They was just publicity stunts of no scientific value at all, especially given the majority of the flight time was well above the ash cloud.
Since you think that "They was" is proper English and this is not a case of a missing word typo or a misspelling typo ("was" and "were" aren't close enough for this to be a single letter spelling mistake), I conclude that you are not smart enough to make that conclusion.
The problem right now is PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE in their ISP.
Or rather, the "choice" is between No ISP, Shitty company A, and if you're REALLY lucky, perhaps Shitty Company B.
I wish Americans on Slashdot would really pay attention to this. Where exactly do these people live that supposedly do have choice? I live in one of the top 10 metropolitan areas of the USA and my choice is limited to my cable and my regional telephone provider. That's it. If I don't like one I can go to the other, but if I don't like both then I am out of options. I hear people always talking smack about how you can just change ISPs if you don't like something, but where exactly is this really a viable option? My father lives in a town of about 50,000 people and the best of my knowledge the only ISP in his town is the local cable company and that's it.
Where the hell do you live that bank managers are so stupid that they wouldn't call the cops about this prior to handing over the money? And please do tell me exactly how those kidnapping robbers are going to be sure that the bank manager "didn't call anyone else" as they surely will tell him.
Again, I don't know where you live, but you CAN get the death penalty in the USA for kidnapping. I've not heard of it being applied without a death, but I don't think a death is strictly required to apply it. Your plan is a great way to turn a "simple" (for lack of a better term) robbery into a lifetime in jail, or death, if the robbers get caught.
The article mentions how some malware previously seen in Ukraine and Russia has shown up in the USA for the first time. While I have not been to Russia, I have been to Ukraine several times. For years now, Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) has been infamous for ATM fraud. Rule of law is very weak in Ukraine and police and the judicial system are notoriously corrupt. Anyone "caught" for ATM fraud could just bribe his way out of trouble. I even heard of fake ATMs placed in various locations in Kiev that never give out money, all they do is record info off the ATM cards and pin numbers and that info is used by the crooks later. It's been like this since at least the early 2000s. I never used an ATM on the times when I was in Kiev. I brought enough cash with me to use anytime I was going to Kiev. For the record, I used ATMs in various other Ukrainian cities and I never had a problem. In fact the only city I've ever heard of ATM fraud happening in is Kiev, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened in some other large cities like Odessa.
I am not disputing what you say at all. But let's be clear that "eastern Europe" is pretty vague. Experiences in Hungary, for example, might be quite different than those in, say, Bulgaria. And there is a sense of adult entitlement in most of the ex-USSR that is self-destructive to those societies in a way that is far far worse than any punk American kid who thinks he deserves an expensive car because he turned 16.
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
Yes, you are quite correct. We have a lot of problems here in America. I say this as an American citizen, but one who has actually traveled to more than a dozen countries around the world. Most Americans know nothing about other countries. I have plenty of friends who have never left North America.
One of the problems we have is that our population is pretty stupid. The average American is a complete and utter moron. But this is nothing new. We have some of the smartest people in the world but probably more than our fair share of idiots as well. What I will call "the idiot factor" means that all you have to do is utter a few magic words and minds close and rational debate ends. These include:
Socialism - Almost nobody understands it, but almost everyone thinks it is some evil, Commie thing. Socialism has been vilified for over 100 years in this country and equated with evil for almost as long. There's no real way to get rid of this thinking. Once you equate something to socialism, it's "game over" for most Americans.
Cut and run - Once you frame any US military action as being "cut and run", it becomes impossible to assess rationally whether staying in the situation even makes sense as opposed to pulling out.
Actually, this is probably the best we can do unless there is some sort of massive change in the thinking of Americans. I don't see that happening.
One of the things that greatly amuses me, and another post touches on this a little, is how the right wing (Republicans) holds out private industry as the solution to all problems. "Privatize it" the call goes. "Everything is better in private industry. Private industry can always do it cheaper than the government." Yet none of these people want the government to offer a government run health insurance plan because "Private industry can't compete with the government". But wait - you guys have been saying that private industry is always cheaper and better and if so, they'll get more people than any government run insurance. What's the fear? It just shows you how polarized politics are here. It sucks.
I am not a lawyer. But my best friend is. And sometimes I ask him questions about the law, how it is applied, and so on. This gives me a better understanding of how it really works, whether I agree with that or not. This should not be a problem that there are no cyber crime specific laws. There should be existing laws that cover crime and one would hope that Spain's laws aren't so weak that those don't apply. Really, are we supposed to believe that Spanish authorities are honestly going to say "Sure, we have laws against stealing, but we didn't write those laws to specifically deal with stealing by computer, so you're out of luck"? That would be like arguing that you are powerless to arrest someone who killed another person by smashing an iPhone against the temple of the other person in a fit of anger because you have no laws that specifically cover killing via smashing with an iPhone. There are certainly negative aspects of Spain, such as their weak stance on illegal immigration, but I'm finding it hard to believe that some existing law on thievery won't do the job here.
Who knows what this means? Taco, seriously, did you even go to the site? There's nothing to be seen except the main blog post, so I don't know where you're getting this "contained questionable content" idea from. That may or may not be true.
This is very typical of Italian "justice". You must understand that in Italy they feel sorry for the worst criminals and like to convict lesser ones. People over 35 might remember the Achille Lauro hijacking where an elderly Jewish American cruise ship passenger was killed by terrorists. The terrorists were going to get away on an Egyptian Airliner until President Reagan ordered US fighters to intercept the flight and force it to land in Italy. The Italians showed up with their elite armed police and at gunpoint demanded the right to try the hijackers. And in justice the Italian way, they ended up feeling sorry for all of them and made all of the ones they convicted eventually eligible for work release. And of course, one of them took advantage of this and fled and it was only due to the competence of Spanish authorities that he was recaptured.
You must be aware too that Italy probably has the strongest voice in all of the EU against the death penalty. So like many countries that don't have it, they tend to be pretty soft on true criminal behavior. They are not like the UK where you actually can get locked up for life. Remember a few years ago when some guys tried and failed to do more terrorist bombings in London? At least one of the culprits fled to Italy and demanded to be tried there. He knew that he'd get maybe 10 years at most and be set free if he faced what passes for Italian justice.
Now in order to get lynched I'm going to start with a statement
I don't care if they put these restrictions on
But I'll add a caveat...
As long as I can play it on any device that I own with only a single payment
I'm sure a lot of people agree with you, but here's the problem. Hollywood to date releases these "digital copies" with DVD purchases so you can play it on your PC, phone, whatever. The dirty little secret is that the digital copies all expire within a few months. So this whole idea requires you to have faith that a group of people who have yet to do the right thing will suddenly do the right thing. I don't see it. My guess is that they will indeed come up with a workable way for the movies to work on multiple devices, but they will still expire because Hollywood really and truly
JUST DOES NOT GET IT
and I don't think they ever will. Remember, consumers are now and always have been the enemy.
PPalmgren's suggestion is certainly worth investigating, but have you tried throttling your upload speed on your client? I had some serious problems until I cut way back on my upload speed and that made things calm down. I have no issues with downloading as fast as possible, but things start to get very bad for me if I allow the default unlimited speed on uploads. I have AT&T and not Comcast, but maybe you might look into that and see if it makes any difference.
Also, LPs are expensive! If you can find a new pressing of a single disc LP for about $20, you've done well. I've seen some listing for prices of $30 or much much more for 1 disc of some newer pressings. No wonder the industry loves it. The profit on these must be immense. An upcoming Sam Cooke re-issue of one disc on 45 RPM (yes, 45 RPM) vinyl LP is listing for $50. All prices are in US dollars.
To be blunt, I don't care enough about the original article to read it. However, I don't see anybody so far asking this question -
Is Dazed and Confused really bad at his job?
If he uses good programming practices, exactly how many calls is he going to get? Is he using IIS? Bad move. At my previous job we had a customer at one time we provided hosting service only for and they blamed us for all of their IIS related issues, even though we weren't paid to be responsible. It got hacked and it crashed regularly yet it was somehow our fault. I supposed that Dazed might have the case of an insane customer who blames him for things that are not his fault or needs way too much handholding, but still, a properly designed website shouldn't need all that much attention after hours. My previous employer required me to be on call 50% of the time, but the good news was that we rarely got calls outside of normal business hours. Still it kind of sucked. My current job requires me to be on call for about 3 weeks each year. I don't get paid extra for it, but 3 weeks is quite reasonable and if something comes up after hours that takes a lot of time, I can get comp time for it.
T-Mobile and Danger were partners long before Microsoft ate Danger up. It's not like Microsoft had a history of failed backups and horrible transitions.
I can actually speak from personal experience what happens when Microsoft buys a company. A little more than 3 years ago I was working in an American office of a major European telcom company. One of the services we sold to customers was an anti-spam email service that was actually managed by another company. How it worked was essentially that the customer's email was routed to the other anti-spam company first and they would scan it for spam and viruses before sending clean email on to the customer. I wish I could remember the name of the company we used at the time, but I can't. Too many years (3) of not having to do that work anymore have caused me to not remember their name. However, during my job that company was purchased by Microsoft. The company proudly stated how this was the greatest thing ever because access to Microsoft's money and name would get them a lot more customers. Not real long after the purchase, Microsoft made changes. See I knew people at the anti-spam company because in my job I had to call them all the time if some customer complained about something in email. I got the complaint and I'd have to refer it to them for resolution. I was told that they were changing their anti-spam engine from tools that ran under some variety of Unix (don't remember which one) to an Exchange based solution. Things started to go real bad after the cutover to Exchange. I remember twice the anti-spam service had prolonged outages. One outage was for over a day. The company had no explanation for the problem and wasn't really able to assure us that it wouldn't happen again (it did happen again). We never had those kinds of problems prior to Microsoft buying them. So yes, I certainly can believe that T-Mobile and Danger may have been in business together in the past and that Microsoft found a way after buying Danger to infect Danger with its Microsofty "goodness" and make things really really bad.
you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony.
I'm probably being excessively pedantic, but you don't need a class action suit to have "legal recourse." It's just easier as a class. You can sue on your own if your property was damaged or a contract was violated.
Wow. Are you a lawyer? Or an idiot? Or not a US resident? Or some/all of those?
Here's what happens when you sue on your own in the USA. No attorney will probably take the case, so you'll probably want to go to Small Claims Court where your costs are lower to file the paperwork to sue Sony. Sony may or may not show in court. If not, you can win a default judgment against them. Yea! You won $399 or whatever your PS3 cost. Now how exactly are you going to collect? Are you going to find a local law enforcement officer who will serve Sony? What if you don't serve them in the right place? What if local law enforcement doesn't want to do it? What if Sony just ignores you? Are you going to sue them again in a real court? At more expense to you? I suppose there is some chance that you might get lucky and Sony might give you a new PS3 or pay you the money, but I'm not sure I'd count on it. So yes you can sue Sony on your own just like any "natural born citizen" over the age of 35 who wants to be president of the USA can run for the job, but whether you can actually be president or get money from Sony is something completely different.
I'm curious how services like ESPN 360 will be affected being that they are the content provider and not the ISP. They are still blocking content to you unless you are on the "right" ISP.
That is a great question and a very good example for US people in particular. My guess is ESPN 360 won't be covered. Companies create website all the time with restricted access where only employees are allowed in. I'm sure that ESPN 360 would be seen the same way. If the website creator wishes to restrict access, even on an ISP basis, that is their right to do so. If ESPN 360 doesn't want to let me in, it's hard for me to argue that my rights are violated. If ESPN 360 wants to let me in but my ISP deliberately slowed down the connection, that's another thing.
I've seen a lot of posts, many filled with wild speculation. It's really quite simple. In the USA if your employer provides health insurance, then almost always they have deals with the provider that the provider has to take everyone who is an employee of the company and provide health insurance, regardless of any pre-existing conditions. Small businesses may not provide any insurance, so it's different for them. With nothing but some non-medically trained person telling you what a heart rate is, I doubt this is very useful. The school might want to know it as the US is quite litigious and in theory, a child with some unknown medical condition might be at risk while exercising. Seeing a heart rate significantly above average might indicate a potential problem, which could cause the school to recommend a doctor visit. Young people die all the time for undetected heart conditions. It happens a lot with basketball and football (American football, I mean) players. I do actually understand the concern, but I have a feeling it's mostly about protecting the school should some kid drop dead of a heart attack in gym class. Do note that the heart rates of children are naturally higher than those of adults. I don't know at what age this changes.
Because in the US that is what hate speech laws are being used for. Get off from a high profile case that "bothers" some politicians and you can be sure a hate speech charge will crop up. Been done in a few visible crimes around Atlanta, suddenly the Feds are brought in because there was enough to convict on the real accused crime.
My b.s. detector is pegging red on this one. First of all, nobody ever went to jail for "hate speech" in the USA. If that were really true, the jails would be filled with white people who dared to say "the N word". Specifically what you are trying and failing spectacularly to talk about is a valid issue, but you don't correctly understand it. The real point is that the Feds sometimes use "hate crimes" laws not "hate speech" laws (there is a gigantic difference here) to go after people who have escaped conviction at the state level by bringing federal charges against them for the same thing. It's my personal belief that if we could go through time and bring the guys who wrote the Constitution here that they would tell us that they never intended for the protection from double jeopardy to not apply here, but because they didn't write the clause well enough, clever lawyers gambled and won that the courts would rule that the double jeopardy clause doesn't apply when the feds bring the same (or almost the same) charges in a federal case that was previously tried at the state level.
Daugherty said his son is very mature and would be able to handle the responsibility of owning a piece of artillery.
"He's a good kid. One thing about my son he has a great respect for guns and weapons, so he will not be firing this anytime soon without an adult present."
I'm sure that's all true. Unlike Mr. Daugherty, I actually do remember being 11 years old. I also remember not doing a very good job of thinking of the consequences of my actions. So we'll all wait for the day when 1 or 2 years from now when this "good kid" and his friends fire this cannon at other people or nearby property and cause damage that they are held accountable for.
But I have it better than minorities in the US or Canada or wherever. This is not my home country. If I ever get totally sick of it (and I'll be honest, there are some things happening these days that are really making me question if it's worth being here--the cops' treatment is getting more special by the day), I can go home to the US where I'll be just another regular white guy. But a regular black guy in the US can't go anywhere. It's his home, and his life is one of being treated differently every single day. I understand why some people get touchy. I'm getting touchy, and I don't have it anywhere near as bad as black people in the US.
You really want to come back here to the USA? I personally find the current political situation so disheartening that I am wondering if I really want to stay here the rest of my life. And I've been born and raised here. When George W. Bush was president, some of the liberal nut bags wanted to kill him. Now that Obama is president, it's the right wing nut bags who want to do the same. There's no chance for any level headed discussion any more about opposing views. The political situation here is basically that nobody wants to listen to anybody who disagrees with them. I always considered myself a Republican, but now I'm an independent. I can't support a party (the Republicans) whose game plan seems to be pretty much "We hate the Democrats! We have no solutions for the problems, but we hate them! Vote for us! Also, we love stupid people! Stupid people, we are your party!" I can't be a Democrat because of too many fundamental differences of opinion. Libertarian? I think I'd rather be a Communist than that. So you really want to come home to this mess?
You know, if maybe you weren't so focused on being offended by everything, you could probably turn this situation around. I'm guessing that you have no sense of humor. Well, it sucks to be you. With regards to the chopstick comment, you could say something like "Yes, and I only lost one eye learning how to do it". As far as kanji goes, that's a pretty terrific accomplishment for a westerner. I'd have thought honestly that acquiring such skills would take so many years that it would be essentially impossible for most people. I think you're being praised here but taking it like an insult. As far as needing more space goes, I'd suggest saying "Yes, I do and I want you to know that I can be hired to give basketball lessons". Can't help with the cops as I have no idea what that is like. Your circumstances are pretty much what you make of them and I'd say that you might as well leave as it seems to me that you're pretty much in the "I'm SO tired of being here" mode and not likely to get out of it. America is no picnic these days with people threatening to "water the tree of liberty", but I will admit that you'll be spared the "racist" comments you are tired of in Japan.
When I was in school one of our school's best spellers was a guy who was a pretty average student. He would sometimes win spelling contests in the school and represent us in regional contests (I don't think he ever made it further than state level), but his academic record was pretty ordinary. I knew him for years and considered him a friend, although not a close one, and I can say that I just think he was a pretty average student. He was no genius. That experience convinced me that people who can spell well may not necessarily be the best and brightest.
From personal experience, the more I studied foreign languages (I am reasonably proficient in 3 besides English), the worse my ability to spell English became. I noticed a definite correlation there. However, I think my grammar improved. I use dictionary.com sometimes to look up words I am unsure about, but I write better than most people I know. I'm always surprised at how many people, especially younger ones, have no idea what the difference is between there, their and they're. That's just one example. As a point of interest, foreign language speakers who study English won't confuse there/their/they're, your/you're and its/it's, but they'll do things like write "could of" when it's really "could've" because they are going by what they hear. They are not helped when idiot native speakers write "could of" or "use to" (it's "used to") though.
I have a friend who is an attorney. He has a small office that has at most 5 people working in it at any given time. He and I have been friends for years and he comes to me for computer related problems or advice. He lives in absolute terror of the BSA. He has never been visited by them, yet he still fears them. He is paranoid beyond belief that maybe, somehow, he might have one piece of software installed on an office PC that wasn't paid for and a disgruntled employee with a grudge will try to get the BSA to visit him and he will get hit with a fine for tens of thousands of dollars. He buys every piece of software he's got. If you can believe this, to save a few dollars he bought Adobe Acrobat (lawyers use PDF files for legal submissions) from some guy on Ebay. He bought 2 copies. Both were OEM. He tried to get them activated by Adobe and got some grief over them being OEM. You would not believe how much he worried about it and he said that in the future he would pay Adobe's full price just to not have to worry about it. The vendor provided a new license key for each copy that Adobe accepted and activated, but my friends is still absolutely paranoid that he is going to get screwed over this.
He refuses to run free software because of his BSA paranoia. He is paranoid that if he doesn't buy it, he'll get screwed by the BSA. The reality is that as a small business owner, he pays rock bottom wages to the people (almost always women) who work as a paralegals for him and he offers no benefits that I know of. Consequently, he doesn't keep people very long. It's really easy for them to find better paying jobs elsewhere. And his office is in a small town so it would be fair to say that he doesn't get the best and brightest to work for him and sometimes employees leave under bad circumstances. They get angry about something and quit. So the BSA has effectively made this small businessman so paranoid that he never considers free software as he is afraid that somehow he might violate some law by using it and he pays full price for everything he buys just for peace of mind and he still fears the BSA knocking on his door and somehow finding one program without a license on a PC at his office. Their tactics may be different from the RIAA but I don't know anybody who fears the RIAA the way my friend and presumably others fear the BSA.
The real danger is that people believe paper ballots can be easily subject to problems and that electronic voting is somehow impervious to these problems.
Actually, I find it troubling that many people seem to believe that paper ballots cannot be compromised at all. I'm not more in favor of electronic voting and I'm not against paper ballots, but I get the sense that quite a few people here seem to think "paper ballots = 100% assurance of honesty" and I don't agree with that. Then again, I was in Ukraine in November of 2004 during the Orange Revolution (long story, but I had long standing plans to go there right after the election and those plans had nothing to do with the election at all) and I've seen how paper ballots can be compromised.
I have a few short pieces of advice. I'm not sure that "literary geek" is a good term to use and I wouldn't recommend that you call her by that. Note that women are really really bad at being direct and they will often show displaced anger. As a guy, you will be completely unaware of this so you need to know that it happens. For example, in guy land if your roommate doesn't take out the trash even though he is supposed to, you will yell at him to take out the trash or you will inflict bodily harm on him. That doesn't happen in women land. In women land, the woman may say "You don't love me!" and after much talking and time spent you will finally figure out that she is really upset about the trash. Or perhaps she will give you some serious grief about not taking the trash out but her real problem is that she is angry that you never offer to help out in the kitchen. The other advice I have is that I found that reading the "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" book helped me to understand how men and women see the world differently. I've asked women and they tell me that they think the book's insights are correct. However, note that like any relationship book, this one has its detractors. The most interesting thing I learned in the book was its discussion of how men and women give out points very very differently in relationships and you'd do well to understand that.
Slashdot Mirror
They was just publicity stunts of no scientific value at all, especially given the majority of the flight time was well above the ash cloud.
Since you think that "They was" is proper English and this is not a case of a missing word typo or a misspelling typo ("was" and "were" aren't close enough for this to be a single letter spelling mistake), I conclude that you are not smart enough to make that conclusion.
No shit.
The problem right now is PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE in their ISP.
Or rather, the "choice" is between No ISP, Shitty company A, and if you're REALLY lucky, perhaps Shitty Company B.
I wish Americans on Slashdot would really pay attention to this. Where exactly do these people live that supposedly do have choice? I live in one of the top 10 metropolitan areas of the USA and my choice is limited to my cable and my regional telephone provider. That's it. If I don't like one I can go to the other, but if I don't like both then I am out of options. I hear people always talking smack about how you can just change ISPs if you don't like something, but where exactly is this really a viable option? My father lives in a town of about 50,000 people and the best of my knowledge the only ISP in his town is the local cable company and that's it.
Where the hell do you live that bank managers are so stupid that they wouldn't call the cops about this prior to handing over the money? And please do tell me exactly how those kidnapping robbers are going to be sure that the bank manager "didn't call anyone else" as they surely will tell him. Again, I don't know where you live, but you CAN get the death penalty in the USA for kidnapping. I've not heard of it being applied without a death, but I don't think a death is strictly required to apply it. Your plan is a great way to turn a "simple" (for lack of a better term) robbery into a lifetime in jail, or death, if the robbers get caught.
The article mentions how some malware previously seen in Ukraine and Russia has shown up in the USA for the first time. While I have not been to Russia, I have been to Ukraine several times. For years now, Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) has been infamous for ATM fraud. Rule of law is very weak in Ukraine and police and the judicial system are notoriously corrupt. Anyone "caught" for ATM fraud could just bribe his way out of trouble. I even heard of fake ATMs placed in various locations in Kiev that never give out money, all they do is record info off the ATM cards and pin numbers and that info is used by the crooks later. It's been like this since at least the early 2000s. I never used an ATM on the times when I was in Kiev. I brought enough cash with me to use anytime I was going to Kiev. For the record, I used ATMs in various other Ukrainian cities and I never had a problem. In fact the only city I've ever heard of ATM fraud happening in is Kiev, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened in some other large cities like Odessa.
I am not disputing what you say at all. But let's be clear that "eastern Europe" is pretty vague. Experiences in Hungary, for example, might be quite different than those in, say, Bulgaria. And there is a sense of adult entitlement in most of the ex-USSR that is self-destructive to those societies in a way that is far far worse than any punk American kid who thinks he deserves an expensive car because he turned 16.
Yes, you are quite correct. We have a lot of problems here in America. I say this as an American citizen, but one who has actually traveled to more than a dozen countries around the world. Most Americans know nothing about other countries. I have plenty of friends who have never left North America.
One of the problems we have is that our population is pretty stupid. The average American is a complete and utter moron. But this is nothing new. We have some of the smartest people in the world but probably more than our fair share of idiots as well. What I will call "the idiot factor" means that all you have to do is utter a few magic words and minds close and rational debate ends. These include:
Socialism - Almost nobody understands it, but almost everyone thinks it is some evil, Commie thing. Socialism has been vilified for over 100 years in this country and equated with evil for almost as long. There's no real way to get rid of this thinking. Once you equate something to socialism, it's "game over" for most Americans.
Cut and run - Once you frame any US military action as being "cut and run", it becomes impossible to assess rationally whether staying in the situation even makes sense as opposed to pulling out.
Actually, this is probably the best we can do unless there is some sort of massive change in the thinking of Americans. I don't see that happening.
One of the things that greatly amuses me, and another post touches on this a little, is how the right wing (Republicans) holds out private industry as the solution to all problems. "Privatize it" the call goes. "Everything is better in private industry. Private industry can always do it cheaper than the government." Yet none of these people want the government to offer a government run health insurance plan because "Private industry can't compete with the government". But wait - you guys have been saying that private industry is always cheaper and better and if so, they'll get more people than any government run insurance. What's the fear? It just shows you how polarized politics are here. It sucks.
I am not a lawyer. But my best friend is. And sometimes I ask him questions about the law, how it is applied, and so on. This gives me a better understanding of how it really works, whether I agree with that or not. This should not be a problem that there are no cyber crime specific laws. There should be existing laws that cover crime and one would hope that Spain's laws aren't so weak that those don't apply. Really, are we supposed to believe that Spanish authorities are honestly going to say "Sure, we have laws against stealing, but we didn't write those laws to specifically deal with stealing by computer, so you're out of luck"? That would be like arguing that you are powerless to arrest someone who killed another person by smashing an iPhone against the temple of the other person in a fit of anger because you have no laws that specifically cover killing via smashing with an iPhone. There are certainly negative aspects of Spain, such as their weak stance on illegal immigration, but I'm finding it hard to believe that some existing law on thievery won't do the job here.
Who knows what this means? Taco, seriously, did you even go to the site? There's nothing to be seen except the main blog post, so I don't know where you're getting this "contained questionable content" idea from. That may or may not be true.
This is very typical of Italian "justice". You must understand that in Italy they feel sorry for the worst criminals and like to convict lesser ones. People over 35 might remember the Achille Lauro hijacking where an elderly Jewish American cruise ship passenger was killed by terrorists. The terrorists were going to get away on an Egyptian Airliner until President Reagan ordered US fighters to intercept the flight and force it to land in Italy. The Italians showed up with their elite armed police and at gunpoint demanded the right to try the hijackers. And in justice the Italian way, they ended up feeling sorry for all of them and made all of the ones they convicted eventually eligible for work release. And of course, one of them took advantage of this and fled and it was only due to the competence of Spanish authorities that he was recaptured.
You must be aware too that Italy probably has the strongest voice in all of the EU against the death penalty. So like many countries that don't have it, they tend to be pretty soft on true criminal behavior. They are not like the UK where you actually can get locked up for life. Remember a few years ago when some guys tried and failed to do more terrorist bombings in London? At least one of the culprits fled to Italy and demanded to be tried there. He knew that he'd get maybe 10 years at most and be set free if he faced what passes for Italian justice.
Now in order to get lynched I'm going to start with a statement
I don't care if they put these restrictions on
But I'll add a caveat...
As long as I can play it on any device that I own with only a single payment
I'm sure a lot of people agree with you, but here's the problem. Hollywood to date releases these "digital copies" with DVD purchases so you can play it on your PC, phone, whatever. The dirty little secret is that the digital copies all expire within a few months. So this whole idea requires you to have faith that a group of people who have yet to do the right thing will suddenly do the right thing. I don't see it. My guess is that they will indeed come up with a workable way for the movies to work on multiple devices, but they will still expire because Hollywood really and truly
JUST DOES NOT GET IT
and I don't think they ever will. Remember, consumers are now and always have been the enemy.
PPalmgren's suggestion is certainly worth investigating, but have you tried throttling your upload speed on your client? I had some serious problems until I cut way back on my upload speed and that made things calm down. I have no issues with downloading as fast as possible, but things start to get very bad for me if I allow the default unlimited speed on uploads. I have AT&T and not Comcast, but maybe you might look into that and see if it makes any difference.
Also, LPs are expensive! If you can find a new pressing of a single disc LP for about $20, you've done well. I've seen some listing for prices of $30 or much much more for 1 disc of some newer pressings. No wonder the industry loves it. The profit on these must be immense. An upcoming Sam Cooke re-issue of one disc on 45 RPM (yes, 45 RPM) vinyl LP is listing for $50. All prices are in US dollars.
The link to the article on the mod is already dead and showing a "database error".
To be blunt, I don't care enough about the original article to read it. However, I don't see anybody so far asking this question -
Is Dazed and Confused really bad at his job?
If he uses good programming practices, exactly how many calls is he going to get? Is he using IIS? Bad move. At my previous job we had a customer at one time we provided hosting service only for and they blamed us for all of their IIS related issues, even though we weren't paid to be responsible. It got hacked and it crashed regularly yet it was somehow our fault. I supposed that Dazed might have the case of an insane customer who blames him for things that are not his fault or needs way too much handholding, but still, a properly designed website shouldn't need all that much attention after hours. My previous employer required me to be on call 50% of the time, but the good news was that we rarely got calls outside of normal business hours. Still it kind of sucked. My current job requires me to be on call for about 3 weeks each year. I don't get paid extra for it, but 3 weeks is quite reasonable and if something comes up after hours that takes a lot of time, I can get comp time for it.
T-Mobile and Danger were partners long before Microsoft ate Danger up. It's not like Microsoft had a history of failed backups and horrible transitions.
I can actually speak from personal experience what happens when Microsoft buys a company. A little more than 3 years ago I was working in an American office of a major European telcom company. One of the services we sold to customers was an anti-spam email service that was actually managed by another company. How it worked was essentially that the customer's email was routed to the other anti-spam company first and they would scan it for spam and viruses before sending clean email on to the customer. I wish I could remember the name of the company we used at the time, but I can't. Too many years (3) of not having to do that work anymore have caused me to not remember their name. However, during my job that company was purchased by Microsoft. The company proudly stated how this was the greatest thing ever because access to Microsoft's money and name would get them a lot more customers. Not real long after the purchase, Microsoft made changes. See I knew people at the anti-spam company because in my job I had to call them all the time if some customer complained about something in email. I got the complaint and I'd have to refer it to them for resolution. I was told that they were changing their anti-spam engine from tools that ran under some variety of Unix (don't remember which one) to an Exchange based solution. Things started to go real bad after the cutover to Exchange. I remember twice the anti-spam service had prolonged outages. One outage was for over a day. The company had no explanation for the problem and wasn't really able to assure us that it wouldn't happen again (it did happen again). We never had those kinds of problems prior to Microsoft buying them. So yes, I certainly can believe that T-Mobile and Danger may have been in business together in the past and that Microsoft found a way after buying Danger to infect Danger with its Microsofty "goodness" and make things really really bad.
you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony.
I'm probably being excessively pedantic, but you don't need a class action suit to have "legal recourse." It's just easier as a class. You can sue on your own if your property was damaged or a contract was violated.
Wow. Are you a lawyer? Or an idiot? Or not a US resident? Or some/all of those?
Here's what happens when you sue on your own in the USA. No attorney will probably take the case, so you'll probably want to go to Small Claims Court where your costs are lower to file the paperwork to sue Sony. Sony may or may not show in court. If not, you can win a default judgment against them. Yea! You won $399 or whatever your PS3 cost. Now how exactly are you going to collect? Are you going to find a local law enforcement officer who will serve Sony? What if you don't serve them in the right place? What if local law enforcement doesn't want to do it? What if Sony just ignores you? Are you going to sue them again in a real court? At more expense to you? I suppose there is some chance that you might get lucky and Sony might give you a new PS3 or pay you the money, but I'm not sure I'd count on it. So yes you can sue Sony on your own just like any "natural born citizen" over the age of 35 who wants to be president of the USA can run for the job, but whether you can actually be president or get money from Sony is something completely different.
I'm curious how services like ESPN 360 will be affected being that they are the content provider and not the ISP. They are still blocking content to you unless you are on the "right" ISP.
That is a great question and a very good example for US people in particular. My guess is ESPN 360 won't be covered. Companies create website all the time with restricted access where only employees are allowed in. I'm sure that ESPN 360 would be seen the same way. If the website creator wishes to restrict access, even on an ISP basis, that is their right to do so. If ESPN 360 doesn't want to let me in, it's hard for me to argue that my rights are violated. If ESPN 360 wants to let me in but my ISP deliberately slowed down the connection, that's another thing.
I've seen a lot of posts, many filled with wild speculation. It's really quite simple. In the USA if your employer provides health insurance, then almost always they have deals with the provider that the provider has to take everyone who is an employee of the company and provide health insurance, regardless of any pre-existing conditions. Small businesses may not provide any insurance, so it's different for them. With nothing but some non-medically trained person telling you what a heart rate is, I doubt this is very useful. The school might want to know it as the US is quite litigious and in theory, a child with some unknown medical condition might be at risk while exercising. Seeing a heart rate significantly above average might indicate a potential problem, which could cause the school to recommend a doctor visit. Young people die all the time for undetected heart conditions. It happens a lot with basketball and football (American football, I mean) players. I do actually understand the concern, but I have a feeling it's mostly about protecting the school should some kid drop dead of a heart attack in gym class. Do note that the heart rates of children are naturally higher than those of adults. I don't know at what age this changes.
Because in the US that is what hate speech laws are being used for. Get off from a high profile case that "bothers" some politicians and you can be sure a hate speech charge will crop up. Been done in a few visible crimes around Atlanta, suddenly the Feds are brought in because there was enough to convict on the real accused crime.
My b.s. detector is pegging red on this one. First of all, nobody ever went to jail for "hate speech" in the USA. If that were really true, the jails would be filled with white people who dared to say "the N word". Specifically what you are trying and failing spectacularly to talk about is a valid issue, but you don't correctly understand it. The real point is that the Feds sometimes use "hate crimes" laws not "hate speech" laws (there is a gigantic difference here) to go after people who have escaped conviction at the state level by bringing federal charges against them for the same thing. It's my personal belief that if we could go through time and bring the guys who wrote the Constitution here that they would tell us that they never intended for the protection from double jeopardy to not apply here, but because they didn't write the clause well enough, clever lawyers gambled and won that the courts would rule that the double jeopardy clause doesn't apply when the feds bring the same (or almost the same) charges in a federal case that was previously tried at the state level.
Daugherty said his son is very mature and would be able to handle the responsibility of owning a piece of artillery.
"He's a good kid. One thing about my son he has a great respect for guns and weapons, so he will not be firing this anytime soon without an adult present."
I'm sure that's all true. Unlike Mr. Daugherty, I actually do remember being 11 years old. I also remember not doing a very good job of thinking of the consequences of my actions. So we'll all wait for the day when 1 or 2 years from now when this "good kid" and his friends fire this cannon at other people or nearby property and cause damage that they are held accountable for.
But I have it better than minorities in the US or Canada or wherever. This is not my home country. If I ever get totally sick of it (and I'll be honest, there are some things happening these days that are really making me question if it's worth being here--the cops' treatment is getting more special by the day), I can go home to the US where I'll be just another regular white guy. But a regular black guy in the US can't go anywhere. It's his home, and his life is one of being treated differently every single day. I understand why some people get touchy. I'm getting touchy, and I don't have it anywhere near as bad as black people in the US.
You really want to come back here to the USA? I personally find the current political situation so disheartening that I am wondering if I really want to stay here the rest of my life. And I've been born and raised here. When George W. Bush was president, some of the liberal nut bags wanted to kill him. Now that Obama is president, it's the right wing nut bags who want to do the same. There's no chance for any level headed discussion any more about opposing views. The political situation here is basically that nobody wants to listen to anybody who disagrees with them. I always considered myself a Republican, but now I'm an independent. I can't support a party (the Republicans) whose game plan seems to be pretty much "We hate the Democrats! We have no solutions for the problems, but we hate them! Vote for us! Also, we love stupid people! Stupid people, we are your party!" I can't be a Democrat because of too many fundamental differences of opinion. Libertarian? I think I'd rather be a Communist than that. So you really want to come home to this mess?
You know, if maybe you weren't so focused on being offended by everything, you could probably turn this situation around. I'm guessing that you have no sense of humor. Well, it sucks to be you. With regards to the chopstick comment, you could say something like "Yes, and I only lost one eye learning how to do it". As far as kanji goes, that's a pretty terrific accomplishment for a westerner. I'd have thought honestly that acquiring such skills would take so many years that it would be essentially impossible for most people. I think you're being praised here but taking it like an insult. As far as needing more space goes, I'd suggest saying "Yes, I do and I want you to know that I can be hired to give basketball lessons". Can't help with the cops as I have no idea what that is like. Your circumstances are pretty much what you make of them and I'd say that you might as well leave as it seems to me that you're pretty much in the "I'm SO tired of being here" mode and not likely to get out of it. America is no picnic these days with people threatening to "water the tree of liberty", but I will admit that you'll be spared the "racist" comments you are tired of in Japan.
When I was in school one of our school's best spellers was a guy who was a pretty average student. He would sometimes win spelling contests in the school and represent us in regional contests (I don't think he ever made it further than state level), but his academic record was pretty ordinary. I knew him for years and considered him a friend, although not a close one, and I can say that I just think he was a pretty average student. He was no genius. That experience convinced me that people who can spell well may not necessarily be the best and brightest.
From personal experience, the more I studied foreign languages (I am reasonably proficient in 3 besides English), the worse my ability to spell English became. I noticed a definite correlation there. However, I think my grammar improved. I use dictionary.com sometimes to look up words I am unsure about, but I write better than most people I know. I'm always surprised at how many people, especially younger ones, have no idea what the difference is between there, their and they're. That's just one example. As a point of interest, foreign language speakers who study English won't confuse there/their/they're, your/you're and its/it's, but they'll do things like write "could of" when it's really "could've" because they are going by what they hear. They are not helped when idiot native speakers write "could of" or "use to" (it's "used to") though.
I have a friend who is an attorney. He has a small office that has at most 5 people working in it at any given time. He and I have been friends for years and he comes to me for computer related problems or advice. He lives in absolute terror of the BSA. He has never been visited by them, yet he still fears them. He is paranoid beyond belief that maybe, somehow, he might have one piece of software installed on an office PC that wasn't paid for and a disgruntled employee with a grudge will try to get the BSA to visit him and he will get hit with a fine for tens of thousands of dollars. He buys every piece of software he's got. If you can believe this, to save a few dollars he bought Adobe Acrobat (lawyers use PDF files for legal submissions) from some guy on Ebay. He bought 2 copies. Both were OEM. He tried to get them activated by Adobe and got some grief over them being OEM. You would not believe how much he worried about it and he said that in the future he would pay Adobe's full price just to not have to worry about it. The vendor provided a new license key for each copy that Adobe accepted and activated, but my friends is still absolutely paranoid that he is going to get screwed over this.
He refuses to run free software because of his BSA paranoia. He is paranoid that if he doesn't buy it, he'll get screwed by the BSA. The reality is that as a small business owner, he pays rock bottom wages to the people (almost always women) who work as a paralegals for him and he offers no benefits that I know of. Consequently, he doesn't keep people very long. It's really easy for them to find better paying jobs elsewhere. And his office is in a small town so it would be fair to say that he doesn't get the best and brightest to work for him and sometimes employees leave under bad circumstances. They get angry about something and quit. So the BSA has effectively made this small businessman so paranoid that he never considers free software as he is afraid that somehow he might violate some law by using it and he pays full price for everything he buys just for peace of mind and he still fears the BSA knocking on his door and somehow finding one program without a license on a PC at his office. Their tactics may be different from the RIAA but I don't know anybody who fears the RIAA the way my friend and presumably others fear the BSA.
The real danger is that people believe paper ballots can be easily subject to problems and that electronic voting is somehow impervious to these problems.
Actually, I find it troubling that many people seem to believe that paper ballots cannot be compromised at all. I'm not more in favor of electronic voting and I'm not against paper ballots, but I get the sense that quite a few people here seem to think "paper ballots = 100% assurance of honesty" and I don't agree with that. Then again, I was in Ukraine in November of 2004 during the Orange Revolution (long story, but I had long standing plans to go there right after the election and those plans had nothing to do with the election at all) and I've seen how paper ballots can be compromised.
I have a few short pieces of advice. I'm not sure that "literary geek" is a good term to use and I wouldn't recommend that you call her by that. Note that women are really really bad at being direct and they will often show displaced anger. As a guy, you will be completely unaware of this so you need to know that it happens. For example, in guy land if your roommate doesn't take out the trash even though he is supposed to, you will yell at him to take out the trash or you will inflict bodily harm on him. That doesn't happen in women land. In women land, the woman may say "You don't love me!" and after much talking and time spent you will finally figure out that she is really upset about the trash. Or perhaps she will give you some serious grief about not taking the trash out but her real problem is that she is angry that you never offer to help out in the kitchen. The other advice I have is that I found that reading the "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" book helped me to understand how men and women see the world differently. I've asked women and they tell me that they think the book's insights are correct. However, note that like any relationship book, this one has its detractors. The most interesting thing I learned in the book was its discussion of how men and women give out points very very differently in relationships and you'd do well to understand that.