You buy a plan from a telco, and the plan comes with a free phone.
If you don't need the phone you won't sign a fixed term contract, you'd be on month to month, or possibly pre-paid. They include the phone in the plan to lock you in for two years. Those little stickers under the model phones in the store that tell you the minimum total cost - they mean it. It's not a free phone.
I think the relevant words to clarify what the A/C meant is "your investment fund, rather than a locked-away pension plan ". If you can't get the money, you don't have the money.
I'm not really the type who is interested in all that stuff
I guess you'll have to rely on luck and the good intentions of investment bankers then. I hope that goes well for you.
You're never going to use your guns to fight the government. All your actions have proven otherwise, every time.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Until recently you could have said the Egyptians would never rise up against their government. All their actions for decades proved that. Until they did.
Until recently you could have said the Libyans would never rise up against their government. All their actions for decades proved that. Until they did.
Civil war is a terrible thing. It is not something to embark upon because your overtime gets cut or a politician gets a pay rise. The oppression from the government needs to be on a level with the destruction from a civil war for it to be worth it.
Since you seem to think that present government abuse is worthy of armed insurrection but you are apparently against the keeping of arms for this purpose, it raises the question: What are you and the other similarly disarmed government haters going to do about it?
It could just be confirmation bias, but I tend to see *far* more name calling directed against the "left" than I do against the "right."
As an amused foreign observer of American politics, yes it is confirmation bias.
I'll try to get my people to stop calling these people....... as soon as you try to get your people to stop calling my people.......
For everyone to take this position is the ONLY way of guaranteeing the name calling and insults continue. If it is a bad thing to do then stop it. If it's a good thing to do, express admiration for your opponents who engage in this behaviour.
As a bonus it would be nice if you'd ask them to stop threatening to kill liberals.
American politics is (compared to other countries) overwhelmed with violent rhetoric, presumably mostly metaphorical (or else you would be in a constant state of civil war). John McCain's "Bomb Iran" song, Obama's "If they bring a knife to the fight, we'll bring a gun", that's just off the top of my head. Here on slashdot I have seen many comments over the years advocating violence, my impression is that it is equally from the "left" and "right".
Whatever your position, consider holding yourself to a higher standard. Argue with logic, behave with manners. You may find yourself regarding many on your own side with disdain and a few of your opponents with respect.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
The police can obtain a warrant to search your house, including your bedroom and toilet. Police installing cameras providing video feed from your bedroom and toilet are not the same thing. The constancy and surreptitiousness of electronic surveillance make it fundamentally different to a police officer physically watching you.
Alternatively, if the are held to be the same thing, electronic surveillance is not needed, since we already have police officers, and they're the same thing!
You're welcome to build your own big military. Until you do, however, we call the shots.
Ha ha. I know, I'm Australian. Personally I think we should have our own nukes instead of relying on permanent US bases. I like us to have a good relationship with the us, but it would be best if we were friends who could look after ourselves. Troops permanently stationed in Australia should be loyal to our country, not yours.
I'm not convinced you can continue to pay for your military expansion and I don't think we should rely on you when, just like any other country, your first obligation is to yourselves. I think Jefferson had it right and both our countries should pay heed: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
I say "I'll think of it in a minute" and I usually do. If I say "I can't remember" then I don't for ages, but think of it later while driving or something.
It's as if once I try to remember the process starts, then my brain follows the instruction I give "think of it in a minute" or "can't remember". Either instruction has a limited but noticeable affect.
Because the US is fairly laissez-faire about it, a lot of foreign registrants have been able to get.com domains, but that doesn't make the TLD "international".
Well it was supposed to be international, that's why you got your own country code. It seems that it is so uncommon for your countrymen to use your country code that you are even unaware it exists. Now you blame "foreign registrants" for using YOUR TLD.
You Americans would be so funny if you didn't have such a big military.
anyone against unions is basically a corp THUG, these days.
I disagree. I was working in a unionised environment when the price of housing virtually tripled. When the largest expense most people have became that much more expensive and wages didn't increase even close to proportionally I realised that unions are just not going to protect us. I hear most unions are much weaker in the US, but here in Australia unions are just another layer of management, run as a separate business. That's not to say there's no benefits but not worth it for me.
I've taken the path of (i) learning to be as good a negotiator as I can (ii) working for a small business so if the boss rips me off he has to look me in the eye and (iii) purchase of my own equipment and tools so I can charge a higher rate. Right now this is working significantly better for me than unionisation was. If my workplace became unionised I would leave.
No he does not need a special mentor, nor does he need special schooling. He needs to learn to function in the normal world.
I'm not sure how you could confuse regular schools with the normal world. Never since school have I been in a room filled only with people within one year of my age with the sole exception being an older authority figure.
Most people will never again be in a similar environment to school after finishing their formal education. Much that happens in the ordinary course of school days would result in criminal charges or harassment lawsuits if it occurred in the adult world. The more people that can be well educated outside schools the better.
Like to watch without buying is like saying there are cars I would like to drive but I wont buy them. You don't go break into one, take it for a joy ride, and give it back.
Indeed I don't and neither do I download illegally. Just because they are both things I choose not to do does not make them equivalent, your point is therefore unpersuasive.
This is a binary thing, either you want it or you don't. If you want it, you buy it.
No, it is quite possible to want something but not place a high enough priority on it to be willing to part with the asking price for it. There are levels of demand more varied than:
0 Don't want/don't buy
1 Do Want/Do buy
A price variation, for example, can change my buying decision but does not change whether I desire to have the item.
Opinion doesn't mean anything where law (civil or criminal) is concerned. You don't get to change how the system works just by saying that you don't think that that is how it should work.
Strange that you would say this since it is you who is giving your opinion that it is criminal when the law does not agree. Personal downloading is not a crime it is a civil offence. Theft is a criminal offence. These are what we call "different" with each one not being the other. Can you reference even one countries law that prosecutes non-commercial personal downloading as theft? In the US, even commercial criminal infringement is not equated with theft by the courts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)
That makes no sense, copyright laws were created to help with non physical items. There were plenty of loopholes for people to weasel out of theft charges.
If non-commercial infringement was supposed to be regarded as theft they would have made it a criminal offence, which it is not in pretty much every country in the world.
There are a number of laws that were created after thousands of years of them not existing, but by your logic, they aren't needed because all contingencies were thought of thousands of years ago.
No, just because something isn't theft doesn't mean it doesn't require laws. Traffic violations are also not theft, and most are not criminal offences, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have those laws.
A work of art, be it music, video, or text, still takes time and effort to create and people have the right to demand compensation for their work from people wishing to benefit from it.
Sure. I'm not an artist but I have a right to be paid for my work too. If people don't pay me I can sue them for payment, but they won't be arrested or charged with theft. If I go around calling them a thief, I could probably be sued for slander. Neither things will have you in good reputation but they are not the same. A non-payer could do business with me again by paying their bill and paying in advance from then on. A thief, no.
In any case, I don't think that there's very many pirates who believe that they are not criminals. They're obviously breaking the law.
Your post was pretty good up until this. Non-commercial copyright infringement is not a crime in most countries, it is a civil offence. The majority of "pirates" are not criminals.
You can read my reply to the parent here if you like.
For you to have downloaded/copied it, you had to want it on some extent. If you didn't want it, you wouldn't download it. If you did, you would buy it. Since you did download it, you did want it, and therefore denied the owner the sale and revenue.
Nonsense. There are movies I would like to watch but do not buy. I also do not download them. If I changed my mind about downloading them, they would not be losing a sale, proven by the fact that I am now simply not watching those movies rather than buying them.
Any other argument is just lying to yourself to justify that you are not a criminal.
I don't need to justify myself since I'm not illegally downloading anything. Nevertheless, despite my complete lack of any need to justify my actions in this regard, I am still of the opinion that downloading is not theft. Furthermore, even if I was downloading for personal use, I still wouldn't be a criminal. I could (in that hypothetical case) be sued but not arrested as non-commercial copyright violation does not violate any part of the criminal code in my country.
Perhaps the clearest indicator that copyright violation is not theft is the existence of copyright laws. Since laws against theft precede copyright laws by thousands of years, if copyright violation was theft there would have been no need for copyright laws as offenders could have been prosecuted under the already existing laws against theft.
How does an 89% urbanization rate make broadband networks to rural areas easier or cheaper to build? It means we have a lower proportion of our population spreading over vastly larger distances. Since we already have a much lower population density, the urbanization rate doesn't mitigate the difference, it exacerbates the difference. That makes it more expensive per household.
maybe you should read then constitution and understand the people who wrote it were labelled terrorists too
i stopped reading here. anyone whose idea of logic involves such a sentence is without intellectual merit.
Not necessarily. Both sought the creation of a state, the Ummah in the present case. As such they are not really non-state actors, or civilians, because they have taken it upon themselves to initiate a state. This is what differentiates Islamic terrorists from a domestic terrorist such as McVeigh, who was tried in a civilian court, despite the similarity of action. The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was a military strike, not an execution. It is no more a violation of the 5th amendment than trying to disrupt an enemies arms supply is a violation of the 2nd amendment.
The possibility of innocent people being killed does not transform this from a military issue to a civilian one. A comparison of the reactions to the founders of the US and Al-Qaeda doesn't have to imply moral equivalence.
In fact where I live - Finland - our density of population is quite similar to Australia - huge country with people concentrated on a few citites "en masse" and running the network to the non-dense areas is easy and not *that* expensive - if the local land owners don't object to fiber being laid down beside the road, but then you can see who to blame, been there, done that - NIMBY works there too, if everybody agrees fiber is quite easy and even cheap to install.
According to wikipedia Finland has a population density of 16 per square km, Australia 2.8. That's a pretty broad definition of "quite similar". Australia is also about 22 times larger area than Finland.
You calling Finland huge would be considered pretty funny here.
Breivik was not a fundamentalist or a christian at all in the commonly used meaning of the words. Breivik's idea of christianity includes "christian atheists" as can be seen by searching for that term in his manifesto.
I'm not sure what a christian atheist would be but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit with most people's idea of what a fundamentalist is.
Slashdot Mirror
You buy a plan from a telco, and the plan comes with a free phone.
If you don't need the phone you won't sign a fixed term contract, you'd be on month to month, or possibly pre-paid. They include the phone in the plan to lock you in for two years. Those little stickers under the model phones in the store that tell you the minimum total cost - they mean it. It's not a free phone.
I'm not really the type who is interested in all that stuff
I guess you'll have to rely on luck and the good intentions of investment bankers then. I hope that goes well for you.
You're never going to use your guns to fight the government. All your actions have proven otherwise, every time.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Until recently you could have said the Egyptians would never rise up against their government. All their actions for decades proved that. Until they did.
Until recently you could have said the Libyans would never rise up against their government. All their actions for decades proved that. Until they did.
Civil war is a terrible thing. It is not something to embark upon because your overtime gets cut or a politician gets a pay rise. The oppression from the government needs to be on a level with the destruction from a civil war for it to be worth it.
Since you seem to think that present government abuse is worthy of armed insurrection but you are apparently against the keeping of arms for this purpose, it raises the question: What are you and the other similarly disarmed government haters going to do about it?
It could just be confirmation bias, but I tend to see *far* more name calling directed against the "left" than I do against the "right."
As an amused foreign observer of American politics, yes it is confirmation bias.
I'll try to get my people to stop calling these people ....... as soon as you try to get your people to stop calling my people .......
For everyone to take this position is the ONLY way of guaranteeing the name calling and insults continue. If it is a bad thing to do then stop it. If it's a good thing to do, express admiration for your opponents who engage in this behaviour.
As a bonus it would be nice if you'd ask them to stop threatening to kill liberals.
American politics is (compared to other countries) overwhelmed with violent rhetoric, presumably mostly metaphorical (or else you would be in a constant state of civil war). John McCain's "Bomb Iran" song, Obama's "If they bring a knife to the fight, we'll bring a gun", that's just off the top of my head. Here on slashdot I have seen many comments over the years advocating violence, my impression is that it is equally from the "left" and "right".
Whatever your position, consider holding yourself to a higher standard. Argue with logic, behave with manners. You may find yourself regarding many on your own side with disdain and a few of your opponents with respect.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
The police can obtain a warrant to search your house, including your bedroom and toilet. Police installing cameras providing video feed from your bedroom and toilet are not the same thing. The constancy and surreptitiousness of electronic surveillance make it fundamentally different to a police officer physically watching you.
Alternatively, if the are held to be the same thing, electronic surveillance is not needed, since we already have police officers, and they're the same thing!
A definition is definite, and beyond argument or speculation. This shouldn't be so hard to grasp.
Homonym has a definition, yet apparently some words can have more than one meaning.
You're welcome to build your own big military. Until you do, however, we call the shots.
Ha ha. I know, I'm Australian. Personally I think we should have our own nukes instead of relying on permanent US bases. I like us to have a good relationship with the us, but it would be best if we were friends who could look after ourselves. Troops permanently stationed in Australia should be loyal to our country, not yours.
I'm not convinced you can continue to pay for your military expansion and I don't think we should rely on you when, just like any other country, your first obligation is to yourselves. I think Jefferson had it right and both our countries should pay heed: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
I say "I'll think of it in a minute" and I usually do. If I say "I can't remember" then I don't for ages, but think of it later while driving or something.
It's as if once I try to remember the process starts, then my brain follows the instruction I give "think of it in a minute" or "can't remember". Either instruction has a limited but noticeable affect.
The ".com" domain is the domain for US commercial entities; there is no other.
Except for this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us
Because the US is fairly laissez-faire about it, a lot of foreign registrants have been able to get .com domains, but that doesn't make the TLD "international".
Well it was supposed to be international, that's why you got your own country code. It seems that it is so uncommon for your countrymen to use your country code that you are even unaware it exists. Now you blame "foreign registrants" for using YOUR TLD.
You Americans would be so funny if you didn't have such a big military.
Why doesn't this "God" take the time to end all this strife and suffering instead of dicking around superimposing himself on toast?
Like the Palestinians, you greatly underestimate the importance of toast in resolving this whole mess. What will it take to get through to you people?
I have never had a fantasy about raping a woman. Ever.
As a man, this doesn't make me feel any safer around you.
If you are going to be a Pirate, then you better have the testicular fortitude to face the consequences. Be a Martyr!
Either that, or escape with your treasure and live out your days in luxury in an exotic paradise.
anyone against unions is basically a corp THUG, these days.
I disagree. I was working in a unionised environment when the price of housing virtually tripled. When the largest expense most people have became that much more expensive and wages didn't increase even close to proportionally I realised that unions are just not going to protect us. I hear most unions are much weaker in the US, but here in Australia unions are just another layer of management, run as a separate business. That's not to say there's no benefits but not worth it for me.
I've taken the path of (i) learning to be as good a negotiator as I can (ii) working for a small business so if the boss rips me off he has to look me in the eye and (iii) purchase of my own equipment and tools so I can charge a higher rate. Right now this is working significantly better for me than unionisation was. If my workplace became unionised I would leave.
No he does not need a special mentor, nor does he need special schooling. He needs to learn to function in the normal world.
I'm not sure how you could confuse regular schools with the normal world. Never since school have I been in a room filled only with people within one year of my age with the sole exception being an older authority figure.
Most people will never again be in a similar environment to school after finishing their formal education. Much that happens in the ordinary course of school days would result in criminal charges or harassment lawsuits if it occurred in the adult world. The more people that can be well educated outside schools the better.
Like to watch without buying is like saying there are cars I would like to drive but I wont buy them. You don't go break into one, take it for a joy ride, and give it back.
Indeed I don't and neither do I download illegally. Just because they are both things I choose not to do does not make them equivalent, your point is therefore unpersuasive.
This is a binary thing, either you want it or you don't. If you want it, you buy it.
No, it is quite possible to want something but not place a high enough priority on it to be willing to part with the asking price for it. There are levels of demand more varied than:
0 Don't want/don't buy
1 Do Want/Do buy
A price variation, for example, can change my buying decision but does not change whether I desire to have the item.
Opinion doesn't mean anything where law (civil or criminal) is concerned. You don't get to change how the system works just by saying that you don't think that that is how it should work.
Strange that you would say this since it is you who is giving your opinion that it is criminal when the law does not agree. Personal downloading is not a crime it is a civil offence. Theft is a criminal offence. These are what we call "different" with each one not being the other. Can you reference even one countries law that prosecutes non-commercial personal downloading as theft? In the US, even commercial criminal infringement is not equated with theft by the courts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)
That makes no sense, copyright laws were created to help with non physical items. There were plenty of loopholes for people to weasel out of theft charges.
If non-commercial infringement was supposed to be regarded as theft they would have made it a criminal offence, which it is not in pretty much every country in the world.
There are a number of laws that were created after thousands of years of them not existing, but by your logic, they aren't needed because all contingencies were thought of thousands of years ago.
No, just because something isn't theft doesn't mean it doesn't require laws. Traffic violations are also not theft, and most are not criminal offences, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have those laws.
A work of art, be it music, video, or text, still takes time and effort to create and people have the right to demand compensation for their work from people wishing to benefit from it.
Sure. I'm not an artist but I have a right to be paid for my work too. If people don't pay me I can sue them for payment, but they won't be arrested or charged with theft. If I go around calling them a thief, I could probably be sued for slander. Neither things will have you in good reputation but they are not the same. A non-payer could do business with me again by paying their bill and paying in advance from then on. A thief, no.
In any case, I don't think that there's very many pirates who believe that they are not criminals. They're obviously breaking the law.
Your post was pretty good up until this. Non-commercial copyright infringement is not a crime in most countries, it is a civil offence. The majority of "pirates" are not criminals.
You can read my reply to the parent here if you like.
For you to have downloaded/copied it, you had to want it on some extent. If you didn't want it, you wouldn't download it. If you did, you would buy it. Since you did download it, you did want it, and therefore denied the owner the sale and revenue.
Nonsense. There are movies I would like to watch but do not buy. I also do not download them. If I changed my mind about downloading them, they would not be losing a sale, proven by the fact that I am now simply not watching those movies rather than buying them.
Any other argument is just lying to yourself to justify that you are not a criminal.
I don't need to justify myself since I'm not illegally downloading anything. Nevertheless, despite my complete lack of any need to justify my actions in this regard, I am still of the opinion that downloading is not theft. Furthermore, even if I was downloading for personal use, I still wouldn't be a criminal. I could (in that hypothetical case) be sued but not arrested as non-commercial copyright violation does not violate any part of the criminal code in my country.
Perhaps the clearest indicator that copyright violation is not theft is the existence of copyright laws. Since laws against theft precede copyright laws by thousands of years, if copyright violation was theft there would have been no need for copyright laws as offenders could have been prosecuted under the already existing laws against theft.
What about cosmetic surgery?
Our unwavering dedication to our principles is the bedrock of our moral superiority.
If we give up our principles, all we have left to fight for are our money and power.
Moral relativism became the dominant principle of the west some time ago.
How does an 89% urbanization rate make broadband networks to rural areas easier or cheaper to build? It means we have a lower proportion of our population spreading over vastly larger distances. Since we already have a much lower population density, the urbanization rate doesn't mitigate the difference, it exacerbates the difference. That makes it more expensive per household.
maybe you should read then constitution and understand the people who wrote it were labelled terrorists too
i stopped reading here. anyone whose idea of logic involves such a sentence is without intellectual merit.
Not necessarily. Both sought the creation of a state, the Ummah in the present case. As such they are not really non-state actors, or civilians, because they have taken it upon themselves to initiate a state. This is what differentiates Islamic terrorists from a domestic terrorist such as McVeigh, who was tried in a civilian court, despite the similarity of action. The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was a military strike, not an execution. It is no more a violation of the 5th amendment than trying to disrupt an enemies arms supply is a violation of the 2nd amendment.
The possibility of innocent people being killed does not transform this from a military issue to a civilian one. A comparison of the reactions to the founders of the US and Al-Qaeda doesn't have to imply moral equivalence.
In fact where I live - Finland - our density of population is quite similar to Australia - huge country with people concentrated on a few citites "en masse" and running the network to the non-dense areas is easy and not *that* expensive - if the local land owners don't object to fiber being laid down beside the road, but then you can see who to blame, been there, done that - NIMBY works there too, if everybody agrees fiber is quite easy and even cheap to install.
According to wikipedia Finland has a population density of 16 per square km, Australia 2.8. That's a pretty broad definition of "quite similar". Australia is also about 22 times larger area than Finland.
You calling Finland huge would be considered pretty funny here.
Now that is enough to send me down to the pub for a tinny or two while I watch the rugger.
You don't drink a "tinny" (which is a can) at the pub, which serves beer in glasses. "Rugger" is a Brit term, not Aussie.
Meanwhile in Europe im getting 25mbit/5mbit for $15, no caps.
That's not nearly enough incentive to move to Europe. I'd hazard a guess and say your heating bill is higher than mine.
Breivik was not a fundamentalist or a christian at all in the commonly used meaning of the words. Breivik's idea of christianity includes "christian atheists" as can be seen by searching for that term in his manifesto.
I'm not sure what a christian atheist would be but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit with most people's idea of what a fundamentalist is.