It might be a good idea to practice saying it. This is a test case and Australia hasn't been too pro-customer from what I've seen lately. Does anyone have any links or data that could link this case to US government, RIAA, MPAA, or any of their legal teams?
Maybe group-sourcing will work to find something to help the fight.
Not that it is the genesis, but the pressure that bundling put on smaller software vendors left no market, a virtual vacuum that was not filled until F/OSS developers who are working for something other than direct competition with MS decided to share their code under GPL et al. I was around for shareware, crippleware, trialware, freeware and the rest. Shareware was good. The license changes really made a difference. The GPL etc. gave more value in the early days. There was a strong battle between Novell and MS when MS decided to not jump on the networking thing. More mergers, more bundling and bad licensing deals, and on it went. The little developers were left cold. Anything that was created outside of Redmond was bought up or squeezed out. By the time that MSDN came along, the battle lines were drawn and entry to the game became rather steep. MS then cleaned up the messes by making it more difficult... whether that was forced on them to control the quality.. meh. The point is that MS helped to create the vacuum that F/OSS blossomed in by taking all the developers who could into their cathedral. Those left on the streets of the market outside waited for scraps, tried to find something to sell that was not given out to those buying in the Cathedral. Eventually they began to cobble their own systems together, and since nobody wanted to play nice or fair, they kept working on them till they were actually better than good, they were competitive.
Right now there are lots of people who shop at the cathedral like Pavlovian experiments in technology, and others are learning that the wares in the bizarre are not nearly as bad as those in the Cathedral want them to believe.
There are many successful Windows programs that survived quite a while:
Winzip, Winamp, SysInternals... can you tell where this is leading?
Adobe resisted with grace. Digital Research fought hard. WordPerfect... not so much. Ever wonder what might have happened if we were all using open standards?
Now we head back to equilibrium. It's no longer just Windows and Mac. Yes there was Xenix and such, but now with F/OSS the cost of entry to the game is much much lower. More competition is good. Look at all the small groups of people that for want of a better phrase, basically said 'fuck microsoft' and did their own thing. StarOffice, OOo, Samba, OpenLDAP etc. People that don't want to buy from the cathedral anymore. It took oppressive behavior coming out of the cathedral to foster it, even if it is not it's progenitor.
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense seems appropriate, though when a skydiver is hurtling toward the ground, and waits a long time to open their chute, the observers on the ground do not say "wow, a sudden outbreak of common sense." Typically what is uttered is more along the lines of "holy shit, that was fucking close"
There is an ancillary benefit. While what you say seems on face value to be true, anything that gets drivers to pay more attention to the road and traffic on it will increase safety. Even if that attention is somewhat fleeting, it will help. Public service minded police do not mind as long as you do slow down. There are those that want to catch you to fill the bank account with booty from fines, but for the most part people and police just want safe roads.
Whoa there nelly. Linus got rewards for his efforts. Many people are getting rewarded. The race is to equilibrium, not zero. The price of functional software had long been inflated. That is not taking RMS's stance either.
There are trade-offs in the software business and RedHat, Mozilla, and others have shown that it's possible to work in that paradigm.
Some of this argument seems to be based on a notion that all work must be rewarded, and that the reward MUST be monetary in nature. It does not always work that way. Cellular companies are willing to give you a phone if you sign up for a contract. That's free right?
Skydiving analogy: You can buy a parachute rig, or use one that is given to you freely. Now, all things equal you can choose to pack it yourself or pay someone to do it for you professionally. Staying on point, the free one can be modified and changed, the one you had to pay for can only be changed/modified with parts from the original vendor. So with either rig you pay to get it packed, but with the pay-for rig you are locked into their cost paradigm. Which rig is more useful?
Sure, you want to make sure that the rig you choose will do the job and perform in the manner you require. With both rigs being equal, which do you choose? Some will choose the pay for model because they can blame someone if the rig fails. Others know that if you don't check your rig regularly and maintain it, it will fail no matter where you got it from.
This race is not to zero but it will force Microsoft and others to re-evaluate how they build and distribute software products. You only have to look at Sun and IBM to see that they are on track with the need to change. Whether they are making wise decisions is yet to be seen, but they are embracing the changes rather than fight them tooth and nail by creating their own standards and fighting against open standards.
The race is toward equilibrium. No matter whether a user pays for Windows or steals a copy. They end up paying to get the machine tuned and fixed. OSS just gives them the opportunity to do it themselves to skip the initial costs and lockin. F/OSS does not have a zero operating cost, but it's MUCH lower than other options.
One of the things that has destroyed the lattice work of market forces in software is Microsoft itself. They bundled so much software for free with their OS that nobody else could afford to compete. Those that could had to give away their product... and the non-monetary reward system was born. People started doing it for the luls or reputation of doing better than MS, or simply from the need to have better than MS. Some people are like that, and are happy to give it away if you have to see their name every time the app starts. The more that MS bundled, the more others did. They squeezed out the small players. Now we are racing towards equilibrium again. se la vie
Choose 'all of the above' and anything else that keeps your mind active. Brain health is a topic with a huge volume of data on the Internet. Recent additions to the pile of info is that cannabis (THC) may help retard onset of senility. There are many things you can do. Your wetware is chemically based, and so any particular concoction that works wonders for anyone else many not work at all for you. The goal would be to match physical traits of yourself to those that benefit most from various remedies. If you are overweight, look for brain health options that seem to work for diabetics etc.
That's what I'm doing. Find best matches and experiment. So far so good. I think.
I don't think this was thought through so well. Imagine if your household is made from more than one surname, meaning that credit and buying history will be different, perhaps vastly different. Woe be unto the poor sod that lives with his wife and 3 18+ daughters. The only thing he's going to see is tampax and menopause commercials and of course, every other pill advertisement with QVC and Oprah ads smashed in between them.
God help the person whose dogs were just killed in a freak pesticide accident who now gets pet grooming/product commercials 24/7 to remind them of their now dead pets. Or maybe the guy who borrows from his 401k to pay for the burial of his wife and then starts getting ads for retirement planning.
If Google wants to do no evil, they better work pretty fucking hard to make sure all those poorly placed ads on websites don't start showing up on television and phone messages. I'm certain that there are serial killers who had less reason to do their killing than what these people are capable of stirring in the souls of the unwashed masses.
When this story first hit the news there were more than a small number of people wanting to know why the school system computers even had access to porn sites. They *should* have been filtered by the school's proxy. Clearly the IT configuration and protections were lacking or nonexistent. A substitute teacher can no more be held liable for the failure of IT systems than they can be held accountable for the failure of lighting systems in the school. This is clearly a travesty and as others have pointed out, the misdemeanor charge was to keep her from suing. Now, all we need to do is wait for anonymous to find this prosecutor doing the wrong thing and get it into the news for karma to reach equilibrium again.
I think the US was just testing the waters at that point. We signed the commerce deals, opened borders... that sort of shunted the communist thing to ground. Now we have to deal with the 21st century cold war problems. What we are seeing is that effort. Dealing with enemies that cannot be outed without revealing your own discrepancies. Cat and mouse in the age of social networking and video phones is much different than the post WWII cold war.
Everyone has forgotten the mysterious underwater cable cuts. Not before or since has such happened, and it's now just ignored. If you ask me that is bizarre. I'm not saying one way or the other what actually happened, but look at the news, and how news treated such problems before then. It's... odd.
As for who has a better grasp now? I would think that those who know Obama's social circles know best. I'm fairly disgusted with American politicians and what they have accomplished in the last 30 years. I want my America back and I'm not easily swayed from thinking that those in power are corrupt beyond redemption. It is not easy to get in those positions of power, and getting the backing to get there is not a job for the pious. Sure, it takes a bit of that to make the decisions that are necessary, but the warnings Eisenhower gave us should be printed on coffee cups everywhere so we don't forget. http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/chalmers-johnson-on-the-military-industrial-complex/
Today, 22 Nov 2008, is the anniversary of JFK's assassination. What better time to stop and think about how many plans within plans our governments weave. It is by no small measure that they benefit from such deceptions. I am fully willing to see and hear evidence from full and impartial investigations into all matters of dodgy repute where government is concerned... and until I see such investigations, I will continue to believe that governments are run by, and staffed by corrupt individuals. If you think your mailman is one of the people I'm speaking about and that they are not corrupt, ok... I'm talking about people that make decisions, sign things into law, or send soldiers to fight etc.
A very good mantra, but one that was written before malicious stupidity became the default modus operandi of political figures. Yes, I realize there were both maliciousness and stupidity long ago. The trick is that in recent decades there are certain political figures who have managed to combine the two in a publicly accepted manner. They use is both to defend themselves and to push for ever more bizarre legal changes. When we believe them too stupid to pull the wool over our eyes they have the perfect opportunity to stick the knife in our backs. I refer you to Pink Floyd at this point:
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to so that when they turn their backs on you you'll get the chance to stick the knife in
It was something about pigs and sheep if I remember rightly.
Stupid people don't get the backing needed to be in the halls of power except through serious complicity of high crimes and misdemeanors. When someone in the halls of power is making stupid mistakes that cost tax payers or the country money or influence, you can bet your autographed picture of Nero that Brutus is using his knife on you/us. There is no such thing as a naive president. Stupidity is ONLY a defense, not something on their todo list.
When Paris Hilton gets elected... meh, perhaps I'll change my tune. Till then, the old white guys club is not letting stupid people in..... yet.
The really funny part about conspiracy theories is that they are all bullshit until enough information comes to light to show they are not. There are many things in the world that happen which the general public as blissfully unaware of. This is a good thing in some cases, a bad thing in others. Since WWI, the US and western countries have had a habit of building up bad press against the people they don't like. Demonizing them as axis of evil etc. This is all about manipulating public opinion.
Personally, I think Al Queda has contracted the Chinese to poison our toys and food supplies. In short, the Chinese are terrorists! But that is just a tin foil hat beer drinking wtf did you say kind of thing.
If you were to play connect the dots with financial data, physical world events, political maneuvers, other significant events, I'm certain that you could come up with better stories than any news station ever could. If you want to have some fun just get a list of the 15 biggest corporations, the 15 most influential politicians, and the 15 most influential world leaders. Now find out how many ways you can connect them. The results would scare the pants off the pope if he wasn't on the lists... but hey, that's all conspiracy crap... right?
Bang on correct! When do people, especially government types admit that they have a problem and are hemorrhaging data to foreign states? Only when there is an advantage to doing so. In this case, I think you are right, it's part of a ramp up on public information to demonize the Chinese. Specifically who among the Chinese is yet to be determined, but the probably have a short list of targets.
The squirrels being crafty as they are, had lain a trap for the raccoons, and Godzilla-coon was overcome by skydiving squirrels when he stopped to rummage in the very large garbage pails the squirrels left at the edge of the forrest, next to the large man-made lake filled with poisoned Gatorade. The carnage of war erupted all around the squirrels trap. Fangs and claws slashing and tearing flesh.
Not to be hindered by small problems, the raccoons regrouped and continued their march, leaving charred and burning squirrel flesh littering the ground behind them. The smoke from their burning bodies was clearly visible as the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon, giving the scene and surreal climax.
Postman Pat noticed the smoke rising from the forest as he began his rounds delivering the mail....
While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry.
That's not a proven fact. As Lawrence Lessig says in his book (I just read it last week) Free Culture (link is to HTML version of the book, which is published under a CC license),
The meaning of 'some loss of revenue' in this case is not meant to indicate that the loss is sufficient or large enough to give cause for the RIAA's legal crusade against grandparents and kids. 'Some loss' could mean as little as a few dollars or any amount you want to guess at. The point is that it is unknown. Even Mr Lessig points out that some people will download instead of buying. This is the part where some loss of revenue occurs. It would be easier to estimate the grans of sand on a beach than to estimate the true loss of revenue to the RIAA through file sharing.
I bet most of the RIAA members are wishing they had kept their lawyer on a leash for a while so they could be standing in line behind wallstreet bankers. ooops!
As he caught his breath, hundreds of raccoon began appearing at the edge of the forest. Each of them was armed with a laser. As Godzilla approached, they began to encircle him.
I think that you're right. If you can't offer equipment and support, perhaps a person would have time (maybe once/week twice/month) to talk to kids who are interested in learning about the parts inside a computer, how they work, how to build a computer etc.
Learning to use office applications is good, but there are some who would like to learn more than that. If you can, that is also a valuable contribution to 'education'.
Learning about the guts of the thing fosters inquiry into more than how to play flash games.
He wondered to himself if the blonde had seen him land on his ass. No time for social graces, the yellow eyes were following him. In the darkness he thought he could make out the shape of raccoon, but something was wrong, very wrong. In the failing light it appeared almost like the raccoon had a laser on it's head.
He hadn't seen the house earlier, but it's hard to see when you are skydiving on dark rainy night. He hadn't even seen the tree coming at him as he crashed.
I'd say that NYCL has enough information there (see my sig) to show that everyone who has been accused was accused under false pretense, without evidence, or accused for what someone else had actually done. While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry. Neither the amount of the loss nor the act of copyright infringement via distribution has been proven. Both are exaggerated by the RIAA legal team. The only thing they have to show is that their assignees accessed other people's computers and downloaded copyrighted works. If you ask me, that's not cricket!
The RIAA continues to show the style and grace of a skydiver with a ripped chute and no backup plan.
Exactly. Well said. When we manage to solve the difference between the theories we now have, we should end up with the theory of everything. Perhaps then we'll all get our flying cars, and so everyone will know how to skydive.
I wonder how much more compute power we'll need to get some facts behind the eventual theory of everything, and will it's name be '42'?
Slashdot Mirror
It might be a good idea to practice saying it. This is a test case and Australia hasn't been too pro-customer from what I've seen lately. Does anyone have any links or data that could link this case to US government, RIAA, MPAA, or any of their legal teams?
Maybe group-sourcing will work to find something to help the fight.
Not that it is the genesis, but the pressure that bundling put on smaller software vendors left no market, a virtual vacuum that was not filled until F/OSS developers who are working for something other than direct competition with MS decided to share their code under GPL et al. I was around for shareware, crippleware, trialware, freeware and the rest. Shareware was good. The license changes really made a difference. The GPL etc. gave more value in the early days. There was a strong battle between Novell and MS when MS decided to not jump on the networking thing. More mergers, more bundling and bad licensing deals, and on it went. The little developers were left cold. Anything that was created outside of Redmond was bought up or squeezed out. By the time that MSDN came along, the battle lines were drawn and entry to the game became rather steep. MS then cleaned up the messes by making it more difficult... whether that was forced on them to control the quality.. meh. The point is that MS helped to create the vacuum that F/OSS blossomed in by taking all the developers who could into their cathedral. Those left on the streets of the market outside waited for scraps, tried to find something to sell that was not given out to those buying in the Cathedral. Eventually they began to cobble their own systems together, and since nobody wanted to play nice or fair, they kept working on them till they were actually better than good, they were competitive.
Right now there are lots of people who shop at the cathedral like Pavlovian experiments in technology, and others are learning that the wares in the bizarre are not nearly as bad as those in the Cathedral want them to believe.
There are many successful Windows programs that survived quite a while:
Winzip, Winamp, SysInternals... can you tell where this is leading?
Adobe resisted with grace. Digital Research fought hard. WordPerfect... not so much. Ever wonder what might have happened if we were all using open standards?
Now we head back to equilibrium. It's no longer just Windows and Mac. Yes there was Xenix and such, but now with F/OSS the cost of entry to the game is much much lower. More competition is good. Look at all the small groups of people that for want of a better phrase, basically said 'fuck microsoft' and did their own thing. StarOffice, OOo, Samba, OpenLDAP etc. People that don't want to buy from the cathedral anymore. It took oppressive behavior coming out of the cathedral to foster it, even if it is not it's progenitor.
Just this example story
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense seems appropriate, though when a skydiver is hurtling toward the ground, and waits a long time to open their chute, the observers on the ground do not say "wow, a sudden outbreak of common sense." Typically what is uttered is more along the lines of "holy shit, that was fucking close"
But you be the judge
It's hilarious to see the letmegooglethatforyou site! My French improves every day. Cheers
There is an ancillary benefit. While what you say seems on face value to be true, anything that gets drivers to pay more attention to the road and traffic on it will increase safety. Even if that attention is somewhat fleeting, it will help. Public service minded police do not mind as long as you do slow down. There are those that want to catch you to fill the bank account with booty from fines, but for the most part people and police just want safe roads.
Whoa there nelly. Linus got rewards for his efforts. Many people are getting rewarded. The race is to equilibrium, not zero. The price of functional software had long been inflated. That is not taking RMS's stance either.
There are trade-offs in the software business and RedHat, Mozilla, and others have shown that it's possible to work in that paradigm.
Some of this argument seems to be based on a notion that all work must be rewarded, and that the reward MUST be monetary in nature. It does not always work that way. Cellular companies are willing to give you a phone if you sign up for a contract. That's free right?
Skydiving analogy: You can buy a parachute rig, or use one that is given to you freely. Now, all things equal you can choose to pack it yourself or pay someone to do it for you professionally. Staying on point, the free one can be modified and changed, the one you had to pay for can only be changed/modified with parts from the original vendor. So with either rig you pay to get it packed, but with the pay-for rig you are locked into their cost paradigm. Which rig is more useful?
Sure, you want to make sure that the rig you choose will do the job and perform in the manner you require. With both rigs being equal, which do you choose? Some will choose the pay for model because they can blame someone if the rig fails. Others know that if you don't check your rig regularly and maintain it, it will fail no matter where you got it from.
This race is not to zero but it will force Microsoft and others to re-evaluate how they build and distribute software products. You only have to look at Sun and IBM to see that they are on track with the need to change. Whether they are making wise decisions is yet to be seen, but they are embracing the changes rather than fight them tooth and nail by creating their own standards and fighting against open standards.
The race is toward equilibrium. No matter whether a user pays for Windows or steals a copy. They end up paying to get the machine tuned and fixed. OSS just gives them the opportunity to do it themselves to skip the initial costs and lockin. F/OSS does not have a zero operating cost, but it's MUCH lower than other options.
One of the things that has destroyed the lattice work of market forces in software is Microsoft itself. They bundled so much software for free with their OS that nobody else could afford to compete. Those that could had to give away their product... and the non-monetary reward system was born. People started doing it for the luls or reputation of doing better than MS, or simply from the need to have better than MS. Some people are like that, and are happy to give it away if you have to see their name every time the app starts. The more that MS bundled, the more others did. They squeezed out the small players. Now we are racing towards equilibrium again. se la vie
I didn't even finish the summary headline and this came to mind.
Fortunately "...one rampage won't get noticed... please..." is hardly the damage that 790 was capable of.
I don't think this effort even made it into the 'uncanny valley'
Choose 'all of the above' and anything else that keeps your mind active. Brain health is a topic with a huge volume of data on the Internet. Recent additions to the pile of info is that cannabis (THC) may help retard onset of senility. There are many things you can do. Your wetware is chemically based, and so any particular concoction that works wonders for anyone else many not work at all for you. The goal would be to match physical traits of yourself to those that benefit most from various remedies. If you are overweight, look for brain health options that seem to work for diabetics etc.
That's what I'm doing. Find best matches and experiment. So far so good. I think.
I don't think this was thought through so well. Imagine if your household is made from more than one surname, meaning that credit and buying history will be different, perhaps vastly different. Woe be unto the poor sod that lives with his wife and 3 18+ daughters. The only thing he's going to see is tampax and menopause commercials and of course, every other pill advertisement with QVC and Oprah ads smashed in between them.
God help the person whose dogs were just killed in a freak pesticide accident who now gets pet grooming/product commercials 24/7 to remind them of their now dead pets. Or maybe the guy who borrows from his 401k to pay for the burial of his wife and then starts getting ads for retirement planning.
If Google wants to do no evil, they better work pretty fucking hard to make sure all those poorly placed ads on websites don't start showing up on television and phone messages. I'm certain that there are serial killers who had less reason to do their killing than what these people are capable of stirring in the souls of the unwashed masses.
When this story first hit the news there were more than a small number of people wanting to know why the school system computers even had access to porn sites. They *should* have been filtered by the school's proxy. Clearly the IT configuration and protections were lacking or nonexistent. A substitute teacher can no more be held liable for the failure of IT systems than they can be held accountable for the failure of lighting systems in the school. This is clearly a travesty and as others have pointed out, the misdemeanor charge was to keep her from suing. Now, all we need to do is wait for anonymous to find this prosecutor doing the wrong thing and get it into the news for karma to reach equilibrium again.
I think the US was just testing the waters at that point. We signed the commerce deals, opened borders... that sort of shunted the communist thing to ground. Now we have to deal with the 21st century cold war problems. What we are seeing is that effort. Dealing with enemies that cannot be outed without revealing your own discrepancies. Cat and mouse in the age of social networking and video phones is much different than the post WWII cold war.
Everyone has forgotten the mysterious underwater cable cuts. Not before or since has such happened, and it's now just ignored. If you ask me that is bizarre. I'm not saying one way or the other what actually happened, but look at the news, and how news treated such problems before then. It's ... odd.
As for who has a better grasp now? I would think that those who know Obama's social circles know best. I'm fairly disgusted with American politicians and what they have accomplished in the last 30 years. I want my America back and I'm not easily swayed from thinking that those in power are corrupt beyond redemption. It is not easy to get in those positions of power, and getting the backing to get there is not a job for the pious. Sure, it takes a bit of that to make the decisions that are necessary, but the warnings Eisenhower gave us should be printed on coffee cups everywhere so we don't forget. http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/chalmers-johnson-on-the-military-industrial-complex/
Today, 22 Nov 2008, is the anniversary of JFK's assassination. What better time to stop and think about how many plans within plans our governments weave. It is by no small measure that they benefit from such deceptions. I am fully willing to see and hear evidence from full and impartial investigations into all matters of dodgy repute where government is concerned... and until I see such investigations, I will continue to believe that governments are run by, and staffed by corrupt individuals. If you think your mailman is one of the people I'm speaking about and that they are not corrupt, ok... I'm talking about people that make decisions, sign things into law, or send soldiers to fight etc.
A very good mantra, but one that was written before malicious stupidity became the default modus operandi of political figures. Yes, I realize there were both maliciousness and stupidity long ago. The trick is that in recent decades there are certain political figures who have managed to combine the two in a publicly accepted manner. They use is both to defend themselves and to push for ever more bizarre legal changes. When we believe them too stupid to pull the wool over our eyes they have the perfect opportunity to stick the knife in our backs. I refer you to Pink Floyd at this point:
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
so that when they turn their backs on you
you'll get the chance to stick the knife in
It was something about pigs and sheep if I remember rightly.
Stupid people don't get the backing needed to be in the halls of power except through serious complicity of high crimes and misdemeanors. When someone in the halls of power is making stupid mistakes that cost tax payers or the country money or influence, you can bet your autographed picture of Nero that Brutus is using his knife on you/us. There is no such thing as a naive president. Stupidity is ONLY a defense, not something on their todo list.
When Paris Hilton gets elected... meh, perhaps I'll change my tune. Till then, the old white guys club is not letting stupid people in..... yet.
The really funny part about conspiracy theories is that they are all bullshit until enough information comes to light to show they are not. There are many things in the world that happen which the general public as blissfully unaware of. This is a good thing in some cases, a bad thing in others. Since WWI, the US and western countries have had a habit of building up bad press against the people they don't like. Demonizing them as axis of evil etc. This is all about manipulating public opinion.
Personally, I think Al Queda has contracted the Chinese to poison our toys and food supplies. In short, the Chinese are terrorists! But that is just a tin foil hat beer drinking wtf did you say kind of thing.
If you were to play connect the dots with financial data, physical world events, political maneuvers, other significant events, I'm certain that you could come up with better stories than any news station ever could. If you want to have some fun just get a list of the 15 biggest corporations, the 15 most influential politicians, and the 15 most influential world leaders. Now find out how many ways you can connect them. The results would scare the pants off the pope if he wasn't on the lists... but hey, that's all conspiracy crap... right?
Mr. Orwell, I miss you!
Bang on correct! When do people, especially government types admit that they have a problem and are hemorrhaging data to foreign states? Only when there is an advantage to doing so. In this case, I think you are right, it's part of a ramp up on public information to demonize the Chinese. Specifically who among the Chinese is yet to be determined, but the probably have a short list of targets.
The squirrels being crafty as they are, had lain a trap for the raccoons, and Godzilla-coon was overcome by skydiving squirrels when he stopped to rummage in the very large garbage pails the squirrels left at the edge of the forrest, next to the large man-made lake filled with poisoned Gatorade. The carnage of war erupted all around the squirrels trap. Fangs and claws slashing and tearing flesh.
Not to be hindered by small problems, the raccoons regrouped and continued their march, leaving charred and burning squirrel flesh littering the ground behind them. The smoke from their burning bodies was clearly visible as the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon, giving the scene and surreal climax.
Postman Pat noticed the smoke rising from the forest as he began his rounds delivering the mail....
While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry.
That's not a proven fact. As Lawrence Lessig says in his book (I just read it last week) Free Culture (link is to HTML version of the book, which is published under a CC license),
The meaning of 'some loss of revenue' in this case is not meant to indicate that the loss is sufficient or large enough to give cause for the RIAA's legal crusade against grandparents and kids. 'Some loss' could mean as little as a few dollars or any amount you want to guess at. The point is that it is unknown. Even Mr Lessig points out that some people will download instead of buying. This is the part where some loss of revenue occurs. It would be easier to estimate the grans of sand on a beach than to estimate the true loss of revenue to the RIAA through file sharing.
I bet most of the RIAA members are wishing they had kept their lawyer on a leash for a while so they could be standing in line behind wallstreet bankers. ooops!
As he caught his breath, hundreds of raccoon began appearing at the edge of the forest. Each of them was armed with a laser. As Godzilla approached, they began to encircle him.
I think that you're right. If you can't offer equipment and support, perhaps a person would have time (maybe once/week twice/month) to talk to kids who are interested in learning about the parts inside a computer, how they work, how to build a computer etc.
Learning to use office applications is good, but there are some who would like to learn more than that. If you can, that is also a valuable contribution to 'education'.
Learning about the guts of the thing fosters inquiry into more than how to play flash games.
He wondered to himself if the blonde had seen him land on his ass. No time for social graces, the yellow eyes were following him. In the darkness he thought he could make out the shape of raccoon, but something was wrong, very wrong. In the failing light it appeared almost like the raccoon had a laser on it's head.
He hadn't seen the house earlier, but it's hard to see when you are skydiving on dark rainy night. He hadn't even seen the tree coming at him as he crashed.
I'd say that NYCL has enough information there (see my sig) to show that everyone who has been accused was accused under false pretense, without evidence, or accused for what someone else had actually done. While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry. Neither the amount of the loss nor the act of copyright infringement via distribution has been proven. Both are exaggerated by the RIAA legal team. The only thing they have to show is that their assignees accessed other people's computers and downloaded copyrighted works. If you ask me, that's not cricket!
The RIAA continues to show the style and grace of a skydiver with a ripped chute and no backup plan.
Just then, his eye caught the movement of a curtain. Turning, he could see the buxom blonde looking out at the night.
Exactly. Well said. When we manage to solve the difference between the theories we now have, we should end up with the theory of everything. Perhaps then we'll all get our flying cars, and so everyone will know how to skydive.
I wonder how much more compute power we'll need to get some facts behind the eventual theory of everything, and will it's name be '42'?
I'm not sure why that is ironic. Edison spent a lot of time failing. Ruth struck out a great many times.... this list can go on.
Now if he were a skydiver, that early failure might have put an end to the story, but still, no irony.