Look, I am not defending the aggressors here, but I like Molotov's. It's certainly not a place, however, that I would proudly sport any $1,500 set of eye-wear, at least not in a way that I am obviously bragging about it, though. Camera-laden or not.

I'm an American who lives in Germany, and this all doesn't add up - practically all of the YouTube content that I want to see see that instead has this GEMA message is AMERICAN content. GEMA certainly doesn't own the rights to much, if any of it. I've always had the understanding that somehow German agencies haven't paid the American fees to play licensed content, or something. It's an entirely different message if I want to watch, say, Swiss content that also is not properly licensed here.

Has anyone actually looked at the slides? To me, they appear so completely, laughably fake. Reminds me of amateur materials for spy / sci-fi role playing dice and books games from the 80s.

Now tell me that I am a shill for discrediting these obviously genuine training materials.

You can be denied exit of the last country before the USA. I was detained at Schipol (Amsterdam international airport), subjected to a strip search and a "friendly" but hugely intimidating amount of questions. They also physically disassembled (but made no practical attempt to access the data on) a LaCie Rugged external HD I had with me. I could not simply ask for a lawyer. I *DID* have all the marks for a targeted search and interrogation: Looked like a total punk stoner leaving Holland for the USA (I've not been to Holland, except for this stop in their airport - my passport clearly showed this); was admittedly beyond the tourist Visa waiver on my US passport (had been in Germany for 6 months with my now wife, then fiance) and had a stack of German anarchist pamphlets in my rucksack (this last part was certainly why I was detained and harassed longer, but not the original reason).

While I understand the need for security, it bothers me greatly that I could be subjected to this for physical appearance and reading material that was well within my rights in all three countries to possess. It bothers me more that my friends react with shock not to this treatment but that I didn't get a haircut and mail myself the pamphlets rather than take them on a plane. The only bit that I completely have to roll with is that yes, I was legally no longer to be allowed in Europe at the time.

I am surprised there is so much debate here on this. Apparently I have a different understanding of Wikimedia's core mission than some people. In my understanding, their mission is to provide, without restriction, community curated knowledge, period. It is temporarily unfortunate that some (even a significant quantity of) people may be unable to benefit from supporting media to the core knowledge because the platform they are paying for in turn forces them to pay a license for the proprietary technology to read such material. But in the long run it is absolutely appropriate that no proprietary technology should be required to read a single digital bit of the material that Wikipedia provides. To have allowed h.264 would have subtly subverted the core mission.

...this is why we must not have brown M&Ms.

Oh. My. God. I knew this topic would be rampant with trolls, but I had no idea how retarded it would actually be. Nobody seems to even question the numbers in the OFA, and everyone is for some idiotic reason lowering themselves to the point of debating IIS vs. Apache. You FOOLS. This is just silly.

As is clear from the subject, this is not a comment on the topic but the /. execution. Please, folks, you really should have the basic facilities and sense to properly normalize the volume on a video like this. I, and I assume others, watch in a carefully volume limited situation, and I had to turn this off early as I couldn't reach out quickly enough to adjust for parts I couldn't hear versus those that were very loud. Yeah, I could I suppose normalize on the client end with a bit of work, but... ...won't someone think of the users

The physiological causes of tinnitus are not the only basis for the condition. It can also be purely neurological. For example, cessation of Benzodiazapenes (typically Xanax or Klonopin - generically Alprazolam) after long-term use is known to often cause tinnitus for ~two years or perhaps more. I have relatively severe tinnitus of this causation. I agree with others' experiential anecdotes - it really can be quite debilitating in a very silent situation.

For quite some years now, Ardour has been the apparent frontrunner in the area you are asking about.

Excellent and thoughtful reply - thank you. I do see your point, especially as you make the specific point about Céline. Taking the difficult jump to really get in to his often first-person, disjointed and abstract narratives, really does allow the reader to understand a character I would find loathsome in the real world.

The way this is set up, it relies at its foundation on a purely subjective concept - what is "quality" literature? I consider myself well read, and empathetic. But my favorite literature, which meets my personal criteria for quality, was written by authors like William S. Burroughs, Mickey Spillane and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Not exactly a collection of empaths or good citizens by standard definitions.

I knew when I clicked on the link from the home page of /. that this could not possibly be good. I expected to use my plentiful mod points to try to diminish the impact of illiterate trolls who take any opportunity to draw attention to themselves at the expense of their scorn of valid opinions.

I had no idea it would be this bad.

I am not an education elitist, at all. I didn't graduate high school. But it is so mind-numbing reading the poorly formed language and logic in nearly every positively-modded post here that I am just simply shocked.

I can't pretend to not have bias in this situation. I am an American living in Germany, and it is really interesting to watch all of this from outside, and see how Europeans view it. Also, I am so far left liberal that I am considered radical in the USA, although simply center-liberal here. My younger sister asked for a basic explanation of what is going on (she is extremely intelligent, but not well-informed - no TV, only mobile phone internet) and I wrote this to her:

"The Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a budget (and the Republicans don't appear to care about the budget, they're keeping it hostage over unrelated issues). The House is controlled by Republicans, and the Senate is controlled by Democrats. It takes both parts of the congress to pass a budget. The deadline for passing a budget passed, so although there is "money in the bank", almost a million people have to go home without pay until these assholes agree on how to spend it."

So, yes, I show my bias.

My point here, though, is simply to ponder: Why does any political discussion, particularly involving the USA, immediately devolve into nearly nonsensical, illiterate commentary that is almost impossible to understand, much less extract value from? 15 mod points is not nearly enough to down-mod all the garbage here, and I see very little to mod up, which is what I usually try to focus on as per Taco's original guidelines.

Actually, when I saw this, I thought:

"O" - Single player
"[O ]" - Multiplayer with remote, internet, co-players.
"[O + O]" - In-person multiplayer, console style.