I'll bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Electronic voting machines available today were practically built to be rigged, and they're built by companies run by and closely associated with people that have very little interest in maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.
Recounts? No recounts, I want the poll run all over again. Paper only, this time.
What it means is that they hope that people will forget about the Halo series long enough to create Halo 3 without rushing it to market. If people start demanding it, though, they'll push out another garbage title like Halo 2 that just rehashes the first.
"I sure hope nobody wants this!"
"Why's that, Bob?"
"I want to have time to polish it up so it doesn't suck like the last one!"
"That makes sense. What happens if people start asking about it, though?"
"Well, I guess I'll just have to give them what I've got already and hope for the best."
The reason the industry is suffering is because forthcoming games and consoles will cost you an arm and a leg to buy, will look dandy on hardware you can't afford, and otherwise suck because nobody is making anything good save for a rare little nugget of fun here and there. Meanwhile interest in gaming is rising among consumers, but only until they realize that they can't afford a console, and once they can, that it was a waste of money. Inevitably, this will change, but for now gamers are stuck with shitty games they can't afford anyway.
Here's the real solution. Cheaper, funner games, and consoles that won't punch a hole in my bank account. (Though I suppose the 360 could be considered a cost effective appliance option, considering that it can double as a space heater, a toaster oven, and a hot plate while you become ever increasingly disappointed with just how lame and generic Project Gotham Racing and Perfect Dark Zero are.)
Maybe now we'll be reading fewer articles like this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/19/171121 0
We all know this is really about cheating, distractions, porn, and piracy though. It has nothing to do with brain tumors, most likely. If it does... why are these people running a university, again?
Okay. So every new computer has this bullshit pre-loaded. Everyone and their mother's cousin's dog knows about the TCPA/TCG, the TPM, the chips, what they do, and how their sole purpose is to implant DRM on a hardware level on every computer bought from now until doomsday. Presumably, even Apple computers have them - our lovable, do-no-evil Apple, screwing us too? For shame. Everyone's going to do it, though, and sadly, FOSS isn't the answer.
FOSS will in all likelihood only work on computers made by vendors that choose to support it. Sounds like FUD, and it should, it's very possible and very likely. IBM has been working to make TCG-ready versions of Linux and whatnot, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to read proprietary format documents and other such lovely things without at least a (expensive) proprietary dongle for your PC or your software. Even if FOSS applications and OSes work on TCG computers, that doesn't mean they'll still be useful. It's not only the perfect way to shaft the consumer into paying constantly for software and hardware they've already bought, and the perfect way to make piracy hellish enough to convince all but the hardcore bootleggers to stop. It's the perfect way to create an enourmous chasm between competing vendors and FOSS communities. It's like stepping back through time. Non-universal PCs and applications will become the norm, and it's almost certain that unless companies like Google and IBM step in to put a stop to the bullshit, FOSS and independent software studios alike will vanish.
This makes our options for action very limited. You would essentially have to start bringing FOSS down to the hardware level. Open Source Software? Open Schematic Hardware. FOSH. To create anything useful, however, it would require stupid-huge amounts of time, money, and collaboration, which means that only companies like Google and IBM would foot the bill. (And like they do with FOSS, they'd use FOSH as just another selling point for their services.) One technology could make all the difference though... A printer-like board fabricator, perhaps? I remember reading about machines like those. Who feels like trying to tack a microscopic soldering iron onto their inkjet? I'm not being sarcastic, I really mean this. The biggest threat to FOSS and universal computing is that hobbyists have been essentially taken out of the loop. We don't know very much about what our hardware does and how, so how are we going to escape the clutches of the TCG if we can't even make and (lawfully) analyze our own computers? Used to be that you'd -BUILD- your own computer. Not just snapping parts together, no. You'd put it together from scratch. A tabletop or desktop fabricating tool that's cheap to purchase, operate, and maintain would be the ultimate weapon in the FOSS/FOSH community's arsenal, and it would enable hobbyists and ordinary folk alike to begin experimenting with circuitry of their own.
Sounds stupid? Probably. FOSS won't stand a chance without corporate stewardship unless FOSH becomes a reality, though. Not just any FOSH, good useful FOSH. So... calling all engineers?
There's a general consensus about mass surveillance. On the 'pro' side of the field, the argument is and will always be, "If you have nothing to hide, then you have no reason to be afraid. It's for your own good." On the 'con' side, however, you actually tend to get the mental juices flowing, and you get responses like the ones I've read here, detailing how mind-blowingly wrong this is and just how pathetic our 'leaders' must be to actually think that implimenting a plan like this will actually help anything.
We Americans, among other societies in the world, have become a society of terror. Pure, unbridled terror - fear in its purest form. I believe it was Albert Einstein that said, "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." This is the sorry lot that we are transforming into. We live in a world run by morons now, people who don't believe that there is an answer to the social ills of the world other than terror; people who place themselves on a higher pedestal than the rest of humanity; people to whom life and freedom are both cheap, and death and oppression are glorious. This is the world we live in, and 'men' like this miserable police chief are the ones in charge - the ones about whom we can do little to nothing. Sadly, there are probably hundreds of thousands of citizens that would agree with this man. People with no will, no desire for freedom, scared, miserable little people who have yet to understand just how worthless life is without the freedom to think, speak, and act on one's own. These are the people who are only motivated by fear and reward; the proud, lobotomized masses.
This site, the people speaking here? This is what terrorism looks like. This is what evil personified would say. At least, that's what we're supposed to believe. There's a war going on out there, but it's not against religious extremists and idealogical warlords. It's by religious extremists and idealogical warlords, and it's being waged against us. I certainly hope our Big Brothers read this, because it goes to show that at least I am wise to their game, and it's obvious I'm hardly the only one here. Our freedoms, our rights, our very minds, these are all being compromised. Even if we ourselves never crack, if the rest of the world goes down without us, then that leaves just us against the world. That leaves us with a limited number of options that we should consider before they are no longer available. The first option is to simply say, "No."
We can't allow ourselves or our societies to degrade into nanny societies where our people are brainwashed into slaves of the M.I.C., serving one narrowminded will that cares only for itself. We simply must say, "No." People like this police chief? They need to be removed from power immediately by any means deemed necessary. I'm not saying to hurt these people, no. That would make us the terrorists they want the rest of the world to see us as. I'll leave the creative work up to you folks out there, though, since honestly, I'd give this police chief a couple black eyes and a fat lip if I could, just for being such a damn moron. Past mass-protesting and mass-petitioning, I also propose that the more tech-literate among us devise a means to discretely detect, arbitrarily disable, or destroy hidden or visible surveillance cameras, microphones, and other sensory devices that may be used to spy on the people if networks like these get out of hand. I know it's for our own good and all, but something about the absolutely massive potential for abuse of power such intelligence networks have and the likelihood that the people in charge will take advantage of that power just kind of bothers me.
I know that the instant I hit 'submit', I'm probably going to wind up on the NSA's shit-list, if I haven't already. I'll probably wind up being locked up some day for saying what I say, thinking what I think, doing what I do. It'd probably be a much better idea for me to simply keep my
You know, if you really want people to believe you, don't announce a product until you have one finished. This guy obviously never learned that lesson, and it would appear that this could indeed be bullshit.
See, if I ever think of anything truly stupendous, I won't blab about it until I have a working model, or at least something that people can look and prod at to see if it's reasonable. That's how you get this little thing called 'credibility'. I don't think PB hard drives are going to be coming for a while, at least not from this guy. Why worry about it, anyway? We already have perpendicular storage on the way, and that's been showing promise since the 1970's. Furthermore, I kind of doubt there'd be much of a market for this stuff. That's... really a bit too much data on one drive, if you asked me. Too much to loose at once, or have stolen at once. Not a good idea to replace an array with this.
Perhaps this is an indication of how and why Alzheimer's occurs - neurological burnout. Maybe neurons have a finite amount of use in addition to a finite lifespan?
Well, you'd think that. You'd think that since there are in fact liscencing agreements in regard to the purchase of these CDs that you're acquiring a liscence to the content, but that's not the case. You're acquiring a liscence to use the CD, not a liscence to the content. In other words, in the eyes of the RIAA, you're borrowing their property via a medium you own and now have a right to use. (If that interpretation is incorrect, please, correct it. I will however say that it sure looks that way now.)
The RIAA, as we are all painfully aware, has absolutely no concern for the consumer. We're walking piggy banks to them - pigeons - and any way that they can fleece money from us is fair game. These braindead executives live in a fantasy world where everyone will just bend over and take it from them. "Oops! I scratched my $20 single-track CD with over 400 MB of DRM and one song on it! I guess I'll just go buy another one from RIAA 'R' US, the only music store around!" See, they wish people would actually say that. Will anyone say that, ever? I sure hope not, and if I ever do hear anyone say that, I certainly hope nobody would hold it against me if I kicked them for it.
The moral of the story is, no matter what we say, the RIAA does not care, and we will always be wrong to them. They will always do everything they can to screw the consumer, the innovator, and the artist alike, all for their own gain. My suggestion to you is to back up your songs as usual, because you should have a right to. That way, if you scratch any of your discs up, you won't have to give any more money to these pigs - money that they've done absolutely nothing to deserve.
Why did I suddenly think of the Atlas Tower from Front Mission when I heard that they'd be using this thing to transport solar power systems into space?
Also, will a war with giant robots break out prior to and again immediately after it's completion?
This is low even for Intel. 'Leap Ahead'? More like 'Leap Back', or 'Get the hell out of Dodge' if you'd prefer. This is just another example of a classic industry cheap-shot - if you can't defeat the market, gang up on the consumer.
Wow. You know what, now I want to do this to my station wagon. 1986 Ford Country Squire. Man, forget spinners, forget neon, forget hydraulic shocks. I'll be all like Optimus Prime up in this bee-yatch, just you wait 'n see.
This idea is made of crap and stupid. What, are they just trying to scare people into not using e-mail if they're going to blow something up, or do they actually care if someone is sending e-mail from a spoofed site named "rofl.mao"?
If there are history books by then. You're absolutely right though, and the brutal irony of it is, America has become a nation of growing tyranny and oppression to stop what? Growing tyranny and oppression! I suppose that fascism doesn't count if we do it, though.
I honestly hate to say this, but Osama won. Big time. You can take people's lives, ruin their economy, deface and destroy their country's monuments... but to attack their minds and crush their spirits is something else entirely. Case in point? Look at how Great Britain reacted to Nazi Germany launching attacks against it in World War 2, and you tell me whether or not they caved. Al Qaeda attacks us once and we roll over for them. Not only do we do exactly what they wanted us to do - cower in fear and run around with our thumbs up our asses - but instead of having to invade to institute their own tyrannical dictatorship, we already have one forming. How nice of us to do that for them.
The only thing that Halo 2 redefined was hype. If these guys think that Halo 2 - which has been on the Xbox for months now - is going to be a selling point for Vista, they're sorely mistaken.
Okay. I read the fucking article, and I get the point. The big telcos want more money to "justify their investments" in their networks; Investments that, by all accounts, they should have started making decades ago in order to meet future bandwidth demands in anticipation of a growing telecommunications industry, be it for phones alone, the internet, or both. That is, on the surface, it would appear that they're trying to save face and make it look like meshing the POTS with a private fiber network is big shit. There's some truth in this, since fiber optic networking technologies have been largely neglected and ignored due to terminating costs and the cost of laying the lines in the first place, and laying down a big fiber network to run side by side with the POTS is a pretty big undertaking. It sure as hell ain't cheap, either, but you definitely get what you pay for. Verizon's fiber network will be extremely fast, and one would be inclined to believe that in order to gain access to such a network, you'd have to pay a little extra, right?
This is where the logic begins to break down. I would completely understand if they said outright that if you wanted to use the fiber network instead of the POTS alone, you'd have to pay extra. Why? Massive bandwidth and connection speeds, and a massive initial investment to make it happen. The POTS is fine, but if you want that extra boost, you've gotta go fiber. That would kind of suck, yeah, but considering the cost, doesn't it make sense that at least in the beginning people should pay top dollar to take advantage of that network? That isn't the case here, though. Their logic is that any business that requires a large amount of bandwidth, regardless of where it comes from, should have to pay extra for it. Their logic is to place new caps of the amount of bandwidth alotted to businesses and individuals in order to create an artificial demand for their product by restricting access to it. This way, they get more money, period. That's the part that I don't like.
I don't neccessarily like Google, but I'll definitely take their side here. Google is hardly getting a "free lunch". Google is hardly running "cheap servers". Google is huge shit, and they have got to be paying millions and millions of dollars a year in America alone to keep their shit online at the speeds and with the bandwidth they require. What that asshole from Verizon said was basically that, "Google doesn't seem important, and they're hogging up all this bandwidth, so we should have the right to arbitrarily charge them extra for the services they're already paying mega-fuck-tons of money for just because we want to." Furthermore, they and others allude to Google's possible and highly plausible future plans for a 'free' internet that will take advantage of the POTS, and see this as a means to an end in order to make sure every customer is paid for, regardless of who fronts the money. Nobody should have to pay extra for a resource or service just because they found a better way to use it. That's like saying because you wipe your ass with both sides of the toilet paper, you should pay twice as much for a roll.
This really makes me wonder just how much Google is making these pigs sweat. Sure, I hate 'em all, Google included, but it seems that they -REALLY- don't like Google. I can see why, too. They're creatively taking advantage of the big telcos' services in order to create alternative services to those provided by the telcos themselves. There's a bit of an ethical faux pas right there, but that's also motive. To add to that, Google's got thousands of miles of fiber under it's belt to boot, and that fiber could be used to place these alternative services on Google's own network, which would allow them to directly compete with the telcos. (Maybe Google's top brass are counting on people jumping ship from the teired telcos because of them, and onto Google's network... Crafty, huh?) That doesn't mean that the telcos have to shove the matter up everyone's ass, though. That just means that they need to play
I have to wonder if cell phones don't wind up cooking your brain, too, or at least your inner ear. Maybe that's why so many people drive while talking on them. They've sustained brain damage and don't know any better.
I suppose this is their method of killing two birds with one stone. Eliminate the threat of a tiered internet and replace the American telecom oligopoly with a shiny new Google monopoly. Brilliant. (Though I'd be much fonder of an effort to create a nation-wide mesh network, under no one party's control...)
I'm just wondering how they're going to pull this off if they're still hemmorhaging money from their little P.R. up-fuck in regards to China. What were their losses up to in stocks, 13 billion? That's... a lot of money. Sure, they have plenty more, but good lord.
Slashdot Mirror
I propose that they build a chair out of Bismuth. Diamagnetism will solve all of our problems.
(I'm kidding, obviously.)
See, I'm already fairly certain I'm on the TIA's shit list, so I'll just say this outright.
Eisenhower would kick Georgie Boy's ass if he were alive today.
I'll bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Electronic voting machines available today were practically built to be rigged, and they're built by companies run by and closely associated with people that have very little interest in maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.
Recounts? No recounts, I want the poll run all over again. Paper only, this time.
What it means is that they hope that people will forget about the Halo series long enough to create Halo 3 without rushing it to market. If people start demanding it, though, they'll push out another garbage title like Halo 2 that just rehashes the first.
"I sure hope nobody wants this!"
"Why's that, Bob?"
"I want to have time to polish it up so it doesn't suck like the last one!"
"That makes sense. What happens if people start asking about it, though?"
"Well, I guess I'll just have to give them what I've got already and hope for the best."
"Will it ever be finished?"
"A few years from now in it's PC release, yeah."
The reason the industry is suffering is because forthcoming games and consoles will cost you an arm and a leg to buy, will look dandy on hardware you can't afford, and otherwise suck because nobody is making anything good save for a rare little nugget of fun here and there. Meanwhile interest in gaming is rising among consumers, but only until they realize that they can't afford a console, and once they can, that it was a waste of money. Inevitably, this will change, but for now gamers are stuck with shitty games they can't afford anyway.
Here's the real solution. Cheaper, funner games, and consoles that won't punch a hole in my bank account. (Though I suppose the 360 could be considered a cost effective appliance option, considering that it can double as a space heater, a toaster oven, and a hot plate while you become ever increasingly disappointed with just how lame and generic Project Gotham Racing and Perfect Dark Zero are.)
Please tell me that the guy who filed for this wasn't named Al Gore.
Maybe now we'll be reading fewer articles like this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/19/171121 0
We all know this is really about cheating, distractions, porn, and piracy though. It has nothing to do with brain tumors, most likely. If it does... why are these people running a university, again?
Well, that settles it. Summon the hookers. We're going to save America the one way we know how...
We're going to get Bush laid and then blow it completely out of proportion.
srsly dis b li3k a h00j prblm 4 r33l i dun n0 wai ppl cnt liek tak nrml li3k wut
If I ever... EVER talk like that again, please, somebody just shoot me.
Okay. So every new computer has this bullshit pre-loaded. Everyone and their mother's cousin's dog knows about the TCPA/TCG, the TPM, the chips, what they do, and how their sole purpose is to implant DRM on a hardware level on every computer bought from now until doomsday. Presumably, even Apple computers have them - our lovable, do-no-evil Apple, screwing us too? For shame. Everyone's going to do it, though, and sadly, FOSS isn't the answer.
FOSS will in all likelihood only work on computers made by vendors that choose to support it. Sounds like FUD, and it should, it's very possible and very likely. IBM has been working to make TCG-ready versions of Linux and whatnot, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to read proprietary format documents and other such lovely things without at least a (expensive) proprietary dongle for your PC or your software. Even if FOSS applications and OSes work on TCG computers, that doesn't mean they'll still be useful. It's not only the perfect way to shaft the consumer into paying constantly for software and hardware they've already bought, and the perfect way to make piracy hellish enough to convince all but the hardcore bootleggers to stop. It's the perfect way to create an enourmous chasm between competing vendors and FOSS communities. It's like stepping back through time. Non-universal PCs and applications will become the norm, and it's almost certain that unless companies like Google and IBM step in to put a stop to the bullshit, FOSS and independent software studios alike will vanish.
This makes our options for action very limited. You would essentially have to start bringing FOSS down to the hardware level. Open Source Software? Open Schematic Hardware. FOSH. To create anything useful, however, it would require stupid-huge amounts of time, money, and collaboration, which means that only companies like Google and IBM would foot the bill. (And like they do with FOSS, they'd use FOSH as just another selling point for their services.) One technology could make all the difference though... A printer-like board fabricator, perhaps? I remember reading about machines like those. Who feels like trying to tack a microscopic soldering iron onto their inkjet? I'm not being sarcastic, I really mean this. The biggest threat to FOSS and universal computing is that hobbyists have been essentially taken out of the loop. We don't know very much about what our hardware does and how, so how are we going to escape the clutches of the TCG if we can't even make and (lawfully) analyze our own computers? Used to be that you'd -BUILD- your own computer. Not just snapping parts together, no. You'd put it together from scratch. A tabletop or desktop fabricating tool that's cheap to purchase, operate, and maintain would be the ultimate weapon in the FOSS/FOSH community's arsenal, and it would enable hobbyists and ordinary folk alike to begin experimenting with circuitry of their own.
Sounds stupid? Probably. FOSS won't stand a chance without corporate stewardship unless FOSH becomes a reality, though. Not just any FOSH, good useful FOSH. So... calling all engineers?
It's finally looking a lot like 1984.
There's a general consensus about mass surveillance. On the 'pro' side of the field, the argument is and will always be, "If you have nothing to hide, then you have no reason to be afraid. It's for your own good." On the 'con' side, however, you actually tend to get the mental juices flowing, and you get responses like the ones I've read here, detailing how mind-blowingly wrong this is and just how pathetic our 'leaders' must be to actually think that implimenting a plan like this will actually help anything.
We Americans, among other societies in the world, have become a society of terror. Pure, unbridled terror - fear in its purest form. I believe it was Albert Einstein that said, "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." This is the sorry lot that we are transforming into. We live in a world run by morons now, people who don't believe that there is an answer to the social ills of the world other than terror; people who place themselves on a higher pedestal than the rest of humanity; people to whom life and freedom are both cheap, and death and oppression are glorious. This is the world we live in, and 'men' like this miserable police chief are the ones in charge - the ones about whom we can do little to nothing. Sadly, there are probably hundreds of thousands of citizens that would agree with this man. People with no will, no desire for freedom, scared, miserable little people who have yet to understand just how worthless life is without the freedom to think, speak, and act on one's own. These are the people who are only motivated by fear and reward; the proud, lobotomized masses.
This site, the people speaking here? This is what terrorism looks like. This is what evil personified would say. At least, that's what we're supposed to believe. There's a war going on out there, but it's not against religious extremists and idealogical warlords. It's by religious extremists and idealogical warlords, and it's being waged against us. I certainly hope our Big Brothers read this, because it goes to show that at least I am wise to their game, and it's obvious I'm hardly the only one here. Our freedoms, our rights, our very minds, these are all being compromised. Even if we ourselves never crack, if the rest of the world goes down without us, then that leaves just us against the world. That leaves us with a limited number of options that we should consider before they are no longer available. The first option is to simply say, "No."
We can't allow ourselves or our societies to degrade into nanny societies where our people are brainwashed into slaves of the M.I.C., serving one narrowminded will that cares only for itself. We simply must say, "No." People like this police chief? They need to be removed from power immediately by any means deemed necessary. I'm not saying to hurt these people, no. That would make us the terrorists they want the rest of the world to see us as. I'll leave the creative work up to you folks out there, though, since honestly, I'd give this police chief a couple black eyes and a fat lip if I could, just for being such a damn moron. Past mass-protesting and mass-petitioning, I also propose that the more tech-literate among us devise a means to discretely detect, arbitrarily disable, or destroy hidden or visible surveillance cameras, microphones, and other sensory devices that may be used to spy on the people if networks like these get out of hand. I know it's for our own good and all, but something about the absolutely massive potential for abuse of power such intelligence networks have and the likelihood that the people in charge will take advantage of that power just kind of bothers me.
I know that the instant I hit 'submit', I'm probably going to wind up on the NSA's shit-list, if I haven't already. I'll probably wind up being locked up some day for saying what I say, thinking what I think, doing what I do. It'd probably be a much better idea for me to simply keep my
You know, if you really want people to believe you, don't announce a product until you have one finished. This guy obviously never learned that lesson, and it would appear that this could indeed be bullshit.
See, if I ever think of anything truly stupendous, I won't blab about it until I have a working model, or at least something that people can look and prod at to see if it's reasonable. That's how you get this little thing called 'credibility'. I don't think PB hard drives are going to be coming for a while, at least not from this guy. Why worry about it, anyway? We already have perpendicular storage on the way, and that's been showing promise since the 1970's. Furthermore, I kind of doubt there'd be much of a market for this stuff. That's... really a bit too much data on one drive, if you asked me. Too much to loose at once, or have stolen at once. Not a good idea to replace an array with this.
Perhaps this is an indication of how and why Alzheimer's occurs - neurological burnout. Maybe neurons have a finite amount of use in addition to a finite lifespan?
Well, you'd think that. You'd think that since there are in fact liscencing agreements in regard to the purchase of these CDs that you're acquiring a liscence to the content, but that's not the case. You're acquiring a liscence to use the CD, not a liscence to the content. In other words, in the eyes of the RIAA, you're borrowing their property via a medium you own and now have a right to use. (If that interpretation is incorrect, please, correct it. I will however say that it sure looks that way now.)
The RIAA, as we are all painfully aware, has absolutely no concern for the consumer. We're walking piggy banks to them - pigeons - and any way that they can fleece money from us is fair game. These braindead executives live in a fantasy world where everyone will just bend over and take it from them. "Oops! I scratched my $20 single-track CD with over 400 MB of DRM and one song on it! I guess I'll just go buy another one from RIAA 'R' US, the only music store around!" See, they wish people would actually say that. Will anyone say that, ever? I sure hope not, and if I ever do hear anyone say that, I certainly hope nobody would hold it against me if I kicked them for it.
The moral of the story is, no matter what we say, the RIAA does not care, and we will always be wrong to them. They will always do everything they can to screw the consumer, the innovator, and the artist alike, all for their own gain. My suggestion to you is to back up your songs as usual, because you should have a right to. That way, if you scratch any of your discs up, you won't have to give any more money to these pigs - money that they've done absolutely nothing to deserve.
Like we need any more reasons not to buy Vista. This is just lovely.
Why did I suddenly think of the Atlas Tower from Front Mission when I heard that they'd be using this thing to transport solar power systems into space?
Also, will a war with giant robots break out prior to and again immediately after it's completion?
This is low even for Intel. 'Leap Ahead'? More like 'Leap Back', or 'Get the hell out of Dodge' if you'd prefer. This is just another example of a classic industry cheap-shot - if you can't defeat the market, gang up on the consumer.
THE CURE FOR ALZHEIMERS -
A single player two-game tetris handheld that provides verbal instructions and tells jokes about Soviet Russia in English, Spanish, and Russian.
YEAH BUDDY.
Wow. You know what, now I want to do this to my station wagon. 1986 Ford Country Squire. Man, forget spinners, forget neon, forget hydraulic shocks. I'll be all like Optimus Prime up in this bee-yatch, just you wait 'n see.
This idea is made of crap and stupid. What, are they just trying to scare people into not using e-mail if they're going to blow something up, or do they actually care if someone is sending e-mail from a spoofed site named "rofl.mao"?
If there are history books by then. You're absolutely right though, and the brutal irony of it is, America has become a nation of growing tyranny and oppression to stop what? Growing tyranny and oppression! I suppose that fascism doesn't count if we do it, though.
I honestly hate to say this, but Osama won. Big time. You can take people's lives, ruin their economy, deface and destroy their country's monuments... but to attack their minds and crush their spirits is something else entirely. Case in point? Look at how Great Britain reacted to Nazi Germany launching attacks against it in World War 2, and you tell me whether or not they caved. Al Qaeda attacks us once and we roll over for them. Not only do we do exactly what they wanted us to do - cower in fear and run around with our thumbs up our asses - but instead of having to invade to institute their own tyrannical dictatorship, we already have one forming. How nice of us to do that for them.
The only thing that Halo 2 redefined was hype. If these guys think that Halo 2 - which has been on the Xbox for months now - is going to be a selling point for Vista, they're sorely mistaken.
Okay. I read the fucking article, and I get the point. The big telcos want more money to "justify their investments" in their networks; Investments that, by all accounts, they should have started making decades ago in order to meet future bandwidth demands in anticipation of a growing telecommunications industry, be it for phones alone, the internet, or both. That is, on the surface, it would appear that they're trying to save face and make it look like meshing the POTS with a private fiber network is big shit. There's some truth in this, since fiber optic networking technologies have been largely neglected and ignored due to terminating costs and the cost of laying the lines in the first place, and laying down a big fiber network to run side by side with the POTS is a pretty big undertaking. It sure as hell ain't cheap, either, but you definitely get what you pay for. Verizon's fiber network will be extremely fast, and one would be inclined to believe that in order to gain access to such a network, you'd have to pay a little extra, right?
This is where the logic begins to break down. I would completely understand if they said outright that if you wanted to use the fiber network instead of the POTS alone, you'd have to pay extra. Why? Massive bandwidth and connection speeds, and a massive initial investment to make it happen. The POTS is fine, but if you want that extra boost, you've gotta go fiber. That would kind of suck, yeah, but considering the cost, doesn't it make sense that at least in the beginning people should pay top dollar to take advantage of that network? That isn't the case here, though. Their logic is that any business that requires a large amount of bandwidth, regardless of where it comes from, should have to pay extra for it. Their logic is to place new caps of the amount of bandwidth alotted to businesses and individuals in order to create an artificial demand for their product by restricting access to it. This way, they get more money, period. That's the part that I don't like.
I don't neccessarily like Google, but I'll definitely take their side here. Google is hardly getting a "free lunch". Google is hardly running "cheap servers". Google is huge shit, and they have got to be paying millions and millions of dollars a year in America alone to keep their shit online at the speeds and with the bandwidth they require. What that asshole from Verizon said was basically that, "Google doesn't seem important, and they're hogging up all this bandwidth, so we should have the right to arbitrarily charge them extra for the services they're already paying mega-fuck-tons of money for just because we want to." Furthermore, they and others allude to Google's possible and highly plausible future plans for a 'free' internet that will take advantage of the POTS, and see this as a means to an end in order to make sure every customer is paid for, regardless of who fronts the money. Nobody should have to pay extra for a resource or service just because they found a better way to use it. That's like saying because you wipe your ass with both sides of the toilet paper, you should pay twice as much for a roll.
This really makes me wonder just how much Google is making these pigs sweat. Sure, I hate 'em all, Google included, but it seems that they -REALLY- don't like Google. I can see why, too. They're creatively taking advantage of the big telcos' services in order to create alternative services to those provided by the telcos themselves. There's a bit of an ethical faux pas right there, but that's also motive. To add to that, Google's got thousands of miles of fiber under it's belt to boot, and that fiber could be used to place these alternative services on Google's own network, which would allow them to directly compete with the telcos. (Maybe Google's top brass are counting on people jumping ship from the teired telcos because of them, and onto Google's network... Crafty, huh?) That doesn't mean that the telcos have to shove the matter up everyone's ass, though. That just means that they need to play
I have to wonder if cell phones don't wind up cooking your brain, too, or at least your inner ear. Maybe that's why so many people drive while talking on them. They've sustained brain damage and don't know any better.
I suppose this is their method of killing two birds with one stone. Eliminate the threat of a tiered internet and replace the American telecom oligopoly with a shiny new Google monopoly. Brilliant. (Though I'd be much fonder of an effort to create a nation-wide mesh network, under no one party's control...)
I'm just wondering how they're going to pull this off if they're still hemmorhaging money from their little P.R. up-fuck in regards to China. What were their losses up to in stocks, 13 billion? That's... a lot of money. Sure, they have plenty more, but good lord.