I never download or burn music using my internet connection or my computer. I honestly almost never listen to music at all. I am sick and tired of this stupid industry monopoly forcing people to pay some bogus fee for something we're not even getting.
It's one thing to offer a service of unlimited music downloads for $5 a month (I'm sure many people would subscribe!). It's a different matter altogether to charge people that "fee" out of the blue.
Silverlight has less chance of succeeding than applets did back in the 90s. In fact, the Applet engine has recently been overhauled in a big way making it even more competitive with Silverlight and Flash. Finally, as bad as applets are, they still have a better marketshare than Silverlight.
Here is a link to the new applet engine: https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html Try it out for yourself. In my experience applets are *far* more usable. They load faster and integrate more seamlessly into the website. Caveat: this release isn't public yet.
The point is having a format that any HTML 5 compliant browser can view (which implies free and open). Touche, this wasn't obvious to me from the Slashdot post. If this is their intent then I support them wholeheartedly.
Obviously you know nothing about Israel. The vast majority of its population is secular, even anti-religious if I may say so. Anyone who's lived in the country can attest this to be true. Do everyone a favor and at least learn to spell a country's name before uttering nonsense about it, especially without sources to back up your claim. Here is my source:
I have nothing against the Ogg Vorbis format, but how is it the business of an HTML spec as to what file format is used by external links? This is no better than the spec mandating we use PNG instead of JPG. Developers will use whatever makes sense to them and it isn't really the spec's business to mandate what is really outside of its scope.
You seem to be implying that most laws are immoral or that we seem to be living in Nazi Germany or something.
The US/Canadian governments gains little by decrypting emails of their citizens, mostly due to our political systems. The same can't be said about decrypting the email of people who most of us would agree are doing "bad things". Think organized crime, terrorists, etc.
First and foremost you need to declare outright what your position is: are you saying that most laws are immoral? are you saying that our government is reasonably comparable to Nazi Germany? Our point of contention seems to have little to do with encryption.
Funny, because most of the criticism I've read so far on Slashdot have nothing to do with the language itself. Rather, people are taking cheap shots at performance or UI when it is actually quite good in both departments.
If you want to have a debate the language syntax then that is an entirely differently discussion.
I don't know why people bother posting Java-related stories to Slashdot. Clearly the majority of its readers are still coding in Perl and have the nerve to suggest that Java's performance or UI is any slower or uglier than Perl. Please:)
Secondly, it seems the majority of you are not aware of the fact that the vast majority of phones out there (~80%) runs JavaME. Pretty much every single one of you have been running Java applications for years on your phones without knowing it.
Java isn't fast at everything, nor is it beautiful for everything, but for 90% of the applications out there it is both fast enough and beautiful enough out-of-the-box. You can always enhance performance or UI by using custom libraries but most developers are either too lazy to or they simply don't need to for their specific application.
I tend to think we should have left them alone -- or at least have done a much better (WWII-era, Japan-style) job of 'introducing' Iraq to democracy -- but there are certainly valid reasons for believing otherwise. I agree. I also think we should have done a much better job of introducing them to democracy. Though, to be fair, I don't think the same thing would work today as it did back in WW2. "Resistance to occupation" and rebelling against your own government is the latest fad nowadays. How did the allies manage to deprogram Nazi Germany and Japan once the war was over?
Iraq is just an excuse for Al Qaeda, like anything else. Before that there was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chechnya, and countless other lands they claim needed to be "liberated". Some of them are damn silly, like some Muslims are fighting to "liberate" parts of China. Good luck with that:)
My point is quite simple: these people will always come up with an excuse no matter what you do. Look at what happened when Israel fully withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 (as certified by the UN) and from Gaza in 2005. In both cases extremists moved in to fill the void and rather then fading into the dark they actually got *inspired* by withdrawals to carry out future attacks. So excuses are endless.
Another thing most people don't seem to understanding is that terrorism is a war tactic, like anything else. The only reason Al Qaeda uses it is because it works so darn well and the West is pretty toothless in its response. Numerous studies across the west have shown that most domestic terrorists have brainwashed in radical mosques as opposed to spontaneously springing into existence as a result of the various wars abroad. Desperation has nothing to do with it either as there are many desperate people across the globe (think Sudan, Tibet for example) that never resorted to terrorism or suicide bombings. This is very much a war of information and as you can see on YouTube (where many Jihad videos are hosted) the west is fighting with kid-gloves on. If we really cared about fighting the information war we would remove those videos anywhere they are found online (especially if they're hosted by businesses based in western countries!) and post our own counter videos to explain our case.
It's quite simple actually: countless people have had their countries invaded in history but only radical Islamists seem to have the perverse notion that any land that was previously under Islamic rule must be "liberated". This is even worse given the fact that Islam was a ruthless invader itself. Millions of people were slaughtered in its name as Muslim armies invaded across the globe. Now a few hundred years later many of those countries they suddenly want to get those countries back. Excuse me but I find that very hypocritical:)
I agree with your comments. One of the primary problems with democracy (as I've heard it said) is that no one knows how to migrate to it. So as much as we want other nations to become democratic and their people claim they want to do the same there is no clear road map to doing so.
I personally believe (though I could be wrong too) that at least part of the problem is political correctness. People wrongfully assume that western culture exists outside our homes. It does not. You do not negotiate the same way in the US as you do in the middle-east. When bootstrapping democracy, "the bad guys" need to understand from day one that you mean business and you carry a big stick while "the good guys" need to feel your constant support. This implies stepping on a lot of people's toes but I don't think there is much choice. In this specific case of Iraq, the politicians need to understand that unless they stop playing games and agree one the *basics* very soon then you will make a decision on their behalf which will surely be worse than anything they can possibly agree to themselves. It's funny how people can argue about the most mundane things unless their back is to a wall (which is part of the reason our own politicians accomplish nothing unless their own neck is on the line).
This brings me to a funny story I once read: http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm "People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment."
What I take from Genghis Khan's story is that one needs to be witty and take the target audience's belief system into consideration. We in the West need to remember that most of the people in the world do not live under a Western mentality so it makes little sense to negotiate or deal with them as we would with fellow Westerns and expect good results. Specifically, if you tried negotiating in a middle-eastern market using Western values you would get stepped on many times over. You need to adapt to the culture of the people you are dealing with and use wit in trying to accomplish your goals.
My understanding is that our goals are quite simple: spread Democracy far and wide because not only does it empower oppressed men and women but it also opens new opportunities for our own people. Let's be honest, we would have far more opportunities (both cultural and financial) when dealing with a Democratic China than we do with it today. The same goes for Iraq and any other country in the world. Look at the fall of the USSR for example. It defused a serious military confrontation, opened new markets for our businesses, and empowered their people with rights and money to boot. It's a win-win situation for everyone.
Right, because ignoring "other people's problems" worked so well for us in World War 2.
When someone is suffering half way around the world it finds a way to bite you in the ass sooner or later. We would all be better off if the rest of the world was living under equal standards of living as we are with as many rights. I am under the impression that the sooner women get equal rights in the middle-east (and they drop polygamy) the sooner this Jihad craziness will end.
The Iraq war was terribly mismanaged, but the idea behind it remains valid. When someone starts massacring millions of people in Sudan we shouldn't sit on our hands and say "that's someone else's problem" only to cry bloody murder when someone dares to remove a raving dictator from power in Iraq. What kind of a message are you sending by keeping quiet when good people suffer and making noise when dictators are removed from power? Shouldn't you be doing the exact opposite?
Anyone who's programmed for Symbian will attest to the evils of its programming APIs and limitations of the C++ you can use. Google is said to be bringing three heavy weights to the table:
Linux (cheap) Java (ease of development) Google (industry-strength support)
In my view not only does this kill Symbian but it will also be a welcome death. Cell phone carriers and OS developers have abused users and developers for far too long.
This should goes to show you how crazy some of these conspiracy theory guys are. Everything is a conspiracy theory to them. Maybe.. just maybe.. they should consider getting a job and trying to live like normal people.
Think about it. OSS can only make money from support whereas support is associated with unwanted overhead for commercial products. As such, OSS products are more likely to be difficult to use to drive up their support profits (see Linux for example) whereas commercial products are much likely to be easier to use to drive their support costs down (see Windows for example).
I love it how you guys turn this from a discussion about open-source to blaming the Jews for propaganda and "nuclear armed aggression" in the middle-east. Let's just be honest, shall we? This isn't about open-source, this is about bigots such as yourself looking for excuses to scapegoat people you don't like.
You don't need to bring Israel into the picture when discussing why Iran's recent behavior is problematic. They openly support the use of terrorism against civilians (just read their newspapers), they oppress their women and they openly call for the destruction of their neighbors. One the one hand they deny that they are developing nuclear weapons while on the other hand they declare no one has the right to deny them those same weapons. There is decade-long evidence that they are developing these weapons on top of other weapons they already openly admit to having (and wanting to use) such as chemical and biological weapons. Having them is one thing, declaring they will use it is another. Just look at what they did during the Iraq-Iran war! They don't even value their own people, having sent children into mine-fields during that war. What kind of corrupt leadership does this? Contrary to what people say, there is a world of a difference between a democracy having access to WMDs and a xenophobic expansionist dictatorship having those same capabilities.
I also take issue with people trying to compare Palestinians to Native Americans. The last I checked, Jews of the middle-east were in fact the original Native Americans to be wiped out of the middle-east by one wave of invasion after another. Although only a minority of Jews remained in Israel during the past thousands of years it does not invalidate their position as a native to the land. I find it amusing how some of you are labeling Palestinians are being native to the region while simultaneously invalidating the Jews' own claim as natives to the region. If one is true then the other must certainly be true too. You can't have it both ways:)
It is ironic that no one mentions the fact that the majority of land was purchased legally from Arabs in the early 1900s by immigrating Jews. Everyone was getting along just swell until the blood riots of 1929 (when Arabs massacred the Jews of Hebron) and again in 1947-1948 when local Palestinians started attacking their Jewish neighbors followed by a en-mass invasion by surrounding Arab countries.
It is no coincidence that the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947. Land was divided based on the population in each area; whomever had a majority population in any given area was given that land. Again the vast majority of land the Jews inhabited was purchased legally from Palestinians prior to the war. It is only after the war that the situation shifted somewhat, but we must keep in mind that in times of war one cannot purchase land from one's enemy. Furthermore, no one seems to mentioned that more Jewish refugees were forcibly removed from Arab countries in the 1948 war than Palestinian refugees, and this in in spite of the fact that the Palestinians were stirring up violence against their neighbors whereas the Jews in Arab countries were not.
Fair enough but my point is that the fine should be dependent on the distribution level. You should get fined a different value when you made a copy for your dad than when you uploaded 10,000 copies to random people online. The former should not cost you $150,000 per track for obvious reasons:) At most they should be able to fine the girls $20 which is the equivilent cost of one pirated CD.
There is no way in hell that making a copy of a CD for your dad costs a music label $1.8 million in losses. I don't even care about putative fines, the numbers simply don't add up. Anyone who says otherwise is basically just trying to stick it to Bush. Scapegoating is simply the little brother of racism; it's just being applied on a smaller scale.
This is *the* technology that will bring Java to the desktop. The community should let Sun know if they value this technology and now that the JDK is open-source you can help make it a reality!
You didn't have unlimited access to satelite photography in the past, how is restricting said information in any way going to make them the masters of you. Governments have had this information for years and citizens did not.
Censorship is also a loaded word here too. They are not censoring your freedom of speech nor anything which you have inherit rights to. You, as a human being, do not have an inherit right to any bit of information that might exist on the face of the earth and it is silly for people to claim that restriction of information of any kind is censorship. It simply is not.
Stop wasting your days away on conspiracy theories. They're dumb and counter-productive. I'm not saying governments are always right but people have been overreaching as of late, wanting everything - immediately - for free. I think this says more a reflection of the selfish behavior of our generation than anything about our governments.
I wouldn't care if someone were to censor my (or others') view if it results in violence against a group of people. Specifically, my view is that Freedom of Speech is there to allow you to offend people but not there to allow you to incite violence against an identifiable group of people. This is why I believe the KKK example should be illegal because at the end of the day real people get hurt. The same thing goes for child porn. When you ban some literature you are essentially saying "As far as the state is concerned this act is illegal, non-sanctioned etc". This is the exact opposite message you get from seeing a group of people spreading hate literature because all of a sudden you start thinking it is okay to incite hate against that group of people. It's no coincidence that the "blood libel" has repeatedly led to the deaths of Jews throughout history. These are words that led to real harm, over and over again whenever some boy would disappear around town.
... hmm, I think you forgot to write "within reason".
If some guy comes along and starts parading child porn photos in the streets should we allow him to have his way simply because we do not wish to impose our value system on him? If a bunch of guys parade around town in KKK outfits with signs "Kill the Jews! Kill the N****rs" shouldn't we have a say about this sort of behavior? This isn't a theoretical question, a few years ago I was shocked to see a KKK parade walking through downtown Montreal (Canada) and not a single person did anything about it (I suspect many were too shocked). Seriously, how is preventing this kind of behavior going to lead to tyranny and the government controlling its population? I really think some people are jumping from point A to point B a little too quickly here:)
I am not saying that one should micro-manage freedom of speech, but I think that there are a bunch of things that are quite reasonable to censor.
There is a world of a difference between expressing views that might be hurt someone's feelings (i.e. making fun of someone's religion) and expressing views that incite violence. For example, I shouldn't be able to publish a website that calls for the genocide of black people in the name of white supremacy. There are countless clear-cut cases of freedom of speech abuse that *should* be outlawed. Yes, I share your concern that certain people with agendas will try to twist the law to suit their needs but what else is new? People already do this with existing laws and that doesn't mean we should not have those laws to begin with.
It is up to judges to apply the laws within reason and you can be sure they will be reluctant to let people abuse it. Hate speech has been outlawed in Canada for years and you don't see your doom and gloom predictions taking form there. Judges are very lenient in the application of the law (frankly I think they should be tougher).
Slashdot Mirror
I never download or burn music using my internet connection or my computer. I honestly almost never listen to music at all. I am sick and tired of this stupid industry monopoly forcing people to pay some bogus fee for something we're not even getting.
It's one thing to offer a service of unlimited music downloads for $5 a month (I'm sure many people would subscribe!). It's a different matter altogether to charge people that "fee" out of the blue.
Silverlight has less chance of succeeding than applets did back in the 90s. In fact, the Applet engine has recently been overhauled in a big way making it even more competitive with Silverlight and Flash. Finally, as bad as applets are, they still have a better marketshare than Silverlight.
Here is a link to the new applet engine: https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
Try it out for yourself. In my experience applets are *far* more usable. They load faster and integrate more seamlessly into the website. Caveat: this release isn't public yet.
I know most of you have been asleep for the past half century but the Iran threat has been raised way before Bush came to power.
Obviously you know nothing about Israel. The vast majority of its population is secular, even anti-religious if I may say so. Anyone who's lived in the country can attest this to be true. Do everyone a favor and at least learn to spell a country's name before uttering nonsense about it, especially without sources to back up your claim. Here is my source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Israel
I have nothing against the Ogg Vorbis format, but how is it the business of an HTML spec as to what file format is used by external links? This is no better than the spec mandating we use PNG instead of JPG. Developers will use whatever makes sense to them and it isn't really the spec's business to mandate what is really outside of its scope.
You seem to be implying that most laws are immoral or that we seem to be living in Nazi Germany or something.
The US/Canadian governments gains little by decrypting emails of their citizens, mostly due to our political systems. The same can't be said about decrypting the email of people who most of us would agree are doing "bad things". Think organized crime, terrorists, etc.
First and foremost you need to declare outright what your position is: are you saying that most laws are immoral? are you saying that our government is reasonably comparable to Nazi Germany? Our point of contention seems to have little to do with encryption.
Funny, because most of the criticism I've read so far on Slashdot have nothing to do with the language itself. Rather, people are taking cheap shots at performance or UI when it is actually quite good in both departments.
If you want to have a debate the language syntax then that is an entirely differently discussion.
I don't know why people bother posting Java-related stories to Slashdot. Clearly the majority of its readers are still coding in Perl and have the nerve to suggest that Java's performance or UI is any slower or uglier than Perl. Please :)
Secondly, it seems the majority of you are not aware of the fact that the vast majority of phones out there (~80%) runs JavaME. Pretty much every single one of you have been running Java applications for years on your phones without knowing it.
Java isn't fast at everything, nor is it beautiful for everything, but for 90% of the applications out there it is both fast enough and beautiful enough out-of-the-box. You can always enhance performance or UI by using custom libraries but most developers are either too lazy to or they simply don't need to for their specific application.
Iraq is just an excuse for Al Qaeda, like anything else. Before that there was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chechnya, and countless other lands they claim needed to be "liberated". Some of them are damn silly, like some Muslims are fighting to "liberate" parts of China. Good luck with that :)
:)
My point is quite simple: these people will always come up with an excuse no matter what you do. Look at what happened when Israel fully withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 (as certified by the UN) and from Gaza in 2005. In both cases extremists moved in to fill the void and rather then fading into the dark they actually got *inspired* by withdrawals to carry out future attacks. So excuses are endless.
Another thing most people don't seem to understanding is that terrorism is a war tactic, like anything else. The only reason Al Qaeda uses it is because it works so darn well and the West is pretty toothless in its response. Numerous studies across the west have shown that most domestic terrorists have brainwashed in radical mosques as opposed to spontaneously springing into existence as a result of the various wars abroad. Desperation has nothing to do with it either as there are many desperate people across the globe (think Sudan, Tibet for example) that never resorted to terrorism or suicide bombings. This is very much a war of information and as you can see on YouTube (where many Jihad videos are hosted) the west is fighting with kid-gloves on. If we really cared about fighting the information war we would remove those videos anywhere they are found online (especially if they're hosted by businesses based in western countries!) and post our own counter videos to explain our case.
It's quite simple actually: countless people have had their countries invaded in history but only radical Islamists seem to have the perverse notion that any land that was previously under Islamic rule must be "liberated". This is even worse given the fact that Islam was a ruthless invader itself. Millions of people were slaughtered in its name as Muslim armies invaded across the globe. Now a few hundred years later many of those countries they suddenly want to get those countries back. Excuse me but I find that very hypocritical
I agree with your comments. One of the primary problems with democracy (as I've heard it said) is that no one knows how to migrate to it. So as much as we want other nations to become democratic and their people claim they want to do the same there is no clear road map to doing so.
I personally believe (though I could be wrong too) that at least part of the problem is political correctness. People wrongfully assume that western culture exists outside our homes. It does not. You do not negotiate the same way in the US as you do in the middle-east. When bootstrapping democracy, "the bad guys" need to understand from day one that you mean business and you carry a big stick while "the good guys" need to feel your constant support. This implies stepping on a lot of people's toes but I don't think there is much choice. In this specific case of Iraq, the politicians need to understand that unless they stop playing games and agree one the *basics* very soon then you will make a decision on their behalf which will surely be worse than anything they can possibly agree to themselves. It's funny how people can argue about the most mundane things unless their back is to a wall (which is part of the reason our own politicians accomplish nothing unless their own neck is on the line).
This brings me to a funny story I once read: http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm
"People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment."
What I take from Genghis Khan's story is that one needs to be witty and take the target audience's belief system into consideration. We in the West need to remember that most of the people in the world do not live under a Western mentality so it makes little sense to negotiate or deal with them as we would with fellow Westerns and expect good results. Specifically, if you tried negotiating in a middle-eastern market using Western values you would get stepped on many times over. You need to adapt to the culture of the people you are dealing with and use wit in trying to accomplish your goals.
My understanding is that our goals are quite simple: spread Democracy far and wide because not only does it empower oppressed men and women but it also opens new opportunities for our own people. Let's be honest, we would have far more opportunities (both cultural and financial) when dealing with a Democratic China than we do with it today. The same goes for Iraq and any other country in the world. Look at the fall of the USSR for example. It defused a serious military confrontation, opened new markets for our businesses, and empowered their people with rights and money to boot. It's a win-win situation for everyone.
Right, because ignoring "other people's problems" worked so well for us in World War 2.
When someone is suffering half way around the world it finds a way to bite you in the ass sooner or later. We would all be better off if the rest of the world was living under equal standards of living as we are with as many rights. I am under the impression that the sooner women get equal rights in the middle-east (and they drop polygamy) the sooner this Jihad craziness will end.
The Iraq war was terribly mismanaged, but the idea behind it remains valid. When someone starts massacring millions of people in Sudan we shouldn't sit on our hands and say "that's someone else's problem" only to cry bloody murder when someone dares to remove a raving dictator from power in Iraq. What kind of a message are you sending by keeping quiet when good people suffer and making noise when dictators are removed from power? Shouldn't you be doing the exact opposite?
Anyone who's programmed for Symbian will attest to the evils of its programming APIs and limitations of the C++ you can use. Google is said to be bringing three heavy weights to the table:
Linux (cheap)
Java (ease of development)
Google (industry-strength support)
In my view not only does this kill Symbian but it will also be a welcome death. Cell phone carriers and OS developers have abused users and developers for far too long.
This should goes to show you how crazy some of these conspiracy theory guys are. Everything is a conspiracy theory to them. Maybe.. just maybe.. they should consider getting a job and trying to live like normal people.
Exactly the opposite is true.
Think about it. OSS can only make money from support whereas support is associated with unwanted overhead for commercial products. As such, OSS products are more likely to be difficult to use to drive up their support profits (see Linux for example) whereas commercial products are much likely to be easier to use to drive their support costs down (see Windows for example).
I love it how you guys turn this from a discussion about open-source to blaming the Jews for propaganda and "nuclear armed aggression" in the middle-east. Let's just be honest, shall we? This isn't about open-source, this is about bigots such as yourself looking for excuses to scapegoat people you don't like.
:)
You don't need to bring Israel into the picture when discussing why Iran's recent behavior is problematic. They openly support the use of terrorism against civilians (just read their newspapers), they oppress their women and they openly call for the destruction of their neighbors. One the one hand they deny that they are developing nuclear weapons while on the other hand they declare no one has the right to deny them those same weapons. There is decade-long evidence that they are developing these weapons on top of other weapons they already openly admit to having (and wanting to use) such as chemical and biological weapons. Having them is one thing, declaring they will use it is another. Just look at what they did during the Iraq-Iran war! They don't even value their own people, having sent children into mine-fields during that war. What kind of corrupt leadership does this? Contrary to what people say, there is a world of a difference between a democracy having access to WMDs and a xenophobic expansionist dictatorship having those same capabilities.
I also take issue with people trying to compare Palestinians to Native Americans. The last I checked, Jews of the middle-east were in fact the original Native Americans to be wiped out of the middle-east by one wave of invasion after another. Although only a minority of Jews remained in Israel during the past thousands of years it does not invalidate their position as a native to the land. I find it amusing how some of you are labeling Palestinians are being native to the region while simultaneously invalidating the Jews' own claim as natives to the region. If one is true then the other must certainly be true too. You can't have it both ways
It is ironic that no one mentions the fact that the majority of land was purchased legally from Arabs in the early 1900s by immigrating Jews. Everyone was getting along just swell until the blood riots of 1929 (when Arabs massacred the Jews of Hebron) and again in 1947-1948 when local Palestinians started attacking their Jewish neighbors followed by a en-mass invasion by surrounding Arab countries.
It is no coincidence that the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947. Land was divided based on the population in each area; whomever had a majority population in any given area was given that land. Again the vast majority of land the Jews inhabited was purchased legally from Palestinians prior to the war. It is only after the war that the situation shifted somewhat, but we must keep in mind that in times of war one cannot purchase land from one's enemy. Furthermore, no one seems to mentioned that more Jewish refugees were forcibly removed from Arab countries in the 1948 war than Palestinian refugees, and this in in spite of the fact that the Palestinians were stirring up violence against their neighbors whereas the Jews in Arab countries were not.
Fair enough but my point is that the fine should be dependent on the distribution level. You should get fined a different value when you made a copy for your dad than when you uploaded 10,000 copies to random people online. The former should not cost you $150,000 per track for obvious reasons :) At most they should be able to fine the girls $20 which is the equivilent cost of one pirated CD.
There is no way in hell that making a copy of a CD for your dad costs a music label $1.8 million in losses. I don't even care about putative fines, the numbers simply don't add up. Anyone who says otherwise is basically just trying to stick it to Bush. Scapegoating is simply the little brother of racism; it's just being applied on a smaller scale.
So please tell me where you're getting these figures from.
0 6/09/java_browser_ed.html
There is also the matter of Java Kernel being developed for Java7 which reduces the size even further: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/20
Two words: Java Kernel
0 6/09/index.html
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/20
This is *the* technology that will bring Java to the desktop. The community should let Sun know if they value this technology and now that the JDK is open-source you can help make it a reality!
Give me a break.
You didn't have unlimited access to satelite photography in the past, how is restricting said information in any way going to make them the masters of you. Governments have had this information for years and citizens did not.
Censorship is also a loaded word here too. They are not censoring your freedom of speech nor anything which you have inherit rights to. You, as a human being, do not have an inherit right to any bit of information that might exist on the face of the earth and it is silly for people to claim that restriction of information of any kind is censorship. It simply is not.
Stop wasting your days away on conspiracy theories. They're dumb and counter-productive. I'm not saying governments are always right but people have been overreaching as of late, wanting everything - immediately - for free. I think this says more a reflection of the selfish behavior of our generation than anything about our governments.
I wouldn't care if someone were to censor my (or others') view if it results in violence against a group of people. Specifically, my view is that Freedom of Speech is there to allow you to offend people but not there to allow you to incite violence against an identifiable group of people. This is why I believe the KKK example should be illegal because at the end of the day real people get hurt. The same thing goes for child porn. When you ban some literature you are essentially saying "As far as the state is concerned this act is illegal, non-sanctioned etc". This is the exact opposite message you get from seeing a group of people spreading hate literature because all of a sudden you start thinking it is okay to incite hate against that group of people. It's no coincidence that the "blood libel" has repeatedly led to the deaths of Jews throughout history. These are words that led to real harm, over and over again whenever some boy would disappear around town.
... hmm, I think you forgot to write "within reason".
:)
If some guy comes along and starts parading child porn photos in the streets should we allow him to have his way simply because we do not wish to impose our value system on him? If a bunch of guys parade around town in KKK outfits with signs "Kill the Jews! Kill the N****rs" shouldn't we have a say about this sort of behavior? This isn't a theoretical question, a few years ago I was shocked to see a KKK parade walking through downtown Montreal (Canada) and not a single person did anything about it (I suspect many were too shocked). Seriously, how is preventing this kind of behavior going to lead to tyranny and the government controlling its population? I really think some people are jumping from point A to point B a little too quickly here
I am not saying that one should micro-manage freedom of speech, but I think that there are a bunch of things that are quite reasonable to censor.
There is a world of a difference between expressing views that might be hurt someone's feelings (i.e. making fun of someone's religion) and expressing views that incite violence. For example, I shouldn't be able to publish a website that calls for the genocide of black people in the name of white supremacy. There are countless clear-cut cases of freedom of speech abuse that *should* be outlawed. Yes, I share your concern that certain people with agendas will try to twist the law to suit their needs but what else is new? People already do this with existing laws and that doesn't mean we should not have those laws to begin with. It is up to judges to apply the laws within reason and you can be sure they will be reluctant to let people abuse it. Hate speech has been outlawed in Canada for years and you don't see your doom and gloom predictions taking form there. Judges are very lenient in the application of the law (frankly I think they should be tougher).