The most trouble I've had with installing graphics cards under Linux in years is Ubuntu popping up a nice little window and me having to click through that the drivers were not verified to work. I clicked 'OK Install Anyway' (or whatever it said, I can't remember) and pretty soon I had all the bells and whistles up and running. I never even had to go near xorg.conf, sudo or nano. YMMV with other distributions but, given the nature of open source, I doubt many places are using a system greatly dissimilar from Ubuntu's.
Also, how did you manage to cock up your machine so badly that your music sounded like chipmunks? Are you sure you hadn't rippled this into Banshee by accident?
Let me see which method of acquiring movies is best for the customer (using a massive sample size of me):
I'm going to take a big film from last year as my example which I'm going to use for all of my comparisons. With no particular preference for anything, I'm going to use Cloverfield as my example.
Regular DVD Purchase
It might just be me, but I'm one of these people that can go back and watch a DVD over and over again - not back to back, that'd get dull really quickly - but every few months, I can go back and watch a movie I really liked, either with a different group of friends or just because I really liked the film. I didn't think much of Cloverfield but if I did, I could get it from Amazon for $15.99. Just over three times more than the auto-rot Flexi-DVD thingy, and I can watch it whenever I want, with whoever I want, forever (or certainly for a lot longer than 48 hours). I can put it on my shelf, in my DVD rack, lend it to my friends, sell it for a few bucks when I get bored of it, anything. All that justifies the higher price point.
Rental
This Flexplay system is $5 per 48-hour self-destructing disc. If a brick-and-mortar rental store wanted $5 for a 2-day rental, I'd go somewhere else, though YMMV on local rental store prices. Alternatively, I could also go to Neflix or Blockbuster's online service and get unlimited monthly rentals (one at a time) for $8.99, so the rental price for each DVD goes down with every rental. If you only watch one or two DVDs a month so $8.99 is too much for you, both Blockbuster and Netflix have a basic plan of $3.99 (Blockbuster) or $4.99 (Netflix) - so I'm getting Cloverfield either cheaper or at the same price point as Flexplay, but I know the disc will play properly, I won't get any of the 'special adhesive' inside my player, and if I want to have the guys round to have a few beers and watch a great film the next weekend, I can. Hell, if I go to Blockbuster I can even save a dollar.
Piracy
Finally, the thing the MPAA is probably trying to compete with with these self-destructing discs, the evil pirate. using everyone's favourite Pirate Bay, a quick search reveals a Cloverfield DVD rip with over two thousand seeds. If I feel like getting fancy, there's a 4Gb Blu-Ray rip with 181 seeds. With a decent internet connection, I could have the regular DVD rip within a couple of hours tops. If I've just been to the store, I'm not going to come straight in and watch a DVD right away, I'm going to wait until I've put everything away. I'm going to wait until all the other jobs I have to do are done before I sit down to watch the film I just saw at the counter. I can afford that wait of 2 hours, if I was the type to pirate movies, then I'd just do that and put the $5 towards beer. If I was just going out to get a film I'd do this as well - you know where my local Staples is? It's at least a 2 hour round trip.
Legal Downloads
Finally, the option Joe Public probably uses less, though I think it's a great idea. iTunes does movies now, but they don't have Cloverfield, so that rules them out of my strict example, but their movies seem to be priced at around $10, so I can just pay double the price and keep the film forever. Seems reasonable, but the real killer is Amazon, who will rent me the film for a whole month for a dollar less than Flexplay will let me have it for 2 days. People will say that Flexplay gives you the physical product, but does that matt
Perhaps you are unaware of what the OSI is, or are confused as to what OSI are doing the approving. The Open Source Initiative was started by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, hardly people likely to risk anything involving viral Microsoft licencing.
They're smart guys. Just because the OSI don't have a loudmouth spokesman like the FSF have Stallman doesn't mean they aren't important, relevant and clever enough to ensure they wouldn't fall for MS's legal tricks.
I think the GP's point was that the Chinese government is too busy mowing down their own unarmed civilians holding a peaceful demonstration to go to the trouble to steal your Star Trek slash fiction.
Those are files the user - if the user knows about how the internet works, temporary internet files, etc - expects to download. An executable on their desktop is not.
Anyone who has anything like a passing knowledge of the UK sex and pornography laws will know that there's already some rediculous laws on the books about what you can and can't do. For those not in the know, the age of sexual consent in the United Kingdom is 16, a fact which is important to the folly of the story below.
A few years ago, back when I was 18, I was in a relationship with a girl of 17 from Liverpool, whereas I'm from London (a distance of a few hundred miles, and a few hours of train travel as I didn't drive back then). Obviously with us spending a good few weeks apart at a time, things would get a little horny for both of us and, sometimes, out would come the webcams and, well, you know. I'm not ashamed to say that I got some good use out of the PrtScr button to keep myself 'stocked up' for later when she wasn't around. Those images, on their own, not distributing them, not showing them to anyone, would land me several years in prison. They were, to the best of my legal knowledge, technically child pornography.
Do you see the stupidity of that law yet? Mere posession of those images could have landed me with a long prison sentence and a place on a national register for the rest of my life, but when I hopped on a train and went and actually fucked her, that was perfectly legal. Now I wouldn't even be allowed to think about doing it - I'd have to shut my eyes and think about something else, maybe.
America, you might complain about your country's puritan approach to sex, your age of consent might be higher than ours, but remember, at least you guys are consistent. We're just fucking stupid.
The death penalty is too quick, a jail sentence has them safe from the rest of the world. It is the only case in which I would approve the use of torture - indeed, in it's most sadistic form, since the goal isn't information or confession, just suffering. Obviously everyone who has modded me down thinks kid-fucking is okay Or maybe we just think "torture in it's most sadistic form" isn't?
Sadly with the number of perverts extant you just might draw an unwanted guest to that garden.
You think some pervert is going to come into your garden and try to fuck your statue? Do you really think that's a likely occurrence? Do you not let your wife or children go into the garden for fear of the big bad perverts?
Computer generated child porn is still child porn.
Yes, computer generated abuse is still abuse, computer generated murder is still murder, and computer generated criminal damage is still criminal damage.
Pretty soon the police will come and arrest everyone who has ever played Doom/Quake/GTA/everything else, throw Carmack's ass in prison for several million counts of aiding and abetting, lock the Cloverfield guys up for what they did to the Statue of Liberty and call PETA on anyone who ever let their tamagotchi die.
Please put the kneejerk response aside and think logically before you speak. Laws (and the endorsement of them) are not to be taken lightly.
gross, looks just like Win2000 This doesn't look like Windows 2000. I think I speak for most of the tech crowd when I say that Windows 2000 is considered the best Windows release there is - fast, stable and with a functional but sleek interface. This looks more like Windows 95 after a slap in the chops.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I sat down and watched Animal Crackers a few months ago and absolutely loved it. I was born over half a century too late to have seen it on it's original release, and I still respect the Marx brothers as the original and best.
You say everybody knows all the jokes, and that's wrong - people know the pattern of the jokes, but they haven't heard them with such masterful delivery. The gags aren't tired, they're timeless. I laughed out loud so much more than I have at 'modern' comedy smash hits, and probably found them almost as funny in 2008 as I expect I would have done in 1938 - do you really think for one second we'll be saying the same thing in 70 years' time about Everybody Loves Raymond or the Sex and the City movie?
Still, even if you can say the movies are dated - though I don't see how - Groucho is still the fastest, sharpest talker to have graced the business. I'd still rather watch old recordings of him cracking a hundred jokes a minute than listen to some jackass asking what the deal is with airline food.
It reminded me of the Red Dwarf episode, 'Back to Reality', where Kryten thinks he's Jake Bullet, who he assumes is a high-powered Robocop type because of his fancy title.
Kryten: (Whipping out his badge) Bullet, Cybernautics! Cop:: That's traffic control!
The desirable course of events would be that Muslims in Canada unite around their religion in response to that attack, but I am afraid that decision of authorities will create false impression on some borderline Muslims that people who reject Allah and His Messenger, sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, actually are "protecting" Muslims.
Given the way muslims in most other places have 'united around their religion' in responses to perceived attacks, that would not end well - do we really want people forced into hiding, embassies and churches burned, etc, just for expressing an opinion? Whether you could call what this guy's done an 'attack' is highly debatable, but when you start setting things on fire, you become the attackers. I hope that's not what you're endorsing?
I view the concept of "speech" as a speech for which a man bares full responsibility, speech as an act for which the man is responsible before the Creator and before other people.
For example, if you offend somebody's mother, you should expect that you might get a beating at the hand of the son.
Not in a civilised country I shouldn't. If we all went around hitting everyone who ever said anything we disagreed with, everywhere would be absolute chaos. Of course, if we're just limiting it to religious texts, your book calls for me to be beheaded or forcefully converted - can I beat you for holding that belief? Of course not. Assaulting people for words is just childish and unnecessary, and laws against it are one of the best things about society.
As for the content of the book, as far as I understood, it's about predictions what will happen. The author of this book is right, the rulers, the powers, the scumbags that rule your countries, that brainwash you with shopping channels and atheism, should be afraid of Muslims, should be afraid of Islam, because Islam is about enjoining Good and forbidding Evil, and those governments are pretty much on the evil side.
Interesting, as in the previous couple of paragraphs you just said it was alright for people to go around beating people up for thinking differently to you. I'd say that's pretty evil, wouldn't you?
Ordinary people should not be afraid of Islam, because only good for then will come out of future Islamic domination.
Unless I happen to believe in something you don't.
Yes, every bad habit that destroys your life will be quite hard to follow: no liquor sores, no pornography, no public lewdness means that the things you have been addicted to will be hard to find. And that is good for you because more people will be free from that bad stuff that ruins their lives.
I avoid those things too, but it's a personal choice - who are you to dictate what other people can and cannot do, if what they're doing isn't directly hurting you? If people around you want to have a drink, crack one off at the wrist or engage in 'public lewdness' and you can't handle it, move. That's not racism, that's not xenophobia, that's simple logic. If my next door neighbours started playing heavy metal through the wall at 4am every weekday, I'd move somewhere where the neighbours didn't play heavy metal at 4am through the wall, because it's easier to do that than sit and bitch about not liking what other people get up to on their own time.
There will be much less street crime because most of the street crime is alcohol or drug fueled or gang-related and all those things will be gone during Islamic rule.
Could somebody please tell that to the Islamic gangs that have 'no whites' areas in Bradford, Leeds and Halifax, and will happily assault white people for going into their 'areas'? Maybe they aren't following the cause of Islam, and if they aren't, you should speak out against them, because as it is, I'm seeing a lot of gang-r
Wow, that's a job I'd love to have. Impotently flailing my tiny balled fists at the unyielding screen in a terrible apoplectic rage at the truth and it's inherent liberal commie something-for-nothing bias.
Ray Beckerman takes the time and effort to explain the legal ins and outs of the RIAA's position and that of the people it sues to those of us (i.e. the vast majority of people on this website, which is fully of highly intelligent people but very few qualified to comment on copyright law) who don't have the time or knowledge to try to comprehend the convoluted legalese in the huge stacks of court documents that come out of these cases. He is a shining light of actual knowledge of the issue in a sea of ad-hoc hysterical shouting from people who are at best uninformed and at worst the kind of pro-piracy everything-for-free freeloading assholes at whom you _should_ be directing your ire.
Yes, he comes down on the side of the people being sued by the RIAA, but haven't they got enough lawyers to be getting on with without Ray Beckerman? How does him not liking how the RIAA conduct themselves mean he is pro-piracy? There have been plenty of examples of legally qualified people - lawyers, university lecturers, law professors - who see problems with the RIAA's tactics and speak out against them - you can get more time in jail for copyright infringement than you can for rape or manslaughter, and that's patently rediculous to anyone with a mind, so it must drive to distraction anyone who went into the legal profession to look out for people rather than to make a big pot of money. I know you're probably just some idiot troll stirring up trouble, but I've seen a lot of people giving Ray a lot stick on here lately and it's simply uncalled for - you don't know Ray Beckerman's view on copyright. You don't know if he torrents every last CD on TPB or if he's never illegally downloaded a single byte in his life. He could be anywhere from sensibly but vigorously anti-piracy to a raging closet commie with six terabytes of pirated Britney Spears FLAC files, you just don't know. As far as I can see his problem lies with the rediculous penalties the RIAA tries to leverage against people, and with their cynical gaming of a legal system that he clearly still believes is supposed to be there for the reasons it was put in place - to ensure justice is done, not to prop up failing corporate business models.
He's that rarest of things, an honest lawyer. We need more like him. Don't start driving them away.
If someone deliberately endangers my family, whether they're a child or not, I'm going to put my foot up their ass and never mind the law. If you think I'm wrong, that's up to you, but I for one am not going to criticise someone for giving a good shoeing to someone who thinks it's hilarious to put their kids in danger.
[my question] is why haven't these things been available for years? It seems obvious that some kind of small remote controlled tread based robot with a machine gun would be extremely useful on the battlefield.
I mean, it would allow you to hit people that are defended by sniper fire and the like, without worrying about getting hit.
Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.
This is such a huge problem - if you don't teach kids the spirit of healthy competition, when they engage in competition on their own, they'll react badly. I'm from the UK, I love football (soccer), I played it every school lunch break from the age of around 8, all through my school life through to the end of college. I'm 21 now and I still get together with the lads for a kickabout every weekend if I can. The thing is, I'm crap at it. Absolutely atrocious. The thing is, I just don't care. I enjoy playing just for the enjoyment of playing. I've been getting nimbler, more athletic guys running rings around me for more than a decade now and I still love playing. Why? Because I've lost before. I get up, dust myself off, shake their hand and maybe have a beer with them later. Now, I see kids younger than me, say even 16 or 17, who now get into vicious fist-fights over who won what - why? Because it's a massive shock to them that they aren't the greatest in the world at everything.
People say they're afraid to let kids play competitive games in case they lose and get upset - what happens when they go out into the real world? People turn almost everything into a competition, and if you aren't used to losing every now and then, your world's going to fall apart. Promotions, jobs, dates, everything is a competition, and if you protect kids from losing for so long, they're either going to grow up with a fear of losing that is going to hold them back, or go to pieces the minute they're passed over for that big promotion, or the pretty redhead at the bar goes home with someone else. I'm sick of this nanny state 'protect the children' mentality that is actually damaging our children in the long term - mine was the last generation where we got to go out and play, kicking a ball around from the end of school until it got too dark to see. Now? Mothers don't let their children outside; they might scrape their knee, lose a game of football or get abducted by one of the Muslim immigrant paedophiles that the papers tell us are lurking on every corner (I'm looking at you, Daily Express). Then we wonder why we're breeding a generation of obese, allergy-ridden, selfish little preciouses.
Slashdot Mirror
The most trouble I've had with installing graphics cards under Linux in years is Ubuntu popping up a nice little window and me having to click through that the drivers were not verified to work. I clicked 'OK Install Anyway' (or whatever it said, I can't remember) and pretty soon I had all the bells and whistles up and running. I never even had to go near xorg.conf, sudo or nano. YMMV with other distributions but, given the nature of open source, I doubt many places are using a system greatly dissimilar from Ubuntu's.
Also, how did you manage to cock up your machine so badly that your music sounded like chipmunks? Are you sure you hadn't rippled this into Banshee by accident?
Let me see which method of acquiring movies is best for the customer (using a massive sample size of me): I'm going to take a big film from last year as my example which I'm going to use for all of my comparisons. With no particular preference for anything, I'm going to use Cloverfield as my example. Regular DVD Purchase
It might just be me, but I'm one of these people that can go back and watch a DVD over and over again - not back to back, that'd get dull really quickly - but every few months, I can go back and watch a movie I really liked, either with a different group of friends or just because I really liked the film. I didn't think much of Cloverfield but if I did, I could get it from Amazon for $15.99. Just over three times more than the auto-rot Flexi-DVD thingy, and I can watch it whenever I want, with whoever I want, forever (or certainly for a lot longer than 48 hours). I can put it on my shelf, in my DVD rack, lend it to my friends, sell it for a few bucks when I get bored of it, anything. All that justifies the higher price point.
Rental This Flexplay system is $5 per 48-hour self-destructing disc. If a brick-and-mortar rental store wanted $5 for a 2-day rental, I'd go somewhere else, though YMMV on local rental store prices. Alternatively, I could also go to Neflix or Blockbuster's online service and get unlimited monthly rentals (one at a time) for $8.99, so the rental price for each DVD goes down with every rental. If you only watch one or two DVDs a month so $8.99 is too much for you, both Blockbuster and Netflix have a basic plan of $3.99 (Blockbuster) or $4.99 (Netflix) - so I'm getting Cloverfield either cheaper or at the same price point as Flexplay, but I know the disc will play properly, I won't get any of the 'special adhesive' inside my player, and if I want to have the guys round to have a few beers and watch a great film the next weekend, I can. Hell, if I go to Blockbuster I can even save a dollar.
Piracy
Finally, the thing the MPAA is probably trying to compete with with these self-destructing discs, the evil pirate. using everyone's favourite Pirate Bay, a quick search reveals a Cloverfield DVD rip with over two thousand seeds. If I feel like getting fancy, there's a 4Gb Blu-Ray rip with 181 seeds. With a decent internet connection, I could have the regular DVD rip within a couple of hours tops. If I've just been to the store, I'm not going to come straight in and watch a DVD right away, I'm going to wait until I've put everything away. I'm going to wait until all the other jobs I have to do are done before I sit down to watch the film I just saw at the counter. I can afford that wait of 2 hours, if I was the type to pirate movies, then I'd just do that and put the $5 towards beer. If I was just going out to get a film I'd do this as well - you know where my local Staples is? It's at least a 2 hour round trip.
Legal Downloads Finally, the option Joe Public probably uses less, though I think it's a great idea. iTunes does movies now, but they don't have Cloverfield, so that rules them out of my strict example, but their movies seem to be priced at around $10, so I can just pay double the price and keep the film forever. Seems reasonable, but the real killer is Amazon, who will rent me the film for a whole month for a dollar less than Flexplay will let me have it for 2 days. People will say that Flexplay gives you the physical product, but does that matt
Perhaps you are unaware of what the OSI is, or are confused as to what OSI are doing the approving. The Open Source Initiative was started by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, hardly people likely to risk anything involving viral Microsoft licencing. They're smart guys. Just because the OSI don't have a loudmouth spokesman like the FSF have Stallman doesn't mean they aren't important, relevant and clever enough to ensure they wouldn't fall for MS's legal tricks.
Because that would give away the fact that all these posing Indie 'The' bands sound like shit without serious production work.
I think the GP's point was that the Chinese government is too busy mowing down their own unarmed civilians holding a peaceful demonstration to go to the trouble to steal your Star Trek slash fiction.
Those are files the user - if the user knows about how the internet works, temporary internet files, etc - expects to download. An executable on their desktop is not.
A few years ago, back when I was 18, I was in a relationship with a girl of 17 from Liverpool, whereas I'm from London (a distance of a few hundred miles, and a few hours of train travel as I didn't drive back then). Obviously with us spending a good few weeks apart at a time, things would get a little horny for both of us and, sometimes, out would come the webcams and, well, you know. I'm not ashamed to say that I got some good use out of the PrtScr button to keep myself 'stocked up' for later when she wasn't around. Those images, on their own, not distributing them, not showing them to anyone, would land me several years in prison. They were, to the best of my legal knowledge, technically child pornography.
Do you see the stupidity of that law yet? Mere posession of those images could have landed me with a long prison sentence and a place on a national register for the rest of my life, but when I hopped on a train and went and actually fucked her, that was perfectly legal. Now I wouldn't even be allowed to think about doing it - I'd have to shut my eyes and think about something else, maybe.
America, you might complain about your country's puritan approach to sex, your age of consent might be higher than ours, but remember, at least you guys are consistent. We're just fucking stupid.
Sadly with the number of perverts extant you just might draw an unwanted guest to that garden.
You think some pervert is going to come into your garden and try to fuck your statue? Do you really think that's a likely occurrence? Do you not let your wife or children go into the garden for fear of the big bad perverts?
Computer generated child porn is still child porn.
Yes, computer generated abuse is still abuse, computer generated murder is still murder, and computer generated criminal damage is still criminal damage.
Pretty soon the police will come and arrest everyone who has ever played Doom/Quake/GTA/everything else, throw Carmack's ass in prison for several million counts of aiding and abetting, lock the Cloverfield guys up for what they did to the Statue of Liberty and call PETA on anyone who ever let their tamagotchi die.
Please put the kneejerk response aside and think logically before you speak. Laws (and the endorsement of them) are not to be taken lightly.
You are putting an extraordinary amount of effort into spoiling a bit of harmless fun.
Is there any way this is not going to turn into a flamewar and/or an excuse to bash IE?
Come on, guys, we know it sucks. Let's have some news already.
And if you dare say "Islam is a dangerous cult", you'll probably go to prison.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I sat down and watched Animal Crackers a few months ago and absolutely loved it. I was born over half a century too late to have seen it on it's original release, and I still respect the Marx brothers as the original and best.
You say everybody knows all the jokes, and that's wrong - people know the pattern of the jokes, but they haven't heard them with such masterful delivery. The gags aren't tired, they're timeless. I laughed out loud so much more than I have at 'modern' comedy smash hits, and probably found them almost as funny in 2008 as I expect I would have done in 1938 - do you really think for one second we'll be saying the same thing in 70 years' time about Everybody Loves Raymond or the Sex and the City movie?
Still, even if you can say the movies are dated - though I don't see how - Groucho is still the fastest, sharpest talker to have graced the business. I'd still rather watch old recordings of him cracking a hundred jokes a minute than listen to some jackass asking what the deal is with airline food.
Funny will always be funny.
It reminded me of the Red Dwarf episode, 'Back to Reality', where Kryten thinks he's Jake Bullet, who he assumes is a high-powered Robocop type because of his fancy title.
Kryten: (Whipping out his badge) Bullet, Cybernautics!
Cop:: That's traffic control!
Your post leaves me with an uneasy feeling.
The desirable course of events would be that Muslims in Canada unite around their religion in response to that attack, but I am afraid that decision of authorities will create false impression on some borderline Muslims that people who reject Allah and His Messenger, sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, actually are "protecting" Muslims.
Given the way muslims in most other places have 'united around their religion' in responses to perceived attacks, that would not end well - do we really want people forced into hiding, embassies and churches burned, etc, just for expressing an opinion? Whether you could call what this guy's done an 'attack' is highly debatable, but when you start setting things on fire, you become the attackers. I hope that's not what you're endorsing?
I view the concept of "speech" as a speech for which a man bares full responsibility, speech as an act for which the man is responsible before the Creator and before other people.
For example, if you offend somebody's mother, you should expect that you might get a beating at the hand of the son.
Not in a civilised country I shouldn't. If we all went around hitting everyone who ever said anything we disagreed with, everywhere would be absolute chaos. Of course, if we're just limiting it to religious texts, your book calls for me to be beheaded or forcefully converted - can I beat you for holding that belief? Of course not. Assaulting people for words is just childish and unnecessary, and laws against it are one of the best things about society.
As for the content of the book, as far as I understood, it's about predictions what will happen. The author of this book is right, the rulers, the powers, the scumbags that rule your countries, that brainwash you with shopping channels and atheism, should be afraid of Muslims, should be afraid of Islam, because Islam is about enjoining Good and forbidding Evil, and those governments are pretty much on the evil side.
Interesting, as in the previous couple of paragraphs you just said it was alright for people to go around beating people up for thinking differently to you. I'd say that's pretty evil, wouldn't you?
Ordinary people should not be afraid of Islam, because only good for then will come out of future Islamic domination.
Unless I happen to believe in something you don't.
Yes, every bad habit that destroys your life will be quite hard to follow: no liquor sores, no pornography, no public lewdness means that the things you have been addicted to will be hard to find. And that is good for you because more people will be free from that bad stuff that ruins their lives.
I avoid those things too, but it's a personal choice - who are you to dictate what other people can and cannot do, if what they're doing isn't directly hurting you? If people around you want to have a drink, crack one off at the wrist or engage in 'public lewdness' and you can't handle it, move. That's not racism, that's not xenophobia, that's simple logic. If my next door neighbours started playing heavy metal through the wall at 4am every weekday, I'd move somewhere where the neighbours didn't play heavy metal at 4am through the wall, because it's easier to do that than sit and bitch about not liking what other people get up to on their own time.
There will be much less street crime because most of the street crime is alcohol or drug fueled or gang-related and all those things will be gone during Islamic rule.
Could somebody please tell that to the Islamic gangs that have 'no whites' areas in Bradford, Leeds and Halifax, and will happily assault white people for going into their 'areas'? Maybe they aren't following the cause of Islam, and if they aren't, you should speak out against them, because as it is, I'm seeing a lot of gang-r
Wow, that's a job I'd love to have. Impotently flailing my tiny balled fists at the unyielding screen in a terrible apoplectic rage at the truth and it's inherent liberal commie something-for-nothing bias.
Do you think they pay in MP3s?
Ray Beckerman takes the time and effort to explain the legal ins and outs of the RIAA's position and that of the people it sues to those of us (i.e. the vast majority of people on this website, which is fully of highly intelligent people but very few qualified to comment on copyright law) who don't have the time or knowledge to try to comprehend the convoluted legalese in the huge stacks of court documents that come out of these cases. He is a shining light of actual knowledge of the issue in a sea of ad-hoc hysterical shouting from people who are at best uninformed and at worst the kind of pro-piracy everything-for-free freeloading assholes at whom you _should_ be directing your ire.
Yes, he comes down on the side of the people being sued by the RIAA, but haven't they got enough lawyers to be getting on with without Ray Beckerman? How does him not liking how the RIAA conduct themselves mean he is pro-piracy? There have been plenty of examples of legally qualified people - lawyers, university lecturers, law professors - who see problems with the RIAA's tactics and speak out against them - you can get more time in jail for copyright infringement than you can for rape or manslaughter, and that's patently rediculous to anyone with a mind, so it must drive to distraction anyone who went into the legal profession to look out for people rather than to make a big pot of money. I know you're probably just some idiot troll stirring up trouble, but I've seen a lot of people giving Ray a lot stick on here lately and it's simply uncalled for - you don't know Ray Beckerman's view on copyright. You don't know if he torrents every last CD on TPB or if he's never illegally downloaded a single byte in his life. He could be anywhere from sensibly but vigorously anti-piracy to a raging closet commie with six terabytes of pirated Britney Spears FLAC files, you just don't know. As far as I can see his problem lies with the rediculous penalties the RIAA tries to leverage against people, and with their cynical gaming of a legal system that he clearly still believes is supposed to be there for the reasons it was put in place - to ensure justice is done, not to prop up failing corporate business models.
He's that rarest of things, an honest lawyer. We need more like him. Don't start driving them away.
If someone deliberately endangers my family, whether they're a child or not, I'm going to put my foot up their ass and never mind the law. If you think I'm wrong, that's up to you, but I for one am not going to criticise someone for giving a good shoeing to someone who thinks it's hilarious to put their kids in danger.
[my question] is why haven't these things been available for years? It seems obvious that some kind of small remote controlled tread based robot with a machine gun would be extremely useful on the battlefield. I mean, it would allow you to hit people that are defended by sniper fire and the like, without worrying about getting hit.
Um, exactly because of problems like this?
[citation needed]
Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.
This is such a huge problem - if you don't teach kids the spirit of healthy competition, when they engage in competition on their own, they'll react badly. I'm from the UK, I love football (soccer), I played it every school lunch break from the age of around 8, all through my school life through to the end of college. I'm 21 now and I still get together with the lads for a kickabout every weekend if I can. The thing is, I'm crap at it. Absolutely atrocious. The thing is, I just don't care. I enjoy playing just for the enjoyment of playing. I've been getting nimbler, more athletic guys running rings around me for more than a decade now and I still love playing. Why? Because I've lost before. I get up, dust myself off, shake their hand and maybe have a beer with them later. Now, I see kids younger than me, say even 16 or 17, who now get into vicious fist-fights over who won what - why? Because it's a massive shock to them that they aren't the greatest in the world at everything.
People say they're afraid to let kids play competitive games in case they lose and get upset - what happens when they go out into the real world? People turn almost everything into a competition, and if you aren't used to losing every now and then, your world's going to fall apart. Promotions, jobs, dates, everything is a competition, and if you protect kids from losing for so long, they're either going to grow up with a fear of losing that is going to hold them back, or go to pieces the minute they're passed over for that big promotion, or the pretty redhead at the bar goes home with someone else. I'm sick of this nanny state 'protect the children' mentality that is actually damaging our children in the long term - mine was the last generation where we got to go out and play, kicking a ball around from the end of school until it got too dark to see. Now? Mothers don't let their children outside; they might scrape their knee, lose a game of football or get abducted by one of the Muslim immigrant paedophiles that the papers tell us are lurking on every corner (I'm looking at you, Daily Express). Then we wonder why we're breeding a generation of obese, allergy-ridden, selfish little preciouses.
Panzer is German for panther.
Wrong! 'Panter' is German for Panther, Panzer is indeed German for 'tank'.
Yes.