Of course he doesn't, and that is not meant as any slur against Klaus_1250. A very large group of/. readers belong to the "I won't follow adverts so blocking them is fine camp", you can try playing Devil's advocate all day but you're wasting your time.
Personally I've taken the view with the sites I manage that either a user is benefiting the site or not. In the case of adblocking users this means that I either think that referrals from them justify allowing them anyway, or as in most cases I block them.
I've had a couple of angry emails from users who were blocked for adblocking, but I just ignore them. I run sites as a hobby, and if someone visits my site it costs me money, if I put adverts up and a person doesn't want to view adverts then I don't want them using my bandwidth.
I'm sorry what? Last time I checked what the website was supposed to be was up to the owner to decide, and plenty of owners have decided that accessibility at all costs isn't what they want.
To have a EULA for web content is antisocial at best.
Practically every website with any form of registered users has a user agreement, even if it is just to cover the admin's ass with regards to young children and membership. Regardless of whether an EULA is really enforceable or not, until it's decided in court they can have various uses for the site owner.
That's Democracy. If you want to have private health insurance, have private insurance. Otherwise, accept that, there's going to be people who will make the argument that we should not blow too much medical money on sufferers of illnesses resulting from lifelong self indulgence or excessive risk taking.
I prefer to look at it from the other angle. No country in the world has a social healthcare system that will give people unrestricted access to any and all available treatments. In the UK this is often most visibly seen when the NHS decides not to provide certain very expensive drugs that can extend the lifetime of Cancer victims.
I don't have a figure available to say what providing truely top level healthcare to everyone so I don't want to make sweeping statements about how unaffordable it would be, but this is exactly what needs to be considered when saying everything should be on social healthcare.
Is it moral for me to suggest that some treatments aren't provided socially, and then pay money into insurance that gives me those treatments? I'm not 100% sure, but I already pay money into a private pension scheme which will help me avoid being stuck on the tiny state pension when I retire and have mortgage insurance through work that protects my house if I become employed, something that everyone doesn't have. Life saving medicine is a more complex issue because one of the arguements ultimately boils down to saying it costs me too much to pay for healthcare that will save someone else's life.
To play Devil's advocate. Without knowing more about the situation it might be the case that if he says nothing it could cost him his job later. If the company is investigated and the piracy is found out, someone within the company is going to pay the price. Poster is at risk for two reasons: when investigating they may decide he almost certainly knew, when investigating they may decide that he should have known and was negligent.
If he has a verbal conversation with a more senior manager who asks him to leave it alone, doing just that leaves him in a very vulnerable position. At the very least, if he is going to put nothing about the piracy in writing, he needs to ensure that the Chinese office is clearly outside of his remit.
Sort of like if China were to give large amounts of money to Democrats to influence US elections and policies.
The same China that Bush Jnr spent most of his 2 terms sucking up to like there was no tomorrow?
Or if Russia were to knowingly and deliberately supply arms and funding to kill US troops in an active conflict. Not that *that* would ever happen, no sir!
Sounding oddly like a situation in which the USA knowingly and deliberately supplied arms and funding to the 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan, who happened to be fighting the Russians at the time.
Any claim of American Imperialism is best set within the context of Neocolonialism. I think it is extremely naive to think that in the modern a nation needs to flew military muscle to achieve its goals, and to that end I have no doubt that America spends a sizable amount of resources for this end.
Your opinion that America has acted better as a super power than any of its potential rivals would of if roles were reversed is likely true. Although with issues like its blind support for Israel; its recent heavy handed actions against that seemed targeted towards Islamic nations; its citizens open support of terrorism in Northern Ireland; its military interventions to 'fight communism' most notably Vietnam; its long term and ongoing meddling in South American nations such as Venezuela, Columbia and also Cuba; its development of new nuclear weapons and defenses in contradiction of the NPT;its heavy handed approach to expanding free trade while hypocritically maintaining its own protectionism that lives on even today in "Buy American"; I'm not sure that pointing out others flaws is sufficient excuse.
If Asus had actually followed through on their original plans to deliver these things at low prices, we'd be seeing the imminent death of Microsoft.
I think this is to over-state the size of the Netbook market. Yes, the sub $200 market was one of the first consumer PC products where Windows wasn't the only option anyone sold (effectively) but from what I have seen Windows variants still ruled for market share and MS had discounted Windows by that much that I think it probably wasn't anymore cost effective for manufacturers to produce Linux versions.
I'd love to see Asus bring out a laptop that was effectively the original EeePC brought up to date. I'd buy one straight away, but I don't think I'm the typical consumer and I can see why they are going for a higher priced market.
Even at $400 I don't think this is an automatic win for Microsoft. Competition in the Netbook market is heavy and if Microsoft is willing to maintain a heavy discount in a fast growing market then it will begin to eat into their profit margin, and they will still have to offer a product that beats the 'free' alternatives (in vendor's opinions). Also, how many people are going to buy a $400 laptop and then buy a copy of MS office at its current price? Even vendors that ship with Windows would be likely to ship with OpenOffice or some other alternative and if they do it starts to break Microsoft's dominance of a market that provides most of the profit.
But good news, because with the current economic crisis, there are fewer homeowners to do the NIMBY.
Sadly, the current economic climate isn't having the same effect in the UK. NIMBYism is still rife, and our governments in so much debt I can't see renewables getting any meaningful investment.
It's times like this that I wish local government was more autonomous, I'd love to see a system where local tax accounted for the number of positive and negative public amenities nearby. Thus if someone wants to live near the local school and hospital, but doesn't want wind turbines or prisons anywhere near they would pay higher local tax (council tax) and people who lived near the prison and further from the school would pay less.
You might think if a system like this was put in place then it would unfairly lead to poor people getting a crap deal, well my counter to that is that they already do, and at least this way they pay less tax in return.
You've done a very good job of pointing out the problem with this proposed solution to spam.
The only solutions to spam that will actually work are ones that negatively effect the person whose computer is being used to send it. This leads to massive problems in trying to balance a workable service with the penalties.
Personally I would like to see ISPs begin to implement a system where they block service to anyone sending over a certain number of emails in a given time frame (this solution can be as technically advanced or simple as you like, and could even include the option to have this limit removed or increased if you contact them by say phone and request it). Instead users would only be allowed to view a portal informing them of the reason for the block, and perhaps offering links to a range of anti-virus tools.
ISPs could then block email from other ISPs whose level of spamming was excessive, until they themselves took action to limit it.
Although anything done on a large enough scale will have an error margin, it does not make 2% an acceptable error for an election in a democracy. I don't like pulling figures out of the air, but if I had to then I doubt even a 0.5% error rate is good enough.
Also, in addition to the basic principle that peoples votes should be counted in an election the larger the error rate the easier to hide vote tampering on a scale that may affect the result. Especially in a system that isn't first past the post (which I believe was the case here). If you consider that in many elections in Europe that use proportional representation there could be a dozen or more parties fighting for votes your error rate is likely to be higher than the voting figure for some of these parties.
i'm betting there's well over 90% probability that those lost votes will be a representative sample.
And I'm willing to bet that the risk that a 2% error margin might lead to an incorrect result (especially in a prop rep system) isn't low enough.
The fact you had to post this AC makes it pretty obvious you know how petty the post was.
The author and everyone reading it will all of known that he meant London, and the way in which he expressed it was perfectly acceptable, even if it wasn't in full pedant style.
As with Parent I think the majority of MS bashing on/. is pretty stupid. This however is a clear case of unacceptable behavior by an OS vendor. Even if you take the view that companies don't need to fully explain changes to their own programs, making alterations to other peoples programs is completely different.
The last thing we need is for software vendors to declare open season and alter each others programs automatically and without explanation, whether their reasons are altruistic or not.
Isn't the BBC almost entirely funded by taxing everyone in the UK with a TV?
Everyone who watches broadcast TV yes.
How is this any different?
It's not completely different, as even though the TV license money only goes to a couple of channels BBC & Channel 4 you can't choose not to pay if you only watch other channels. Where it starts to differ is that this £20 a year doesn't give anyone the right to do anything, it just funds a government department we don't even want.
People bought cheap T-models not only because of the hype and the novelty of it all, but because they proved very reliable and easy to use. And they didn't shit on the street or in your paddock.
People bought cars because they were better for themselves, any benefit for others was a lucky benefit. The automobile and late 19th century New York do not provide a good example of an environmental issue being solved by planning.
The best thing government can do is give incentives for research and development that it believes is for the good of the nation. One of the biggest issues with global warming, is that if true, any solution needs to be global to work. Currently a country is at an economic disadvantage for going 'green' as any nation that chooses not to will have lower costs. If this fundamental issue is not addressed then any countries efforts to become more environmentally friendly will simply lead to the transfer of production and pollution to areas that are not effected.
This displacement phenomena is the same as is often seen when laws vary between bordering states.
I don't think this law is aimed at stopping people you think it is, an audible noise is probably intended to discourage people who are presented with a situation where they might consider taking a picture that is inappropriate. If this is the case then it is unlikely people will have damaged their phone etc to remove the sound.
Even given the above my initial view is that this measure is unlikely to have been worth bringing into law. However as someone who has quite a few years left yet till I intend to have kids, I already have very little idea about kid and teen culture and perhaps the people who proposed this actually researched this issue properly and this solution works...
Not really. You don't have to reverse engineer Unix/Linux/Mac. The documentation is all there for free.
Not everything that doesn't run on Windows is freely licensed, in fact I'd bet good money more OS software is run on Windows than on all other OS combined (just due to market share). The parent was absolutely right that it is not Microsoft's fault that people release products for their platform and not others.
As to your railed car analogy, aside from being unrelated it's pretty aweful on other levels.
All common roads are slowly replaced by railed roads.All common roads are slowly replaced by railed roads.
If your government is dumb enough to pay to replace roads with a new version which is controlled by a private company, or willing to allow a private company to replace your roads with a new patented variant then that's your problem.
If on the other hand a company was to with its own money build an entirely new railed road network, and 98% of people were to buy cars from this manufacturer to use on it, then yes it would be the governments responsibility to maintain the original road system if they so wish.
It isn't bad in operating systems that are currently incapable of abusing a monopoly position because they have such a low market share.
Apple has had a monopoly (by market share) in the mp3 player market for years now. I haven't heard anyone demanding that the none music player features be removed so that other competitors can offer video and other solutions on it.
The monopoly argument simply doesn't cut it for me, it's the same dead horse that is used time and again to try and cover the fact that most of the time people just want to damage Microsoft.
If you believe it is damaging for Microsoft to include a web browser within their operating system, why do you think that it would be bad to require all operating systems to come without browsers? Do Apple get a pass because that conveniently gives them an additional edge over Microsoft?
I think most people who read Slashdot will realise that removing what is seen as basic functionality from an operating system will be seen as a weakness in the product.
Howeer, there is a down side to this. It provides yet another way for the govt. to track your movements. I just don't want to give them any information on this, or keep them from getting as much as possible.
You're correct that lack of privacy is a downside of using a payment method that must be topped up from a bank account and linked to the address that bank account is registered to. I respect and have no issue with your view of this matter. There are in fact other downsides to the Oyster system in addition to privacy as well.
I personally have no issue with the system. The option to pay for a ticket with cash still exists, but at a higher cost. The Oyster card system is clearly more cost effective for the operator so I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to price it differently.
When I spend cold hard cash, I tend to think twice about my expenditures.
Again, I am sure that is the case for you. Personally, I actually used to have more trouble with cash. I used to treat cash in my pocket like money that was only good for spending, and because I didn't record what I spent it on it was hard to look over retrospectively. Now I keep as little cash as possible on me, and record what I spend, which has helped me spend less.
The above might just be quirks of environments and habit, I certainly wouldn't want to claim what I did was in any way more correct.
I agree entirely with your point, their is no way all browsers could be included and to exclude any is just as much a problem as the current situation.
However, I'd take this logic even further. Surely if bundling browsers in Windows is bad, the it is bad in all operating systems, and this rule should apply to all operating systems. Secondly, surely if it is bad for browsers it is bad for other additional features such as media players, calculators, ftp clients, image viewers etc.
Also I do not think the package manager idea solves the issue, people would still want to install software when not online and who decides what limited set of media can be on the disc, and who gets to decide which programs are included in the online package manager?
I know there is a view among many Slashdotters that any measure that harms Microsoft is good, and any excuse for doing so should be used to the maximum extent. However in this case I can see no reason to treat Window's inclusion of IE any differently to OS X's inclusion of Finder.
The Kent police are policing in an archaic way that does not work anymore.
They have the server, and if it contains information that can help them to determine who posted the information it worked, if the server does not then they have checked a source for evidence and found none, which I am sure happens a lot in police work whether crimes are electronic or not.
and the fact of the matter is that if it's important to a person to reveal that sort of information about an individual publicly, they'll do it in such a way that the Kent police will have absolutely nothing to say about it.
To a certain extent you are correct, if someone uses sufficient care information can be distributed on the internet with no risk of the origin being found. Almost any crime could be committed in a way which leaves no chance of the perpetrator being caught, this alone does not constitute a reason not to try.
Additionally, laws across the world are being passed to require greater levels of data retention by service providers. It is almost certain that the ability to pass information anonymously around the internet will become more difficult over time. Although I am sad to admit it, I feel the question regarding the future of true anonymity online is how long it will, not whether it will endure.
I have to wonder whether you posted AC because you already knew your point was nonsensical. The article was pointing out how under California law Juries names cannot be hidden, it has no relevance whatsoever to UK law.
And what value exactly does a green piece of paper have? Why not go the whole hog and ban currency, people might not spend so wastefully if they could see the real cost of what they are spending (2 eggs for the morning newspaper, a few grams of gold for the electricity etc).
I and others who shop for entertainment media (DVD, CDs and games) online using 'plastic' and get things a damn site cheaper than people who go into stores and pay with physical currency. I and others who use an Oyster card (prepay travel card) get London Underground travel far cheaper than those who pay with cash. These and other examples show that alternative forms of payment can be of benefit to the purchaser.
There are a number of issues with making a mobile phone a form of payment, and yes possibly a minor one will be that it allows people who are poor at managing expenditure to be even worse at it, just like currency. However most people will benefit from the convenience and still manage not to go bankrupt.
You make your point well, but it doesn't stop your point being a variant on "Get off my lawn".
Yes it would be a real shame if your friends knowledge was to die with him, but it isn't Wikipedia's intention to preserve everything by everyone about anything. Has your friend, for example, gotten his knowledge published in Encyclopedia Brittanica? I doubt it, and for good reason, they like Wikipedia aren't the place for it.
Your friend is an expert on a specialist subject, if he wants to use the internet to spread and preserve that knowledge he should be setting up a website, potentially with a newsgroup or wiki of its own. I hope that he does, but trying to put information in the wrong place and blaming that for the loss of a life's worth of information is a poor excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course he doesn't, and that is not meant as any slur against Klaus_1250. A very large group of /. readers belong to the "I won't follow adverts so blocking them is fine camp", you can try playing Devil's advocate all day but you're wasting your time.
Personally I've taken the view with the sites I manage that either a user is benefiting the site or not. In the case of adblocking users this means that I either think that referrals from them justify allowing them anyway, or as in most cases I block them.
I've had a couple of angry emails from users who were blocked for adblocking, but I just ignore them. I run sites as a hobby, and if someone visits my site it costs me money, if I put adverts up and a person doesn't want to view adverts then I don't want them using my bandwidth.
I'm sorry what? Last time I checked what the website was supposed to be was up to the owner to decide, and plenty of owners have decided that accessibility at all costs isn't what they want.
Practically every website with any form of registered users has a user agreement, even if it is just to cover the admin's ass with regards to young children and membership. Regardless of whether an EULA is really enforceable or not, until it's decided in court they can have various uses for the site owner.
I prefer to look at it from the other angle. No country in the world has a social healthcare system that will give people unrestricted access to any and all available treatments. In the UK this is often most visibly seen when the NHS decides not to provide certain very expensive drugs that can extend the lifetime of Cancer victims.
I don't have a figure available to say what providing truely top level healthcare to everyone so I don't want to make sweeping statements about how unaffordable it would be, but this is exactly what needs to be considered when saying everything should be on social healthcare.
Is it moral for me to suggest that some treatments aren't provided socially, and then pay money into insurance that gives me those treatments? I'm not 100% sure, but I already pay money into a private pension scheme which will help me avoid being stuck on the tiny state pension when I retire and have mortgage insurance through work that protects my house if I become employed, something that everyone doesn't have. Life saving medicine is a more complex issue because one of the arguements ultimately boils down to saying it costs me too much to pay for healthcare that will save someone else's life.
To play Devil's advocate. Without knowing more about the situation it might be the case that if he says nothing it could cost him his job later. If the company is investigated and the piracy is found out, someone within the company is going to pay the price. Poster is at risk for two reasons: when investigating they may decide he almost certainly knew, when investigating they may decide that he should have known and was negligent.
If he has a verbal conversation with a more senior manager who asks him to leave it alone, doing just that leaves him in a very vulnerable position. At the very least, if he is going to put nothing about the piracy in writing, he needs to ensure that the Chinese office is clearly outside of his remit.
The same China that Bush Jnr spent most of his 2 terms sucking up to like there was no tomorrow?
Sounding oddly like a situation in which the USA knowingly and deliberately supplied arms and funding to the 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan, who happened to be fighting the Russians at the time.
Any claim of American Imperialism is best set within the context of Neocolonialism. I think it is extremely naive to think that in the modern a nation needs to flew military muscle to achieve its goals, and to that end I have no doubt that America spends a sizable amount of resources for this end.
Your opinion that America has acted better as a super power than any of its potential rivals would of if roles were reversed is likely true. Although with issues like its blind support for Israel; its recent heavy handed actions against that seemed targeted towards Islamic nations; its citizens open support of terrorism in Northern Ireland; its military interventions to 'fight communism' most notably Vietnam; its long term and ongoing meddling in South American nations such as Venezuela, Columbia and also Cuba; its development of new nuclear weapons and defenses in contradiction of the NPT;its heavy handed approach to expanding free trade while hypocritically maintaining its own protectionism that lives on even today in "Buy American"; I'm not sure that pointing out others flaws is sufficient excuse.
I think this is to over-state the size of the Netbook market. Yes, the sub $200 market was one of the first consumer PC products where Windows wasn't the only option anyone sold (effectively) but from what I have seen Windows variants still ruled for market share and MS had discounted Windows by that much that I think it probably wasn't anymore cost effective for manufacturers to produce Linux versions.
I'd love to see Asus bring out a laptop that was effectively the original EeePC brought up to date. I'd buy one straight away, but I don't think I'm the typical consumer and I can see why they are going for a higher priced market.
Even at $400 I don't think this is an automatic win for Microsoft. Competition in the Netbook market is heavy and if Microsoft is willing to maintain a heavy discount in a fast growing market then it will begin to eat into their profit margin, and they will still have to offer a product that beats the 'free' alternatives (in vendor's opinions). Also, how many people are going to buy a $400 laptop and then buy a copy of MS office at its current price? Even vendors that ship with Windows would be likely to ship with OpenOffice or some other alternative and if they do it starts to break Microsoft's dominance of a market that provides most of the profit.
Sadly, the current economic climate isn't having the same effect in the UK. NIMBYism is still rife, and our governments in so much debt I can't see renewables getting any meaningful investment.
It's times like this that I wish local government was more autonomous, I'd love to see a system where local tax accounted for the number of positive and negative public amenities nearby. Thus if someone wants to live near the local school and hospital, but doesn't want wind turbines or prisons anywhere near they would pay higher local tax (council tax) and people who lived near the prison and further from the school would pay less.
You might think if a system like this was put in place then it would unfairly lead to poor people getting a crap deal, well my counter to that is that they already do, and at least this way they pay less tax in return.
You've done a very good job of pointing out the problem with this proposed solution to spam.
The only solutions to spam that will actually work are ones that negatively effect the person whose computer is being used to send it. This leads to massive problems in trying to balance a workable service with the penalties.
Personally I would like to see ISPs begin to implement a system where they block service to anyone sending over a certain number of emails in a given time frame (this solution can be as technically advanced or simple as you like, and could even include the option to have this limit removed or increased if you contact them by say phone and request it). Instead users would only be allowed to view a portal informing them of the reason for the block, and perhaps offering links to a range of anti-virus tools.
ISPs could then block email from other ISPs whose level of spamming was excessive, until they themselves took action to limit it.
Also, in addition to the basic principle that peoples votes should be counted in an election the larger the error rate the easier to hide vote tampering on a scale that may affect the result. Especially in a system that isn't first past the post (which I believe was the case here). If you consider that in many elections in Europe that use proportional representation there could be a dozen or more parties fighting for votes your error rate is likely to be higher than the voting figure for some of these parties.
And I'm willing to bet that the risk that a 2% error margin might lead to an incorrect result (especially in a prop rep system) isn't low enough.
The fact you had to post this AC makes it pretty obvious you know how petty the post was.
The author and everyone reading it will all of known that he meant London, and the way in which he expressed it was perfectly acceptable, even if it wasn't in full pedant style.
As with Parent I think the majority of MS bashing on /. is pretty stupid. This however is a clear case of unacceptable behavior by an OS vendor. Even if you take the view that companies don't need to fully explain changes to their own programs, making alterations to other peoples programs is completely different.
The last thing we need is for software vendors to declare open season and alter each others programs automatically and without explanation, whether their reasons are altruistic or not.
Everyone who watches broadcast TV yes.
It's not completely different, as even though the TV license money only goes to a couple of channels BBC & Channel 4 you can't choose not to pay if you only watch other channels. Where it starts to differ is that this £20 a year doesn't give anyone the right to do anything, it just funds a government department we don't even want.
Or the $2800 you invested over 18 years could be worth $15500 as a typical stock investment.
I'm not saying it's a bad investment, but compare it to other things you could do to benefit the kid if you want to do a fair comparison.
Or you could emigrate...
People bought cars because they were better for themselves, any benefit for others was a lucky benefit. The automobile and late 19th century New York do not provide a good example of an environmental issue being solved by planning.
The best thing government can do is give incentives for research and development that it believes is for the good of the nation. One of the biggest issues with global warming, is that if true, any solution needs to be global to work. Currently a country is at an economic disadvantage for going 'green' as any nation that chooses not to will have lower costs. If this fundamental issue is not addressed then any countries efforts to become more environmentally friendly will simply lead to the transfer of production and pollution to areas that are not effected.
This displacement phenomena is the same as is often seen when laws vary between bordering states.
I don't think this law is aimed at stopping people you think it is, an audible noise is probably intended to discourage people who are presented with a situation where they might consider taking a picture that is inappropriate. If this is the case then it is unlikely people will have damaged their phone etc to remove the sound.
Even given the above my initial view is that this measure is unlikely to have been worth bringing into law. However as someone who has quite a few years left yet till I intend to have kids, I already have very little idea about kid and teen culture and perhaps the people who proposed this actually researched this issue properly and this solution works...
Not everything that doesn't run on Windows is freely licensed, in fact I'd bet good money more OS software is run on Windows than on all other OS combined (just due to market share). The parent was absolutely right that it is not Microsoft's fault that people release products for their platform and not others.
As to your railed car analogy, aside from being unrelated it's pretty aweful on other levels.
If your government is dumb enough to pay to replace roads with a new version which is controlled by a private company, or willing to allow a private company to replace your roads with a new patented variant then that's your problem.
If on the other hand a company was to with its own money build an entirely new railed road network, and 98% of people were to buy cars from this manufacturer to use on it, then yes it would be the governments responsibility to maintain the original road system if they so wish.
Apple has had a monopoly (by market share) in the mp3 player market for years now. I haven't heard anyone demanding that the none music player features be removed so that other competitors can offer video and other solutions on it.
The monopoly argument simply doesn't cut it for me, it's the same dead horse that is used time and again to try and cover the fact that most of the time people just want to damage Microsoft.
If you believe it is damaging for Microsoft to include a web browser within their operating system, why do you think that it would be bad to require all operating systems to come without browsers? Do Apple get a pass because that conveniently gives them an additional edge over Microsoft?
I think most people who read Slashdot will realise that removing what is seen as basic functionality from an operating system will be seen as a weakness in the product.
You're correct that lack of privacy is a downside of using a payment method that must be topped up from a bank account and linked to the address that bank account is registered to. I respect and have no issue with your view of this matter. There are in fact other downsides to the Oyster system in addition to privacy as well.
I personally have no issue with the system. The option to pay for a ticket with cash still exists, but at a higher cost. The Oyster card system is clearly more cost effective for the operator so I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to price it differently.
Again, I am sure that is the case for you. Personally, I actually used to have more trouble with cash. I used to treat cash in my pocket like money that was only good for spending, and because I didn't record what I spent it on it was hard to look over retrospectively. Now I keep as little cash as possible on me, and record what I spend, which has helped me spend less.
The above might just be quirks of environments and habit, I certainly wouldn't want to claim what I did was in any way more correct.
I agree entirely with your point, their is no way all browsers could be included and to exclude any is just as much a problem as the current situation.
However, I'd take this logic even further. Surely if bundling browsers in Windows is bad, the it is bad in all operating systems, and this rule should apply to all operating systems. Secondly, surely if it is bad for browsers it is bad for other additional features such as media players, calculators, ftp clients, image viewers etc.
Also I do not think the package manager idea solves the issue, people would still want to install software when not online and who decides what limited set of media can be on the disc, and who gets to decide which programs are included in the online package manager?
I know there is a view among many Slashdotters that any measure that harms Microsoft is good, and any excuse for doing so should be used to the maximum extent. However in this case I can see no reason to treat Window's inclusion of IE any differently to OS X's inclusion of Finder.
They have the server, and if it contains information that can help them to determine who posted the information it worked, if the server does not then they have checked a source for evidence and found none, which I am sure happens a lot in police work whether crimes are electronic or not.
To a certain extent you are correct, if someone uses sufficient care information can be distributed on the internet with no risk of the origin being found. Almost any crime could be committed in a way which leaves no chance of the perpetrator being caught, this alone does not constitute a reason not to try.
Additionally, laws across the world are being passed to require greater levels of data retention by service providers. It is almost certain that the ability to pass information anonymously around the internet will become more difficult over time. Although I am sad to admit it, I feel the question regarding the future of true anonymity online is how long it will, not whether it will endure.
I have to wonder whether you posted AC because you already knew your point was nonsensical. The article was pointing out how under California law Juries names cannot be hidden, it has no relevance whatsoever to UK law.
And what value exactly does a green piece of paper have? Why not go the whole hog and ban currency, people might not spend so wastefully if they could see the real cost of what they are spending (2 eggs for the morning newspaper, a few grams of gold for the electricity etc).
I and others who shop for entertainment media (DVD, CDs and games) online using 'plastic' and get things a damn site cheaper than people who go into stores and pay with physical currency. I and others who use an Oyster card (prepay travel card) get London Underground travel far cheaper than those who pay with cash. These and other examples show that alternative forms of payment can be of benefit to the purchaser.
There are a number of issues with making a mobile phone a form of payment, and yes possibly a minor one will be that it allows people who are poor at managing expenditure to be even worse at it, just like currency. However most people will benefit from the convenience and still manage not to go bankrupt.
You make your point well, but it doesn't stop your point being a variant on "Get off my lawn".
The Anon parent is right on this one.
Yes it would be a real shame if your friends knowledge was to die with him, but it isn't Wikipedia's intention to preserve everything by everyone about anything. Has your friend, for example, gotten his knowledge published in Encyclopedia Brittanica? I doubt it, and for good reason, they like Wikipedia aren't the place for it.
Your friend is an expert on a specialist subject, if he wants to use the internet to spread and preserve that knowledge he should be setting up a website, potentially with a newsgroup or wiki of its own. I hope that he does, but trying to put information in the wrong place and blaming that for the loss of a life's worth of information is a poor excuse.
You are aware I assume that California is not part of the United Kingdom?
Then you clearly wouldn't.