All attempts at flying sucked until the Wright brothers got it right too, thankfully they didn't give up because someone told them everyone elses attempt before sucked, or because someone wrote it was impossible. The same could be said with more modern inventions like the Wii, which worked where previous attempts at motion control failed.
I'm not exactly sure what you're on about in your latter paragraph, why would I want to refer to a sci-fi author whose been deceased for over 9 years for information on modern AI research and development?
It's hard to know what's happening without context of seeing it live or in video, but there are a number of other possibilities too- large scale projection equipment as being used here may have more latency than your typical smaller home displays, but also we don't know how fast the guys arms were moving, if it's latency it could simply be on such a low order that a camera can catch it in a situation like that but a human isn't going to notice or care when using it in person.
It's a bit early to be making assumptions based on a single image that lacks any real context though.
Natal, or 'Kinect' is different though, unfortunately not many people seem to have the imagination capable of seeing why so far however and just dismiss it as a clone of the Wii's control system.
The fundamental difference with Kinect is it's controllerless nature. A lot of people seem to see this as some mutually exclusive thing, but that's simply not the case. There's no reason Kinect can't be used with existing control systems- this may for example mean observing the player as they play an FPS and allowing them to duck slightly to the left or right to avoid incoming projectiles, this may mean using the classic guitar hero guitar controllers whilst rocking out, or using the Lips microphones whilst dancing.
Not all of this is exactly groundbreaking but it's enough to add an extra layer of imersiveness to existing games that we just haven't had up until now- Wii games haven't been immersive because they've for the most party been outright crap, but where they haven't, simply haven't had the graphics capabilities to really draw you into the game world. Kinect means that the device can support even the existing hardcore crowd- they didn't like the Wii, but this system gives the option of going the full distance with brand new types of games on the Wii, or simply augmenting existing game types with features that can draw the player in a little more.
Move really is just a Wii clone, but even that has it's merits- it seems to be far more flexible and precise than the Wii, but importantly it's on a console that can simply do more than the Wii and which has a proven track record of developers actually making great games, whilst the Wii's game lineup still to this day leaves a lot to be desired with very little worth mentioning outside a few of Nintendo's first party titles. So even Sony's offering despite being much more a clone of the Wii's setup shows an awful lot of promise.
So all in all, I think these releases do in fact matter, which is not to say that I wouldn't like to see a new console iteration too, but I suspect people like you can me are in a minority- the 360/PS3 didn't really start selling until they came in at below £250, and I don't think that wave of purchases is over yet, I think people like us are probably a minority in being willing to splash £350 - £500 out on a new system just yet, and Microsoft and Sony having spent so much money investing in trying to outdo the other with their hardware this time round themselves probably want to soak up some profits before they start churning out that kind of system again. Besides, the PS3 and 360 still wow me with their graphical abilities to this day, and PCs still aren't really churning out anything more stunning despite them now being more powerful so there's not really a competition aspect for Sony and Microsoft there either.
On the upside, at least Move and Kinect will be well tuned and lessons will have been learnt by Microsoft, Sony, and 3rd party developers alike in time for them to be fully integrated components of the next gen consoles, the sort of thing that will then come as standard.
It's not necessarily Microsoft's software that's the problem, it's the fact that many people have used undocumented APIs over the years but that Microsoft is still decent enough to support them. The Windows ecosystem is so massive that that excuse just doesn't hold, even if Microsoft builds software sensibly it doesn't mean everyone else has.
Seeing as Linux rarely seems to work out the box with a lot of hardware I've tried it with anyway, it's hardly a good example.
I've never found it works right with many things like different wifi cards, graphics cards, and TV tuners over the years without a massive amount of fiddling, although I've not had any real hardware problems using it in a server environment with no GUI, just a standard non-wireless network card and such I suppose.
Personally I'd be happier with Linux if it just worked on the desktop at all without a need for fiddling at all, let alone before dealing with patches.
Still as I said in my original post, Microsoft's marketshare is a major factor in the differences between Linux and Windows, but there are other factors- Linux networks tend to be administered by much more skilled professionals who can shrug off problems a lot of Windows users and admins can't. Further, people pay for Windows so have higher expectations in terms of quality, if Linux fails to work people might whine in the forums, but they know they'd have no legal recourse, whilst if Microsoft brought down a bunch of important servers across the world with a patch it could find itself deep in legal trouble. Patching for Linux still doesn't really compare to patching for Windows.
I use Google but don't mind Bing's background images, I hated Google's however, why?
Because Google's implementation looked horrendous, it made some text on their page unreadable. It was just outright crap. In contrast, Bing designs it's site with the images in mind so that text remains readable and the page doesn't look tacky.
So Bing may well have images, but at least on Bing it works and looks fine, on Google is was just atrocious, like some 6 year old kid from the AOL days had built the page.
Sure some companies don't give a fuck about incompatability caused by updates and that sort of thing, however MS very much does.
Further, as they have such a large share of the desktop and server market that depends on working it would be irresponsible of them to throw out a patch in a mere 5 days that can't have been fully tested with countless configurations and ended up causing more harm to customers machines than if they'd just not bothered to patch at all.
You can't reasonably build and test a patch that has minimal effect on your customer base in 5 days when your customer base is as large and varied as Microsoft's.
"And are you saying that claims of anxiety and panic attacks can be conclusively proven or disproven? I'm pretty sure that, given enough incentive, you or I could display the appropriate symptoms, at least enough to fool some doctors."
Again, I think the issue is you're confusing the situation- people can fake these symptons well enough to get past their local doctor if all they want is a sick note for a few weeks off work because their local doctor is going to be quite apathetic in this situation, there's no downside to the doctor to just accepting what they say.
In contrast, for a full blown extradition battle against two large governments the doctors are going to have to look a hell of a lot harder and that's the point at which faking it is no longer going to cut it. We're simply not talking about an apathetic doctor here, but someone whose examinations are going to face the scrutiny of other experts in the courts, any professional doctor who specialises in this sort of thing is going to see right through someone faking it, and any doctor signing someone off with this in the face of such an event is going to be pretty careful about what they diagnose. Again, the fact that the government hasn't even bothered to try and dispute his mental health and is instead focussing on other points is pretty telling.
"First of all, America is just one of many (if not all) nations which are addicted to oil. Singling out the US and americans for this is preposterous."
No other nation comes close to the US in oil consumption. Regarding the Wikipedia list, and the EU being second, remember that the EU has 535 million people in it and an economy around 15% larger than the US'. The US has a population of 300 million. In other words, the whole of the EU uses only just over 75% of the oil the US does, but has a far larger population and still manages to maintain a far larger economy. In other words, there's no real valid excuse for the US' massive oil consumption.
"Secondly, and more importantly, as much as we all want (or at least, need) oil, no one forced BP to cut corners and be sloppy."
No one raise their voice about it either, because it meant they could keep their oil cheap. Just as no one raised a concern about any of the other oil companies who equally cut corners. BP being the ones unfortunate enough that it happened to them, doesn't mean the other oil companies act any differently whatsoever.
"And I mean BP specifically. They have a far worse record than other companies."
One single incident is your source to prove they have a far worse record than other companies? That makes no sense whatsoever.
I guess the inconvenient truth that Exxon mobile itself is currently also responsible for a major underwater oil leak passed many people by, because Africa just can't make the kind of world media noise that Africa can:
Do you still think the US is just like every other country in terms of oil addiction? Do you still think BP is somehow unique in it's spill? Feel free to search on the subject a little more to confirm the figures if you don't trust my links.
It's not a reasonable suspicion because it's utterly stupid in the context.
We're talking about a guy who has been fighting against the combined might of the British and US government to avoid extradition. If he thinks McKinnon paid off a doctor for the diagnosis he got does he really believe someone in the British or US government involved in checking whether he's fit to prosecute might have, you know, checked his mental health out themselves? They might have checked the validity of the doctor's statement?
We're not talking about someone pulling a sicky to get a day off work here, faking illness in the face of extradition is quite different.
Don't you think rather than suffer countless embarassments over their persistence to continue with this the British government might have you know, come out and simply said either "He refused our diagnosis so we can't confirm he really has this problem", or "Our doctor found nothing wrong with him"? Contrary to the GGP's assertion, these things aren't impossible to prove or disprove at all.
The only thing the GPP demonstrated is that he's ignorant but despite his ignorance feels he's qualified to state something as fact regardless of how little he clearly knows about the subject.
"It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss"."
The question really needs to be why the executives cut corners and ignored signs, were they unique in the oil industry in doing this? were they just unfortunate that they were the ones it came back to bite? Is this a bigger problem across the oil industry in general that has gone ignored because of the American government and American people's lust for cheap oil?
I suspect that's very much the case. I suspect no amount of punishment will matter in the long run if the underlying problem isn't resolved, because some time down the road, that lust for cheap oil will have chiselled away at industry standards and government oversight enough to allow this sort of accident to be repeated yet again. Sure punishment will make it okay for a few years as the industry is much more closely watched, and they all have to play the good little oil company for a while, but it wont last, the cutting corners to keep profits high and cost of oil low will come back to bite again.
Hell, Iraq was pretty blatantly about oil contracts at the end of the day, and look how many people including American soldiers and contractors suffered over that. It's not like we even have to go all the way back to the Valdez disaster to find the last great example of how the lust for cheap oil in the US causes massive problems.
Don't get me wrong, the US is hardly unique in this respect, but it is almost certainly the worst offender.
Yeah good idea, why not seize the assets of a foreign oil company, I'm sure that will go down well.
Hey, weren't you Americans crying not so long ago when Venezuela did just that to your oil company's assets over there over the past couple of years?
What about your precious Halliburton for their role in the disaster? or do they get away with it because they're an American company? How would you feel if Europe seized the assets of the likes of Halliburton for their crimes in Iraq? Or the likes of Microsoft and Apple for their market abuse? You'd probably be the first one complaining.
Seriously, the hypocrisy from Americans over the BP oil disaster is just disgusting.
This happened because you're an oil mad nation, and you want oil to remain unsustainably cheap on your shores. If you really want a solution look more towards getting yourself off your fucking national oil addiction, or at very least quit with the offshore drilling and accept the inevitable price hike that will cause.
I'm angry at BP too, but if you think BP is the only entity to be angry at you're mistaken- BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and just as importantly, the American public all equally deserve blame for this incident.
Why are so many Americans only concerned about the tragic effects your oil hunger can have when it effects you shores? What about the thousands of people who died for America's little oil adventure into Iraq and Halliburton's activities in Iraq that even put your own citizens needlessly in danger for the sake of keeping your oil cheap? Does it not matter when it happens elsewhere?
The fact is, the gulf oil spill happened too close to home, and Americans don't like to admit they collectively caused this, trying to deflect the blame entirely onto BP for a problem you caused is laughable.
"And I have this terrible dread the real number who would prefer to see Islam exported by the sword is a lot closer to 50% than 1%."
That's because you're an ignorant paranoid kook, whose probably never even ventured more than a short distance away from his home town judging by the level of ignorance of the world shown.
Try travelling the world a bit, try going to some of these muslim countries, you'll soon find that there's hundreds of millions of them who are even more reasonable than you are.
You really believe that say, the US was more justified in causing the death of thousands of Iraqis than those Iraqis were killing US soldiers defending their country?
Look how it ended, the US was only able to finally cut back it's troop deployments in Iraq, when the US finally clued into the fact that the solution was to court moderate muslims to help fix their country- sure there are still attacks now, but compare Iraq now to Iraq a few years ago.
Murdering civilians doesn't work, it never has, and it never will. The only way of winning is to win the support of the general population against extremist elements, this wont work if the extremist elements are less morally corrupt than you are though and are in fact the reasonable ones.
I don't know what this coming war you're on about is, a skirmish with Iran perhaps but that's about it. You'd be better off looking to your South where Chavez is talking up the idea of building a south-south anti-Western alliance with South American and South African nations, but unfortunately I suppose that doesn't slot well into your ignorant world view, because it involves Christian, not muslim nations.
For what it's worth, here in the UK we had no problem with religious extremists either until we joined America's war, and really the only reason America had problems (i.e. 9/11) was because of it's meddling overseas in muslim nations. So much for them being interested in expansionism, they didn't actually harass Western shores until long after they got fed up of Western nations meddling on theirs. We did and still do however have a problem with Catholic extremists in the UK though- you might have heard of them, the IRA, but again, I suppose the idea of non-muslim extremists being a bigger, longer running problem hurts your world view. Those were the same Catholic extremists that your America gave refuge too and somewhat supported in their terrorist activities too by the way, all for the sake of winning votes from your Irish population.
You know, I don't disagree with your comments about political correctness often being taken too far, I agree that perhaps military action is the only solution in nations that are too far gone, and the moderates have too small amount of power to do anything as in Iran, but the rest of your viewpoint is simply based on ignorance, a lack of understanding about the world, and perhaps a bit of patriotism that blinds you to the fact that the religious majority in your nation are equally dangerous, and that your nation itself has supported extremism in Islam, Christianity and so forth over the years too.
You really want to know the best way to deal with Islam if you're still scared shitless of it despite everything I've said? Look to alternative energy, and stop consuming their oil, and watch as their oil based economies plummet such that they can't even afford to arm themselves anymore even if they wanted to. That trick will solve the old Venezuela problem for you too whilst you're at it, sorry if it doesn't involve the heavy metal and pretty explosions you were hoping for though.
"The Turks don't want anyone to talk, write or even think about Armenians or Kurds. And they don't care for Jews all that much either."
That's simply not true, the Turkish people very much case for the jews, which is precisely why Turkey has been Israel's closest muslim ally, doing combat training and war games together etc.
The problem is that an Islamic party has taken political control, and yes, those in this party, and those supporting it generally do hate the jews and just about everyone who isn't muslim. That's the fundamental problem- it's not all Turks, just a certain subset, and even those who did vote for the Islamic party did not necessarily do so because they support say an anti-Jewish stance- these people are in a minority, the trouble is, it's a minority that's been granted power by a small majority.
"I agree about the 3G though. Cell phone networks have been slow to realize that they need to develop a high speed high bandwidth data only network and deploy it everywhere."
When the land line carriers have been refusing to pay for this for the last decade despite already having the resources and infrastructure to feed the cable down and connect it together, what makes you think mobile carriers are capable of doing it?
However, I searched for some of the terms and it seems you oddly picked the article on Tying, which is not what we were talking about here.
I'm not sure why you had to resort to an unrelated article, I can only assume it was another attempt at using a straw man to divert from the fact you are wrong, but oh well.
That's exactly the same thing, because the issue is precisely that - their method of controlling that interaction, and that is in the case of Warden, and in the case of trying to have Glider deemed illegal by intruding into your system's processes and scanning to see what is running on your system.
There is no problem with controlling your access to the servers at their end, by filtering out or manipulating data sent to/from your system to their server at their server, the issue is their manipulation of software on your PC including software that isn't even related to WoW.
You simply can't separate the two as you've attempted to do, because Blizzard are attempting to do precisely what I said, in an attempt to do what you said- control your interaction with the servers.
The issue is that terms of access to the server and terms of use of the software are two very different things.
If Blizzard state you can't do what you want with the software on your local machine then that's stupid, if Blizzard state you can't access the server if you have manipulated the software on your local machine that's fine.
The issue is about how they go enforcing the latter, and if it means infringing your rights to do as you will on your local machine then that's where the problem lies with the EULA.
Regarding enforcement of EULAs, see this case as evidence that your assertion that no EULA has ever been declared invalid, and only specific clauses have is simply wrong:
I'm not sure you took my point from reading my post. My point was that historically if you've bought something rather than rented or licensed it, you had a right to do as you wanted with it, and this is what I was referring to be precedent, whilst I agree no precedent has been set specifically for software licenses, precedent has been set for "things in general" - i.e. your toaster, your food, etc. there is no restriction on what you do with them. My point was that I'm not sure there's good reason that software should really be special in this respect and the attempt to make special cases for things like software by setting new precedents for it that run counter to the precedent of pretty much everything else you might buy is the fundamental problem I see here. I'd rather no special precedent was set for software and that it was just simply left alone such that if you bought it it was yours to do with as you wish under existing law - in other words, I'd rather EULAs that state what you can and can't do with a product you've bought are ruled as non-enforcable.
"amazon came way after and got a better agreement. play.com started the music business in 2008, before that was selling drm laden content (dvd)"
So why didn't Apple renegotiate theres? It's not like they couldn't have. DVDs are a standard and not limited to a single manufacturer so I'm not sure why you bring them up other than as a straw man.
"and that is ignoring, of curse, that itunes is drm free too."
Yes, but if you'd read my post, you'd have seen the relevance of that.
"nonsense, how does that differ from the app store?"
Because Apple only let users of their products use the app store, in contrast, Debian can install apps from any source. The GPL is incompatible with the app store, Apple removes apps using GPL'd code so your assertion that you can use app store apps anywhere else is simply wrong.
"same argument as before: you can load movie to the ipad from everywhere, and you can load itunes movies to every devices where the manufacturer had provided the required conversion program. it's not like the explorer situation at all: itunes is not forcing you to buy ipad and apple is not preventing itunes file to be available to other manufacturers"
You didn't have to use Internet Explorer, you could use Netscape, you didn't have to use IE on Windows, you could use it on the Mac. Your arguments make no sense in the context of this discussion because they're entirely irrelevant.
"ipad requires itunes but what crime would that be? reverse leveraging? using a item that has no market share at all to increase the install base of something that already is on a lot of apple fanboy (the ipad prime target)?"
The crime is using an existing monpoly, i.e. iTunes to push into a different market. In this case, Apple are using their iTunes monopoly, which still contains proprietary DRM'd content (although not music now at least) to push into the tablet space. The mechanism is vendor lock-in- you have to go through iTunes to use the device.
"this is the best of all: what is an 'illegal monopoly'?"
A monopoly which abuses it's monopoly status to gain unfair advantage in the marketplace.
It seems a lot of your problems with this discussion is that you don't understand what warrants an illegal monopoly, so I suggest you go read up on it before trying to discuss further as opposed to trying to discuss without actually understanding what you're discussing.
The problem is that it's how the law has worked historically for just about everything else. What we're seeing in the past decade or so is an attempt to change the precedent for everything else in the case of software or digital media, as if software and digital media is something special that needs treating differently to pretty much everything else on the planet that someone might purchase to own.
But the key point is this, until there's a ruling that says otherwise, historical precedent must apply, and so I believe the GP is correct, for now, because that's how every other service provider must work.
If Blizzard wants it this way the solution is really quite simple for them- start renting out the software, rather than putting it in shops as a purchase to own product. The issue is they're scared consumers will reject that approach, but it's tough shit, they really just can't have it both ways- sell to own, then tell you how you can use it, because that causes fundamental problems with implications far outside of WoW. If your toaster plug goes, can you change the fuse in the plug yourself? or can you now only use a certified replacement service from the manufacturer that costs far far too much because when you opened the box you accepted the EULA that was strapped across it?
"This is what every person playing WoW has agreed to by contract with Blizzard."
No, they agreed to it via EULA, there's no solid decision that EULAs represent valid contracts. Even then, does it explicitly state those things I mentioned in the EULA? Even if valid, can a user really give up fundamental human right of the right to privacy via a EULA simply by clicking a button when it's non-obvious that WoW would ever perform such intrusive actions? If you feel the answer is yes, do you also agree that a user should have to live with a piece of malware indefinitely if they accidently agree to install it because they weren't paying attention if the EULA of said malware states is the case?
The situation is far from as clear cut as you seem to think.
"MDY started the lawsuit, Blizzard finished it."
As a defensive measure against Blizzard's assertion that they were infringing Blizzard's copyright and intended to sue them over it anyway you mean?
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All attempts at flying sucked until the Wright brothers got it right too, thankfully they didn't give up because someone told them everyone elses attempt before sucked, or because someone wrote it was impossible. The same could be said with more modern inventions like the Wii, which worked where previous attempts at motion control failed.
I'm not exactly sure what you're on about in your latter paragraph, why would I want to refer to a sci-fi author whose been deceased for over 9 years for information on modern AI research and development?
It's hard to know what's happening without context of seeing it live or in video, but there are a number of other possibilities too- large scale projection equipment as being used here may have more latency than your typical smaller home displays, but also we don't know how fast the guys arms were moving, if it's latency it could simply be on such a low order that a camera can catch it in a situation like that but a human isn't going to notice or care when using it in person.
It's a bit early to be making assumptions based on a single image that lacks any real context though.
Natal, or 'Kinect' is different though, unfortunately not many people seem to have the imagination capable of seeing why so far however and just dismiss it as a clone of the Wii's control system.
The fundamental difference with Kinect is it's controllerless nature. A lot of people seem to see this as some mutually exclusive thing, but that's simply not the case. There's no reason Kinect can't be used with existing control systems- this may for example mean observing the player as they play an FPS and allowing them to duck slightly to the left or right to avoid incoming projectiles, this may mean using the classic guitar hero guitar controllers whilst rocking out, or using the Lips microphones whilst dancing.
Not all of this is exactly groundbreaking but it's enough to add an extra layer of imersiveness to existing games that we just haven't had up until now- Wii games haven't been immersive because they've for the most party been outright crap, but where they haven't, simply haven't had the graphics capabilities to really draw you into the game world. Kinect means that the device can support even the existing hardcore crowd- they didn't like the Wii, but this system gives the option of going the full distance with brand new types of games on the Wii, or simply augmenting existing game types with features that can draw the player in a little more.
Move really is just a Wii clone, but even that has it's merits- it seems to be far more flexible and precise than the Wii, but importantly it's on a console that can simply do more than the Wii and which has a proven track record of developers actually making great games, whilst the Wii's game lineup still to this day leaves a lot to be desired with very little worth mentioning outside a few of Nintendo's first party titles. So even Sony's offering despite being much more a clone of the Wii's setup shows an awful lot of promise.
So all in all, I think these releases do in fact matter, which is not to say that I wouldn't like to see a new console iteration too, but I suspect people like you can me are in a minority- the 360/PS3 didn't really start selling until they came in at below £250, and I don't think that wave of purchases is over yet, I think people like us are probably a minority in being willing to splash £350 - £500 out on a new system just yet, and Microsoft and Sony having spent so much money investing in trying to outdo the other with their hardware this time round themselves probably want to soak up some profits before they start churning out that kind of system again. Besides, the PS3 and 360 still wow me with their graphical abilities to this day, and PCs still aren't really churning out anything more stunning despite them now being more powerful so there's not really a competition aspect for Sony and Microsoft there either.
On the upside, at least Move and Kinect will be well tuned and lessons will have been learnt by Microsoft, Sony, and 3rd party developers alike in time for them to be fully integrated components of the next gen consoles, the sort of thing that will then come as standard.
It's not necessarily Microsoft's software that's the problem, it's the fact that many people have used undocumented APIs over the years but that Microsoft is still decent enough to support them. The Windows ecosystem is so massive that that excuse just doesn't hold, even if Microsoft builds software sensibly it doesn't mean everyone else has.
Yeah, until you were 4.
If you're going to try that one it's generally not the brightest idea to have your biography linked on every single post.
Moving at that age leaves you about as British as McDonalds.
Seeing as Linux rarely seems to work out the box with a lot of hardware I've tried it with anyway, it's hardly a good example.
I've never found it works right with many things like different wifi cards, graphics cards, and TV tuners over the years without a massive amount of fiddling, although I've not had any real hardware problems using it in a server environment with no GUI, just a standard non-wireless network card and such I suppose.
Personally I'd be happier with Linux if it just worked on the desktop at all without a need for fiddling at all, let alone before dealing with patches.
Still as I said in my original post, Microsoft's marketshare is a major factor in the differences between Linux and Windows, but there are other factors- Linux networks tend to be administered by much more skilled professionals who can shrug off problems a lot of Windows users and admins can't. Further, people pay for Windows so have higher expectations in terms of quality, if Linux fails to work people might whine in the forums, but they know they'd have no legal recourse, whilst if Microsoft brought down a bunch of important servers across the world with a patch it could find itself deep in legal trouble. Patching for Linux still doesn't really compare to patching for Windows.
I use Google but don't mind Bing's background images, I hated Google's however, why?
Because Google's implementation looked horrendous, it made some text on their page unreadable. It was just outright crap. In contrast, Bing designs it's site with the images in mind so that text remains readable and the page doesn't look tacky.
So Bing may well have images, but at least on Bing it works and looks fine, on Google is was just atrocious, like some 6 year old kid from the AOL days had built the page.
That depends on the company.
Sure some companies don't give a fuck about incompatability caused by updates and that sort of thing, however MS very much does.
Further, as they have such a large share of the desktop and server market that depends on working it would be irresponsible of them to throw out a patch in a mere 5 days that can't have been fully tested with countless configurations and ended up causing more harm to customers machines than if they'd just not bothered to patch at all.
You can't reasonably build and test a patch that has minimal effect on your customer base in 5 days when your customer base is as large and varied as Microsoft's.
Can I re-download all my old iTunes music for free in a DRM free format now then?
"And are you saying that claims of anxiety and panic attacks can be conclusively proven or disproven? I'm pretty sure that, given enough incentive, you or I could display the appropriate symptoms, at least enough to fool some doctors."
Again, I think the issue is you're confusing the situation- people can fake these symptons well enough to get past their local doctor if all they want is a sick note for a few weeks off work because their local doctor is going to be quite apathetic in this situation, there's no downside to the doctor to just accepting what they say.
In contrast, for a full blown extradition battle against two large governments the doctors are going to have to look a hell of a lot harder and that's the point at which faking it is no longer going to cut it. We're simply not talking about an apathetic doctor here, but someone whose examinations are going to face the scrutiny of other experts in the courts, any professional doctor who specialises in this sort of thing is going to see right through someone faking it, and any doctor signing someone off with this in the face of such an event is going to be pretty careful about what they diagnose. Again, the fact that the government hasn't even bothered to try and dispute his mental health and is instead focussing on other points is pretty telling.
"First of all, America is just one of many (if not all) nations which are addicted to oil. Singling out the US and americans for this is preposterous."
Really?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption
No other nation comes close to the US in oil consumption. Regarding the Wikipedia list, and the EU being second, remember that the EU has 535 million people in it and an economy around 15% larger than the US'. The US has a population of 300 million. In other words, the whole of the EU uses only just over 75% of the oil the US does, but has a far larger population and still manages to maintain a far larger economy. In other words, there's no real valid excuse for the US' massive oil consumption.
"Secondly, and more importantly, as much as we all want (or at least, need) oil, no one forced BP to cut corners and be sloppy."
No one raise their voice about it either, because it meant they could keep their oil cheap. Just as no one raised a concern about any of the other oil companies who equally cut corners. BP being the ones unfortunate enough that it happened to them, doesn't mean the other oil companies act any differently whatsoever.
"And I mean BP specifically. They have a far worse record than other companies."
One single incident is your source to prove they have a far worse record than other companies? That makes no sense whatsoever.
I guess the inconvenient truth that Exxon mobile itself is currently also responsible for a major underwater oil leak passed many people by, because Africa just can't make the kind of world media noise that Africa can:
http://saharareporters.com/real-news/sr-headlines/6244-exxonmobil-oil-spill-in-niger-delta-exposes-nigerians-to-poisoned-fish.html
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/nigerian-oil-spills-make-exxon-valdez-look-like-drop-in-the-bucket/19483921
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05iht-edejikeme.html
Do you still think the US is just like every other country in terms of oil addiction? Do you still think BP is somehow unique in it's spill? Feel free to search on the subject a little more to confirm the figures if you don't trust my links.
Fair point, on second thoughts, yeah, you can have BP :)
It's not a reasonable suspicion because it's utterly stupid in the context.
We're talking about a guy who has been fighting against the combined might of the British and US government to avoid extradition. If he thinks McKinnon paid off a doctor for the diagnosis he got does he really believe someone in the British or US government involved in checking whether he's fit to prosecute might have, you know, checked his mental health out themselves? They might have checked the validity of the doctor's statement?
We're not talking about someone pulling a sicky to get a day off work here, faking illness in the face of extradition is quite different.
Don't you think rather than suffer countless embarassments over their persistence to continue with this the British government might have you know, come out and simply said either "He refused our diagnosis so we can't confirm he really has this problem", or "Our doctor found nothing wrong with him"? Contrary to the GGP's assertion, these things aren't impossible to prove or disprove at all.
The only thing the GPP demonstrated is that he's ignorant but despite his ignorance feels he's qualified to state something as fact regardless of how little he clearly knows about the subject.
"It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss"."
The question really needs to be why the executives cut corners and ignored signs, were they unique in the oil industry in doing this? were they just unfortunate that they were the ones it came back to bite? Is this a bigger problem across the oil industry in general that has gone ignored because of the American government and American people's lust for cheap oil?
I suspect that's very much the case. I suspect no amount of punishment will matter in the long run if the underlying problem isn't resolved, because some time down the road, that lust for cheap oil will have chiselled away at industry standards and government oversight enough to allow this sort of accident to be repeated yet again. Sure punishment will make it okay for a few years as the industry is much more closely watched, and they all have to play the good little oil company for a while, but it wont last, the cutting corners to keep profits high and cost of oil low will come back to bite again.
Hell, Iraq was pretty blatantly about oil contracts at the end of the day, and look how many people including American soldiers and contractors suffered over that. It's not like we even have to go all the way back to the Valdez disaster to find the last great example of how the lust for cheap oil in the US causes massive problems.
Don't get me wrong, the US is hardly unique in this respect, but it is almost certainly the worst offender.
Yeah good idea, why not seize the assets of a foreign oil company, I'm sure that will go down well.
Hey, weren't you Americans crying not so long ago when Venezuela did just that to your oil company's assets over there over the past couple of years?
What about your precious Halliburton for their role in the disaster? or do they get away with it because they're an American company? How would you feel if Europe seized the assets of the likes of Halliburton for their crimes in Iraq? Or the likes of Microsoft and Apple for their market abuse? You'd probably be the first one complaining.
Seriously, the hypocrisy from Americans over the BP oil disaster is just disgusting.
This happened because you're an oil mad nation, and you want oil to remain unsustainably cheap on your shores. If you really want a solution look more towards getting yourself off your fucking national oil addiction, or at very least quit with the offshore drilling and accept the inevitable price hike that will cause.
I'm angry at BP too, but if you think BP is the only entity to be angry at you're mistaken- BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and just as importantly, the American public all equally deserve blame for this incident.
Why are so many Americans only concerned about the tragic effects your oil hunger can have when it effects you shores? What about the thousands of people who died for America's little oil adventure into Iraq and Halliburton's activities in Iraq that even put your own citizens needlessly in danger for the sake of keeping your oil cheap? Does it not matter when it happens elsewhere?
The fact is, the gulf oil spill happened too close to home, and Americans don't like to admit they collectively caused this, trying to deflect the blame entirely onto BP for a problem you caused is laughable.
"And I have this terrible dread the real number who would prefer to see Islam exported by the sword is a lot closer to 50% than 1%."
That's because you're an ignorant paranoid kook, whose probably never even ventured more than a short distance away from his home town judging by the level of ignorance of the world shown.
Try travelling the world a bit, try going to some of these muslim countries, you'll soon find that there's hundreds of millions of them who are even more reasonable than you are.
You really believe that say, the US was more justified in causing the death of thousands of Iraqis than those Iraqis were killing US soldiers defending their country?
Look how it ended, the US was only able to finally cut back it's troop deployments in Iraq, when the US finally clued into the fact that the solution was to court moderate muslims to help fix their country- sure there are still attacks now, but compare Iraq now to Iraq a few years ago.
Murdering civilians doesn't work, it never has, and it never will. The only way of winning is to win the support of the general population against extremist elements, this wont work if the extremist elements are less morally corrupt than you are though and are in fact the reasonable ones.
I don't know what this coming war you're on about is, a skirmish with Iran perhaps but that's about it. You'd be better off looking to your South where Chavez is talking up the idea of building a south-south anti-Western alliance with South American and South African nations, but unfortunately I suppose that doesn't slot well into your ignorant world view, because it involves Christian, not muslim nations.
For what it's worth, here in the UK we had no problem with religious extremists either until we joined America's war, and really the only reason America had problems (i.e. 9/11) was because of it's meddling overseas in muslim nations. So much for them being interested in expansionism, they didn't actually harass Western shores until long after they got fed up of Western nations meddling on theirs. We did and still do however have a problem with Catholic extremists in the UK though- you might have heard of them, the IRA, but again, I suppose the idea of non-muslim extremists being a bigger, longer running problem hurts your world view. Those were the same Catholic extremists that your America gave refuge too and somewhat supported in their terrorist activities too by the way, all for the sake of winning votes from your Irish population.
You know, I don't disagree with your comments about political correctness often being taken too far, I agree that perhaps military action is the only solution in nations that are too far gone, and the moderates have too small amount of power to do anything as in Iran, but the rest of your viewpoint is simply based on ignorance, a lack of understanding about the world, and perhaps a bit of patriotism that blinds you to the fact that the religious majority in your nation are equally dangerous, and that your nation itself has supported extremism in Islam, Christianity and so forth over the years too.
You really want to know the best way to deal with Islam if you're still scared shitless of it despite everything I've said? Look to alternative energy, and stop consuming their oil, and watch as their oil based economies plummet such that they can't even afford to arm themselves anymore even if they wanted to. That trick will solve the old Venezuela problem for you too whilst you're at it, sorry if it doesn't involve the heavy metal and pretty explosions you were hoping for though.
"The Turks don't want anyone to talk, write or even think about Armenians or Kurds. And they don't care for Jews all that much either."
That's simply not true, the Turkish people very much case for the jews, which is precisely why Turkey has been Israel's closest muslim ally, doing combat training and war games together etc.
The problem is that an Islamic party has taken political control, and yes, those in this party, and those supporting it generally do hate the jews and just about everyone who isn't muslim. That's the fundamental problem- it's not all Turks, just a certain subset, and even those who did vote for the Islamic party did not necessarily do so because they support say an anti-Jewish stance- these people are in a minority, the trouble is, it's a minority that's been granted power by a small majority.
"I agree about the 3G though. Cell phone networks have been slow to realize that they need to develop a high speed high bandwidth data only network and deploy it everywhere."
When the land line carriers have been refusing to pay for this for the last decade despite already having the resources and infrastructure to feed the cable down and connect it together, what makes you think mobile carriers are capable of doing it?
It's best if you cite which Wikipedia article you're referring to, because that doesn't come up in sections on monopoly abuse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law#Dominance_and_monopoly
However, I searched for some of the terms and it seems you oddly picked the article on Tying, which is not what we were talking about here.
I'm not sure why you had to resort to an unrelated article, I can only assume it was another attempt at using a straw man to divert from the fact you are wrong, but oh well.
That's exactly the same thing, because the issue is precisely that - their method of controlling that interaction, and that is in the case of Warden, and in the case of trying to have Glider deemed illegal by intruding into your system's processes and scanning to see what is running on your system.
There is no problem with controlling your access to the servers at their end, by filtering out or manipulating data sent to/from your system to their server at their server, the issue is their manipulation of software on your PC including software that isn't even related to WoW.
You simply can't separate the two as you've attempted to do, because Blizzard are attempting to do precisely what I said, in an attempt to do what you said- control your interaction with the servers.
The issue is that terms of access to the server and terms of use of the software are two very different things.
If Blizzard state you can't do what you want with the software on your local machine then that's stupid, if Blizzard state you can't access the server if you have manipulated the software on your local machine that's fine.
The issue is about how they go enforcing the latter, and if it means infringing your rights to do as you will on your local machine then that's where the problem lies with the EULA.
Regarding enforcement of EULAs, see this case as evidence that your assertion that no EULA has ever been declared invalid, and only specific clauses have is simply wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step-Saver_Data_Systems,_Inc._v._Wyse_Technology
I'm not sure you took my point from reading my post. My point was that historically if you've bought something rather than rented or licensed it, you had a right to do as you wanted with it, and this is what I was referring to be precedent, whilst I agree no precedent has been set specifically for software licenses, precedent has been set for "things in general" - i.e. your toaster, your food, etc. there is no restriction on what you do with them. My point was that I'm not sure there's good reason that software should really be special in this respect and the attempt to make special cases for things like software by setting new precedents for it that run counter to the precedent of pretty much everything else you might buy is the fundamental problem I see here. I'd rather no special precedent was set for software and that it was just simply left alone such that if you bought it it was yours to do with as you wish under existing law - in other words, I'd rather EULAs that state what you can and can't do with a product you've bought are ruled as non-enforcable.
"amazon came way after and got a better agreement. play.com started the music business in 2008, before that was selling drm laden content (dvd)"
So why didn't Apple renegotiate theres? It's not like they couldn't have. DVDs are a standard and not limited to a single manufacturer so I'm not sure why you bring them up other than as a straw man.
"and that is ignoring, of curse, that itunes is drm free too."
Yes, but if you'd read my post, you'd have seen the relevance of that.
"nonsense, how does that differ from the app store?"
Because Apple only let users of their products use the app store, in contrast, Debian can install apps from any source. The GPL is incompatible with the app store, Apple removes apps using GPL'd code so your assertion that you can use app store apps anywhere else is simply wrong.
"same argument as before: you can load movie to the ipad from everywhere, and you can load itunes movies to every devices where the manufacturer had provided the required conversion program. it's not like the explorer situation at all: itunes is not forcing you to buy ipad and apple is not preventing itunes file to be available to other manufacturers"
You didn't have to use Internet Explorer, you could use Netscape, you didn't have to use IE on Windows, you could use it on the Mac. Your arguments make no sense in the context of this discussion because they're entirely irrelevant.
"ipad requires itunes but what crime would that be? reverse leveraging? using a item that has no market share at all to increase the install base of something that already is on a lot of apple fanboy (the ipad prime target)?"
The crime is using an existing monpoly, i.e. iTunes to push into a different market. In this case, Apple are using their iTunes monopoly, which still contains proprietary DRM'd content (although not music now at least) to push into the tablet space. The mechanism is vendor lock-in- you have to go through iTunes to use the device.
"this is the best of all: what is an 'illegal monopoly'?"
A monopoly which abuses it's monopoly status to gain unfair advantage in the marketplace.
It seems a lot of your problems with this discussion is that you don't understand what warrants an illegal monopoly, so I suggest you go read up on it before trying to discuss further as opposed to trying to discuss without actually understanding what you're discussing.
The problem is that it's how the law has worked historically for just about everything else. What we're seeing in the past decade or so is an attempt to change the precedent for everything else in the case of software or digital media, as if software and digital media is something special that needs treating differently to pretty much everything else on the planet that someone might purchase to own.
But the key point is this, until there's a ruling that says otherwise, historical precedent must apply, and so I believe the GP is correct, for now, because that's how every other service provider must work.
If Blizzard wants it this way the solution is really quite simple for them- start renting out the software, rather than putting it in shops as a purchase to own product. The issue is they're scared consumers will reject that approach, but it's tough shit, they really just can't have it both ways- sell to own, then tell you how you can use it, because that causes fundamental problems with implications far outside of WoW. If your toaster plug goes, can you change the fuse in the plug yourself? or can you now only use a certified replacement service from the manufacturer that costs far far too much because when you opened the box you accepted the EULA that was strapped across it?
"This is what every person playing WoW has agreed to by contract with Blizzard."
No, they agreed to it via EULA, there's no solid decision that EULAs represent valid contracts. Even then, does it explicitly state those things I mentioned in the EULA? Even if valid, can a user really give up fundamental human right of the right to privacy via a EULA simply by clicking a button when it's non-obvious that WoW would ever perform such intrusive actions? If you feel the answer is yes, do you also agree that a user should have to live with a piece of malware indefinitely if they accidently agree to install it because they weren't paying attention if the EULA of said malware states is the case?
The situation is far from as clear cut as you seem to think.
"MDY started the lawsuit, Blizzard finished it."
As a defensive measure against Blizzard's assertion that they were infringing Blizzard's copyright and intended to sue them over it anyway you mean?