If I'm sending international junk mail, I am actively sending to someone in the US before he can sue me.
Running a website isn't sending international mail. It's not the same and doesn't even compare.
As for my website - they dropped the case some US guy sued in the same case put up a defense until they ran out of steam. I don't know what would've happened had they won, because they didn't.
We are talking about more than domain names. Don't confuse the official agenda with what's it about. We're starting with domain names, yes.
And if there were an international court system governing the Internet, then you could keep your constitution and do with it whatever you want, it wouldn't affect me because you can sue all you want, if you try to enforce, my court system would tell you to go through the international court and get a proper judgement.
Until things get much worse in the US there's not much Bush can do to regulate or make less free the internet. He'd have to deal with congress, the courts, and the people first.
Are we talking about the same congress that passed the insane laws that he made up? And the same courts that found no problems with his violations of things like the Geneva Convention? And the same people that re-elected him?
Roadkill, at worst. Nothing that'd even slow him down.
I actually had a long phone conversation with a judge in California. Here's the short version of the jurisdiction insanity:
* Showing up in court, sending a letter to the court, making any statement on the case whatsoever is automatically interpreted as you accepting the court's jurisdiction * Not showing up yields you a default judgement * There is only one way out of this dilemma: A "special appearance to challenge personal jurisdiction" - but that a) still requires you to hire a lawyer halfway around the globe and b) is a bit tricky because if it isn't executed flawlessly can easily cross into the first bullet point, and if it fails you're back at the second point.
In short: One way or the other, if you're sued in the US, you are fucked and your only hope is that your country won't enforce the judgement. Which I wouldn't count on - most western countries have treaties about these kinds of things. I was actually served the court papers (the whole 2000 or so pages of them) by a clerk at the townhall. He was kind and helpful and explained a few things about how this works, and that he is bound by law to serve me those court papers as if they were from a local court.
Let me think... I think just after you equated spam control with running a centralized government mail server. Which wouldn't work anyways.
But the 'net is good enough as is. Don't screw with it until it needs fixing.
It does need fixing. We need a solution to spam, we need a solution to phishing, not to speak of the fact that I have proven several years ago that a 0-day remote windos exploit could shut down 80% of it within hours. So we need a flashworm solution, too. Then we should find some answers to questions of jurisdiction, to counter the stupidity of some small californian company being able to sue people that never had contact with them, never were within 1000 miles of California and whose servers, domains and everything are 10,000 miles away.
THE ONLY reason to give power to others is so they can assert control over US-OWNED NETWORKS
Maybe, but right now the US is asserting control over everyone else's networks.
Here's a real-life example for you: I was sued in a US court for a part of my website. I am a German. I've been to the US once, 15 years ago. I've never been to that particular state. The website is hosted on a server that has never been outside Germany (except probably to be assembled in China). The domain is registered to me, on a german address. The registrar is german, as is the ISP. Until that day, I knew nobody in California.
Jurisdiction wasn't even checked. I learned that it was my job to challenge it - by paying a US lawyer to appear in a US court to tell them "erm, did you notice that Germany happens to not be a county of California?".
No. Wake up, fool! This is not about anyone else wanting to control US networks, it's about getting the fucking US out of our networks. If you morons were to accept that there is an Internet outside the US, we wouldn't want to desperately get you to give up control.
Wonderful, here come the regulations... The thing about the internet is that it isn't broken, but since the US currently kinda runs things foreign politicians must "do something to fix it" in order to appease their constituents.
Cue music for the US apologists who seriously believe that the US is the only country able to get things right - even though for the past 6 years or so there is precious little they didn't get wrong.
Access for non-english speaking people can be as simple as Unicode-support in DNS. Registering for websites - well, the US invented the requirement of the DNS owner record. And "think of the chiiildren" is an argument that is heard at least 80 times in the US for every one time it's heard over here in Europe. As for government e-mail servers - may I remind you of Carnivore? Quick, I forgot: Which country did invent that one?
Right now, with the US shifting towards a totalitarian state as quickly as is possible without interrupting the more important activity of lining the politicians own pockets, I'd much rather have control of the Internet outside the US.
I finally understand what it must have felt like to watch Germany from the outside during the 1930s. The point has long passed where I thought "this is the US, they're stupid idiots on a course to destruction, but what does that matter to me?".
It matters all, just like the growth of national socialism in Germany mattered to everyone in the end, or the growth of communism in Russia affected us all in the end. The growth of tyranny in the US today will certainly affect me in a few years, if it doesn't already (my government practically falls over itself implementing some of the worst US "inventions").
No, even though Bush actually meant it to be the "War on Ideas", his press corp did not catch his latest mis-pronounciation, so it's the "War of Ideas" now.
the "Power Users". They get on a linux box and the first thing they say is "where's the C drive?" Then next its "where's Program Files?"
Good thing you put that in quotations marks. Those are the wannabe-power-users. The ones who think they know about computers because they can use windos - provided you don't ask them to open the shell.
There are a few actual power users that I happen to know. They are either Unix freaks or they don't care much about the operating system, as long as it gets the job done. Most importantly, they understand that "C drive" is a concept, a mapping, that can be different on other OSs.
You are aware of the tiny historic fact that the animated "click here to start" thing that appeared in the task bar of windos 95 after a fresh install was put there as a last-minute hack because final tests on a new user group, totally new to the system, resulted in the shock finding that none of them thought about looking for Applications in a button called "Start" ?
The phrase "starting a program" is geek-speak. It's not how your mum thinks.
All three. They will give each system a 10-second-or-so chance. Then they'll turn to OSX, because on both of the others they'll have spent 8 of those 10 seconds trying to figure out where everything is.
Beauty is important. That from someone who is a commandline freak. But ever since I switched to OSX, I've learnt that eye candy - well designed - can make a lot of difference. The polished look of OSX makes both windos and Linux look like amateur toys.
Can only counter with 10 years IT business (23 years total computing experience). I've been quite a fan of "I don't need fancy, I need working" for most of that time. This year, I realized that it can be a nice thing to let other people do the work and buy something that just works in every aspect.
My servers are still running Debian and are mostly self-assembled or at least modified.
Frankly, I wouldn't switch it for a twice-as-powerful PC notebook. I had a Vaio before that, top-of-the-line model. It wasn't half as polish, solid and well-designed as the MBP.
6. Counterfeit Pharmaceutical -- Here's another place that the retail and distributor can excel at.
Not really. Consumer protection is a real issue and I consider it quite worthwhile. It saves me (the consumer) from doing extensive legwork on the reputation, quality, etc. of a vendor I deal with.
Plus it would create considerable barriers to entry for every retailer new to the market.
15. Art and Antique Smuggling. I insure against theft, so should you. The State is worthless here.
You must be kidding. The insurance will pay you some money if your Da Vinci gets stolen, but that doesn't bring you your Da Vinci back, nor will it prevent the thief from stealing it in the first place. Acting against the smuggling is probably the best shot at getting the item itself back that you have. If you had any valuable art, you'd not say that the state is worthless.
25. Small Arms Trafficking -- See the second amendment.
Which is valid for the US only. There are other countries on this world, ever heard of that? Some of them *gasp* have outlawed firearms.
31. Counterfeit Dollars - See Federal Reserve Board, they're already making billions of these.
Aside from the legal issues, counterfeit currency adds to the money pool, thus devaluating the currency.
I'm interested in hearing from people who use both Linux and Mac extensively.
Been using Linux for almost 10 years now, bought an MPB earlier this year. Your answers:
1) No. It's a full-fledged Unix underneath. You might want to bring some of your favourite tools, but standard unix tools as well as perl, etc. are installed.
2) The few java apps I use work well, no visible slowdowns
3) Fairly stable. I've had to power it off once so far, no other crashes or the like
4) This is where OSX is still lacking. There's a lot of shareware around, and a good collection of Free Software or freeware, but nothing that could compare to Debian, for example.
5) Workmanship is good, especially when it comes to design. I don't mean the "look, shiney" part, but how everything fits and works and all the buttons and connectors are in the right place. The lid closes very smoothly and nicely, the magnetic power connector is nice, that kind of stuff
6) Not as fast as I had expected from the numbers, but considerably faster than my Vaio, which was a top-of-the-line machine when I bought it 2 years ago.
7) no idea on that one. I use a mighty mouse at home and on the road I use the one button and ctrl+click.
Good design is in the details, so instances of bad design are actually a good metric of the overal effort. In UI design, it's easy to get the big things right. It's the small things that seperate the pros from the amateurs and imitateurs.
And the decision is exceptionally bad, it breaks both consistency and intuition. Why the 8 limit? How do you explain your mom that Ctrl+9 works different from Ctrl+1-8 ? Ctrl+0 might have been borderline, using a not-number is what a good designer would've done.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you even get it?
If I'm sending international junk mail, I am actively sending to someone in the US before he can sue me.
Running a website isn't sending international mail. It's not the same and doesn't even compare.
As for my website - they dropped the case some US guy sued in the same case put up a defense until they ran out of steam. I don't know what would've happened had they won, because they didn't.
We are talking about more than domain names. Don't confuse the official agenda with what's it about. We're starting with domain names, yes.
And if there were an international court system governing the Internet, then you could keep your constitution and do with it whatever you want, it wouldn't affect me because you can sue all you want, if you try to enforce, my court system would tell you to go through the international court and get a proper judgement.
Until things get much worse in the US there's not much Bush can do to regulate or make less free the internet. He'd have to deal with congress, the courts, and the people first.
Are we talking about the same congress that passed the insane laws that he made up? And the same courts that found no problems with his violations of things like the Geneva Convention? And the same people that re-elected him?
Roadkill, at worst. Nothing that'd even slow him down.
A company in California can sue anybody for any reason no matter who is in control of domain names on the internet.
True, but we're speaking about more than just domain names.
If the UN were in control of the Internet, one option would be to set up an international court system - as exists for the high seas.
Whoever modded parent up, please get a clue.
I actually had a long phone conversation with a judge in California. Here's the short version of the jurisdiction insanity:
* Showing up in court, sending a letter to the court, making any statement on the case whatsoever is automatically interpreted as you accepting the court's jurisdiction
* Not showing up yields you a default judgement
* There is only one way out of this dilemma: A "special appearance to challenge personal jurisdiction" - but that a) still requires you to hire a lawyer halfway around the globe and b) is a bit tricky because if it isn't executed flawlessly can easily cross into the first bullet point, and if it fails you're back at the second point.
In short: One way or the other, if you're sued in the US, you are fucked and your only hope is that your country won't enforce the judgement. Which I wouldn't count on - most western countries have treaties about these kinds of things. I was actually served the court papers (the whole 2000 or so pages of them) by a clerk at the townhall. He was kind and helpful and explained a few things about how this works, and that he is bound by law to serve me those court papers as if they were from a local court.
When in your mind did those become the same?
Let me think... I think just after you equated spam control with running a centralized government mail server. Which wouldn't work anyways.
But the 'net is good enough as is. Don't screw with it until it needs fixing.
It does need fixing. We need a solution to spam, we need a solution to phishing, not to speak of the fact that I have proven several years ago that a 0-day remote windos exploit could shut down 80% of it within hours. So we need a flashworm solution, too. Then we should find some answers to questions of jurisdiction, to counter the stupidity of some small californian company being able to sue people that never had contact with them, never were within 1000 miles of California and whose servers, domains and everything are 10,000 miles away.
THE ONLY reason to give power to others is so they can assert control over US-OWNED NETWORKS
Maybe, but right now the US is asserting control over everyone else's networks.
Here's a real-life example for you: I was sued in a US court for a part of my website. I am a German. I've been to the US once, 15 years ago. I've never been to that particular state. The website is hosted on a server that has never been outside Germany (except probably to be assembled in China). The domain is registered to me, on a german address. The registrar is german, as is the ISP. Until that day, I knew nobody in California.
Jurisdiction wasn't even checked. I learned that it was my job to challenge it - by paying a US lawyer to appear in a US court to tell them "erm, did you notice that Germany happens to not be a county of California?".
No. Wake up, fool! This is not about anyone else wanting to control US networks, it's about getting the fucking US out of our networks. If you morons were to accept that there is an Internet outside the US, we wouldn't want to desperately get you to give up control.
Wonderful, here come the regulations... The thing about the internet is that it isn't broken, but since the US currently kinda runs things foreign politicians must "do something to fix it" in order to appease their constituents.
Cue music for the US apologists who seriously believe that the US is the only country able to get things right - even though for the past 6 years or so there is precious little they didn't get wrong.
Access for non-english speaking people can be as simple as Unicode-support in DNS.
Registering for websites - well, the US invented the requirement of the DNS owner record.
And "think of the chiiildren" is an argument that is heard at least 80 times in the US for every one time it's heard over here in Europe.
As for government e-mail servers - may I remind you of Carnivore? Quick, I forgot: Which country did invent that one?
Right now, with the US shifting towards a totalitarian state as quickly as is possible without interrupting the more important activity of lining the politicians own pockets, I'd much rather have control of the Internet outside the US.
I finally understand what it must have felt like to watch Germany from the outside during the 1930s. The point has long passed where I thought "this is the US, they're stupid idiots on a course to destruction, but what does that matter to me?".
It matters all, just like the growth of national socialism in Germany mattered to everyone in the end, or the growth of communism in Russia affected us all in the end. The growth of tyranny in the US today will certainly affect me in a few years, if it doesn't already (my government practically falls over itself implementing some of the worst US "inventions").
What, are we afraid of ideas?
No, even though Bush actually meant it to be the "War on Ideas", his press corp did not catch his latest mis-pronounciation, so it's the "War of Ideas" now.
I've seen people spending quite a while figuring out where the application list was on OSX...
:-)
True, but if you give them 10 seconds, then everything they could possibly want in that short time frame is in the dock.
this version contains the latest in Microsoft DRM software. Interested parties can download a free copy
Why does that sound so much like "here, take a free sniff of this crack line" to me?
the "Power Users". They get on a linux box and the first thing they say is "where's the C drive?" Then next its "where's Program Files?"
Good thing you put that in quotations marks. Those are the wannabe-power-users. The ones who think they know about computers because they can use windos - provided you don't ask them to open the shell.
There are a few actual power users that I happen to know. They are either Unix freaks or they don't care much about the operating system, as long as it gets the job done. Most importantly, they understand that "C drive" is a concept, a mapping, that can be different on other OSs.
because it has the big start button
You are aware of the tiny historic fact that the animated "click here to start" thing that appeared in the task bar of windos 95 after a fresh install was put there as a last-minute hack because final tests on a new user group, totally new to the system, resulted in the shock finding that none of them thought about looking for Applications in a button called "Start" ?
The phrase "starting a program" is geek-speak. It's not how your mum thinks.
All three. They will give each system a 10-second-or-so chance. Then they'll turn to OSX, because on both of the others they'll have spent 8 of those 10 seconds trying to figure out where everything is.
("Start? Don't need that, it's already started")
Beauty is important. That from someone who is a commandline freak. But ever since I switched to OSX, I've learnt that eye candy - well designed - can make a lot of difference. The polished look of OSX makes both windos and Linux look like amateur toys.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but why would anyone pay the asking price of just under a hundred quid for a minor revision?
Because Apple's minor revisions contain more updates and changes than a completely new windos version, for example.
Check the list of changes, not the number that changes in the descriptor.
Can only counter with 10 years IT business (23 years total computing experience). I've been quite a fan of "I don't need fancy, I need working" for most of that time. This year, I realized that it can be a nice thing to let other people do the work and buy something that just works in every aspect.
My servers are still running Debian and are mostly self-assembled or at least modified.
Frankly, I wouldn't switch it for a twice-as-powerful PC notebook. I had a Vaio before that, top-of-the-line model. It wasn't half as polish, solid and well-designed as the MBP.
How Much Does a Vista Upgrade Cost?
The usual: Firstborn son, soul and many nights of cursing, pleading and finally resignation.
6. Counterfeit Pharmaceutical -- Here's another place that the retail and distributor can excel at.
Not really. Consumer protection is a real issue and I consider it quite worthwhile. It saves me (the consumer) from doing extensive legwork on the reputation, quality, etc. of a vendor I deal with.
Plus it would create considerable barriers to entry for every retailer new to the market.
15. Art and Antique Smuggling. I insure against theft, so should you. The State is worthless here.
You must be kidding. The insurance will pay you some money if your Da Vinci gets stolen, but that doesn't bring you your Da Vinci back, nor will it prevent the thief from stealing it in the first place.
Acting against the smuggling is probably the best shot at getting the item itself back that you have. If you had any valuable art, you'd not say that the state is worthless.
25. Small Arms Trafficking -- See the second amendment.
Which is valid for the US only. There are other countries on this world, ever heard of that? Some of them *gasp* have outlawed firearms.
31. Counterfeit Dollars - See Federal Reserve Board, they're already making billions of these.
Aside from the legal issues, counterfeit currency adds to the money pool, thus devaluating the currency.
One more reason on the growing list of "why to avoid the USA when travelling".
Just when I got comfortable with my MacBook Pro they release the next generation - and barely more expensive!
:-)
Anyone know how I can get my "old" MBP exchanged for one of these new sweeties?
I'm interested in hearing from people who use both Linux and Mac extensively.
Been using Linux for almost 10 years now, bought an MPB earlier this year. Your answers:
1) No. It's a full-fledged Unix underneath. You might want to bring some of your favourite tools, but standard unix tools as well as perl, etc. are installed.
2) The few java apps I use work well, no visible slowdowns
3) Fairly stable. I've had to power it off once so far, no other crashes or the like
4) This is where OSX is still lacking. There's a lot of shareware around, and a good collection of Free Software or freeware, but nothing that could compare to Debian, for example.
5) Workmanship is good, especially when it comes to design. I don't mean the "look, shiney" part, but how everything fits and works and all the buttons and connectors are in the right place. The lid closes very smoothly and nicely, the magnetic power connector is nice, that kind of stuff
6) Not as fast as I had expected from the numbers, but considerably faster than my Vaio, which was a top-of-the-line machine when I bought it 2 years ago.
7) no idea on that one. I use a mighty mouse at home and on the road I use the one button and ctrl+click.
Good design is in the details, so instances of bad design are actually a good metric of the overal effort. In UI design, it's easy to get the big things right. It's the small things that seperate the pros from the amateurs and imitateurs.
And the decision is exceptionally bad, it breaks both consistency and intuition. Why the 8 limit? How do you explain your mom that Ctrl+9 works different from Ctrl+1-8 ? Ctrl+0 might have been borderline, using a not-number is what a good designer would've done.