Posts by Michael Compton 85 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2007
Would you not find it a more than a little annoying to be subjected to 6 days of questioning, all your personal belongings rifled through by complete strangers and all your friends and family questioned. This sort of treatment traumatises people and can in the worse case only serve to radicalise them.
As for the 'Less than Truthful' this could be anything from spelling his name wrong on one page to neglecting to say he worked for Bin Laden as an IED manufacturer.
but it is a failure for a lot of people who laid down cold hard cash for it
They managed to get people to pay a fortune for a product that by Balmers own admission is a work in progress. You have to either give them credit for pulling it off or lambast people for being so naive.
I would have said it is only the software industry that gets away with this stuff but with whats going on in the world i'm beginning to think we are all being taken for a ride by the owners and people of power.
- Rising oil price which by the looks of it is going to be justified by saying we need to invest in alternatives.
- Credit crunch because of cowboy lending practices
- Draconian Copyright enforce due to dated and flawed buisness models
- Rising Taxes to pay for inefficent and short sight government decision making.
All these have something in common, its the common people that are being hit to pay for these mistakes while the super rich corpRats and there major shareholders just seem to get richer.
Call me commie if you want but thats what i'm seeing. Dead vulture because it all smells bad to me :)
I can't help but think of that incident and draw a comparison.
They probably found it as offensive as our government finds these drawings but yet we rightly stood by the right to free expression (general consensus not sure the governments stance).
When will we ever be free, every week there seems to be some new law brought down from on high and we are told its for our own good and to protect are well being. NO VICTIM NO CRIME.
'I resemble that remark'
So is Bee made up then because i'm nearly sure Sarah isn't because my parents aren't that imaginative and they called my sister Sarah.
I really thought it was ur name, but maybe there is some joke that is lost on me.
Smiley because i was reading the weed story before this :p
No bitterness intended, these things don't really bother me much to be honest so why would i be bitter.
And i am man enough to apologise because you are right it wasn't really aimed at the 'contractors' but its a fine line, i seen the same attitude over here; it was late at the time and may have been a bit blinkered.
The main point i was trying to make was that the US is good at ripping off other people and then gets very vocal when other people try to level the playing field.
Well then tell them to put the sign up, if he can afford the kit i'm sure he can afford a sign.
The sign is important for number for a number of reasons i'd think:
1 (and the main one) The point is to deter crime not get ur vigilante horn on.
2 People should know if there is a possibility of your friends camera recording them especially as when u point out it is recording activity not on your friends property.
Though if deterence was the correct answer then I'm sure crime would have been vastly reduced along time ago but unfortuately it isn't.
In my opinion lobby groups make a complete farce of the whole democratic process as they seem to hold far more sway on government decision making than the electorate, which is the opposite of what I thought the point of democracy was.
Also if they had nothing to hid in these meetings why make a big deal on privacy. Westerners love to critcise other regimes and hold themselves up as some beacon of freedom and justice but frankly our governments stink.
Yes matts post was so jumbled it didn't make much sense but i think u got a few things a little out of perspective as well.
"Yes, because we don't hang people for being gay, jail, beat and torture women for being raped and arrest people for getting a haircut."
What u describe there is more the US's ersnt while ally Saudi Arabia which by all accounts is the most extreme country in the world; the only one that doesn't allow women to drive by law. I think u have been digesting to much US propoganda on Iran. Also as for supporting terrorist/freedom fighters (depends on ur perspective really) I think u'll find that the US probably wrote the book on war by proxy.
As a side note America carried out more executions a year than Iran, go figure. Also who says they have to find acceptable what u find acceptable anyway, take a look at our society, hardly something to hold up as a beacon of all we can be.
As for not abusing Iranians i think ur missing something rather relevant the US has pushed as much of world against Iran as it can (including Saddam ironically) ever since their puppet the Shah was toppled by popular revolt, funny that a countries people deciding their own destiny and not what the US said it should be.
And as for irrational patriotism and support for armed forces I think i'll make my own decisions on who to support or not and not start waving a flag just because its whats expected. And i do have a fair grasp of international politics and its extension by other means (military power).
I'm on no side really and just like to point out these things, criticise that position all u will but it works for me :)
Art is only as valuable as the amount of money people are willing to pay for it.
Many traditional fine art artist were never rich it was only long after their death that the value of their pieces shot up. And it can be argued that this traditional art is more worthy as it is a one off original and anything else is a copy and so not worth much. Music on the other hand is all a copy so why expect it to be worth all that much.
You kind of proved my point.
I at no time made a comparison of Islam to Judaism what i was comparing was the differing reaction to controversial material by free speech advocates depending on how acceptable they deem the content, I am not counting obscene material here for simplicities sake :), to me it seems like hypocrisy.
But if you want some examples of nastiness for Judaism and with Israel effectively a Jewish state then check out some of the Mossad's exploits; Like their killing spree after those killings at the Olympics camp. Or the old Palestine thing.
What some views would have been if it had of been something derogatory about Judaism. Unfortuately i think some of the proponents of free speech may have been a little less vocal. If i remember correct there was alot of uproar in the west about Irans conference on the Holocaust, me thinks some people are being a tad hypocritical and i can't stand hyprocisy.
If you look at objectively it is all quite comparable and you realise that the worlds leaders and people of authority have just degenerate into a bunch of name callers and puppet masters who send their sons and daughters to die for their trumpted up causes.
Not much changes then.
Dead vulture because something must be dead because it all stinks
If the Germanys had only patented their Blitzkrieg i'm sure they would have had a case :)
Strangely they had the same problems to; though they took a country very fast it was pacifying them afterwards which was the problem. Though kudos must be given to the Germans because they actually took on countries that on paper had better equiped armies eg. France in 1940 and Russia, the Germans had to get pretty imaginative to take out T34 and KV1's at the start of the campaign. Ulitmately Russia was a bit much though as everyone knows.
Most fun you can have with your clothes on....and maybe off umm :p
I had my first taste of programming on that puppy in 1997 would u believe. Though I also had to do COBOL as well, damn you millenium bug, though at the time it didn't seem bad its working with it since thats peeved me off :|
Just because he's british doesn't make it anymore interesting to watch. Going round in circles ~60 times and essentially staying in the same places they started unless someone in the pit trips over their hose isn't my idea of top quality entertainment.
*Wanders off muttering about irrational bouts patriotism*
No wait its just a piece of dust.
I'm sure ASUS are still making money on the laptop so if Sony can't do that then they should get out of the game. I can't believe they have the gall to come out with claptrap like this, crying because they wont make as much money.
Bad parenting and an unengaging education system and society do.
When i was a minor i witnessed and was on the receiving end of a fair bit of sociopathic behaviour and the vast majority wouldn't even have known how to turn on a computer, plus at the time computer games mostly consisted of nothing more than blocky images vaguely representing demons from hell (Doom) and such like.
All this is is a grab by policy makers to find a scapegoat for their own faillings in providing an engaging and enlightening society for developing human beings. Plus some people should never be allowed to reproduce :)
As a longtime PC gamer I'm used to having the ability to play the online portion of the game for free, except of course on MMO and i think it should be the de facto norm. If they say its because of server cost then they should release the server application and allow third parties to offer the service possibly funded by advertising and such.
After buying a game that has as one of its USP some online play I would be rather miffed to be told I have to pay again for said USP.
I really can't understand how people can just sit back and let large corprat enitities take them for a ride like so many seem willing to. Have we really just became a bunch of apathetic automatons going about our 9-5's so we can feed these behemoths.
For the record i have a Wii and quite enjoy it but i will not be paying for some mediocre online play on a game I have already paid for.
Try one more time to comment on this story as it seems to be rather hard to get one accepted.
I recommend reading Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace it has some great insights into where this might lead technologically as well as politicalky and socially, though I'd also recommend reading Forever War first (great book by the way).
Boot using the Vista CD then select the repair option it will eventually give you the option to use system restore. It may make numerous failed attempts to fix the problem its self though, also each of these attempts will probably involve a reboot. There may be a way to force it to try system restore first but i don't know of it.
I don't honestly see how what i said was completely eroneous no more so that what you yourself said as both comments are conjecture.
I would counter the economy of scale arguement with the fact that with now an obvious increase in demand, as its the only HD movie medium, that this economy will be offset, also its just plain difficult to make, shortage of blue diodes and the susceptibility to damage for the discs.
The licensing fee's may also mean cheap kit will be hard to produce especially with all the extra pressure on components channel.
But as i mentioned in my first post i'm not a moive buyer so its all pretty irrelevant to me, except that it would have been nice to have a replacement for DVD.
Yes single layer was only 25GB but dual was 50GB so i don't see how thats an issue because if i remember correctly it was easier to add more layers to HD-DVD than to BR. And CDs were only for audio at one point so then i'm sure HD-DVD would have got data evidentually its only 1 and 0's we are storing here not lots of tiny pictures or something.
I think sony have been great at spinning everyone, as capacity wasn't really an issue. There is far better alternativea than these discs for super capacity in the future. Both of these I beleive were going to be nothing more than stop cap solutions, just now the option is more expensive.
The price of movies is never tied to the medium, if that was the case then music albums should be about £1 and movies £4 (i gave them extra cause the movie cost alot more than album but u can see what i'm getting at i'm sure). Media congolomerates rip all consumers off but thats a different story. I'm only talking kit and medium not the over priced content they push on them.
Not that i'm particularly against sony's offer its just not right for my needs. I'm not a movie buyer so would just have wanted it for storage but the BR hardware and discs will be just to expensive to be an option when compared to cheaper DVD kit. HD-DVD would have slotted in nicely as the prices would have came close to commodity prices, which they were already close to, as opposed to luxury item.
With no real competition i can see BR kit/disc pretty much staying as they are in terms of price no need to lower it now. Hope you movie lovers have deep pockets :)
The composer rights length should have been reduced, 70 years let alone the lifetime part is too long.
And the pension argument is so messed up its hardly worth a retort. Invest like the rest have to you morons.
Positive role models? Elvis fed himself to death, Hendrix drowned in his on vomit, Ozzy can't speak anymore, Britney has gone mental, if she wasn't before, and Bono and co are self righteous eejits. The list is pretty long thats just some of the highlights, Oh and Cliff is just plain weird.
Asking people to spend a large wad of cash for a product and then getting them to agree to a contract thats says it may not be fit for purpose is rather suspect as well :)
Other products have failure rate as well but no one but software developers get a way with this, EULA have to be the most bizarre thing ever.
Don't get on about the difficulty of software developments and unknowns its still balls.
Anyone want to buy my 'pig in a poke'
There could be more to this than they let on. I'd imagine any sensitive surveillance kit would not survive reentry to a degree that would make it vastly useful, though i'm sure some reverse engineering could be done.
But maybe just maybe they put something in the satelite they know the world would not really agree with ie weapons, and any evidence of such would go down very badly with the international community. Just a thought, you never know what these guys are up to.
A sizeable portion of the computer game market are not children. But its so much easier to just use the tired old 'think of the children' line.
Simple answer is don't allow these games to be sold or bought for children.
As games have come more and more an accepted form of entertainment instead of some geeky niche and parents consequently are more aware of the content they can contain then hopefully this will happen more.
But people in power love to prohibit, it feeds their feeling of power, so they will probably push for that until all we can play is tetris.
The flame as yet another sign of any personal liberty and freedom going up in smoke, seems to be order of the day this century. We will all be living in pseudo facist states within 20 years. Or already if ur in America, hehe only joking, honestly :)
Its all well and good saying that users should be more savvy but to be honest theres no hope of that.
There is still spam (OS agnostic) after all so people are still following up on these obviously dubious mails and hence perpetuating the whole thing, and spam I would have thought is alot easier to ignore as they usually so bloody obvious.
Maybe that computer license idea has merit after all :)
As an example of the how the average user fails to accept responsiblity for their computer. My sister recently caught a trojan that sent a virus loaded file to every one of her contacts on MSN, her reaction? umm to ignore it, apparently she was afraid i was going to give her a lecture. I only found out after it sent itself to me. This meant she was exposing all her friends on msn as it looks like it was pic sent from her, all because she was unwilling to accept responsiblity for her computer. AV software didn't pick this up either which i was a bit disappointed in. And then even with the use of a different package it couldn't fully remove it as the it had placed itself in system restore, manual removal was the only option. I was willing to do my research to find this out which other users seem unwilling to do.
Bootnote: AV software unfortuately has to be some of the worst on the planet, resource hog and nearly impossible to remove totally.
</rant> :)
Some people really do seem to have bother seeing the wood for the trees.
The graphics on the Wii are grand, ok not bleeding edge but some way from pac man. And that PS3 processor is so damn hard to program developers are having bother getting games to work as well as they used to, If its so good how come pro evo lags on PS3 when it works fine on other 'less' powerful machines.
Been playing Mario Galaxy since christmas and have to say its one of the most polished games i have ever played; well balanced and evolutionary gameplay, indeed i think its the first true 3D platformer, and the graphics are great as well.
I'm not saying the PS3 is crap just horses for courses i suppose, and just to show i am at least marginally objective i would criticise the lack of motion sensing in some of Wii games, never lags though :)
The planets climate has always been changing and probably always will so what benefit is any of this stuff we can't stop it actually happening.
Money would be better spent dealing with climate change rather than trying to control it. But then again Govt's are obessed with control so that probably doesn't sit well with them.
'We don't believe this was a terror related incident'
As if we are all living in constant fear of terror attacks, I think they have a little more propoganda to spout before that is the case.
Sorry I know its not mentioned but it was in the BBC's intial report, and I had to mention it because it annoys me that 'terror' seems to be the every other word on these peoples lips.
Re: Ill-advised subsidy of corn ethanol for US producers
Nothing new the US has pandered to the large US farmers lobbying group on a number of occasions.
I have the solution to the transport C02 stuff; rip out all the safety crap that has been put in to the cars over the years, these are the main reason the wieght of cars has steadly increase and has negated any advances in engine efficency. This also has the added bonus of removing human beings, which lets face it have large carbon footprints over a life time.
Have a nice day and drive safe :)
Trams and trains are on tracks and would rarely go towards financial or military buildings/installations so the powers than be wouldn't really care about the terror threat.
And theres u thinking it was all about your safety, afraid not its the money and big boys toys they're really worried about :)
Its the fact that large lobbying groups can achieve these sort of results where as the peoples opinions don't really seem to hold much water that is the worrying and sickening part.
They have asked to be cop, judge and executioner, proverbally of course :), and they are going to get it. Don't remember people asking for speed camera stealth taxes, costly invasions, 'high score' system for police, sorry targets, or a creeking NHS.
We have to remember we are talking about entertainment here not military/state secrets. And its over priced entertainment at that if u ask me.
In days of yore artist where not in it for vast quanities of money but rather a love of medium within which they choose to express themselves.
I do not remember the general populace getting up in arms in regard to file sharing so why are the governments getting so deeply involved. Just highlights that democratic governments are just as bad when it comes to cronieism. Corprats and Politicos are only out for themselves and know they only need to throw a bone or two to cover ur eyes in wool.
Is they lose alot of market control. The big labels love to pick an artist that will appeal to a common denominator and then pour all their marketing dollars into that, and because the Joe Bloggs is so subseptable to marketing the artist gets success well above there level of talent which then breeds more exposure and further success even further above their ability.
Its alot more economical for them to take this approach than to diverify and have lots of artist. A flat license would make monopolistic practices like this very difficult
@It's not about a fair way to distribute music
There is a lot of talented musicans out there that get nothing because they are squeezed out by these practices, the big labels only want room for a couple of over-hyped artist, their over hyped artists.
Monopolistic practices no matter what industry stifle development and are ultimately bad for the consumer, sure just look at the price they expect u to pay for just a track. I make music and I can tell u it doesn't cost anywhere near that much anymore, all you, i don't purchase anymore, are paying for is the marketing dollars to ensure the aforementioned position is maintained oh and the big fat director paychecks.
"more than 8,000 of them in the form of emails, postcards and letters in standard Greenpeace wording"
GP are spammers as well as idiots*.
*Well agenda touting sensationalist at least and like fanbois their words should be taken with truck loads of rock salt.
Crux of the matter are;
increasing energy needs (and sorry conservation aint going to signficantly stop that)
No natural gas reserves left and the Ruskies are prone to power trips (no pun intended)
Nuclear is good but costly and would be a long time away, plus the greenies hate that too.
Renewables, bah, decent but not going to cover the entire need and output fluctuates greatly, brownouts are not cool.
Also the beautiful blonde walking on the footpath that wonderfully ornate frontdoor to the house with the lovely spruce tree and so the list goes on.
Until the fallible meat bag is removed from behind the wheel there will always be accidents and deaths, but guess what people even with out cars at all there will still be accidents and... wait for it.... people will die also, oh the humanity people dying as if there is a shortage or something meh.
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