't ask for this publicity when the published the photos. It was just a little personal photo gallery for friends (and fellow motorcycle riders), nothing more. I've been in Berlin a few weeks ago and took some photos. My friends took some photos too. If I copy one of their pics (of a building or a monument that I didn't have a chance to photograph) and include it in my album, which I then post online for my other friends and relatives, would that be unethical? Would that be misleading? Now if that album was picked up by Slashdot and major media outlets, would it be right to call me a fake and a liar? I don't think so.
A particularly nice movie: The Corporation. Nothing groundbreaking, but that was not the point. The point was to tell the story of how corporations came to being and why they are so fucking heartless. It includes interviews with people both inside and outside the corporate world. If you never thought about why the corporations occupy the place in your world that they now do, this films could be an eye-opener. Below are the eDonkey links for the film (3 episodes, different encodings), but other networks may have them as well.
Personally with every new day I realise how the history comes back 100 years ago in some respects... The struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist opressors did not end, despite what you may have been told. It is inevitable, let's just hope we all do better this time.
Ok, here is a question from me, a Russian, to my American friends.
While not calling this undisputed evidence, this is a pretty fucking good evidence (as good as you can get without a paper trail) that there was not just "election fraud", but that the very basis of your society was fucking hijacked. That Bush guy basically showed that he doesn't give a flying fuck about what you guys, the so called "people", think. He showed that he is the boss, and you are his bitches. That this is his country, and that he will do what he wants. It doesn't matter right now whether he was the evil genius, or some other guys standing behind him, the puppeteers, so to speak, who cares...
What matters is that the line has been crossed. You can't just say "Oh, I hope, it will get better", or "I don't think we are as bad as Nazi Germany yet", or "They have worse elections in Uzbekistan" or any other feel-good shit excuses.
People in other countries learned to stand for their rights, though they don't do it very well. There are people like that in the US too, you managed to achieve some great successes in the past and achieve some small victories every day. But it is suddenly not enough.
This is the point of no return. When you destroy the main check you have - the ability to decide that the president doesn't do his job well, then you will gradually lose everything else. It won't happen overnight, but it's the road with no return - democracy placed Hitler at the helm, but democracy could not remove him in 1938 even if people wanted. You can't easily take your freedoms back. Especially now, when the governments are so much more powerful than in the past and the oppression mechanisms are so strong.
Now you have only one choice, the one that guy in Guardian wrote about, the one which is obvious to many people, but which is illegal to speak about. You need to oust the bastard from the White House and since there is no other way, you must do it by force. Kill the fucker, prove that the weapons you still have are not useless and that it's still you, the people, who have the power.
Don't think that it may change to the better. Don't hold illusions that whatever Bush does till 2008 will only make it easier for the Democrats to win. Don't be idiots, it doesn't work this way. In 15 years my own country changed from the one of two world superpowers, with the world's best science, with some of the best free education, with free universal health care, with everything that makes quality of life better, albeit without McDonalds restaurants, without Coca-Cola and without Hollywood movies, into a country, which is as fucking pathetic as it gets. With economy still 30% down from 1989, with tens of millions of people living below poverty line, with science funded less every year, with disfunctional army, with destroyed education, healthcare and social security, with little international influence and a bunch of theives in charge of this giant bordello. That's what you get for being stupid. Don't magically expect things to work differently just because you live in America.
So the question - what you gonna do now? Will anything change? Do you have the power to do anything, other than talk about how you want things to be better? Can you march with a million people to Washington and get the traitor out of the White House? Can you still get rid of him? Or do you value your illusions "that the system works" more?
Both problems you cite are very significant. The rapid transit systems are feasible both technically and economically, but they require a strong commitment, which, sadly, is extremely difficult to get, as you need to persuade people, who are generally backwards, selfish and illiterate, to support the idea.
We can chose between a revolutionary (make the system, tax the cars heavily and force everyone to enjoy this) and evolutionary (build it gradually and hope people will switch) approaches. Sadly, evolutionary path is much more difficult technically - you need to solve much more problems if you want to make a single line of such transport preferable to people, many of whom already have cars, you need to integrate it with the existing infrastructure, etc. A lot of these problems would not be here if we could just abandon (or severely restrict) the old system and just build this new, good one. But this option won't get popular support.
The truth is that they had test versions of Steam before the code leak. Sadly, this is just a typical case when every individual decision makes sense, but in the end they produce an abomination. Let's cut off the middleman - makes sense. Let's allow gamers to download the games instead of going to the store - makes sense. We need to encrypt the files - make sense. The users should authorise the copy via Internet - makes sense. We should require Steam installation so that all our customers (even those who bought a box) have a chance to learn what a great experience it is (and we can make more money selling to them directly in the future) - makes sense. We should display pop-ups with ads for our new products using Steam - makes sense.
Yes, the farther we get, the more questionable the morals of these decisions become, but they still are mostly logical. Sadly, the major mistake Valve made was actually technical - not having servers to cope with the demand during the first few days. A lot of people here (as you experienced firsthand) are willing to cut Valve A LOT of slack in this and if nobody had obvious and immediate problems with Steam like you did, noone would complain (except people who are aware and afraid of the Steam -> DRM -> Right to Read slippery slope).
It's terribly depressing.:( The saddest thing is that we forget it's actually possible to have a healthy society, where programmers work 40 hours a week, where their games have no annoying copy-restriction, where people respect the creative work of others and are willing to voluntarily reward them, where gamers have fun with creative and innovative new games... I don't realise why this should be a struggle, a war between US and THEM, why we must have the conflict.:(
The interesting thing is that then it was considered an extraordinary accomplishment, a heroic act, but nowadays it's just the matter of persuading your insurance company to foot the bill. Wonders of progress.
There is a reason why noone asks you to design these things. If the stations are a mile apart, an average hike would be 0.8 miles and the maximum would be 1.41 miles. This is for a rectangular grid with uniform distribution over area. If we assume the starting and ending points are randomly distributed over roads, that would be an average of 0.5 mile hike and a max of 1 mile hike.:)
From their frontpage: "an area-wide feeder to light rail or buses". In big cities this would collect people to subway/light rail/bus/whatever systems, then ship them in bulk to their destination and use another SkyWebExpress system to deliver them more precisely to their target. If ticket systems are integrated and wait times are minimized, this can work in cities of arbitrary size.
Many people don't have the brains to figure it out. That's why they buy SUVs that you can fit 7+ people in. Just in case. Like that Chukcha, who placed two glasses on the bedside table - one with water and one without. Why do they need it, people asked? Just in case I want to drink at night. Yeah, but why the empty glass? Just in case I don't.
It would make a nice project to set up an environment (a student group, an online forum, etc.) where people would be able to patent/copyright everything just by pointing at it or by claiming it as their own. After the first such claim is made, others must honor it and either not use the patented/copyrighted object, or license it (or enter a cross-licensing agreement). It would be really funny to see what would happen after a few days, when the air is copyrighted, breating is patented, the process of patenting is patented and most words are either trademarked or copyrighted. It should provide some great insight into the distopian future of technology (in the worst scenario) to look at how these people would manage (or would NOT manage) to function in such environment.
As a matter of fact, they are perfectly legal. The reason for this is that copyright law differs in different countries. Here in Russia there is an "anti-RIAA". This anti-RIAA is ROMS - "Russian society for multimedia and digital networks". By law they hold certain rights to all works produced and sold in Russia, which rights can be licensed from them for a very modest fee (determined by law and they can't refuse, basically).
Legal info on AllofMP3 and MP3Search says just that - the music is licensed according to Russian laws from copyright holders. It is perfectly legal as long as you have the right to download content from other countries. IANAL, but I think it is legal - just as legal as ordering a movie abroad, which was not released in the USA (or even after it was released in the USA). There might be some export legislation, but in general I think it is legal.
Another interesting fact is that all content produced (anywhere) before 1973 is public domain in Russia. So if you were to set up a free (or for a nominal fee to cover the bandwidth) download service in Russia with Disney movies made before 1973, you would manage to really piss off Disney, but they won't be able to do anything.:) Unfortunately, the current trend for "harmonisation" and forcing every country to agree to WTO rules or "fuck off and die" means that in the future there will be less such freedom.:( But while it lasts, enjoy it!
P.S. FUD spread by some people that these Russian servers would steal your credit card numbers and do other scary stuff is completely unfounded (like all good FUD should be).
Slashdot Mirror
Because if they disclosed the list it would become obvious that there is little or no child porn sites listed there. It just so happens that for half a decade already there is almost no child porn on the Web or Usenet (it's still on the Internet, but mostly on P2P, private FTPs, etc.). So the list either blocks questionable sites, which aren't child porn, or it blocks sites that are merely discussion boards, or it blocks sites that don't exist already. In any case, neither the list creators, nor BT are interested in anyone learning the truth, because that would undermine their excellent publicity ("BT is protecting our children").
The probability theory can easily explain this. In a sufficiently large pool of $1bn+ companies there are bound to be some that had good experience with Windows. Another factor is that when you don't do much with Windows it works fine.
:) Of course, those Windows machines that are not used for much stuff usually work better, but I am fed up with that. After working with DOS/Windows for almost 20 years I personally tired of this - my next computers (and those in my family) will be Macs with a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine for fun/gaming.
But please, stop pretending that you don't have problems because you are smart, when the real reason is that you are an outlier. Windows machines don't die every day, you were just lucky to never have serious problems. Eventually there might be a virus outbreak, corrupt data and anything else. Of course, it's possible to minimize the bad consequences and I hope you did it, but you can't escape the fact that Windows machines tend to sometimes spontaneously go nuts.
I just had Win2k kill me a few HDD partitions a week ago for no apparent reason. Interestingly, Knoppix could read everything just fine, but Windows kept getting weirder and weirder, until it finally fucked up enough of my data that I decided to stop resisting.
This was stupid, but apparently mods chose to ignore this fact. You don't buy a P2 for a "missing critical" security sensitive computer. Where would you get a replacement CPU, ISA card, 150Watt power supply and other old stuff when your computer breaks? Not to mention the fact that many applications may be developed for the browser platform (which sadly means you need a relatively modern PC to run it and a stable OS) and many other factors.
Just the day before yesterday I saw a PC that was responsible for radiactive material video control (client workstation) on a Russian-Finnish border. Apparently, someone succumbed to the temptation to get an el cheapo brand of P2 (or was it Pentium?), and let me tell you - it wasn't pretty.
Low-end system is theoretically feasible, but in practice you face so many different requirements, problems and issues, that buying a standard modern medium-range PC is a smart decision, even if that means paying a few hundreds extra for each. The cost of commodity computer hardware is rarely the biggest factor in any organisation or business.
Full disclosure: this post was typed on Intel Pentium MMX 200MGhz computer with 192Mb of RAM (it costed about 1000$, AFAIR) using Opera 7.54 on Windows 98. It's sluggish, even though perfectly functional.
Apparently your browser wasn't using it to detect corruption in the word "has". :)
I didn't have time to RTFA, but I don't think anyone would use it - it was proven time and time again, that inventors and tinkerers are so ahead of their time. :(
The problem of smaller publishers generally is not that their works are pirated, but that they can't generate enough interest in them at all. There are a few examples of niche publishers driven out of business because their books/whatever are widely copied, but this is much rarer than small publishers going out of business, because they don't have the marketing muscle needed to push a product in competition with the big guys.
RTFA. The logistical problems consist of launching 7 tons of kevlar cable to the L1 point 250 000 km from Earth. I am not saying there are no technological obstacles to overcome, but compared with Cassini probe or Mars rovers this is a piece of cake. There are existing rockets with that launch capacity, it doesn't take long to get there, it's cheap, easy and we get to test the space elevator prototype. There is simply no reason not to do it in the next few years.
You are hopelessly naive. The real world is very different from what you may believe about it. There is so much written about the real world, start with reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for example.
It goes like this: US government, through organisations it openly controls like CIA and those it controls (to a large extent, not absolutely) indirectly (World Bank, WTO, etc.) pressures developing countries into opening the economy, privatizing state enterprises, allowing American corporations to operate there outside American laws and prevents the local governments from interfering too much.
Consider how the US government pressed Bolivian government through the World Bank to privatise even the water supplies and what that led to.
Most of the damage done to the world is done in the name of US interests and either by US directly, US corporate machine or US-sponsored puppets.
What you know is just the public consumption version of "How world economy works". This version was prepared by countless PR specialists serving their corporate masters (and corporate-controlled US government). This isn't paranoia on my part, it's just harsh reality. Read/watch/listen to anything created by "dissidents", open your mind, eyes and ears and try to dig a bit deeper into their concerns. I guarantee, when you learn the facts, you would no longer accept the standard-issue rose-colored glasses you were given.
I too have a preference for 100% absolute honesty. This is what somewhat puts me off of various documentary films (including the most popular ones by a certain fat filmmaker). I may like the author, I may agree with his main point, share his feelings, but when I see them twist the truth, that's annoying.
But at the same time I realise that they have the right to present a story in the way the like. In some cases it's unethical, but in case of Elena I don't think it's her fault. It would be nice to live in a world, where everyone holds the truth in highest regard, but we don't live in such a world.
P.S. Not to mention the fact that it's natural to forget some things and distort the picture - all humans do it, because it's how our brains work. It is not impossible (though may be unlikely) that when Elena made the gallery, she believed she rode the motorcycle in some of the areas she filmed.
The author of that article, Andrey Illarionov, is hardly a trusted source. He doesn't give a shit about truth, only about his interests (and interests of those who pay him).
He was accused (although no proof was found) in getting a 3 million USD bribe from Exxon (some evidence that 240000$ was paid to him was found, though).
The head of the Institute for Energy Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yury Israel (who actually opposes Kyoto protocol) flatly accuses Illarionov of lying through his teeth.
So you can't trust that bastard, even when FT prints his ramblings. He has an agenda and it has nothing to do with reality.
the fact that corporations make money also means that most people in the country are making money
The problem is that this isn't true. Salaries (in real terms) were not growing in the past decades, while corporate profits were. What fool would give the money to the workers? Capitalism is not about it, it's about exploitation. That's why corporations choose to pay 3 cents/hour to workers abroad when they can manage it. They don't want to share the wealth with workers and they never do, unless they have no other choice.
The principle of "good for corporations - good for people" is blatantly wrong. Watch The Corporation or read the book, or something similar to counteract the traditional corporate sponsored PR.
That's bullshit. The Congress (if motivated by the pres administration sufficiently strongly) can easily pass a law, obliging US companies to enforce strict labour and environmental standards in their subsidiaries and subcontractors abroad. That would immediately:
1) Stop sweatshops, turning them from vehicles of exploitation into seeds of economic growth.
2) Make it possible for US companies to compete by reducing (though not diminishing) the cost advantage of undeveloped countries.
3) Solve a bunch of environmental problems.
4) Create loads of good PR for the USA.
Why isn't this done? Because corporations enjoy moving jobs overseas to earn bigger profits. And at the same time they enjoy polluting the USA (and the world) to earn bigger profits. Both positions are consistent with bigger profits for corporations.
Faked is a wrong term. She just made a personal photo gallery for friends, she didn't submit the /. story for publicity. So she has absolutely no responsibility for being factual, just like I don't have that for my LJ diary. I mean, I can write there about my fantasies of having sex with Natalie Portman without adding disclaimers that "this is a work of fiction". I can even intersperse these stories with real facts. There would be nothing wrong with it, and if that diary was featured on Slashdot, I would not be responsible for people thinking it is 100% true. And I would not deserve the "liar" label for that.
Internet doesn't have a single standard for integrity, truthfulness and lack of fantasies. NEWS.BBC.CO.UK has one standard for truthfulness, WIKIPEDIA.ORG has another, SLASHDOT.ORG yet another, THEONION.COM has another standard too and my personal blog (if I had one) would have yet another. And there is nothing wrong with that, it's not like The Onion is somehow "worse" than The Economist. So it is silly to approach Elena's story with the same standards you have for Reuters. You don't have the right to be upset about anything other than your own gullibility.
She was not a journalist writing for a news publication. She had absolutely no responsibility to present facts and facts only. This is Internet, I can write about my dreams, about my aspirations, fantasies, etc. If I wanted, I could make a photo-gallery of me making a trip to the center of the Earth without any sort of disclaimers and that would not be unethical, that would not be misleading people. You are responsible for judging the validity of the content on the Net, not the author.
And note that Elena didn't ask for this publicity when the published the photos. It was just a little personal photo gallery for friends (and fellow motorcycle riders), nothing more. I've been in Berlin a few weeks ago and took some photos. My friends took some photos too. If I copy one of their pics (of a building or a monument that I didn't have a chance to photograph) and include it in my album, which I then post online for my other friends and relatives, would that be unethical? Would that be misleading? Now if that album was picked up by Slashdot and major media outlets, would it be right to call me a fake and a liar? I don't think so.
A particularly nice movie: The Corporation. Nothing groundbreaking, but that was not the point. The point was to tell the story of how corporations came to being and why they are so fucking heartless. It includes interviews with people both inside and outside the corporate world. If you never thought about why the corporations occupy the place in your world that they now do, this films could be an eye-opener. Below are the eDonkey links for the film (3 episodes, different encodings), but other networks may have them as well.
4 52 |61E26051E883C07D83646F94EA51DD27|/
3 46 |A0779FC2FCB779170A0D731080FE05A0|/
4 24 |512F7E9F820E44F3DE13FF9D1470D9D9|/
6 03 |B3AEB0657C12ADF02F65A4BBDB490A21|/
4 74 |87C48DC6F846ACDDFFF3A1C634A67555|/
1 98 |4DD8040BC28C0E6AAFC8C9556240E4E5|/
3 90 |BEB7F1F625126E8BCB53A6FC0621BB12|/
6 22 |8C19BFCC0FC0871EB087B908AE19D818|/
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20Cd1.mpg|614170
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20Cd2.avi|516856
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e1.1.mp4|97272
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e1.2.mp4|56726
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e2.1.mp4|97412
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e2.2.mp4|56447
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e3.1.mp4|97394
ed2k://|file|The%20Corporation%20e3.2.mp4|60489
Personally with every new day I realise how the history comes back 100 years ago in some respects... The struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist opressors did not end, despite what you may have been told. It is inevitable, let's just hope we all do better this time.
Ok, here is a question from me, a Russian, to my American friends.
While not calling this undisputed evidence, this is a pretty fucking good evidence (as good as you can get without a paper trail) that there was not just "election fraud", but that the very basis of your society was fucking hijacked. That Bush guy basically showed that he doesn't give a flying fuck about what you guys, the so called "people", think. He showed that he is the boss, and you are his bitches. That this is his country, and that he will do what he wants. It doesn't matter right now whether he was the evil genius, or some other guys standing behind him, the puppeteers, so to speak, who cares...
What matters is that the line has been crossed. You can't just say "Oh, I hope, it will get better", or "I don't think we are as bad as Nazi Germany yet", or "They have worse elections in Uzbekistan" or any other feel-good shit excuses.
People in other countries learned to stand for their rights, though they don't do it very well. There are people like that in the US too, you managed to achieve some great successes in the past and achieve some small victories every day. But it is suddenly not enough.
This is the point of no return. When you destroy the main check you have - the ability to decide that the president doesn't do his job well, then you will gradually lose everything else. It won't happen overnight, but it's the road with no return - democracy placed Hitler at the helm, but democracy could not remove him in 1938 even if people wanted. You can't easily take your freedoms back. Especially now, when the governments are so much more powerful than in the past and the oppression mechanisms are so strong.
Now you have only one choice, the one that guy in Guardian wrote about, the one which is obvious to many people, but which is illegal to speak about. You need to oust the bastard from the White House and since there is no other way, you must do it by force. Kill the fucker, prove that the weapons you still have are not useless and that it's still you, the people, who have the power.
Don't think that it may change to the better. Don't hold illusions that whatever Bush does till 2008 will only make it easier for the Democrats to win. Don't be idiots, it doesn't work this way. In 15 years my own country changed from the one of two world superpowers, with the world's best science, with some of the best free education, with free universal health care, with everything that makes quality of life better, albeit without McDonalds restaurants, without Coca-Cola and without Hollywood movies, into a country, which is as fucking pathetic as it gets. With economy still 30% down from 1989, with tens of millions of people living below poverty line, with science funded less every year, with disfunctional army, with destroyed education, healthcare and social security, with little international influence and a bunch of theives in charge of this giant bordello. That's what you get for being stupid. Don't magically expect things to work differently just because you live in America.
So the question - what you gonna do now? Will anything change? Do you have the power to do anything, other than talk about how you want things to be better? Can you march with a million people to Washington and get the traitor out of the White House? Can you still get rid of him? Or do you value your illusions "that the system works" more?
Both problems you cite are very significant. The rapid transit systems are feasible both technically and economically, but they require a strong commitment, which, sadly, is extremely difficult to get, as you need to persuade people, who are generally backwards, selfish and illiterate, to support the idea.
We can chose between a revolutionary (make the system, tax the cars heavily and force everyone to enjoy this) and evolutionary (build it gradually and hope people will switch) approaches. Sadly, evolutionary path is much more difficult technically - you need to solve much more problems if you want to make a single line of such transport preferable to people, many of whom already have cars, you need to integrate it with the existing infrastructure, etc. A lot of these problems would not be here if we could just abandon (or severely restrict) the old system and just build this new, good one. But this option won't get popular support.
The truth is that they had test versions of Steam before the code leak. Sadly, this is just a typical case when every individual decision makes sense, but in the end they produce an abomination. Let's cut off the middleman - makes sense. Let's allow gamers to download the games instead of going to the store - makes sense. We need to encrypt the files - make sense. The users should authorise the copy via Internet - makes sense. We should require Steam installation so that all our customers (even those who bought a box) have a chance to learn what a great experience it is (and we can make more money selling to them directly in the future) - makes sense. We should display pop-ups with ads for our new products using Steam - makes sense.
:( The saddest thing is that we forget it's actually possible to have a healthy society, where programmers work 40 hours a week, where their games have no annoying copy-restriction, where people respect the creative work of others and are willing to voluntarily reward them, where gamers have fun with creative and innovative new games... I don't realise why this should be a struggle, a war between US and THEM, why we must have the conflict. :(
Yes, the farther we get, the more questionable the morals of these decisions become, but they still are mostly logical. Sadly, the major mistake Valve made was actually technical - not having servers to cope with the demand during the first few days. A lot of people here (as you experienced firsthand) are willing to cut Valve A LOT of slack in this and if nobody had obvious and immediate problems with Steam like you did, noone would complain (except people who are aware and afraid of the Steam -> DRM -> Right to Read slippery slope).
It's terribly depressing.
The interesting thing is that then it was considered an extraordinary accomplishment, a heroic act, but nowadays it's just the matter of persuading your insurance company to foot the bill. Wonders of progress.
There is a reason why noone asks you to design these things. If the stations are a mile apart, an average hike would be 0.8 miles and the maximum would be 1.41 miles. This is for a rectangular grid with uniform distribution over area. If we assume the starting and ending points are randomly distributed over roads, that would be an average of 0.5 mile hike and a max of 1 mile hike. :)
From their frontpage: "an area-wide feeder to light rail or buses". In big cities this would collect people to subway/light rail/bus/whatever systems, then ship them in bulk to their destination and use another SkyWebExpress system to deliver them more precisely to their target. If ticket systems are integrated and wait times are minimized, this can work in cities of arbitrary size.
Many people don't have the brains to figure it out. That's why they buy SUVs that you can fit 7+ people in. Just in case. Like that Chukcha, who placed two glasses on the bedside table - one with water and one without. Why do they need it, people asked? Just in case I want to drink at night. Yeah, but why the empty glass? Just in case I don't.
It would make a nice project to set up an environment (a student group, an online forum, etc.) where people would be able to patent/copyright everything just by pointing at it or by claiming it as their own. After the first such claim is made, others must honor it and either not use the patented/copyrighted object, or license it (or enter a cross-licensing agreement). It would be really funny to see what would happen after a few days, when the air is copyrighted, breating is patented, the process of patenting is patented and most words are either trademarked or copyrighted. It should provide some great insight into the distopian future of technology (in the worst scenario) to look at how these people would manage (or would NOT manage) to function in such environment.
As a matter of fact, they are perfectly legal. The reason for this is that copyright law differs in different countries. Here in Russia there is an "anti-RIAA". This anti-RIAA is ROMS - "Russian society for multimedia and digital networks". By law they hold certain rights to all works produced and sold in Russia, which rights can be licensed from them for a very modest fee (determined by law and they can't refuse, basically).
:) Unfortunately, the current trend for "harmonisation" and forcing every country to agree to WTO rules or "fuck off and die" means that in the future there will be less such freedom. :( But while it lasts, enjoy it!
Legal info on AllofMP3 and MP3Search says just that - the music is licensed according to Russian laws from copyright holders. It is perfectly legal as long as you have the right to download content from other countries. IANAL, but I think it is legal - just as legal as ordering a movie abroad, which was not released in the USA (or even after it was released in the USA). There might be some export legislation, but in general I think it is legal.
Another interesting fact is that all content produced (anywhere) before 1973 is public domain in Russia. So if you were to set up a free (or for a nominal fee to cover the bandwidth) download service in Russia with Disney movies made before 1973, you would manage to really piss off Disney, but they won't be able to do anything.
P.S. FUD spread by some people that these Russian servers would steal your credit card numbers and do other scary stuff is completely unfounded (like all good FUD should be).