Broadcasting most certainly does not imply having an audience, unless you are only meaning in the traditional field of Broadcasting as it relates to commercial radio. However, just to clear it up, I will say transmitting. Transmitting absolutely does not require anyone to be receiving for it to cause horrible things to happen in the RF spectrum. And easy to hack radios means that people can transmit anything they want (don't get stuck in thinking voice only please) at any power. Incidentally, in case you haven't noticed almost everyone has a AM/FM radio that is quite capable of picking up transmissions in those frequency ranges, people have garage door openers that receive signals, lots of people have various keyless start/lock setups, TONS of people have cellphones, there is also the various networking gear, and wireless phones. So there is NO shortage of radios to be interfered with that the FCC would get very upset by you interfering by transmitting anything in those frequency ranges.
As far as mustering 1000 people, I am gunna go out on a limb here and say that cable descramblers have FAR more users than 1000. So understanding of the technology and use of the technology are two entirely different things. "This wifi hack lets you cover your entire house with only 1 AP" "This will extend your cordless phone to your entire block!" "These hand held walkie talkies can reach across city blocks! No more expensive cell phones" All of these would be incredibly disruptive to other peoples use of the RF spectrum. Now, don't think I am fond of the FCC's methods of handling business, but ultimately there is a need for regulation of the RF spectrum to make ANY RF based technology useful, or people will just muddy up the airwaves and make it very very difficult to use any RF based devices.
I saw tons of new(ish) movies in Iraq. They were all being sold for $2-4 bucks for a DVD with 2-4 new(ish) releases by some random local in a wooden hut on the road near camp. In the meantime the MPAA and friends are chasing down 17yr olds to put them in jail...wonder why they don't go to Iraq and stop the piracy themselves. (Ignoring that Hillary Rosen was on the ground in Iraq in the very very early days begging the new Iraqi government to adopt her proposals on copyright...yeah...they need help with food, water, and security, and this psychotic bitch is going to go and talk to them about music downloads?)
I'm a little disappointed with the Iraqi government for their lack of progress...they should have shot her ass on the spot for that nonsense.
It is exactly as you said. They don't want the populace spewing things into the RF spectrum that they can't manage. So one or two pirate radio stations spring up and are easily hunted down by the FCC. Now, with easy to "hack" software radios everyone could start broadcasting any information they want, in any format, on any frequency, at any power, etc...and there would be no way for the FCC to even begin to track that kind of rampant violation down.
If one guy is in the street protesting it is easy to control and quell. If its 10,000 guys in the street protesting it gets a little harder, if its 10,000,000 guys its basically imposisble.
I still don't feel sorry for criminals busted by criminals because ultimately they were doing something illegal. Crying foul that you got busted doing something illegal because the person catching you was doing something illegal is stupid. As far as entrapment goes I have a hard time believing a judge would go for that if they found a website and tried to go in and get free movies. The big problem with entrapment (specially in the case of drugs) is that most people are scared of the drug dealer pushing on them and will just throw some money to make the scary guy that probably has a gun go away. If I was surfing the web and found "Illegal drugs here! Buy now!" and it turned out to be a cop...well I don't think I would get far claiming entrapment. The kiddie molesters certainly don't get very far with those claims when its a cop and not a underage girl/boy.
And yes, I have seen meth, coke, acid, etc ruin FAR too many peoples lives to not have large issues with people using them and or selling them. Now a couple of potheads I really don't give a rat's ass about, but smoking a plant that you can find growing in a ditch and snorting stuff that came out of a chemistry set are two very different things. But more than that, it was just the easiest thing that came to mind because I have seen multiple stories in the news of dealers calling the cops when someone stole from them, or druggies calling the cops when the dealer sold them bad stuff, or any number of things like that of such unbelievable stupidity that it is hard to justify not letting them rot in a cell somewhere.
Well thats the problem, those people who would go anyways are idiots. "I am going to go wave toy guns at cops so they get in trouble when they shoot me" is the same line of stupidity. No sane judge is going to defend the downloader in this scenario, and I think demanding that they do is irresponsible if we actually want to maintain that grandma isn't really downloading mp3s. If you really want to make a case that the RIAA is harassing innocent people to scare people then you have to stand up and drop the hammer on the people who really are guilty. Like their methods or not, they ARE right that many of these people are violating copyright. If the community outs the real offenders it protects us from insane lawsuits, it makes the aggressors look bad for attacking the innocent, and *gasp* if we don't buy the horseshit they are selling then maybe the market will actually start to adapt to something we would be happy to participate in.
I can shoot and kill a civilian and not be charged with murder, and I am not law enforcement. A Cop can shoot and kill a civilian and be charged with murder (as has happened frequently). So no they are not above the law, nor are the laws any different for them.
1. They weren't advertising it as free MPAA approved movie downloads so that "getting it from the MPAA" argument is almost completely garbage
2. They could offer movie downloads, get you to download their speedy client thing, check for other illegal movies and *gasp* not let you download movies from them. So right there "getting" is pretty much destroyed because "download our download speedup software so you can download the bootleg movies we have faster" doesn't invalidate "oh, we forgot to tell you we have no bootleg movies for download".
Yes, they are grasping at straws. Yes they are a dying business that would rather legistlate profit than to adapt to the new world. No, they aren't so freaking retarded that they would actually let you download movies from them while convincing you to download their illegal movie checker software.
If they were doing drive be installs or exploits or something then yes, the better analogy would be the PI breaking in. So since we are splitting hairs. You let someone who you thought was a drug dealer into your house to sell you drugs, but instead it turns out he is just some private party looking to get the reward for turning in criminals, and he calls the cops to report that he found paraphanalia in your house. YOU still let him in (downloaded the illegal movie download speedup software), and it would be unbelievably stupid for you to complain that he didn't tell you he was going to call the cops if he saw anything illegal (other downloaded movies) after you invited him in to sell you illegal drugs (the downloaded movies you were going to get from the site that offered you the speedup software). You clicked install, they aren't breaking the law, quit crying, pay for the movie or don't watch it. Personally I choose don't watch it, most of it is garbage anyways.
You know how you avoid those the problem? You don't go looking for illegal movie downloads that might be a trap! Sorry, no sympathy, its a stupid argument.
BZZZT Wrong! In fact you have forgotten the information that causes you to be wrong, as most people have. Windows ME... Noone in their right mind touched that garbage between 98/2k/xp. Win2k workstation was missing a large number of things that were promised for the OS that was to kill the 9x codebase forever, so XP actually had alot of legitimate improvements over 2k.
WinME was all the garbage they couldn't make work, prettied up to look like Win2k, and slapped on a craptastic code base. I honestly wonder if this is what they are doing with Vista. Because it wasn't long before the only thing you could buy preinstalled was win ME and it was trash, and people flocked to XP to save them from that horrible version. So they force Vista down our throats...and then VistaII rolls out as an upgrade path. Seems to follow their pattern. 3.1 (ok) - 95 (garbage) - 98 (pretty good) - ME (worse than garbage) - XP (way better than before) - Vista (...) You get the picture.
This is just too stupid for words. This is like trying to sue the convenience store owner for fraud when he gives you fake money that is easily traced when you rob him. Or maybe like when the druggie calls the cops because the dealer sold him fake coke. Seriously, as much as I hate the MPAA for the way they handle things, this particular trick doesn't bother me much, and crying fraud is stupid at best. I hope there isn't a judge alive that would view this as fraud. "Ok, so you are sueing the MPAA for fraud because they set up a site that offered illegal movie downloads...and you signed up...downloaded their fake client...and are now being sued by the MPAA for the copyright material they found on your computer?"
I can't even wrap my head around the fact that you want a valid EULA that clearly describes its methods for software that is designed for catching illegal activities. The next thing you are going to tell me is that when the cops pretend to be drug dealers to catch druggies you want them to be wearing DEA uniforms.
Doesn't all that stuff make you glad that we spent so much money supporting him? I mean those pictures of Rummy and crew all smiling shaking hands and shit is just classic. Oh wait...Rummy was involved in supporting him...and now rummy is involved in Bush's "crusade" (wonderful choice of words king geroge). No this this has been an unmitigated cluster fuck from day 1. I have been there, and everything is stamped with KBR...which is a halliburton company...which *shock* is still paying their former front man Dick Cheney! This whole fucking thing in Iraq has been a horseshit story from day one and fucking reaks of conflicts of interest and personal agendas. I mean it was this same crew of asshats that authored that document that says "America must fight a 2 front war and win both decisively so secure our place at the top of the world". Afghanistan, justified, planned, and up until Iraq was handled fairly well. Iraq, unjustified, unplanned, and a total fucking disaster from the onset, with every top military man worth a shit or with an ounce of integrity either "quitting" or getting outright fired. When Congress turned Dem and there was a threat to the agenda they threw rummy out to the wolves in a hurry and replaced him with Gates. That wonderful jackass responsible for the Iran Contra business. Yup...we have the most honest and correct government just trying to do the right thing in that part of the world. If you honestly believe that bullshit I have some nice beachfront property to sell you in Utah.
Well I will just touch on a few things. Melinda Gates was the one responsible for Microsoft Bob which eventually became clippy. He married an employee, which while there is nothing inherently wrong with it, given his past behaviors it certainly looks funny.
That wonderful gates foundation you are so happy with ALSO invests heavily in various chemical plants in africa that are causing huge amounts of lung damage/disease in the areas they operate in because its so horribly profitable for these US companies to move their operations outside of the reach of the US regulations so they can spew shit into the air and water and not have to worry about it. So yes they are absolutely fantastic, they give a bunch of african kids diseases and disabilities and then get super happy PR when they show up to "help out". For even more fun go look up the rural isp/computer in africa thing that MS got asked for help from and saw it as a way to sticker their name all over a big PR hype thing and still charge the poor guy thousands of dollars. (Nambia net or something to that effect, it was some years ago, and the guy doing it basically posted all the letters online on the 'deals' MS offered and he told them to go stuff it). So you are right, he is just a businessman that understands how incredibly important it is to look the part of good ol traditional american family values and how to milk the PR machine.
The man is a megalomaniacal scumbag willing to lie cheat and steal his way to the top. Now you are right, there are far more serious issues in the world than his little "I will rule the world" "One Microsoft Way" nonsense...but he is in no way a good guy. I would encourage you to not give a dime to that scumsuckers charity, go find a real charity that is more responsible with their investments and expenditures and not focused on getting a convicted monopolist "Man of the Year".
Uhm...lying about squirting on an intern is not even the same thing as lying about starting a war. Now I do agree that its an understanding of the people that we are screwed by the legal system no matter what happens since the laws are just more things to hold against us and never to protect us.
We had a president that "didn't inhale" (and his interview where he explains he knew it was the dumbest thing he could possibly say, but his interviews are all 'scripted' and he didn't have an answer prepared for that). Jogged to McDs every day. Played Jazz. We had a president that liked to get high.
NOW! We have a guy that drank alot and did alot of blow, and then goes on with this youthful indescression crap while talking about how hard on drugs he is. Has out of control drunken daughters, has a druggy niece (I think it was Jebs daughter). Thinks he is the king of the world and is above the law. Likes to fight. Can't talk (and I'm more and more convinced it isn't that he just isn't a good speaker, I think he really is that dumb).
Lessons to be learned here. Just like in normal day to day life your potheads are NOWHERE NEAR the same type of problem causing criminals as your boozers or your coke heads.
Maybe I am insensitive but I would say "sexually harass female employees with impunity" doesn't even begin to compare to "Shock and Awe" on the scale of "Wow that was fucked up".
This is what I hate about this crap these days. Just because I think King George is a blight on our nation it somehow immediately means that I must be a liberal Clinton supporter. I think Clinton was an ass too, I just think on the grand scale of things he was far better than Bush. You know...there is the guy that takes candy from a baby, he is a bad guy...then there is the guy that takes the candy, chokes the baby, chops it up in a wood chipper, and then feeds it to his pit bull...that guy is worse than the guy who took the candy from the baby.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of your stupidity here. It is interesting to me that you think I am some liberal Clinton fanboi because I think Bush is worse. I think they both sucked, (well slick willy got sucked). But I think King George has done more damage to our credibility, our integrity, and our freedoms than any other world leader has in a long long time.
As far as bankruptcy...grow the hell up and do the research. They have shown that the something like 90% or more of bankruptcies are not from irresponsible spending, it is from things like outrageous medical bills and other emergencies or disasters. The credit companies convinced our lawmakers that it was all irresponsible spending so they can block people from filing bankruptcy so they can still squeeze every dime out. This is all who extend credit, not just credit card companies by the way. Housing, cars, credit cards, everything. That isn't to say that there aren't people taking advantage of it, but hey, maybe the credit company shouldn't have given that person credit in the first place then huh? As for me, I refuse to deal with the credit card companies because it is such an insane scam with rates like 12-25% APR and then I have seen cards default as high as 89%! Just because people are dumb and poor at math does not justify taking advantage of them. Unless of course you think it is ok to scam seniors on medicare too just because they don't understand.
Given that the Capt sorta is the American spirit and all that, I think his death is a bit more appropriate. We have been crushed and sold as a people. We have allowed our constitution to be highjacked, we have allowed our laws to be sold, we have allowed fear to rule our lives. There are a handful that are upset about this, but they are a minority by a long shot. I can't count the times I hear "If you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide" when I talk about how wrong the spying is, or even "Well did it, so why are you upset now?" like I was alive or aware of the others that have done it, or that the current crop aren't more blatant about breaking more laws to do it.
The fact is, most people don't seem to care. King George was reelected. You can point to his low approval rating, but congress is even lower, and noone is actually doing anything about it. Slick Willy got a blowjob and it was the end of the world, King George starts a war, usurps our freedoms, potentially stole 2 elections...well...that doesn't make as good sensationalist dirty gossip story so noone cares.
American Spirit is all but dead. Noone cares or is too busy shoveling themselves out of debt in our insane buy now pay later, keeping up with the Jones' culture. Lets not forget our wonderful lawmakers passed that nice law to make sure those poor credit companies don't have their money stolen by dirty citizens declaring bankruptcy!
Whoa whoa whoa now. Let me point out VERY clearly here that the vast majority of the military is not this stupid. The ones that ARE this stupid tend to be the senior officers and government officials that make these retarded decisions to go through with these kind of idiot plans. The problem is due to the structure when one General (who by the way, like all other officers are college graduates) makes a dumb ass choice like this, it effectively causes everyone underneath him in the chain related to that project to be ordered to be stupid.
Just to play devil's advocate here a bit, would you prefer that they are always 100% efficient in finding new ways to damage/destroy/etc?
Having been over the the history of things such as acoustic kitty, the bat bomb, the various psychic projects, the gay bomb, the laughing bullets, etc etc etc. The list goes on and on and on of the utterly moronic things that some assclown in our administration thought would be a good idea and spent millions of dollars on...
I think they thought the whole alien story was actually a good story for entirely different reasons than you and I think it was a good story. To be perfectly honest I imagine the whole alien thing is significantly less embarrasing that what the truth probably is. It wouldn't surprise me if the government has spent millions of dollars creating evidence for this alien story just to keep the embarassing truth deeeeeply hidden.
When they have shown that you can identify a person by their google searches, or by browsing habits, and any other number of things "anonymous" data is just a bullshit artists way of calming you while he takes your info.
You are right, however here is the rub. During that time we weren't exactly on the best of terms with that other superpower, you know, those dirty reds. As such both of us were engaged in that whole arms race business, developing the latest and greatest in wizbang ways to spy or kill. Now we have historical evidence that while we have had some AMAZING wins and developed some of the "that is impossible" type stuff (tapping undersea cables), we also have a list of "that's fucking retarded" such as acoustic kitty. So now the stage is set, two very large and powerful countries, with very large budgets, and no shortage of paranoia in the government and in the people (remember, a red could be living next door, turn them in!).
So another OOPS in development, because if you have a clue you know that the government does alot of testing out in the middle of the desert because its not only harder to get spied on, its easier to catch people spying. So...they don't want the ruskies to know whats going on (or they don't want to admit to the stupid idea of developing modern spying capabilities using weather balloons), so here comes the little green men to the rescue. Americans can barely find any kind of information regarding what the hell happened, among dozens of "official" stories and crackpot theories, and it happened in our own back yard!. Think the commies would be able to glean ANY kind of information about what we were really up to?
In the boring real world it is far more likely it was just another bleeding edge test project that crashed and they muddied the waters as best they could to keep any of our enemies from learning what happened. If you believe the F-22 was a result of a recent research and development project you are a fool. There is a huge lagtime between R&D on military wizbang stuff and actual production.
Somehow I don't think that would work well for us Americans. Seems that not many of my fellow citizens can even find half the worlds countries. "We are meeting in Uraguay for a raid" would lead to a few dumb jokes about "your a gay" and then everyone scattered around the map unable to figure out where the hell to even start looking.
No we don't. We have Republicans and Democrats. Anyone from any other so called "party" is really just an enemy of one of the existing parties which would make them a member of the opposing party. Where the hell have you been? If you don't hate gay marriage, then you are a godless liberal Democrat. If you support the death penalty you are christian conservative Republican. All the people who don't agree with the whole party are flip-floppers or traitors to the other party.
Not that I entirely disagree, but I offer this in his defense. As he mentioned flying was not feasible for a long while. As a great number of other things, and typically the true engineers are the ones pointing and laughing because of how silly and stupid an idea is, with their vast knowledge of how things are supposed to work. The engineers only get involved when enough tinkerers have cobbled together something that looks like a real engineer might be able to clean up into something feasible. This is somewhat ironic because you are right, many engineers got started as tinkerers, but somewhere along the line they frequently lose that tinkering aspect and fall into "the correct way". It really is no different in a number of fields or environments where the lowly worker knows how stupid or unrealistic various high level decisions are, but when they get there themselves they fall into the trap of making the same stupid and unrealistic decisions while laughing at the underlings for not understanding.
I'm not exactly sure as to what is so hard to figure out about this. Action = Pleasure things can pretty much all be addictive. From video games, to music, to drugs, to masturbation, action = pleasure. The difference is if I quit video games I don't have a real biological withdrawl like I would if I just quit crack. Physical addiction is not the same as psychological addiction. Physical addictions involve your body actually failing to function when the substance is removed.
I am waiting for someone to claim they has an exercise addiction since it is proven that regular exercise releases various feel good chemicals, and that a lack of exercise and your body will start to fail. THAT would be genious...of coarse that means you have to exercise alot which would interfere with playing video games.
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Broadcasting most certainly does not imply having an audience, unless you are only meaning in the traditional field of Broadcasting as it relates to commercial radio. However, just to clear it up, I will say transmitting. Transmitting absolutely does not require anyone to be receiving for it to cause horrible things to happen in the RF spectrum. And easy to hack radios means that people can transmit anything they want (don't get stuck in thinking voice only please) at any power. Incidentally, in case you haven't noticed almost everyone has a AM/FM radio that is quite capable of picking up transmissions in those frequency ranges, people have garage door openers that receive signals, lots of people have various keyless start/lock setups, TONS of people have cellphones, there is also the various networking gear, and wireless phones. So there is NO shortage of radios to be interfered with that the FCC would get very upset by you interfering by transmitting anything in those frequency ranges.
As far as mustering 1000 people, I am gunna go out on a limb here and say that cable descramblers have FAR more users than 1000. So understanding of the technology and use of the technology are two entirely different things. "This wifi hack lets you cover your entire house with only 1 AP" "This will extend your cordless phone to your entire block!" "These hand held walkie talkies can reach across city blocks! No more expensive cell phones" All of these would be incredibly disruptive to other peoples use of the RF spectrum. Now, don't think I am fond of the FCC's methods of handling business, but ultimately there is a need for regulation of the RF spectrum to make ANY RF based technology useful, or people will just muddy up the airwaves and make it very very difficult to use any RF based devices.
I saw tons of new(ish) movies in Iraq. They were all being sold for $2-4 bucks for a DVD with 2-4 new(ish) releases by some random local in a wooden hut on the road near camp. In the meantime the MPAA and friends are chasing down 17yr olds to put them in jail...wonder why they don't go to Iraq and stop the piracy themselves. (Ignoring that Hillary Rosen was on the ground in Iraq in the very very early days begging the new Iraqi government to adopt her proposals on copyright...yeah...they need help with food, water, and security, and this psychotic bitch is going to go and talk to them about music downloads?)
I'm a little disappointed with the Iraqi government for their lack of progress...they should have shot her ass on the spot for that nonsense.
It is exactly as you said. They don't want the populace spewing things into the RF spectrum that they can't manage. So one or two pirate radio stations spring up and are easily hunted down by the FCC. Now, with easy to "hack" software radios everyone could start broadcasting any information they want, in any format, on any frequency, at any power, etc...and there would be no way for the FCC to even begin to track that kind of rampant violation down.
If one guy is in the street protesting it is easy to control and quell. If its 10,000 guys in the street protesting it gets a little harder, if its 10,000,000 guys its basically imposisble.
I still don't feel sorry for criminals busted by criminals because ultimately they were doing something illegal. Crying foul that you got busted doing something illegal because the person catching you was doing something illegal is stupid. As far as entrapment goes I have a hard time believing a judge would go for that if they found a website and tried to go in and get free movies. The big problem with entrapment (specially in the case of drugs) is that most people are scared of the drug dealer pushing on them and will just throw some money to make the scary guy that probably has a gun go away. If I was surfing the web and found "Illegal drugs here! Buy now!" and it turned out to be a cop...well I don't think I would get far claiming entrapment. The kiddie molesters certainly don't get very far with those claims when its a cop and not a underage girl/boy.
And yes, I have seen meth, coke, acid, etc ruin FAR too many peoples lives to not have large issues with people using them and or selling them. Now a couple of potheads I really don't give a rat's ass about, but smoking a plant that you can find growing in a ditch and snorting stuff that came out of a chemistry set are two very different things. But more than that, it was just the easiest thing that came to mind because I have seen multiple stories in the news of dealers calling the cops when someone stole from them, or druggies calling the cops when the dealer sold them bad stuff, or any number of things like that of such unbelievable stupidity that it is hard to justify not letting them rot in a cell somewhere.
Well thats the problem, those people who would go anyways are idiots. "I am going to go wave toy guns at cops so they get in trouble when they shoot me" is the same line of stupidity. No sane judge is going to defend the downloader in this scenario, and I think demanding that they do is irresponsible if we actually want to maintain that grandma isn't really downloading mp3s. If you really want to make a case that the RIAA is harassing innocent people to scare people then you have to stand up and drop the hammer on the people who really are guilty. Like their methods or not, they ARE right that many of these people are violating copyright. If the community outs the real offenders it protects us from insane lawsuits, it makes the aggressors look bad for attacking the innocent, and *gasp* if we don't buy the horseshit they are selling then maybe the market will actually start to adapt to something we would be happy to participate in.
I can shoot and kill a civilian and not be charged with murder, and I am not law enforcement. A Cop can shoot and kill a civilian and be charged with murder (as has happened frequently). So no they are not above the law, nor are the laws any different for them.
Well...just a few problems.
1. They weren't advertising it as free MPAA approved movie downloads so that "getting it from the MPAA" argument is almost completely garbage
2. They could offer movie downloads, get you to download their speedy client thing, check for other illegal movies and *gasp* not let you download movies from them. So right there "getting" is pretty much destroyed because "download our download speedup software so you can download the bootleg movies we have faster" doesn't invalidate "oh, we forgot to tell you we have no bootleg movies for download".
Yes, they are grasping at straws. Yes they are a dying business that would rather legistlate profit than to adapt to the new world. No, they aren't so freaking retarded that they would actually let you download movies from them while convincing you to download their illegal movie checker software.
If they were doing drive be installs or exploits or something then yes, the better analogy would be the PI breaking in. So since we are splitting hairs. You let someone who you thought was a drug dealer into your house to sell you drugs, but instead it turns out he is just some private party looking to get the reward for turning in criminals, and he calls the cops to report that he found paraphanalia in your house. YOU still let him in (downloaded the illegal movie download speedup software), and it would be unbelievably stupid for you to complain that he didn't tell you he was going to call the cops if he saw anything illegal (other downloaded movies) after you invited him in to sell you illegal drugs (the downloaded movies you were going to get from the site that offered you the speedup software). You clicked install, they aren't breaking the law, quit crying, pay for the movie or don't watch it. Personally I choose don't watch it, most of it is garbage anyways.
You know how you avoid those the problem? You don't go looking for illegal movie downloads that might be a trap! Sorry, no sympathy, its a stupid argument.
BZZZT Wrong! In fact you have forgotten the information that causes you to be wrong, as most people have. Windows ME... Noone in their right mind touched that garbage between 98/2k/xp. Win2k workstation was missing a large number of things that were promised for the OS that was to kill the 9x codebase forever, so XP actually had alot of legitimate improvements over 2k.
WinME was all the garbage they couldn't make work, prettied up to look like Win2k, and slapped on a craptastic code base. I honestly wonder if this is what they are doing with Vista. Because it wasn't long before the only thing you could buy preinstalled was win ME and it was trash, and people flocked to XP to save them from that horrible version. So they force Vista down our throats...and then VistaII rolls out as an upgrade path. Seems to follow their pattern. 3.1 (ok) - 95 (garbage) - 98 (pretty good) - ME (worse than garbage) - XP (way better than before) - Vista (...) You get the picture.
This is just too stupid for words. This is like trying to sue the convenience store owner for fraud when he gives you fake money that is easily traced when you rob him. Or maybe like when the druggie calls the cops because the dealer sold him fake coke. Seriously, as much as I hate the MPAA for the way they handle things, this particular trick doesn't bother me much, and crying fraud is stupid at best. I hope there isn't a judge alive that would view this as fraud. "Ok, so you are sueing the MPAA for fraud because they set up a site that offered illegal movie downloads...and you signed up...downloaded their fake client...and are now being sued by the MPAA for the copyright material they found on your computer?"
I can't even wrap my head around the fact that you want a valid EULA that clearly describes its methods for software that is designed for catching illegal activities. The next thing you are going to tell me is that when the cops pretend to be drug dealers to catch druggies you want them to be wearing DEA uniforms.
Doesn't all that stuff make you glad that we spent so much money supporting him? I mean those pictures of Rummy and crew all smiling shaking hands and shit is just classic. Oh wait...Rummy was involved in supporting him...and now rummy is involved in Bush's "crusade" (wonderful choice of words king geroge). No this this has been an unmitigated cluster fuck from day 1. I have been there, and everything is stamped with KBR...which is a halliburton company...which *shock* is still paying their former front man Dick Cheney! This whole fucking thing in Iraq has been a horseshit story from day one and fucking reaks of conflicts of interest and personal agendas. I mean it was this same crew of asshats that authored that document that says "America must fight a 2 front war and win both decisively so secure our place at the top of the world". Afghanistan, justified, planned, and up until Iraq was handled fairly well. Iraq, unjustified, unplanned, and a total fucking disaster from the onset, with every top military man worth a shit or with an ounce of integrity either "quitting" or getting outright fired. When Congress turned Dem and there was a threat to the agenda they threw rummy out to the wolves in a hurry and replaced him with Gates. That wonderful jackass responsible for the Iran Contra business. Yup...we have the most honest and correct government just trying to do the right thing in that part of the world. If you honestly believe that bullshit I have some nice beachfront property to sell you in Utah.
Well I will just touch on a few things. Melinda Gates was the one responsible for Microsoft Bob which eventually became clippy. He married an employee, which while there is nothing inherently wrong with it, given his past behaviors it certainly looks funny.
That wonderful gates foundation you are so happy with ALSO invests heavily in various chemical plants in africa that are causing huge amounts of lung damage/disease in the areas they operate in because its so horribly profitable for these US companies to move their operations outside of the reach of the US regulations so they can spew shit into the air and water and not have to worry about it. So yes they are absolutely fantastic, they give a bunch of african kids diseases and disabilities and then get super happy PR when they show up to "help out". For even more fun go look up the rural isp/computer in africa thing that MS got asked for help from and saw it as a way to sticker their name all over a big PR hype thing and still charge the poor guy thousands of dollars. (Nambia net or something to that effect, it was some years ago, and the guy doing it basically posted all the letters online on the 'deals' MS offered and he told them to go stuff it). So you are right, he is just a businessman that understands how incredibly important it is to look the part of good ol traditional american family values and how to milk the PR machine.
The man is a megalomaniacal scumbag willing to lie cheat and steal his way to the top. Now you are right, there are far more serious issues in the world than his little "I will rule the world" "One Microsoft Way" nonsense...but he is in no way a good guy. I would encourage you to not give a dime to that scumsuckers charity, go find a real charity that is more responsible with their investments and expenditures and not focused on getting a convicted monopolist "Man of the Year".
Uhm...lying about squirting on an intern is not even the same thing as lying about starting a war. Now I do agree that its an understanding of the people that we are screwed by the legal system no matter what happens since the laws are just more things to hold against us and never to protect us.
We had a president that "didn't inhale" (and his interview where he explains he knew it was the dumbest thing he could possibly say, but his interviews are all 'scripted' and he didn't have an answer prepared for that). Jogged to McDs every day. Played Jazz. We had a president that liked to get high.
NOW! We have a guy that drank alot and did alot of blow, and then goes on with this youthful indescression crap while talking about how hard on drugs he is. Has out of control drunken daughters, has a druggy niece (I think it was Jebs daughter). Thinks he is the king of the world and is above the law. Likes to fight. Can't talk (and I'm more and more convinced it isn't that he just isn't a good speaker, I think he really is that dumb).
Lessons to be learned here. Just like in normal day to day life your potheads are NOWHERE NEAR the same type of problem causing criminals as your boozers or your coke heads.
Maybe I am insensitive but I would say "sexually harass female employees with impunity" doesn't even begin to compare to "Shock and Awe" on the scale of "Wow that was fucked up".
This is what I hate about this crap these days. Just because I think King George is a blight on our nation it somehow immediately means that I must be a liberal Clinton supporter. I think Clinton was an ass too, I just think on the grand scale of things he was far better than Bush. You know...there is the guy that takes candy from a baby, he is a bad guy...then there is the guy that takes the candy, chokes the baby, chops it up in a wood chipper, and then feeds it to his pit bull...that guy is worse than the guy who took the candy from the baby.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of your stupidity here. It is interesting to me that you think I am some liberal Clinton fanboi because I think Bush is worse. I think they both sucked, (well slick willy got sucked). But I think King George has done more damage to our credibility, our integrity, and our freedoms than any other world leader has in a long long time.
As far as bankruptcy...grow the hell up and do the research. They have shown that the something like 90% or more of bankruptcies are not from irresponsible spending, it is from things like outrageous medical bills and other emergencies or disasters. The credit companies convinced our lawmakers that it was all irresponsible spending so they can block people from filing bankruptcy so they can still squeeze every dime out. This is all who extend credit, not just credit card companies by the way. Housing, cars, credit cards, everything. That isn't to say that there aren't people taking advantage of it, but hey, maybe the credit company shouldn't have given that person credit in the first place then huh? As for me, I refuse to deal with the credit card companies because it is such an insane scam with rates like 12-25% APR and then I have seen cards default as high as 89%! Just because people are dumb and poor at math does not justify taking advantage of them. Unless of course you think it is ok to scam seniors on medicare too just because they don't understand.
Given that the Capt sorta is the American spirit and all that, I think his death is a bit more appropriate. We have been crushed and sold as a people. We have allowed our constitution to be highjacked, we have allowed our laws to be sold, we have allowed fear to rule our lives. There are a handful that are upset about this, but they are a minority by a long shot. I can't count the times I hear "If you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide" when I talk about how wrong the spying is, or even "Well did it, so why are you upset now?" like I was alive or aware of the others that have done it, or that the current crop aren't more blatant about breaking more laws to do it.
The fact is, most people don't seem to care. King George was reelected. You can point to his low approval rating, but congress is even lower, and noone is actually doing anything about it. Slick Willy got a blowjob and it was the end of the world, King George starts a war, usurps our freedoms, potentially stole 2 elections...well...that doesn't make as good sensationalist dirty gossip story so noone cares.
American Spirit is all but dead. Noone cares or is too busy shoveling themselves out of debt in our insane buy now pay later, keeping up with the Jones' culture. Lets not forget our wonderful lawmakers passed that nice law to make sure those poor credit companies don't have their money stolen by dirty citizens declaring bankruptcy!
Whoa whoa whoa now. Let me point out VERY clearly here that the vast majority of the military is not this stupid. The ones that ARE this stupid tend to be the senior officers and government officials that make these retarded decisions to go through with these kind of idiot plans. The problem is due to the structure when one General (who by the way, like all other officers are college graduates) makes a dumb ass choice like this, it effectively causes everyone underneath him in the chain related to that project to be ordered to be stupid.
Just to play devil's advocate here a bit, would you prefer that they are always 100% efficient in finding new ways to damage/destroy/etc?
Having been over the the history of things such as acoustic kitty, the bat bomb, the various psychic projects, the gay bomb, the laughing bullets, etc etc etc. The list goes on and on and on of the utterly moronic things that some assclown in our administration thought would be a good idea and spent millions of dollars on...
I think they thought the whole alien story was actually a good story for entirely different reasons than you and I think it was a good story. To be perfectly honest I imagine the whole alien thing is significantly less embarrasing that what the truth probably is. It wouldn't surprise me if the government has spent millions of dollars creating evidence for this alien story just to keep the embarassing truth deeeeeply hidden.
When they have shown that you can identify a person by their google searches, or by browsing habits, and any other number of things "anonymous" data is just a bullshit artists way of calming you while he takes your info.
You are right, however here is the rub. During that time we weren't exactly on the best of terms with that other superpower, you know, those dirty reds. As such both of us were engaged in that whole arms race business, developing the latest and greatest in wizbang ways to spy or kill. Now we have historical evidence that while we have had some AMAZING wins and developed some of the "that is impossible" type stuff (tapping undersea cables), we also have a list of "that's fucking retarded" such as acoustic kitty. So now the stage is set, two very large and powerful countries, with very large budgets, and no shortage of paranoia in the government and in the people (remember, a red could be living next door, turn them in!).
So another OOPS in development, because if you have a clue you know that the government does alot of testing out in the middle of the desert because its not only harder to get spied on, its easier to catch people spying. So...they don't want the ruskies to know whats going on (or they don't want to admit to the stupid idea of developing modern spying capabilities using weather balloons), so here comes the little green men to the rescue. Americans can barely find any kind of information regarding what the hell happened, among dozens of "official" stories and crackpot theories, and it happened in our own back yard!. Think the commies would be able to glean ANY kind of information about what we were really up to?
In the boring real world it is far more likely it was just another bleeding edge test project that crashed and they muddied the waters as best they could to keep any of our enemies from learning what happened. If you believe the F-22 was a result of a recent research and development project you are a fool. There is a huge lagtime between R&D on military wizbang stuff and actual production.
Somehow I don't think that would work well for us Americans. Seems that not many of my fellow citizens can even find half the worlds countries. "We are meeting in Uraguay for a raid" would lead to a few dumb jokes about "your a gay" and then everyone scattered around the map unable to figure out where the hell to even start looking.
No we don't. We have Republicans and Democrats. Anyone from any other so called "party" is really just an enemy of one of the existing parties which would make them a member of the opposing party. Where the hell have you been? If you don't hate gay marriage, then you are a godless liberal Democrat. If you support the death penalty you are christian conservative Republican. All the people who don't agree with the whole party are flip-floppers or traitors to the other party.
Not that I entirely disagree, but I offer this in his defense. As he mentioned flying was not feasible for a long while. As a great number of other things, and typically the true engineers are the ones pointing and laughing because of how silly and stupid an idea is, with their vast knowledge of how things are supposed to work. The engineers only get involved when enough tinkerers have cobbled together something that looks like a real engineer might be able to clean up into something feasible. This is somewhat ironic because you are right, many engineers got started as tinkerers, but somewhere along the line they frequently lose that tinkering aspect and fall into "the correct way". It really is no different in a number of fields or environments where the lowly worker knows how stupid or unrealistic various high level decisions are, but when they get there themselves they fall into the trap of making the same stupid and unrealistic decisions while laughing at the underlings for not understanding.
I'm not exactly sure as to what is so hard to figure out about this. Action = Pleasure things can pretty much all be addictive. From video games, to music, to drugs, to masturbation, action = pleasure. The difference is if I quit video games I don't have a real biological withdrawl like I would if I just quit crack. Physical addiction is not the same as psychological addiction. Physical addictions involve your body actually failing to function when the substance is removed.
I am waiting for someone to claim they has an exercise addiction since it is proven that regular exercise releases various feel good chemicals, and that a lack of exercise and your body will start to fail. THAT would be genious...of coarse that means you have to exercise alot which would interfere with playing video games.