"Among those 13 courses of action is a proposal for a system that will allow users to `flag' content they believe to be illegal when surfing the web. These alarms would be sent for review to the service provider and in turn, a government agency."
And will the people doing this flagging be trained to know what is and what isn't illegal content? Didn't think so. I don't think the proponent of this idea has thought enough about the unintended consequences of such a capability.
``While Microsoft have modified their original position and all x86 Windows machines will be required to have a firmware option to disable this or to permit users to enrol their own keys, it's not really an option to force all our users to play with hard to find firmware settings before they can run Fedora.''
Uh, define ``hard to find''. Will vendors now make the means of accessing the firmware become something akin to playing Myst? Will the UEFI options be hidden to all who do not press F8 during some narrow and undocumented window? Will the options be worded so cryptically that end-users won't be able to decipher the settings?
I'm having trouble envisioning where all this difficulty is going to be encountered. I only see dual-booters as the ones having this trouble and, yeah, it would sucketh mightily to have to tweak firmware settings every time you wanted to boot to the other OS. Perhaps I don't see the problem since none of the systems I use are dual-booting. Most have ever even had Windows installed on them and, if they did, the Windows disks were reformatted long ago (i.e., 5+ years ago). Dual-booting is a kludge that I don't find necessary any more. Maybe I'm just lucky.
What's the Vegas line on when there will be a call by the more fanatical Linux proponents to shun Fedora like there has been for SuSE?
It was fairly common, some years ago, for people to use a widely known user login to read The New York Times web site without having to create an account yourself. What's to stop something like that from happening and allowing anonymous posts on NY-based web sites? It'll look like one extremely-well-travelled (based on the poster's IP address) "Joe Blow" has nothing better to do than post on tons of web sites from locations all over the world. (And "Joe" will appear to suffer from a major multiple personality disorder as he posts responses to his previous posts.)
... people working in a "homeland security" role seem to be either the most incompetent or the most corrupt people to ever draw breath? There's the recent report that the Federal DHS spent ludicrous amounts of money on crap that has either doesn't work or hasn't even been deployed and now this waste of money in WV. (And I swear that I've seen other reports of huge wastes of money reported earlier.) We probably won't have to wait long to find that most of the other 49 states have had just as outrageous or worse wastes of taxpayer's money.
... an extra 20 seconds for me to get a soda before the movie starts. If you look at these little warnings as nothing more than extra time to grab your snacks they're not that bad. They don't think I'm going to actually sit in front of the TV actually watching their propaganda, do they? I do agree with other posters that they are more than a little insulting. I've paid for the DVD so it's obvious that I'm not a member of the population who they should be aiming these 20 seconds at. Surely the studios doesn't expect me to go to work tomorrow and tell all my coworkers about the riveting anti-piracy messages I saw last night. Or are they really that dumb?
Sure extra junk like these messages are annoying but since they come at the beginning of the DVD before the actual feature begins, I find that they're pretty ignorable. The thing about the newer DVDs that really makes my blood boil is when you have to wait and wait and wait for a cursor move to be recognized while moving around the menus. The older DVDs that we own don't seem to impose these silly delays. Next on my list are the DVDs that seem to screw around with our players and turn on subtitles. Add to that those multisecond delays as you navigate through the menus to turn the darned things off and you're in a foul mood before the movie even begins.
I vote ``Yes''. I'm a bit tired of people who complain about Google returning `` 30 million hits in 0.013sec''. Nobody cares about anything but the first 2, maybe 3 pages (tops), of hits returned by Google. Google certainly wouldn't do themselves much harm if their responses were more like ``There were 30 links you might be interested. There were also 29,999,970 hits that you probably couldn't care less about. (Click [here] to see those if you've got nothing better to do.)''. (Maybe it's just me but if you're getting that many hits from a search, maybe your search parameters need to be narrower.)
I'm planning to upgrade all my Firefox browsers to V12 this weekend. If recent history is any indication, we can expect FF13 to be released sometime next week.
``but then you bring in a stereotypical one and it all crumbles.''
Instead of ``you bring in'' I think you meant to say ``the venture capitalists bring in''. The horror stories I've read all seem to involve a well-run company that the VCs want to grow larger. Of course, the VCs have a guy in mind to manage the company to the ``next level''. Unfortunately, once this guy takes charge things go downhill.
``...accidentally re-organize and re-name all the tools using bumbled into industry standard names...''
Which I assume you mean ``do things exactly like Photoshop''. That's what most people critical of the GIMP mean when they want something changed. (And, frankly, it's getting more than a little old.)
I'm not sure who should receive the bulk of our ire but I'm leaning toward being more angry at the DOE for awarding a prize to a company that didn't meet the requirements of the competition.
Dr. Peiser doesn't have the scientific background to judge whether Hansen's predictions are correct, incorrect, or somwhere in between. He says his "interests" are in climate change (among other things) but that doesn't mean he has anything of note to add to the debate. I suspect that most of his interest in climate change is that someone's paying him for the use of the "Dr." title he has. In his previous job, he was, apparently, a "sports historian". (Where does one study to obtain a degree in History of Gym?)
Eric von Daniken has an interest in certain topics involving space. That doesn't mean I should listen to his thoughts on space policy. von Daniken was working in a hotel when he wrote the book that made him famous. That's about par with making public noises about climate change while having a background in sports history.
As Deep Throat said: "Follow the money". There's big money (BIG money) behind the changes in public opinion about climate change.
"Several of the protesters stated that they fear for the the health of their families and that they refuse to live near wind turbines. Others fear that the value of their property will be reduced significantly by the presence of turbines. With the cost of gas and oil on its way up it's a wonder that any one would be against the use of renewable energy sources."
Ah... the triumph of all that money that the fossil fuel corporations have at their disposal to buy advertising that puts these crazy ideas into peoples' minds. More wind power means that the power utilities won't have to use as much fossil fuel to generate power which will cut into the oil/gas/coal industry's profits. So they're going to fight it as best they can. I'd bet that most of the FUD directed at autos like the Chevy Volt is being funded by these same fossil fuel companies.
... install Linux on a '486 system with a mere 16MB of RAM? I still recall how POed I was when I needed to borrow RAM frmo another system to install Red Hat because the new Anaconda required 32MB. (Because, you know, all that additional memory was required for that slide show showing you all the cool features that you were probably going to be too lazy to read about.)
You're right. I'd fallen asleep watching the movie and missed the credits. I remember rather looking forward to the movie after having the read the book and liked it (and me not being much of a murder mystery fan was surprised by that) but I found the movie to be bo-r-ring. And those accents. Jeez.
Maybe it's not "fantasy" enough for this discussion but I didn't find Bob Hoskins' accent in Gorki Park all that "exotic". Laugh-inducing was more like it since he was supposed to be a Russian thug and came off sounding like he was doing a bad Michael Caine impersonation. In fact, all the actors seemed to have been picked for their inability to speak in a passable Eastern European accent.
- cassette deck sounds -- I don't remember how one of sounded. Except for, maybe, the sound the door made when you closed it.
- a record after finishing, with the stylus stuck at the end. -- Even more missed is the records that recorded some repetitive music or sounds right into the end so that leaving the stylus on the record provided you endless hours of entertainment.
- the slap-slap-slap of tapes when the reel finished -- Still have one of those (an old Teac) but I haven't had it connected to the stereo for years.
- the winding of a film camera -- Still have one of those, too. Haven't used it for a couple of years.
- the sound of a Dunhill lighter -- Does the sound of a Zippo lighter cover flipping open and closed count?
- manual pencil sharpeners -- I recall that, not too long ago, when I was at the office supply store you could still buy those.
- whistle of a tea kettle -- The only civilized way to heat water for tea is to use a whistling kettle. (We have two.)
- the bell of wind-up alarm clocks -- Still use one of those when I'm traveling. (Missed one too many wake-up calls from the hotel.)
- the sounds of non-computerized pinball machines -- I have friends that collect those. Much prefer the sound of real bells over the synthesized noise that more recent machines produce.
- hammond organs -- Ah... there's nothing like the sound of a B3 playing through Leslie speaker cabinets.
- kids playing with cork pop guns -- I remember having one of those when I was really young. I can't recall what they sounded like, though. Now the sound of my air rifle is a fond memory. (Probably have the cops descending on you if your kids played with one of those nowadays.)
- "Houston, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed." -- Heard that "live" in my uncle's living room. A few years ago I stood behind some teenagers at a museum where the training LEM was on display and listened to them going back and forth not knowing what "that thing" was. Sad.
So he owns the U.S. trademark. What standing does he have to hassle someone in England over the word "hobbit"?
This jerk's right up there with McDonald's, Inc. suing a Scottish family named McDonald to stop them from calling their pub "McDonald's".
I've seen photos of a fire extinguisher brand name "UNIX" (from Spain if memory serves). Did AT&T go and sue them? There's the famous vacuum cleaner VAX for sale over in England. Did DEC sue them?
"C'mon - you people that want strict functional naming schemes are missing the point. Names are supposed to be for humans. We have all kinds of ways of associating names with functionality."
I agree. Strict functional naming conventions come with their own problems. For example, I just had to re-read for the umptyumpth time, the multiple re-sent emails, wiki pages, and web pages containing the corporate warnings about making sure you're logged into the correct server before executing changes. It seems that the policy of having systems assigned names like "mxyzptlkvm001" and "mxyzptlkvm010", etc., isn't as useful as someone originally thought. (Quick! Which one's the production database server and which one is the test web server?) Sure... it makes figuring out what to name a system easier -- just pick the next number in the sequence -- but administrators and users can't remember where their applications and data live and a simple typo can get you connected to the wrong system without your even realizing it. I'm fortunate enough to be working (primarily) with some systems that were named before the new corporate standard naming convention was put into place and I have no problem knowing what system I'm working on. But, man, my eyes just glaze over when I have to wade through a list of the nearly-identically named systems built after the naming convention mandate.
...I began hitting more and more web sites that wouldn't render properly with Firefox 3.6.x. I finally got fed up with it and upgraded -- in quick succession -- to FF8.x, then 9.x, and finally 10.x. For those of you eagerly awaiting FF10.0.3, please be patient. It'll be released the day after I upgrade to FF 10.0.2.
Slashdot Mirror
And will the people doing this flagging be trained to know what is and what isn't illegal content? Didn't think so. I don't think the proponent of this idea has thought enough about the unintended consequences of such a capability.
Uh, define ``hard to find''. Will vendors now make the means of accessing the firmware become something akin to playing Myst? Will the UEFI options be hidden to all who do not press F8 during some narrow and undocumented window? Will the options be worded so cryptically that end-users won't be able to decipher the settings?
I'm having trouble envisioning where all this difficulty is going to be encountered. I only see dual-booters as the ones having this trouble and, yeah, it would sucketh mightily to have to tweak firmware settings every time you wanted to boot to the other OS. Perhaps I don't see the problem since none of the systems I use are dual-booting. Most have ever even had Windows installed on them and, if they did, the Windows disks were reformatted long ago (i.e., 5+ years ago). Dual-booting is a kludge that I don't find necessary any more. Maybe I'm just lucky.
What's the Vegas line on when there will be a call by the more fanatical Linux proponents to shun Fedora like there has been for SuSE?
What does one study in the Kibo laboratory? The effects of bozons on astronauts?
I was thinking the same thing.
It was fairly common, some years ago, for people to use a widely known user login to read The New York Times web site without having to create an account yourself. What's to stop something like that from happening and allowing anonymous posts on NY-based web sites? It'll look like one extremely-well-travelled (based on the poster's IP address) "Joe Blow" has nothing better to do than post on tons of web sites from locations all over the world. (And "Joe" will appear to suffer from a major multiple personality disorder as he posts responses to his previous posts.)
... people working in a "homeland security" role seem to be either the most incompetent or the most corrupt people to ever draw breath? There's the recent report that the Federal DHS spent ludicrous amounts of money on crap that has either doesn't work or hasn't even been deployed and now this waste of money in WV. (And I swear that I've seen other reports of huge wastes of money reported earlier.) We probably won't have to wait long to find that most of the other 49 states have had just as outrageous or worse wastes of taxpayer's money.
... an extra 20 seconds for me to get a soda before the movie starts. If you look at these little warnings as nothing more than extra time to grab your snacks they're not that bad. They don't think I'm going to actually sit in front of the TV actually watching their propaganda, do they? I do agree with other posters that they are more than a little insulting. I've paid for the DVD so it's obvious that I'm not a member of the population who they should be aiming these 20 seconds at. Surely the studios doesn't expect me to go to work tomorrow and tell all my coworkers about the riveting anti-piracy messages I saw last night. Or are they really that dumb?
Sure extra junk like these messages are annoying but since they come at the beginning of the DVD before the actual feature begins, I find that they're pretty ignorable. The thing about the newer DVDs that really makes my blood boil is when you have to wait and wait and wait for a cursor move to be recognized while moving around the menus. The older DVDs that we own don't seem to impose these silly delays. Next on my list are the DVDs that seem to screw around with our players and turn on subtitles. Add to that those multisecond delays as you navigate through the menus to turn the darned things off and you're in a foul mood before the movie even begins.
Not at McDonald's.
(I don't consider that a ``restaurant'', though. I'm guessing the grandparent poster does.)
I vote ``Yes''. I'm a bit tired of people who complain about Google returning `` 30 million hits in 0.013sec''. Nobody cares about anything but the first 2, maybe 3 pages (tops), of hits returned by Google. Google certainly wouldn't do themselves much harm if their responses were more like ``There were 30 links you might be interested. There were also 29,999,970 hits that you probably couldn't care less about. (Click [here] to see those if you've got nothing better to do.)''. (Maybe it's just me but if you're getting that many hits from a search, maybe your search parameters need to be narrower.)
You'd think he was being paid by the comma.
Heads up everyone!
I'm planning to upgrade all my Firefox browsers to V12 this weekend. If recent history is any indication, we can expect FF13 to be released sometime next week.
Instead of ``you bring in'' I think you meant to say ``the venture capitalists bring in''. The horror stories I've read all seem to involve a well-run company that the VCs want to grow larger. Of course, the VCs have a guy in mind to manage the company to the ``next level''. Unfortunately, once this guy takes charge things go downhill.
Which I assume you mean ``do things exactly like Photoshop''. That's what most people critical of the GIMP mean when they want something changed. (And, frankly, it's getting more than a little old.)
I'm not sure who should receive the bulk of our ire but I'm leaning toward being more angry at the DOE for awarding a prize to a company that didn't meet the requirements of the competition.
... two very important facts: 1.) There is a club and 2.) He's not in it.
Dr. Peiser doesn't have the scientific background to judge whether Hansen's predictions are correct, incorrect, or somwhere in between. He says his "interests" are in climate change (among other things) but that doesn't mean he has anything of note to add to the debate. I suspect that most of his interest in climate change is that someone's paying him for the use of the "Dr." title he has. In his previous job, he was, apparently, a "sports historian". (Where does one study to obtain a degree in History of Gym?)
Eric von Daniken has an interest in certain topics involving space. That doesn't mean I should listen to his thoughts on space policy. von Daniken was working in a hotel when he wrote the book that made him famous. That's about par with making public noises about climate change while having a background in sports history.
As Deep Throat said: "Follow the money". There's big money (BIG money) behind the changes in public opinion about climate change.
Ah... the triumph of all that money that the fossil fuel corporations have at their disposal to buy advertising that puts these crazy ideas into peoples' minds. More wind power means that the power utilities won't have to use as much fossil fuel to generate power which will cut into the oil/gas/coal industry's profits. So they're going to fight it as best they can. I'd bet that most of the FUD directed at autos like the Chevy Volt is being funded by these same fossil fuel companies.
... install Linux on a '486 system with a mere 16MB of RAM? I still recall how POed I was when I needed to borrow RAM frmo another system to install Red Hat because the new Anaconda required 32MB. (Because, you know, all that additional memory was required for that slide show showing you all the cool features that you were probably going to be too lazy to read about.)
You're right. I'd fallen asleep watching the movie and missed the credits. I remember rather looking forward to the movie after having the read the book and liked it (and me not being much of a murder mystery fan was surprised by that) but I found the movie to be bo-r-ring. And those accents. Jeez.
Maybe it's not "fantasy" enough for this discussion but I didn't find Bob Hoskins' accent in Gorki Park all that "exotic". Laugh-inducing was more like it since he was supposed to be a Russian thug and came off sounding like he was doing a bad Michael Caine impersonation. In fact, all the actors seemed to have been picked for their inability to speak in a passable Eastern European accent.
Uh... ever hear of ALEC?
Insulting the winners of a shooting competition. I suggest doing just a little bit more research before next year's event.
- cassette deck sounds -- I don't remember how one of sounded. Except for, maybe, the sound the door made when you closed it.
- a record after finishing, with the stylus stuck at the end. -- Even more missed is the records that recorded some repetitive music or sounds right into the end so that leaving the stylus on the record provided you endless hours of entertainment.
- the slap-slap-slap of tapes when the reel finished -- Still have one of those (an old Teac) but I haven't had it connected to the stereo for years.
- the winding of a film camera -- Still have one of those, too. Haven't used it for a couple of years.
- the sound of a Dunhill lighter -- Does the sound of a Zippo lighter cover flipping open and closed count?
- manual pencil sharpeners -- I recall that, not too long ago, when I was at the office supply store you could still buy those.
- whistle of a tea kettle -- The only civilized way to heat water for tea is to use a whistling kettle. (We have two.)
- the bell of wind-up alarm clocks -- Still use one of those when I'm traveling. (Missed one too many wake-up calls from the hotel.)
- the sounds of non-computerized pinball machines -- I have friends that collect those. Much prefer the sound of real bells over the synthesized noise that more recent machines produce.
- hammond organs -- Ah... there's nothing like the sound of a B3 playing through Leslie speaker cabinets.
- kids playing with cork pop guns -- I remember having one of those when I was really young. I can't recall what they sounded like, though. Now the sound of my air rifle is a fond memory. (Probably have the cops descending on you if your kids played with one of those nowadays.)
- "Houston, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed." -- Heard that "live" in my uncle's living room. A few years ago I stood behind some teenagers at a museum where the training LEM was on display and listened to them going back and forth not knowing what "that thing" was. Sad.
So he owns the U.S. trademark. What standing does he have to hassle someone in England over the word "hobbit"? This jerk's right up there with McDonald's, Inc. suing a Scottish family named McDonald to stop them from calling their pub "McDonald's". I've seen photos of a fire extinguisher brand name "UNIX" (from Spain if memory serves). Did AT&T go and sue them? There's the famous vacuum cleaner VAX for sale over in England. Did DEC sue them?
I agree. Strict functional naming conventions come with their own problems. For example, I just had to re-read for the umptyumpth time, the multiple re-sent emails, wiki pages, and web pages containing the corporate warnings about making sure you're logged into the correct server before executing changes. It seems that the policy of having systems assigned names like "mxyzptlkvm001" and "mxyzptlkvm010", etc., isn't as useful as someone originally thought. (Quick! Which one's the production database server and which one is the test web server?) Sure... it makes figuring out what to name a system easier -- just pick the next number in the sequence -- but administrators and users can't remember where their applications and data live and a simple typo can get you connected to the wrong system without your even realizing it. I'm fortunate enough to be working (primarily) with some systems that were named before the new corporate standard naming convention was put into place and I have no problem knowing what system I'm working on. But, man, my eyes just glaze over when I have to wade through a list of the nearly-identically named systems built after the naming convention mandate.
...I began hitting more and more web sites that wouldn't render properly with Firefox 3.6.x. I finally got fed up with it and upgraded -- in quick succession -- to FF8.x, then 9.x, and finally 10.x. For those of you eagerly awaiting FF10.0.3, please be patient. It'll be released the day after I upgrade to FF 10.0.2.