"All pretty nasty stuff, but unfortunately hardly unique. For instance our nice ally Saudi Arabia also executes people for "Homosexual activity"."
It's also not seeking to obtain nuclear weapons so I'm not sure what the relevance of Saudi Arabia is here.
"The inspections are required by the safeguard agreement, an annexe to the NPT. Not allowing inspections breaches the safeguard agreement, not the NPT."
The safeguard agreement is a condition imposed on NPT signatories, if you are not adhering to it then you are thus breaking that condition of the NPT. Of course Iran isn't non-compliant to the entirety of the NPT, but being non-compliant to part of it is still non-compliance.
Some sections of the additional protocol are valid under the existing framework of the NPT and being a signatory is irrelevant, Iran was also a signatory for a couple of years before pulling out of it also, during which time they were again non-compliant in some areas.
For sites not yet in use is the question of early notification.
Cherry picking parts of the IAEA document whilst ignoring others and using a blogger with a clear bias as your sources doesn't glaze over the fact Iran is non-compliant. I mean really, a blogger with a blatant bias? Can you get any less authoritative and objective?
Of course, even ignoring the facts that put Iran in the wrong there's still a more important point- Iran could end this and embarass the West tommorrow if it wanted to simply by giving unfettered access to IAEA inspectors across all their nuclear sites so there could be no question at all that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It'd put it in the right, it'd embarass the West for applying so much pressure and it'd strengthen Ahmadinejad. There'd be nothing to lose and everything to gain, so why wont he do that, apart from the obvious possibility- that Iran is in fact working to develop nuclear weapons?
"Besides which, they still have more overhead on a physical mailer than just the CD & packaging, stamp and envelope. (Someone has to be paid to actually touch the mailer... the "handling" part of "shipping and handling";"
I really just omitted this because similarly you need IT staff to setup and manage servers also. For the most part in both cases a lot can be automated, envelopes can be printed on directly just as servers should look after themselves pretty well past initial setup. IT staff also cost much more than office drones for example.
"furthermore they have to have the infrastructure to take names & addresses, validate them so as to prevent returned mail which costs them, print/affix the postage and address on the envelope, etc.)"
This is a given seeing as there were plans to post them anyway. You'd similarly need infrastructure to gather e-mail addresses and validate you're allowing download access to the right people too.
There seemed little point including those unquantifiable costs as both approaches face them, but realistically when it comes to there seems little reason to think they'd be far apart, in fact, there are even companies you could outsource to in both cases that would charge similar prices.
"They should already have most of the hardware in place (they have a web site of course, and it should already be relatively robust specifically so as to handle the occasional digital release such as this); I'd expect bandwidth to be the main expense in a digital distribution such as this, and bandwidth is relatively cheap."
It's not really a case of just having hardware in place, you don't want to stick a big digital distribution like this on your main web servers and have your sales section grind to a halt. This sort of thing is always going to have to be offloaded to separate servers and likely a separate internet connection. Even Microsoft offloaded the MSDN release of Windows 7 RTM the other week to a 3rd party download providers to prevent the main MSDN site keeling over despite it normally handling thousands of users downloading much larger files than your average consumer PC site would handle.
Yes, it is and would apply in the proposed $0 download option in the summary that is hence not really $0 to the consumer. I'm not sure why that can't be compared to the cost of a stamp, the company can still pass that cost onto you just as a portion of the cost is effectively being passed onto you if you download using your bandwidth- when you pay for bandwidth you're paying for a portion of the transit costs. The £2.61 is still paid overall in addition to the server side infrastructure costs.
The underlying point being that there is no free form of transport in this respect. Even if an employee hand delivers it the employees wage and travel expenses still has to be paid for for example.
The only distinction I can see you might be trying to make is that the stamp may not be the better option for the company because infrastructure and server side bandwidth may come in at less than the cost of a first class stamp per 3gb? If so that's a fair point, but it's obviously not the best option for the consumer of course who'd still be better off footing that 36p + envelope cost, and I'm not sure it would be cheaper than that option at the server side anyway when you account for hardware, hardware rental or hosting costs along with the bandwidth as well.
No, that's not what I was saying. I was saying it's pointless them setting up a download infrastructure and not charging you for it because if they were going down the not charging route they could do it cheaper by snail mail due to bandwidth costs.
A 1st class stamp in the UK is 36p, 3gb of bandwidth on an ISP like PlusNet outside your allowance would cost be £2.61. Of course inside my allowance you could argue it's cost me nothing, but at £19.99 a month I'd disagree- I'm still paying for that bandwidth.
Of course $17 is extortionate, I wasn't disagreeing with that, I was disagreeing with the editor's comment that to put it up for download with no charge would be free because it wouldn't - the company would have to pay for the servers and bandwidth at their end and the consumer would have to pay for the bandwidth at his/her end.
My point was that the cheaper option for everyone than the editors suggested "$0" would be to post 1st class snail mail that's all.
At absolute best (which no ISP ever manages to achieve), it costs them 52p per gigabyte of data, so around £1.56 to allow you to download Windows 7. Realistically, if you check somewhere like PlusNet their out of allowance charges are £1.74 per 2gb of data, so around £2.61 to download Windows 7 for an end user at retail.
Oh and er, a 1st class stamp in the UK costs only 36p, envelopes cost next to nothing in bulk, so around 40p so far, call it 50p once you've printed the labels and posted and that's ignoring Royal Mail's bulk discounts and such.
21cn costs are here, but this isn't rolled out to most of the UK:
The reason you don't know the first thing about bandwidth costs is because you probably use consumer ADSL or similar and don't actually use that much bandwidth. If you do then you're likely being subsidised as that's how many ISPs work, low end users don't use anywhere near their bandwidth limits so are paying to subsidise other users.
Still, at the end of the day my point stands, it's much cheaper to just post the discs first class than it is to setup an infrastructure (which costs on top of the bandwidth costs) for downloading. The above of course is just the costs for the consumer also, chances are you'll have your own bandwidth charges on top at the server side. If you provide a download then, the consumer may be paying 3 to 5 times as much as if you post it and charge them for the stamp and envelope etc.
By Iran I refer to it's leadership as they are the ones who determine the course of the nation. Murdering it's own citizens just because they protest against the elections being rigged is a pretty good start but of course you can also throw hanging homosexuals in there too as being things that put Iran pretty high up on the evil list. Beating women because they don't conform to a specific dress style, torturing men for having western style haircuts, that sort of thing. It's hard to suggest that that is not an evil regime.
"In what manner is Iran breaching the NPT? According to who?"
I mentioned this already in my post, I guess you didn't bother to read it all. Iran is breaching the NPT because they have not allowed full inspections of their nuclear sites and examination of all relevant documentation surrounding nuclear activity. This is a condition imposted on all NPT signatories including Iran. Iran is hence breaching the NPT according to the IAEA which is the body that determines NPT compliance. Further non-compliance and breach of the NPT came to light recently when Iran unveiled another nuclear plant at Qom also. There has been multiple account of non-comppliance over the last 8 or so years, with the last two ongoing however the Qom issue looks to be resolved as they are due to let inspectors in in a couple of weeks. This does not resolve the other outstanding issues that Iran has for years now refused to resolve by allowing IAEA inspectors the access they require.
Because of course the infrastructure to serve 3gb of data to each customer doesn't cost anything?
Not that I'm defending the practice of charging for a free upgrade, free upgrades should be free, postage free too, but suggesting doing it digitally means there would be no cost is ignorant. In the UK with the extortionate costs of bandwidth I think posting a CD first class via Royal Mail might in fact be cheaper.
A lot of people would just want to stick the Windows 7 DVD they receieve through the post in the drive too. Downloading an ISO and knowing how to burn an ISO rather than copying the file across like they do usually when writing CDs (if they've ever even written one before) would be too much for some users.
So isn't strong password enforcement by default the key?
This is what Windows has done since Windows Server 2003. There is a default complexity and length requirement on passwords. You can of course change or even disable the policy but you have to go out your way to do so which in my mind is how it really should be.
The problem is, what you say is complete bullshit.
Israel has large exports in technology (e.g. networking gear), agriculture (e.g. oranges), military equipment (e.g. UAVs).
I'd love to know if you can provide any real data to back up your claims as a quick search for things like "Israel Economy", "Economy of Israel" and so forth suggest you're way of course. In fact, Israel is in the top 50 strongest economies in the world:
You say people should research Israel's economy and so, well, I did, and it turns out you're completely wrong. If you believe I'm mistaken can you tell us where exactly we're supposed to go to find unbiased sources that agree with you?
"Apart from that Iran has signed the NNPT, and the IAEA can do the necessary inspections."
Er, except Iran hasn't been letting the IAEA do the necessary inspections, hence the IAEA's conclusion that it cannot rule out that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, hence the reason we have the current political crisis in the first place...
The act of merely signing the NNPT doesn't make a nation a responsible one, especially if it doesn't fulfil it's obligations under the NNPT as is the case with Iran. In fact, Iran goes a step further- it has been actively going against it's obligations in preventing IAEA inspectors from having full access.
Of course Israel is no better, but give them credit- at least they're honest enough not to sign the NNPT in the first place. For what it's worth, this is also why the same actions being taken against Iran cannot be taken against Israel for having nuclear weapons, because as Israel is not a signatory of the NNPT they have no international legal obligations under it either. Also, as Israel has proved itself responsible with nuclear weapons (even if not with conventional weapons) there is probably less will to deal with them because they've demonstrated themselves to be no real nuclear threat whilst Iran still remains very much an unknown in that context.
"Germany has not, and as the German comedian Volker Pispers is apt to say: After all, it was Iran who was responsible for two World Wars, unlike Germany who has such a great track record."
The difference is, Germany learnt it's lesson. Iran denies the lesson Germany learnt from ever even happened. You really think a country that learnt it's lesson is more dangerous than one that hasn't and refuses to learn the same lesson?
"Basically, we are breaking the contract here. So what if Iran knows how to build them? As long as they do not, they are keeping their end of the deal"
No they're not. Part of their responsibility is to allow unfettered access by nuclear inspectors to their facilities so the IAEA can confirm that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has not been doing this, the IAEA have stated they are not able to rule out the idea that Iran may be seeking to develop or even developing nuclear weapons. the IAEA is currently headed up by Mohamed ElBaradei, a muslim Egyptian arab. Iran then, is most certainly not keeping their end of the deal or living up to their responsibilities as signatories to the NPT. If you're going to argue Iran is keeping up their end of the deal, at least understand what their end of the deal involves, if you did, you'd know full well Iran is not fulfilling their obligations.
"Our being afraid is good enough reason to force our wishes upon them? And you fucking wonder why the Arab nations like us westerners so much?"
Iran is, like Afghanistan, a Persian nation, not Arabic. Arabic nations consist of countries like Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. The vast majority of arabic countries are strong allies of the West and we have good, healthy trade ties with them. The false idea that arabs hate us stems from the absolute tiny minority of fascist terrorists that generally attack Western targets. Arabs are in general extremely hospitable people, and to suggest they hate us and that the reason we wish to impose sanctions on countries that do not live up to their responsibilities as NPT signatories is because we're racist and hate them is extremely ignorant. It plays directly into the kind of fascism that parties like the BNP in the UK try to play on, and groups like Al Qaeda in the Middle East and Asia try to play on. Most arab nations want to see Iran get nuclear weapons about as much as the West does.
A lot of America/"The West" bashing arose out of the fuck up that was Iraq and frankly was quite warranted. The problem is now there are a lot of people who can't even see who is wrong anymore, and unquestioningly assume it's just America's fault. Sorry to burst your bubble but the fact is the Iranian regime IS evil, and it IS in breach of the NPT.
If Iran is pissed off about how it's being treated about the nuclear issue all it has to do is allow unfettered access to all it's nuclear facilities, it's not like it's developed any top secret advanced technology that it needs to hide that the IAEA and the West doesn't understand already. Allowing full inspections would even be a massive publicity coup, if the IAEA was able to show Iran wasn't attempting to make nuclear weapons imagine how hard Iran could rub it in the West's face and go on about Western meddling in it's affairs when it was telling the truth? The problem is, Iran isn't taking this fantastic opportunity up, why do you think that might be? The best we've got so far is allowing us to inspect their newly admitted Qom plant in a few weeks, but that's not much help when the plants we really want to inspect, where the IAEA weren't given the access they needed is still being kept behind closed doors.
The sidebar/widget changes are a massive step backwards too. I now have the option of having maximised Windows go underneath them if they're always on top meaning they get in the way of my working Window, or I have the option of them just being on the desktop underneath all my Windows where I have to go to desktop to see them so they may as well just be implemented as normal applications.
In contrast the sidebar kept the widgets visible where I needed them without obscuring my Windows as the Windows maximised around the sidebar rather than under it.
I wouldn't mind, if it weren't for the fact there is no option to go back on this feature and those you describe. There are some ugly hacks, but how long can they really be expected to work for?
Most the Windows 7 UI changes really do piss me off, especially as they're mandatory not optional.
What does the iPhone show up as? If it shows up as Mac OS X then it's reasonable to assume the increase in Mac OS X figures could simply stem from the iPhone rather than a decrease of Windows numbers.
"I don't know how you can possibly treat the Pahlevi regime as a *good* thing. They were despised by their own people so much that the people risked death to revolt en masse in conditions almost never seen in a revolution (none of the typical causes, rapid speed, immense popularity of the revolution, and the defeat of a lavishly financed and well trained domestic military apparatus)."
So a little like the government that replaced them in recent years?
The difference is, the new government is even more brutal, has an even bigger more blindly faithful military and set of militia so that this time the citizens didn't manage a revolt.
Say what you will about that regime, but it speaks volumes that the citizens were free enough and the government was weak enough to be overthrown, in contrast to the current Iranian regime or that of say Burma, or North Korea.
I'm not defending the US' puppet regime of course, but I think sometimes it's blown out of proportion how bad it was- certainly it was no worse than what has followed, and no worse than that in many other nations.
Of course, I'm certainly not arguing with your fundamental point either- that US medalling in that way did them more harm than good in the region, in fact, with the likes of Iraq etc., one has to wonder if America ever even learnt it's lesson.
"I was really pissed when I discovered that Microsoft had discontinued all versions of Visual Studio Express under the most recent one (2008, I believe?). I had to go and get a copy of VSE2005 off of bittorent since you could no longer download it from the Microsoft web site."
Then you got pissed and used BitTorrent for absolutely no reason whatsoever, because Microsoft are touting Visual Studio Express more than ever nowadays, it's become a core product for them.
What gave you the impression they'd discontinued them? Even on the standard Visual Studio pages links to express are and always have been clearly visible.
To add to that it begs the question, shouldn't any operating system/application be secure by default?
If that were the case then sloppy admins wouldn't be a problem, only incompetent admins that specifically go and disable said security features.
The problem is that sloppy admins will always exist, so to blame them doesn't really achieve much, nor does it absolve the operating system/application in question of blame. If a problem is known (i.e. some admins are sloppy), and nothing is done to resolve that, then the OS/App deserves just as much blame.
Again as you say, this is a problem for all operating systems and all software.
There are a number of possible causes that lead to this result, but I'll give an example scenario that results in this outcome.
Imagine you have 4 sets of terrain adjacent to the previous in this order: jungle, forest, grasslands, plains. Imagine we have a species that has adapted to jungle conditions- over time the population grows and some are forced to start living in the forest, over time, through natural selection these living in the forest become different because the trees are different- there's less of them, they're smaller, eventually this population in the forest becomes different enough to be a different species.
Now imagine the same happens with the grasslands, and the plains- we end up with 4 different distinct species each adapted to the different environments they now inhabit. Imagine also that something happens to one of these environments- the grasslands burn away in a massive fire, a new, stronger predator evolves in the forests or whatever and one of these species is whiped out because of this.
To cut a long story short it comes down to this, species evolve to be suited to the pressures of their environment, if a species suffers no enviromental change or does not spread outside it's environment it does not need to evolve very much, but ultimately some members of that species may be forced into new environments due to a large population leading to food shortages. Those in the new environment evolve to suit that new environment better whilst the previous population need not evolve because they're still fine in their old environment. If an event occurs (such as the end of the ice age or the dawning of the ice age for example) that changes an enviroment drastically, some species in some habitats will no longer be able to survive, whilst other species in other environments will be able to do so just fine.
I hope that clears up at least one of the primary explanations to your question! For what it's worth, it's more complicated in some species such as plants, because it may be that seeds are deposited a long way away from the original population by a bird, these seeds may germinate and the plants evolve into their new environment over time into a different species, because the bird made them take the jump from one habitat to another, it may be that there is no intermediate species. This sort of thing happening in animals is rare though, because it's harder for animals to suffer sudden jumps in habitat changes like plants might, hence why there is much more confidence in intermediate species existing through human evolution- our evolution was almost without a doubt gradual unlike the previously mentioned scenario for some plant species.
"Havok and the DX Physics are completely open and either party can use them, no proprietary api or licensing or anything silly. No hardware vendor controls what happens."
Completely open? What? DirectX is far from open, I'm assuming you mean free to use? You're also locked into Microsoft's platforms. As for Havok:
"PhysX is not. It is controlled by Nvidia. Gosh, they wouldn't have financial motives to abuse this power would they? No of course not..."
See above, I'm not sure why you would believe there is no commercial entity involvement in DirectX Physics or Havok anymore so than nVidia's involvement in PhysX.
"Nvidia lately seems to have been getting around the whole market segmentation issue by... paying off forum members in all the hot PC Hardware forums?"
Ah, that must be it! Of course! If someone disagrees with you they're getting paid to disagree with you! Why didn't I think of that? YOU must be getting paid by ATI to disagree with me and I must be getting paid to disagree with you by nVidia. Now we know this we can just find a 3rd opinion and just agree on that because that must be the real truth right? Did you ever stop to think if a lot of people are predicting the death of AMD/ATI right now it might just be that the majority of people (including me) just aren't particularly impressed with the turd AMD/ATI have thrown out recently? I've seen periods where nVidia has gotten just as much of a pounding on forums, what does that mean? that ATI was just throwing more money to pay people off to slag off nVidia at that point than nVidia was paying vice versa?
"still waiting for a game where it actually adds anything"
Well, one of the first was Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter which has been out years, there's plenty more though. Lots of engines provide integration as default or at least provide integration paths.
Does it suck what nVidia is doing? Yeah, I guess so if you're an ATI user. On the same note though it's hard to see why nVidia should support their opponents platforms, that's just bad business and really, the only people who suffer are people who aren't actually their customers anyway. I can see why they're doing it, it just makes good business sense.
Why do you assume it'll be the security council that'll get involved rather than say the International Telecommunication Union?
What's that? You didn't realise the UN already does pretty much what ICANN does in another area very successfully?
"Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be even worse than the jackbooted variety, as the authorities choke off dissent while insisting it's all for our own good."
But you think it's okay for a single US state to be able to impose censorship for our own good I suppose?
Eventually the appeals court realised this was stupid and overturned it, but the fact is a single judge in a single state of the US whilst US has full control of ICANN could censor whatever they wanted and did so for a damaging period of time for a web based business, and they did. More than once:
"Honestly, I can't understand how any serious observer of world affairs, whatever you may personally think of the United States, can maintain that UN control is preferable to the current system. Not by any standard."
Your answer lies above, it is because any "serious observer of world affairs" who is not ignorant to the reality of US control of ICANN realises it's been doing a really, really bad job in recent years with everything from gTLDs to censorship of foreign domain names being.
I guess you weren't aware of what ICANN has done wrong in recent years which is fair enough, but if you're going to defend an organisation and speculate on what an alternative organisation would do wrong, you should at least make sure the organisation you're defending wasn't guilty of doing exactly what you're so concerned about- censorship.
Yes, and there's an awful lot of other countries that don't want censorship.
Changes need consensus in international organisations, this is a stupid argument, because you'd never get international consensus on this sort of thing so it wouldn't happen.
Whilst you have one country controlling it however, you get shit like this:
Yes that's right, judges in single US courts being able to unilaterally order the effective take down of overseas sites for which they should have no jurisdiction over whatsoever.
Don't try and pretend the countries you list would magically get their way over Western nations if control was shared, and don't try and pretend the US has never done anything wrong whilst in control of the internet.
When you have opposing views sharing power, stupid ideas get blocked indefinitely so the sort of situation in the above two articles would never happen, neither would censorship. Stuff like security issues that need urgent attention would get passed because everyone would agree they're a problem.
Effectively just as in hung or proportionally represented governments, the only stuff that gets blocked is controversal shit that half the people don't want, the only stuff that gets through is stuff that's agreeable to everyone. That's much better all round than having a single entity unilaterally imposing bad ideas on everyone else.
Re:Do we need the anti-smoking jab
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A Geek Funeral
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Because when you eat a hamburger it has no effect on anyone else.
When you smoke you're forcing other people to breathe in your smoke, and forcing them to deal with that awful smell that you're soaked in.
People usually don't complain about smokers because they're worried about them killing themselves early, they complain because they themselves don't want to be killed early and made uncomfortable due to not being able to breathe fresh air in the meantime by a smoker.
If smokers want to fuck themselves over fine, but don't expect people to be happy about being fucked over with them against their will. Hamburgers don't have any relevance in this argument, it's really a straw man.
Next time you're at work take a look at how many people go for a smoke, how many women spend a bit of time filing their nails, how many spend 5 minutes on Solitaire, how many browse the internet for a while, how many stand around having a chat for 5 minutes?
The point is that there is not a single person on the planet who can realistically work for a solid working day without the slightest break, if someone is looking at porn in their break for 5 minutes rather than going out and smoking 3 times a day for 10 minutes a time for example, or chatting around the water cooler for 5 minutes then I really don't see the problem.
The key in my opinion is whether someone is being abusive with it, if they're doing whatever they like to do for 4 hours of the working day then fair enough, that's really not acceptable, but if it's something like 20 minutes spread across the whole day? I don't see the issue, it makes people more productive if they're allowed to have short breaks for a few minutes through the day.
If someone actually spent 331 days at doing it I'd be concerned that they are in fact mentally ill in some way. If they just looked for 5 mins or so each day for 331 days then who cares?
Slashdot Mirror
"All pretty nasty stuff, but unfortunately hardly unique. For instance our nice ally Saudi Arabia also executes people for "Homosexual activity"."
It's also not seeking to obtain nuclear weapons so I'm not sure what the relevance of Saudi Arabia is here.
"The inspections are required by the safeguard agreement, an annexe to the NPT. Not allowing inspections breaches the safeguard agreement, not the NPT."
The safeguard agreement is a condition imposed on NPT signatories, if you are not adhering to it then you are thus breaking that condition of the NPT. Of course Iran isn't non-compliant to the entirety of the NPT, but being non-compliant to part of it is still non-compliance.
Some sections of the additional protocol are valid under the existing framework of the NPT and being a signatory is irrelevant, Iran was also a signatory for a couple of years before pulling out of it also, during which time they were again non-compliant in some areas.
For sites not yet in use is the question of early notification.
Cherry picking parts of the IAEA document whilst ignoring others and using a blogger with a clear bias as your sources doesn't glaze over the fact Iran is non-compliant. I mean really, a blogger with a blatant bias? Can you get any less authoritative and objective?
Of course, even ignoring the facts that put Iran in the wrong there's still a more important point- Iran could end this and embarass the West tommorrow if it wanted to simply by giving unfettered access to IAEA inspectors across all their nuclear sites so there could be no question at all that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It'd put it in the right, it'd embarass the West for applying so much pressure and it'd strengthen Ahmadinejad. There'd be nothing to lose and everything to gain, so why wont he do that, apart from the obvious possibility- that Iran is in fact working to develop nuclear weapons?
"Besides which, they still have more overhead on a physical mailer than just the CD & packaging, stamp and envelope. (Someone has to be paid to actually touch the mailer... the "handling" part of "shipping and handling";"
I really just omitted this because similarly you need IT staff to setup and manage servers also. For the most part in both cases a lot can be automated, envelopes can be printed on directly just as servers should look after themselves pretty well past initial setup. IT staff also cost much more than office drones for example.
"furthermore they have to have the infrastructure to take names & addresses, validate them so as to prevent returned mail which costs them, print/affix the postage and address on the envelope, etc.)"
This is a given seeing as there were plans to post them anyway. You'd similarly need infrastructure to gather e-mail addresses and validate you're allowing download access to the right people too.
There seemed little point including those unquantifiable costs as both approaches face them, but realistically when it comes to there seems little reason to think they'd be far apart, in fact, there are even companies you could outsource to in both cases that would charge similar prices.
"They should already have most of the hardware in place (they have a web site of course, and it should already be relatively robust specifically so as to handle the occasional digital release such as this); I'd expect bandwidth to be the main expense in a digital distribution such as this, and bandwidth is relatively cheap."
It's not really a case of just having hardware in place, you don't want to stick a big digital distribution like this on your main web servers and have your sales section grind to a halt. This sort of thing is always going to have to be offloaded to separate servers and likely a separate internet connection. Even Microsoft offloaded the MSDN release of Windows 7 RTM the other week to a 3rd party download providers to prevent the main MSDN site keeling over despite it normally handling thousands of users downloading much larger files than your average consumer PC site would handle.
Yes, it is and would apply in the proposed $0 download option in the summary that is hence not really $0 to the consumer. I'm not sure why that can't be compared to the cost of a stamp, the company can still pass that cost onto you just as a portion of the cost is effectively being passed onto you if you download using your bandwidth- when you pay for bandwidth you're paying for a portion of the transit costs. The £2.61 is still paid overall in addition to the server side infrastructure costs.
The underlying point being that there is no free form of transport in this respect. Even if an employee hand delivers it the employees wage and travel expenses still has to be paid for for example.
The only distinction I can see you might be trying to make is that the stamp may not be the better option for the company because infrastructure and server side bandwidth may come in at less than the cost of a first class stamp per 3gb? If so that's a fair point, but it's obviously not the best option for the consumer of course who'd still be better off footing that 36p + envelope cost, and I'm not sure it would be cheaper than that option at the server side anyway when you account for hardware, hardware rental or hosting costs along with the bandwidth as well.
Customers still pay for their bandwidth in many parts of the world, particularly if they're outside their inclusive monthly allowance.
No, that's not what I was saying. I was saying it's pointless them setting up a download infrastructure and not charging you for it because if they were going down the not charging route they could do it cheaper by snail mail due to bandwidth costs.
A 1st class stamp in the UK is 36p, 3gb of bandwidth on an ISP like PlusNet outside your allowance would cost be £2.61. Of course inside my allowance you could argue it's cost me nothing, but at £19.99 a month I'd disagree- I'm still paying for that bandwidth.
Of course $17 is extortionate, I wasn't disagreeing with that, I was disagreeing with the editor's comment that to put it up for download with no charge would be free because it wouldn't - the company would have to pay for the servers and bandwidth at their end and the consumer would have to pay for the bandwidth at his/her end.
My point was that the cheaper option for everyone than the editors suggested "$0" would be to post 1st class snail mail that's all.
See here for costs on the current generation network:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html
At absolute best (which no ISP ever manages to achieve), it costs them 52p per gigabyte of data, so around £1.56 to allow you to download Windows 7. Realistically, if you check somewhere like PlusNet their out of allowance charges are £1.74 per 2gb of data, so around £2.61 to download Windows 7 for an end user at retail.
Oh and er, a 1st class stamp in the UK costs only 36p, envelopes cost next to nothing in bulk, so around 40p so far, call it 50p once you've printed the labels and posted and that's ignoring Royal Mail's bulk discounts and such.
21cn costs are here, but this isn't rolled out to most of the UK:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html
However, it's still well over the 36p price.
The reason you don't know the first thing about bandwidth costs is because you probably use consumer ADSL or similar and don't actually use that much bandwidth. If you do then you're likely being subsidised as that's how many ISPs work, low end users don't use anywhere near their bandwidth limits so are paying to subsidise other users.
Still, at the end of the day my point stands, it's much cheaper to just post the discs first class than it is to setup an infrastructure (which costs on top of the bandwidth costs) for downloading. The above of course is just the costs for the consumer also, chances are you'll have your own bandwidth charges on top at the server side. If you provide a download then, the consumer may be paying 3 to 5 times as much as if you post it and charge them for the stamp and envelope etc.
"What makes it "evil"?"
By Iran I refer to it's leadership as they are the ones who determine the course of the nation. Murdering it's own citizens just because they protest against the elections being rigged is a pretty good start but of course you can also throw hanging homosexuals in there too as being things that put Iran pretty high up on the evil list. Beating women because they don't conform to a specific dress style, torturing men for having western style haircuts, that sort of thing. It's hard to suggest that that is not an evil regime.
"In what manner is Iran breaching the NPT? According to who?"
I mentioned this already in my post, I guess you didn't bother to read it all. Iran is breaching the NPT because they have not allowed full inspections of their nuclear sites and examination of all relevant documentation surrounding nuclear activity. This is a condition imposted on all NPT signatories including Iran. Iran is hence breaching the NPT according to the IAEA which is the body that determines NPT compliance. Further non-compliance and breach of the NPT came to light recently when Iran unveiled another nuclear plant at Qom also. There has been multiple account of non-comppliance over the last 8 or so years, with the last two ongoing however the Qom issue looks to be resolved as they are due to let inspectors in in a couple of weeks. This does not resolve the other outstanding issues that Iran has for years now refused to resolve by allowing IAEA inspectors the access they require.
Because of course the infrastructure to serve 3gb of data to each customer doesn't cost anything?
Not that I'm defending the practice of charging for a free upgrade, free upgrades should be free, postage free too, but suggesting doing it digitally means there would be no cost is ignorant. In the UK with the extortionate costs of bandwidth I think posting a CD first class via Royal Mail might in fact be cheaper.
A lot of people would just want to stick the Windows 7 DVD they receieve through the post in the drive too. Downloading an ISO and knowing how to burn an ISO rather than copying the file across like they do usually when writing CDs (if they've ever even written one before) would be too much for some users.
So isn't strong password enforcement by default the key?
This is what Windows has done since Windows Server 2003. There is a default complexity and length requirement on passwords. You can of course change or even disable the policy but you have to go out your way to do so which in my mind is how it really should be.
Can you provide a source for your claims?
The problem is, what you say is complete bullshit.
Israel has large exports in technology (e.g. networking gear), agriculture (e.g. oranges), military equipment (e.g. UAVs).
I'd love to know if you can provide any real data to back up your claims as a quick search for things like "Israel Economy", "Economy of Israel" and so forth suggest you're way of course. In fact, Israel is in the top 50 strongest economies in the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
You say people should research Israel's economy and so, well, I did, and it turns out you're completely wrong. If you believe I'm mistaken can you tell us where exactly we're supposed to go to find unbiased sources that agree with you?
"Apart from that Iran has signed the NNPT, and the IAEA can do the necessary inspections."
Er, except Iran hasn't been letting the IAEA do the necessary inspections, hence the IAEA's conclusion that it cannot rule out that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, hence the reason we have the current political crisis in the first place...
The act of merely signing the NNPT doesn't make a nation a responsible one, especially if it doesn't fulfil it's obligations under the NNPT as is the case with Iran. In fact, Iran goes a step further- it has been actively going against it's obligations in preventing IAEA inspectors from having full access.
Of course Israel is no better, but give them credit- at least they're honest enough not to sign the NNPT in the first place. For what it's worth, this is also why the same actions being taken against Iran cannot be taken against Israel for having nuclear weapons, because as Israel is not a signatory of the NNPT they have no international legal obligations under it either. Also, as Israel has proved itself responsible with nuclear weapons (even if not with conventional weapons) there is probably less will to deal with them because they've demonstrated themselves to be no real nuclear threat whilst Iran still remains very much an unknown in that context.
"Germany has not, and as the German comedian Volker Pispers is apt to say: After all, it was Iran who was responsible for two World Wars, unlike Germany who has such a great track record."
The difference is, Germany learnt it's lesson. Iran denies the lesson Germany learnt from ever even happened. You really think a country that learnt it's lesson is more dangerous than one that hasn't and refuses to learn the same lesson?
"Basically, we are breaking the contract here. So what if Iran knows how to build them? As long as they do not, they are keeping their end of the deal"
No they're not. Part of their responsibility is to allow unfettered access by nuclear inspectors to their facilities so the IAEA can confirm that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has not been doing this, the IAEA have stated they are not able to rule out the idea that Iran may be seeking to develop or even developing nuclear weapons. the IAEA is currently headed up by Mohamed ElBaradei, a muslim Egyptian arab. Iran then, is most certainly not keeping their end of the deal or living up to their responsibilities as signatories to the NPT. If you're going to argue Iran is keeping up their end of the deal, at least understand what their end of the deal involves, if you did, you'd know full well Iran is not fulfilling their obligations.
"Our being afraid is good enough reason to force our wishes upon them? And you fucking wonder why the Arab nations like us westerners so much?"
Iran is, like Afghanistan, a Persian nation, not Arabic. Arabic nations consist of countries like Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. The vast majority of arabic countries are strong allies of the West and we have good, healthy trade ties with them. The false idea that arabs hate us stems from the absolute tiny minority of fascist terrorists that generally attack Western targets. Arabs are in general extremely hospitable people, and to suggest they hate us and that the reason we wish to impose sanctions on countries that do not live up to their responsibilities as NPT signatories is because we're racist and hate them is extremely ignorant. It plays directly into the kind of fascism that parties like the BNP in the UK try to play on, and groups like Al Qaeda in the Middle East and Asia try to play on. Most arab nations want to see Iran get nuclear weapons about as much as the West does.
A lot of America/"The West" bashing arose out of the fuck up that was Iraq and frankly was quite warranted. The problem is now there are a lot of people who can't even see who is wrong anymore, and unquestioningly assume it's just America's fault. Sorry to burst your bubble but the fact is the Iranian regime IS evil, and it IS in breach of the NPT.
If Iran is pissed off about how it's being treated about the nuclear issue all it has to do is allow unfettered access to all it's nuclear facilities, it's not like it's developed any top secret advanced technology that it needs to hide that the IAEA and the West doesn't understand already. Allowing full inspections would even be a massive publicity coup, if the IAEA was able to show Iran wasn't attempting to make nuclear weapons imagine how hard Iran could rub it in the West's face and go on about Western meddling in it's affairs when it was telling the truth? The problem is, Iran isn't taking this fantastic opportunity up, why do you think that might be? The best we've got so far is allowing us to inspect their newly admitted Qom plant in a few weeks, but that's not much help when the plants we really want to inspect, where the IAEA weren't given the access they needed is still being kept behind closed doors.
The sidebar/widget changes are a massive step backwards too. I now have the option of having maximised Windows go underneath them if they're always on top meaning they get in the way of my working Window, or I have the option of them just being on the desktop underneath all my Windows where I have to go to desktop to see them so they may as well just be implemented as normal applications.
In contrast the sidebar kept the widgets visible where I needed them without obscuring my Windows as the Windows maximised around the sidebar rather than under it.
I wouldn't mind, if it weren't for the fact there is no option to go back on this feature and those you describe. There are some ugly hacks, but how long can they really be expected to work for?
Most the Windows 7 UI changes really do piss me off, especially as they're mandatory not optional.
What does the iPhone show up as? If it shows up as Mac OS X then it's reasonable to assume the increase in Mac OS X figures could simply stem from the iPhone rather than a decrease of Windows numbers.
"I don't know how you can possibly treat the Pahlevi regime as a *good* thing. They were despised by their own people so much that the people risked death to revolt en masse in conditions almost never seen in a revolution (none of the typical causes, rapid speed, immense popularity of the revolution, and the defeat of a lavishly financed and well trained domestic military apparatus)."
So a little like the government that replaced them in recent years?
The difference is, the new government is even more brutal, has an even bigger more blindly faithful military and set of militia so that this time the citizens didn't manage a revolt.
Say what you will about that regime, but it speaks volumes that the citizens were free enough and the government was weak enough to be overthrown, in contrast to the current Iranian regime or that of say Burma, or North Korea.
I'm not defending the US' puppet regime of course, but I think sometimes it's blown out of proportion how bad it was- certainly it was no worse than what has followed, and no worse than that in many other nations.
Of course, I'm certainly not arguing with your fundamental point either- that US medalling in that way did them more harm than good in the region, in fact, with the likes of Iraq etc., one has to wonder if America ever even learnt it's lesson.
"I was really pissed when I discovered that Microsoft had discontinued all versions of Visual Studio Express under the most recent one (2008, I believe?). I had to go and get a copy of VSE2005 off of bittorent since you could no longer download it from the Microsoft web site."
Then you got pissed and used BitTorrent for absolutely no reason whatsoever, because Microsoft are touting Visual Studio Express more than ever nowadays, it's become a core product for them.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/
What gave you the impression they'd discontinued them? Even on the standard Visual Studio pages links to express are and always have been clearly visible.
To add to that it begs the question, shouldn't any operating system/application be secure by default?
If that were the case then sloppy admins wouldn't be a problem, only incompetent admins that specifically go and disable said security features.
The problem is that sloppy admins will always exist, so to blame them doesn't really achieve much, nor does it absolve the operating system/application in question of blame. If a problem is known (i.e. some admins are sloppy), and nothing is done to resolve that, then the OS/App deserves just as much blame.
Again as you say, this is a problem for all operating systems and all software.
There are a number of possible causes that lead to this result, but I'll give an example scenario that results in this outcome.
Imagine you have 4 sets of terrain adjacent to the previous in this order: jungle, forest, grasslands, plains. Imagine we have a species that has adapted to jungle conditions- over time the population grows and some are forced to start living in the forest, over time, through natural selection these living in the forest become different because the trees are different- there's less of them, they're smaller, eventually this population in the forest becomes different enough to be a different species.
Now imagine the same happens with the grasslands, and the plains- we end up with 4 different distinct species each adapted to the different environments they now inhabit. Imagine also that something happens to one of these environments- the grasslands burn away in a massive fire, a new, stronger predator evolves in the forests or whatever and one of these species is whiped out because of this.
To cut a long story short it comes down to this, species evolve to be suited to the pressures of their environment, if a species suffers no enviromental change or does not spread outside it's environment it does not need to evolve very much, but ultimately some members of that species may be forced into new environments due to a large population leading to food shortages. Those in the new environment evolve to suit that new environment better whilst the previous population need not evolve because they're still fine in their old environment. If an event occurs (such as the end of the ice age or the dawning of the ice age for example) that changes an enviroment drastically, some species in some habitats will no longer be able to survive, whilst other species in other environments will be able to do so just fine.
I hope that clears up at least one of the primary explanations to your question! For what it's worth, it's more complicated in some species such as plants, because it may be that seeds are deposited a long way away from the original population by a bird, these seeds may germinate and the plants evolve into their new environment over time into a different species, because the bird made them take the jump from one habitat to another, it may be that there is no intermediate species. This sort of thing happening in animals is rare though, because it's harder for animals to suffer sudden jumps in habitat changes like plants might, hence why there is much more confidence in intermediate species existing through human evolution- our evolution was almost without a doubt gradual unlike the previously mentioned scenario for some plant species.
"Havok and the DX Physics are completely open and either party can use them, no proprietary api or licensing or anything silly. No hardware vendor controls what happens."
Completely open? What? DirectX is far from open, I'm assuming you mean free to use? You're also locked into Microsoft's platforms. As for Havok:
http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=pc-game-distribution-license-request
So er, just like PhysX then in other words.
"PhysX is not. It is controlled by Nvidia. Gosh, they wouldn't have financial motives to abuse this power would they? No of course not..."
See above, I'm not sure why you would believe there is no commercial entity involvement in DirectX Physics or Havok anymore so than nVidia's involvement in PhysX.
"Nvidia lately seems to have been getting around the whole market segmentation issue by ... paying off forum members in all the hot PC Hardware forums?"
Ah, that must be it! Of course! If someone disagrees with you they're getting paid to disagree with you! Why didn't I think of that? YOU must be getting paid by ATI to disagree with me and I must be getting paid to disagree with you by nVidia. Now we know this we can just find a 3rd opinion and just agree on that because that must be the real truth right? Did you ever stop to think if a lot of people are predicting the death of AMD/ATI right now it might just be that the majority of people (including me) just aren't particularly impressed with the turd AMD/ATI have thrown out recently? I've seen periods where nVidia has gotten just as much of a pounding on forums, what does that mean? that ATI was just throwing more money to pay people off to slag off nVidia at that point than nVidia was paying vice versa?
"still waiting for a game where it actually adds anything"
Well, one of the first was Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter which has been out years, there's plenty more though. Lots of engines provide integration as default or at least provide integration paths.
Does it suck what nVidia is doing? Yeah, I guess so if you're an ATI user. On the same note though it's hard to see why nVidia should support their opponents platforms, that's just bad business and really, the only people who suffer are people who aren't actually their customers anyway. I can see why they're doing it, it just makes good business sense.
Why do you assume it'll be the security council that'll get involved rather than say the International Telecommunication Union?
What's that? You didn't realise the UN already does pretty much what ICANN does in another area very successfully?
"Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be even worse than the jackbooted variety, as the authorities choke off dissent while insisting it's all for our own good."
But you think it's okay for a single US state to be able to impose censorship for our own good I suppose?
http://www.freepress.net/node/45158
Eventually the appeals court realised this was stupid and overturned it, but the fact is a single judge in a single state of the US whilst US has full control of ICANN could censor whatever they wanted and did so for a damaging period of time for a web based business, and they did. More than once:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2008/03/us-interferes-with-travel-to-cuba.ars
"Honestly, I can't understand how any serious observer of world affairs, whatever you may personally think of the United States, can maintain that UN control is preferable to the current system. Not by any standard."
Your answer lies above, it is because any "serious observer of world affairs" who is not ignorant to the reality of US control of ICANN realises it's been doing a really, really bad job in recent years with everything from gTLDs to censorship of foreign domain names being.
I guess you weren't aware of what ICANN has done wrong in recent years which is fair enough, but if you're going to defend an organisation and speculate on what an alternative organisation would do wrong, you should at least make sure the organisation you're defending wasn't guilty of doing exactly what you're so concerned about- censorship.
Yes, and there's an awful lot of other countries that don't want censorship.
Changes need consensus in international organisations, this is a stupid argument, because you'd never get international consensus on this sort of thing so it wouldn't happen.
Whilst you have one country controlling it however, you get shit like this:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html
Yes that's right, judges in single US courts being able to unilaterally order the effective take down of overseas sites for which they should have no jurisdiction over whatsoever.
Don't try and pretend the countries you list would magically get their way over Western nations if control was shared, and don't try and pretend the US has never done anything wrong whilst in control of the internet.
When you have opposing views sharing power, stupid ideas get blocked indefinitely so the sort of situation in the above two articles would never happen, neither would censorship. Stuff like security issues that need urgent attention would get passed because everyone would agree they're a problem.
Effectively just as in hung or proportionally represented governments, the only stuff that gets blocked is controversal shit that half the people don't want, the only stuff that gets through is stuff that's agreeable to everyone. That's much better all round than having a single entity unilaterally imposing bad ideas on everyone else.
Because when you eat a hamburger it has no effect on anyone else.
When you smoke you're forcing other people to breathe in your smoke, and forcing them to deal with that awful smell that you're soaked in.
People usually don't complain about smokers because they're worried about them killing themselves early, they complain because they themselves don't want to be killed early and made uncomfortable due to not being able to breathe fresh air in the meantime by a smoker.
If smokers want to fuck themselves over fine, but don't expect people to be happy about being fucked over with them against their will. Hamburgers don't have any relevance in this argument, it's really a straw man.
Next time you're at work take a look at how many people go for a smoke, how many women spend a bit of time filing their nails, how many spend 5 minutes on Solitaire, how many browse the internet for a while, how many stand around having a chat for 5 minutes?
The point is that there is not a single person on the planet who can realistically work for a solid working day without the slightest break, if someone is looking at porn in their break for 5 minutes rather than going out and smoking 3 times a day for 10 minutes a time for example, or chatting around the water cooler for 5 minutes then I really don't see the problem.
The key in my opinion is whether someone is being abusive with it, if they're doing whatever they like to do for 4 hours of the working day then fair enough, that's really not acceptable, but if it's something like 20 minutes spread across the whole day? I don't see the issue, it makes people more productive if they're allowed to have short breaks for a few minutes through the day.
It's an important distinction for sure.
If someone actually spent 331 days at doing it I'd be concerned that they are in fact mentally ill in some way. If they just looked for 5 mins or so each day for 331 days then who cares?
The Pirate Party name gets average joes asking what they actually stand for.
Calling it something mundane just leaves them thinking "Oh, just another run of the mill minority party".