In fact, I've always thought it would be entertaining, if a store advertised (eg) "39.95 (in huge print) - after $30 and $50 rebates (in tiny print)" to go to the store, bringing exactly [......] walked out the door leaving the item there, and making lots of noise about it as I did so - the whold point being to A. force them to deal with an unhappy (lost) customer, B. have to carry the item back and put it on the shelf again, and C. call as much attention to I could (both to the store, as well as any other customers at the registers, etc) that they had lost a sale over the stupidity.
a little off topic, but i think that is a reasonable action for any poor customer service. I did it in the food store once. I [almost] bought $140us worth of food, and one single six pack of newcastle. I ran into a friend in line buying some chips or something, he was behind me, and because we were 'talking to one another' they needed to see his ID for me to purchase my beer... he is 20. i tried to reason with them, but ended up just saying 'if i can't buy the beer then i don't want any of this, i'll go to another store' so someone at that store ended up putting back all my frozen goods and meats and everything.
Am I just being a stubborn consumer or do others have a similar attitude?
i have a very similar attitude, mostly refusing the bother even taking the MIR form. i fully agree my thoughts on price don't reflect the MIR, and if i get it it is an added bonus.
Some years ago, however, i purchased two Samsung SyncMaster 151v's (15" lcds) at Bestbuy for $249.00 US/ea, which wasn't incredibly expensive for an lcd at the time, but came with $100 rebate on each. Fine print didn't mention 'one per household', and about six weeks later i went out and bought many many many drinks for many many people armed with my newly cashed $200 cheque.
Outside of that one experience, i have never recieved any other rebate, nor do i write down dates or photocopy anything as i generally just don't care, because we all know MIR are just a way for you to make you feel like you are spending less money at the time. it's the same reason we make everything $19.99 instead of $20- , it sound cheaper.
or rather than complain about the dupes, keep scrolling down to the next headline. I didn't catch the origional article because i do things like go out in public and bathe, so i for one am thankful i got to read it. i miss quite a few articles in fact, and it's really not the end of the world. if i should happen to notice a dupe, i calmly keep scrolling thinking in my head "that sounds familiar, not of interest to me... " really, you all should try it rather than wasting extra keystrokes to complain about some free service.
Windows has gotten a lot more stable over the years.... or you've found [free] replacements/supplements to keep it to par, like firefox, adaware, gaim, avg, et al. or maybe coders are getting better at avoiding microsoft pitfalls rather than the underlaying os being more stable. i will agree i get less and less crashed, have seen ONE BSOD in many many moons, etc. It's still flaky though. Programs hang, but you can always kill them eventually. It's uber-smart automation is annoying (yes windows, *I* unplugged the network cable... ) and opposite, i do not need to be warned i am unsafe because windows personal firewall is not enabled [every five minutes].
less crashes, but not more 'stable' to me... ahh, see, point in case. this is posted via firefox to my 'stable' linux machine beneath my television. had to reboot the windows machine [i am using], but saved the post because it was on a machine that only reboots when i *tell* it too, or the local power company decides to replace my meter unannounced (and if the ups was a smite bigger it may have survived).
i do, however, have a whole list of shortcoming with linux that i wish would be 'easier' to manage, but would force myself off topic were i to persure.
yes, but there is a valid signature on my ID along with a picture of myself.
# An unsigned card (blank signature line) is not a valid card.
my BOA card has my picutre and my signature printed on the front side as part of the face of the card, i see little use in signing the front and back and ID (as they are allegedly supposed to check).
or perhaps it would do a bunch of geeks some good to exert the physical energy required to lift 3 pounds and tilt/shake it. a little exercise never hurt anyone (well, i bet it *could*)
not if it's a 400meg windows update download. most people don't have cutting-edge xp pro sp2 boxes freshly installed, but rather old old variations on IE4|5 with their windows 98/me setups. people will only 'go back to it' if there are incessant warnings about insecure/outdated browser every time you run an alternative browser. sure it'll come shipped with 'new' computers (maybe wrapped up in longhorn the same way you can't remove ie6 from xp), but as long as there is a secure/better/standards-based alternative, the tech-savvy/conscious people will always find it, and will forever be preaching about the 'evils of microsoft internet explorer' getting people to switch one at a time.
if Dell or Compaq would ship firefox ALONG side with IE5/6/7 and name it that ("IE#" rather than "internet explorer") people would use it, and realize their IE-picture works more slowly and sometimes causes me "to call my tech, where the "red circle with blue" picture called "firefox" loads up quickly and i never get any popups" that would take care of 'joe-sixpack'. problem is joe sixpack never even hears about the alternatives.... and if web developers would stick to the standards they are presented with (rahter than infesting pages with AX/javascript/flash) IE would simply render ugly pages, and people would either a) wonder why pages look so much better in firefox or b) MS would release a patch for IE to prioritize standards and then their proprietary foo afterwards, making pages again clean, but still leaving the (gaping security hole|extra features) that is 'ActiveX'.
an earlier post mentioned firefox not considering the coporate market, and not being able to deploy firefox on a large scale... with some slight code modification, or perhaps even just an extension installed on each copy, to poll a single (local) server for settings changes and whatnot, (homepage, cookie settings, etc, etc) it could be deployed and managed with no problem.
Re:This is all they need to do to maintain dominan
on
IE7 Details Emerge
·
· Score: 1
sp2's security center will report to me a popup saying 'you are not using a secure web browser' whenever firefox is running...
even if you 'remove' IE from XP 'windows explorer' behaves just the same, and i've never ever been able to fully remove outlook from any xp machine.
i am curious why no one put up such a big stink over FEMA? has anyone read over what FEMA can do in the event of a 'national emergancy'? its really quite interesting.
The fact that you don't care about those human beings or their loss of due process in the slightest demonstrates to me that our education system truly has failed as it has produced a nation of voting age adults who have no idea what the words "freedom", "liberty", "rights", or "critical thinking" mean. The government said it, you believed it.
It frustrates me so much that sometimes I just want to cry about where this country is going. In your eyes, that probably makes me an "America hater".
in a recent 'the Week' (theweekmagazine.com, a wonderful 'get the world news at a glance' publication), a survey of american highschool students said: (and i'm close, but not accurate, i cannot find the origional wording)
39% of high school americans believe the first ammendment is too vague, and the government should provide more regulation.
i will continue to try to find the article, but it's absurd. what kind of propoganda do they show the kids in highschool these days that makes (some/most of) them spineless apathetic boobs? is this really the future of america?
If you really want to talk about the Patriot Act, then let me be so bold as to suggest that even if it isn't being abused now it will eventually be abused and probably not even against terrorists. Recall how the RICO statures were intended to be used against organized crime. Nowadays the Feds will threaten RICO prosecutions against just about anybody to force a favorable plea or seek harsher sentences then the normal laws will provide.
just as an aside to you, William S. Cooper's 1991 book entitled 'behold a pale horse' has a chapter that goes into great lengths about FEMA and various other bits of (pending) federal regulations that are frighteningly similiar to our current day patriot act. the word PATRIOT appears many many times, i always found it interesting, especially when his thoughts and fears and whatnot about the 'coming legislation' and the conditions that will exist prior to a [he claims] 'new world order'. it's conspiracy hooplah, so take it at face value, but the similarities are uncanny.
i have an english mini sprite, and have been playing with the idea of putting a mac mini in it, except the it's too big for in-dash, under seats, or almost even in the trunk. my other option was to put a mini system in it: a 5" subwoofer with a 25w amp in a mini box, tiny speakers/tweaters... unfortunately the whole car runs on a 9V battery..
i'm not so sure why that was modded 'funny' but it was definately deserving of a +5...
i have 42 gigs (no hitchhikers joke, really right at 42) of mp3s and another 100 on a firewire drive full of tv episodes and movies and whatnot (a lot of which are backups of my dvd's and cd's and lots of obscure shit, out of print stuff, etc) that i NEVER share. i have a list, and if you erally really need something badly that i have, i will send it, but general p2p 'serving' is not something i do. been doing it with the bittorrent stuff recently, but that's mostly 'legal' stuff. when i dl something, i usually let it sit an hour or so after completed out of respect, kill emule, and bask in the excess upstream bandwidth i've been given back.
Most of the smaller labels out there don't seem to particularly care about file sharing. Century Media, which isn't that small, but isn't RIAA affiliated to the best of my knowledge doesn't do these kinds of suits. I guess it's because they're not so big that most of the people are just swiping free MP3s that they have no intention of buying. I have frequently downloaded metal MP3s and I go out and buy the real CD when I can find it.
i'd say that's mostly true, and is a good business model for labels trying to gain marketshare. the problem with the RIAA-sponsored/supported/supporting labels is they bank on the already existing popularity of an artists' name. when labels look at p2p as a distribution method or even just near free promotional stuff to spark interest in a band/etc...
i have a question, and IANAL... i worked at a record store for many years, and over those years was given many thousands of disc's and lp's marked as 'promotional'... the copyright notice on the front stated 'no for commercial distribution' (which when i asked a rep meant we can't sell it in the store), and the upc and spine were damanged. does this mean i can freely rip/encode those cd's and share them p2p becuase the ORIGIONAL is released under some seperate copyright rules used to give free promotional music to store clerks (or in-store play i think was the actual intent)... most of the stuff that is my my/mp3 folder is sourced in that method.
again, a great distribution model: instead of providing streaming audio on a label website, provide tracker links, and PUSH the technology to maybe put a copy of a mp3 on many many computers at once. if it's good (good being the operative) people will buy more... there is lots of good music on smaller labels that you've never heard, and deserve to be heard, at the very least.
http://higginsforpresident.net/warez/
i found alink like that on/. once, couldn't find it, and wrote up another one really quickly. some of the filenames are ridiculous, but you'd be suprised how often things get downloaded... i haven't yet recieved any C&D letters because of it, and don't really expect to, but will frame it and hang it in my bathroom if i ever get one.
is what i read out of that, but i disagree. my viao runs much more smoothly with xfce/xorg than the xp home that shipped with it... all my devices (including a 1394 and 802.11b pcmcia cards) were found/have support... there is serious headway being made my the various linux flavours in the way of desktop/laptop 'market share'... but i still only seriously use linux on computers without monitors, and have no real reason to go through the extra effort involved in tweaking xorg/xf86 to the point where my 'tv out just works' and my 'scroll wheel works predictabally'.
i will admit though, on my windows pc, i have a running vnc connection most all the time to a linux (xfce recently only blackbox) desktop, which in turn runs kmail, gkrellm, and anywhere between two and ten xterms, nothing else. but that's one of the advantages of a dual-head right, permenant full screen vnc session on the second?
*nix will always have an invaluable place on the server side of things, where the fancy anti-aliasing and shadings and fades mean nothing except wasted cycles. projects like samba (for example) provide for usefullness, and often times provide higher levels of security (typical 'more eyes' arguement)... and could argueablly be said to be 'enterprise' ready, and generally are more accepting of cross-platform communication.
blah blah blah
and now, as i read over the parents' post again (some english major pleeease correct me on how to use an 's s' whatever, i always forget), this should be modded -1 redundant, because: i agree. except the bit about cold sweats: i'd bet they both sleep fine. dropping from 35billion in worth the 32billion in worth really really hurts sometimes, but i don't think it's worth losing sleep over to them.
The fact is, these people were probably just curious about their application status. And the reason only those 119 probably checked theirs out was because they were the only ones that knew about it.
not to mention the already stressful act of waiting to find out of you are accepted or not. most of those kids would have JUMPED at the opportunity to end their agonizing wait.
I say all of this because I don't think there's a single thing we can do to prevent those outside our country from doing this over and over and over again.
the great firewall of america? filters out all outgoing fud. unfortunately,/. would then be inaccessable to the rest of the world.
that's what i'm thinking: match the contours of the piece, save what you can see on the front side, and when you finally get all the pieces in the db, it would automatically scale and fit and match colors to assemble the end puzzle (on the screen)... have it able to reprint guesses at missing pieces because there is always one.
parent is absolutely correct. i joke with my teacher friends saying they are 'grossly overpaid baby sitters'... a baby sitter (avg 15-17yr old girl something) makes what, $4/hr/child?
lets go low average of 20 pupils per class, and put it in a grade school setting with one teacher per block of kids, from 7:00 to 14:00, 200 days a year... and a *generous* salary of $35,000 annually.
math teaches us that: this particular hypothetical teacher makes $1.25 per hour per student and the babysitter under these conditions would make an annual salary of $112,000...
and now consider time not actually *teaching*, but 'working as a teacher' with 'no child left behind' in addition to the masses and masses of required paperwork (progress reports per parents request, state placements. special ed teachers have even more than that), and the teacher hourly rate drops even lower.
i'm curious how much of it is second-hand-spam (you submitted email, they sold it) vs. bot/spidering/harvesting (eg: wholly unsolicited email)...
i have a catch all tld i use to watch. signup like kjamez-slashdot@tld.com which comes to all the same box, so when i start getting unsolicited emails to kjamez-slashdot@tld.com from random people, i can at least see the origin to some degree. i do the same with magazine subscriptions and credit cards and the like. all slight variations on my real name, some even wholly ficticious.
Yes, but we also have thousands of people going into Starbucks every day to buy their over-priced coffee without giving a moment's thought to the coffee growers in Brazil/Africa/etc. It's one thing caring but it's only effective when the majority care...
but isn't that the entire point of 'direct positive action'? to make people care who would otherwise know nothing about it? fair trade coffee being a good example: i had none clue about what level of exploitation was taking place, but i loved some coffee. i moved to oregon, and i got handed a flyer, and now [do my best to] buy only fair trade coffee. their action cause a minor loss of sales to the opposing cause. i told other people about fair trade coffee... lather, rinse, repeat. if you stop activly campaigning for something, you are as apathetic towards the cause (if not moreso because of your knowledge) by failing to do anything about it.
It's the computer vendors selling the stuff per-installed and the corporates with the licensing deals that fill the Microsoft coffers...
who are in turn yet another corp, with a dropping bottom line. if Dell won't sell you a PC with a choice of operating system / bundled software, 'dude don't get a dell'. Your local pc shop may or may not offer you a better deal in that regards. Even if they charged the equilivent of the ms-tax to install/setup/secure your fedora install (not distro war, just example), i (as a concerned consumer) would gladly consider alternatives.
I'm all for direct positive action but the reality is most people just don't give a damn, I'm sorry to say.
not true. i believe it's lack of exposure. have you ever met a californian without a 'cause'? going back to coffee: stereotypically (and sometimes truely) tennessee'ans don't even know where coffee comes from, much less that this random company they've never heard of (i have one starbucks within 40 miles! beat that.) would be exploiting someone somewhere over it.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I've always thought it would be entertaining, if a store advertised (eg) "39.95 (in huge print) - after $30 and $50 rebates (in tiny print)" to go to the store, bringing exactly [......]
... he is 20. i tried to reason with them, but ended up just saying 'if i can't buy the beer then i don't want any of this, i'll go to another store' so someone at that store ended up putting back all my frozen goods and meats and everything.
walked out the door leaving the item there, and making lots of noise about it as I did so - the whold point being to A. force them to deal with an unhappy (lost) customer, B. have to carry the item back and put it on the shelf again, and C. call as much attention to I could (both to the store, as well as any other customers at the registers, etc) that they had lost a sale over the stupidity.
a little off topic, but i think that is a reasonable action for any poor customer service. I did it in the food store once. I [almost] bought $140us worth of food, and one single six pack of newcastle. I ran into a friend in line buying some chips or something, he was behind me, and because we were 'talking to one another' they needed to see his ID for me to purchase my beer
Am I just being a stubborn consumer or do others have a similar attitude?
i have a very similar attitude, mostly refusing the bother even taking the MIR form. i fully agree my thoughts on price don't reflect the MIR, and if i get it it is an added bonus.
Some years ago, however, i purchased two Samsung SyncMaster 151v's (15" lcds) at Bestbuy for $249.00 US/ea, which wasn't incredibly expensive for an lcd at the time, but came with $100 rebate on each. Fine print didn't mention 'one per household', and about six weeks later i went out and bought many many many drinks for many many people armed with my newly cashed $200 cheque.
Outside of that one experience, i have never recieved any other rebate, nor do i write down dates or photocopy anything as i generally just don't care, because we all know MIR are just a way for you to make you feel like you are spending less money at the time. it's the same reason we make everything $19.99 instead of $20- , it sound cheaper.
perhaps they will be cursed with another year of dupes and incorrect spelling...
india. /*
i am not lame.
i am not lame. */
or rather than complain about the dupes, keep scrolling down to the next headline. I didn't catch the origional article because i do things like go out in public and bathe, so i for one am thankful i got to read it. i miss quite a few articles in fact, and it's really not the end of the world. if i should happen to notice a dupe, i calmly keep scrolling thinking in my head "that sounds familiar, not of interest to me... " really, you all should try it rather than wasting extra keystrokes to complain about some free service.
Windows has gotten a lot more stable over the years.
less crashes, but not more 'stable' to me
i do, however, have a whole list of shortcoming with linux that i wish would be 'easier' to manage, but would force myself off topic were i to persure.
# SEE ID is not a valid signature
yes, but there is a valid signature on my ID along with a picture of myself.
# An unsigned card (blank signature line) is not a valid card.
my BOA card has my picutre and my signature printed on the front side as part of the face of the card, i see little use in signing the front and back and ID (as they are allegedly supposed to check).
or perhaps it would do a bunch of geeks some good to exert the physical energy required to lift 3 pounds and tilt/shake it. a little exercise never hurt anyone (well, i bet it *could*)
well you are ready for a exec position at microsoft with those ethics ... have you considered sending in your cv?
not if it's a 400meg windows update download. most people don't have cutting-edge xp pro sp2 boxes freshly installed, but rather old old variations on IE4|5 with their windows 98/me setups. people will only 'go back to it' if there are incessant warnings about insecure/outdated browser every time you run an alternative browser. sure it'll come shipped with 'new' computers (maybe wrapped up in longhorn the same way you can't remove ie6 from xp), but as long as there is a secure/better/standards-based alternative, the tech-savvy/conscious people will always find it, and will forever be preaching about the 'evils of microsoft internet explorer' getting people to switch one at a time.
... and if web developers would stick to the standards they are presented with (rahter than infesting pages with AX/javascript/flash) IE would simply render ugly pages, and people would either a) wonder why pages look so much better in firefox or b) MS would release a patch for IE to prioritize standards and then their proprietary foo afterwards, making pages again clean, but still leaving the (gaping security hole|extra features) that is 'ActiveX'.
... with some slight code modification, or perhaps even just an extension installed on each copy, to poll a single (local) server for settings changes and whatnot, (homepage, cookie settings, etc, etc) it could be deployed and managed with no problem.
if Dell or Compaq would ship firefox ALONG side with IE5/6/7 and name it that ("IE#" rather than "internet explorer") people would use it, and realize their IE-picture works more slowly and sometimes causes me "to call my tech, where the "red circle with blue" picture called "firefox" loads up quickly and i never get any popups"
that would take care of 'joe-sixpack'. problem is joe sixpack never even hears about the alternatives.
an earlier post mentioned firefox not considering the coporate market, and not being able to deploy firefox on a large scale
sp2's security center will report to me a popup saying 'you are not using a secure web browser' whenever firefox is running ...
even if you 'remove' IE from XP 'windows explorer' behaves just the same, and i've never ever been able to fully remove outlook from any xp machine.
i am curious why no one put up such a big stink over FEMA? has anyone read over what FEMA can do in the event of a 'national emergancy'? its really quite interesting.
The fact that you don't care about those human beings or their loss of due process in the slightest demonstrates to me that our education system truly has failed as it has produced a nation of voting age adults who have no idea what the words "freedom", "liberty", "rights", or "critical thinking" mean. The government said it, you believed it.
It frustrates me so much that sometimes I just want to cry about where this country is going. In your eyes, that probably makes me an "America hater".
in a recent 'the Week' (theweekmagazine.com, a wonderful 'get the world news at a glance' publication), a survey of american highschool students said: (and i'm close, but not accurate, i cannot find the origional wording)
39% of high school americans believe the first ammendment is too vague, and the government should provide more regulation.
i will continue to try to find the article, but it's absurd. what kind of propoganda do they show the kids in highschool these days that makes (some/most of) them spineless apathetic boobs? is this really the future of america?
If you really want to talk about the Patriot Act, then let me be so bold as to suggest that even if it isn't being abused now it will eventually be abused and probably not even against terrorists. Recall how the RICO statures were intended to be used against organized crime. Nowadays the Feds will threaten RICO prosecutions against just about anybody to force a favorable plea or seek harsher sentences then the normal laws will provide.
just as an aside to you, William S. Cooper's 1991 book entitled 'behold a pale horse' has a chapter that goes into great lengths about FEMA and various other bits of (pending) federal regulations that are frighteningly similiar to our current day patriot act. the word PATRIOT appears many many times, i always found it interesting, especially when his thoughts and fears and whatnot about the 'coming legislation' and the conditions that will exist prior to a [he claims] 'new world order'. it's conspiracy hooplah, so take it at face value, but the similarities are uncanny.
shuttle sk41 - $160 (with onboard everything)
40gig ide - $ 60
amd 1900+ mp - $125
512m pc3200 - $110
cheap dvdrom - $ 20
= $475
i have one under my television. the shuttle has one fan, and most of the noise is from the hard drive.
i have an english mini sprite, and have been playing with the idea of putting a mac mini in it, except the it's too big for in-dash, under seats, or almost even in the trunk. my other option was to put a mini system in it: a 5" subwoofer with a 25w amp in a mini box, tiny speakers/tweaters ... unfortunately the whole car runs on a 9V battery ..
i'm not so sure why that was modded 'funny' but it was definately deserving of a +5 ...
i have 42 gigs (no hitchhikers joke, really right at 42) of mp3s and another 100 on a firewire drive full of tv episodes and movies and whatnot (a lot of which are backups of my dvd's and cd's and lots of obscure shit, out of print stuff, etc) that i NEVER share. i have a list, and if you erally really need something badly that i have, i will send it, but general p2p 'serving' is not something i do. been doing it with the bittorrent stuff recently, but that's mostly 'legal' stuff. when i dl something, i usually let it sit an hour or so after completed out of respect, kill emule, and bask in the excess upstream bandwidth i've been given back.
you method is water-tight, keep using it.
Most of the smaller labels out there don't seem to particularly care about file sharing. Century Media, which isn't that small, but isn't RIAA affiliated to the best of my knowledge doesn't do these kinds of suits. I guess it's because they're not so big that most of the people are just swiping free MP3s that they have no intention of buying. I have frequently downloaded metal MP3s and I go out and buy the real CD when I can find it.
...
... i worked at a record store for many years, and over those years was given many thousands of disc's and lp's marked as 'promotional' ... the copyright notice on the front stated 'no for commercial distribution' (which when i asked a rep meant we can't sell it in the store), and the upc and spine were damanged. does this mean i can freely rip/encode those cd's and share them p2p becuase the ORIGIONAL is released under some seperate copyright rules used to give free promotional music to store clerks (or in-store play i think was the actual intent) ... most of the stuff that is my my /mp3 folder is sourced in that method.
... there is lots of good music on smaller labels that you've never heard, and deserve to be heard, at the very least.
/. once, couldn't find it, and wrote up another one really quickly. some of the filenames are ridiculous, but you'd be suprised how often things get downloaded ... i haven't yet recieved any C&D letters because of it, and don't really expect to, but will frame it and hang it in my bathroom if i ever get one.
i'd say that's mostly true, and is a good business model for labels trying to gain marketshare. the problem with the RIAA-sponsored/supported/supporting labels is they bank on the already existing popularity of an artists' name. when labels look at p2p as a distribution method or even just near free promotional stuff to spark interest in a band/etc
i have a question, and IANAL
again, a great distribution model: instead of providing streaming audio on a label website, provide tracker links, and PUSH the technology to maybe put a copy of a mp3 on many many computers at once. if it's good (good being the operative) people will buy more
http://higginsforpresident.net/warez/
i found alink like that on
... marketshare == desktop && laptop machines ...
... all my devices (including a 1394 and 802.11b pcmcia cards) were found/have support ... there is serious headway being made my the various linux flavours in the way of desktop/laptop 'market share' ... but i still only seriously use linux on computers without monitors, and have no real reason to go through the extra effort involved in tweaking xorg/xf86 to the point where my 'tv out just works' and my 'scroll wheel works predictabally'.
... and could argueablly be said to be 'enterprise' ready, and generally are more accepting of cross-platform communication.
is what i read out of that, but i disagree. my viao runs much more smoothly with xfce/xorg than the xp home that shipped with it
i will admit though, on my windows pc, i have a running vnc connection most all the time to a linux (xfce recently only blackbox) desktop, which in turn runs kmail, gkrellm, and anywhere between two and ten xterms, nothing else. but that's one of the advantages of a dual-head right, permenant full screen vnc session on the second?
*nix will always have an invaluable place on the server side of things, where the fancy anti-aliasing and shadings and fades mean nothing except wasted cycles. projects like samba (for example) provide for usefullness, and often times provide higher levels of security (typical 'more eyes' arguement)
blah blah blah
and now, as i read over the parents' post again (some english major pleeease correct me on how to use an 's s' whatever, i always forget), this should be modded -1 redundant, because: i agree. except the bit about cold sweats: i'd bet they both sleep fine. dropping from 35billion in worth the 32billion in worth really really hurts sometimes, but i don't think it's worth losing sleep over to them.
The fact is, these people were probably just curious about their application status. And the reason only those 119 probably checked theirs out was because they were the only ones that knew about it.
not to mention the already stressful act of waiting to find out of you are accepted or not. most of those kids would have JUMPED at the opportunity to end their agonizing wait.
I say all of this because I don't think there's a single thing we can do to prevent those outside our country from doing this over and over and over again.
/. would then be inaccessable to the rest of the world.
the great firewall of america? filters out all outgoing fud. unfortunately,
that's what i'm thinking: match the contours of the piece, save what you can see on the front side, and when you finally get all the pieces in the db, it would automatically scale and fit and match colors to assemble the end puzzle (on the screen) ... have it able to reprint guesses at missing pieces because there is always one.
parent is absolutely correct. i joke with my teacher friends saying they are 'grossly overpaid baby sitters' ... a baby sitter (avg 15-17yr old girl something) makes what, $4/hr/child?
... and a *generous* salary of $35,000 annually.
...
lets go low average of 20 pupils per class, and put it in a grade school setting with one teacher per block of kids, from 7:00 to 14:00, 200 days a year
math teaches us that:
this particular hypothetical teacher makes $1.25 per hour per student and the babysitter under these conditions would make an annual salary of $112,000
and now consider time not actually *teaching*, but 'working as a teacher' with 'no child left behind' in addition to the masses and masses of required paperwork (progress reports per parents request, state placements. special ed teachers have even more than that), and the teacher hourly rate drops even lower.
i'm curious how much of it is second-hand-spam (you submitted email, they sold it) vs. bot/spidering/harvesting (eg: wholly unsolicited email) ...
i have a catch all tld i use to watch. signup like kjamez-slashdot@tld.com which comes to all the same box, so when i start getting unsolicited emails to kjamez-slashdot@tld.com from random people, i can at least see the origin to some degree. i do the same with magazine subscriptions and credit cards and the like. all slight variations on my real name, some even wholly ficticious.
i'm just curious like that.
Yes, but we also have thousands of people going into Starbucks every day to buy their over-priced coffee without giving a moment's thought to the coffee growers in Brazil/Africa/etc. It's one thing caring but it's only effective when the majority care...
... lather, rinse, repeat. if you stop activly campaigning for something, you are as apathetic towards the cause (if not moreso because of your knowledge) by failing to do anything about it.
but isn't that the entire point of 'direct positive action'? to make people care who would otherwise know nothing about it? fair trade coffee being a good example: i had none clue about what level of exploitation was taking place, but i loved some coffee. i moved to oregon, and i got handed a flyer, and now [do my best to] buy only fair trade coffee. their action cause a minor loss of sales to the opposing cause. i told other people about fair trade coffee
It's the computer vendors selling the stuff per-installed and the corporates with the licensing deals that fill the Microsoft coffers...
who are in turn yet another corp, with a dropping bottom line. if Dell won't sell you a PC with a choice of operating system / bundled software, 'dude don't get a dell'. Your local pc shop may or may not offer you a better deal in that regards. Even if they charged the equilivent of the ms-tax to install/setup/secure your fedora install (not distro war, just example), i (as a concerned consumer) would gladly consider alternatives.
I'm all for direct positive action but the reality is most people just don't give a damn, I'm sorry to say.
not true. i believe it's lack of exposure. have you ever met a californian without a 'cause'? going back to coffee: stereotypically (and sometimes truely) tennessee'ans don't even know where coffee comes from, much less that this random company they've never heard of (i have one starbucks within 40 miles! beat that.) would be exploiting someone somewhere over it.