And it's been bugging me for a while, but if someone somewhere knows the answer or where to find it, I would be forever indebted to you. Unless the particles that formed this planet travelled faster than light, how do we ever expect to be able to "see" the big bang using any electromagnetic energies? I'm not trying to be an ass hat, and I'm no physicist, but how can they say the universe is 15 billion years old, when it would have taken longer than 15 billion years for the dust that formed us all to get here from the big bang? Please no religous arguments, and only serious replies with information (unless you want to throw in a Flying Spaghetti Monster joke for fun)
First, you're right, they can't have it both ways, but to expect that someone would have to pay taxes on something that isn't even real is kinda shifty. If someone finds a sucker willing to purchase virtual goods, then fine, tax them on the money they made from the sucker, no argument there. It would be the same as taxing someone for the gold that their D&D character got from slaying a dragon (talking old school here, pen, paper, and dice). It's all just make believe, and this (taxing the virtual stuff on people who haven't converted it to real money) is another way for the government of the U.S. to make money in a feeble attempt to "balance the budget" without having to cut out the pork.
Here's one I've seen many times, and will no doubt be many times repeated:
Why does Diebold have such a hard time making a voting machine in the same way as an ATM? ATMs work, everybody knows how they work, they are secure, and even give a paper reciept. Are those features so hard to put into a voting machine? The interface could even stay pretty much the same:
Press here to vote for candidate x ------> Press here to vote for candidate y ------> Press here to vote for write in --------->
lather, rinse, repeat: paper comes out, you hand in paper. It isn't that difficult (hell, you could probably even use an ATM for it, with some slight modifications to the prompts)
Why is this so difficult? Or is Diebold trying to rig the election?
I've had no problem whatsoever with Slackware, Sourcemage or Ubuntu installing on Dell Optiplex GX110 (about 10 years old) with 450 mhz p2s (though Sourcemage took forever to compile gcc and X, but that's what you get for compiling programs that big on old hardware), Ubuntu and Slack both installed just as quickly as Windows XP, and I didn't have any problems. I'm not going to say you didn't have issues, but as far as legacy hardware goes, I've had no such bad experiences with Linux.
Here here! I find it shamefull that politicians are so blantantly putting themselves up for sale like this. I think government needs an overhaul - big time. No more political contributions from any group, business or collective entity, and cap personal contributions to something in the tune of $1000 bucks per person. Get rid of all lobbyists, so that congress-critters listen to the people again, not just the ones who take them to Jamaica on vacation with them.
That makes sense. Maybe the same thing should happen here in the US, where we are indirectly ruled by fear of "another terrorist attack", and have also given up too much precious liberty and privacy for a false sense of security.
My son's bilogical father is in China for a year working for a big Multi-national corp. He has told me that you never hear of anything truly bad happening in China, the only really bad news you hear is from other countries. The only news you hear about China is how good it is.
Just change #4 to Force elected officials to do everything possible to follow through on thier promises, and I'd be all behind you. No, they shouldn't make promises that they absolutly cannot follow through on, but if they put up a good effort (bring the issue up over and over again, even after it is shot down), they at least showed good faith effort to follow through on thier promises.
also add #5 yank the golden fleece -that nifty little retirement package they get, full pension, free medical care, etc or grant it to all constituants, I don't care which. (And before I get reamed about how to impliment that solution, no I don't know how, it is possible, even if in a quantum physics-longer that the lifespan of the universe, kind of way. Maybe the easiest solution would be to just yank the golden fleece). And if you're going to ream me about "how would hurting them make you feel better?" It isn't about "hurting" anyone, it's about an even playing field. If the congress-critters actually had to live in the world they create, maybe they'd make a better one.
Where I work we have a few kiosk computers for applicants to use, after much evaluation we settled on a product called SiteKiosk. This has worked very well for us (our network admin gave up on cracking out of it after 20 minutes, citing that no applicant would take that much effort to get around the program). The program actually loads a custom shell, uses a customised browser and is very easy to lock down, a little tweaking is needed to open stuff up, but it isn't hard from the administrator's account, it is impossible without the administrator's password. After deploying it 6 months ago, I have not had to service the pc's one time, ever. They are very secure (about as secure as I say a machine can be). Security on these can be as extreme as you want it (autologon to the SiteKiosk user, only browse to whitelisted websites, etc...) if someone manages to get around it, you should consider giving them a job, seriously. I don't know of the cost, but I know it works.
My other suggestion is Linux, it would probably cost less, and be as secure (if you configured it right) and good luck getting windows games to run on it if you don't install Wine (Slack would be my suggested distro, stable, secure, and easy for administrators to handle).
As extreme as this view is, it is technically correct. It isn't as if the Government of China is going around taping everyone's mouth shut. They are, however very strict in what they allow to be said without reprecution. You are free, in China to stand in the middle of town and say the government is bad, however, you will probably have to face some form of punishment (I'm not Chinese, don't have any first hand knowledge, but from my understanding they frown very heavily on criticism of leadership). Much like you can in fact yell fire in a crowded theater, you will just be brought up on charges. Technically, everyone is free to say anything they wish, but depending on what you say and where you say it, the powers that be may or may not punish you for it.
Back on topic: 2 things have become clear to me in reading some of the posts here today: 1) The defendant should appeal, because she didn't recieve the summons, even if it means going sans lawyer, because she isn't the only one who has issues with the plaintiff. 2) The plaintiff has many more people out there speaking poorly of her, maybe the defendant was on to something.
Funny, I seem to remember a first Gulf war, as well as many, many other intrusions into other nations with the U.S. acting as a "world police force". I understand that Gulf War I was a direct response to the invasion of Kuwait, but if that is all it was, why didn't we stop after we got Iraq out of there? Because we wanted to topple Hussein after realizing that maybe our support of him against Iran wasn't such a hot idea. This middle east stuff goes way back (even farther than my starting point, cold ware being what is was and all) and boils down to this: we need thier oil. We won't leave the area alone until they run out or we find another means of energy. So, yes, in a way, we did provoke them prior to the first WTC bombing and the attack on the Cole. If you are going to cite history, please don't be selective about what you cite.
Wow, and is my sig fitting for the times now, or what?
and what is wrong with everyone paying a flat percentage rate? Why should the lowest income brackets pay a heftier percentage of their pay in taxes? Mind you, I'm not talking about the percent before deductions, I'm talking about after all the tax shelters get deducted. Example: A race horse is not an "agricultural expense", unless, of course the horse pulls a plow during the week, and races on the weekend. I would be all for everyone paying 10% of their income in taxes, cut out the deductions, etc. This government would have money coming out of its ears.
to put it bluntly: I wish I could complain that I pay more in taxes per year than most people make.
Granted an atrocious analogy, maybe even an extreme one, but the point is still valid. The assumptions made by the ISP were erroneous in the first place, just as in my example of double selling land. Yes there are those who abuse the system. I don't. My internet is used mostly by my wife for neopets and e-mail. I use it mostly for getting packages when playing with various linux distros, and keeping my systems up to date. I don't do a lot of torrenting, I don't hog bandwidth. I like you're analogy also, it points out that someone will abuse the system, and it hurts everyone else. If the cases came forward that were there in your example, then the business model needs to shift, maybe the ISP could "lease" a dedicated lawn mower to the abusers for a much higher rate than everyone else. And I think that's what you were getting at in the second part of your post, that they will, in fact, start charging for usage above a certain amount. That's only fair. What isn't fair is them taking from everyone just because of a few abusers, nor the assumption that everyone is an abuser, just because they use a certain part of the service they over-sell.
My fair share is what I paid for. I don't seed torrents, or abuse my pipes. I am the customer that my cable company loves, I don't use all my bandwidth 24/7. We have it so my wife can play neopets, and I can research things without waiting long for pages to load. Most of my traffic is web/e-mail. If I go to a speed test, I regularly post well, but it takes days (yes days) to download a single cd iso for a distro from a torrent. Why? I am paying for 1.5 mb/s. It is in my agreement that I had when signing up for service. It is a gauranteed speed. If they can't meet that, then either charge me more, or don't gaurantee it. Yes land is product, but would my analogy hold any less true if I had used a service? How does that change the fact that they are over selling the service? And isn't a service just a product without a physical medium? If I were a temp worker, I would be the temp agency's product, no?
I saw other posts saying the same thing about ISP's hoping that you don't use all of your available bandwidth, and overselling the service, and my question is this:
If I buy say 25 acres of land, and I sell 1 acre parcels of this land, normally valued at 1,000 dollars per acre to 50 people at 750 dollars per acre (to give a good deal and sell my land), in the hope that they don't use it all, how long do I have before I go to jail, and how much of a jackass am I for counting on the fact that no one will try to use thier full acre?
I don't understand your question at all. Are you saying that MS sees using the OS as redistributing it? I don't follow.
redistribute tr.v. redistributed, redistributing, redistributes To distribute again in a different way; reallocate. --the free dictionary How is using an OS re-distributing it?
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Thank you.
And it's been bugging me for a while, but if someone somewhere knows the answer or where to find it, I would be forever indebted to you. Unless the particles that formed this planet travelled faster than light, how do we ever expect to be able to "see" the big bang using any electromagnetic energies? I'm not trying to be an ass hat, and I'm no physicist, but how can they say the universe is 15 billion years old, when it would have taken longer than 15 billion years for the dust that formed us all to get here from the big bang? Please no religous arguments, and only serious replies with information (unless you want to throw in a Flying Spaghetti Monster joke for fun)
First, you're right, they can't have it both ways, but to expect that someone would have to pay taxes on something that isn't even real is kinda shifty. If someone finds a sucker willing to purchase virtual goods, then fine, tax them on the money they made from the sucker, no argument there. It would be the same as taxing someone for the gold that their D&D character got from slaying a dragon (talking old school here, pen, paper, and dice). It's all just make believe, and this (taxing the virtual stuff on people who haven't converted it to real money) is another way for the government of the U.S. to make money in a feeble attempt to "balance the budget" without having to cut out the pork.
Here's one I've seen many times, and will no doubt be many times repeated:
Why does Diebold have such a hard time making a voting machine in the same way as an ATM? ATMs work, everybody knows how they work, they are secure, and even give a paper reciept. Are those features so hard to put into a voting machine? The interface could even stay pretty much the same:
Press here to vote for candidate x ------>
Press here to vote for candidate y ------>
Press here to vote for write in --------->
lather, rinse, repeat: paper comes out, you hand in paper. It isn't that difficult (hell, you could probably even use an ATM for it, with some slight modifications to the prompts)
Why is this so difficult? Or is Diebold trying to rig the election?
I've had no problem whatsoever with Slackware, Sourcemage or Ubuntu installing on Dell Optiplex GX110 (about 10 years old) with 450 mhz p2s (though Sourcemage took forever to compile gcc and X, but that's what you get for compiling programs that big on old hardware), Ubuntu and Slack both installed just as quickly as Windows XP, and I didn't have any problems. I'm not going to say you didn't have issues, but as far as legacy hardware goes, I've had no such bad experiences with Linux.
my bad
"Never underestimate the power of the mouse."
Whether you intended it or not, that is the best play on words I've ever seen. Hat's off to you! (if I could mod you, I would)
Here here! I find it shamefull that politicians are so blantantly putting themselves up for sale like this. I think government needs an overhaul - big time. No more political contributions from any group, business or collective entity, and cap personal contributions to something in the tune of $1000 bucks per person. Get rid of all lobbyists, so that congress-critters listen to the people again, not just the ones who take them to Jamaica on vacation with them.
Everyone knows you burn the place to the ground.
That makes sense. Maybe the same thing should happen here in the US, where we are indirectly ruled by fear of "another terrorist attack", and have also given up too much precious liberty and privacy for a false sense of security.
Dear god (or whatever) I hope you're not serious. Rule by fear, that's just what this world needs
To back up your claim:
My son's bilogical father is in China for a year working for a big Multi-national corp. He has told me that you never hear of anything truly bad happening in China, the only really bad news you hear is from other countries. The only news you hear about China is how good it is.
Just change #4 to Force elected officials to do everything possible to follow through on thier promises, and I'd be all behind you. No, they shouldn't make promises that they absolutly cannot follow through on, but if they put up a good effort (bring the issue up over and over again, even after it is shot down), they at least showed good faith effort to follow through on thier promises.
also add #5 yank the golden fleece -that nifty little retirement package they get, full pension, free medical care, etc or grant it to all constituants, I don't care which. (And before I get reamed about how to impliment that solution, no I don't know how, it is possible, even if in a quantum physics-longer that the lifespan of the universe, kind of way. Maybe the easiest solution would be to just yank the golden fleece). And if you're going to ream me about "how would hurting them make you feel better?" It isn't about "hurting" anyone, it's about an even playing field. If the congress-critters actually had to live in the world they create, maybe they'd make a better one.
Where I work we have a few kiosk computers for applicants to use, after much evaluation we settled on a product called SiteKiosk. This has worked very well for us (our network admin gave up on cracking out of it after 20 minutes, citing that no applicant would take that much effort to get around the program). The program actually loads a custom shell, uses a customised browser and is very easy to lock down, a little tweaking is needed to open stuff up, but it isn't hard from the administrator's account, it is impossible without the administrator's password. After deploying it 6 months ago, I have not had to service the pc's one time, ever. They are very secure (about as secure as I say a machine can be). Security on these can be as extreme as you want it (autologon to the SiteKiosk user, only browse to whitelisted websites, etc...) if someone manages to get around it, you should consider giving them a job, seriously. I don't know of the cost, but I know it works.
My other suggestion is Linux, it would probably cost less, and be as secure (if you configured it right) and good luck getting windows games to run on it if you don't install Wine (Slack would be my suggested distro, stable, secure, and easy for administrators to handle).
As extreme as this view is, it is technically correct. It isn't as if the Government of China is going around taping everyone's mouth shut. They are, however very strict in what they allow to be said without reprecution. You are free, in China to stand in the middle of town and say the government is bad, however, you will probably have to face some form of punishment (I'm not Chinese, don't have any first hand knowledge, but from my understanding they frown very heavily on criticism of leadership). Much like you can in fact yell fire in a crowded theater, you will just be brought up on charges. Technically, everyone is free to say anything they wish, but depending on what you say and where you say it, the powers that be may or may not punish you for it.
Back on topic: 2 things have become clear to me in reading some of the posts here today: 1) The defendant should appeal, because she didn't recieve the summons, even if it means going sans lawyer, because she isn't the only one who has issues with the plaintiff. 2) The plaintiff has many more people out there speaking poorly of her, maybe the defendant was on to something.
Funny, I seem to remember a first Gulf war, as well as many, many other intrusions into other nations with the U.S. acting as a "world police force". I understand that Gulf War I was a direct response to the invasion of Kuwait, but if that is all it was, why didn't we stop after we got Iraq out of there? Because we wanted to topple Hussein after realizing that maybe our support of him against Iran wasn't such a hot idea. This middle east stuff goes way back (even farther than my starting point, cold ware being what is was and all) and boils down to this: we need thier oil. We won't leave the area alone until they run out or we find another means of energy. So, yes, in a way, we did provoke them prior to the first WTC bombing and the attack on the Cole. If you are going to cite history, please don't be selective about what you cite.
Wow, and is my sig fitting for the times now, or what?
and what is wrong with everyone paying a flat percentage rate? Why should the lowest income brackets pay a heftier percentage of their pay in taxes? Mind you, I'm not talking about the percent before deductions, I'm talking about after all the tax shelters get deducted. Example: A race horse is not an "agricultural expense", unless, of course the horse pulls a plow during the week, and races on the weekend. I would be all for everyone paying 10% of their income in taxes, cut out the deductions, etc. This government would have money coming out of its ears.
to put it bluntly: I wish I could complain that I pay more in taxes per year than most people make.
Yeah, but even then aren't the new shiny hardware features going to be eaten up by all of that pretty eye-candy?
My favorite was in LSL 3 when it asked about Agent Orange. One of the responses was "It made you talk like Donald Duck". Those writers were hilarious.
Granted an atrocious analogy, maybe even an extreme one, but the point is still valid. The assumptions made by the ISP were erroneous in the first place, just as in my example of double selling land. Yes there are those who abuse the system. I don't. My internet is used mostly by my wife for neopets and e-mail. I use it mostly for getting packages when playing with various linux distros, and keeping my systems up to date. I don't do a lot of torrenting, I don't hog bandwidth. I like you're analogy also, it points out that someone will abuse the system, and it hurts everyone else. If the cases came forward that were there in your example, then the business model needs to shift, maybe the ISP could "lease" a dedicated lawn mower to the abusers for a much higher rate than everyone else. And I think that's what you were getting at in the second part of your post, that they will, in fact, start charging for usage above a certain amount. That's only fair. What isn't fair is them taking from everyone just because of a few abusers, nor the assumption that everyone is an abuser, just because they use a certain part of the service they over-sell.
My fair share is what I paid for. I don't seed torrents, or abuse my pipes. I am the customer that my cable company loves, I don't use all my bandwidth 24/7. We have it so my wife can play neopets, and I can research things without waiting long for pages to load. Most of my traffic is web/e-mail. If I go to a speed test, I regularly post well, but it takes days (yes days) to download a single cd iso for a distro from a torrent. Why? I am paying for 1.5 mb/s. It is in my agreement that I had when signing up for service. It is a gauranteed speed. If they can't meet that, then either charge me more, or don't gaurantee it. Yes land is product, but would my analogy hold any less true if I had used a service? How does that change the fact that they are over selling the service? And isn't a service just a product without a physical medium? If I were a temp worker, I would be the temp agency's product, no?
I saw other posts saying the same thing about ISP's hoping that you don't use all of your available bandwidth, and overselling the service, and my question is this:
If I buy say 25 acres of land, and I sell 1 acre parcels of this land, normally valued at 1,000 dollars per acre to 50 people at 750 dollars per acre (to give a good deal and sell my land), in the hope that they don't use it all, how long do I have before I go to jail, and how much of a jackass am I for counting on the fact that no one will try to use thier full acre?
Thank you for the clarification. I was a bit confused.
I don't understand your question at all. Are you saying that MS sees using the OS as redistributing it? I don't follow.
redistribute
tr.v. redistributed, redistributing, redistributes
To distribute again in a different way; reallocate.
--the free dictionary
How is using an OS re-distributing it?
To be sure, if you lived in Israel/Lebanon, it might even behoove you to not go outside to find out what's going on.