Going back to the phone analogy, once people had a choice, the GPO (split in two - BT (comms) and the post office (postal)) actually started trying harder
It's not really the same, though. People have always had a choice. There was never any government-granted monopoly given to Microsoft and enforced by power of law. It's just worked out that the large majority of choosers all chose the same way. I can understand if you don't like their choices, or think they choose unwisely, but ultimately that's not your decision to make.
The problem with WMP isn't that it's bundled or that people really want to get rid of it. The problem is that it likes to grab file associations away from the programs you specified (not that wmp is the only one that does this). The OS is allowing WMP to dominate controls over file associations
I call total BS on that. I've had WinAMP do it, RealPlayer is obnoxious about it, even quicktime does it to my browser without me asking. But I've never had WMP take back file associations unless I explicity told it to. Even if I've told it to associate mp3 files with itself, if another app takes possession, it actually unchecks mp3 automatically and won't retake possession until I go back and check it again. It's the least selfish media player I've seen. (Caveat: this is the current version of WMP; older versions may have been less polite, I don't know.)
with only one major music store for the non-windows market, itunes
There is absolutely nobody to blame for this except Apple. They are the ones who refuse to license their DRM scheme. And since they have about as much market share in PMPs as Microsoft does in PC's, their "lock-in" has been effective.
What you say might make sense, if it were true. Internet Explorer isn't a library, it's an app. The library in question in MSHTML. You can certainly uninstall Internet Explorer (at least in XP going forward) just like Safari. You can't uninstall MSHTML, just like the Apple libraries. The same is true for WMP.
The reason is because it would violate a large number of important and realtively strong international treaties. If the EU is willing to nullify the IP protection of a U.S. entity in violation of treaty, then what is to stop the U.S. from nullifying EU-originated IP?
Actually, I do believe that they intend to design functionality such that you can plug in your ipod and play non-DRM'ed music on it. (As far as not playing iTMS songs, there's nobody to blame for that except Apple for refusing to license the codec.)
The power of government cannot be used to take sides.
Yet the ACLU supports discriminating against religions in many cases, when, but for their religious status, they would be treated like any other non-governmental organization. This is the part that I think goes too far. It's not establishment of a religion, for example, to provide a state scholarship won by merit to a student who plans to study theology, yet the ACLU supported the state in taking that student's scholarhip away for precisely that reason. (See Locke v. Davey).
The ACLU defends our right to religious freedom by attackign the government when it attempts to abuse it's powers to take sides on religion, when government power is used against us to support or suppress any religion or religious belief.
Okay, then please explain to me how the ACLU's amicus brief in Locke v. Davey, supporting the government's right to deny a scholarship granted solely on the basis of meritorious grades to a student specifically because he intended to study religion, upholds any of those principles. In other words, the ACLU stood up for the right of the government to specifically discriminate against individuals for their choice to study religion. What say you?
This whole business about "freedom from religion" being something the ACLU made up is classic propaganda from Fundamentalist Theocrats. I find it surprising that as an avowed agnostic you would buy into their reasoning.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about crap like suing the Boy Scouts and threating the city of Los Angeles to have a tiny cross removed from the city seal. In what conceivable way do these things impinge the rights of individuals to practice any religion or not as they please? The fact is they don't; it's petty, vindictive attacks on religion.
The ACLU also takes the position that the government is required to discriminate specifically against religious organizations in many cases; for example, in funding a school voucher program. I strongly disagree with this reading of the constitution. I believe it is erroneous, misguided, and quite damaging.
Actually, it's not even that, since the cooling simply comes from the fact that the water is colder than the air to begin with. It's just "blowing air across a cool surface". But with a siphon, to make it all science-y and energy efficient.
We can express our heritage, but in expressing religious heritage, we must acknowledge the beliefs of others; in the SCOTUS building, we can also find Hamarabi's code and other influences of early law accross different cultures.
Well, that sounds sensible, except that inconveniently, our heritage comes mainly from a particular time and place that happened to believe in particular religions.
Take, for example, this case. The Los Angeles county seal, containing various symbolic and historic pictographs, displayed, among other things, a cross to represent the historic fact of the importance of catholic missions in the county's history. The ACLU threatened to file suit to have the small cross declared unconstitutional and erased from the county seal.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that the ACLU is taking its position too far, to the point that it demands that governement understanding of history be sanitized in the name of protecting people from seeing a tiny cross on a historic county seal.
In response to the threat of litigation, the county erased the cross.
But trying to make me into a defacto Christian by passing Bible-based laws that have no logical backing is where I draw the line.
I see no legitimate rationale for discriminating against religious unprovable moral axioms, as opposed secular unprovable moral axioms. This is, I think, a trap that people who oppose - rightfully so - having religion forced upon them often fall into. If the laws you opposed are morally unsound, then argue with alternative moral principles. If they are morally sound but based on religious principles, you are comitting a genetic fallacy.
I don't understand. And before you flame me for being stupid, try to educate me. And if I still disagree, please feel free to flame away!
What I am referring to are noncriminal, nonjudicial punishments for free speech, like employees being fired or students being expelled from universities for violating campus speech codes, and civil lawsuits, usually involving harassment or workplace discrimination, which attach legal penalties to what ought to be protected speech. The university speech code issue particularly rankles me, but organizations like FIRE have stepped in to pick up the slack. (It also rankles me that the ACLU refuses to recognize the plain meaning of the Second Amendment, but the post I originally replied to acknowledged this, so I'll digress.)
As to you and the others who responded with vociferous disagreement, I want to make clear that I am not attacking the ACLU for standing up for an individual's right to freely exercise any religion or not, nor for standing against any state compulsion of religion. What I am referring to is the ACLU adopting the position that individuals ought to be protected from seeing or hearing anything related to religion coming from the state whatsoever, and more to the point, that the government must uniquely discriminate against religious entities for the provision of social service funds or grants. In particular, I thought the lawsuit against the BSA was unnecessary and counterproductive.
I think a lot of people have become disenthralled with the ACLU ever since they seem to have adopted "freedom from religion" as a civil right. This is beyond historical precedent and rather controversial. Also, for some reason, they seem loathe to defend free speech against administrative punishments and civil litigation.
Parent is right. Something is FUBAR with his system. Running an Office app should not be spawning an msworks.exe process. He should compare installs on a fresh system.
I'll bet you a beer this is being pitted against iPhoto/iLife.
I think that's highly unlikely. Vector manipulation, which is the fundamental strength of Acrylic, has very little utility for photos. There are no user-friendly tools for auto-adjustment or balance. And there is absolutely no "management" function whatsoever. MS may very well bundle such a utility, but this is not it.
iTunes isnt forced on anyone, nor is a iPod. there ARE other services out there, they just suck.
How is that any different than the fact that you didn't have to use internet explorer - you could always download Netscape instead. Be fair. Leveraging is leveraging, lock-in is lock-in, no matter whose logo is on the box. The only thing that prevents the playing of iTMS songs on any device by the iPod is Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really the same, though. People have always had a choice. There was never any government-granted monopoly given to Microsoft and enforced by power of law. It's just worked out that the large majority of choosers all chose the same way. I can understand if you don't like their choices, or think they choose unwisely, but ultimately that's not your decision to make.
I call total BS on that. I've had WinAMP do it, RealPlayer is obnoxious about it, even quicktime does it to my browser without me asking. But I've never had WMP take back file associations unless I explicity told it to. Even if I've told it to associate mp3 files with itself, if another app takes possession, it actually unchecks mp3 automatically and won't retake possession until I go back and check it again. It's the least selfish media player I've seen. (Caveat: this is the current version of WMP; older versions may have been less polite, I don't know.)
There is absolutely nobody to blame for this except Apple. They are the ones who refuse to license their DRM scheme. And since they have about as much market share in PMPs as Microsoft does in PC's, their "lock-in" has been effective.
What you say might make sense, if it were true. Internet Explorer isn't a library, it's an app. The library in question in MSHTML. You can certainly uninstall Internet Explorer (at least in XP going forward) just like Safari. You can't uninstall MSHTML, just like the Apple libraries. The same is true for WMP.
The reason is because it would violate a large number of important and realtively strong international treaties. If the EU is willing to nullify the IP protection of a U.S. entity in violation of treaty, then what is to stop the U.S. from nullifying EU-originated IP?
Actually, I do believe that they intend to design functionality such that you can plug in your ipod and play non-DRM'ed music on it. (As far as not playing iTMS songs, there's nobody to blame for that except Apple for refusing to license the codec.)
Yet the ACLU supports discriminating against religions in many cases, when, but for their religious status, they would be treated like any other non-governmental organization. This is the part that I think goes too far. It's not establishment of a religion, for example, to provide a state scholarship won by merit to a student who plans to study theology, yet the ACLU supported the state in taking that student's scholarhip away for precisely that reason. (See Locke v. Davey).
Okay, then please explain to me how the ACLU's amicus brief in Locke v. Davey, supporting the government's right to deny a scholarship granted solely on the basis of meritorious grades to a student specifically because he intended to study religion, upholds any of those principles. In other words, the ACLU stood up for the right of the government to specifically discriminate against individuals for their choice to study religion. What say you?
What are you talking about? It's not a shorthand recording device.
This is why I tried it but switched back. If I can't easily and one-handedly CTRL+C, CTRL+X, and CTRL+V, the layout simply won't work.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about crap like suing the Boy Scouts and threating the city of Los Angeles to have a tiny cross removed from the city seal. In what conceivable way do these things impinge the rights of individuals to practice any religion or not as they please? The fact is they don't; it's petty, vindictive attacks on religion.
The ACLU also takes the position that the government is required to discriminate specifically against religious organizations in many cases; for example, in funding a school voucher program. I strongly disagree with this reading of the constitution. I believe it is erroneous, misguided, and quite damaging.
Why is the functioning of human society an important goal?
Actually, it's not even that, since the cooling simply comes from the fact that the water is colder than the air to begin with. It's just "blowing air across a cool surface". But with a siphon, to make it all science-y and energy efficient.
Well, that sounds sensible, except that inconveniently, our heritage comes mainly from a particular time and place that happened to believe in particular religions.
Take, for example, this case. The Los Angeles county seal, containing various symbolic and historic pictographs, displayed, among other things, a cross to represent the historic fact of the importance of catholic missions in the county's history. The ACLU threatened to file suit to have the small cross declared unconstitutional and erased from the county seal.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that the ACLU is taking its position too far, to the point that it demands that governement understanding of history be sanitized in the name of protecting people from seeing a tiny cross on a historic county seal.
In response to the threat of litigation, the county erased the cross.
Check out some of the cases on http://www.thefire.org
I see no legitimate rationale for discriminating against religious unprovable moral axioms, as opposed secular unprovable moral axioms. This is, I think, a trap that people who oppose - rightfully so - having religion forced upon them often fall into. If the laws you opposed are morally unsound, then argue with alternative moral principles. If they are morally sound but based on religious principles, you are comitting a genetic fallacy.
What I am referring to are noncriminal, nonjudicial punishments for free speech, like employees being fired or students being expelled from universities for violating campus speech codes, and civil lawsuits, usually involving harassment or workplace discrimination, which attach legal penalties to what ought to be protected speech. The university speech code issue particularly rankles me, but organizations like FIRE have stepped in to pick up the slack. (It also rankles me that the ACLU refuses to recognize the plain meaning of the Second Amendment, but the post I originally replied to acknowledged this, so I'll digress.)
As to you and the others who responded with vociferous disagreement, I want to make clear that I am not attacking the ACLU for standing up for an individual's right to freely exercise any religion or not, nor for standing against any state compulsion of religion. What I am referring to is the ACLU adopting the position that individuals ought to be protected from seeing or hearing anything related to religion coming from the state whatsoever, and more to the point, that the government must uniquely discriminate against religious entities for the provision of social service funds or grants. In particular, I thought the lawsuit against the BSA was unnecessary and counterproductive.
P.S.: I'm an agnostic.
I think a lot of people have become disenthralled with the ACLU ever since they seem to have adopted "freedom from religion" as a civil right. This is beyond historical precedent and rather controversial. Also, for some reason, they seem loathe to defend free speech against administrative punishments and civil litigation.
But then Doom4 will require a hypercube of processors. May require some new fab techniques.
Parent is right. Something is FUBAR with his system. Running an Office app should not be spawning an msworks.exe process. He should compare installs on a fresh system.
http://thomas.loc.gov
It's a real shame more people don't know about this.
Screw WASD.
MOUSE1: Forward
MOUSE2: Backward
MOUSE3: Alt Fire
MOUSE4: Fire
MOUSE5: Reload
Q: Strafe Left
W: Strafe Right
I think that's highly unlikely. Vector manipulation, which is the fundamental strength of Acrylic, has very little utility for photos. There are no user-friendly tools for auto-adjustment or balance. And there is absolutely no "management" function whatsoever. MS may very well bundle such a utility, but this is not it.
Missed that little File-->Export menu option, did you?
How is that any different than the fact that you didn't have to use internet explorer - you could always download Netscape instead. Be fair. Leveraging is leveraging, lock-in is lock-in, no matter whose logo is on the box. The only thing that prevents the playing of iTMS songs on any device by the iPod is Apple.