Tell you what, you should wait for a similar chatty email from a fellow spending some time in Taiwan. You might just get a different perspective.
EVERY Taiwanese person that I have ever met thinks that the island should be completely and formally a seperate nation. Oddly enough, every mainland chinese person that I've met disagrees and belives as you have stated. Most of them also believe that Tibet rightfully belongs to China too.
Here's why -- that's what they teach them in the schools. Both sides get a full load of propaganda growing up and it takes a serious amount of critical thinking for any of them to get beyond it.
However, despite my American-propaganda filled youth, I can independently say that it is absolutely true that while Taiwan and the mainland obivously share a strong cultural bond, their current-day societies are different enough that any such integration would be extremely difficult and very destructive to smaller of the two. Far worse than what is happening in HK.
The Dutch minister misinformed the national parliament before the vote on the political agreement. This came to light, and now he has to bear the consequences.
That's not a problem, he's probably got a cushy golf-playing job already lined up at Microsoft or another similiarly nefarious organization, just waiting for him to take it whenever he feels like retiring from politics to, "spend more time with his family."
No real point or witty comment, just an off-the-wall observation:
I've always thought that Russian Cyrllic looks a LOT like English characters viewed in a mirror (try it sometime, if you don't look real close you could be fooled, especially if you don't read Cyrllic).
But in that image the text is upside down and underlined (or I guess "overlined") and it sure looks like an India alphabet - devangari(? - I think that is the name of one of the subcontinent's alphabets).
Maybe there is some sort of social commentary buried in there somewhere...
So far it seems no one has pointed out the flipside of this "solution" and the social problems that follow. I'm talking about the effect it will have on the people who sign up and use it, instead of worrying about the system's effectiveness at discouraging terrorism (which is an altogether very important risk) I'm talking about its effective on our nation's social structure.
Without a doubt, some of the earliest users of this system will be the political class. Right now we are suppossed to be subject to random searches (as well as an apparently random no-fly list, but that's another topic). This condition means that potentially anyone, all the way up to the speaker of the house and the senate majority/minority leaders must entertain the possibility of being subjected to random search and all the inconvenience and embarrasment that goes with it.
There have been countless stories in the news of big famous celebrities and big important rich white politicians being subject to "pointless searches" since everybody knows they aren't terrorists. Well, besides the fact that some of these people are clearly off their rocker to begin with, at least being subjected to a search is equalitarian or in other words, it's "keeping it real," for those who make the rules too.
Once all the big fat important people effectively opt out of the hassle of searches, only the occasional flyer, the average joe and his poorer cousin, who still make up the majority of passengers, will be subject to the hassle of searches. The people in power will no longer have to live with the consequences of their (assinine and useless) "security" while the rest of us will still bear the brunt of it.
The next logical step is for "security" measures to be stepped up one little bit at a time because, after all, what politician wants to be seen as "soft on terrorism?" More thorough and invasive searches adding, say, 20 minutes to your wait time -- not a problem on paper since we are all expected to get to the airport 4 hours before departure, so there is plenty of time for extended and more frequent searches (yeah right). Since the very people who will inevitably be tightening the screws on the thumbs of general public will never feel the pressure themselves, it makes it that much easier for them to fuck with us with impunity.
On the plus side, the database of people in this program is certain to be a high-value target for identity theft. If security on the data is handled by the same people responsible for airport (in)security, then we can look forward to a successful break-in and theft of the database and all the personal information contained therein. Maybe the fallout from such a theft will be enough to get some effective data privacy laws passed in this country. But I'm not holding my breath.
Regardless of your politics or religion or whatever, you have to admit that there are few countries that have to deal with terrorism on a more daily basis than Israel.
And regardless of your politics, you have to admit that there is no country that has been more spectacular at failing to solve their terrorism problems than Israel. For all their logistical ability, Israel is on the top of list of countries that we should avoid emulating when it comes to actually dealing with terrorism.
This kind of comment is why IT workers probably should avoid making remarks on other industries...
Hardee haha, you so clever. You can't go out and build a supercomputer from component transistors either. So what? Should IT workers also avoid making remarks about their own industry?
A single individual can still acquire enough domain-specific skills as to become exceptionally valuable to an organization searching for an oil-field. If your specific skills and experience can reduce the average number of exploratory drills by say 30% that is worth BIG dollars to an oil company. A person who brings that level of value to an organization should expect to be highly compensated for their contribution, even if they don't have twenty or thirty or a hundred million dollars.
Don't overlook the opportunity to become an "expert in the field" -- that's essentially what I've done, which does rule out making billions because it reduces the opportunity for much growth beyond being a one-man operation. But it lets me get consulting work with big and little corps alike. FWIW, I "outsourced" my backoffice stuff to a company that specializes in it, other than schmoozing for new clients, the daily work is almost the same as being a wage-slave. But I can come into work late and instead of getting hassled it just increases my mystique as the "expert consultant."
PS, my speciality is in high-performance computing systems, but mostly DoD rather than petroleum. FWIW, my grandfather was a seismologist at philips, but that was long before 3D imaging and even most computers.
If I discover a billion barrel oil field the super-major I work for gives me a 20% bonus.
Let's be clear here -- 20% of your salary, not 20% of the revenue generated from your oil field.
That kind of inequity is exactly why I quit working for a big high-priced computer company and went independent. Why should any of us settle for an infitesimal piece of the pie when with a little entreprenurial spirit we can get 50% or more? Worked well for me, after a couple of years of doing exactly the same kind of work, but through my own company, I'm bringing in more than 16x what I made in salary as a wage-slave.
You do have to be good at what you do though, and it does take an iron stomach or balls of steel to deal with some of the risks. But, in retrospect, those risks weren't nearly as big as they appeared at the time.
Then why even bother posting in the first place, since obviously you aren't trying to say anything that will make an iota of difference?
PS - That's the exact same reasoning I hear from heads-down proprietary coders who think open source is a dead end. They have zero interest in actually learning anything beyond their feeble understanding of the topic and they assume that everyone else is exactly as close-minded as they are and thus any argument that one might make is immediately deflected with "I don't want to hear that, I've made up my mind, you've made up your mind and so why bother thinking?" Great way to run your life, much less the country.
1) Just because the Bush League is corrupt and a pox on the country doesn't mean the democrats are any better.
2) The bin Ladens pulled out of the Carlyle group in October 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks. As a reaction to the attacks it sure looks suspicious. As if they are trying protect their friends by disassociating from them, so the bin Laden bad publicity would have a lessened effect on the Bush League.
Even if I didn't think Moore was a big, fat, pathetic loser who takes out his own depression on everyone around him with his non-stop torrent of hate speech, I'd still have a hard time believing anyone who was so full of himself that he must weigh 300 pounds. What else could explain that he so detests the very country where someone like him could become so rich and famous?
Wow. Listen to talk radio much? That paragraph is as loaded with ad hominem and strawmen as the best that Rush, Savage and the rest of the crew have ever done. You should consider a job, maybe as guest knee-jerk-geek commentator on a show or two. You've got the rap down pat.
Truth? It's kind of hard to fake actual recorded video.
I know that by saying this I'm self-identifying as a massive geek, but you need to watch the episode of Babylon5 where a news crew follows the captain around on a "typical day." The first 30 minutes of the show we get to see what the news crew sees, the second 30 minutes of the show we get to see the program put together from the recorded footage rhat the news crew shot. The difference between the two half-hours is incredible -- the spin takes the reality of first 30 minutes and makes the produced show tell a story that is 180 degrees out of sync with "the truth."
That episode of Babylon5 is probably the best, most easily grasped, demonstration of how a camera can lie.
Not that I'm saying Moore lied or not, haven't seen the movie and won't see it until I buy it on DVD. My point is just that your original comment is not a sound basis for belief of any subject.
But don't claim that it is "more free" than this license. Restrictions are restrictions.
I call bullshit. That's like saying a switchblade and an AK-47 are the same thing because "weapons are weapons." There is clearly a difference in degree here.
The difference is that with the GPL, the rules are "you can do anything you want as long as you ALSO do X" while with the Alladin license it is, "you can do anything you want EXCEPT Y and Z." Since the GPL's ANYTHING is a larger set than the Alladin's (ANYTHING - YZ), the GPL is indeed more Free than the Alladin license.
Hello - Australia founded as a penal colony. So by definition you are all guilty to begin with, ain't no such thing as the "assumption of innocence" down under. So of course you guys are automatically treated as criminals.
Yes, it's a joke, but not completely so. In some ways Australia was the product of tyranny - that of the british empire, so it isn't so surprising that you'd have a different legal basis than a country that was founded in opposition to that same tyranny.
And if everyone else jumps off the bridge, that means we should do it too?
You know, the US was founded on prinicples that were not in place ANYWHERE ELSE the world at the time. Maybe the reason the rest of the world does it is because they haven't caught up to the ideals that the US was founded on.
Of course, the article is flamebait. Since when did/. publish news? YOu don't really think the squad of adolescents running this thing have a clue what they're talking about?
On matters like this, no not the line about the SCOTUS, the REST of the submission, they have 10x the clue of the average American.
By that token, I daresay you insult the memory of those same people by not paying enough attention to what's already happening.
Absofuckinglutely. You didn't even have to quote the poem by Martin Niemöller to make your point either. Wish I hadn't already posted, I'd mod you up for that.
You are saying, "It is stupid to put up a fight when the cop has the upper-hand." I just don't understand how you get from that to, "It's OK for cops to have even MORE power in situations where they already have the upper-hand."
I just don't get it -- the closest justification I can think of is along the lines that the anti-privacy advocates like to say, "You don't have any privacy anyway, so you might as well just give up trying to put the genie back in the bottle." If you agree with that, then at least I know where you are coming from. I sure don't understand it, but at least your position is now easily categorized in to the group of, "Vigilance, we don't need to stinking vigilance, the government will provide it for us!"
Although I disagree with the original poster - going to Iraq as a civilian contractor can be about doing a good thing for the Iraqi people, I also disagree with your analogy.
The problem with your analogy is that in Iraq, the "liberators" are the closest and most vocal ally of a third country, a country that, on a daily basis, is shown on television killing people that a majority of the Iraqi population have great sympathy for if not directly identify with. We don't see that footage played at all over here in the USA, but in the middle-east video of palestinian suffering and death is shown over and over again (because it "sells" just like Fox News "sells" over here).
It doesn't matter if the video is biased and one-sided or not. All that matters is that it has a huge, visceral impact on the people in Iraq and the rest of the middle east and thus their perceptions of the trustworthiness of the USA. Of course there are other factors that lead Iraqis to be mistrustful, but I figured I'd stick one nice big example to make the point.
Indeed. And why is it called Orac when it doesn't actually look anything like Orac?
It isn't a Dr. Who homage. The problem is that he only used a half-size tower case. If he had gone with a full-tower, he would not have had to leave off the "le" on the end. At least he used something approximating the corporate font on the resevoir so you still kind of get an impression of what he was aiming for.
In other words, when the wall's off, it's opaque. When current's applied to a section, the liquid inside the wall becomes clear and the wall is see-through. Not sure if the technology's there yet, though....
Yeah, it has been around for quite some time, here is just one of many articles on it: Smart Glass
One of my client's has their entire NOC done up with this kind of glass. Just one of the excesses of the dot-com era.
This stuff ain't cheap, but there is even more expensive versions that go black instead of translucent white (and default to clear when there is no current). I desperately want some of that for my car's windows. Alas it is so expensive that the people selling it don't even talk to small fry like I.
1) It is lower quality than a DVD 2) You have to burn it on your own media 3) No case, no cover-art so it looks like ass on your shelf
That needs to be priced no more than $3. By the time movies are available as pay-per-view, they are also available used at most video rental stores and often have even made it to Columbia House. That means good quality DVDs with case and cover-art are often available for around $8 new and even less than that used -- I've bought a ton of barely used foreign and indie flicks at Hollywood Video for $5.66 after tax, the big-name titles have been about $7.10 after tax.
That comparison is a little facetious as it involves the combination of Hollywood Video's 3/$20 and 3/$25 sales and %20 discount on gift cards, and the Columbia House pricing requires more orgainzation-work than some are willing to do. But the point is that DVD pricing is in a long-term downward trend and that the market is so saturated with titles that a download service needs to provide significant improvement over competing offerings. Then there is competition with bit-torrents and the other latest P2P flavors - ignoring the fact that they are "free," the diversity of titles available via P2P is staggering, those foreign films that aren't even on DVD in the USA? Good chance they are on the net and readily available.
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Tell you what, you should wait for a similar chatty email from a fellow spending some time in Taiwan. You might just get a different perspective.
EVERY Taiwanese person that I have ever met thinks that the island should be completely and formally a seperate nation. Oddly enough, every mainland chinese person that I've met disagrees and belives as you have stated. Most of them also believe that Tibet rightfully belongs to China too.
Here's why -- that's what they teach them in the schools. Both sides get a full load of propaganda growing up and it takes a serious amount of critical thinking for any of them to get beyond it.
However, despite my American-propaganda filled youth, I can independently say that it is absolutely true that while Taiwan and the mainland obivously share a strong cultural bond, their current-day societies are different enough that any such integration would be extremely difficult and very destructive to smaller of the two. Far worse than what is happening in HK.
The Dutch minister misinformed the national parliament before the vote on the political agreement. This came to light, and now he has to bear the consequences.
That's not a problem, he's probably got a cushy golf-playing job already lined up at Microsoft or another similiarly nefarious organization, just waiting for him to take it whenever he feels like retiring from politics to, "spend more time with his family."
No real point or witty comment, just an off-the-wall observation:
I've always thought that Russian Cyrllic looks a LOT like English characters viewed in a mirror (try it sometime, if you don't look real close you could be fooled, especially if you don't read Cyrllic).
But in that image the text is upside down and underlined (or I guess "overlined") and it sure looks like an India alphabet - devangari(? - I think that is the name of one of the subcontinent's alphabets).
Maybe there is some sort of social commentary buried in there somewhere...
So far it seems no one has pointed out the flipside of this "solution" and the social problems that follow. I'm talking about the effect it will have on the people who sign up and use it, instead of worrying about the system's effectiveness at discouraging terrorism (which is an altogether very important risk) I'm talking about its effective on our nation's social structure.
Without a doubt, some of the earliest users of this system will be the political class. Right now we are suppossed to be subject to random searches (as well as an apparently random no-fly list, but that's another topic). This condition means that potentially anyone, all the way up to the speaker of the house and the senate majority/minority leaders must entertain the possibility of being subjected to random search and all the inconvenience and embarrasment that goes with it.
There have been countless stories in the news of big famous celebrities and big important rich white politicians being subject to "pointless searches" since everybody knows they aren't terrorists. Well, besides the fact that some of these people are clearly off their rocker to begin with, at least being subjected to a search is equalitarian or in other words, it's "keeping it real," for those who make the rules too.
Once all the big fat important people effectively opt out of the hassle of searches, only the occasional flyer, the average joe and his poorer cousin, who still make up the majority of passengers, will be subject to the hassle of searches. The people in power will no longer have to live with the consequences of their (assinine and useless) "security" while the rest of us will still bear the brunt of it.
The next logical step is for "security" measures to be stepped up one little bit at a time because, after all, what politician wants to be seen as "soft on terrorism?" More thorough and invasive searches adding, say, 20 minutes to your wait time -- not a problem on paper since we are all expected to get to the airport 4 hours before departure, so there is plenty of time for extended and more frequent searches (yeah right). Since the very people who will inevitably be tightening the screws on the thumbs of general public will never feel the pressure themselves, it makes it that much easier for them to fuck with us with impunity.
On the plus side, the database of people in this program is certain to be a high-value target for identity theft. If security on the data is handled by the same people responsible for airport (in)security, then we can look forward to a successful break-in and theft of the database and all the personal information contained therein. Maybe the fallout from such a theft will be enough to get some effective data privacy laws passed in this country. But I'm not holding my breath.
Regardless of your politics or religion or whatever, you have to admit that there are few countries that have to deal with terrorism on a more daily basis than Israel.
And regardless of your politics, you have to admit that there is no country that has been more spectacular at failing to solve their terrorism problems than Israel. For all their logistical ability, Israel is on the top of list of countries that we should avoid emulating when it comes to actually dealing with terrorism.
This kind of comment is why IT workers probably should avoid making remarks on other industries...
Hardee haha, you so clever. You can't go out and build a supercomputer from component transistors either. So what? Should IT workers also avoid making remarks about their own industry?
A single individual can still acquire enough domain-specific skills as to become exceptionally valuable to an organization searching for an oil-field. If your specific skills and experience can reduce the average number of exploratory drills by say 30% that is worth BIG dollars to an oil company. A person who brings that level of value to an organization should expect to be highly compensated for their contribution, even if they don't have twenty or thirty or a hundred million dollars.
Don't overlook the opportunity to become an "expert in the field" -- that's essentially what I've done, which does rule out making billions because it reduces the opportunity for much growth beyond being a one-man operation. But it lets me get consulting work with big and little corps alike. FWIW, I "outsourced" my backoffice stuff to a company that specializes in it, other than schmoozing for new clients, the daily work is almost the same as being a wage-slave. But I can come into work late and instead of getting hassled it just increases my mystique as the "expert consultant."
PS, my speciality is in high-performance computing systems, but mostly DoD rather than petroleum. FWIW, my grandfather was a seismologist at philips, but that was long before 3D imaging and even most computers.
If I discover a billion barrel oil field the super-major I work for gives me a 20% bonus.
Let's be clear here -- 20% of your salary, not 20% of the revenue generated from your oil field.
That kind of inequity is exactly why I quit working for a big high-priced computer company and went independent. Why should any of us settle for an infitesimal piece of the pie when with a little entreprenurial spirit we can get 50% or more? Worked well for me, after a couple of years of doing exactly the same kind of work, but through my own company, I'm bringing in more than 16x what I made in salary as a wage-slave.
You do have to be good at what you do though, and it does take an iron stomach or balls of steel to deal with some of the risks. But, in retrospect, those risks weren't nearly as big as they appeared at the time.
Then why even bother posting in the first place, since obviously you aren't trying to say anything that will make an iota of difference?
PS - That's the exact same reasoning I hear from heads-down proprietary coders who think open source is a dead end. They have zero interest in actually learning anything beyond their feeble understanding of the topic and they assume that everyone else is exactly as close-minded as they are and thus any argument that one might make is immediately deflected with "I don't want to hear that, I've made up my mind, you've made up your mind and so why bother thinking?" Great way to run your life, much less the country.
1) Just because the Bush League is corrupt and a pox on the country doesn't mean the democrats are any better.
2) The bin Ladens pulled out of the Carlyle group in October 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks. As a reaction to the attacks it sure looks suspicious. As if they are trying protect their friends by disassociating from them, so the bin Laden bad publicity would have a lessened effect on the Bush League.
Even if I didn't think Moore was a big, fat, pathetic loser who takes out his own depression on everyone around him with his non-stop torrent of hate speech, I'd still have a hard time believing anyone who was so full of himself that he must weigh 300 pounds. What else could explain that he so detests the very country where someone like him could become so rich and famous?
Wow. Listen to talk radio much? That paragraph is as loaded with ad hominem and strawmen as the best that Rush, Savage and the rest of the crew have ever done. You should consider a job, maybe as guest knee-jerk-geek commentator on a show or two. You've got the rap down pat.
Truth? It's kind of hard to fake actual recorded video.
I know that by saying this I'm self-identifying as a massive geek, but you need to watch the episode of Babylon5 where a news crew follows the captain around on a "typical day." The first 30 minutes of the show we get to see what the news crew sees, the second 30 minutes of the show we get to see the program put together from the recorded footage rhat the news crew shot. The difference between the two half-hours is incredible -- the spin takes the reality of first 30 minutes and makes the produced show tell a story that is 180 degrees out of sync with "the truth."
That episode of Babylon5 is probably the best, most easily grasped, demonstration of how a camera can lie.
Not that I'm saying Moore lied or not, haven't seen the movie and won't see it until I buy it on DVD. My point is just that your original comment is not a sound basis for belief of any subject.
You do understand that invective is not supporting evidence, right?
But don't claim that it is "more free" than this license. Restrictions are restrictions.
I call bullshit. That's like saying a switchblade and an AK-47 are the same thing because "weapons are weapons." There is clearly a difference in degree here.
The difference is that with the GPL, the rules are "you can do anything you want as long as you ALSO do X" while with the Alladin license it is, "you can do anything you want EXCEPT Y and Z." Since the GPL's ANYTHING is a larger set than the Alladin's (ANYTHING - YZ), the GPL is indeed more Free than the Alladin license.
For every idiot like King who happens to be ON CAMERA there are 100 regular joes that are abused with no witness that gives a damn.
Hello - Australia founded as a penal colony. So by definition you are all guilty to begin with, ain't no such thing as the "assumption of innocence" down under. So of course you guys are automatically treated as criminals.
Yes, it's a joke, but not completely so. In some ways Australia was the product of tyranny - that of the british empire, so it isn't so surprising that you'd have a different legal basis than a country that was founded in opposition to that same tyranny.
And if everyone else jumps off the bridge, that means we should do it too?
You know, the US was founded on prinicples that were not in place ANYWHERE ELSE the world at the time. Maybe the reason the rest of the world does it is because they haven't caught up to the ideals that the US was founded on.
Of course, the article is flamebait. Since when did /. publish news? YOu don't really think the squad of adolescents running this thing have a clue what they're talking about?
On matters like this, no not the line about the SCOTUS, the REST of the submission, they have 10x the clue of the average American.
By that token, I daresay you insult the memory of those same people by not paying enough attention to what's already happening.
Absofuckinglutely.
You didn't even have to quote the poem by Martin Niemöller to make your point either.
Wish I hadn't already posted, I'd mod you up for that.
You are saying, "It is stupid to put up a fight when the cop has the upper-hand." I just don't understand how you get from that to, "It's OK for cops to have even MORE power in situations where they already have the upper-hand."
I just don't get it -- the closest justification I can think of is along the lines that the anti-privacy advocates like to say, "You don't have any privacy anyway, so you might as well just give up trying to put the genie back in the bottle." If you agree with that, then at least I know where you are coming from. I sure don't understand it, but at least your position is now easily categorized in to the group of, "Vigilance, we don't need to stinking vigilance, the government will provide it for us!"
Are these episodes available on DVD or online in high-enough-quality-so-I-don't-go-blind-watching-i t?
Although I disagree with the original poster - going to Iraq as a civilian contractor can be about doing a good thing for the Iraqi people, I also disagree with your analogy.
The problem with your analogy is that in Iraq, the "liberators" are the closest and most vocal ally of a third country, a country that, on a daily basis, is shown on television killing people that a majority of the Iraqi population have great sympathy for if not directly identify with. We don't see that footage played at all over here in the USA, but in the middle-east video of palestinian suffering and death is shown over and over again (because it "sells" just like Fox News "sells" over here).
It doesn't matter if the video is biased and one-sided or not. All that matters is that it has a huge, visceral impact on the people in Iraq and the rest of the middle east and thus their perceptions of the trustworthiness of the USA. Of course there are other factors that lead Iraqis to be mistrustful, but I figured I'd stick one nice big example to make the point.
Indeed. And why is it called Orac when it doesn't actually look anything like Orac?
It isn't a Dr. Who homage. The problem is that he only used a half-size tower case. If he had gone with a full-tower, he would not have had to leave off the "le" on the end. At least he used something approximating the corporate font on the resevoir so you still kind of get an impression of what he was aiming for.
In other words, when the wall's off, it's opaque. When current's applied to a section, the liquid inside the wall becomes clear and the wall is see-through. Not sure if the technology's there yet, though....
Yeah, it has been around for quite some time, here is just one of many articles on it: Smart Glass
One of my client's has their entire NOC done up with this kind of glass. Just one of the excesses of the dot-com era.
This stuff ain't cheap, but there is even more expensive versions that go black instead of translucent white (and default to clear when there is no current). I desperately want some of that for my car's windows. Alas it is so expensive that the people selling it don't even talk to small fry like I.
5-10 bucks and:
1) It is lower quality than a DVD
2) You have to burn it on your own media
3) No case, no cover-art so it looks like ass on your shelf
That needs to be priced no more than $3. By the time movies are available as pay-per-view, they are also available used at most video rental stores and often have even made it to Columbia House. That means good quality DVDs with case and cover-art are often available for around $8 new and even less than that used -- I've bought a ton of barely used foreign and indie flicks at Hollywood Video for $5.66 after tax, the big-name titles have been about $7.10 after tax.
That comparison is a little facetious as it involves the combination of Hollywood Video's 3/$20 and 3/$25 sales and %20 discount on gift cards, and the Columbia House pricing requires more orgainzation-work than some are willing to do. But the point is that DVD pricing is in a long-term downward trend and that the market is so saturated with titles that a download service needs to provide significant improvement over competing offerings. Then there is competition with bit-torrents and the other latest P2P flavors - ignoring the fact that they are "free," the diversity of titles available via P2P is staggering, those foreign films that aren't even on DVD in the USA? Good chance they are on the net and readily available.