While I partly agree, the concept that piracy always hurts is a misnomer. In the case of indie games I would consider piracy a neutral force. Sometimes piracy brings to mainlight games that few would have tried. People saw the game but didn't think it was worth the money, after pirating and playing it, suddenly realized it was worth the money and paid for, while other times people pirate the game and are happy to just stick with the pirated version. I don't know of any in depth legitimate study that isn't brazenly wrong to the point of assuming one of 2 false ideas.
1. Everyone who would have paid will pay for software regardless of if they pirated it or not.
2. Everyone who pirates a game, absolutely would have purchased it if they hadn't pirated it.
Both overgeneralizations are equally bogus, the truth of the matter is somewhere inbetween, one thing I can say though, is the actual value of the game is a huge factor. Anyone who downloads the game, and feels it isn't anywhere near worth the money it costs, is a guaranteed lost sale. IMO the absolute best of both worlds, is when games have both as single player and an online mode, as the online mode is sort of a carrot, that pirates can rarely actually crack, but the single player is something that gives people a solid idea of the depth of the gameplay. IE games like left4dead etc... do very well with this model. Of course that dosn't work for every game, no shortage of games just can't translate to have an attractive multiplayer mode, however even something simple like an authenticated high scores table etc... can translate theft into sales. The kind of play and the cost of the games influence the percentage of pirates turned to sales, and IMO developers using the right practices can very often find ways to turn many cases of piracy into sales, often in ways that generate more sales than the game would have had without the piracy. Piracy can't and won't be stopped, IMO it takes a different way of looking at it to turn a "problem" into a marketing plan.
Nokia was under completely different management 2 years ago, which essentially makes every point on behavior prior to the microsoft deals entirely unrelated points.
If my memory serves right, microsoft was one of the first to fire in the patent wars, possibly the first. What i recall was microsoft made the anouncement that microsoft would handle defending the cases and legal fees for all phones using windows phones, and then promptly fired the first offensive shot at one of the android manufactures, starting a large random surge of lawsuits firing in every direction.
Actually with your statement it can be agreed with while completely disagreeing at the same time, at least based on the summary. The issue isn't that the CLI should be destroyed, the issue is the gui shouldn't be lacking enough to make the CLI NECESSARY. Key word here, NECESSARY. A somewhat intuative, yet significantly slower then the CLI that gets the job done, in addition to a CLI that gets the job done much faster, reaches both markets. Features that are left out of the gui's altogether because "Meh they can just use the CLI to do that", completely lose the non IT worker market. That being said, I haven't run into an issue with anything in a long time, setting up linux mint for my 6 year old, or my parents, I can't think of a single task that actually required the CLI, so what is the complaint about exactly? That the CLI is an option for people who prefer it, or the feared stigma that someone looking over a geeks sholder when he is using the CLI will think linux is too hard. I am kind of lost on both perspectives of this argument.
Very possible, but I think this will backfire. Bill Gates stance on people using MS software for free, was smarter (I believe gates had a statement along the lines of "I would rather people pirate windows XP than use the competition. Something that is much more real of a competition, as people for whom office starter is good enough for, Google docs is probably also good enough for. Pushing people to the cloud, isn't the best idea when microsoft isn't winning the war in the cloud.
Bottom line is, it isn't the way to go in war. Fair war, is to offer an ultimatum (IE stop develoment of nukes or we will take action). Send in drones or whatever etc... Claiming we are at peace, then sending in random cyber attacks on nuklear systems, which for all we know could backfire and say... set off a nuclear reaction killing who knows how many scientists and civilians. Really if we do it the backdoor way, how is that tactic any more moral than say, flying a plane into a large populated building? The methods matter, especially when we are talking countries in which the public is brainwashed, and the governments are looking for any form of propoganda to convince them that america is evil. When we give them solid evidence we are evil, we are essentially creating terrorists on their side.
I would say further then that, I started on linux when I was 13. At that point I didn't have the budget to purchase my own computer parts, heck I wasn't even using the main system for it (If I recall it was an older moved past it's usefulness dell I used). This hurts the next generation, linux has been working in strides to become more user friendly. Currently linux has moved to the point where I could easily hand my mother a linux mint disk, tell her to boot it up and follow the on screen directions, and her have it installed and fully usable in an hour. Now we are talking a new hurdle involving diving into the bios, entering in a certain password (Provided of course the manufacturer actually provides this password, they might not). With steam being ported to linux in the very near future, webapps starting to replace regular programs etc... it is actually reaching a time where linux may truely be viable for the common folk. The OS matters less and less every day.
In the context of a system administrator running a company there are no issues with the feature, In terms of a home market where some users may want to dable in linux etc... There is an issue. Believe it or not not every software hobbyist is also a hardware hobbyest. Not everyone who toys with linux has the choice of what hardware they purchase (say teenagers for instance). Now in business class machines, yes lock them down, set them so that without an administrator key they can only run windows, and microsoft office. The issue is will OEMs provide their customers with the key to allow them to even run linux.
I wasn't talking about vaporware at all, with apple I was referring to the level of loyalty of their fan-base, and the rapidness of their hardcore to upgrade. IE the quanity of apple fans who will buy (rolling way back in time here), the 1GB Ipod, and then the 4 GB Ipod when it comes out a month later, then the 8GB one 3 months after that. There are a handful of those types with any product, but Apple seems to have the largest quantity of that type of person. While more frugal people, will likely not buy until the version with as much space as they need comes out, and hang onto it until it no longer meets their needs, regardless of how many other versions come out in the meantime.
How does vaporware draw in customers? Hypnotized apple fans are known for buying every version that comes out, but for the most part the average android customer, buys the one they want when it comes out. I would imagine unobtainable vaporware, delays if not removes the sale. IE the 32 GB version should be out in a month, I'll wait until it comes out before buying.
Honestly I think it was a flaw to encorage and allow manufacturers to pre-load software from the beginning. Instead of making sure everything was pre-loaded, they should have put that effort into simplifying the windows install. That viewpoint could also have greatly assisted in preventing the existance of worms etc... (IE if the password were set at the install, by the user, instead of 90% of systems being a factory default pre-installed system). The bottom line is the hardware makers should never have been in charge of pre-installing the software of their choice. They should have been able to offer disks, include a drivers disk (Which also should more or less have been ultra simplified down to a "click here to load all drivers", etc... Making the software configuration a choice of the hardware vendors, and retailers is what permitted the crapware infestation.
While that is obvious, I would say the fact that they are intentionally terrible is at least somewhat less obvious than it seems. I always figured they were trying to set the bar at getting as many people to bite as possible, and simply had the spelling errors and horrible stories as a result of not being bright or skilled at English. The idea of specifically avoiding people who are stupid enough to bite, but might catch on down the road, is somewhat new to me.
Certainly, and Elon Musk has a good budget to do things, but you still have to factor in, it is a finite budget. He cannot go toe to toe with china, purely funneling income from his other businesses and expect to come out on top. We can easilly get to where we've gone 50 years ago on a fairly small budget, especially with ex-nasa working for him. But actually doing the level of in depth R&D that is going to be needed to take us to new frontiers, I just don't think that can be done without a government being willing to throw ENORMOUS chunks of change into the project.
The bottom line, what on earth is spaceX's motivation to go to mars? The thing with corporations running things, is they have to be profitable. Hence why spaceX's missions are to deliver to ISS etc... China just has to get a guy there and put up a flag. SpaceX has to, find a resource on mars, figure out a way to obtain said resource, get good enough quanities of it, and bring it back and sell it, for roughly more money then the trip cost. Unless of course they can write it off as a multi-billion dollar marketing plan. But even that, marketing to whom? They aren't in a business where they can easilly increase their number of customers. Only governments, and multi billionares can even think of hiring them, and well, I'm pretty sure every government with interest in stuff from space, and person ritch enough to actually afford a space tourist trip, knows of them already. Maybe a tourist trip where they can bring along say 15-20 of the people on the forbes list who are brave enough to want to be part of the first trip to land on mars, that might fund it.
While it is true, Microsoft may just be hoping for a foot in at this point. HTML5 is touted as the one stop shop to port an app to Android, IOS and windows. Microsoft is entering the mobile phone war late in the game and way behind, interchangeability at this stage of the game is a plus for them. They just need plans to mess that up late in the game if they take the lead.
Considering the spam bots have a history of getting about 50% of the first posts, and I would assume there are 100 slashdot users for every spambot. I would say they are better than us at getting first posts.
I've linked this before to a different post, but if you can name a single creationist arguement that isn't on this list http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html , then you may have a slight case in the "those arguments haven't been acknowledged by science. In general most of the creation groups, completely deny and ignore the fact that their arguement has been proven invalid, and continue to say "No one has ever countered it". One of the former major creationist leaders Kent Hovind" was known for doing this. He'd go to one debate, have something totally and utterly debunked, go to the next debate "No one has ever given me an answer to this".
One thing worth noting, evolution does not disprove in god, nor does the existence of a god disprove evolution. The majority of people in the world, who believe in evolution, are religious, and the majority of the people in the world who are religious, believe in evolution.
The biggest fact remains, evolution makes predictive claims, and they turn out right. Scientists have created new species, anticipated the changes that virus's will make, etc... The age of the universe and earth, have both been calculated from dozens of different methods and sources, and all of the different methods, still come up with nearly the exact same age. If a God created the world, he either used the big bang and evolution as tools, Or he instantly poofed things into existence with natural laws in place specifically designed to make things look like they have been running on such a process. Roughly the equivalent of making a slow moving car, 75% of the way onto a track, and going out of the way to build tire tracks to the first 75% to give people the idea that it is still moving. We have thousands of fossils, of what would be called transitional forms. If the creationists arguements are using the flood as a possibility to explain why the extremely rare process of fossilization has happened so many times, then they need to account for the fact that the pyramids of egypt etc... were made roughly 200 years after the supposed flood. Is there a rational explanation for how the human population got large enough to populate the entire country of egypt in addition to enough countries for them to take slaves from. Rabbits can't populate fast enough to pull that one off, let alone humans.
Evolution is not assumed true because the scientists do not believe in god. Evolution is a fact because there is mounds of evidence and predictions that it has succesfully made, and no competing theories have been able to make any succesful predictions.
If religion never existed, if darwin never existed, evolution would be recreated. There is as much evidence backing the theory of evolution, as the theory of gravity, atomic theory, or the theory of relativity. Evolution vs God isn't an either or question, they could both be true, or they can both be false. As you mentioned however, God as defined by christians, cannot fall into the category of science. by definition or at least believed definition, humans can never and will never be able to invent a tool to detect or measure God. God will never act in a way that can be predicted or tested. So bottom line, god isn't and can't be part of science. So why on earth can there be a case to teach the existance of god, in a science class.
The big thing is, the statements need evidence to back them. Wild assertions with little to no backing evidence made by some joe of the street with no background in working with the subject matter, is not = to a scientific theory with solid backing, solid predictions etc... No scientists are not unfallable, but the peer review system is the most solid thing we have, and it does a pretty darn good job. If creationism wants to be taken seriously, they need to train some scientists, and actually submit something that can be subject to peer review. Believe it or not scientific discoveries are not followed on dogma, if a scientist disproves a major theory, he is not ridiculed, he is awarded a nobel prize. Were scientists mad at Einstien for the fact that relativity disproved many portions of newtons theories? Of course not, the fact that they were tested, and proved is invaluable. The problem with creationism, is they want it to skip past the peer review process, they want it to go straight from the hypothisis stage, into the textbook, with no oversight. A my ignorance is as good as your knowledge argument more or less.
The thing is the science has been discussed, evolutionary theory has been up for peer review for 150 years. Virtually every creationist arguement ever posed is either untestable, or outright debunked. Any claim you can find on the creationist side, is almost certainly going to be on this list. http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
An explanation that can't be tested, and contains no predictive capabilities is useless scientifically. Science is about figuring out how things work, and what can be predicted from them. Evolutionary theory has assisted us in everything from breeding specific animals, to making vaccines etc... Why do we need a new flu shot every year, because the flu virus evolves. Scientists have replicated in the lab virtually every step, from changing of one species to another, to changing one category of creature to another (mostly among smaller animals with shorter lifecycles, as obviously attempting a creature that takes years to reach maturity, cannot go through generations in a reasonable time).
I general when google aquires something, what is left alone, is what google doesn't have interest in. Google's aquisitions are usually about integrating what they want into their own services. Unfortunately it does usually involve some losses. I would say it is highly probable that in the next 3 months or so, the web based google talk, will be adding MSN, facebook and other IM compatibilities.
If you've ever shown sympathy to any slashdotters who put up with awful working conditions as is common in many areas of our industry then you are again guilty of double standards.[br][p][/p] The thing is... they aren't the tech industry, they are models... The job of a model, is to go out in front of people wearing outfits designed to draw attention to themselves. That's like an IT worker complaining about having to work on computers all day long. It isn't a trait of the crap entry level portion of the industry... It is the definition of the industry. Being a booth babe at E3, isn't going to raise your chances of becoming a programmer for whatever company by much, as it is highly unlikely that will really count as relevant experience. It is a crap job that they chose, of which they should be more thankful that their bodies allow them a slightly larger pool of crap jobs to chose from then the rest of us. Being a booth babe to put yourself through college is fine, or you could go work at McDonalds or UPS like the less attractive people have to.
Google the corporation might be a person, google the search engine, is not a person. If every product, or software made by the company were a "person", every crime would be a conspiracy... "He conspired with his black & Decker chainsaw"
Microsoft could legally define itself as a person, Windows on the other hand is not a person. Google the corporation could be defined as a person, Googles search engine, mail, etc... aren't people, even using the batshit retarted laws.
Sadly in our current laws we already allow the police this power to an extent. If you go to the home depot, get a hammer, nails, shovel, 8' of rope, and a roll of duct tape. The home depot could call the police and report you as suspicious, which does give them probable cause for a home search.
I highly doubt NZ acted with 0 evidence, there are obviously 2 different categories of evidence. The evidence that lead to the raid, and the evidence from the raid. No different than say a drug bust, prior to a drug bust the police would have video, etc... showing things being trafficed into and out of the place in question. After the bust they would have say, a warehouse full of drugs, documents detailing the suppliers/customers etc... Both would be used in the case against the person, the first is enough for arrest, and in theory the 2nd should be enough for conviction.
I'm pretty sure allowing the raid meant NZ had the equivelant of the former, the latter is certainly needed in order to secure a conviction, and both should be reviewed by the defendant if he is to have a fair trial.
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1. Everyone who would have paid will pay for software regardless of if they pirated it or not.
2. Everyone who pirates a game, absolutely would have purchased it if they hadn't pirated it.
Both overgeneralizations are equally bogus, the truth of the matter is somewhere inbetween, one thing I can say though, is the actual value of the game is a huge factor. Anyone who downloads the game, and feels it isn't anywhere near worth the money it costs, is a guaranteed lost sale. IMO the absolute best of both worlds, is when games have both as single player and an online mode, as the online mode is sort of a carrot, that pirates can rarely actually crack, but the single player is something that gives people a solid idea of the depth of the gameplay. IE games like left4dead etc... do very well with this model. Of course that dosn't work for every game, no shortage of games just can't translate to have an attractive multiplayer mode, however even something simple like an authenticated high scores table etc... can translate theft into sales. The kind of play and the cost of the games influence the percentage of pirates turned to sales, and IMO developers using the right practices can very often find ways to turn many cases of piracy into sales, often in ways that generate more sales than the game would have had without the piracy. Piracy can't and won't be stopped, IMO it takes a different way of looking at it to turn a "problem" into a marketing plan.
Nokia was under completely different management 2 years ago, which essentially makes every point on behavior prior to the microsoft deals entirely unrelated points.
If my memory serves right, microsoft was one of the first to fire in the patent wars, possibly the first. What i recall was microsoft made the anouncement that microsoft would handle defending the cases and legal fees for all phones using windows phones, and then promptly fired the first offensive shot at one of the android manufactures, starting a large random surge of lawsuits firing in every direction.
Actually with your statement it can be agreed with while completely disagreeing at the same time, at least based on the summary. The issue isn't that the CLI should be destroyed, the issue is the gui shouldn't be lacking enough to make the CLI NECESSARY. Key word here, NECESSARY. A somewhat intuative, yet significantly slower then the CLI that gets the job done, in addition to a CLI that gets the job done much faster, reaches both markets. Features that are left out of the gui's altogether because "Meh they can just use the CLI to do that", completely lose the non IT worker market. That being said, I haven't run into an issue with anything in a long time, setting up linux mint for my 6 year old, or my parents, I can't think of a single task that actually required the CLI, so what is the complaint about exactly? That the CLI is an option for people who prefer it, or the feared stigma that someone looking over a geeks sholder when he is using the CLI will think linux is too hard. I am kind of lost on both perspectives of this argument.
Very possible, but I think this will backfire. Bill Gates stance on people using MS software for free, was smarter (I believe gates had a statement along the lines of "I would rather people pirate windows XP than use the competition. Something that is much more real of a competition, as people for whom office starter is good enough for, Google docs is probably also good enough for. Pushing people to the cloud, isn't the best idea when microsoft isn't winning the war in the cloud.
Bottom line is, it isn't the way to go in war. Fair war, is to offer an ultimatum (IE stop develoment of nukes or we will take action). Send in drones or whatever etc... Claiming we are at peace, then sending in random cyber attacks on nuklear systems, which for all we know could backfire and say... set off a nuclear reaction killing who knows how many scientists and civilians. Really if we do it the backdoor way, how is that tactic any more moral than say, flying a plane into a large populated building? The methods matter, especially when we are talking countries in which the public is brainwashed, and the governments are looking for any form of propoganda to convince them that america is evil. When we give them solid evidence we are evil, we are essentially creating terrorists on their side.
I would say further then that, I started on linux when I was 13. At that point I didn't have the budget to purchase my own computer parts, heck I wasn't even using the main system for it (If I recall it was an older moved past it's usefulness dell I used). This hurts the next generation, linux has been working in strides to become more user friendly. Currently linux has moved to the point where I could easily hand my mother a linux mint disk, tell her to boot it up and follow the on screen directions, and her have it installed and fully usable in an hour. Now we are talking a new hurdle involving diving into the bios, entering in a certain password (Provided of course the manufacturer actually provides this password, they might not). With steam being ported to linux in the very near future, webapps starting to replace regular programs etc... it is actually reaching a time where linux may truely be viable for the common folk. The OS matters less and less every day.
In the context of a system administrator running a company there are no issues with the feature, In terms of a home market where some users may want to dable in linux etc... There is an issue. Believe it or not not every software hobbyist is also a hardware hobbyest. Not everyone who toys with linux has the choice of what hardware they purchase (say teenagers for instance). Now in business class machines, yes lock them down, set them so that without an administrator key they can only run windows, and microsoft office. The issue is will OEMs provide their customers with the key to allow them to even run linux.
I wasn't talking about vaporware at all, with apple I was referring to the level of loyalty of their fan-base, and the rapidness of their hardcore to upgrade. IE the quanity of apple fans who will buy (rolling way back in time here), the 1GB Ipod, and then the 4 GB Ipod when it comes out a month later, then the 8GB one 3 months after that. There are a handful of those types with any product, but Apple seems to have the largest quantity of that type of person. While more frugal people, will likely not buy until the version with as much space as they need comes out, and hang onto it until it no longer meets their needs, regardless of how many other versions come out in the meantime.
How does vaporware draw in customers? Hypnotized apple fans are known for buying every version that comes out, but for the most part the average android customer, buys the one they want when it comes out. I would imagine unobtainable vaporware, delays if not removes the sale. IE the 32 GB version should be out in a month, I'll wait until it comes out before buying.
Honestly I think it was a flaw to encorage and allow manufacturers to pre-load software from the beginning. Instead of making sure everything was pre-loaded, they should have put that effort into simplifying the windows install. That viewpoint could also have greatly assisted in preventing the existance of worms etc... (IE if the password were set at the install, by the user, instead of 90% of systems being a factory default pre-installed system). The bottom line is the hardware makers should never have been in charge of pre-installing the software of their choice. They should have been able to offer disks, include a drivers disk (Which also should more or less have been ultra simplified down to a "click here to load all drivers", etc... Making the software configuration a choice of the hardware vendors, and retailers is what permitted the crapware infestation.
While that is obvious, I would say the fact that they are intentionally terrible is at least somewhat less obvious than it seems. I always figured they were trying to set the bar at getting as many people to bite as possible, and simply had the spelling errors and horrible stories as a result of not being bright or skilled at English. The idea of specifically avoiding people who are stupid enough to bite, but might catch on down the road, is somewhat new to me.
Certainly, and Elon Musk has a good budget to do things, but you still have to factor in, it is a finite budget. He cannot go toe to toe with china, purely funneling income from his other businesses and expect to come out on top. We can easilly get to where we've gone 50 years ago on a fairly small budget, especially with ex-nasa working for him. But actually doing the level of in depth R&D that is going to be needed to take us to new frontiers, I just don't think that can be done without a government being willing to throw ENORMOUS chunks of change into the project.
The bottom line, what on earth is spaceX's motivation to go to mars? The thing with corporations running things, is they have to be profitable. Hence why spaceX's missions are to deliver to ISS etc... China just has to get a guy there and put up a flag. SpaceX has to, find a resource on mars, figure out a way to obtain said resource, get good enough quanities of it, and bring it back and sell it, for roughly more money then the trip cost. Unless of course they can write it off as a multi-billion dollar marketing plan. But even that, marketing to whom? They aren't in a business where they can easilly increase their number of customers. Only governments, and multi billionares can even think of hiring them, and well, I'm pretty sure every government with interest in stuff from space, and person ritch enough to actually afford a space tourist trip, knows of them already. Maybe a tourist trip where they can bring along say 15-20 of the people on the forbes list who are brave enough to want to be part of the first trip to land on mars, that might fund it.
While it is true, Microsoft may just be hoping for a foot in at this point. HTML5 is touted as the one stop shop to port an app to Android, IOS and windows. Microsoft is entering the mobile phone war late in the game and way behind, interchangeability at this stage of the game is a plus for them. They just need plans to mess that up late in the game if they take the lead.
Considering the spam bots have a history of getting about 50% of the first posts, and I would assume there are 100 slashdot users for every spambot. I would say they are better than us at getting first posts.
One thing worth noting, evolution does not disprove in god, nor does the existence of a god disprove evolution. The majority of people in the world, who believe in evolution, are religious, and the majority of the people in the world who are religious, believe in evolution.
The biggest fact remains, evolution makes predictive claims, and they turn out right. Scientists have created new species, anticipated the changes that virus's will make, etc... The age of the universe and earth, have both been calculated from dozens of different methods and sources, and all of the different methods, still come up with nearly the exact same age. If a God created the world, he either used the big bang and evolution as tools, Or he instantly poofed things into existence with natural laws in place specifically designed to make things look like they have been running on such a process. Roughly the equivalent of making a slow moving car, 75% of the way onto a track, and going out of the way to build tire tracks to the first 75% to give people the idea that it is still moving. We have thousands of fossils, of what would be called transitional forms. If the creationists arguements are using the flood as a possibility to explain why the extremely rare process of fossilization has happened so many times, then they need to account for the fact that the pyramids of egypt etc... were made roughly 200 years after the supposed flood. Is there a rational explanation for how the human population got large enough to populate the entire country of egypt in addition to enough countries for them to take slaves from. Rabbits can't populate fast enough to pull that one off, let alone humans.
Evolution is not assumed true because the scientists do not believe in god. Evolution is a fact because there is mounds of evidence and predictions that it has succesfully made, and no competing theories have been able to make any succesful predictions.
If religion never existed, if darwin never existed, evolution would be recreated. There is as much evidence backing the theory of evolution, as the theory of gravity, atomic theory, or the theory of relativity. Evolution vs God isn't an either or question, they could both be true, or they can both be false. As you mentioned however, God as defined by christians, cannot fall into the category of science. by definition or at least believed definition, humans can never and will never be able to invent a tool to detect or measure God. God will never act in a way that can be predicted or tested. So bottom line, god isn't and can't be part of science. So why on earth can there be a case to teach the existance of god, in a science class.
The big thing is, the statements need evidence to back them. Wild assertions with little to no backing evidence made by some joe of the street with no background in working with the subject matter, is not = to a scientific theory with solid backing, solid predictions etc... No scientists are not unfallable, but the peer review system is the most solid thing we have, and it does a pretty darn good job. If creationism wants to be taken seriously, they need to train some scientists, and actually submit something that can be subject to peer review. Believe it or not scientific discoveries are not followed on dogma, if a scientist disproves a major theory, he is not ridiculed, he is awarded a nobel prize. Were scientists mad at Einstien for the fact that relativity disproved many portions of newtons theories? Of course not, the fact that they were tested, and proved is invaluable. The problem with creationism, is they want it to skip past the peer review process, they want it to go straight from the hypothisis stage, into the textbook, with no oversight. A my ignorance is as good as your knowledge argument more or less.
The thing is the science has been discussed, evolutionary theory has been up for peer review for 150 years. Virtually every creationist arguement ever posed is either untestable, or outright debunked. Any claim you can find on the creationist side, is almost certainly going to be on this list. http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html An explanation that can't be tested, and contains no predictive capabilities is useless scientifically. Science is about figuring out how things work, and what can be predicted from them. Evolutionary theory has assisted us in everything from breeding specific animals, to making vaccines etc... Why do we need a new flu shot every year, because the flu virus evolves. Scientists have replicated in the lab virtually every step, from changing of one species to another, to changing one category of creature to another (mostly among smaller animals with shorter lifecycles, as obviously attempting a creature that takes years to reach maturity, cannot go through generations in a reasonable time).
Not sure of a SIP one, but there is the XMPP route of google voice.
I general when google aquires something, what is left alone, is what google doesn't have interest in. Google's aquisitions are usually about integrating what they want into their own services. Unfortunately it does usually involve some losses. I would say it is highly probable that in the next 3 months or so, the web based google talk, will be adding MSN, facebook and other IM compatibilities.
If you've ever shown sympathy to any slashdotters who put up with awful working conditions as is common in many areas of our industry then you are again guilty of double standards.[br][p][/p] The thing is... they aren't the tech industry, they are models... The job of a model, is to go out in front of people wearing outfits designed to draw attention to themselves. That's like an IT worker complaining about having to work on computers all day long. It isn't a trait of the crap entry level portion of the industry... It is the definition of the industry. Being a booth babe at E3, isn't going to raise your chances of becoming a programmer for whatever company by much, as it is highly unlikely that will really count as relevant experience. It is a crap job that they chose, of which they should be more thankful that their bodies allow them a slightly larger pool of crap jobs to chose from then the rest of us. Being a booth babe to put yourself through college is fine, or you could go work at McDonalds or UPS like the less attractive people have to.
Google the corporation might be a person, google the search engine, is not a person. If every product, or software made by the company were a "person", every crime would be a conspiracy... "He conspired with his black & Decker chainsaw" Microsoft could legally define itself as a person, Windows on the other hand is not a person. Google the corporation could be defined as a person, Googles search engine, mail, etc... aren't people, even using the batshit retarted laws.
Sadly in our current laws we already allow the police this power to an extent. If you go to the home depot, get a hammer, nails, shovel, 8' of rope, and a roll of duct tape. The home depot could call the police and report you as suspicious, which does give them probable cause for a home search.
I highly doubt NZ acted with 0 evidence, there are obviously 2 different categories of evidence. The evidence that lead to the raid, and the evidence from the raid. No different than say a drug bust, prior to a drug bust the police would have video, etc... showing things being trafficed into and out of the place in question. After the bust they would have say, a warehouse full of drugs, documents detailing the suppliers/customers etc... Both would be used in the case against the person, the first is enough for arrest, and in theory the 2nd should be enough for conviction. I'm pretty sure allowing the raid meant NZ had the equivelant of the former, the latter is certainly needed in order to secure a conviction, and both should be reviewed by the defendant if he is to have a fair trial.