Yeah, but if it's not patent holders it's someone else. The same thing goes on in the US -- we shift from one fixation to another as soon as someone cries "inequity!" Mind you, we never really solve the inequity...
Look, it sounds hippy-ish, but the fact is, you can take any issue and claim that the time, energy, and money being used for it belongs somewhere else. People said that in the 60s and 70s about the space program -- stop sending guys to the Moon and spend the money on Earth. Ok, Congress guts NASA and spends the money elsewhere. Result: poverty, disease, wiped out. Oh wait...
You know the EU is wasting its time and I know they are wasting their time, but they're sure this is the solution to everyone's problems, so they're going to plow straight into it, until they break through and find themselves over the edge of the cliff. When you make a large bureaucracy, that's what happens. They'll pick on the pharmas eventually, then they'll find someone else's pockets to rifle through. As long as politicians are allowed free reign, they'll spend their time looking like they are getting something done while lining their pockets.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding me, so let me be plain: my statement said there were "parallels", meaning that circumstances in 1936 and now bear more than a passing resemblance. At no point did I articulate my dislike, disgust, or disregard for the Chinese people in my original statement. I have high regard for their culture and history given its broad span and their accomplishments, especially in the sciences, but their culture entering the 20th Century became rather stilted and their move to Communism effectively put a wall up between China and the rest of the world. Though the wall has crumbled somewhat, the structures belying it have not, and if you believe that all is hunky-dory and peachy-keen behind the scenes, I defy you to ask a member of the Falun Gong how well treated and respected they are in their own country. Just because the acrid smoke of a million chimneys is not filling the air with the putrid stench of burned corpses doesn't mean that they aren't quietly eliminating opposition in their country.
As far as I know, agents of the United States Government have not told me what I have to think and how I should feel about things. I've come to these conclusions based on my own knowledge and research. Your responses to my posts hint at a reactionary stigma, too prevalent in our society, where discourse has been replaced by "is to... is not...". For the record I find Fox News pedantic and CNN self-important. I don't take news at face value. I don't like being told what to believe. If I want to know, I find out for myself. If my indoctrination includes freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and the right to form and keep my own opinion, then that's the kind of "indoctrination" we could use more of, rather the reactionary negation you favor.
Don't just assume per automatic that people in other countries want the same as you - to an American 'freedom' may be a sacred ideal, but to Chinese and to many others it is more important to fit in and be successful. Who can say who is 'right'? Or, to turn it around, don't you believe in the right of others to choose what they want, even if it is completely different from what you would have chosen?
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, everyone is free to do as they choose. I have a problem when they decide that the way they do things is the way I should do things, and I don't have any say in the matter. Now that might be fine for the Chinese people, but that's not fine for me.
And I'm not sure how you go from my relatively benign statement of the parallels involved to a diatribe against the Chinese way of life and why I'm against it. I am not free to form my own opinion based on the evidence before me? I'm not a China expert, but despite their foray into mass markets and manufacturing, it's still the same repressive government, that is more concerned with indoctrination than general social welfare. The Chinese people are free to make any choice they like... so long as it is approved by Beijing.
If the theory of evolution is correct, and we did not always exist in our current form, which means we have not been around to observe the universe through most of its life, how does it exist? Perhpas it was created spontaneously? Spooky!!!!!!
Quantum mechanics works at the level of the atom; I think it's safe to say that when I go to bed tonight, my house and all its furnishings are not suddenly going to cease to exist or even waver in their existence while I'm dreaming.
Look, to spare everyone the continued arguing over which statistical test to use at what probability level and the lack of proper control groups, let me say that MythBusters has never claimed to be a science show like Mr. Wizard. The guys are special effects designers for crying out loud! They are good at what they do, and while their scientific methodology and statistics may be a bit wonky at times, there are some experiments I've seen in peer-reviewed journals that aren't much better. Science education in the United States gets worse all the time, and if these guys can inject some life and curiosity into the current generation to get them interested in science, I applaud the effort.
Agreed. As much as it still has flaws, XP is a vast improvement over the Windows that came before. I think I've only ever seen the BSOD twice in five years, and I could have never said that about Win98 or Win2K. Perhaps it's getting bit long in the tooth now, but my next move is more likely to be to Ubuntu than to Vista.
The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this year that is set to give Hu another five-year term and open the way for him to choose eventual successors. In 2008, Beijing hosts the Olympic Games, when the party's economic achievements will be on display, along with its political and media controls.
The parallels to the Olympics of 1936 are kind of eerie -- then it was Hitler attempting to show off German might and industry, his neat and orderly Aryan society, and the superiority of the German race. Perhaps this is not as sinister, but it is certainly disturbing.
And while that may be true, this is the Guilty-Because-It's-On-The-News-And-They-Don't-Lie Age. Remember the whole Duke Lacrosse Incident? Gulity! String 'em up! Oh... wait... inconsistencies... hmmmmm... still... they look guilty... what?!? Not guilty? Knew it all along!
As soon as your name (or IP address) is spread across the news as being attached to a crime, even innocently, your are convicted in the Court of Under-informed Public Opinion. Look at the guy they originally accused of the '96 Atlanta Olympics bombing. His name was dragged through the media for weeks until they suddenly found out it was actual an anti-abortion freak who thought he was doing "good works" (Ok, this is a very vague outlay of the incident, but it was over 10 years ago and if you want specific infor, Google it). He had the hardest time getting his life back once he was fully acquitted. Don't kid yourself -- guilt and innocence are relative to your media profile now.
All we need is to build a botnet capable of hunting down and destroying other botnets... or perhaps converting them? Kind of the Internet equivalent of an evangelist...
But that doesn't matter. If I am running an ISP in a foreign country, I really don't fear the Canadian Government. I am not going out of my way to enforce decency standards that Canada has defined, even if they make sense to me. The cost is prohibitive, and given the number of countries on the planet, if everyone decided that ISPs had to enforce their rules or else, most ISPs would go belly up. Regulating the Internet is a waste of time and resources; not even ICANN can do it, and they handle the domain name structure. The United States thinks it runs the Internet, but the network is now global and is simply beyond our control.
Blocking objectionable content starts in the home. It can't be legislated by governments.
Perhaps Joy Smith does not understand, but the Internet is a global system, i.e. most of the content exists somewhere else than Canada, eh. She can try to regulate ISPs all she wants, but she can't actually touch most of them, and those that don't want to be bothered simply won't operate in Canada, or will flout the law and dare the Canadian government to come after them.
That's the bigger concern. I think most people would agree that getting served a subpoena and having 24 or less hours notice is pretty poor sportsmanship on the part of the RIAA, but what else is new? The hole they dig for themselves gets deeper all the time.
That's why I put the nationalities in quotes. After all, wouldn't it behoove the CEO of Ford to drive a Toyota and see what his competition was up to? Wouldn't it make sense for MD to give Linux (any distro) a spin on his laptop, to see if he can steal a march on his competitors? Even his having a Gateway on his desk wouldn't be that newsworthy -- he's a proactive CEO, and he won't simply take other people's word for what others products could do. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a MacBook somewhere in his house.
It was actually an obscure reference to commercials I remember as a child, for I believe, watches. The point being, it doesn't matter much what Michael Dell has on his person, let alone his laptop... I suspect he's better dressed and his house better furnished than your average geek... if he chooses to putter around with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro, it's not that much to get excited about... now if you'd seen Ubuntu on Bill Gates' laptop, that might be interesting...
Who cares what Michael Dell has on his laptop? How many people who work for "American" car companies drive "Japanese" cars? Just because his company has a deal with Bill Gates doesn't mean MD has to run Windows on his laptop, nor does it mean that what's on his laptop is going into production laptops. Talk about creating a stir over nothing...
I think they may be referring to instances where items/services can be paid for with an on-line "check". I know that at some of the sites where I pay bills, I do so by authorizing them to write a "check" against my checking account. Assuming a crook had your name, address, bank routing number, and checking account number, they could easily purchase goods as you, with money drawn directly from your account. The hitch of course being if there's any money in the account to begin with...
That way, when the kid gets it from his inept, irresponsible, moronic parents
As the saying goes, "you can't legislate stupidity." Parents are increasingly irresponsible and clueless when it comes to what their children say and do. We're having trouble with my 10-year-old stepson because he feels we're being unfair because we won't let him have games rated T-for-Teen, or have his own cell phone. He rails at us because we won't simply let him go where he wants, when he wants, and we won't continuously feed his bad habits. He constantly tells us how "other kids' parents don't do this," to which my standard reply is "I don't care what other parents do." And I don't, because I see how other parents let their children push them around, guilt them into buying them things, browbeat them when they don't get what they want. And these people cave in!
But again, that's what they decide to do. Parents will do stupid things and while you can make those things illegal, you can't make people not do them. Parents have to decide for themselves that buying these games for their children are a bad idea.
Then again, this is Small Claims court. I suspect most judges in said court would prefer to be in a higher court, and probably think of Small Claims as marking time. Also, since suing a spammer deals with the Internet, and the Internet is a global resource, perhaps your typical Small Claims judge feels that it's way outside the bounds of their court, as the amount you're asking for is not terribly high and is probably not going to hurt most spammers significantly.
The only way to get at a spammer in a meaningful fashion is to find others and sue as a group in civil court, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
Selected quotes on the topic from various sources:
"'Stolen' is such an ugly word... 'purchased' is much closer to the truth." - B. L. Zeebub, RNC Campaign Chief
"Shocked... I'm shocked to find out that we didn't think of it first!" - Lou Cipher, DNC Campaign Chief
Welcome to the world of 21st Century Politics-As-Usual.
Yeah, but if it's not patent holders it's someone else. The same thing goes on in the US -- we shift from one fixation to another as soon as someone cries "inequity!" Mind you, we never really solve the inequity...
Look, it sounds hippy-ish, but the fact is, you can take any issue and claim that the time, energy, and money being used for it belongs somewhere else. People said that in the 60s and 70s about the space program -- stop sending guys to the Moon and spend the money on Earth. Ok, Congress guts NASA and spends the money elsewhere. Result: poverty, disease, wiped out. Oh wait...
You know the EU is wasting its time and I know they are wasting their time, but they're sure this is the solution to everyone's problems, so they're going to plow straight into it, until they break through and find themselves over the edge of the cliff. When you make a large bureaucracy, that's what happens. They'll pick on the pharmas eventually, then they'll find someone else's pockets to rifle through. As long as politicians are allowed free reign, they'll spend their time looking like they are getting something done while lining their pockets.
Imagine if everybody dumped their focus on (name over-emphasized thing here) and applied the same amount of energy to disease, poverty, war, etc.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding me, so let me be plain: my statement said there were "parallels", meaning that circumstances in 1936 and now bear more than a passing resemblance. At no point did I articulate my dislike, disgust, or disregard for the Chinese people in my original statement. I have high regard for their culture and history given its broad span and their accomplishments, especially in the sciences, but their culture entering the 20th Century became rather stilted and their move to Communism effectively put a wall up between China and the rest of the world. Though the wall has crumbled somewhat, the structures belying it have not, and if you believe that all is hunky-dory and peachy-keen behind the scenes, I defy you to ask a member of the Falun Gong how well treated and respected they are in their own country. Just because the acrid smoke of a million chimneys is not filling the air with the putrid stench of burned corpses doesn't mean that they aren't quietly eliminating opposition in their country.
As far as I know, agents of the United States Government have not told me what I have to think and how I should feel about things. I've come to these conclusions based on my own knowledge and research. Your responses to my posts hint at a reactionary stigma, too prevalent in our society, where discourse has been replaced by "is to... is not...". For the record I find Fox News pedantic and CNN self-important. I don't take news at face value. I don't like being told what to believe. If I want to know, I find out for myself. If my indoctrination includes freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and the right to form and keep my own opinion, then that's the kind of "indoctrination" we could use more of, rather the reactionary negation you favor.
And somewhere on Earth, in an unknown fortress, a stranger from planet Jadar knows fear...
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, everyone is free to do as they choose. I have a problem when they decide that the way they do things is the way I should do things, and I don't have any say in the matter. Now that might be fine for the Chinese people, but that's not fine for me.
And I'm not sure how you go from my relatively benign statement of the parallels involved to a diatribe against the Chinese way of life and why I'm against it. I am not free to form my own opinion based on the evidence before me? I'm not a China expert, but despite their foray into mass markets and manufacturing, it's still the same repressive government, that is more concerned with indoctrination than general social welfare. The Chinese people are free to make any choice they like... so long as it is approved by Beijing.
If the theory of evolution is correct, and we did not always exist in our current form, which means we have not been around to observe the universe through most of its life, how does it exist? Perhpas it was created spontaneously? Spooky!!!!!!
Quantum mechanics works at the level of the atom; I think it's safe to say that when I go to bed tonight, my house and all its furnishings are not suddenly going to cease to exist or even waver in their existence while I'm dreaming.
Look, to spare everyone the continued arguing over which statistical test to use at what probability level and the lack of proper control groups, let me say that MythBusters has never claimed to be a science show like Mr. Wizard. The guys are special effects designers for crying out loud! They are good at what they do, and while their scientific methodology and statistics may be a bit wonky at times, there are some experiments I've seen in peer-reviewed journals that aren't much better. Science education in the United States gets worse all the time, and if these guys can inject some life and curiosity into the current generation to get them interested in science, I applaud the effort.
Agreed. As much as it still has flaws, XP is a vast improvement over the Windows that came before. I think I've only ever seen the BSOD twice in five years, and I could have never said that about Win98 or Win2K. Perhaps it's getting bit long in the tooth now, but my next move is more likely to be to Ubuntu than to Vista.
The parallels to the Olympics of 1936 are kind of eerie -- then it was Hitler attempting to show off German might and industry, his neat and orderly Aryan society, and the superiority of the German race. Perhaps this is not as sinister, but it is certainly disturbing.
And while that may be true, this is the Guilty-Because-It's-On-The-News-And-They-Don't-Lie Age. Remember the whole Duke Lacrosse Incident? Gulity! String 'em up! Oh... wait... inconsistencies... hmmmmm... still... they look guilty... what?!? Not guilty? Knew it all along!
As soon as your name (or IP address) is spread across the news as being attached to a crime, even innocently, your are convicted in the Court of Under-informed Public Opinion. Look at the guy they originally accused of the '96 Atlanta Olympics bombing. His name was dragged through the media for weeks until they suddenly found out it was actual an anti-abortion freak who thought he was doing "good works" (Ok, this is a very vague outlay of the incident, but it was over 10 years ago and if you want specific infor, Google it). He had the hardest time getting his life back once he was fully acquitted. Don't kid yourself -- guilt and innocence are relative to your media profile now.
Ok, I hate to reply to my own post... and far be it from me to insult the Gods of Karma... but "Insightful?" Now that's funny!
The other thought that came to mind was "Autobots, attack!", but that's just me...
All we need is to build a botnet capable of hunting down and destroying other botnets... or perhaps converting them? Kind of the Internet equivalent of an evangelist...
Never let CmdrTaco come up with headlines after a night of watching girl-girl porn... the images created are... disturbing...
But that doesn't matter. If I am running an ISP in a foreign country, I really don't fear the Canadian Government. I am not going out of my way to enforce decency standards that Canada has defined, even if they make sense to me. The cost is prohibitive, and given the number of countries on the planet, if everyone decided that ISPs had to enforce their rules or else, most ISPs would go belly up. Regulating the Internet is a waste of time and resources; not even ICANN can do it, and they handle the domain name structure. The United States thinks it runs the Internet, but the network is now global and is simply beyond our control.
Blocking objectionable content starts in the home. It can't be legislated by governments.
Perhaps Joy Smith does not understand, but the Internet is a global system, i.e. most of the content exists somewhere else than Canada, eh. She can try to regulate ISPs all she wants, but she can't actually touch most of them, and those that don't want to be bothered simply won't operate in Canada, or will flout the law and dare the Canadian government to come after them.
My question is: What kind of "research" was Pete Townshend doing? He seems to have used his own credit card and visited a site where this stuff was available.
That's the bigger concern. I think most people would agree that getting served a subpoena and having 24 or less hours notice is pretty poor sportsmanship on the part of the RIAA, but what else is new? The hole they dig for themselves gets deeper all the time.
That's why I put the nationalities in quotes. After all, wouldn't it behoove the CEO of Ford to drive a Toyota and see what his competition was up to? Wouldn't it make sense for MD to give Linux (any distro) a spin on his laptop, to see if he can steal a march on his competitors? Even his having a Gateway on his desk wouldn't be that newsworthy -- he's a proactive CEO, and he won't simply take other people's word for what others products could do. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a MacBook somewhere in his house.
It was actually an obscure reference to commercials I remember as a child, for I believe, watches. The point being, it doesn't matter much what Michael Dell has on his person, let alone his laptop... I suspect he's better dressed and his house better furnished than your average geek... if he chooses to putter around with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro, it's not that much to get excited about... now if you'd seen Ubuntu on Bill Gates' laptop, that might be interesting...
Watch by Cartier
Desk by Ethan Allen
Suit by Armani
Who cares what Michael Dell has on his laptop? How many people who work for "American" car companies drive "Japanese" cars? Just because his company has a deal with Bill Gates doesn't mean MD has to run Windows on his laptop, nor does it mean that what's on his laptop is going into production laptops. Talk about creating a stir over nothing...
I think they may be referring to instances where items/services can be paid for with an on-line "check". I know that at some of the sites where I pay bills, I do so by authorizing them to write a "check" against my checking account. Assuming a crook had your name, address, bank routing number, and checking account number, they could easily purchase goods as you, with money drawn directly from your account. The hitch of course being if there's any money in the account to begin with...
As the saying goes, "you can't legislate stupidity." Parents are increasingly irresponsible and clueless when it comes to what their children say and do. We're having trouble with my 10-year-old stepson because he feels we're being unfair because we won't let him have games rated T-for-Teen, or have his own cell phone. He rails at us because we won't simply let him go where he wants, when he wants, and we won't continuously feed his bad habits. He constantly tells us how "other kids' parents don't do this," to which my standard reply is "I don't care what other parents do." And I don't, because I see how other parents let their children push them around, guilt them into buying them things, browbeat them when they don't get what they want. And these people cave in!
But again, that's what they decide to do. Parents will do stupid things and while you can make those things illegal, you can't make people not do them. Parents have to decide for themselves that buying these games for their children are a bad idea.
Then again, this is Small Claims court. I suspect most judges in said court would prefer to be in a higher court, and probably think of Small Claims as marking time. Also, since suing a spammer deals with the Internet, and the Internet is a global resource, perhaps your typical Small Claims judge feels that it's way outside the bounds of their court, as the amount you're asking for is not terribly high and is probably not going to hurt most spammers significantly.
The only way to get at a spammer in a meaningful fashion is to find others and sue as a group in civil court, IMHO.