
WMD Angle
So, how about letting some of these loose in Iraq so that we can finally find some WMD ?
OTOH, considering the excessive Ganja Patrol in the US, would it probably be accused of being WMD ?
23 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
It was Microsoft that royally s*****d Burst communications for patents relating to video compression. And Burst did real R&D costing tens of millions of dollars, so, they were not 'Patent Trolls', so to speak. Microsoft started licensing discussions and once they had enough information, they just said, 'No, Thank You' and ceased negotiations.
The saga has many gory details but the bottom line was, Microsoft had more lawyers and more money just to wear Burst down. Search the net for details and you'll understand.
They however could not do it with Alcatel-Lucent.
I guess what goes around .......
Having used numerous IOmega devices through over a decade, I must confess that the sale of IOmega to the Chinese should have been permitted to go through. The combination bad quality and erratic performance and sudden data loss and corruption could only halt the cause of communism.
I live in the US and as such am familiar with the middle finger gesture. It essentially means 'Up Yours' in an abbreviated form(with finger indicating the proverbial phallus), since the original involved using the whole forearm with clenched fist. Or so I think.
What exactly does this two fingered 'V' gesture signify ?
This does not mean that the leopard will change colours overnight. Although the documentation is available, the "sabotage competitors products" department may not have completely been dismantled. And what about the attitude of the thousands of employees who have been indoctrinated in the 'Siege Mentality', can one really believe that it will change ?
And also, what about all those bugs ? Just because it is documented does not mean it will work as documented. A programmer intimate with the Microsoft APIs once told me that the API documentation should be treated more like a 'Wish List' and that the fingers should always be crossed before implementing products using them.
The chief executive of AT&T has been forever whining about how Google and others need to pay AT&T to take their traffic down to consumers despite the hefty sums the consumers and small business pay for what is internet service of the last century (remember, the services haven't really changed in almost a decade).
On top of that, telcos have been allowed to tax consumers with surcharges that amount to a couple hundred billion dollars (yes, billion, with nine zeroes) that they promised they will use to provide 100mbps internet to the consumers. Remember the monies have essentially been pocketed. (For details, visit the following.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)
Google, through this move, could essentially create a very high speed wireless internet and completely bypass the telcos and cable monopolies (or rather collusive duopolies).
Imagine getting 100 mbps SYMMETRIC internet wirelessly.
Imagine now small content creators, budding filmmakers, musicians, bloggers, commentators being able to communicate using audio and video and reaching the consumers directly.
Imagine the shattering sound of breaking barriers to entry by creators all over the world.
Imagine political debate and dialog completely unfettered by the broadcast and cable behemoths.
All the copyright cartel thinks about is piracy, however, the fear they don't talk about is the ability of the future creators to bypass them and reach their consumers directly.
Same is true for all the political spin meisters and news blockers (AKA news channels, newspapers etc.)
I could be fantasizing, but, if not Google, do you think that day is far,inevitable or impossible ?
Is it me or is this a dubious honor ? How can someone flog death machines like this ? And I don't mean to be humanitarian, but if far too many death machines were to be sold like this, the future buyers will either be dead or be prevented from being born since their potential parents killed each-other.
In all this discussion about whether or not this law is constitutional etc. or whether the founding fathers would have approved or disapproved, has anybody ever considered the fact that FBI regularly exceeds its mandates and does not even apologize ?
Does anybody here know about the recent news of FBI having asked for far more data than it was allowed by sheer force of intimidation from many businesses and financial institutions ? Those involved have not even been fired.
And finally, I heard somewhere that 'When XYZ is outlawed only outlaws will have XYZ'. So, while the real outlaws will roam freely, those 'suspected of' will suffer in Guantanamos all around the world without any rights to even question their accuser.
While we go quoting great thinkers, how about Plato in his 'The Republic' ? Most modern thinkers, including the founding fathers of the US are known to have read it, and definitely the framers of modern democratic constitutions.
"Judge the civilization of a society by how it treats its least priviledged" (Or most defenceless)
As far as survival of the US goes, the promise of the US is the guarantees that its constitution provides. The day those guarantees are rationed by the privileges, is the day that the nation as defined by the document(s) is no more.
And while we discuss the US alone, let us not forget that every nation that claims to call itself a free democratic nation has and will continue to have demagogues in leaders clothings that will try to go on a power trip by taking advantage of a foreign bogeyman. It is a worldwide phenomenon and this is just a recent round of it.
So, class, who here shall tell me who the author of the following quote is ? (Really, I don't know who it is, so, please help !)
"The true cost of freedom is vigilance"
And on that count, all the comments here give me hope.
(I probably got the wording wrong too)
As per the Telecommunications Act of 1996, All the phone companies have been charging surcharges to the US consumers on all their telephone and internet service bills with the promise to provide 100 Mbps broadband service.
The companies have so far collected and usurped upwards of $200 bn so far without delivering the services that they promised.
For that amount, an independent organization would have provide last mile fiber optic connection to practically all US households.
Don't believe me ? check out the following.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
I think following names could be good.
1. Every Forest and subjected to Clear Cutting - Richard M Cheney Memorial Natural Reserve
2. Abu Ghareb Prison - George W Bush Memorial Correctional Facility
3. Guantanamo Bay Holding Facility - Alberto Gonzalez Memorial Correctional Facility
4. NSA - George W Bush Agency for Warrantless Wiretapping
5. FBI - (you fill in the blanks now)
etc. etc.
Then we can go about naming all those secret prisons in Central Asia where people are shipped as we get to know the names.
Considering widespread prosecutorial misconduct on the part of RIAA, can a prosecutor like Eliott Spitzer come along and sue RIAA under the RICO statutes ?
For those interested - RICO Act = Racketee Influenced Corrupt Organization act was first enacted to prosecute Mafia, but then was also used to go after many large corporations and entities which abused their power.
With enough number of such cases, there may be a possibility of bankrupting RIAA by bringing the bigger gun - the federal government - against them.
Please Please keep the exclamation marks. For a million reasons that I can not articulate but one that I can - they put a smile on my face every time I see the headlines. In fact, I wish there was a tool in every editor that would put exclamation mark at the end of every word just so that I can put exclamation marks at the end of every word here. I hope you can accept the bulk delivery of the missing exclamation marks at the end of this message in lieu of having them at the end of each word here.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Citrix services essentially packages available open source tools into appliances and charges a fortune for them.
InstallShield, their bread and butter product, is losing ground due to the fact that most of the corporate software is deployed over intranets and not on individual clients PCs.
This business model is not sustainable long term.
Let's suppose one traps a badger instead of killing it using a bullet, and then kills it using the bleeding instead of hacking to death technique, would that be then 'halal' or 'kosher' meat ?
Considering the state of economy out there, couldn't they provide a great source of meat, and hence protein ?
Badger Kabobs anyone ?
I believe whatever Mr. Garloff has his facts wrong, or his argument has very low basis in fact.
First of all, to think that there is no participation from people in Asia is certainly mistaken.
Let's start with Japan. Anybody hear of SCIM ? Look it up. AFAIK, the project originated from Japan and leading team members are from Eastern Asia. But I digress.
While you may not see earth shattering developments come from Asian teams or individuals, understand that there are whole lot of teams of open source projects which have members from all over Asia, and for that matter, Africa too. We just don't notice them because that fact is not reported on as much. If you don't believe me, go to source-forge and see the contributors names in the top ten, twenty or fifty projects.
The nature of open source development is more evolutionary, so, that could also impact the lack of news about open source efforts in Eastern Hemisphere (Africa, Asia).
Second, consider governmental efforts into Open Source, especially in countries like China and India. Ever hear of 'Red Flag Linux' ? Anybody know about the fact that Government of India has its own Linux distribution that is localized in dozens of languages ? That you can write to the government and they will mail you a disc set for free ? In these cases, the effort is more focused on 'Think Globally Act Locally' type of approach. The Open Source effort and solutions in those parts are geared towards solving local problems. The current government efforts are focused towards overcoming language barriers by developing localized fonts, localizing software and generally making the IT and the internet accessible. All this started in the nineties, while the west had a couple of decades of head start.
Third, think of the infrastructure lag. Communities in many parts of countries are just beginning to come on-line, and the government efforts to overcome language barriers are just beginning to bear fruit. As FOSS works on meeting local needs - most of the FOSS projects started to 'scratch an itch of the programmer'. FOSS solutions in those parts are just beginning to scratch the local itches - proverbially speaking, and sooner or later the results will trickle back when the solutions developed elsewhere become useful to the western consumers of FOSS.
I can state all this with confidence because I am a contributor to a free software project or two and I have also been following the FOSS developments for almost a decade, spending an hour or two every day surfing through the news-blogs geared towards FOSS development.
What I can say in conclusion is, FOSS can not yet leave Asian or African developers behind, because, they have just entered the race. Give it time. Most importantly, get your own facts and not some conclusions from someone else.
Do understand that
1. BAE probably does business with half the countries in the world (the other half can't afford to buy the equipment)
2. In the modern world of Globalisation, everything is connected, tat means there are far too many powerful on the other side of the pond who stand to lose their stock value and dividend income if such a investigation came to be.
3. Even if there were indictments handed out, it would still be business as usual.
4. Those countries whose officials were bribed also stand to fire those officials and the politicians will have to stop doing business with BAE just to provie to their constituents that they are 'clean'. That means many of the Connected Aristocrats on both sides of the pond stand to lose a big wad.
Do you really think this birdie will really fly ?
Using natural predators for the pests are the best solution. This has been tried before. In this case, vaccinated dogs can certainly be trained to hunt and collect these rodents.
Animal shelters are full of dogs that have to be otherwise 'euthenized', why not make use of such a resource ?