The original posting said "The joy of closed source security at work." Then the poster above me said "security through obscurity NOT effective security."
Maybe I'm just a little thick, but you're talking about encryption, when the issue here is piracy control. We're not talking about keys to unencrypt data, we're talking about keys to activate software. How would an open security algorithm have protected them in this case? If the key-checking algorithm were public, couldn't people simply brute-force numbers through the (now public) algorithm, generating keys till the cows come home?
So I repeat, and am sincerely interested: why the snide comments about how much better open is than closed, and how obscurity is a bad method of protection (despite having successfully protected the product for, what, a couple of years now?)? How would an open solution have protected the product any better? Note that I'm not talking about opening the entire product, since I'm not interested in this degrading to a "Linux vs. Microsoft" argument - the comments were specifically directed at this particular security component (the anti-piracy key checking algorithm), so that's what I'd like to hear you defend, if indeed it is possible, in the context of an open solution/algorithm being superior to a closed one.
I appreciate that you were just trying to whore some "+1 Funny" points, but that joke has already gotten old. Not only that, but do you even know what an "RFC" is? What you've said is the equivalent of saying "I wrote my homepage in RFC HTML. You can access it using any browser that supports the RFC HTTP protocol over an RFC TCP/IP network. I'll post the link to RFC Usenet later."
"RFC" means "Request For Comments." It's a review process for adopting new protocols and standards. So your (huge quotes) "joke" could be translated as "Does it support the Request For Comment Evil bit?" Which, of course, makes no sense. What you should have said was simply "Does it support the Evil bit?"
You're probably one of those guys who says "PIN number" and "DVD disk", aren't you.
There's almost as much sugar in fruit juice as in fizzy sugar water
Pick up a nutirition book and learn the difference between "natural sugars" and "refined sugars." One is much worse for you than the other. Can you guess which?
people who know what they talk about post interesting information on all kind of subjects
Uhm, are we looking at the same Internet? On the one I surf, people post on all kinds of topics, whether they know what they're talking about or not!:)
I can't believe this. This is the web, buddy. People will visit your site. Suck it up. Get a decent hosting solution. How hard is it? My site's been semi-slashdotted once, but my hosting provider didn't even flinch. Served over 12,000 files in a few hours. And if I hit my bandwidth limit (6 gigs), they don't just start charging me more, they stop serving until either the end of the month, or I buy more bandwidth. And I'm hosting photographs!
Hyperlinks are the reason the web works. Nobody needs anybody's "permission" to link to your page! If you put it up on the web, it's fair game. That's your implied consent - nay, invitation - for people to come visit your site. Why would you put something on the web if you didn't want people to see it? And even then, that's what a.htaccess file is for.
Actually, no, the courts disagree with me. The governments down own the courts. If they did, there would be no need for a district attorney - they'd just skip right to the judge.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
The courts have also ruled that Bush won an election, despite his opponent garnering more votes.
Just because the courts say something doesn't make it fact. It just makes it law.
Actually, it isn't. The fact that you think the (many) alternatives are too expensive doesn't negate the fact that they exist, and that alone is enough to rebut the accusation that Microsoft is a "monopoly." Does Canjet have an airline monopoly in Canada? I always fly with Canjet. I can't afford to fly with Air Canada, so I guess by your definition, CanJet is a monopoly in Canada. Whatever.
I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are.
I'd take that bet. Movie commercials are very expensive. What on Earth makes you think movie producers will put up with a full two minute ad (your words, not mine) before every one of their shows, without Microsoft front a massive wad of cash? The only analogy I can think of is that occassionally, some movies I see show a 15 second "THX" or "Dolby Digital" promo. Certainly not two minutes.
Gee, has it occurred to you that the reason it seems that the "rich" (defined as "anyone who makes more than you") are the beneficieries of all the tax cuts is because they're the ones who pay BY FAR the most taxes? Perhaps 80% of the tax benefits are going to the top 1% because the top 1% contribute 80% of the government's tax revenue? Hmm?
WARNING: I made those numbers up, but my point remains. The majority of tax dollars come from a small minority of taxpayers (the actually rich, not just the ones YOU consider "rich").
Depending on the circumstances, the company may not be allowed to fire that one person, either. In the UK, certain conditions must be met before a company is permitted to lay people off (eg., can't lay off more than 10% of your staff at a time or something - someone actually from the UK can probably provide more details).
It is just a matter of time before IIS regains marketshare and overtakes Apache. As Microsoft's.NET architecture gains a foothold, organizations will slowly, project-by-project, find themselves moving back toward IIS. Apache doesn't have anything to compete with.NET (JSPs provide similar [though stripped-down] functionality, but without the sophisticated SDK and development tools that Visual Studio.NET provides), and there's not even anything on the horizon.
Mark my words - IIS is most definitely not "slaughtered," "wiped out," or "irrelevant." Unless JSPs (or something else) evolve to bring Apache's functionality up to IIS, Apache will be the one rendered into obscurity in the coming years.
So, you're saying a picture MUST be printed as it originally was? What if the picture is perfect, except for a glare from the sun on the guy's sunglasses? What about digital colour corrections? Increasing the contrast to bring out the shadows more?
There are a lot more subtle changes that can be made to a photo beyond the obvious big things like putting an American flag on an Iraqi tank, etc.
Imagine you're speeding along the surface of the ocean in a boat, and you have a cone-shaped, 200 pound piece of ice. You drop the ice into the water just as you approach another boat. You turn your own boat to the side, and the chunk of ice torpedoes through the water and slams into the side of the second boat, creating a large hole and sinking his ship.
Now, imagine the same scenario, except this time you have 200 pounds of ice cubes, instead of one giant piece. Again, as you approach the second boat, you throw the ice overboard. What happens this time? Do you think the second boat will still sink?
Of course not. This time, with their increased surface area, the ice cubes will slow much faster, melt more quickly, and those that do reach the boat will impact over a much larger area, causing little to no damage. The same amount of energy was dissipated into the water (the cooling affect of the ice was the same) and the ice had the same amount of kinetic energy as in the first case, but this time, the outcome is much more favourable for the second boat.
XML is very useful. It's not XML's fault that Microsoft isn't implementing it.
Ppppppht! *sprays water all over monitor* Microsoft's not "implementing it?" What in the heck do you mean by that? Have you taken a look at anything in the.NET suite lately? The entire system is built on XML. The solution files, project files, assembly manifests, application configuration files, setup binding files - they're all XML! Visual Studio.NET is build extensively on XML, and the.NET API includes some very intuitive and powerful classes for reading, manipulating, and building XML documents. I suggest you do at least a cursory investigation before spouting something so outrageously inaccurate next time.
The sad thing is, most people won't care. They'll roll this out, a very vocal, splinter minority will kick up a loud stink, it'll blow over, and we'll have lost a little more freedom. The public is just too lazy and apathetic to get worked up over something so (seemingly) trivial. As long as the beer store is still there and they're still running Bingo every Thursday night, they'll just go with the flow.
One thing I've learned is that it takes a VERY big offense to motivate your average citizen to actually get up off their couch and do something - ANYTHING - about something. I mean geez, polls show that at a minimum, 30% of Americans oppose the war on^H^Hin Iraq. That's what, 90,000,000 Americans? How many actually show up at the protests? A few thousand here and there? And we're talking about peoples' lives being at stake! Hell, half of the Yankee populace can't even be bothered to vote - you think they're going to sit down and write a letter to their rep over some stupid copy protection that they don't even understand anyway? Call my cynical, but I don't think so.
I believe that if the RIAA decides they want this tech out there, then it's just a matter of time before all CDs have this copy protection. You can boycott if you want, but if every single CD is using it, there won't be any alternatives for you to direct your money at (none worth listening to, anyway).:(
it takes someone 5 seconds to identify a message as spam and delete it.
5 seconds??? Are you insane? Look at your watch. Now wait 5 seconds. That's an eternity. Why on Earth would it take anyone that long to look at an email and determine "Hey, who the %*#@ is this and why are they emailing me about penis creme?"
Personally, I can scan through a list of email subjects and senders (i.e., the folder - don't even need to see the messages' contents) and identify spam by the dozens. Even still, for the sake of argument, let's say it takes a whole second per spam.
Now, for the other holes in your ludicrous argument.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I regularly receive about 100 pieces of spam on a typical day.
At work? Then your work for a really crappy company. Even the tiniest of companies use spam filtering software. In the last 4 years, and at two separate companies, I've only ever recieved I think 2 spams IN TOTAL. Certainly not "100 per day." Sure, I get that much at home, but no one's paying me for that time, so you can't count that as lost productivity or economic cost or whatever.
So for normal employees, who can identify spam in 1 second instead of 5, and who receive 2 spams a year on their work account instead of the 26,000 you assert you receive, that amounts to about 0.0000001% of their paycheck, or precisely $0/year. Zero net impact on the company, other than loading down their mail servers a little more than usual as the spam filters do their thing.
If you get 100 spams a day on your work account, then either you're self employed and too lazy to set up even the most rudimentary spam filters, or your company sucks, or you're an idiot and use your real, work email address every time you sign up for a Honda mailing list or NASCAR "Speed Bulletins."
Stop the FUD. Spam sucks, but don't pretend it costs us more than a few seconds of our time or a few dollars of extra IT work. I get a kick out of all these people who complain that it takes them 30 valuable seconds of their free time in the evenings to delete a few dozen spams. Yet they'll sit there and waste hours on a Diablo game. If their time is so valuable, how come they spend so much time planted in front of the TV or surfing useless websites?
That is a LIE, though to your credit, an oft-repeated one. I guess I can forgive you, as even a few of the less credible news sources have parrotted it as out-of-context as you just did.
The actual stat you are referring to claims that 76% of Americans "agree that Iraq is a threat to the United States." Fewer than 45% support the open war with Iraq that Dubya has delivered. In case your mind is even remotely open, why don't you ask yourself "if 76% of Americans feel Iraq is a threat to the US, then how many feel that North Korea is also a threat?" And if being a "threat" is enough to justify invasion of Iraq, then shouldn't it also be enough to justify invasion of North Korea?
President's Choice financial is owned by CIBC. Also, I don't have to maintain the $1000 minimum balance, because technically, I'm with "Bank @Work", a special promotion that was offered to Nortel Networks employees. The $1000 minimum balance is moot anyway, since our account cycles through over $5000 worth of paychecks and bills every month anyway, so there is always at least several thousands of dollars there as a "buffer."
They can't raise prices without adding a new "service" which involves paying for something that I used to get for free.
Uh, checked your bank statement lately? Here in Canada, at least, most major banks now charge customers for using the ATM. Used to be if you used some other bank's ATM to access your account, you'd pay a fee, but as long as you stuck with your own bank's ATMs, you weren't charged. Now, they all charge you to access your own accounts, even if you use your own bank's ATM. Some even charge you for using a teller. Basically, any time you want to do anything with your money (deposit, withdraw, transfer), whether you use an ATM or a teller, you'll be charged a buck fifty or so.
claiming that NK is a more pressing issue is just uninformed.
???
We know North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program. We know they have ICBMs capable of reaching US shores. We know they've openly threatened the US. North Korea is a very real threat the US. Iraq is not.
Iraq has the motive, but neither the means nor the opportunity to attack the US. Iraq is not a threat to the US. North Korea is. So why is the US invading Iraq, and completely ignoring North Korea?
[A digital print] will have no grain and better color.
Digital will never match the colour of slide film. It can't, by definition. It may be more vivid, due to some post-processing tricks, but it will never be as real or as authentic. Slide film captures the colour exactly as it was, whereas digital rounds it to the nearest bit. Slide film colour is as faithful and rich as the real thing.
very little of the money is going to the artists themselves
Oh yeah, tell me about it. Just look at poor Jennifer Lopez, the poor girl obviously can't even afford a decent meal. And I'm sure DMX's gold chains are all fake, and I'll bet Shania Twain bought her Mercedes at the "Used" lot, rather than the showroom, like she deserved.
I find that the music industry is getting tons of money for something they didn't even create.
I find the newspaper industry is getting tons of money for something they didn't even create.
There is a helluvalot more to the music industry than just the music. The fact that the art itself is what you actually hear does not erase the fact that hundreds of talented, specialized people are involved in the production and marketing of an album. Those people deserve to be paid.
Listen to yourself, people like you make me sick. You think that just because it's Britney's voice on the CD, that somehow she should get most of the money from the album. She's just ONE PERSON. Sure, she's talented, but is she any more talented than the artist who created the cover art on the CD, or the costume designer who worked on her video, or the 100 or so other people involved in marketing her? Why should one person get HALF of all the profits, while the people who MADE HER WHAT SHE IS get to fight over the remaining crumbs?
Think about it. You seem to think that aaaaall those other people are just inconsequential and expendible. If that were true, then why don't the artists go it on their own? Thousands do, and you never hear of ANY if them. Know why? Because those other people involved in the creation of an album ARE creating value. Without them, you'd never have even heard of Britney, and there wouldn't be any profits for her to bitch about.
The arrogance of your opinion sickens me. Just because someone is blessed with a good voice, or is a decent guitar player doesn't automatically mean that perfectly-mastered CDs will magically show up at the local record shop. It takes a lot of people, a lot of work, and most importantly, A LOT OF MONEY to get it there, and the other people involved deserve to be paid just as much as the trained monkey reading off the lyrics that some other nameless artist wrote for him/her.
That is like saying that the alliance counter-attacked Hitler because he wasn't a Christian.
WHAT?!?! It's not the same thing at all! Hitler did attack other nations and slaughtered millions of Jews! Iraq's been sitting there minding their own business for 12 years.
What has Iraq done to warrant being invaded and overthrown?
Like I said, currently I am not happy about this war, but I am much more unhappy about bald faced ignorance
I too am apalled at the ignorance involved in this scenario, but it is directed at those who are ignorant of the history of the region, ignorant of the possibility that Iraq might actually have had an arguably legitimate claim to Kuwait (it used to be a provice of Iraq, it was being unreasonable in denying Iraq access to the sea - how is Iraq supposed to participate in international trade without waterway access??), and ignorant of Bush's blatant ulterior motives and hatemongering.
The US is a rabid dog, and I sincerely hope the rest of the world has the courage to unite in time to reign in their leash before thousands of innocent Iraqis are slaughtered, just so the Jones can keep filling their BMW SUV with premium, Middle East petroleum products.
First of all, I remember the commercial you're referring to, and I think it was pretty well done. It was done in a Mastercard-style. "Machine gun: $800. 20 pounds of explosives: $1800...." It went on, listing off all these artifacts of terrorism and their costs. It ended by saying, "Where do terrorists get the money to do what they do? If you buy drugs, maybe from you."
A little over-the-top, maybe, but a very powerful message. And contrary to your ignorance, not entirely off the mark. There are far more forms of terrorism than simply the far-east ones. Heck, even local gang-wars qualify as terrorism, and it's not hard to argue that they're funded by drug money.
a pathetic attempt to scam money out of unsuspecting people who are scared. Likely the same people who stocked up on supplies for Y2K.
This is ridiculous. What's wrong with selling people what they want? If people are willing to part their money for things that you don't deem worthy, they're stupid? Gee, I guess everyone who buys a Mercedes is stupid and "unsuspecting" then, because they could get by just as easily with a Kia. They must be getting ripped off by those "pathetic" scam-artists at Daimler-Chrysler. Someone should outlaw that type of marketing.
It also says "geek." It was meant to convey that I strive for an effective balance of both. I'm curious what you think of my own site. It's primary goal is to showcase photography. Do you believe that the mechanism I use to achieve this (namely iframes) is efficient and effective, or is it overly gimmicky at the expense of usability? Do the graphics on my site detract from it's overall usability?
My point in asking this is that I believe that my site demonstrates an effective balance of both form and function, and that the two are not mutually exclusive. I strive to prove that content-rich sites needn't be boring and stuffy, and that flashiness isn't an automatic warning of a site devoid of content. What do you think? I'm sincerely interested in your opinion. At the risk of these posts being modded "off-topic," please feel free to email me at kombat@kombat.org.
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The original posting said "The joy of closed source security at work." Then the poster above me said "security through obscurity NOT effective security."
Maybe I'm just a little thick, but you're talking about encryption, when the issue here is piracy control. We're not talking about keys to unencrypt data, we're talking about keys to activate software. How would an open security algorithm have protected them in this case? If the key-checking algorithm were public, couldn't people simply brute-force numbers through the (now public) algorithm, generating keys till the cows come home?
So I repeat, and am sincerely interested: why the snide comments about how much better open is than closed, and how obscurity is a bad method of protection (despite having successfully protected the product for, what, a couple of years now?)? How would an open solution have protected the product any better? Note that I'm not talking about opening the entire product, since I'm not interested in this degrading to a "Linux vs. Microsoft" argument - the comments were specifically directed at this particular security component (the anti-piracy key checking algorithm), so that's what I'd like to hear you defend, if indeed it is possible, in the context of an open solution/algorithm being superior to a closed one.
Any takers?
Does it support the RFC Evil bit?
I appreciate that you were just trying to whore some "+1 Funny" points, but that joke has already gotten old. Not only that, but do you even know what an "RFC" is? What you've said is the equivalent of saying "I wrote my homepage in RFC HTML. You can access it using any browser that supports the RFC HTTP protocol over an RFC TCP/IP network. I'll post the link to RFC Usenet later."
"RFC" means "Request For Comments." It's a review process for adopting new protocols and standards. So your (huge quotes) "joke" could be translated as "Does it support the Request For Comment Evil bit?" Which, of course, makes no sense. What you should have said was simply "Does it support the Evil bit?"
You're probably one of those guys who says "PIN number" and "DVD disk", aren't you.
There's almost as much sugar in fruit juice as in fizzy sugar water
Pick up a nutirition book and learn the difference between "natural sugars" and "refined sugars." One is much worse for you than the other. Can you guess which?
people who know what they talk about post interesting information on all kind of subjects
:)
Uhm, are we looking at the same Internet? On the one I surf, people post on all kinds of topics, whether they know what they're talking about or not!
I can't believe this. This is the web, buddy. People will visit your site. Suck it up. Get a decent hosting solution. How hard is it? My site's been semi-slashdotted once, but my hosting provider didn't even flinch. Served over 12,000 files in a few hours. And if I hit my bandwidth limit (6 gigs), they don't just start charging me more, they stop serving until either the end of the month, or I buy more bandwidth. And I'm hosting photographs!
.htaccess file is for.
Hyperlinks are the reason the web works. Nobody needs anybody's "permission" to link to your page! If you put it up on the web, it's fair game. That's your implied consent - nay, invitation - for people to come visit your site. Why would you put something on the web if you didn't want people to see it? And even then, that's what a
Cripes.
You neglect to consider the other alternatives, like, for example, the CEO taking a pay cut, or the investors suffering a loss. Boo hoo.
Actually, no, the courts disagree with me. The governments down own the courts. If they did, there would be no need for a district attorney - they'd just skip right to the judge.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
The courts have also ruled that Bush won an election, despite his opponent garnering more votes.
Just because the courts say something doesn't make it fact. It just makes it law.
Actually, it is.
Actually, it isn't. The fact that you think the (many) alternatives are too expensive doesn't negate the fact that they exist, and that alone is enough to rebut the accusation that Microsoft is a "monopoly." Does Canjet have an airline monopoly in Canada? I always fly with Canjet. I can't afford to fly with Air Canada, so I guess by your definition, CanJet is a monopoly in Canada. Whatever.
I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are.
I'd take that bet. Movie commercials are very expensive. What on Earth makes you think movie producers will put up with a full two minute ad (your words, not mine) before every one of their shows, without Microsoft front a massive wad of cash? The only analogy I can think of is that occassionally, some movies I see show a 15 second "THX" or "Dolby Digital" promo. Certainly not two minutes.
Stop with the FUD. You sound ignorant.
Gee, has it occurred to you that the reason it seems that the "rich" (defined as "anyone who makes more than you") are the beneficieries of all the tax cuts is because they're the ones who pay BY FAR the most taxes? Perhaps 80% of the tax benefits are going to the top 1% because the top 1% contribute 80% of the government's tax revenue? Hmm?
WARNING: I made those numbers up, but my point remains. The majority of tax dollars come from a small minority of taxpayers (the actually rich, not just the ones YOU consider "rich").
Depending on the circumstances, the company may not be allowed to fire that one person, either. In the UK, certain conditions must be met before a company is permitted to lay people off (eg., can't lay off more than 10% of your staff at a time or something - someone actually from the UK can probably provide more details).
Mark my words - IIS is most definitely not "slaughtered," "wiped out," or "irrelevant." Unless JSPs (or something else) evolve to bring Apache's functionality up to IIS, Apache will be the one rendered into obscurity in the coming years.
There are a lot more subtle changes that can be made to a photo beyond the obvious big things like putting an American flag on an Iraqi tank, etc.
Now, imagine the same scenario, except this time you have 200 pounds of ice cubes, instead of one giant piece. Again, as you approach the second boat, you throw the ice overboard. What happens this time? Do you think the second boat will still sink?
Of course not. This time, with their increased surface area, the ice cubes will slow much faster, melt more quickly, and those that do reach the boat will impact over a much larger area, causing little to no damage. The same amount of energy was dissipated into the water (the cooling affect of the ice was the same) and the ice had the same amount of kinetic energy as in the first case, but this time, the outcome is much more favourable for the second boat.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Ppppppht! *sprays water all over monitor* Microsoft's not "implementing it?" What in the heck do you mean by that? Have you taken a look at anything in the .NET suite lately? The entire system is built on XML. The solution files, project files, assembly manifests, application configuration files, setup binding files - they're all XML! Visual Studio .NET is build extensively on XML, and the .NET API includes some very intuitive and powerful classes for reading, manipulating, and building XML documents. I suggest you do at least a cursory investigation before spouting something so outrageously inaccurate next time.
One thing I've learned is that it takes a VERY big offense to motivate your average citizen to actually get up off their couch and do something - ANYTHING - about something. I mean geez, polls show that at a minimum, 30% of Americans oppose the war on^H^Hin Iraq. That's what, 90,000,000 Americans? How many actually show up at the protests? A few thousand here and there? And we're talking about peoples' lives being at stake! Hell, half of the Yankee populace can't even be bothered to vote - you think they're going to sit down and write a letter to their rep over some stupid copy protection that they don't even understand anyway? Call my cynical, but I don't think so.
I believe that if the RIAA decides they want this tech out there, then it's just a matter of time before all CDs have this copy protection. You can boycott if you want, but if every single CD is using it, there won't be any alternatives for you to direct your money at (none worth listening to, anyway). :(
5 seconds??? Are you insane? Look at your watch. Now wait 5 seconds. That's an eternity. Why on Earth would it take anyone that long to look at an email and determine "Hey, who the %*#@ is this and why are they emailing me about penis creme?"
Personally, I can scan through a list of email subjects and senders (i.e., the folder - don't even need to see the messages' contents) and identify spam by the dozens. Even still, for the sake of argument, let's say it takes a whole second per spam.
Now, for the other holes in your ludicrous argument.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I regularly receive about 100 pieces of spam on a typical day.
At work? Then your work for a really crappy company. Even the tiniest of companies use spam filtering software. In the last 4 years, and at two separate companies, I've only ever recieved I think 2 spams IN TOTAL. Certainly not "100 per day." Sure, I get that much at home, but no one's paying me for that time, so you can't count that as lost productivity or economic cost or whatever.
So for normal employees, who can identify spam in 1 second instead of 5, and who receive 2 spams a year on their work account instead of the 26,000 you assert you receive, that amounts to about 0.0000001% of their paycheck, or precisely $0/year. Zero net impact on the company, other than loading down their mail servers a little more than usual as the spam filters do their thing.
If you get 100 spams a day on your work account, then either you're self employed and too lazy to set up even the most rudimentary spam filters, or your company sucks, or you're an idiot and use your real, work email address every time you sign up for a Honda mailing list or NASCAR "Speed Bulletins."
Stop the FUD. Spam sucks, but don't pretend it costs us more than a few seconds of our time or a few dollars of extra IT work. I get a kick out of all these people who complain that it takes them 30 valuable seconds of their free time in the evenings to delete a few dozen spams. Yet they'll sit there and waste hours on a Diablo game. If their time is so valuable, how come they spend so much time planted in front of the TV or surfing useless websites?
That is a LIE, though to your credit, an oft-repeated one. I guess I can forgive you, as even a few of the less credible news sources have parrotted it as out-of-context as you just did.
The actual stat you are referring to claims that 76% of Americans "agree that Iraq is a threat to the United States." Fewer than 45% support the open war with Iraq that Dubya has delivered. In case your mind is even remotely open, why don't you ask yourself "if 76% of Americans feel Iraq is a threat to the US, then how many feel that North Korea is also a threat?" And if being a "threat" is enough to justify invasion of Iraq, then shouldn't it also be enough to justify invasion of North Korea?
President's Choice financial is owned by CIBC. Also, I don't have to maintain the $1000 minimum balance, because technically, I'm with "Bank @Work", a special promotion that was offered to Nortel Networks employees. The $1000 minimum balance is moot anyway, since our account cycles through over $5000 worth of paychecks and bills every month anyway, so there is always at least several thousands of dollars there as a "buffer."
Uh, checked your bank statement lately? Here in Canada, at least, most major banks now charge customers for using the ATM. Used to be if you used some other bank's ATM to access your account, you'd pay a fee, but as long as you stuck with your own bank's ATMs, you weren't charged. Now, they all charge you to access your own accounts, even if you use your own bank's ATM. Some even charge you for using a teller. Basically, any time you want to do anything with your money (deposit, withdraw, transfer), whether you use an ATM or a teller, you'll be charged a buck fifty or so.
That's why I switched to CIBC No-Fee Banking.
???
We know North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program. We know they have ICBMs capable of reaching US shores. We know they've openly threatened the US. North Korea is a very real threat the US. Iraq is not.
Iraq has the motive, but neither the means nor the opportunity to attack the US. Iraq is not a threat to the US. North Korea is. So why is the US invading Iraq, and completely ignoring North Korea?
Digital will never match the colour of slide film. It can't, by definition. It may be more vivid, due to some post-processing tricks, but it will never be as real or as authentic. Slide film captures the colour exactly as it was, whereas digital rounds it to the nearest bit. Slide film colour is as faithful and rich as the real thing.
Oh yeah, tell me about it. Just look at poor Jennifer Lopez, the poor girl obviously can't even afford a decent meal. And I'm sure DMX's gold chains are all fake, and I'll bet Shania Twain bought her Mercedes at the "Used" lot, rather than the showroom, like she deserved.
I find that the music industry is getting tons of money for something they didn't even create.
I find the newspaper industry is getting tons of money for something they didn't even create.
There is a helluvalot more to the music industry than just the music. The fact that the art itself is what you actually hear does not erase the fact that hundreds of talented, specialized people are involved in the production and marketing of an album. Those people deserve to be paid.
Listen to yourself, people like you make me sick. You think that just because it's Britney's voice on the CD, that somehow she should get most of the money from the album. She's just ONE PERSON. Sure, she's talented, but is she any more talented than the artist who created the cover art on the CD, or the costume designer who worked on her video, or the 100 or so other people involved in marketing her? Why should one person get HALF of all the profits, while the people who MADE HER WHAT SHE IS get to fight over the remaining crumbs?
Think about it. You seem to think that aaaaall those other people are just inconsequential and expendible. If that were true, then why don't the artists go it on their own? Thousands do, and you never hear of ANY if them. Know why? Because those other people involved in the creation of an album ARE creating value. Without them, you'd never have even heard of Britney, and there wouldn't be any profits for her to bitch about.
The arrogance of your opinion sickens me. Just because someone is blessed with a good voice, or is a decent guitar player doesn't automatically mean that perfectly-mastered CDs will magically show up at the local record shop. It takes a lot of people, a lot of work, and most importantly, A LOT OF MONEY to get it there, and the other people involved deserve to be paid just as much as the trained monkey reading off the lyrics that some other nameless artist wrote for him/her.
WHAT?!?! It's not the same thing at all! Hitler did attack other nations and slaughtered millions of Jews! Iraq's been sitting there minding their own business for 12 years.
What has Iraq done to warrant being invaded and overthrown?
Like I said, currently I am not happy about this war, but I am much more unhappy about bald faced ignorance
I too am apalled at the ignorance involved in this scenario, but it is directed at those who are ignorant of the history of the region, ignorant of the possibility that Iraq might actually have had an arguably legitimate claim to Kuwait (it used to be a provice of Iraq, it was being unreasonable in denying Iraq access to the sea - how is Iraq supposed to participate in international trade without waterway access??), and ignorant of Bush's blatant ulterior motives and hatemongering.
The US is a rabid dog, and I sincerely hope the rest of the world has the courage to unite in time to reign in their leash before thousands of innocent Iraqis are slaughtered, just so the Jones can keep filling their BMW SUV with premium, Middle East petroleum products.
A little over-the-top, maybe, but a very powerful message. And contrary to your ignorance, not entirely off the mark. There are far more forms of terrorism than simply the far-east ones. Heck, even local gang-wars qualify as terrorism, and it's not hard to argue that they're funded by drug money.
a pathetic attempt to scam money out of unsuspecting people who are scared. Likely the same people who stocked up on supplies for Y2K.
This is ridiculous. What's wrong with selling people what they want? If people are willing to part their money for things that you don't deem worthy, they're stupid? Gee, I guess everyone who buys a Mercedes is stupid and "unsuspecting" then, because they could get by just as easily with a Kia. They must be getting ripped off by those "pathetic" scam-artists at Daimler-Chrysler. Someone should outlaw that type of marketing.
It also says "geek." It was meant to convey that I strive for an effective balance of both. I'm curious what you think of my own site. It's primary goal is to showcase photography. Do you believe that the mechanism I use to achieve this (namely iframes) is efficient and effective, or is it overly gimmicky at the expense of usability? Do the graphics on my site detract from it's overall usability?
My point in asking this is that I believe that my site demonstrates an effective balance of both form and function, and that the two are not mutually exclusive. I strive to prove that content-rich sites needn't be boring and stuffy, and that flashiness isn't an automatic warning of a site devoid of content. What do you think? I'm sincerely interested in your opinion. At the risk of these posts being modded "off-topic," please feel free to email me at kombat@kombat.org.