In most urban and suburban areas, the right-of-way for utilities is already established and marked on your survey. However, to make use of that requires approval of the local government.
If the local government goes along with it, then they do not have to ask anyone because the right-of-way is already there. It was there when you bought the property.
Try building a subdivision and bypassing all that process. It is a significant pain in the rear because of all of the different players that get involved.
Small point. Being a Democrat may not be in opposition to being a cop. But, the question needs to be asked, why would anyone know you are a Democrat? This isn't the sort of thing that they put on job applications.
Ah, perhaps they know because you wear inappropriate clothing (Bush-bashing T-shirt instead of your uniform), or constantly berate those around you for being idiots for not being Democrats? Or, maybe it was getting your picture in the newspaper holding up signs at a political rally?
See, sometimes political views creep over into the job. And when they do, it becomes a problem. Being a Democrat isn't the problem. Being an obnoxious Democrat is.
The essential problem with this is that this goes against the entire philosophy of the judicial system. According to the law and everyone before the court, including the prosecutor, the person isn't really guilty until a decision is handed down, either by the judge or the jury. Period.
This means that the lawyer defending someone should not (and really can not) absolutely believe their client is guilty until the end of the trial. Even then, given some circumstances and occurrences in the trial, they may not be convinced.
A lawyer deciding their client is guilty before or during the trial is pretty much violating the basis for how the whole process works. Sure, it can happen, and I would say that it is that lawyer's responsibility to remove himself from the process. He's lost whatever impartiality he might have had and isn't doing his client any favors either.
Now, where lawyers will often come down is to rather forcibly not decide on the guilt of their client. Regardless of the evidence, they will continue as the question is still open and continue to defend their client to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, this is a very small division away from doing whatever it takes to make a buck. The difference is certainly not apparent to most observers. And that is why most people hate lawyers.
- do you believe that the Muslim folks do not have the ability and/or willpower to do harm?
- do you believe there is only a small lunatic fringe group that really is responsible for mayhem and mostly Muslims are decent and peace-loving folk?
- do you believe we are powerless to stop them?
(a) Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Maybe not very many, but they have them. Iran clearly wants them. I would say there is certainly the possibility of great destruction if someone got the silly idea that they should actually use these nuclear weapons.
(b) Check out Gaza in the last week and Iran anytime in the last few months. Plenty of evidence that if there is just a lunatic fringe it either isn't that small or at least includes the folks in power.
Some people are always going to feel oppressed and underprivileged. Some people have been trying to cure that since the beginning of time. The answer is not either to bring everyone down to their level or to give them handouts to bring them up. Neither works well. It is a pretty common believe that a large percentage of these people do not want to be relieved of their "suffering", because if they did they might take constructive action to combat it. Instead, they wait for someone else to take responsibility and solve all their problems.
We are likely to always have oppressed and underprivileged people. The problem is when they think their solution is to bring everyone down to their level. Either through taxation or bombs.
Sadly, this has nothing to do with "wrong" or "illegal". Lawsuits are in civil court, which does not decide cases based on the actions being illegal or not. It is up to the judge or jury to determine if the plaintiff has been wronged and to determine a judgement (generally financial) that will address the wrongdoing.
So the first question is, how much is the EFF suing for and how much do you think they could get in a class action lawsuit? Would $5 and a coupon for some free phone service help you?
This "Napster" is not the company founded by Shawn Fanning. This is the company that was formerly known as Roxio that sold off all of their software assets to Sonic and then hired Shawn Fanning and bought the name Napster.
This company has been mismanaged from the moment it was spun off from Adaptec. This would not surprise me in the least, but unfortunately it is probably a really good move for the current Napster folks. They will make out like bandits.
Unfortunately, it can be considered by many that the only non-biased factual way is to treat the "new" definition of the word "santorum" as being something that will be appearing in Webster's. I suspect that the number of people familiar with this definition greatly exceeds the number personally familiar with Senator Santorum and may be even unaware of the intentional connection.
Therefore, you may find "santorum" appearing on the dictionary.com web page soon. What isn't factual about that?
Do you believe there is anything that a company that is the target of a phishing attack can do? Let's see here, someone signs up for a hosting account and the hosting company is under legal obligation to protect the identity of their customer. If that hosting company is in a different country than the target, then without international police cooperation, you aren't going to get anywhere. No court is going to force a hosting company to disclose the identity of someone that might be either the perpetrator or a victim.
So, your helpful report (along with a few thousand others) is likely to be met with either silence or open rejection. There isn't much they can do, and it is unlikely they can do much for the fools that fall for such scams. If you believe you bank is going to send you email from a host they don't have their domain name on, you will believe anything. More over, these days if you think your bank is going to send you email at all you are being silly. They already figured out that email is useless given the density of spam.
The problem is the target is helpless. It is up to people to stop responding to this stuff. If we aren't going to go after the people that send this out, what do you want the target to do?
The problem is clearly identified - We won't be able to stop people from trying to bring down software and networks, however businesses can become more competent on how to prevent and protect.
Why not? This is like saying "I live in a crime-ridden part of town, but I can't do anything to help myself and my neighbors other than getting bigger, stronger security grates."
How about addressing the problem? Why is attacking computers and destroying information so much fun?
Sure, it is difficult but part of the difficultly is that it gets let go for so long. You see 1000 password attempts and you have an IP address where they came from. What can you do? Today, the answer is nothing. Nobody cares, even if that IP address is down the street from you. This isn't a jurisdictional issue, it is far simpler than that. We let people try stuff and play with viruses and worms and then - all of a sudden, out of the blue - people are offering rewards for the capture of someone releasing some uber-worm. Where was the attention two years before when they were just playing around?
More than obviously, the MS China isn't MS USA. Sure, there is some connection and MS China likely pays lots of money to MS USA for the right to sell MS products and services. But don't think for a moment that China would allow a US corporation to operate independently in China. It is a independent business unit that is very much subject to the whims of the Chinese government.
MS could close the independent business unit down. Or not. And that is about it.
You must be kidding, right? You think the US economy would collapse without the junk imported from China? How about maybe, just maybe there might be reasonably-paying factory jobs in the US again. Maybe, just maybe if we turned off the tap with China that we would have folks over here working for wages instead of goverment subsidies.
Continued trade with China will result in nothing other than China ending up owning every part of the US because of the trade deficit. They make what we want with slave labor and want nothing we have. We have "free trade" where they can export stuff to us at no cost and if you try to import a grain of rice into China it is taxed and tariffed so it costs three times what local rice does. So nobody bothers.
You like the idea that every manufactured item in the US will be made in China in a few years?
Maybe 50% of current CO2 is produced by transportation rather than industrial and power generation sources. Maybe.
4000 people from Chernobyl? Wherever you are getting this from must be counting everyone that died in the area for whatever reason. Sure, you can say "This 92 year old man should have lived to be 94 if it wasn't for Chernobyl." but that doesn't make it meaningful.
More likely someone at the phone company is getting paid to send them the information. How much would it cost for you to deliver some information from your company? $50 an item? With a assured flow of cash as long as you keep the supply flowing?
The problem is that people are way too easily bribed into this sort of thing, and the information is just lying around at the cell phone provider for people to send out.
Today, there is a significant amount of money associated with the production and distribution of movies and video programs.
There are those that believe any such money is based on an obsolete business model and feel it is their right to perform actions which reduce the amount of money that is derived from production and distribution of movies and video programs.
Well, one of the two sides is going to win. One has a lot more money and a vested interest in continuing the flow of money. The other side wants stuff for free and has nothing constructive to add that might offer an alternative for the people depending on this production and distribution for their income today.
Remember the like from Risky Business: don't f..k with a man's livelihood.
The problem isn't that it is too expensive to do anything - it is that it is too expensive to do the wrong thing. Sure, stopping all unnecessary use of fossil fuels would be something, but what is necessary? Air travel? Shipping? Personal automobiles? Ambulances? There is no real energy transport mechanism that is both (a) practical and (b) usable today that can replace gasoline. There is no universally acceptable energy source for running power plants besides fossil fuels today. So, we can either turn the switch off or we can keep working. I disagree with those that want to turn the switch off.
The other part of the problem is if we do something active today we have really no idea of what the result might be. It could be that the only thing that is keeping glacial ice from burying New York City is the current level of CO2. It could also be that without immediate, drastic elimination of all production of carbon - i.e., burning - we face a runaway heat cycle where the surface of the Earth will be like Venus in 50 years. Sadly, we have no idea which way to jump. And guessing "conservatively" in favor of reduced emissions - like 1990 levels - is likely a feel-good measure without any real results. Sure, it might help everyone's attitude, but it isn't going to make much difference if the necessary level is where we were in 1790.
The one thing that might help - a massive war which would eliminate at least 25% of the population of the Earth - is getting closer and closer all the time. That would solve the problem for a very long time, especially since it would be most of the first-world countries that would be hit the hardest.
This article has no information in it. The people responding to it lack basic information about the current state of fingerprint sensors, so most of what is said here is way off.
Or, they get their information by bashing Microsoft.
Microsoft about a year ago released a rebadged optical fingerprint reader from Digital Persona. It is a horrible device that can easily be fooled. It also wears out quickly because the sensor relies on a coating on the glass to image fingerprints. Once the coating rubs off, the sensor is useless. Needless to say, this isn't anywhere near the state of the art.
A better technology is based on capacitive sensors. They work much better and are extremely difficult to fool. I.e., Play-Doh doesn't work. Gummi Bears do not work. However, the sensors tend to wear out and can be fooled by cadaver fingers.
Look at sensors from Authentec. That is http://www.authentec.com/. They make sensors that use RF reflection to measure the patterns beneath the first layer of skin. They also have integrated thermal sensing. Cadaver fingers do not work. Neither does Play-Doh or anything else. Fooling these sensors, which are far better than the junk referred to in the original article, is extremely difficult. So, just how much does this military-spec technology cost? $32, quantity one retail.
Can we please send a copy of this to Ms. Schuckers so she can write papers based on the current state of the art, rather than utterly outmoded Microsoft-distributed optical scanners? Please?
Sorry, but other people profiting off the author's (or creator's) work isn't the point. It is preventing the author or creator from profiting that is the point.
How are we supposed to bring about the collapse of capitalism and the elimination of profit-hungry media companies without eliminating the profit from all digital media? That means they get to sell one copy... or maybe ten... but that's all! After the 10th copy is sold the digitial pipeline is primed and anyone can just download it from their friends for free. No more sales. Period.
If you don't understand this, then you need to think about where "sharing" ends up. Why buy when you can share?
If indeed the industrial revolution is the cause of global warming and this really began in the 1800's, then we better worry about what we are going to do that does not spew carbon into the atmosphere if we are going to target a one-world, closed-system ecology.
The alternative is to plan on getting into space and not being limited to the resources on good old planet Earth. Unfortunately, such investments seem to be taking a back seat to things that have a more immediate payback, like making sure everyone can have an Xbox 360 for Christmas.
We have a clear choice and if we don't choose soon, the choice will be made for us. Resource consumption is either a way of life or not. Your average family in 800 AD used a lot less resources than just about anyone does today. The choice is to figure out how not to make this a problem or to roll with it and live like they did in 800 AD.
Sure, there is a third way - pretend that Kyoto will solve things and that such halfway measures are going to do something useful. If this really started in 1800 and not 1980, then reducing emissions to 1990 levels isn't even a beginning, its a joke.
The next really, really important question is how many humans can the Earth support with 800 AD levels of technology and energy use. If you don't like those answers either, I suggest you wake up and figure out what the real alternatives are. Doing nothing will absolutely result in your descendents living like their distance ancestors did.
Why? You bought something you already "paid" for with your time to download it. Did you get better quality? Was it in a more convenient to use format? Did it work better? I'll wager none of these are true.
What you did was either try to resolve some inner guilt over downloading (i.e. stealing from the artist) and hoping they would forgive you if you also bought their CD, or were under some mistaken understanding that by buying the CD you were doing something good for the artist. Neither of these is a good reason.
If you are serious about downloading, then make sure you do not pay for music - paying again isn't going to help resolve matters. Only by pushing back on the profits from music will it ever really be free. We now stand on the edge of being able to completely eliminate profit from music in any form. Unfortunately, people like you keep putting money into the system.
Of course, I could be wrong. You might not really believe in downloading and were just hoping to find a "sample" before really buying. Why? Why not download the whole thing and forget about the CD? Are you really concerned about supporting what many consider to be a failed business model?
My personal belief is that most people really haven't thought this through very far. They want stuff for nothing - downloading - and will try to excuse their actions by buying the occasional CD. Unfortunately, we live in a society more-or-less dominated by promotions and advertising. Individual creativity is very hard to reward in this system and while the system we have now - the music promotional factories - do a fairly pathetic job of rewarding the individual creator, it does happen. Most of the other models rely on either common taxation or hoping the creator like doing something else to eat. I think if we don't reward creators of software, music and other forms we are in real trouble. All I have heard for the last 10 years is how these people don't really need to be rewarded, that the act of creation is its own reward.
You seem to be under the impression that it is somehow actionable to build a duplicate of someone else's hardware. It happens all the time, especially in China. One reason you don't see it so much in the US is because it can be very difficult to get the same firmware to go with the easily-discovered hardware parts.
If the software was open and available there would be nothing to stop this form of "competition". And, with a "lowest price rules" mentality, it pretty much means that cheaters win.
Now maybe if the hardware design was patented, or custom chips were used, it could be kept away from this. But today that is just silly. Everybody wants to use off-the-shelf parts and customize the program code. And keeping the code secret is the only way to shut out cheating. Otherwise, people just get the identical hardware made in China and have no R&D costs on the software.
The problem is (a) too many people feel that paying anything is beyond their means and (b) there are plenty of people that given a low-risk opportunity to get something for nothing will do so.
What this means is that any industry that derives revenue from something that can be digitally "shared" can no longer assume they have a market. Sure, they may sell a few copies, but there are people that feel it is their moral obligation to make sure their friends aren't "taken" - so they "share". Even with the RIAA filing hundreds of lawsuits, they are only filing hundreds, not millions. Therefore the risk is so low as to not be meaningful. You aren't going to get sued.
It will be interesting to see if iTunes can be converted from a iPod sales gimmick into meaningful online music sales. And then, what happens to the folks without the high-speed Internet connections? Are they just left out, or does someone step up to sell them something?
The problem is that whoever owns the email account darksingh666@hotmail.com cannot be located - Microsoft can't help because the process is essentially anonymous. And, it is extremely doubtful that they would record the IP address of people accessing a given email account.
So, never fear, using Hotmail (or Yahoo, or mailasia.com or any of the other thousands of free anonymous email services) will allow people to mail keylogger files from infected machines.
Contact the authorities? Sure, as soon as you find out a name they will talk to you.
Isn't the LAME encoder an MP3 encoder that still needs to be licensed from Thompson? And, if you are going to get the license from Thompson, why use the LAME encoder instead of the nice licensed one?
While I can understand a bunch of patent-adverse geeks using an unlicensed encoder, it is really difficult to understand Sony doing this. This actually sounds like it all came from First 4 Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
In most urban and suburban areas, the right-of-way for utilities is already established and marked on your survey. However, to make use of that requires approval of the local government.
If the local government goes along with it, then they do not have to ask anyone because the right-of-way is already there. It was there when you bought the property.
Try building a subdivision and bypassing all that process. It is a significant pain in the rear because of all of the different players that get involved.
Small point. Being a Democrat may not be in opposition to being a cop. But, the question needs to be asked, why would anyone know you are a Democrat? This isn't the sort of thing that they put on job applications.
Ah, perhaps they know because you wear inappropriate clothing (Bush-bashing T-shirt instead of your uniform), or constantly berate those around you for being idiots for not being Democrats? Or, maybe it was getting your picture in the newspaper holding up signs at a political rally?
See, sometimes political views creep over into the job. And when they do, it becomes a problem. Being a Democrat isn't the problem. Being an obnoxious Democrat is.
The essential problem with this is that this goes against the entire philosophy of the judicial system. According to the law and everyone before the court, including the prosecutor, the person isn't really guilty until a decision is handed down, either by the judge or the jury. Period.
This means that the lawyer defending someone should not (and really can not) absolutely believe their client is guilty until the end of the trial. Even then, given some circumstances and occurrences in the trial, they may not be convinced.
A lawyer deciding their client is guilty before or during the trial is pretty much violating the basis for how the whole process works. Sure, it can happen, and I would say that it is that lawyer's responsibility to remove himself from the process. He's lost whatever impartiality he might have had and isn't doing his client any favors either.
Now, where lawyers will often come down is to rather forcibly not decide on the guilt of their client. Regardless of the evidence, they will continue as the question is still open and continue to defend their client to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, this is a very small division away from doing whatever it takes to make a buck. The difference is certainly not apparent to most observers. And that is why most people hate lawyers.
OK, which is it?
- do you believe that the Muslim folks do not have the ability and/or willpower to do harm?
- do you believe there is only a small lunatic fringe group that really is responsible for mayhem and mostly Muslims are decent and peace-loving folk?
- do you believe we are powerless to stop them?
(a) Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Maybe not very many, but they have them. Iran clearly wants them. I would say there is certainly the possibility of great destruction if someone got the silly idea that they should actually use these nuclear weapons.
(b) Check out Gaza in the last week and Iran anytime in the last few months. Plenty of evidence that if there is just a lunatic fringe it either isn't that small or at least includes the folks in power.
Some people are always going to feel oppressed and underprivileged. Some people have been trying to cure that since the beginning of time. The answer is not either to bring everyone down to their level or to give them handouts to bring them up. Neither works well. It is a pretty common believe that a large percentage of these people do not want to be relieved of their "suffering", because if they did they might take constructive action to combat it. Instead, they wait for someone else to take responsibility and solve all their problems.
We are likely to always have oppressed and underprivileged people. The problem is when they think their solution is to bring everyone down to their level. Either through taxation or bombs.
Sadly, this has nothing to do with "wrong" or "illegal". Lawsuits are in civil court, which does not decide cases based on the actions being illegal or not. It is up to the judge or jury to determine if the plaintiff has been wronged and to determine a judgement (generally financial) that will address the wrongdoing.
So the first question is, how much is the EFF suing for and how much do you think they could get in a class action lawsuit? Would $5 and a coupon for some free phone service help you?
This "Napster" is not the company founded by Shawn Fanning. This is the company that was formerly known as Roxio that sold off all of their software assets to Sonic and then hired Shawn Fanning and bought the name Napster.
This company has been mismanaged from the moment it was spun off from Adaptec. This would not surprise me in the least, but unfortunately it is probably a really good move for the current Napster folks. They will make out like bandits.
Unfortunately, it can be considered by many that the only non-biased factual way is to treat the "new" definition of the word "santorum" as being something that will be appearing in Webster's. I suspect that the number of people familiar with this definition greatly exceeds the number personally familiar with Senator Santorum and may be even unaware of the intentional connection.
Therefore, you may find "santorum" appearing on the dictionary.com web page soon. What isn't factual about that?
Do you believe there is anything that a company that is the target of a phishing attack can do? Let's see here, someone signs up for a hosting account and the hosting company is under legal obligation to protect the identity of their customer. If that hosting company is in a different country than the target, then without international police cooperation, you aren't going to get anywhere. No court is going to force a hosting company to disclose the identity of someone that might be either the perpetrator or a victim.
So, your helpful report (along with a few thousand others) is likely to be met with either silence or open rejection. There isn't much they can do, and it is unlikely they can do much for the fools that fall for such scams. If you believe you bank is going to send you email from a host they don't have their domain name on, you will believe anything. More over, these days if you think your bank is going to send you email at all you are being silly. They already figured out that email is useless given the density of spam.
The problem is the target is helpless. It is up to people to stop responding to this stuff. If we aren't going to go after the people that send this out, what do you want the target to do?
Yep, this is going to get someone's attention.
Why not? This is like saying "I live in a crime-ridden part of town, but I can't do anything to help myself and my neighbors other than getting bigger, stronger security grates."
How about addressing the problem? Why is attacking computers and destroying information so much fun?
Sure, it is difficult but part of the difficultly is that it gets let go for so long. You see 1000 password attempts and you have an IP address where they came from. What can you do? Today, the answer is nothing. Nobody cares, even if that IP address is down the street from you. This isn't a jurisdictional issue, it is far simpler than that. We let people try stuff and play with viruses and worms and then - all of a sudden, out of the blue - people are offering rewards for the capture of someone releasing some uber-worm. Where was the attention two years before when they were just playing around?
More than obviously, the MS China isn't MS USA. Sure, there is some connection and MS China likely pays lots of money to MS USA for the right to sell MS products and services. But don't think for a moment that China would allow a US corporation to operate independently in China. It is a independent business unit that is very much subject to the whims of the Chinese government.
MS could close the independent business unit down. Or not. And that is about it.
You must be kidding, right? You think the US economy would collapse without the junk imported from China? How about maybe, just maybe there might be reasonably-paying factory jobs in the US again. Maybe, just maybe if we turned off the tap with China that we would have folks over here working for wages instead of goverment subsidies.
Continued trade with China will result in nothing other than China ending up owning every part of the US because of the trade deficit. They make what we want with slave labor and want nothing we have. We have "free trade" where they can export stuff to us at no cost and if you try to import a grain of rice into China it is taxed and tariffed so it costs three times what local rice does. So nobody bothers.
You like the idea that every manufactured item in the US will be made in China in a few years?
Maybe 50% of current CO2 is produced by transportation rather than industrial and power generation sources. Maybe.
4000 people from Chernobyl? Wherever you are getting this from must be counting everyone that died in the area for whatever reason. Sure, you can say "This 92 year old man should have lived to be 94 if it wasn't for Chernobyl." but that doesn't make it meaningful.
The problem is that people are way too easily bribed into this sort of thing, and the information is just lying around at the cell phone provider for people to send out.
There are those that believe any such money is based on an obsolete business model and feel it is their right to perform actions which reduce the amount of money that is derived from production and distribution of movies and video programs.
Well, one of the two sides is going to win. One has a lot more money and a vested interest in continuing the flow of money. The other side wants stuff for free and has nothing constructive to add that might offer an alternative for the people depending on this production and distribution for their income today.
Remember the like from Risky Business: don't f..k with a man's livelihood.
The other part of the problem is if we do something active today we have really no idea of what the result might be. It could be that the only thing that is keeping glacial ice from burying New York City is the current level of CO2. It could also be that without immediate, drastic elimination of all production of carbon - i.e., burning - we face a runaway heat cycle where the surface of the Earth will be like Venus in 50 years. Sadly, we have no idea which way to jump. And guessing "conservatively" in favor of reduced emissions - like 1990 levels - is likely a feel-good measure without any real results. Sure, it might help everyone's attitude, but it isn't going to make much difference if the necessary level is where we were in 1790.
The one thing that might help - a massive war which would eliminate at least 25% of the population of the Earth - is getting closer and closer all the time. That would solve the problem for a very long time, especially since it would be most of the first-world countries that would be hit the hardest.
Or, they get their information by bashing Microsoft.
Microsoft about a year ago released a rebadged optical fingerprint reader from Digital Persona. It is a horrible device that can easily be fooled. It also wears out quickly because the sensor relies on a coating on the glass to image fingerprints. Once the coating rubs off, the sensor is useless. Needless to say, this isn't anywhere near the state of the art.
A better technology is based on capacitive sensors. They work much better and are extremely difficult to fool. I.e., Play-Doh doesn't work. Gummi Bears do not work. However, the sensors tend to wear out and can be fooled by cadaver fingers.
Look at sensors from Authentec. That is http://www.authentec.com/. They make sensors that use RF reflection to measure the patterns beneath the first layer of skin. They also have integrated thermal sensing. Cadaver fingers do not work. Neither does Play-Doh or anything else. Fooling these sensors, which are far better than the junk referred to in the original article, is extremely difficult. So, just how much does this military-spec technology cost? $32, quantity one retail.
Can we please send a copy of this to Ms. Schuckers so she can write papers based on the current state of the art, rather than utterly outmoded Microsoft-distributed optical scanners? Please?
How are we supposed to bring about the collapse of capitalism and the elimination of profit-hungry media companies without eliminating the profit from all digital media? That means they get to sell one copy ... or maybe ten ... but that's all! After the 10th copy is sold the digitial pipeline is primed and anyone can just download it from their friends for free. No more sales. Period.
If you don't understand this, then you need to think about where "sharing" ends up. Why buy when you can share?
The alternative is to plan on getting into space and not being limited to the resources on good old planet Earth. Unfortunately, such investments seem to be taking a back seat to things that have a more immediate payback, like making sure everyone can have an Xbox 360 for Christmas.
We have a clear choice and if we don't choose soon, the choice will be made for us. Resource consumption is either a way of life or not. Your average family in 800 AD used a lot less resources than just about anyone does today. The choice is to figure out how not to make this a problem or to roll with it and live like they did in 800 AD.
Sure, there is a third way - pretend that Kyoto will solve things and that such halfway measures are going to do something useful. If this really started in 1800 and not 1980, then reducing emissions to 1990 levels isn't even a beginning, its a joke.
The next really, really important question is how many humans can the Earth support with 800 AD levels of technology and energy use. If you don't like those answers either, I suggest you wake up and figure out what the real alternatives are. Doing nothing will absolutely result in your descendents living like their distance ancestors did.
What you did was either try to resolve some inner guilt over downloading (i.e. stealing from the artist) and hoping they would forgive you if you also bought their CD, or were under some mistaken understanding that by buying the CD you were doing something good for the artist. Neither of these is a good reason.
If you are serious about downloading, then make sure you do not pay for music - paying again isn't going to help resolve matters. Only by pushing back on the profits from music will it ever really be free. We now stand on the edge of being able to completely eliminate profit from music in any form. Unfortunately, people like you keep putting money into the system.
Of course, I could be wrong. You might not really believe in downloading and were just hoping to find a "sample" before really buying. Why? Why not download the whole thing and forget about the CD? Are you really concerned about supporting what many consider to be a failed business model?
My personal belief is that most people really haven't thought this through very far. They want stuff for nothing - downloading - and will try to excuse their actions by buying the occasional CD. Unfortunately, we live in a society more-or-less dominated by promotions and advertising. Individual creativity is very hard to reward in this system and while the system we have now - the music promotional factories - do a fairly pathetic job of rewarding the individual creator, it does happen. Most of the other models rely on either common taxation or hoping the creator like doing something else to eat. I think if we don't reward creators of software, music and other forms we are in real trouble. All I have heard for the last 10 years is how these people don't really need to be rewarded, that the act of creation is its own reward.
You seem to be under the impression that it is somehow actionable to build a duplicate of someone else's hardware. It happens all the time, especially in China. One reason you don't see it so much in the US is because it can be very difficult to get the same firmware to go with the easily-discovered hardware parts.
If the software was open and available there would be nothing to stop this form of "competition". And, with a "lowest price rules" mentality, it pretty much means that cheaters win.
Now maybe if the hardware design was patented, or custom chips were used, it could be kept away from this. But today that is just silly. Everybody wants to use off-the-shelf parts and customize the program code. And keeping the code secret is the only way to shut out cheating. Otherwise, people just get the identical hardware made in China and have no R&D costs on the software.
What this means is that any industry that derives revenue from something that can be digitally "shared" can no longer assume they have a market. Sure, they may sell a few copies, but there are people that feel it is their moral obligation to make sure their friends aren't "taken" - so they "share". Even with the RIAA filing hundreds of lawsuits, they are only filing hundreds, not millions. Therefore the risk is so low as to not be meaningful. You aren't going to get sued.
It will be interesting to see if iTunes can be converted from a iPod sales gimmick into meaningful online music sales. And then, what happens to the folks without the high-speed Internet connections? Are they just left out, or does someone step up to sell them something?
The problem is that whoever owns the email account darksingh666@hotmail.com cannot be located - Microsoft can't help because the process is essentially anonymous. And, it is extremely doubtful that they would record the IP address of people accessing a given email account.
So, never fear, using Hotmail (or Yahoo, or mailasia.com or any of the other thousands of free anonymous email services) will allow people to mail keylogger files from infected machines.
Contact the authorities? Sure, as soon as you find out a name they will talk to you.
Isn't the LAME encoder an MP3 encoder that still needs to be licensed from Thompson? And, if you are going to get the license from Thompson, why use the LAME encoder instead of the nice licensed one?
While I can understand a bunch of patent-adverse geeks using an unlicensed encoder, it is really difficult to understand Sony doing this. This actually sounds like it all came from First 4 Internet.
How incredibly lame are these guys?
Proposal: 20 ton object
Current shuttle: 100 ton object
So, this would be about 1/5th of the current launch weight of the shuttle and probably about the same cost.