Thank you SO much for those pictures, especially that first one. Remember, the post I was replying to claimed if you didn't know who the characters were "it just looks like a panel of randomly placed LEDs". Unbelievable.
New York also had these devices, and and managed not to flip out like a pack of morons. And you might see why they're even more touchy about 9/11 since, you know...
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking that. Just thought I'd quote you for visibility since you posted AC.
I suggest YOU read up on it. You seem to think I'm ignorant of the rules of the Senate. I assure you, I am not. Hopefully YOU are not ignorant of the fact that continually blocking all legislation has a severe political ramifications, even though it is allowed under the Senate rules.
Also, note how you chopped my comment off at "anything". The actual quote was "anything other than mandatory baby sacrifices". This is what's called humor. Specifically, hyperbole (oooh, look at the thread title!). The phrase basically meant anything other than standard political footballs like an abortion ban, drilling in ANWR, removing evolution from school textbooks, etc. I hope you don't think I *literally* meant they could pass anything.
I'm glad the moderators got it, even if you didn't.
Well, I was going to post it but I see you've beaten me to the punch. Blocking military spending would have been a kiss of death for the Democrats. So they tended to shy away from anything that could be spun to claim they didn't "support our troops." I'd like to see a bill or amendment the Republicans introduced that tried to fund a project like stratjakt referenced. The fact is that the Congress fairly overwhelmingly signed off on every military spending bill Bush asked for.
Oh come on, stop being a jackass. When you don't control either house of congress, you ARE utterly out of power. A president cannot introduce legislation. And as long as there is no line item veto, he can't pick and choose which parts of a bill he wants to become a law.
dems dont want to let them have the funding they need
So, tell me again how the dems managed to cause this problem when they were utterly out of power for the last for the last decade. Oh, and for the last six years the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress with enough votes to pass anything other than mandatory baby sacrifices and had a president that would sign any bill sent to him?
If you aren't the one who is paying for it, you don't own it. In the case of a university network, it is owned by a community of taxpayers , fee payers (students) and donation-makers. They EMPLOY people to be responsible for it. But they do not cede ownership to those people. Those people should constantly remember they are employees and are there to serve the owners, not the other way around.
Note that I don't claim the professor is an owner of the network. He is an employee as well and therefore on the same level as the IT folks, detectives, etc. As the article has pointed out, they tried to assert an authority over certain use that was never given to them. Until it is, they should butt the hell out.
Well, I certainly hope you didn't misunderstand the thrust of my posts. My big problem was ffflala's attitude towards the whole thing. It was very much one of trivializing people's wishes to avoid all these compatibility annoyances you go through (e.g the "fashion accessory" comment) and to blame the user for not doing enough work learn how to break the DRM. Second, I was backing up the original posters point about how the librarians bought this crappy system and instead of listening to their patron, they kept claiming they were wrong because of what the brochure says.
I also understand what you're going through and don't wish it on anyone. Trying to figure out how to get audiobooks to library patrons really isn't THAT different from being "the computer guy" amongst family/friends and having to handle every DRM snafu that comes up - it's just a matter of scale. The only real way this will be put to rest is if either content owners realize how stupid and pointless DRM is, or if lawmakers can be made to understand that a library cannot serve as an archive when their materials are saddled with DRM that depends on a very specific set of software that will probably not work 10 years from now.
BTW, on the audiobook question - have you looked into the ipods audiobook playing abilities? I know that they treat.m4b differently from.m4a (even though its just renaming the extension). It saves a per-audiobook bookmark and everything. Or is the whole DRMed WMA a dealbreaker for this? Or, I suppose, price could do it, too (ipods aren't exactly the cheapest players). Actually, I guess if you buy the audiobook off the ipod store, it's probably locked to that ipod, isn't it? Damn them!
So, is it the IT folks network? The campus detectives network? I don't understand your reasoning on this one. In fact, FTA it sounds like he was more involved for setting policy for these situations than any of the people who were doing the questioning.
In truth, most network admins tend to like things as nice an neat as possible. If they can use their power and influence to squash harmless but annoying things like a few people on the whole campus using Tor, they will. Just to make sure they don't have those pesky log entries saying there might be something bad going on.
As I said, they're well worth it. I just don't like the whole "free" label being stuck on something that in no way is free. It's like saying that the interstate system is free.
This is where I felt it got a bit condescending: In return just do a LITTLE bit of your own work to get it to play on your fashion accessory of choice for free, m'kay?
First, as I've said in other posts, libraries aren't free unless you plan on never paying taxes. Second, the fact that most portable audio players and all Macs (around half of which are owned by people over the age of 55, according to a recent survey) can't play these files should not be relegated to a quip about a "fashion accessory."
The simple fact is the library should never have forked out money for such a crappy system and failed the people who pay their salaries (however inadequate that salary is). It's like having all the books on chains but giving a nudge and wink and saying "hey, you know that chain is long enough to reach the photocopier, right?"
Libraries are only "free" if you don't pay taxes. Or never WILL pay taxes.
I'm not saying I don't love 'em. But you have to realize that for those that aren't fortunate enough to get a significant amount of their budget from charitable donations, the money comes out of your pocket.
Good information, but got a bit condescending towards the end.
I wonder if you missed the main point of his post - that librarians are fooled by the brochure and don't realize the limitations on the software they are buying/using. By buying a system without knowing its limitations, they are not in a very good position to pay a fair price. And by continually giving patrons incorrect information, they are just causing confusion and wasted time.
Now, as for the "But if you want to subvert copyright DRM, audio or video, you will have to roll up your sleeves and learn how to do so" - first off, the DMCA allows for interoperability. So there's no copyright subversion here. People just want to be able to actually use the software. Second, do you have no concept of the computer ability of the general public? It's fine to say "you'll just have to put some effort into it." But the real truth of the matter is that most people could spend an inordinate amount of time and still not understand how to navigate the complexities of file conversion. Computers are just not something that everyone gets - not even everyone under 30.
Cute, but a bad analogy. This would be more like if there was a test 20% into it that you had to pass before you could watch the last 80%. And all the questions were essay questions. And you had to come up with the essay answer that was word for word, letter for letter the same as the official answer. While being kicked in the nuts.
Because another problem with the touch screens was that they frequently failed to work properly. So having it continue to print out the wrong answers wouldn't really have been that helpful.
I definitely agree with your point, but the fact is that ANY voting system will have potential areas of failure. However, the lower-tech the system is, the less likely that the error will be due to the technology (still leaves the possibility of voter error - that's unavoidable). The fill-in-the-bubble followed by an immediate scan by tried and true optical scanners to catch any obvious errors seems like one of the lowest-risk methods. The input device is something people of every age and background are familiar with - pencil and paper. The paper trail is the actual physical ballot that was marked (rather than a printout of what the computer THOUGHT you marked as is the case of the e-voting machines). There is no possiblity of tampering with the machine to get it to print a phony paper trail. And instead of having to buy a lot of machines to handle the many voters at each polling location, you only need one optical scanner with a backup or two just in case.
Seems like a no-brainer. My state wisely used the "Help America Vote Act" money to install this system of "electronic" voting. Election day went smooth as silk.
Agreed on the whole Flex thing. And it's a remarkably good IDE for a 2.0 version (owes a lot of that to Eclipse). I can only imagine Flex Builder 5.0 or the like.
I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good. And even Microsoft consists of humans.
I have a similar belief. However, I would more specifically word it as "Without any other information given, I have a tendency to believe a person is basically good."
For example, if you tell me that person is a member of Fred Phelp's church, I no longer believe that they fall in any category I would classify as "good." The same is true if they belonged to the Earth Liberation Front. This does not mean that this person necessarily classifies themself as "evil." In all likelyhood, they would classify themself as "good."
But working at Microsoft is a datapoint that does change my assumptions about the person. At the very least, they are willing to sacrifice their principles for money. They are willing to work at a company that knowingly and willingly acts as Microsoft does most of the time.
A similar example is Wal-Mart. When employees at a given store tries to organize a union, Wal-Mart tends to close down the store and say "well, we were already going to close it and the union drive had nothing to do with it." No matter if you think unions are a good thing or a bad thing, you can make up your own mind about whether Wal-Mart is telling the truth.
So, while Microsoft might have just made a mistake, I do not trust their word on it.
Nothing can directly be accessed from a sd card aside from photos
Well, at the current time. I can't imagine it would take more than a software patch to do so. They're probably holding off on it because they want to make 100% no fooling deadly serious sure there's no hole or exploit that would let someone load their own code.
I bought it an enjoy it. But I remember liking multiplayer in the SNES version (can't remember if it was #1 or #2) much much better.
What I'd really like is a revamped SNES version with full online play. Just gussy up the graphics, add in online functions and keep the gameplay mechanics the same. Oh, and add some more GOOD boards. If they're not good, don't even bother. I'd pay $50 for something like this.
I've often wondered about what the real "worth" of a penny is. When they say it's worth five cents, does that include the cost of transporting, melting down and separating out the raw materials? It's one thing to say a rod of pure copper or zinc is worth X, but another when you're talking about a big bag of pennies.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you SO much for those pictures, especially that first one. Remember, the post I was replying to claimed if you didn't know who the characters were "it just looks like a panel of randomly placed LEDs". Unbelievable.
I suggest YOU read up on it. You seem to think I'm ignorant of the rules of the Senate. I assure you, I am not. Hopefully YOU are not ignorant of the fact that continually blocking all legislation has a severe political ramifications, even though it is allowed under the Senate rules.
Also, note how you chopped my comment off at "anything". The actual quote was "anything other than mandatory baby sacrifices". This is what's called humor. Specifically, hyperbole (oooh, look at the thread title!). The phrase basically meant anything other than standard political footballs like an abortion ban, drilling in ANWR, removing evolution from school textbooks, etc. I hope you don't think I *literally* meant they could pass anything.
I'm glad the moderators got it, even if you didn't.
Well, I was going to post it but I see you've beaten me to the punch. Blocking military spending would have been a kiss of death for the Democrats. So they tended to shy away from anything that could be spun to claim they didn't "support our troops." I'd like to see a bill or amendment the Republicans introduced that tried to fund a project like stratjakt referenced. The fact is that the Congress fairly overwhelmingly signed off on every military spending bill Bush asked for.
Oh come on, stop being a jackass. When you don't control either house of congress, you ARE utterly out of power. A president cannot introduce legislation. And as long as there is no line item veto, he can't pick and choose which parts of a bill he wants to become a law.
Those lousy Democrats sure are crafty...
The other two replies to this comment have gone a long way towards restoring my faith that at least some people get it.
Responsibility != Ownership
If you aren't the one who is paying for it, you don't own it. In the case of a university network, it is owned by a community of taxpayers , fee payers (students) and donation-makers. They EMPLOY people to be responsible for it. But they do not cede ownership to those people. Those people should constantly remember they are employees and are there to serve the owners, not the other way around.
Note that I don't claim the professor is an owner of the network. He is an employee as well and therefore on the same level as the IT folks, detectives, etc. As the article has pointed out, they tried to assert an authority over certain use that was never given to them. Until it is, they should butt the hell out.
Well, I certainly hope you didn't misunderstand the thrust of my posts. My big problem was ffflala's attitude towards the whole thing. It was very much one of trivializing people's wishes to avoid all these compatibility annoyances you go through (e.g the "fashion accessory" comment) and to blame the user for not doing enough work learn how to break the DRM. Second, I was backing up the original posters point about how the librarians bought this crappy system and instead of listening to their patron, they kept claiming they were wrong because of what the brochure says.
.m4b differently from .m4a (even though its just renaming the extension). It saves a per-audiobook bookmark and everything. Or is the whole DRMed WMA a dealbreaker for this? Or, I suppose, price could do it, too (ipods aren't exactly the cheapest players). Actually, I guess if you buy the audiobook off the ipod store, it's probably locked to that ipod, isn't it? Damn them!
I also understand what you're going through and don't wish it on anyone. Trying to figure out how to get audiobooks to library patrons really isn't THAT different from being "the computer guy" amongst family/friends and having to handle every DRM snafu that comes up - it's just a matter of scale. The only real way this will be put to rest is if either content owners realize how stupid and pointless DRM is, or if lawmakers can be made to understand that a library cannot serve as an archive when their materials are saddled with DRM that depends on a very specific set of software that will probably not work 10 years from now.
BTW, on the audiobook question - have you looked into the ipods audiobook playing abilities? I know that they treat
In truth, most network admins tend to like things as nice an neat as possible. If they can use their power and influence to squash harmless but annoying things like a few people on the whole campus using Tor, they will. Just to make sure they don't have those pesky log entries saying there might be something bad going on.
As I said, they're well worth it. I just don't like the whole "free" label being stuck on something that in no way is free. It's like saying that the interstate system is free.
This is where I felt it got a bit condescending: In return just do a LITTLE bit of your own work to get it to play on your fashion accessory of choice for free, m'kay?
First, as I've said in other posts, libraries aren't free unless you plan on never paying taxes. Second, the fact that most portable audio players and all Macs (around half of which are owned by people over the age of 55, according to a recent survey) can't play these files should not be relegated to a quip about a "fashion accessory."
The simple fact is the library should never have forked out money for such a crappy system and failed the people who pay their salaries (however inadequate that salary is). It's like having all the books on chains but giving a nudge and wink and saying "hey, you know that chain is long enough to reach the photocopier, right?"
Libraries are only "free" if you don't pay taxes. Or never WILL pay taxes.
I'm not saying I don't love 'em. But you have to realize that for those that aren't fortunate enough to get a significant amount of their budget from charitable donations, the money comes out of your pocket.
Good information, but got a bit condescending towards the end.
I wonder if you missed the main point of his post - that librarians are fooled by the brochure and don't realize the limitations on the software they are buying/using. By buying a system without knowing its limitations, they are not in a very good position to pay a fair price. And by continually giving patrons incorrect information, they are just causing confusion and wasted time.
Now, as for the "But if you want to subvert copyright DRM, audio or video, you will have to roll up your sleeves and learn how to do so" - first off, the DMCA allows for interoperability. So there's no copyright subversion here. People just want to be able to actually use the software. Second, do you have no concept of the computer ability of the general public? It's fine to say "you'll just have to put some effort into it." But the real truth of the matter is that most people could spend an inordinate amount of time and still not understand how to navigate the complexities of file conversion. Computers are just not something that everyone gets - not even everyone under 30.
Cute, but a bad analogy. This would be more like if there was a test 20% into it that you had to pass before you could watch the last 80%. And all the questions were essay questions. And you had to come up with the essay answer that was word for word, letter for letter the same as the official answer. While being kicked in the nuts.
Yes, much like how "electronic mail" means that the electronics compose your email for you. You've given me so much to think about.
Because another problem with the touch screens was that they frequently failed to work properly. So having it continue to print out the wrong answers wouldn't really have been that helpful.
I definitely agree with your point, but the fact is that ANY voting system will have potential areas of failure. However, the lower-tech the system is, the less likely that the error will be due to the technology (still leaves the possibility of voter error - that's unavoidable). The fill-in-the-bubble followed by an immediate scan by tried and true optical scanners to catch any obvious errors seems like one of the lowest-risk methods. The input device is something people of every age and background are familiar with - pencil and paper. The paper trail is the actual physical ballot that was marked (rather than a printout of what the computer THOUGHT you marked as is the case of the e-voting machines). There is no possiblity of tampering with the machine to get it to print a phony paper trail. And instead of having to buy a lot of machines to handle the many voters at each polling location, you only need one optical scanner with a backup or two just in case.
Seems like a no-brainer. My state wisely used the "Help America Vote Act" money to install this system of "electronic" voting. Election day went smooth as silk.
Agreed on the whole Flex thing. And it's a remarkably good IDE for a 2.0 version (owes a lot of that to Eclipse). I can only imagine Flex Builder 5.0 or the like.
For example, if you tell me that person is a member of Fred Phelp's church, I no longer believe that they fall in any category I would classify as "good." The same is true if they belonged to the Earth Liberation Front. This does not mean that this person necessarily classifies themself as "evil." In all likelyhood, they would classify themself as "good."
But working at Microsoft is a datapoint that does change my assumptions about the person. At the very least, they are willing to sacrifice their principles for money. They are willing to work at a company that knowingly and willingly acts as Microsoft does most of the time.
A similar example is Wal-Mart. When employees at a given store tries to organize a union, Wal-Mart tends to close down the store and say "well, we were already going to close it and the union drive had nothing to do with it." No matter if you think unions are a good thing or a bad thing, you can make up your own mind about whether Wal-Mart is telling the truth.
So, while Microsoft might have just made a mistake, I do not trust their word on it.
I bought it an enjoy it. But I remember liking multiplayer in the SNES version (can't remember if it was #1 or #2) much much better.
What I'd really like is a revamped SNES version with full online play. Just gussy up the graphics, add in online functions and keep the gameplay mechanics the same. Oh, and add some more GOOD boards. If they're not good, don't even bother. I'd pay $50 for something like this.
At least it didn't say millions of users sitting on some of the fattest pipes in the world.
I've often wondered about what the real "worth" of a penny is. When they say it's worth five cents, does that include the cost of transporting, melting down and separating out the raw materials? It's one thing to say a rod of pure copper or zinc is worth X, but another when you're talking about a big bag of pennies.
Guess I should have included the tag...