When robots are capable of assembling and maintaining a fully functional and habitable environment for us in the Americas, or any other remote location, that's the time to start packing our suitcases.
No risk, no reward. People like you would never have sailed the ocean, crossed the North American continent.
We don't have robots capable of building what you describe *here* let alone elsewhere. And it would be far cheaper and easier to have robots building our whoel infrastructure here on earth than it would be elsewhere; thus it'd happen here before there. And when it does, you will probably be first in line to say they shouldn't do it becuase they are putting people out of work, or that they don't work as well as people.
There are a lot of things automation can do. There are a lot more it can not do. Building a society's infrastructure w/o human involvement is one of them. Landing reliably in unknown terrain is another.
If we don't yet have the technology to do this then I'd question our ability to reliably send people on such missions and kepp them alive for much longer than it takes to plant a flag.
I question your ability to use your computer for much longer than to post such nonsense. Mankind has been exploring the unknown and building things in situ long before robots were even conceived of by humans. I don't need to know how to make an android to know how to send a rocket to Mars, make bricks out of local materials and use that to then make buildings such as greenhouses to grow my own food (and recycle C02 to O2), use chemistry to manufacture oxygen, water (in quantities suitable for early stages), fuel for local and return travel, plastics, steel, aluminum, etc..
If a return to the Moon has the same effect this time as it did last time the gains will create employement for a LOT of people and be a boon to the economy.
It can't. The technology for going ot the moon is too small.
As opposed to the earlier Flag and Footprints mission:
* Our computing power has uhh massively increased. Watches more posess more computing capability than was used for Apollo
* Our materials technology makes Apollo materials look like stone tools. This includes fuel.
So another F&F mission would do noting for technical advancement. Anytime a president proposes such an event, it is an F&F mission.
How about a base? you ask.
Doing what?? There isn't much there that is economically interesting.
Now Mars, it has the potential to establish a colony. It has things we humans need to live, Luna does not. In order for space to benefit us technologically this time around, we need ordinary people living there. The moon does not provide the means. Nor does a floating hunk of metal in space. Mars, however, does.
Mars is cheaper. WHAT? No seriously, Mars is cheaper. It takes less Delta V, and has far more economic opportunities than the moon does.
No, you can not use the moon as a bounce point for getting to deeper exploration.
First a moon base will not be self sufficient in our life times. That means a lot of money being poured into a black hole (pun intended). It is also cheaper to lunch a direct big booster rocket than to stage to Earth orbit. Even w/o the costs and uncertainties surrounding the whole space station thing.
Second, no you can not use it as a testbed for a Mars mission. The two environments are so vastly different that the equipment is not comparable. The moon has zero atmosphere, large extremes in temerature, and dust that somehow manages to find it's way into vacuum tubes.
Mars has none of those. Mars has an atmosphere that helps protect the pioneers from the cosmic rays (which are much less than we are led to believe, but still present).
Further, Mars has resources that alter the economics and safety in dramatic ways.
For example, for lunar trips, tou have to take *ALL* your resources with you. Enough to get there, stay there, and get back. You will expend large amounts of fuel to slow down to enter orbit and land.
A Mars trip on the other hand, is different. First, you can send an advance craft to manufacture oxygen, water, and fuel for the return trip in situ. By the time your people head out, you can have a return craft, fully fueled, with enough oxygen and water to last for a couple years. The means to do this is mostly solid state, and can be built in your garage. It is a proven technology that is inexpensive to make.
The moon does not offer that.
Further, a direct mission to Mars has an advantage in that it can use a technique called aerobraking. This means you use the atmosphere of Mars to slow the craft down, as opposed to buring fuel to do it.
The combination of a resource filled atmosphere and permafrost allows pioneers to build houses, making bricks from the land. The less you have to take and can make in situ, the less costly and more long term the whole #! is. It also means it is likely to be more stable (bricks are a proven technology, btw;) ) and can be repaired w/o needing more supplies from Earth, several months away.
Indeed, plastics, ceramics, and glass can all be manufactured in situ quite inexpensively and simply on Mars. No so with the moon. Aluminim, steel, copper, and silicon are also not complicated givent he resources available.
The martian soil is quite good for plants, the moon's is not. This means that a greenhouse can be built to provide fresh greens (and oxygen) for those pioneers on Mars. That means less cost in support. Water is heavy, and plants contain a lot of water. Thus, not needing to ship them is a damned good thing. Morale is improved dramatically by the presence of plants, so another plus is to be had.
The moon offers none of these advantages and comes with a more difficult set of technology to develop and deploy.
Space stations should only come into play for earth-related observation and study, not as jumping points for interplanetary exploration. At least not until we have them a Mars base. It takes more to go to orbit and then launch then it does to launch directly.
Much of this can be discovered reading, among other things, Zubrin's Mars Direct plan. Go to Mars Society webpage to find out more.
In particular, the book "Why Mars" details the plan in amazing simplicity and common sense. (BTW, no click-through or affiliate stuff; just a direct link to the book )
The moon push, especially when done by NASA, is a bad trip that should be avoided. For the amount NASA is spending (or wanting to) on th
It is not insightful, it is flat out wrong on so many things wrong.
Scroll to the top and reread the story.
Wait, don't both here it is: "New Line, which spent $US300million ($415 million) making the films, is already planning to continue its Rings success with an adaptation of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit. "
That plainly says they spent the money on the LoTR series, not on the King Kong Remake. Further hints include the little know fact that "films" is plural, whereas "the King Kong remake" is singular.;)
Oh, and not to pick any nits or anything, but Universal is the one paying Jackson to do the remake of King Kong, and has budgeted 100 million to the project.
The only "insight" is that Simonetta didn't seem to read the original post. The tragedy is that s/he went off on poor defenseless strawman, and got a +5 insightful.
Just goes to show that put enough monkeys at a keyboard and let them bang away, eventually they'll mod anything and everything up to +5 insightful.
Of course, we still put locks on our doors, and many use them. Why would we do that?
The key is in the phrase "Sufficiently qualfiied and determined".
The underlying focus of security is primarily to make it difficult enough that you raise the cost of doing it to the point that *most* buggers pass on.
However, there is a side-effect that comes with this. A story from my AD&D 2nd ed days should explain it well (to those who get it;) ).
I had a 4th level fighter who had managed to get is armor class (resistance to getting damaged) up high enough you only had a 1 in 20 chance to hit him. That meant you had to score a critical hit. Critical hits meant gobs more damage.
Translation: When he got hit it really freaking hurt.
The harder it is to get in, the more dangerous are those who do get in. On the other hand, you have to be a helluva target for them to bother with you.
From what I can tell he is merely talking about the data that says where the main download data (i.e. the iso or whatever) is. Kind of like storing a mirror list in the TXT record.
So the ftp thing would not be an accurate comparison.
I am quite familar with opensecrets.org, and the data there does not support your assertions.
In fact, MS, when you include their subsidiaries and affilated organizations, outspent them.In 2004, for example, MS outspent Oracle by more than 10 to 1.
In 1998, for example, MS was again the Number one contribuitor, MS spent over one and a quarter million dollars that year. Netscape only spent 189K.
In 2000: MS: 4.5MILLION NS: 226THOUSAND
in 1996: MS: 246K NS: 52K
1994: MS: 104K NS: Less than 5K (they don't show up on the list)
1992: MS: 56K NS: See above
What about Sun? They don't show up in the list, so they are apparently not donating directly, or through affiliates and held companies, etc. according to opensecrets.org.
Oracle's totals for 96 and 98 are a little over 300K, barely more than MS's 96 total, and much less than MS' 96-98 totals.
Starting in the 1998 cylce, MS has been the number on contributor in terms of Internet/Software every cycle listed at opensecrets.org. In 1996 they were number two, by less than a thousand bucks. And ususally they spend more than the next 3-4 runners up combined.
In 1993 Sun donated 15K to the Repubs, covering the 1994 and 1996 cycles.
Here is the link to Microsoft's donations for the same two cycles. Note that in 1995 alone MS totalled 30K. For those two cycles, MS donations topped 87K to Sun's 15K and Netscpaes ZERO.
For 92/94: Oracle: 15K MS: 10K
Pretty close, but Oracle pulls ahead for the one time they do so.
Of course, those are "hard money" donations.
Add in the soft money and lookout!!
Sun's total from 98-2002 is ~42.5K. Oracle's is 15K. In 98 alone MS accounted for over 750K in soft money.
From 2000 to 2004, Sun's Soft money comes to 26K. In that same time frame, MS accounted for nearly 5 MILLION in soft money.
So, we see that according to the source YOU referenced, MS was quite active dating back to the early nineties, and was more active from the start than Sun or Netscape (when going by dollar amounts).
Prior to 1998, MS had given over 400K, More than 2X the amount Netscape has total.
This link is from 1998 and talks about MS's history until then. It even points out how what changed in 98 that they switched "allegiances" from the Democrats to the Repubs. Nowadays, they are fairly even between them.
Neither Sun, Oracle, nor Netscape qualify for the top 100 all time donors; only MS does.
So the "shakedown" argument bears no weight according to your own sources.
They didn't give any money to political interests up until the trial.
You referenced source shows this to be a falsehood.
Another fatal flaw in your assertion is that you assume donating money was soley about a future antitrust trial, and not the more likely attempts to curry favor for government contracts and other preferential treatment.
Like the OP said, study your history. All of it. To which I'll add: check your facts when telling the rest of us to go check them. You look silly or decetiful when you make claims your source refutes.
I did this in a test environment (testing hardware) using Linux and VNC. You can automate quite a bit of mouseclicking via replays and recordings, etc.. Check in to it.
As far as a large cluster, I had a dozen racks full of 1u and 2u machines, does that count as large?:)
personally, I pay 36/year to have all non-clear, non-identified numbers/names blocked. You want in, you have to take the time to say who you are, your purpose, etc.. Then I get a recording of it and decide if I take the call.
Meanwhile Mr. Telemarketer will be on the phone, eating his call times up. So far, no takers.
Indeed, this protects against offshore telemarketing, whereas the DNC list does not.
The you wil have no logical recourse, usign your argument, when the voters decide that it is a serious breach of ettitquette to use the internet to post such talk, or to push a free program or otehr such nonsense as "etiquette".
Grow up and realize you are in something larger than your grandmotehr's dining room. One persons etiquette is anotehrs' nightmare.
For example, I was tought growing up that you don't take the fruits of other people's labors to pay your way. I was taught that the right thing to do was to work for yourself.
This DNC list, this legislating etiquette gargbage violates the etiquette i was raised on. it makes me work more so you can sit at dinner allegedly uninterrupted (which won't happen, btw).
There are measures you can take, but you see, that involves you taking them. You'd rather I work to pay your way.
That is a serious breach of etiquette.
On top of that, you are now also insisting I pay for the telemarketers to have market research done for them! Walk on over to the economics departemnt and find out what happens when an industry suddenly finds that the government is doing some of their more costly work for them.
Ask the profs over there what happens when the costs of doing business go down. At least then you won't be suprised when the telemarketing industry finds itself growing and becoming even more profitable.
And you'll have only yourself, and your attitude to blame. You want me to pay for the telemarketers' research, and you want me to pay for the alleged "privacy" you thnk you're getting.
You want to take food off of my kids' dinner table so you can sit at yours and not have to ignore the phone, or pay afew bucks to have the calls blocked.
That is a breach of etiquette, and of simple respect. You demand that telemarketers respect your rights, while you trample mine.
Is that not more than a mere breach of etiquette?
BTW, it wasn't the voters that did this. It wasn't even the legislature. It was an agency trying to justify it's existence.
Of interesting note is the fact that the Smithsonian was funded and conceived of by the private sector, Mr Smithson.
It was in his will. Adams took up the cause, and the gift was deemed a permanent loan at 6% interest.
Again we see the private sector doing what the government could not. However, it went from wholly independent funding to 70% government funding. That's government for you.
There are whole industries that are counter-productive and a pain in the ass for normal people like me.
Yup, and government is number one on that list
You could have requested the permission to call and thus made a do-call-list.
How, by calling people and asking? *snicker*
In short, you could have de-sleazed the industry. You could offer support, not pushy salespeople. You could respect your workers more.
Well, when your industry is next, you'll get no sympathy from me. there are sleazebags in every industry even computers. SCO anyone?
There you go again, making the "victims" and people with responsibility pay for a few people's sleaziness.
So when you get pushed out of your job because government regulations on your industry happen or get worse do to a select few sleazebags, it will be YOUR own damned fault, and I will have no sympathy for you. Or will it suddenly be different? I'll bet the latter.
It is this whole idea that we hold groups of people responsible for the actions of a few members of that group that is causing so much crap in this country, indeed in this world. And here you go reinforcing it.
You could not scam elderly from giving up their life savings.
So, you are one of those people that beleive that if Mr. BadGuy is going to break the law to scam people, he will suddenly decide to folllow this law? Mmmmm... next you'll tell us that ILLEGAL immigrants are "law-abiding people", or that a bank robber will not get a gun because he's already a felon and that would be illegal.
You could offer support, not pushy salespeople.
Ever been to a car lot?? Hey I know, how about a "Do Not Pitch To Registry" so I can walk onto a car lot and not have a"pushy salesman" come bug me!
Or even better! There are scammers on tYou could offer support, not pushy salespeople.he Internet! Better do some Internet banning to make sure Mr. BadGuy doesn't break the law there too! Of course, in order to do that we'll all need to make a few concessions... I'm sure Mr. Ashcroft and the IRS can tell you alllllll about them.
You can not legislate morality, wealth, wisdom, courtesy and manners, or intelligence.
If you're a national telemarketer, you pay your $7,375.00 and download the 122MB compressed file annually. I don't think this is a large fee or burden compared to the actual costs of the telecommunications equipment, not to mention your staff.
Which of course means that the taxpayers are paying for the rest of the cost of running this fiasco.
In the coming months I am going to be even happier about paying 3 bucks a month to eliminate, so far, more calls than a do not call list can. For me, I've got a deal w/the phone company. List or no list, I've received zero TM calls since I signed up for the service. Yet I'm on neither the state list or the federal one. The change was night and day.
Why? Well, with people like you who are happy and rejoicing over the fact that you are now SUBSIDIZING telemarketers, there will only be more of them. Telemarketing will become a very lucrative business for companies that can afford to call from Canada, where the DNCR is toothless, or from Mexico, or other "offshore" locations.
Now that you've subsidized an industry by making the government do some of it's work for them, you can cry me a river when there is more and more of it, and: a) they don't play by the new rules and/or b) they do it from "safe havens"
And in the end, your call volume is unaffected. sure, for a short time, but then it will come back with a vengeance.
Congratulations, you've just made telemarketing more profitable. especially when they figure they can avoid the risk/costs with the DNCR, and operate outside the country while paying people far less! Locally, TM jobs are pushing more than 2X minimum wage.
Thanks to people like you, if I were running a TM company, it would ONLY cost me under a penny to eliminate numbers that would have cost me upwards of a buck to prune out before. Thank you for reducing the costs of telemarketing.
Now, when this fails to solve your inability to say no, or to demand better service from your telco, and combined with your demand that other people pay for that, you can expect no sympathy from me.
So, the only companies losing any revenue are the small mom and pop places, like the local glass store, etc.. It will not stop the big companies who don't care about reputation or laws. Precisely the same ones breaking the law prior to the DNCR.
I expect this will drive out the local non-telemarketing houses, the local small businesses that do some in house TM locally to improve their sales, or even to maintain their existence. It will be interesting to see how many of them will go under, and how many people are suprised to learn the place they've been having come in and clean their carpets (for example) for the last couple years does some small-time TM, and now due to a slip-up is out of business.
Meanwhile the Telespam(tm) from out of the country will continue, and even grow.
Then the loopholes will start coming in. Well, for companies under this size maybe we can exclude them. Then there will be more, and more. And we will have yet another PITA goverment agency incapaple of chewing gum and walking sucking down taxes and productivity. And it will become another Sacred Cow.
And personal repsonsibility and accountability takes another body shot.
Damned socialist and fascists.
What's worse, is that now, you will also push TM into centralized companies to cover even better cost-risk scenarios, thus making them harder to deal with, and with deeper pockets to pay fines for breaking the rules.
Really, the risk is rather low.
her eis how to avoid it according to teh FTC:
# it has written procedures to comply with the do not call requirements # it trains its personnel in those procedures # it monitors and enforces compliance with these procedures # it maintains a company-specific list of telephone numbers that it may not call # it accesses the national registry no more than three months befo
Music writers & singers have no such options. There is no advertsiing capability on a Justin Timberlake CD. There are no Justin Timberlake action figures.
So the concerts, the posters, the t-shirts, jackets, the product endorsements, etc. are things the big starts pay to do, instead of getting paid for?
What planet are you on??
The only thing interesting about the parent post was it's utter lack of a basis in reality.
Now this qualifies as insighful, and should be modded even higher!
usually the figure is put about 10%, or something similarly low. Hard to believe that such a business would be worthwhile if the response rate is so low; but whatever it is, it must be high enough that the incentive for telemarketing and spamming is maintained. Otherwise, there'd be no such thing.
Direct mail, that snail-spam you get has a response rate of 3-5%. If you do calls in high enough volume, even that rate is enough. 10% is a godsend to business.
If it did (I doubt it, it's too time consuming), combining the do not call list with a reverse lookup will provide quite the nice list of people who apparently lack the will to say no to you on the phone, let alone in person will provide you a nice place to start sending said door to door salesman. A veritable gold mine.
And they will be a *lot* more assertive/aggresive than telemarketers. it takes a more ballsey perosn to do it in person.
.. imagine the millions of second-wage earners that can now no longer keep the bills paid. Imagine the working students who now can not pay their bills, and have to drop out taking menial jobs that pay less. Imagine the single mothers who were doing TM because it paid better than double jobs + lots of sitters and no time with kids that now have to do exactly that just to get by. Imagine that family now having that wonderful "dinner togetherness" over a pot of ramen noodles instead of something healthy, since now they can't afford it.
Then, imagine the companies who products these people are hawking seeing drastic drops in orders, meaning more layoffs amd thus, more government spending, which leads to more taxes which leads to less take home pay, which leads to more poverty which leads to more government involvement. Rinse lather, repeat.
Do some math. How many are currently unemployed? How much would the unemployment rate change by adding 2+ million to it.
Slashdot Mirror
When robots are capable of assembling and maintaining a fully functional and habitable environment for us in the Americas, or any other remote location, that's the time to start packing our suitcases.
No risk, no reward. People like you would never have sailed the ocean, crossed the North American continent.
We don't have robots capable of building what you describe *here* let alone elsewhere. And it would be far cheaper and easier to have robots building our whoel infrastructure here on earth than it would be elsewhere; thus it'd happen here before there. And when it does, you will probably be first in line to say they shouldn't do it becuase they are putting people out of work, or that they don't work as well as people.
There are a lot of things automation can do. There are a lot more it can not do. Building a society's infrastructure w/o human involvement is one of them. Landing reliably in unknown terrain is another.
If we don't yet have the technology to do this then I'd question our ability to reliably send people on such missions and kepp them alive for much longer than it takes to plant a flag.
I question your ability to use your computer for much longer than to post such nonsense. Mankind has been exploring the unknown and building things in situ long before robots were even conceived of by humans. I don't need to know how to make an android to know how to send a rocket to Mars, make bricks out of local materials and use that to then make buildings such as greenhouses to grow my own food (and recycle C02 to O2), use chemistry to manufacture oxygen, water (in quantities suitable for early stages), fuel for local and return travel, plastics, steel, aluminum, etc..
If a return to the Moon has the same effect this time as it did last time the gains will create employement for a LOT of people and be a boon to the economy.
It can't. The technology for going ot the moon is too small.
As opposed to the earlier Flag and Footprints mission:
* Our computing power has uhh massively increased. Watches more posess more computing capability than was used for Apollo
* Our materials technology makes Apollo materials look like stone tools. This includes fuel.
So another F&F mission would do noting for technical advancement. Anytime a president proposes such an event, it is an F&F mission.
How about a base? you ask.
Doing what?? There isn't much there that is economically interesting.
Now Mars, it has the potential to establish a colony. It has things we humans need to live, Luna does not. In order for space to benefit us technologically this time around, we need ordinary people living there. The moon does not provide the means. Nor does a floating hunk of metal in space. Mars, however, does.
easy to launch nukes from, easy to hide what you aare doing,
Not really. You have to get them there, and deal with the nasty surface. In order to hide you would need:
* a way to get a nice BIG launch hidden
* to do it on the dark side of the moon.
Those two combine to make orbitally parked missiles a whole lot easier. But ground based ones are even easier.
The moons harsh conditions preclude it being terribly useful for anything beyond eventual mining of material suitable for fusion.
I'm pretty sure "regolith resistant" spacesuits aren't a big problem, regardless.
They are. They weigh more, and weight is a HUGE factor in getting out of the gravity well we call Earth.
Honestly, what is under the surface isn't that interesting until we develop better fusion capabilities.
OK, this is bad. Really Bad(tm).
;) ) and can be repaired w/o needing more supplies from Earth, several months away.
First, let's deal with some realities.
Mars is cheaper.
WHAT?
No seriously, Mars is cheaper. It takes less Delta V, and has far more economic opportunities than the moon does.
No, you can not use the moon as a bounce point for getting to deeper exploration.
First a moon base will not be self sufficient in our life times. That means a lot of money being poured into a black hole (pun intended). It is also cheaper to lunch a direct big booster rocket than to stage to Earth orbit. Even w/o the costs and uncertainties surrounding the whole space station thing.
Second, no you can not use it as a testbed for a Mars mission. The two environments are so vastly different that the equipment is not comparable. The moon has zero atmosphere, large extremes in temerature, and dust that somehow manages to find it's way into vacuum tubes.
Mars has none of those. Mars has an atmosphere that helps protect the pioneers from the cosmic rays (which are much less than we are led to believe, but still present).
Further, Mars has resources that alter the economics and safety in dramatic ways.
For example, for lunar trips, tou have to take *ALL* your resources with you. Enough to get there, stay there, and get back. You will expend large amounts of fuel to slow down to enter orbit and land.
A Mars trip on the other hand, is different. First, you can send an advance craft to manufacture oxygen, water, and fuel for the return trip in situ. By the time your people head out, you can have a return craft, fully fueled, with enough oxygen and water to last for a couple years. The means to do this is mostly solid state, and can be built in your garage. It is a proven technology that is inexpensive to make.
The moon does not offer that.
Further, a direct mission to Mars has an advantage in that it can use a technique called aerobraking. This means you use the atmosphere of Mars to slow the craft down, as opposed to buring fuel to do it.
The combination of a resource filled atmosphere and permafrost allows pioneers to build houses, making bricks from the land. The less you have to take and can make in situ, the less costly and more long term the whole #! is. It also means it is likely to be more stable (bricks are a proven technology, btw
Indeed, plastics, ceramics, and glass can all be manufactured in situ quite inexpensively and simply on Mars. No so with the moon. Aluminim, steel, copper, and silicon are also not complicated givent he resources available.
The martian soil is quite good for plants, the moon's is not. This means that a greenhouse can be built to provide fresh greens (and oxygen) for those pioneers on Mars. That means less cost in support. Water is heavy, and plants contain a lot of water. Thus, not needing to ship them is a damned good thing. Morale is improved dramatically by the presence of plants, so another plus is to be had.
The moon offers none of these advantages and comes with a more difficult set of technology to develop and deploy.
Space stations should only come into play for earth-related observation and study, not as jumping points for interplanetary exploration. At least not until we have them a Mars base. It takes more to go to orbit and then launch then it does to launch directly.
Much of this can be discovered reading, among other things, Zubrin's Mars Direct plan. Go to Mars Society webpage to find out more.
In particular, the book "Why Mars" details the plan in amazing simplicity and common sense. (BTW, no click-through or affiliate stuff; just a direct link to the book )
The moon push, especially when done by NASA, is a bad trip that should be avoided. For the amount NASA is spending (or wanting to) on th
It is not insightful, it is flat out wrong on so many things wrong.
;)
Scroll to the top and reread the story.
Wait, don't both here it is:
"New Line, which spent $US300million ($415 million) making the films, is already planning to continue its Rings success with an adaptation of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit. "
That plainly says they spent the money on the LoTR series, not on the King Kong Remake. Further hints include the little know fact that "films" is plural, whereas "the King Kong remake" is singular.
Oh, and not to pick any nits or anything, but Universal is the one paying Jackson to do the remake of King Kong, and has budgeted 100 million to the project.
The only "insight" is that Simonetta didn't seem to read the original post. The tragedy is that s/he went off on poor defenseless strawman, and got a +5 insightful.
Just goes to show that put enough monkeys at a keyboard and let them bang away, eventually they'll mod anything and everything up to +5 insightful.
Of course, we still put locks on our doors, and many use them. Why would we do that?
;) ).
The key is in the phrase "Sufficiently qualfiied and determined".
The underlying focus of security is primarily to make it difficult enough that you raise the cost of doing it to the point that *most* buggers pass on.
However, there is a side-effect that comes with this. A story from my AD&D 2nd ed days should explain it well (to those who get it
I had a 4th level fighter who had managed to get is armor class (resistance to getting damaged) up high enough you only had a 1 in 20 chance to hit him. That meant you had to score a critical hit. Critical hits meant gobs more damage.
Translation:
When he got hit it really freaking hurt.
The harder it is to get in, the more dangerous are those who do get in. On the other hand, you have to be a helluva target for them to bother with you.
If a President lands in Iraq and nobody notices does he gain votes?
....
Only if you count the military vote
From what I can tell he is merely talking about the data that says where the main download data (i.e. the iso or whatever) is. Kind of like storing a mirror list in the TXT record.
So the ftp thing would not be an accurate comparison.
Just a small wrinkle in your theory:
I am quite familar with opensecrets.org, and the data there does not support your assertions.
In fact, MS, when you include their subsidiaries and affilated organizations, outspent them.In 2004, for example, MS outspent Oracle by more than 10 to 1.
In 1998, for example, MS was again the Number one contribuitor, MS spent over one and a quarter million dollars that year. Netscape only spent 189K.
In 2000:
MS: 4.5MILLION
NS: 226THOUSAND
in 1996:
MS: 246K
NS: 52K
1994:
MS: 104K
NS: Less than 5K (they don't show up on the list)
1992:
MS: 56K
NS: See above
What about Sun? They don't show up in the list, so they are apparently not donating directly, or through affiliates and held companies, etc. according to opensecrets.org.
Oracle's totals for 96 and 98 are a little over 300K, barely more than MS's 96 total, and much less than MS' 96-98 totals.
Starting in the 1998 cylce, MS has been the number on contributor in terms of Internet/Software every cycle listed at opensecrets.org. In 1996 they were number two, by less than a thousand bucks. And ususally they spend more than the next 3-4 runners up combined.
In 1993 Sun donated 15K to the Repubs, covering the 1994 and 1996 cycles.
Here
is the link to Microsoft's donations for the same two cycles. Note that in 1995 alone MS totalled 30K. For those two cycles, MS donations topped 87K to Sun's 15K and Netscpaes ZERO.
For 92/94:
Oracle: 15K
MS: 10K
Pretty close, but Oracle pulls ahead for the one time they do so.
Of course, those are "hard money" donations.
Add in the soft money and lookout!!
Sun's total from 98-2002 is ~42.5K. Oracle's is 15K.
In 98 alone MS accounted for over 750K in soft money.
From 2000 to 2004, Sun's Soft money comes to 26K. In that same time frame, MS accounted for nearly 5 MILLION in soft money.
So, we see that according to the source YOU referenced, MS was quite active dating back to the early nineties, and was more active from the start than Sun or Netscape (when going by dollar amounts).
Prior to 1998, MS had given over 400K, More than 2X the amount Netscape has total.
This link is from 1998 and talks about MS's history until then. It even points out how what changed in 98 that they switched "allegiances" from the Democrats to the Repubs. Nowadays, they are fairly even between them.
Neither Sun, Oracle, nor Netscape qualify for the top 100 all time donors; only MS does.
So the "shakedown" argument bears no weight according to your own sources.
They didn't give any money to political interests up until the trial.
You referenced source shows this to be a falsehood.
Another fatal flaw in your assertion is that you assume donating money was soley about a future antitrust trial, and not the more likely attempts to curry favor for government contracts and other preferential treatment.
Like the OP said, study your history. All of it. To which I'll add: check your facts when telling the rest of us to go check them. You look silly or decetiful when you make claims your source refutes.
Pull their corporate license.
Take away all those immunities they have, and see thigns change as responsibility and accountability come home to roost.
They can still do business, they just are not protected from everybody.
If he knew enough to do that, he'd know that 5.1 has NOT been tagged stable.
Neither is 2.6, last I heard
I did this in a test environment (testing hardware) using Linux and VNC. You can automate quite a bit of mouseclicking via replays and recordings, etc.. Check in to it.
:)
As far as a large cluster, I had a dozen racks full of 1u and 2u machines, does that count as large?
Only works in places that have caller ID.
personally, I pay 36/year to have all non-clear, non-identified numbers/names blocked. You want in, you have to take the time to say who you are, your purpose, etc.. Then I get a recording of it and decide if I take the call.
Meanwhile Mr. Telemarketer will be on the phone, eating his call times up. So far, no takers.
Indeed, this protects against offshore telemarketing, whereas the DNC list does not.
The you wil have no logical recourse, usign your argument, when the voters decide that it is a serious breach of ettitquette to use the internet to post such talk, or to push a free program or otehr such nonsense as "etiquette".
Grow up and realize you are in something larger than your grandmotehr's dining room. One persons etiquette is anotehrs' nightmare.
For example, I was tought growing up that you don't take the fruits of other people's labors to pay your way. I was taught that the right thing to do was to work for yourself.
This DNC list, this legislating etiquette gargbage violates the etiquette i was raised on. it makes me work more so you can sit at dinner allegedly uninterrupted (which won't happen, btw).
There are measures you can take, but you see, that involves you taking them. You'd rather I work to pay your way.
That is a serious breach of etiquette.
On top of that, you are now also insisting I pay for the telemarketers to have market research done for them! Walk on over to the economics departemnt and find out what happens when an industry suddenly finds that the government is doing some of their more costly work for them.
Ask the profs over there what happens when the costs of doing business go down. At least then you won't be suprised when the telemarketing industry finds itself growing and becoming even more profitable.
And you'll have only yourself, and your attitude to blame. You want me to pay for the telemarketers' research, and you want me to pay for the alleged "privacy" you thnk you're getting.
You want to take food off of my kids' dinner table so you can sit at yours and not have to ignore the phone, or pay afew bucks to have the calls blocked.
That is a breach of etiquette, and of simple respect. You demand that telemarketers respect your rights, while you trample mine.
Is that not more than a mere breach of etiquette?
BTW, it wasn't the voters that did this. It wasn't even the legislature. It was an agency trying to justify it's existence.
Of interesting note is the fact that the Smithsonian was funded and conceived of by the private sector, Mr Smithson.
It was in his will. Adams took up the cause, and the gift was deemed a permanent loan at 6% interest.
Again we see the private sector doing what the government could not. However, it went from wholly independent funding to 70% government funding. That's government for you.
Middle of Nowhere, Idaho
That's Middle of Nowhere UTAH. Sheesh,
Oh, and SCO isn't a software house anymore, they are a lawsuit and sabre rattling house.
"What if they called a war and nobody showed up?" Ask SCO.
There are whole industries that are counter-productive and a pain in the ass for normal people like me.
... next you'll tell us that ILLEGAL immigrants are "law-abiding people", or that a bank robber will not get a gun because he's already a felon and that would be illegal.
... I'm sure Mr. Ashcroft and the IRS can tell you alllllll about them.
Yup, and government is number one on that list
You could have requested the permission to call and thus made a do-call-list.
How, by calling people and asking? *snicker*
In short, you could have de-sleazed the industry. You could offer support, not pushy salespeople. You could respect your workers more.
Well, when your industry is next, you'll get no sympathy from me. there are sleazebags in every industry even computers. SCO anyone?
There you go again, making the "victims" and people with responsibility pay for a few people's sleaziness.
So when you get pushed out of your job because government regulations on your industry happen or get worse do to a select few sleazebags, it will be YOUR own damned fault, and I will have no sympathy for you. Or will it suddenly be different? I'll bet the latter.
It is this whole idea that we hold groups of people responsible for the actions of a few members of that group that is causing so much crap in this country, indeed in this world. And here you go reinforcing it.
You could not scam elderly from giving up their life savings.
So, you are one of those people that beleive that if Mr. BadGuy is going to break the law to scam people, he will suddenly decide to folllow this law? Mmmmm
You could offer support, not pushy salespeople.
Ever been to a car lot?? Hey I know, how about a "Do Not Pitch To Registry" so I can walk onto a car lot and not have a"pushy salesman" come bug me!
Or even better! There are scammers on tYou could offer support, not pushy salespeople.he Internet! Better do some Internet banning to make sure Mr. BadGuy doesn't break the law there too! Of course, in order to do that we'll all need to make a few concessions
You can not legislate morality, wealth, wisdom, courtesy and manners, or intelligence.
Which of course means that the taxpayers are paying for the rest of the cost of running this fiasco.
In the coming months I am going to be even happier about paying 3 bucks a month to eliminate, so far, more calls than a do not call list can. For me, I've got a deal w/the phone company. List or no list, I've received zero TM calls since I signed up for the service. Yet I'm on neither the state list or the federal one. The change was night and day.
Why? Well, with people like you who are happy and rejoicing over the fact that you are now SUBSIDIZING telemarketers, there will only be more of them. Telemarketing will become a very lucrative business for companies that can afford to call from Canada, where the DNCR is toothless, or from Mexico, or other "offshore" locations.
Now that you've subsidized an industry by making the government do some of it's work for them, you can cry me a river when there is more and more of it, and:
a) they don't play by the new rules
and/or
b) they do it from "safe havens"
And in the end, your call volume is unaffected. sure, for a short time, but then it will come back with a vengeance.
Congratulations, you've just made telemarketing more profitable. especially when they figure they can avoid the risk/costs with the DNCR, and operate outside the country while paying people far less! Locally, TM jobs are pushing more than 2X minimum wage.
Thanks to people like you, if I were running a TM company, it would ONLY cost me under a penny to eliminate numbers that would have cost me upwards of a buck to prune out before. Thank you for reducing the costs of telemarketing.
Now, when this fails to solve your inability to say no, or to demand better service from your telco, and combined with your demand that other people pay for that, you can expect no sympathy from me.
So, the only companies losing any revenue are the small mom and pop places, like the local glass store, etc.. It will not stop the big companies who don't care about reputation or laws. Precisely the same ones breaking the law prior to the DNCR.
I expect this will drive out the local non-telemarketing houses, the local small businesses that do some in house TM locally to improve their sales, or even to maintain their existence. It will be interesting to see how many of them will go under, and how many people are suprised to learn the place they've been having come in and clean their carpets (for example) for the last couple years does some small-time TM, and now due to a slip-up is out of business.
Meanwhile the Telespam(tm) from out of the country will continue, and even grow.
Then the loopholes will start coming in. Well, for companies under this size maybe we can exclude them. Then there will be more, and more. And we will have yet another PITA goverment agency incapaple of chewing gum and walking sucking down taxes and productivity. And it will become another Sacred Cow.
And personal repsonsibility and accountability takes another body shot.
Damned socialist and fascists.
What's worse, is that now, you will also push TM into centralized companies to cover even better cost-risk scenarios, thus making them harder to deal with, and with deeper pockets to pay fines for breaking the rules.
Really, the risk is rather low.
her eis how to avoid it according to teh FTC:
Many of those industries/companies *did* get government protection. The salient point is that it did little, if anything to stave off the inevitable.
Music writers & singers have no such options. There is no advertsiing capability on a Justin Timberlake CD. There are no Justin Timberlake action figures.
So the concerts, the posters, the t-shirts, jackets, the product endorsements, etc. are things the big starts pay to do, instead of getting paid for?
What planet are you on??
The only thing interesting about the parent post was it's utter lack of a basis in reality.
Now if we can just get people to realize you can't legislate wealth we'll be doing well.
Now this qualifies as insighful, and should be modded even higher!
usually the figure is put about 10%, or something similarly low. Hard to believe that such a business would be worthwhile if the response rate is so low; but whatever it is, it must be high enough that the incentive for telemarketing and spamming is maintained. Otherwise, there'd be no such thing.
Direct mail, that snail-spam you get has a response rate of 3-5%. If you do calls in high enough volume, even that rate is enough. 10% is a godsend to business.
If it did (I doubt it, it's too time consuming), combining the do not call list with a reverse lookup will provide quite the nice list of people who apparently lack the will to say no to you on the phone, let alone in person will provide you a nice place to start sending said door to door salesman. A veritable gold mine.
And they will be a *lot* more assertive/aggresive than telemarketers. it takes a more ballsey perosn to do it in person.
Ahh the law of unintended consequences.
.. imagine the millions of second-wage earners that can now no longer keep the bills paid. Imagine the working students who now can not pay their bills, and have to drop out taking menial jobs that pay less. Imagine the single mothers who were doing TM because it paid better than double jobs + lots of sitters and no time with kids that now have to do exactly that just to get by. Imagine that family now having that wonderful "dinner togetherness" over a pot of ramen noodles instead of something healthy, since now they can't afford it.
Then, imagine the companies who products these people are hawking seeing drastic drops in orders, meaning more layoffs amd thus, more government spending, which leads to more taxes which leads to less take home pay, which leads to more poverty which leads to more government involvement. Rinse lather, repeat.
Do some math. How many are currently unemployed? How much would the unemployment rate change by adding 2+ million to it.
I ti s not as you may like to believe, pollyana.