When will the world realize that the only solution that will be tolerated by Christian facists is the death of every person of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, atheist, and/or any other religious bent other than Christian?
Historically Islam has been a much more peaceful religion than Christianity, and much more tolerant of other religions. There are extremists on both sides, the difference is the Christian extremists are running much of the U.S. government while the islamic extremists are criminals running from country to country.
The rest of the world is, rightfully, much more afraid that the U.S. will blow them up, than that Islamic extremists will.
The best recipe for creating more terrorists and suicide bombers that I can think of is flying across the ocean, invading a country full of people of another religion, blowing up large numbers of them, including innocent civilians, taking some captive, torturing them and forcing them to perform immoral sexual acts, bleeding their economy dry with reparations (see Germany after WWII), and installing a known agent of your military as their new leader. Gee that won't make anyone mad enough to try to kill us. The more of them we kill, the more of their friends an relatives give up hope, and live only for hate and revenge. (see Vietnam).
" Popular vote does not guarantee electoral votes!"
No but I heard plenty of people say, "No way, if someone lost the popular vote but was elected anyway their would RIOTS IN THE STREETS." Which there were not.
"no one state could dominate over all the others"
Yeah, except they were actually sovereign states at the time, not provinces beholden to a strong central government. Also, it was a compromise to keep the states from exercising their right to walk out and succeed. I think the civil war and establishment of a federal army pretty much ended that idea. Unfair representation is unfair representation, and just because it has been that way for a long time, does not make it fair. I suppose you think women should not be allowed to vote too?
"The video clips that are used by the news channels"
Well there is your problem, you seem to be getting all your news by watching TV. Dumbed down 2 minute sounds bites are not news. Buy a news paper and please read about what you are talking about. (One not owned by the moonies.) I'm not sure if you noticed, but Gore declared Bush the winner quickly in an attempt to avoid a big legal battle and to keep from undermining the election process. He may or may not have done the right thing.
"You mean if Bush starts acting like H. Ross Perot?"
WTF are you talking about? I must have missed something, I don't remember Perot ever being elected president.
Supporters of Bush and his policies have more in common with the Christians of the Inquisition that tortured and murdered those poor ignorant jews for their own good, than with any real followers of Jesus. Try taking a few recent republican speeches and swapping muslim/arab/terrorist with jew/foreigner/insurrectionist and then comparing them to some of the early Nazi party speeches.
I wish. The U.S. population does not give a crap about the elections. When Bush was elected after all the networks except Fox declared Gore the winner, after Gore won the popular vote, after a shady recount in a state governed by his brother... there were no major riots. After the election if Bush goes on TV and says, "Sorry we had to invalidate the results because a secret report from the CIA says terrorists rigged the election. I will remain president until this situation is resolved. " Most people will shrug and go back to watching Friends re-runs and eating low-carb twinkies.
"So you think all states should be equally disadvantaged. For most states, that's *THE* argument to keep the EC."
The electoral college was invented to provide representation to a number of sovereign states, to allow them to work together. It was a compromise. States rights are as dead as dead can be. The civil war and the new deal castrated the states to the point that they have no real power, it is all concentrated in the hands of the federal government since they control all the funding. That being said, if all states were to represent their electoral votes as a percentage of the votes of their populace, the people would be more accurately represented. It is just making the system more granular and accurate to another decimal point. If some states represent their electoral votes as a percentage, and others do not, this provides the majority party in those states that do not proportionally distribute their votes to have disproportionately large say in our federal government, and as a result gives them more bargaining power and attention from presidential candidates.
Your argument seems to imply that disadvantaging all states would be a bad thing. In this case there is a limited amount of representation. It is not as though if every state changed their policies, politicians would say, "Nah, not worth the bother of trying to win votes." The representation is a finite, fixed quantity that is divided. Currently it is just divided up less equitably than it could be.
P.S. if you want to keep the electoral college the way it was originally written, fine. But lets restore the rest of the union to its original state as well. The federal government should give no money to state governments, ever. All money spent within a state should be raised by, and completely controlled by the state. The states should not have to Kow-tow to the federal government constantly. Lower federal taxes by 75%, raise state taxes proportionately. Restore the right of states to succeed. Then I will agree the electoral college should stay.
Gee, Cisco bought another bad-aid partial solution to the worm and virus problem, that only addresses symptoms and does not have any hope of working on a zero-day worm in a production environment. That is what, five they have bought now, none of which solve the problem?
OK, here is one. It is not illegal for me to go to the library, or bookstore and copy an entire book using either a pen or copy machine for my own personal use. Or if it is illegal, the libraries and their users have been guilty for years so this falls into the same category as those "women are not allowed to drive unless preceded by to men swinging lanterns and shouting" type laws. Is it illegal for me to go to the library and copy an entire album using a microphone? Some other method? I'd like to see the court case for that one. And no "Geophysical Union v. Texaco" doesn't count.
No it is not. The absence of something happening isn't proof of anything other than that it hasn't happened yet.
You obviously did not read my argument carefully, it was in two parts, if X therefore Y stands as evidence. Citing that the second statement does not stand on it's own while disregarding the postulate is a logical fallacy on your part, not mine. I may not be fluent in leagalize, but I seriously doubt you are more qualified to judge cascading logic chains than I am. The whole premise of reasoned discourse is to find common ground then build until the factual or ethical differentiation can be defined and, hopefully, resolved. (I know this must be foreign to a lawyer.) In this instance You have tried to to jump past the "reason" part and assert your conclusions or refute mine, by disregarding the foundation statement.
Ealier you addressed the difference between publishing and reproduction. That addressed a possible factual differentiation and was logical. but you did not cite the relevance to any stated opinion or argument.
"And how do you explain away the rulings that do actually talk about downloaders?"
What rulings?
"Since the deterrance factor is pretty similar for any group of users"
I do not grant that this is so. What evidence do you have to support your theory that downloaders will be deterred from downloading by lawsuits against uploaders? (this is the base disagreement for X, referenced above. Notice the logical regression.)
What makes you think that downloading music for non-commercial purposes is illegal? I can see some technical parts of the law that might apply to reproduction, but I don't think any jury would consider copying something to RAM to be copying.
I'd say, without any suits filed against any individual or organization for downloading music, the legality of such action is still in question. In fact, I have not found any reputable legal sources that claim downloading of mp3's is illegal, since copying files on a computer system has long been held to not constitute publishing, and hence illegal publication, unless those files are offered to others. There are plenty of market-speak articles declaring MP3 sharing to be illegal, and some claiming downloading is illegal, but I have yet to see anything from a major company or organization that goes so far. It may be true that the RIAA or some other copyright holder can sue the allofmp3.com company for illegal publication, but given that they do not operate in the U.S., and that they do hold legal licenses to the work in Russia, I think their chances of success are slim.
"If you sue Carol, all you stop is her own infringement. There are no beneficial side effects."
Your argument relies upon the premise that these legal suits are intended to stop people from sharing files by actually suing everyone doing so. That is preposterous. The intent of these lawsuits is to frighten people into "going straight." A lawsuit against someone who merely downloads music would be more effective in this regard, as it would let a much larger subset of the population know that they are at risk of being sued. The very fact that the RIAA has not yet sued a downloader is very strong evidence that they do not think they can win such a lawsuit or, perhaps, that they fear doing so would frighten enough people to actually get laws passed that make it legal.
Since you profess some legal knowledge answer me this, "Has anyone ever been prosecuted in the U.S. for downloading an mp3?" I know of plenty of cases where uploading an mp3 was the cause of a suit being filed, but never a case of downloading, as with the customers of allofmp3.com.
Not too shabby. A bit pricey at $800 including the subscription and after the rebate, but a pretty viable option. I would have strongly considered this option, had I found it before purchasing my current setup. It lacks all of the cool functionality of having a full computer outputting video, but then again, you don't need to already have a computer. All in all, I think I prefer my setup, since I can use it for games, burning to VCD, MP3's, alternate video sources, etc. But that looks like a very good option, aside from the price.
Opening the exploit demo in a new window, did not switch focus page to the page opening the new window. I'm pretty sure I would not fall for this, but I can see where it could be a problem. I wonder what the correct behavior should be. Switch your window focus without your consent (annoying), tag new windows with something to relate them to their parent window (weird), not allow pages to create new windows without user intervention (potentially breaks other pages)?
I just tried the exploit demonstration for Safari, but it did not work. The active tab switched back to the one providing the pop-up, not the target site. Did anyone else try it and have it work?
Looking at Dell.com, the only 5100 series they offer is the 5160, which is $1500 after a 10% discount and two mail in rebates. I'm not sure that qualifies as low-end. Also, their website does not seem to give any specs on the video card, or it's capabilities. I'll tell you what I have sitting on my desk right now. An IBM T30 thinkpad and an Apple 12" powerbook. They cost about the same amount, but the powerbook is the only one that can use the CRT and it's own LCD to display parts of the desktop.
If you think buying the crap that Dell sells is the way to go though, hey good luck. Say "hi" to Rashid for me when you call with a problem.
I wanted to buy a PVR a few months ago. What I found was a serious lack of ability in current PVRs. If I conducted the interview my first question would be "Why can't I burn DVDs?" My second question would be "Why can't I burn DVDs?!?"
If I'm going to shell out big bucks for an ultra-technomological VCR, shouldn't it at least have the same level of functionality as my current VCR? The lack of ability to archive shows and movies, combined with the monthly fee, queered the deal for me. I went with an EyeTV that I plugged into my old mac tower. The cost was similar to a Tivo and the functionality is drastically superior. Also, no monthly fee. I buy something and never have to worry about paying for it again (except for blank DVDs).
I have used a Tivo, and I really like the user interface and ease of use, but come on, grow a pair already and give your customers what they want.
Disclaimer: if you don't have a spare mac laying around this option may not be the best for you. (come on this is/. we all have spare macs laying around, right?)
Dual CPUs are much different in OSX, than in Windows. They actually both do things...really. My older dual 533 G4 has no problem playing UT2003 or Warcraft3 while still functioning as my web server, MP3 server, and PVR. Try playing a CPU intensive game on a dual CPU windows box, while also using it to record and encode a TV show. Now try it on a 4 year old windows box. I dare you.
"Nowadays all but the absolute lowest-end PC laptops have dual-headed display support with separate "screens" on the built-in display and the video out port."
Plenty of people have pointed out the firmware hack that will allow ibooks to do monitor spanning as well as mirroring. However, I take issue with your assertion that most PC laptops come with this feature. I know that the IBM thinkpads we get at work don't have it. From a quick glance at their web page, it looks like only their top-end X series, 1 of four product lines, offers monitor spanning rather than mirroring. As near as I can tell Dell offers it as an option on the top half of their product line. I think you are greatly mistaken if you think low-end consumer laptops, or even middle priced laptops provide monitor spanning.
I believe DAldredge was referring to California's ban on.50 caliber breech loading rifles. You see the thing is, there is not alot of criminal application of a rifle that costs thousands of dollars plus $4 a round. Violent crime is usually an act of desperation. It is a lot easier to pay 5 guys a hundred bucks each to go kill someone, then to hire someone who can afford to buy that kind of expensive specialty gun.
P.S. they are a lot of fun to shoot if you can find a long enough range.
Voter registration throughout the U.S. is a pot-luck. In Michigan, where I live, you just fill out a few extra fields on your driver's license. In many places there are drives, where people go door-to-door trying to sign up voters. Unlike many other nations, voter turn out in the U.S. is piss poor, with less than half of the citizenry voting. Much of this is because of our backwards electoral system, that is not equally representative, and the entrenched two-party system that makes voting a choice between two candidates with very similar views.
Allegations of voter fraud are unbelievably common. Here in Michigan, the secretary of state, issued notices to people registering to vote, telling them they were not eligible to vote in the coming presidential election, since they registered to late. The notices, however, were sent out a month earlier than intended and now many people who can vote, probably will not. When called on the issue, they decided not to send out corrections, citing that it would be too expensive.
A final problem with the U.S. voter registration system is that it is not independent. It is almost always conducted by members of one party or another. This provides incentive for them to try to skew the process, and reason for their opposition to be suspicious. The secretary of state and registrar of votes are both prominent members of one party. In fact a state representative from one party publicly made statements about how important it was to "suppress the vote" in Detroit, the largest and most liberal city in the state.
Basically the system is corrupt, no one is surprised, half of the people I know don't think their vote will even be counted, a good portion of the country thinks our current president was not legally elected, and there does not seem to be any way for the public to force an actual vote that would make a difference. Some of the smartest people I know are moving out of the country, I may follow them.
I did no such thing. All i did was give you more information, by telling you that I own real estate. I can't be responsible to enlighten you about every aspect of everything. You'll note I also did not mention that this was in the U.S. or that it was not taking place in bizarro world where Superman is evil.
Furthermore, suspecting someone of a crime, does not constitute a pre-existing relationship for the MPAA any more than it does for me. If I suspect that you are trying to sell my real estate to someone, based upon the fact that you are advertising a stupendously beautiful house, which mine is, does that mean we have a pre-existing relationship? That is complete bull-pucky. In order to reasonably suspect someone of a infringing on my intellectual property rights, I have to at least look at what they are publishing. As far as your counter "analogy" goes, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you know what an analogy is?
There is nothing wrong with a read-only format. There is a problem with the read-only format they have chosen. "Freely available" were the words used in the instructions. These documents can only be viewed in IE with a special plug-in from MS. IE runs on 2 platforms, Windows and MacOS (sort of). MS has deprecated the mac version, leaving Windows the only actively maintained platform for reading this documentation. Windows costs money.
If I complied with a court order to provide documentation, by putting the documents in a safe deposit box and offering to sell people copies of the key, I'd be rotting in a cell by now. Bill Gates should spend at least one night in the lock-up for this crap.
"Since you know that you don't own the real estate, you're knowingly sending out a false message."
I own real estate. My house. But I, like the MPAA, did not do a very good job of making sure the property in question is the one that belongs to me, you know, like looking at it, or a picture of it, which is all that they would have had to do.
Considering it is now illegal to send unsolicited, commercial messages, I think you might have a very good case. Because the spam is intended as part of a con, claiming copyright on works not owned by that party, you would probably have a better case, not worse. Think of it this way, If I searched with google for the string "real estate" and the @ character, then sent messages to every e-mail address I harvested in this way, stating that the real estate was in fact my property, and they must stop advertising it. Would I be more or less likely to win a lawsuit that my messages are spam than the average spammer?
While I agree with you that Bush sucks and voting for Kerry is a necessary evil, I think by leaving the title "Politics" conversation is encouraged by those poor, stupid bastards that are currently planning on voting for the asshat incumbent. You know the lying, cheating, murdering, oathbreaking, coke-head, drunk, religious fanatic that is currently terrorizing the world and screwing us all on a daily basis? Don't you think that would be a good idea?
Porn is the cultural touchstone
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The article basically says that the internet and the information provided in it will allows services and products that are only of interest to a few people to be profitable, by marketing them globally. Well duh. As always, the porn industry is the leader in technology and market trends. Ten years ago sites popped up that provided pictures of one-armed women in golf cleats doing obscene things with cottage cheese. There were forty people who would pay to see that, just enough to make it profitable if you roped them all in from around the world. The mainstream media is just catching on. Provide that obscure service and weirdos around the world will google for it.
Slashdot Mirror
When will the world realize that the only solution that will be tolerated by Christian facists is the death of every person of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, atheist, and/or any other religious bent other than Christian?
Historically Islam has been a much more peaceful religion than Christianity, and much more tolerant of other religions. There are extremists on both sides, the difference is the Christian extremists are running much of the U.S. government while the islamic extremists are criminals running from country to country.
The rest of the world is, rightfully, much more afraid that the U.S. will blow them up, than that Islamic extremists will.
The best recipe for creating more terrorists and suicide bombers that I can think of is flying across the ocean, invading a country full of people of another religion, blowing up large numbers of them, including innocent civilians, taking some captive, torturing them and forcing them to perform immoral sexual acts, bleeding their economy dry with reparations (see Germany after WWII), and installing a known agent of your military as their new leader. Gee that won't make anyone mad enough to try to kill us. The more of them we kill, the more of their friends an relatives give up hope, and live only for hate and revenge. (see Vietnam).
" Popular vote does not guarantee electoral votes!"
No but I heard plenty of people say, "No way, if someone lost the popular vote but was elected anyway their would RIOTS IN THE STREETS." Which there were not.
"no one state could dominate over all the others"
Yeah, except they were actually sovereign states at the time, not provinces beholden to a strong central government. Also, it was a compromise to keep the states from exercising their right to walk out and succeed. I think the civil war and establishment of a federal army pretty much ended that idea. Unfair representation is unfair representation, and just because it has been that way for a long time, does not make it fair. I suppose you think women should not be allowed to vote too?
"The video clips that are used by the news channels"
Well there is your problem, you seem to be getting all your news by watching TV. Dumbed down 2 minute sounds bites are not news. Buy a news paper and please read about what you are talking about. (One not owned by the moonies.) I'm not sure if you noticed, but Gore declared Bush the winner quickly in an attempt to avoid a big legal battle and to keep from undermining the election process. He may or may not have done the right thing.
"You mean if Bush starts acting like H. Ross Perot?"
WTF are you talking about? I must have missed something, I don't remember Perot ever being elected president.
Supporters of Bush and his policies have more in common with the Christians of the Inquisition that tortured and murdered those poor ignorant jews for their own good, than with any real followers of Jesus. Try taking a few recent republican speeches and swapping muslim/arab/terrorist with jew/foreigner/insurrectionist and then comparing them to some of the early Nazi party speeches.
there would be riots in the streets
I wish. The U.S. population does not give a crap about the elections. When Bush was elected after all the networks except Fox declared Gore the winner, after Gore won the popular vote, after a shady recount in a state governed by his brother... there were no major riots. After the election if Bush goes on TV and says, "Sorry we had to invalidate the results because a secret report from the CIA says terrorists rigged the election. I will remain president until this situation is resolved. " Most people will shrug and go back to watching Friends re-runs and eating low-carb twinkies.
"So you think all states should be equally disadvantaged. For most states, that's *THE* argument to keep the EC."
The electoral college was invented to provide representation to a number of sovereign states, to allow them to work together. It was a compromise. States rights are as dead as dead can be. The civil war and the new deal castrated the states to the point that they have no real power, it is all concentrated in the hands of the federal government since they control all the funding. That being said, if all states were to represent their electoral votes as a percentage of the votes of their populace, the people would be more accurately represented. It is just making the system more granular and accurate to another decimal point. If some states represent their electoral votes as a percentage, and others do not, this provides the majority party in those states that do not proportionally distribute their votes to have disproportionately large say in our federal government, and as a result gives them more bargaining power and attention from presidential candidates.
Your argument seems to imply that disadvantaging all states would be a bad thing. In this case there is a limited amount of representation. It is not as though if every state changed their policies, politicians would say, "Nah, not worth the bother of trying to win votes." The representation is a finite, fixed quantity that is divided. Currently it is just divided up less equitably than it could be.
P.S. if you want to keep the electoral college the way it was originally written, fine. But lets restore the rest of the union to its original state as well. The federal government should give no money to state governments, ever. All money spent within a state should be raised by, and completely controlled by the state. The states should not have to Kow-tow to the federal government constantly. Lower federal taxes by 75%, raise state taxes proportionately. Restore the right of states to succeed. Then I will agree the electoral college should stay.
Gee, Cisco bought another bad-aid partial solution to the worm and virus problem, that only addresses symptoms and does not have any hope of working on a zero-day worm in a production environment. That is what, five they have bought now, none of which solve the problem?
"Look, the courts live on analogy."
OK, here is one. It is not illegal for me to go to the library, or bookstore and copy an entire book using either a pen or copy machine for my own personal use. Or if it is illegal, the libraries and their users have been guilty for years so this falls into the same category as those "women are not allowed to drive unless preceded by to men swinging lanterns and shouting" type laws. Is it illegal for me to go to the library and copy an entire album using a microphone? Some other method? I'd like to see the court case for that one. And no "Geophysical Union v. Texaco" doesn't count.
No it is not. The absence of something happening isn't proof of anything other than that it hasn't happened yet.
You obviously did not read my argument carefully, it was in two parts, if X therefore Y stands as evidence. Citing that the second statement does not stand on it's own while disregarding the postulate is a logical fallacy on your part, not mine. I may not be fluent in leagalize, but I seriously doubt you are more qualified to judge cascading logic chains than I am. The whole premise of reasoned discourse is to find common ground then build until the factual or ethical differentiation can be defined and, hopefully, resolved. (I know this must be foreign to a lawyer.) In this instance You have tried to to jump past the "reason" part and assert your conclusions or refute mine, by disregarding the foundation statement.
Ealier you addressed the difference between publishing and reproduction. That addressed a possible factual differentiation and was logical. but you did not cite the relevance to any stated opinion or argument.
"And how do you explain away the rulings that do actually talk about downloaders?"
What rulings?
"Since the deterrance factor is pretty similar for any group of users"
I do not grant that this is so. What evidence do you have to support your theory that downloaders will be deterred from downloading by lawsuits against uploaders? (this is the base disagreement for X, referenced above. Notice the logical regression.)
What makes you think that downloading music for non-commercial purposes is illegal? I can see some technical parts of the law that might apply to reproduction, but I don't think any jury would consider copying something to RAM to be copying.
I find your ideas interesting... and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'd say, without any suits filed against any individual or organization for downloading music, the legality of such action is still in question. In fact, I have not found any reputable legal sources that claim downloading of mp3's is illegal, since copying files on a computer system has long been held to not constitute publishing, and hence illegal publication, unless those files are offered to others. There are plenty of market-speak articles declaring MP3 sharing to be illegal, and some claiming downloading is illegal, but I have yet to see anything from a major company or organization that goes so far. It may be true that the RIAA or some other copyright holder can sue the allofmp3.com company for illegal publication, but given that they do not operate in the U.S., and that they do hold legal licenses to the work in Russia, I think their chances of success are slim.
"If you sue Carol, all you stop is her own infringement. There are no beneficial side effects."
Your argument relies upon the premise that these legal suits are intended to stop people from sharing files by actually suing everyone doing so. That is preposterous. The intent of these lawsuits is to frighten people into "going straight." A lawsuit against someone who merely downloads music would be more effective in this regard, as it would let a much larger subset of the population know that they are at risk of being sued. The very fact that the RIAA has not yet sued a downloader is very strong evidence that they do not think they can win such a lawsuit or, perhaps, that they fear doing so would frighten enough people to actually get laws passed that make it legal.
Since you profess some legal knowledge answer me this, "Has anyone ever been prosecuted in the U.S. for downloading an mp3?" I know of plenty of cases where uploading an mp3 was the cause of a suit being filed, but never a case of downloading, as with the customers of allofmp3.com.
Not too shabby. A bit pricey at $800 including the subscription and after the rebate, but a pretty viable option. I would have strongly considered this option, had I found it before purchasing my current setup. It lacks all of the cool functionality of having a full computer outputting video, but then again, you don't need to already have a computer. All in all, I think I prefer my setup, since I can use it for games, burning to VCD, MP3's, alternate video sources, etc. But that looks like a very good option, aside from the price.
Opening the exploit demo in a new window, did not switch focus page to the page opening the new window. I'm pretty sure I would not fall for this, but I can see where it could be a problem. I wonder what the correct behavior should be. Switch your window focus without your consent (annoying), tag new windows with something to relate them to their parent window (weird), not allow pages to create new windows without user intervention (potentially breaks other pages)?
I just tried the exploit demonstration for Safari, but it did not work. The active tab switched back to the one providing the pop-up, not the target site. Did anyone else try it and have it work?
Looking at Dell.com, the only 5100 series they offer is the 5160, which is $1500 after a 10% discount and two mail in rebates. I'm not sure that qualifies as low-end. Also, their website does not seem to give any specs on the video card, or it's capabilities. I'll tell you what I have sitting on my desk right now. An IBM T30 thinkpad and an Apple 12" powerbook. They cost about the same amount, but the powerbook is the only one that can use the CRT and it's own LCD to display parts of the desktop.
If you think buying the crap that Dell sells is the way to go though, hey good luck. Say "hi" to Rashid for me when you call with a problem.
I wanted to buy a PVR a few months ago. What I found was a serious lack of ability in current PVRs. If I conducted the interview my first question would be "Why can't I burn DVDs?" My second question would be "Why can't I burn DVDs?!?"
If I'm going to shell out big bucks for an ultra-technomological VCR, shouldn't it at least have the same level of functionality as my current VCR? The lack of ability to archive shows and movies, combined with the monthly fee, queered the deal for me. I went with an EyeTV that I plugged into my old mac tower. The cost was similar to a Tivo and the functionality is drastically superior. Also, no monthly fee. I buy something and never have to worry about paying for it again (except for blank DVDs).
I have used a Tivo, and I really like the user interface and ease of use, but come on, grow a pair already and give your customers what they want.
Disclaimer: if you don't have a spare mac laying around this option may not be the best for you. (come on this is /. we all have spare macs laying around, right?)
Dual CPUs are much different in OSX, than in Windows. They actually both do things...really. My older dual 533 G4 has no problem playing UT2003 or Warcraft3 while still functioning as my web server, MP3 server, and PVR. Try playing a CPU intensive game on a dual CPU windows box, while also using it to record and encode a TV show. Now try it on a 4 year old windows box. I dare you.
"Nowadays all but the absolute lowest-end PC laptops have dual-headed display support with separate "screens" on the built-in display and the video out port."
Plenty of people have pointed out the firmware hack that will allow ibooks to do monitor spanning as well as mirroring. However, I take issue with your assertion that most PC laptops come with this feature. I know that the IBM thinkpads we get at work don't have it. From a quick glance at their web page, it looks like only their top-end X series, 1 of four product lines, offers monitor spanning rather than mirroring. As near as I can tell Dell offers it as an option on the top half of their product line. I think you are greatly mistaken if you think low-end consumer laptops, or even middle priced laptops provide monitor spanning.
I believe DAldredge was referring to California's ban on .50 caliber breech loading rifles. You see the thing is, there is not alot of criminal application of a rifle that costs thousands of dollars plus $4 a round. Violent crime is usually an act of desperation. It is a lot easier to pay 5 guys a hundred bucks each to go kill someone, then to hire someone who can afford to buy that kind of expensive specialty gun.
P.S. they are a lot of fun to shoot if you can find a long enough range.
Voter registration throughout the U.S. is a pot-luck. In Michigan, where I live, you just fill out a few extra fields on your driver's license. In many places there are drives, where people go door-to-door trying to sign up voters. Unlike many other nations, voter turn out in the U.S. is piss poor, with less than half of the citizenry voting. Much of this is because of our backwards electoral system, that is not equally representative, and the entrenched two-party system that makes voting a choice between two candidates with very similar views.
Allegations of voter fraud are unbelievably common. Here in Michigan, the secretary of state, issued notices to people registering to vote, telling them they were not eligible to vote in the coming presidential election, since they registered to late. The notices, however, were sent out a month earlier than intended and now many people who can vote, probably will not. When called on the issue, they decided not to send out corrections, citing that it would be too expensive.
A final problem with the U.S. voter registration system is that it is not independent. It is almost always conducted by members of one party or another. This provides incentive for them to try to skew the process, and reason for their opposition to be suspicious. The secretary of state and registrar of votes are both prominent members of one party. In fact a state representative from one party publicly made statements about how important it was to "suppress the vote" in Detroit, the largest and most liberal city in the state.
Basically the system is corrupt, no one is surprised, half of the people I know don't think their vote will even be counted, a good portion of the country thinks our current president was not legally elected, and there does not seem to be any way for the public to force an actual vote that would make a difference. Some of the smartest people I know are moving out of the country, I may follow them.
You can't change your analogy in mid-stream!
I did no such thing. All i did was give you more information, by telling you that I own real estate. I can't be responsible to enlighten you about every aspect of everything. You'll note I also did not mention that this was in the U.S. or that it was not taking place in bizarro world where Superman is evil.
Furthermore, suspecting someone of a crime, does not constitute a pre-existing relationship for the MPAA any more than it does for me. If I suspect that you are trying to sell my real estate to someone, based upon the fact that you are advertising a stupendously beautiful house, which mine is, does that mean we have a pre-existing relationship? That is complete bull-pucky. In order to reasonably suspect someone of a infringing on my intellectual property rights, I have to at least look at what they are publishing. As far as your counter "analogy" goes, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you know what an analogy is?
What's so difficult about a read-only format?
There is nothing wrong with a read-only format. There is a problem with the read-only format they have chosen. "Freely available" were the words used in the instructions. These documents can only be viewed in IE with a special plug-in from MS. IE runs on 2 platforms, Windows and MacOS (sort of). MS has deprecated the mac version, leaving Windows the only actively maintained platform for reading this documentation. Windows costs money.
If I complied with a court order to provide documentation, by putting the documents in a safe deposit box and offering to sell people copies of the key, I'd be rotting in a cell by now. Bill Gates should spend at least one night in the lock-up for this crap.
"Since you know that you don't own the real estate, you're knowingly sending out a false message."
I own real estate. My house. But I, like the MPAA, did not do a very good job of making sure the property in question is the one that belongs to me, you know, like looking at it, or a picture of it, which is all that they would have had to do.
I stand my analogy, it is apt, you hear me? Apt!
You must live in the lower peninsula.
Considering it is now illegal to send unsolicited, commercial messages, I think you might have a very good case. Because the spam is intended as part of a con, claiming copyright on works not owned by that party, you would probably have a better case, not worse. Think of it this way, If I searched with google for the string "real estate" and the @ character, then sent messages to every e-mail address I harvested in this way, stating that the real estate was in fact my property, and they must stop advertising it. Would I be more or less likely to win a lawsuit that my messages are spam than the average spammer?
While I agree with you that Bush sucks and voting for Kerry is a necessary evil, I think by leaving the title "Politics" conversation is encouraged by those poor, stupid bastards that are currently planning on voting for the asshat incumbent. You know the lying, cheating, murdering, oathbreaking, coke-head, drunk, religious fanatic that is currently terrorizing the world and screwing us all on a daily basis? Don't you think that would be a good idea?
The article basically says that the internet and the information provided in it will allows services and products that are only of interest to a few people to be profitable, by marketing them globally. Well duh. As always, the porn industry is the leader in technology and market trends. Ten years ago sites popped up that provided pictures of one-armed women in golf cleats doing obscene things with cottage cheese. There were forty people who would pay to see that, just enough to make it profitable if you roped them all in from around the world. The mainstream media is just catching on. Provide that obscure service and weirdos around the world will google for it.