The parent comment is not insightful.Twitter can be all the inane things the parent describes. Just like small talk can be inane, launching and goofing around can be inane, and school kid chatter is inane. But that is only one use of Twitter.

I work from home and I am relatively secluded during my work day. I am not a social butterfly by any means, but I like to talk and socialize to take a small break. Twitter gives me the opportunity to have those quick social interactions during my work-day.

I am also an in a field where there are a lot of others in the same or similar fields on Twitter. I get professional benefit from following them and, hopefully, them following me (thought I don't subscribe to quid pro quo following. If I find you interesting, I will follow you.) I am able to ask and answer questions, be alerted by events relevant to my job, and generally share outwardly. Not all the chatter is professionally focused, but enough is that it is worth while.

Twitter is a tool that unlike the IRC is open enough that you can more or less control how much stuff is sent to you by following folks and is closed enough that you can really limit the spam you receive. In fact, I rarely, if ever, get a spam Tweet. The trick to make Twitter successful for you is to build a network that is relevant to you. I don't view my follow or following count as a contest (thought others do). I view it from a quality stand point. I have far more followers than I follow. Frankly, I don't know why some of my followers follow me (and I don't mean spam bots, either).

If, however, you focus on the numbers, then you become innundated with spam and other bad behavior.

In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?

Because specifications are written by people and then read and interpreted by others. While specification creators try to be as complete and thorough as possible, there are still gaps. In something as complex as a document format like spreadsheets, I'd imagine it's an impossible task. Bake-offs where all the stakeholders get into a room, try to get this shit to interoperate, and then decided the proper interpretation, is where the interoperation work gets done. All of the Internet protocols went through a similar cycle. Then, when there is consensus on the interpretations, guidance and reference implementations can be written.

TFN talks ONLY about spread sheet interoperability. It's important to note that. Has interoperability testing been done with documents?

Dude, any digital navigation is automatically labeled "GPS" because digital navigation is too foreign to the common press. Calling all digital navigation GPS wildly inaccurate, yes, but easier than trying to explain what is actually going on.

And yer right, GPS won't work in a building or even under heavy canopy of trees and if it did, it's not accurate enough. 30ft difference isn't much for a conventoinal or nuclear bomb, but it is when choosing potted beef and mightydog dog food.

Really, it is. And for a 20MB line, cat 5 will do nicely.

Twitter is not like Skype or IM at all. It's more like IRC but you can choose (mostly) who you associate with. It's also one of the first services that let you easily participate via client, web, SMS and included an API.

It is a bit revolutionary in extending communication further.

Because I, the ISP, have formed a pact with your local government to prevent Speakeasy (or any other meaningful competition) from servicing your area of the country.

Economics has stopped competition. Speakeasy could service your part of the country if they wanted to run cables through right of ways to complete the local loop, build a bunch of CO's to interconnect the local loops. It's too frigging expensive to build the plant.

Are they talking about anonymity in general or a group that called Anonymous? Confused.

So for a submarine, the use of active sonar is useful to get a final target and bearing before firing a torpedo. Passive sonar is good for getting a ball park range track.

Torpedos aren't perfect, so getting an accurate range and bearing is pretty imporant. Active sonar really doensn't give anything away since once you launch a torpedo, the target, or anyone else in the area, is going to know where the sub is anyway.

What is news is that in 2009, this is still being discussed. The problem is the old guard running news sites don't know how or don't want to adapt.

Come on. Creating relevant content on a daily basis is hard and takes money. I read or watch the news and a dozen questions pop into my mind about the story, but finding the answers is work and the news cycle is so quick, that those answers can't be had in time.

> but it wouldn't exist in the first place without support from my customers. So find out a non-forceful way to get their support. If you can't, they obviously do not _want_ to support you, fully knowing that you wont be able to continue your art. Your assumption is that IF people liked what they downloaded, THEN they would pay for it in some way.

So where are all the checks flooding into artists pockets? They don't exist becuase people WON'T pay for what they can get for free. Face it.

Hey, I am all for the utopian vision where IF people would act ethically AND if they downloaded a file that the copyright holder charged for, AND (they liked it, AND they paid for it) OR (they deleted they deleted the file and never used it again) then I think you have a argument. But that is generally not what happens.

So your argument boils down to:

• I can do what ever I want because I say so, laws be damned
• People who spend their time, talent, and energy who want to control the rights to their work either play by YOUR rules or they can go flip burgers.
• And because you CAN illegally copy stuff, it's OK

That sum it up correctly?

What you want to do with your creative works is your business. If you want to give it away under a license, or no license, that is your choice. The world benefits from all the people who create and distribute works under licenses like creative commons, GPL, etc, and other open source initiatives.

But they choose to make their work freely available. Imagine the uproar of someone came along and said, "Nope, sorry, you have to charge money for what you do. No exceptions." The problem in that scenario is the creator has lost control of the distribution and licensing their work. Just like your ignoring their rights to require payment for use.

Respect the copyright holders wishes.

And by the way, you may not want to call copyright infringement theft, but if someone sells an electronic file, and you copy and use it without paying for it, you have stolen money from them. I am not going to quibble definitions. Just admit what you are and be done with it. Or are you ashamed of the truth?

The pirate bay exists simply to share stuff, illegal or not. Show me something where the developers/maintainers of TPB have said they designed it with the main intent being to distribute illegal content. Just because 'illegal' content is prevalent doesn't imply it's initial intent.

This is a disingenuous argument. It doesn't matter what the creators or maintainers say or don't (ok, it matter legally, but ethically, it doens't). TPB is use *primarily* to distribute torrents, locators, to copyrighted material. Period. Copyrighted material is not a little bit of TPB torrents, or a small minority, or half. It's the main reason it exists. If there were someway to magically make illegal torrents go away, the TPB would cease to exist.

Denying that TPB is uses primarily for distributing locators to copyrighted material shows you are either painfully ignorant, blind, or are lying.

Dude. Come. Fucking. On. It's 2009 and artists still have to make a living to continue to make art. You seem to think all the people out there illegally copying files are somehow noble and who would, if they knew how, listen to the song/movie/whatever and if they liked it, pay the perform(s) or if they didn't like it, delete it never view it again.

It ain't that way, junior mint, and your rationalizations aside, ain't never gonna be. You copy files that you 1) don't have permission to copy 2) have not paid, or 3) and are NOT exercising Fair Use you are:

1. Committing a crime
2. Stealing from the artist and those who have invested money in producing/distributing the thing you want to copy
3. Removing incentive for the producers to renew the artist due to reduced sales

If you think differently, then you have the ethics of a common thief and I'd love to see you in jail wedded to Bubba the ass fucker.

Bullshit on people not being able to change after 30. Utter bullshit.

To the poster, figure out what career you want and use that to plan out graduate work. You can always go back and get an MBA, even if you have a family and have kids. Harder? Maybe. But with work experience, you will get far more out of it.