Not unusual. In our house, we don't watch broadcast or pay TV anymore. What we do watch is 3 programs we enjoy that we download episodes of. But lately, we have been finding we don't have time to watch these three programs......as we are now too busy doing the million other things that one can do with one's time when the TV isn't on.
It's been madeclear to us that it's not our culture anymore.....so - on an emotional level - we now feel we have no need for it and no "skin" in it.
It's not ours.
I have a pre-pay GSM phone (Nokia 1100). I simply took the SIM out of the previous cheap GSM phone, popped it into the new (cheap) one and carried on without any further muss nor fuss.
I had also been told the choice of phone in the US was different due to the US military having long ago reserved the frequencies that GSM uses everywhere else. So my GSM phone from New Zealand or almost any other country would be illegal in the US.
I used to have an account-based GSM phone and travelled all over the Asia-Pacific region. I'd get off an airplane and pick one of the local GSM providers and just start calling. If I wanted to go to the US, GSM coverage was pretty much the worst anywhere......and I needed a phone that could operate on the different frequencies used in the US. This was a few years ago now......but it was one more area where the US lagged behind the rest of the world.
Another is making the person who receives the call pay. The norm in the rest of the world is caller pays. Receiver pays nothing. As a consequence, US cell phone uptake lagged the explosive growth everywhere else.
OS/2 was the handheld calculator when everyone was using the Windows 3.11/9x abacus.
IBM dropping it was the only reason I moved to Linux.
OS/2 was the functional equivalent of WinXP for the 386/486 with 16MB of RAM......6 years before Microsoft managed it.
If OSes survived on meritand ISVs and end-users knew what GOOD stuff was, OS/2 woulda been king.
If you look into the detail of how the United States has implemented e-voting and compare that to the detail of how countries like Venezuela and India have done it, there can be only one conclusion: e-voting in the United States is designed to be cheater-friendly.
Yet the Bush Admininstration has had the utter cheek to accuse Venezuela of running shonky elections......when the reality is that cheating under the e-voting system there would be all but impossible.
The same can certainly NOT be said about the United States where unverified, last-minute, "patches" to voting systems are a common occurence, the source code is closed-source and there is no paper trail to verify anything.
Kerry looking good next to Bush isn't "propaganda".
Bush is a serial liar who has killed tens of thousands of people, maimed an even larger number and has no intention of stopping.
He clearly has no regard whatever for the US Constitution - his oath of office notwithstanding.
If Kerry looks better than Bush on Wikipedia, it likely isn't due to "propaganda".
No...I'm not an American....which is why I can see these two men and what they do very clearly.
In NZ, schools get MS software for free and teachers can legaly use free copies at home on their own PCs.
This is to keep Open Source out of schools and it has been very effective at doing that. I know of two schools where the local IT person - who only knows Windows - completely rules out any use of Linux, declaring it to be "too hard" for kids to use.
My daughter, who has been using Linux sinsce she was 4, stood up in her class and openly disagreed with him. He wasn't interested in the truth was what she took away from the discussion.
Well...he did say in 5-6 years....so that must be about the time the fast solid state storage is expected to be a lot cheaper.
Five to 6 years ago most PCs being sold were under 1GHz........
Nuke plants may be the way some countries have to go, but many countries have other, cheaper and more effective options. Nuke plants take years to build and typically cost billions of dollars. Storing the waste for millennia is another cost. Decommissioning is yet another. All huge.
Wind power starts with the spin of the first turbine, can be built in months not years, cost single-digit millions for several and perhaps hundreds of millions for enough to power an entire city......not billions, requires no storage of waste, and to decommission, you push them over and sell them for scrap on the open market. If some contractor lied and screwed up the construction, there are no radiation leaks or environmental or health disasters. At worst a turbine blade falls off or the tower falls over. Put it back up in days or weeks - not a multi-billion dollar cleanup with decades of possible health consequences.
A country like New Zealand, for example, with wind sites where the wind blows 45% of the time (23% is the global avarage for wind farms) would be silly to build nuke plants - which typically out put 4GW....more than the entire NZ electrical system combined produces today.
There are many countries for which nukes are a really dumb idea - leaving aside all the unresolved issues about waste and hazaradous materials.
It's amazing how much like the old Soviet Union Bush is making the United States. Similarly, Adolf Hitler used national security and the threat of the communists to ignore and override German law protecting the rights of citizens. At this point, anyone claiming the Constitution can be ignored "becasue it isn't a suicide pact" would have made a GREAT Nazi.....or Communist Party member.
Correct me if I'm wrong.....but Bittorrent seems more vulnerable to interference from outside precisely becasue it relies on trackers.
Whereas networks based on gnutella (Bearshare, gtk-gnutella, iMesh, Limewire.....etc) have no center, no trackers - just self-promoting "ultrapeers" who may come and go hourly or daily.
Seems the latter network is more "secure" from any organised attacked.
I have submitted bug reports on OS....but not patches. In my experience, the bugs are rare and not serious.....and I haven't found any in the new release yet.
Agreed.
That they could even get this removed from a UN document - as one private company, not even a government - is pathetic.
No doubt they had help from the US govt folk on the panel.
Bought and paid for in Bushworld.
No. That is only shooting the messenger.
You want to be aware of and combat the people who are using the lawyers as tools to allow them to monopolise what they do not already own.
Bush lied about WMD and Iraqi links to al Qaeda in order to start a war in which tens of thousands of people have died and US$300 billion has been spent.
If that isn't grounds to impeach a President - then impeachment isn't possible under any circumstances.
The US department responsible for trade has been very active in discouraging the adoption of open source software. There are several examples. One was the convention in Japan a year or so ago of Asia-Pacific countries - and Japan, Korea and China wanted a positive statement about open source software included in the final communique. The United States specificially objected to this and instead the final document spoke only about choice.
That didn't stop those other nations from advancing their own open source aims on their own, but it did preclude regional co-ordination and a consistent approach by all concerned. That consistency is important in harmonising regluatory and governmental approaches with a view to trade liberalisation further down the line.
The US today is attempting to construct an intellectual property and software cartel and misses no opportunity to see other nations sign up to protect US interests. For exmaple, the right-wing government in Australia was SO keen to get a free trade agreement with the United States, they not only helped invade Iraq.......but worse - they signed away their own interests in pledging to implement US-like laws on intellectual property protection - extending copyright to life plus 75 years, adopting a local equivalent of the American DMCA and similar nonsense.
I used to work at (TLA-bigcorp) and the lawyers there were of the view that they would frame the most one-sided agreements imaginable.....becasue they could. Any user that objected always had the option of not buying the software. Any large customer would be able to afford lawyers to ask for a variation on the license (and they often did).
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One dodgy book in the 1960's isn't enough to refute the reality of what is happening today.
Sometimes bad things really DO happen....and yes, there were foreseen and were preventable.
Of course, you are free to belive anything you like and ignore the evidence as much as your belief requires.
Billions of people do this every day or there would be no religion.
Not unusual. In our house, we don't watch broadcast or pay TV anymore. What we do watch is 3 programs we enjoy that we download episodes of. But lately, we have been finding we don't have time to watch these three programs......as we are now too busy doing the million other things that one can do with one's time when the TV isn't on. It's been madeclear to us that it's not our culture anymore.....so - on an emotional level - we now feel we have no need for it and no "skin" in it. It's not ours.
I have a pre-pay GSM phone (Nokia 1100). I simply took the SIM out of the previous cheap GSM phone, popped it into the new (cheap) one and carried on without any further muss nor fuss. I had also been told the choice of phone in the US was different due to the US military having long ago reserved the frequencies that GSM uses everywhere else. So my GSM phone from New Zealand or almost any other country would be illegal in the US. I used to have an account-based GSM phone and travelled all over the Asia-Pacific region. I'd get off an airplane and pick one of the local GSM providers and just start calling. If I wanted to go to the US, GSM coverage was pretty much the worst anywhere......and I needed a phone that could operate on the different frequencies used in the US. This was a few years ago now......but it was one more area where the US lagged behind the rest of the world. Another is making the person who receives the call pay. The norm in the rest of the world is caller pays. Receiver pays nothing. As a consequence, US cell phone uptake lagged the explosive growth everywhere else.
So the tumor would be smaller, but the side-effects could be most uncomfortable......
OS/2 was the handheld calculator when everyone was using the Windows 3.11/9x abacus. IBM dropping it was the only reason I moved to Linux. OS/2 was the functional equivalent of WinXP for the 386/486 with 16MB of RAM......6 years before Microsoft managed it. If OSes survived on meritand ISVs and end-users knew what GOOD stuff was, OS/2 woulda been king.
I gave up a 23 year career in IT to do two new jobs: farmer and corrections officer in the local prison.
The money is about 25% of what I used to get paid.....but the work is better.
If you look into the detail of how the United States has implemented e-voting and compare that to the detail of how countries like Venezuela and India have done it, there can be only one conclusion: e-voting in the United States is designed to be cheater-friendly. Yet the Bush Admininstration has had the utter cheek to accuse Venezuela of running shonky elections......when the reality is that cheating under the e-voting system there would be all but impossible. The same can certainly NOT be said about the United States where unverified, last-minute, "patches" to voting systems are a common occurence, the source code is closed-source and there is no paper trail to verify anything.
Kerry looking good next to Bush isn't "propaganda". Bush is a serial liar who has killed tens of thousands of people, maimed an even larger number and has no intention of stopping. He clearly has no regard whatever for the US Constitution - his oath of office notwithstanding. If Kerry looks better than Bush on Wikipedia, it likely isn't due to "propaganda". No...I'm not an American....which is why I can see these two men and what they do very clearly.
In NZ, schools get MS software for free and teachers can legaly use free copies at home on their own PCs. This is to keep Open Source out of schools and it has been very effective at doing that. I know of two schools where the local IT person - who only knows Windows - completely rules out any use of Linux, declaring it to be "too hard" for kids to use. My daughter, who has been using Linux sinsce she was 4, stood up in her class and openly disagreed with him. He wasn't interested in the truth was what she took away from the discussion.
Well...he did say in 5-6 years....so that must be about the time the fast solid state storage is expected to be a lot cheaper. Five to 6 years ago most PCs being sold were under 1GHz........
Nuke plants may be the way some countries have to go, but many countries have other, cheaper and more effective options. Nuke plants take years to build and typically cost billions of dollars. Storing the waste for millennia is another cost. Decommissioning is yet another. All huge.
Wind power starts with the spin of the first turbine, can be built in months not years, cost single-digit millions for several and perhaps hundreds of millions for enough to power an entire city......not billions, requires no storage of waste, and to decommission, you push them over and sell them for scrap on the open market. If some contractor lied and screwed up the construction, there are no radiation leaks or environmental or health disasters. At worst a turbine blade falls off or the tower falls over. Put it back up in days or weeks - not a multi-billion dollar cleanup with decades of possible health consequences.
A country like New Zealand, for example, with wind sites where the wind blows 45% of the time (23% is the global avarage for wind farms) would be silly to build nuke plants - which typically out put 4GW....more than the entire NZ electrical system combined produces today.
There are many countries for which nukes are a really dumb idea - leaving aside all the unresolved issues about waste and hazaradous materials.
I get LOADS of propaganda from my 17yo daughter when she wants to go to a concert with her friends. "No, we won't be drinking!".....etc...etc...
It's amazing how much like the old Soviet Union Bush is making the United States. Similarly, Adolf Hitler used national security and the threat of the communists to ignore and override German law protecting the rights of citizens. At this point, anyone claiming the Constitution can be ignored "becasue it isn't a suicide pact" would have made a GREAT Nazi.....or Communist Party member.
Correct me if I'm wrong.....but Bittorrent seems more vulnerable to interference from outside precisely becasue it relies on trackers. Whereas networks based on gnutella (Bearshare, gtk-gnutella, iMesh, Limewire.....etc) have no center, no trackers - just self-promoting "ultrapeers" who may come and go hourly or daily. Seems the latter network is more "secure" from any organised attacked.
I have submitted bug reports on OS....but not patches. In my experience, the bugs are rare and not serious.....and I haven't found any in the new release yet.
Agreed. That they could even get this removed from a UN document - as one private company, not even a government - is pathetic. No doubt they had help from the US govt folk on the panel. Bought and paid for in Bushworld.
Rogers is Canadian. "Common carrier status" is an American thing as far as I know. Different country - different laws.
Hola fellow Canadian!! I hate anything funny, too. It REALLY pisses me off. A bit like Rogers dumping USENET.....
No. That is only shooting the messenger. You want to be aware of and combat the people who are using the lawyers as tools to allow them to monopolise what they do not already own.
Bush lied about WMD and Iraqi links to al Qaeda in order to start a war in which tens of thousands of people have died and US$300 billion has been spent. If that isn't grounds to impeach a President - then impeachment isn't possible under any circumstances.
I don't care which idiot President started it. The guy in the Oval Office today let it get into orbit.
The US department responsible for trade has been very active in discouraging the adoption of open source software. There are several examples. One was the convention in Japan a year or so ago of Asia-Pacific countries - and Japan, Korea and China wanted a positive statement about open source software included in the final communique. The United States specificially objected to this and instead the final document spoke only about choice. That didn't stop those other nations from advancing their own open source aims on their own, but it did preclude regional co-ordination and a consistent approach by all concerned. That consistency is important in harmonising regluatory and governmental approaches with a view to trade liberalisation further down the line. The US today is attempting to construct an intellectual property and software cartel and misses no opportunity to see other nations sign up to protect US interests. For exmaple, the right-wing government in Australia was SO keen to get a free trade agreement with the United States, they not only helped invade Iraq.......but worse - they signed away their own interests in pledging to implement US-like laws on intellectual property protection - extending copyright to life plus 75 years, adopting a local equivalent of the American DMCA and similar nonsense.
Can someone please get these warmongering neo-cons OUT of the White House?
It's like termites - eating away the structures that have maintained relative peace in the world for decades.......
These idiots should be in prison somewhere - based on the numbers of people they have already killed - not power.
Their body count makes Bin Laden look like a wannabe.
I used to work at (TLA-bigcorp) and the lawyers there were of the view that they would frame the most one-sided agreements imaginable.....becasue they could. Any user that objected always had the option of not buying the software. Any large customer would be able to afford lawyers to ask for a variation on the license (and they often did).
Looks like we may have horse-drawn cars in the near future.......the way the price of gas is going.