How is using bit torrent to obtain data that you would otherwise have to pay for any different from gathering up a thousand people, walking into Best Buy and walking out with all the music and software on the shelves?
This is not a rhetorical question.
I occasionally use bit torrent to download software and music. The way I rationalize it because:
1) I would not actually pay for that data if it were not available by any other means. I actually do purchase software that I would pay for.
2) I have already purchased that data at one point in the past and either lost it or am too lazy to rip all my CDs.
I don't believe either is a legitimate excuse for theft, but I do it anyway now and then. I've also ended up purchasing data that I have obtained through bit torrent.
Spoken like a true parent. Children are not citizens of a democracy, they are born as subjects of a dictatorship. They are the property and responsibility of parents until such time they are responsible for themselves. In the U.S, this is age eighteen. If your child resents you by that age, you have failed as a leader. If they still resent you by the time they are 21 or so, you have failed as a parent.
It doesn't take a "study" to realize that only imbeciles (or people new to the internet) actually click through internet ads. These are probably the same people that buy infomercial and home shopping channel garbage.
Wasted effort. Just think of the REAL things that could be accomplished with all the effort being put into this publicity stunt. We're in an election year with a president and congress at lowest rankings in U.S history, terrorists are using disabled persons as bombers, and these morons are giving free publicity to CoS. In the grand scheme of things CoS is a blip. Why are these people so intent on taking violating the rights of the CoS. The world is full of far more sinister people.
This goes to show you how stupid the myspace generation is.
"In the statement, the group explained their goal as safeguarding the right to freedom of speech."
And they plan to accomplish this by suppressing the free speech that the Church of Scientology is entitled to?? How enlightened they are and what an embarrassment to people who REALLY fight for freedom.
Just because you don't agree with something, you don't have a right to suppress it. I hear sound bites all the time of Democrat politicians spouting this , but their actions are consistently in conflict with this message. Both parties are equally guilty of groupthink.
Suppressing Scientology is no different the the Chinese government suppressing and killing Christians. My guess is that this is a dry run and that Christianity is next on the list. Being an independent agnostic, I personally think there is no general difference between Scientology, Christianity, or Islam. I think it amusing how unabashedly anxious they are to suppress and/or conquer each other.
The world has been throwing money into poor countries, mostly in Africa, for years. We have NOTHING to show for it. Money is not the answer. It's no different than giving a five-spot to a homeless drunk on the street. It will be used to buy another drink.
Instead of giving money to corrupt governments and organizations, we need to give money to businesses, charities, and other private organizations to help build infrastructure in these countries. We need also to help stabilize these countries so businesses will feel safe going into them and helping. If we cannot get stable leadership within, all all efforts are futile. We've been trying to band-aid Africa for longer than I've been alive and what's been tried hasn't worked. It's time to come up with something new...or forget it all and leave it alone.
Workers benefit by actually having jobs. THAT is the basis of a free-market economy. It's free as in beer...not free as in no-cost. There is no such thing as free, as in getting something for nothing.
Workers don't "deserve" anything more than a salary as compensation for their work. These jackasses got exactly what they deserved. I'm just a regular guy and I don't understand this "entitlement" ideology than is overtaking the minds of Americans. If you are a worker bee at a successful company, you benefit by continuing to have a job, and if you are lucky, occasional salary increases.
It sounds like these people didn't like the fact that they were salaried, but worked more than forty hours. I guarantee you, most, if not all, of these same people have worked less than 40 hours a week here and there. One of the perks of being salaried, is that your hours are generally more flexible and get get away with working fewer hours when the workload is light or heading out early now and then because you don't feel well, yet maintain the same pay.
The one thing to remember about all these executives is that they work 24/7 and make more sacrifices than you do. If they don't perform, they get axed in the blink of an eye. When they get the kinds of salaries they do, they are pretty much company property.
bloggers were journalists. Why don't they join a journalists union. Doesn't forming a union go against the whole idea that the "blogosphere" is a maverick movement raging against the machine? It's just like John McCain suggesting he is some sort of maverick, when he is really just a lifetime senator that has done nothing but make the occasional principled vote when he knows it will have no effect on the outcome.
Sorry, but this is an attempt at lining the pockets of the union organizers. There is nothing that a modern-day union provides to it members. Unions are oppressive, big-brother organizations that prevent individual achievement. You are beholden to their word and are forced to join if you want to work in a field where they have control. They played an important role in protecting workers back in the day, but are now corrupt dinosaurs that provide no measurable benefit to it's members or society.
Bloggers are a bunch of blowhards who couldn't make it in the industry. The often cite no sources and frankly spread BS all over the internet with no accountability. Bloggers are the biggest propagandists of all. Personally, I'm tired of hearing people cite some blogger as a legitimate source of information without doing their own non-blogger research. To see this in it full glory, take a look at digg.com. It is the biggest example of a bunch of wanna-be bloggers spreading their feces-ridden content out to the masses, who willingly take in every putrid morsel, then pronounce how anti-establishment they are. They are just tools of tools.
I think you're right on. This is Apple pushing consumer computing into a new phase. It's just like when they went USB-only and everyone was like "wtf??". MacBook Air is EXACTLY what I've been looking for...a true notebook computer. No ugly ports all over it and no useless optical drive. My MacBook has never been "plugged in" and has only ever been wireless. It's time to do away with CAT5 once and for all.
I don't use a laptop as a desktop replacement, I use it as a portable extension of my desktop and don't need all the other cruft.
Do we need to keep perpetuating this myth that Apple has some sort of music monoploy. They make a music player that plays whatever music format they choose to let it play. It is their prerogative to do so. There are plenty of devices out there that play WMA. The only way Apple would be violating anti-trust laws is if they were interfering with the production of devices from other companies and somehow keeping them from support WMA. Having a unique, proprietary product does not make a monopoly.
I'm so tired of privacy nuts. There is no such thing as privacy or anonymity...especially on the internet. If you don't want Google to know anything about you, don't use their service. No one is forcing you to. Likewise, don't do business with anyone using Double-click's service.
In fact, if you want real privacy, go live in the woods a cut yourself off from humanity. Of course, the animals will know where you eat, sleep, and shit. Sorry.
Does it really matter if we run out of IP4 address space? A majority of the internet is either a waste or a joke - myspace, facebook, etc...it's all pointless crap.
Why not reclaim all the wasted, unused existing space? Adding IPv6 seems akin to raising taxes instead of controlling spending. It's going to cost a shitload of money and Regular Joe won't see any benefit.
"bizarre claim that there was a link between the terrorist organisation al Qaeda and the Iraq government"
Pot calling kettle black? It's not a bizarre claim. It's a fact that there was a link between bin Laden and Saddam. They both acknowledged it. I'm tired of people being so anti-Bush that they ignore the words of our enemies and try to rewrite history. Jihadists wanted to kill us long before Bush was ever in the picture. They will never go away as long as the U.S exists...period. Maybe if Clinton had done something while terrorists were killing us and blowing us up, Bush wouldn't have been left in a shitty position. Clinton spent two terms with blinders on to what was going on in the rest of the world.
Bush's big mistake was trying to come up with all these secondary reasons to go into Iraq. He didn't need any of that. We were still in a state of war with Iraq and had 10 years of him shooting at our aircraft. We also had his violation of 14 U.N resolutions, which allowed for us to take him out. Just because the rest of the U.N didn't support us, didn't mean we didn't have to right to act. There was nothing illegal about our action. Bush got Congressional approval even though it wasn't required since we were still at war.
It fine to disagree with it, but there was nothing illegal or unjust about it. What was unjust is that daddy Bush didn't finish the job the first time and let that tyrant stay in power.
Hell, the only thing Bush has gotten right was taking Saddam out. The rest of his presidency has been as bad as Clinton's.
to buy music, so how could downloading music by college students actually affect sales? Before the internet, people would probably chip in for a tape or CD, then make copies for everyone.
Personally, I recorded music from the radio when I was too poor to buy music.
Everyone knows that most college students don't care about politics and don't bother voting. I'm not surprised that so many woudl be willing to give up their right to vote for a shiny penny. Someone with this attitude doesn't deserve to vote.
Personally, I think that if you are a college student and still on your parents' insurance, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. I would support increasing the voting age to at least 21, maybe higher. I might even support paying off college students to keep them from voting. They're usually mindless, zombie liberals anyway.
I'm so weary of lawsuits. Can we bring a lawsuit to stop all of these ridiculous lawsuits?
Elections are a STATE issue and there should be nothing compelling any given state to do what another states chooses to do. We have another activist here that would presume to tell everyone in the country what to do. Screw that. The states should counter-sue this jack-ass and bankrupt him. He is wasting the money of every single taxpayer in the U.S.
As far as I am concerned, a state should be able to draw straws as part of their elections if that's how they want to do it. This moron Ellis, is really just trying to subvert our election process and nationalize it. This is BAD. Our election system was designed specifically to avoid nationalized voting.
The argument that computerized voting hides votes from the public is absurd. We just had a local election and all of the ballots were hidden from my view in a locked ballot box. What's new?
Filter the "blogoshpere". The problem is that there are too many "bloggers" out there spewing complete and utter ignorance. Everything ends up devolving into the political gutter. It's not productive it does not represent proper, civilised discourse.
Presidents don't need to know anything more about science than your average joe. They APPOINT people with that knowledge when and where they are needed. Contrary to popular belief, presidents don't need to be subject matter experts on everything.
Vista's massive failure is all the more reason for Apple to make sure they release Leopard when it's ready, not to meet a dead or to take advantage of MS's misstep. With a much smaller market share, Apple cannot really afford a "Vista Blunder".
If this kid doesn't get jail time, it's just time to do away with all of our laws. What's the point?
The victimized family should bring a a civil suit and make sure they get a monetary judgement that docks his wages for years to come. If he gets away with it, we'll be hearing about him again.
This is more waste of Congressional salaries. Who ya gonna sue?? Like the person who stole your ID is going to have any assets. This is just another way to line the pockets of ambulance chasers. The lawyers will get YOUR money and you get SQUAT in return. This is a joke, just like most civil suits are. You may get a judgement, but you'll never see a penny. The only people making money here are lawyers.
Huh? The WTO is really just extension of the UN, which is undeniably anti-American and was established as such. The WTO is no different. It was formed purely to keep the U.S from becoming too powerful in international trade. It was designed to let the members of the EU perpetually gang-rape the U.S. Membership in the WTO certainly does not benefit U.S taxpayers.
As you said, if the U.S is not "in", there is no point to the WTO, since the U.S is the target.
Umm, socialism doesn't work at the huge corporate level either. All socialism does is merge low and middle class into a single peasant class for easier management by the ruling class. The "big players" are eliminated and replaced by the government. There are no consumers left because individualism and choice is gone...not to mention that they no longer have money. Say hello to Big Brother.
If you love that, there's a guy down in Venezuela who would love to have you.
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How is using bit torrent to obtain data that you would otherwise have to pay for any different from gathering up a thousand people, walking into Best Buy and walking out with all the music and software on the shelves?
This is not a rhetorical question.
I occasionally use bit torrent to download software and music. The way I rationalize it because:
1) I would not actually pay for that data if it were not available by any other means. I actually do purchase software that I would pay for.
2) I have already purchased that data at one point in the past and either lost it or am too lazy to rip all my CDs.
I don't believe either is a legitimate excuse for theft, but I do it anyway now and then. I've also ended up purchasing data that I have obtained through bit torrent.
Spoken like a true parent. Children are not citizens of a democracy, they are born as subjects of a dictatorship. They are the property and responsibility of parents until such time they are responsible for themselves. In the U.S, this is age eighteen. If your child resents you by that age, you have failed as a leader. If they still resent you by the time they are 21 or so, you have failed as a parent.
It doesn't take a "study" to realize that only imbeciles (or people new to the internet) actually click through internet ads. These are probably the same people that buy infomercial and home shopping channel garbage.
Wasted effort. Just think of the REAL things that could be accomplished with all the effort being put into this publicity stunt. We're in an election year with a president and congress at lowest rankings in U.S history, terrorists are using disabled persons as bombers, and these morons are giving free publicity to CoS. In the grand scheme of things CoS is a blip. Why are these people so intent on taking violating the rights of the CoS. The world is full of far more sinister people.
This goes to show you how stupid the myspace generation is.
You aren't forced to buy the phone. Period. Any argument beyond that is void.
You have at least 2 choices:
1) move
2) mobile broadband
"In the statement, the group explained their goal as safeguarding the right to freedom of speech."
And they plan to accomplish this by suppressing the free speech that the Church of Scientology is entitled to?? How enlightened they are and what an embarrassment to people who REALLY fight for freedom.
Just because you don't agree with something, you don't have a right to suppress it. I hear sound bites all the time of Democrat politicians spouting this , but their actions are consistently in conflict with this message. Both parties are equally guilty of groupthink.
Suppressing Scientology is no different the the Chinese government suppressing and killing Christians. My guess is that this is a dry run and that Christianity is next on the list. Being an independent agnostic, I personally think there is no general difference between Scientology, Christianity, or Islam. I think it amusing how unabashedly anxious they are to suppress and/or conquer each other.
The world has been throwing money into poor countries, mostly in Africa, for years. We have NOTHING to show for it. Money is not the answer. It's no different than giving a five-spot to a homeless drunk on the street. It will be used to buy another drink.
Instead of giving money to corrupt governments and organizations, we need to give money to businesses, charities, and other private organizations to help build infrastructure in these countries. We need also to help stabilize these countries so businesses will feel safe going into them and helping. If we cannot get stable leadership within, all all efforts are futile. We've been trying to band-aid Africa for longer than I've been alive and what's been tried hasn't worked. It's time to come up with something new...or forget it all and leave it alone.
Workers benefit by actually having jobs. THAT is the basis of a free-market economy. It's free as in beer...not free as in no-cost. There is no such thing as free, as in getting something for nothing.
Workers don't "deserve" anything more than a salary as compensation for their work. These jackasses got exactly what they deserved. I'm just a regular guy and I don't understand this "entitlement" ideology than is overtaking the minds of Americans. If you are a worker bee at a successful company, you benefit by continuing to have a job, and if you are lucky, occasional salary increases.
It sounds like these people didn't like the fact that they were salaried, but worked more than forty hours. I guarantee you, most, if not all, of these same people have worked less than 40 hours a week here and there. One of the perks of being salaried, is that your hours are generally more flexible and get get away with working fewer hours when the workload is light or heading out early now and then because you don't feel well, yet maintain the same pay.
The one thing to remember about all these executives is that they work 24/7 and make more sacrifices than you do. If they don't perform, they get axed in the blink of an eye. When they get the kinds of salaries they do, they are pretty much company property.
bloggers were journalists. Why don't they join a journalists union. Doesn't forming a union go against the whole idea that the "blogosphere" is a maverick movement raging against the machine? It's just like John McCain suggesting he is some sort of maverick, when he is really just a lifetime senator that has done nothing but make the occasional principled vote when he knows it will have no effect on the outcome.
Sorry, but this is an attempt at lining the pockets of the union organizers. There is nothing that a modern-day union provides to it members. Unions are oppressive, big-brother organizations that prevent individual achievement. You are beholden to their word and are forced to join if you want to work in a field where they have control. They played an important role in protecting workers back in the day, but are now corrupt dinosaurs that provide no measurable benefit to it's members or society.
Bloggers are a bunch of blowhards who couldn't make it in the industry. The often cite no sources and frankly spread BS all over the internet with no accountability. Bloggers are the biggest propagandists of all. Personally, I'm tired of hearing people cite some blogger as a legitimate source of information without doing their own non-blogger research. To see this in it full glory, take a look at digg.com. It is the biggest example of a bunch of wanna-be bloggers spreading their feces-ridden content out to the masses, who willingly take in every putrid morsel, then pronounce how anti-establishment they are. They are just tools of tools.
I think you're right on. This is Apple pushing consumer computing into a new phase. It's just like when they went USB-only and everyone was like "wtf??". MacBook Air is EXACTLY what I've been looking for...a true notebook computer. No ugly ports all over it and no useless optical drive. My MacBook has never been "plugged in" and has only ever been wireless. It's time to do away with CAT5 once and for all.
I don't use a laptop as a desktop replacement, I use it as a portable extension of my desktop and don't need all the other cruft.
Do we need to keep perpetuating this myth that Apple has some sort of music monoploy. They make a music player that plays whatever music format they choose to let it play. It is their prerogative to do so. There are plenty of devices out there that play WMA. The only way Apple would be violating anti-trust laws is if they were interfering with the production of devices from other companies and somehow keeping them from support WMA. Having a unique, proprietary product does not make a monopoly.
I'm so tired of privacy nuts. There is no such thing as privacy or anonymity...especially on the internet. If you don't want Google to know anything about you, don't use their service. No one is forcing you to. Likewise, don't do business with anyone using Double-click's service.
In fact, if you want real privacy, go live in the woods a cut yourself off from humanity. Of course, the animals will know where you eat, sleep, and shit. Sorry.
Does it really matter if we run out of IP4 address space? A majority of the internet is either a waste or a joke - myspace, facebook, etc...it's all pointless crap.
Why not reclaim all the wasted, unused existing space? Adding IPv6 seems akin to raising taxes instead of controlling spending. It's going to cost a shitload of money and Regular Joe won't see any benefit.
"bizarre claim that there was a link between the terrorist organisation al Qaeda and the Iraq government"
Pot calling kettle black? It's not a bizarre claim. It's a fact that there was a link between bin Laden and Saddam. They both acknowledged it. I'm tired of people being so anti-Bush that they ignore the words of our enemies and try to rewrite history. Jihadists wanted to kill us long before Bush was ever in the picture. They will never go away as long as the U.S exists...period. Maybe if Clinton had done something while terrorists were killing us and blowing us up, Bush wouldn't have been left in a shitty position. Clinton spent two terms with blinders on to what was going on in the rest of the world.
Bush's big mistake was trying to come up with all these secondary reasons to go into Iraq. He didn't need any of that. We were still in a state of war with Iraq and had 10 years of him shooting at our aircraft. We also had his violation of 14 U.N resolutions, which allowed for us to take him out. Just because the rest of the U.N didn't support us, didn't mean we didn't have to right to act. There was nothing illegal about our action. Bush got Congressional approval even though it wasn't required since we were still at war.
It fine to disagree with it, but there was nothing illegal or unjust about it. What was unjust is that daddy Bush didn't finish the job the first time and let that tyrant stay in power.
Hell, the only thing Bush has gotten right was taking Saddam out. The rest of his presidency has been as bad as Clinton's.
to buy music, so how could downloading music by college students actually affect sales? Before the internet, people would probably chip in for a tape or CD, then make copies for everyone.
Personally, I recorded music from the radio when I was too poor to buy music.
Everyone knows that most college students don't care about politics and don't bother voting. I'm not surprised that so many woudl be willing to give up their right to vote for a shiny penny. Someone with this attitude doesn't deserve to vote.
Personally, I think that if you are a college student and still on your parents' insurance, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. I would support increasing the voting age to at least 21, maybe higher. I might even support paying off college students to keep them from voting. They're usually mindless, zombie liberals anyway.
I'm so weary of lawsuits. Can we bring a lawsuit to stop all of these ridiculous lawsuits?
Elections are a STATE issue and there should be nothing compelling any given state to do what another states chooses to do. We have another activist here that would presume to tell everyone in the country what to do. Screw that. The states should counter-sue this jack-ass and bankrupt him. He is wasting the money of every single taxpayer in the U.S.
As far as I am concerned, a state should be able to draw straws as part of their elections if that's how they want to do it. This moron Ellis, is really just trying to subvert our election process and nationalize it. This is BAD. Our election system was designed specifically to avoid nationalized voting.
The argument that computerized voting hides votes from the public is absurd. We just had a local election and all of the ballots were hidden from my view in a locked ballot box. What's new?
Filter the "blogoshpere". The problem is that there are too many "bloggers" out there spewing complete and utter ignorance. Everything ends up devolving into the political gutter. It's not productive it does not represent proper, civilised discourse.
Presidents don't need to know anything more about science than your average joe. They APPOINT people with that knowledge when and where they are needed. Contrary to popular belief, presidents don't need to be subject matter experts on everything.
Vista's massive failure is all the more reason for Apple to make sure they release Leopard when it's ready, not to meet a dead or to take advantage of MS's misstep. With a much smaller market share, Apple cannot really afford a "Vista Blunder".
If this kid doesn't get jail time, it's just time to do away with all of our laws. What's the point?
The victimized family should bring a a civil suit and make sure they get a monetary judgement that docks his wages for years to come. If he gets away with it, we'll be hearing about him again.
This is more waste of Congressional salaries. Who ya gonna sue?? Like the person who stole your ID is going to have any assets. This is just another way to line the pockets of ambulance chasers. The lawyers will get YOUR money and you get SQUAT in return. This is a joke, just like most civil suits are. You may get a judgement, but you'll never see a penny. The only people making money here are lawyers.
Huh? The WTO is really just extension of the UN, which is undeniably anti-American and was established as such. The WTO is no different. It was formed purely to keep the U.S from becoming too powerful in international trade. It was designed to let the members of the EU perpetually gang-rape the U.S. Membership in the WTO certainly does not benefit U.S taxpayers.
As you said, if the U.S is not "in", there is no point to the WTO, since the U.S is the target.
Umm, socialism doesn't work at the huge corporate level either. All socialism does is merge low and middle class into a single peasant class for easier management by the ruling class. The "big players" are eliminated and replaced by the government. There are no consumers left because individualism and choice is gone...not to mention that they no longer have money. Say hello to Big Brother.
If you love that, there's a guy down in Venezuela who would love to have you.