I wonder what happened to the statements Pelosi made just before the 2006 elections about how if the Dems got control they would not be going after impeachment. Or were they just meaning Bush impeachment and Cheney is free game?
Also I agree that Kucinich needs some BIG media pop to catch up to the Hillary/Barak league of play. This could be a desperation ploy, his personal love letter to the far left and whatnot.
In a far scarier development, consider that giving Bush a chance to put someone in the VP seat who could actually run might hurt the Democrats in 2008, here's why.
Bush appoints someone the RNC feels is a very solid contender. Then Bush allows that person the latitude to make changes and do things while Bush a;; but throws himself on any grenades under the auspice of "this was my problem before you even took the job". Fill in VP is seen as a person in there fixing problems, the perfect play to compliment most republicans current packaging and distancing from Bush.
IMHO the Democrats would be best served by just letting Bush and Cheney roll out this last year and a half as it gives them even more time to look bad.
I am already pretty against the "hate crime" laws in the US for the very reason mentioned above. The crime should be what is punished for, not the thought and intent behind it.
Given crime == 5 years in jail Given crime + hateful thoughts == 8 years in jail. Then following through... hateful thoughts == 3 years in jail
The fact that you have quantified a pattern of thought as being punishable by 3 more years in jail is far FAR too Orwellian for my tastes. It's the legal equivalent of venial sins, not bad enough to be a sin on it's own, but definitely bad enough to increase your penance for a mortal sin.
Something which is free , by definition, is something which has no restrictions placed on it. Freedom of speech means freedom to say things which aren't popular opinions. The EU is futher taking away free speech with this. (It was already not really free with the current laws in place)
Here's a question, since the Quran tells Muslims to kill the disbelievers wherever they find them (Q. 2:191), to murder them and treat them harshly (Q. 9:123), slay them (Q. 9:5), fight with them, (Q. 8: 65 ) even if they are Christians and Jews, humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax (Q. 9: 29). (quick and dirty google for that.. http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/sina.htm ) Does this mean the Quran is a "hate text"? Would reading those passages be "Hate Speech"?
Whereas I don't agree with those things, I respect the right of someone else to think and believe them. Now, if they act on those beliefs then they are transgressing against the rights of others to things such as life and liberty. At that point it's punishment time. But not punishment for believing it, punishment for the act expressing it.
It's nice to see a judge finally start applying some "put up or shut up" logic to this mess. Actually this looks more like a "Put up AND shut up", but I'm willing to run with that as well.
If they had realized or at least internally admitted that this "upgrade" is really not half as huge or earth shattering as they had hoped and instead priced it as a small to moderate upgrade more would have sold. Instead they priced it so that the OS was essentially the single biggest cost in building a new system in many cases. (short of of the GPU for gamers)
They also tried to play the "let's granularize by feature" game and lost miserably.
My personal opinion as to why is that MS needed something to rake in big money to make shareholders happy. So they placed some ill advised bets on what the market would and wouldn't take and so far they've lost them all.
The next foot I see falling will be an interesting stand off. At some point MS will declare that all XP support and patches will end on some given date, then Dell and the other PC manufacturers will either have to capitulate and push Vista more or say "Well, we'll just start selling systems with on there, they charge the customer an upgrade fee to put Vista on instead."
And even being a Windows user and not a "fan boi" of any given linux distro even I hope they choose the second option.
But the combination of trying to find how to easily get to the real article while also fighting "Intellitext" ads proved too much for me. I am a weak weak man.
How does RIM plan on maintaining this behemoth it has created when more smart phones that know how to use TCP/IP are in play and people realize "wait, we can just set up an exchange or IMAP server..."
Is there something THAT magical in their kool-aid?
Actually, I can't imagine going to one of those things in costume, and since the reasons I ever do go to big shows like that would be to learn about new products and they really don't have anything other than "yeah, we're gonna work on WoW more... maybe something starcrafty will happen eventually..."
I've had one since Mid January. When I decided to get one I made a rotation of the local best buys (2 of them), then local circuit cities (1 of them), and the local warmarts (3 of them),plus 2 gamestops.
On day 7 of making a rotation driving to each one I got the Wii, at a WalMart. Notably it was a WalMart we refer to as "GhettoMart" because of the neighborhood it's in. It's also the leader in "shrinkage" for the area (i.e. more stuff gets stolen from it). I don't know if that was a factor in some way, but that's where I got mine.
Make the WiFi capable of easily handing off songs without attaching DRM and we can talk. Unleash what WiFi could really do on these and you're in business.
Make it so that if you're at a Starbucks and like the background music playing your Zune can check what artist and song and buy the album from the server streaming the music at Starbucks if you wish.
While you're at, if you have WiFi you should never have any reason to need to "dock" right? Just be on the same 802.11 network and sync over it.. right?
But I agree, give MS time, and let them throw their money in a hole slowly developing a good product.
I also agree that anybody whining that they can't switch because they have so many tunes locked in on iTunes should have to suffer through an inferior product until they get the DRM lock-in monkey off their back.
I thought that too, but then the back of my brain asked "Well, if they encrypt it to be decrypted by all known good keys that means a disc made at one point in time wouldn't be able to support a key issued to a new player manufacturer later."
That led me to think they had to use a revocation list scheme like CA's use. Because without it if , say, Bob's electronics decide to manufacture it's own drive then any HD content made BEFORE it was issued it's key wouldn't play on it. That would be a HUGE barrier to entry into the market.
IIRC the AACS scheme works a lot like a certificate authority. What they are doing is that on new discs they will add the old InterVideo key to the revocation list. Then compliant players will read and obey the revocation list and not play if their key show up on the list.
Wouldn't the far superior hack then be to hack the player program/firmware in such a way that it simply disregards the KRL?
Could someone with more AACS-fu then I please enlighten me on that one?
Blizzard knows they can ban botters because they are violating the AUP of the game which they agree to. The problem is the ones who do this to farm gold and resale (which is also against the AUP) consider this just a speedbump and accepted/expected cost of doing business. They buy a new CD key, gen a new account, and GBTW.
Blizzard wants to (or at least wants to LOOK like they want to if you listed to the conspiracy theorists) stop botting/gold farming from happening all together. The problem is they have no real way to go after the people doing it. IANAL, but the AUP and TOS are civil agreements, if you break them you're in breach of contract (depending on which Judge they get) but they can't jail you, or bring any real punishment beyond some punitive damages. They want a way to jail people for it. Which brings them to going after those who make the tools.
This looks to be a pretty flimsy case, but something that even if it's a no chance proposal they have to do in order to look like they're doing SOMETHING about it. It boils down to if you can use some type of addon component to optimize the operation of another product you purchased, and if not are the manufacturers of the addon legally liable for it's use?
To get some of the standard cliched comparisons out of the way... Does a car manufacturer get to sue a NO2 after market company for making it's cars exceed the intended specs and usage? No. Can they void the warranty on the car? yes.
Does DirectTV get to have me thrown in jail because I pop open my TIVO and add a second hard drive to it to increase storage then patch the OS to allow for net access? No. Can they void the warranty on my Tivo and chose to disconnect my service? Yes.
Actually there are more than a few Trojans, Keystealers, and other forums of viruses/malware that do specifically target WoW. To the point the Blizzard has posts on the forums specifically dealing with them.
But the angry daystar is preparing for it's final assault on pale people everywhere! (this should inherently strike terror into the hearts of most slashdotters...)
Oh I went through "simply not playing" but most of that for me was solved with a carpet bombing of codec packs.
Right now she has a bunch of stuff on her machine in the office, and the draft N wireless router I put in is having issues with streams of traffic. By all measures you should be able to stream non HD content just fine over a 802.11G connection running at 54. I think it's just a sub standard Draft N router that doesn't handle stepping down to G (which is what the WMCE box has in it) particularly well.
And if you've got dishonest cops you have far bigger things to worry about. I mean what kind of governmental system would be able to operate if you had an executive branch playing fast and loose with the rules of law...
I also live in Texas. What you are seeing in the "no tax on internet purchases" was a specific caveat made in order to foster and encourage the growth of e-business. In theory if you buy something on line from a retailer who has a storefront in Texas you're supposed to be paying sales tax on it as well. That is just not enforced because it's very impractical to do so.
An example is Borders, who I believe is spinning it's e-commerce stuff off from Amazon. They will have to charge sales tax on all purchases because they have storefronts in every state. But this is a moot point because you're thinking of sales tax, and the topic here is income tax. If you make income and profit off on-line sales you still owe income tax, that is not exempted from taxation merely because it's online.
Apple has long strived to merge the concept of the device and the service into one. It's what made the iPod/iTunes combo such a devastatingly effective one. Is this a case where that same mantra is biting them in the posterior? In this case the lacking of higher definition content on service (iTunes) is magnified by the product.
Don't knock the hardware for it. It's a nice little hardware platform, place the blame on the shoulders of an iTunes service which just doesn't have enough HD content.
It's like my wife blaming Windows Media Center for choppy video performance watching a video when it was really a flaky wireless router dropping packets.
There are actual regulations and laws regarding how to list illegally gained income on your taxes. The funny thing is you can list illegal income and because you list it is not considered a viable reason for the police to investigate you unless they have other evidence.
The fact is this isn't something "new." This is still simply income.
You could be raising tomatos out in your back yard, then selling them to neighbors just as easily as you could be farming gold in WoW and selling it to desperate e-peen jockeys who need consumables for raiding... Same thing.
If you raised those tomatos and just gave them to your neighbors that's not income, ergo not taxed. It's when you charge for them that it becomes income.
So this isn't a matter of establishing a new tax as it is a matter of making sure we have definitions of what is and isn't income. A different medium makes no difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Then how does that explain the quotes from Clinton and Albright from before the Bush presidency started?
It seems actually that you might be the one cherry picking data, eh?
I wonder what happened to the statements Pelosi made just before the 2006 elections about how if the Dems got control they would not be going after impeachment. Or were they just meaning Bush impeachment and Cheney is free game?
Also I agree that Kucinich needs some BIG media pop to catch up to the Hillary/Barak league of play. This could be a desperation ploy, his personal love letter to the far left and whatnot.
In a far scarier development, consider that giving Bush a chance to put someone in the VP seat who could actually run might hurt the Democrats in 2008, here's why.
Bush appoints someone the RNC feels is a very solid contender. Then Bush allows that person the latitude to make changes and do things while Bush a;; but throws himself on any grenades under the auspice of "this was my problem before you even took the job". Fill in VP is seen as a person in there fixing problems, the perfect play to compliment most republicans current packaging and distancing from Bush.
IMHO the Democrats would be best served by just letting Bush and Cheney roll out this last year and a half as it gives them even more time to look bad.
I am already pretty against the "hate crime" laws in the US for the very reason mentioned above. The crime should be what is punished for, not the thought and intent behind it.
Given crime == 5 years in jail
Given crime + hateful thoughts == 8 years in jail.
Then following through...
hateful thoughts == 3 years in jail
The fact that you have quantified a pattern of thought as being punishable by 3 more years in jail is far FAR too Orwellian for my tastes. It's the legal equivalent of venial sins, not bad enough to be a sin on it's own, but definitely bad enough to increase your penance for a mortal sin.
Something which is free , by definition, is something which has no restrictions placed on it. Freedom of speech means freedom to say things which aren't popular opinions. The EU is futher taking away free speech with this. (It was already not really free with the current laws in place)
Here's a question, since the Quran tells Muslims to kill the disbelievers wherever they find them (Q. 2:191), to murder them and treat them harshly (Q. 9:123), slay them (Q. 9:5), fight with them, (Q. 8: 65 ) even if they are Christians and Jews, humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax (Q. 9: 29). (quick and dirty google for that.. http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/sina.htm ) Does this mean the Quran is a "hate text"? Would reading those passages be "Hate Speech"?
Whereas I don't agree with those things, I respect the right of someone else to think and believe them. Now, if they act on those beliefs then they are transgressing against the rights of others to things such as life and liberty. At that point it's punishment time. But not punishment for believing it, punishment for the act expressing it.
Yeah, but think for a second what the majority of big business lawyers look like. You might reconsider that last part ;)
It's nice to see a judge finally start applying some "put up or shut up" logic to this mess. Actually this looks more like a "Put up AND shut up", but I'm willing to run with that as well.
For some reason it did not like me using some symbols in that sentence... didn't catch it on preview.. bad me... correct sentence:
"Well, we'll just start selling systems with {insert linux distro} on there, they charge the customer an upgrade fee to put Vista on instead."
If they had realized or at least internally admitted that this "upgrade" is really not half as huge or earth shattering as they had hoped and instead priced it as a small to moderate upgrade more would have sold. Instead they priced it so that the OS was essentially the single biggest cost in building a new system in many cases. (short of of the GPU for gamers)
They also tried to play the "let's granularize by feature" game and lost miserably.
My personal opinion as to why is that MS needed something to rake in big money to make shareholders happy. So they placed some ill advised bets on what the market would and wouldn't take and so far they've lost them all.
The next foot I see falling will be an interesting stand off. At some point MS will declare that all XP support and patches will end on some given date, then Dell and the other PC manufacturers will either have to capitulate and push Vista more or say "Well, we'll just start selling systems with on there, they charge the customer an upgrade fee to put Vista on instead."
And even being a Windows user and not a "fan boi" of any given linux distro even I hope they choose the second option.
But the combination of trying to find how to easily get to the real article while also fighting "Intellitext" ads proved too much for me. I am a weak weak man.
This is something which mystifies me...
How does RIM plan on maintaining this behemoth it has created when more smart phones that know how to use TCP/IP are in play and people realize "wait, we can just set up an exchange or IMAP server..."
Is there something THAT magical in their kool-aid?
My AVG seems to have quarantined a couple of these yesterday.
That took longer than I thought it would.
I put on my wizard hat and robe...
Actually, I can't imagine going to one of those things in costume, and since the reasons I ever do go to big shows like that would be to learn about new products and they really don't have anything other than "yeah, we're gonna work on WoW more... maybe something starcrafty will happen eventually..."
I've had one since Mid January. When I decided to get one I made a rotation of the local best buys (2 of them), then local circuit cities (1 of them), and the local warmarts (3 of them),plus 2 gamestops.
On day 7 of making a rotation driving to each one I got the Wii, at a WalMart. Notably it was a WalMart we refer to as "GhettoMart" because of the neighborhood it's in. It's also the leader in "shrinkage" for the area (i.e. more stuff gets stolen from it). I don't know if that was a factor in some way, but that's where I got mine.
Make the WiFi capable of easily handing off songs without attaching DRM and we can talk. Unleash what WiFi could really do on these and you're in business.
Make it so that if you're at a Starbucks and like the background music playing your Zune can check what artist and song and buy the album from the server streaming the music at Starbucks if you wish.
While you're at, if you have WiFi you should never have any reason to need to "dock" right? Just be on the same 802.11 network and sync over it.. right?
But I agree, give MS time, and let them throw their money in a hole slowly developing a good product.
I also agree that anybody whining that they can't switch because they have so many tunes locked in on iTunes should have to suffer through an inferior product until they get the DRM lock-in monkey off their back.
I thought that too, but then the back of my brain asked "Well, if they encrypt it to be decrypted by all known good keys that means a disc made at one point in time wouldn't be able to support a key issued to a new player manufacturer later."
That led me to think they had to use a revocation list scheme like CA's use. Because without it if , say, Bob's electronics decide to manufacture it's own drive then any HD content made BEFORE it was issued it's key wouldn't play on it. That would be a HUGE barrier to entry into the market.
IIRC the AACS scheme works a lot like a certificate authority. What they are doing is that on new discs they will add the old InterVideo key to the revocation list. Then compliant players will read and obey the revocation list and not play if their key show up on the list.
Wouldn't the far superior hack then be to hack the player program/firmware in such a way that it simply disregards the KRL?
Could someone with more AACS-fu then I please enlighten me on that one?
Blizzard knows they can ban botters because they are violating the AUP of the game which they agree to. The problem is the ones who do this to farm gold and resale (which is also against the AUP) consider this just a speedbump and accepted/expected cost of doing business. They buy a new CD key, gen a new account, and GBTW.
Blizzard wants to (or at least wants to LOOK like they want to if you listed to the conspiracy theorists) stop botting/gold farming from happening all together. The problem is they have no real way to go after the people doing it. IANAL, but the AUP and TOS are civil agreements, if you break them you're in breach of contract (depending on which Judge they get) but they can't jail you, or bring any real punishment beyond some punitive damages. They want a way to jail people for it. Which brings them to going after those who make the tools.
This looks to be a pretty flimsy case, but something that even if it's a no chance proposal they have to do in order to look like they're doing SOMETHING about it. It boils down to if you can use some type of addon component to optimize the operation of another product you purchased, and if not are the manufacturers of the addon legally liable for it's use?
To get some of the standard cliched comparisons out of the way...
Does a car manufacturer get to sue a NO2 after market company for making it's cars exceed the intended specs and usage? No. Can they void the warranty on the car? yes.
Does DirectTV get to have me thrown in jail because I pop open my TIVO and add a second hard drive to it to increase storage then patch the OS to allow for net access? No. Can they void the warranty on my Tivo and chose to disconnect my service? Yes.
Actually there are more than a few Trojans, Keystealers, and other forums of viruses/malware that do specifically target WoW. To the point the Blizzard has posts on the forums specifically dealing with them.
the more you know...
But the angry daystar is preparing for it's final assault on pale people everywhere! (this should inherently strike terror into the hearts of most slashdotters...)
Oh I went through "simply not playing" but most of that for me was solved with a carpet bombing of codec packs.
;)
Right now she has a bunch of stuff on her machine in the office, and the draft N wireless router I put in is having issues with streams of traffic. By all measures you should be able to stream non HD content just fine over a 802.11G connection running at 54. I think it's just a sub standard Draft N router that doesn't handle stepping down to G (which is what the WMCE box has in it) particularly well.
But that's besides the point
Depends on how honest the cops are.
And if you've got dishonest cops you have far bigger things to worry about. I mean what kind of governmental system would be able to operate if you had an executive branch playing fast and loose with the rules of law...
Um.... nevermind.
I also live in Texas. What you are seeing in the "no tax on internet purchases" was a specific caveat made in order to foster and encourage the growth of e-business. In theory if you buy something on line from a retailer who has a storefront in Texas you're supposed to be paying sales tax on it as well. That is just not enforced because it's very impractical to do so.
An example is Borders, who I believe is spinning it's e-commerce stuff off from Amazon. They will have to charge sales tax on all purchases because they have storefronts in every state. But this is a moot point because you're thinking of sales tax, and the topic here is income tax. If you make income and profit off on-line sales you still owe income tax, that is not exempted from taxation merely because it's online.
Apple has long strived to merge the concept of the device and the service into one. It's what made the iPod/iTunes combo such a devastatingly effective one. Is this a case where that same mantra is biting them in the posterior? In this case the lacking of higher definition content on service (iTunes) is magnified by the product.
Don't knock the hardware for it. It's a nice little hardware platform, place the blame on the shoulders of an iTunes service which just doesn't have enough HD content.
It's like my wife blaming Windows Media Center for choppy video performance watching a video when it was really a flaky wireless router dropping packets.
There are actual regulations and laws regarding how to list illegally gained income on your taxes. The funny thing is you can list illegal income and because you list it is not considered a viable reason for the police to investigate you unless they have other evidence.
The fact is this isn't something "new." This is still simply income.
You could be raising tomatos out in your back yard, then selling them to neighbors just as easily as you could be farming gold in WoW and selling it to desperate e-peen jockeys who need consumables for raiding... Same thing.
If you raised those tomatos and just gave them to your neighbors that's not income, ergo not taxed. It's when you charge for them that it becomes income.
So this isn't a matter of establishing a new tax as it is a matter of making sure we have definitions of what is and isn't income. A different medium makes no difference.