I've been occasionally kicking around the idea of setting up a website that shows how much of a tangent the ads are skewed from the real thing these days. I was thinking about putting up a picture of the ad right next to an equally-arranged picture of the real thing... I wonder if this would be of any interest?
Who knows it could connect to a medical diagnostic database.
Ah, yet another vision of the future which will never come to be (like flying cars). And who's going to pay for access to this database? It's not going to sit online for free, consuming hundreds if not thousands of watts of power and kilo/megabits of bandwidth in some rack somewhere.
Didn't the late 90s show that the 'net can *not* provide useful, reliable information, for free? Sometimes you can find an online source which fits two of those three, but most of the time it's only one.
There's no financial incentive to making the masses smarter. As a matter of fact, I'm sure some large-corporate executives would find it in their best interests that the public remain as ignorant as possible, so they won't be aware of what they're buying, eating, smelling in the water, etc.
That's all and good except your ISP has already cut you off because it's easier for them to cut off one customer than being the middleman in a legal battle.
Taking a chick to a movie, buying popcorn and everything comes to $20+. And thats 3 hours of entertainment tops. WC3 is months of entertainment, at least. Isn't it worth the money?
Yeah, but the date at least has a marginal chance of resulting in your spreading your genetic material on to future generations, which is basically the whole reason we're here in the first place...;-)
What about in a restaurant? If the person doesn't like the food, should they be able to just up and leave, telling the waiter on the way out that they didn't like the food, so they shouldn't have to pay for it?
That's ridiculous. For one thing, a restaurant actually loses something if that customer doesn't pay, while the software company doesn't. They also provided personal service to the customers, whereas a warez obtainer does all of the work hirself.
Not all analogies work out, espeically when it comes to the difference between the tangible, physical world, and the intangible world of data. And I think THAT is the reason why we're going to be screwed by politicians and lobbyists who use bad analogies against the computer-enthusiast society.
I understand how they figure that companies "lose money" whenever they're software is pirated. But do they figure into those billions of lost dollars statements like the one above? Seems to me it's hard to find out just how much money the software companies are really losing because not all people who pirate their software are people who would ever pay for it.
Is there a term for this? If not, someone must invent one. It must be a fairly unique word which is distinct enough to make it clear that companies do not lose money to people who would never have bought something in the first place. It seems like lately this concept has been explained over and over (software, mp3s, movies, etc), but until we label it, it will never sink in.
I will concede that a portion of the people would have purchased it if there were no piracy, but there has to be a stop to this incessant and inane meme that, for example, one million users illegally downloading software "X", valued at $100 per copy is not a net loss to the company of 100 million dollars - maybe one million, maybe five million, maybe ten million - but no way in hell 100% of the people who copied the software would have bought it if piracy never existed.
I agree with this post. If anything needs to be called the "Digital Dark Ages", it's what's about to come as a result of legislation from Senator Hollings of Disney, the MPAA, the RIAA, and Microsoft Palladium.
I know the trouble it is to get my system back up to speed after re-installing windows. I can't imagine if I have to go through whatever hurdles will be necessary to re-authenticate my license to dozens of various applications, and hundreds or thousands of media files. And when was the last time any customer database system ever worked perfectly. I have a feeling at least one out of a hundred people will get "lost" in the system and will have to be re-issued new authentication tokens, and will have to re-apply for the license to all of their software. Ugh.
Actually, I'm hoping for the opposite: that our 3D algorithms keep up with the CPU speed increases. Imagine if you could turn the realisim up even higher, to such a degree that you get even more realistic images/animations (with a detailed physics model), at the cost of taking all night or an eight hour workday to render on a 2Ghz machine.
I don't count hydro, as this usually comes from a dam that disrupted local flora/fauna
[As Homer Simpson, sarcastically]
Ooooh.. disrupt the local flooora and fauuuna? Oh, we wouldn't want to do that now would we!
[Proceeds to do donuts in his 10gpm-guzzling Canynero, in a bright grassy meadow, as the wildlife disperses in a chaotic manner]
All kidding aside, give me a break. I'm all for conservation, but if damming up a river as an alternative to burning oil, gas, or coal and filling the air with millions of tons of crap isn't considered an alternative (aka newable and clean) form of energy, then you need to take your flora and fauna with you to keep them safe on your next trip to fantasyland.
Tell me about it. When I got Morrowind, I first got a GForce4, but that seemed to have trouble with my existing system, so I decided to go ahead and get a new system. So I upgraded from a 1Ghz Athlon to an Athlon 2000+, new case, *8* fans, DDR memory, and since the A7V333 supported simple hardware raid, I bought two 80G drives and reinstalled Win2K on it, all for one game:)
I had two ATI All-In-Wonder cards, and I finally abandoned them when I got tired of constantly hearing about bugfixes coming "soon" that never came. That, and I really hated their application software for TV and video capture. I hate overdone metaphor GUI's.
I wonder if we had a portable way to monitor our blood sugar, triglycerides, and cholesterol if that would help a lot with this diet plan. Imagine if you could check these at least once a day and graph them, they might be encouraging enough to help you follow healthy food intake practices, and probably contribute a lot of information if everyone contributed their numbers and corresponding habits to a knowledge base.
Some people have more efficient mitochondria than others (or have more of them).
This "mitochondria" sounds like a good thing. Where can I get more!?
Seriously though, I have thought this for a long time, assuming I have a very low count (or inefficient) mitochondria, as both myself and my mom and my siblings are always tired all the time, but my dad seems to be able to get by on 4 hours sleep every night, and has been for as long as I can remember. Since the father has no contribution to the child's mitochondria, this makes sense in my family's situation. I just wish there were a way to teach my cells to "grow" some extra mitochondria.:)
I quit caffeine right about the same time I started on provigil, and I don't really recall suffering any bad side effects, other than a very mild headache at night as the provigil started to wear off.
I've been considering a low-carb diet even before I found out (just yesterday, coincidentally enough) that my Triglycerides are over 1000. I'm not horribly obese; I'm 26 years old, 5'10", 240lbs, but I do eat a lot of cereal and pasta.
I have a family history of diabetes, but I've been tested for that with a blood glucose tolerance test and that came back negative for diabetes. I just got perscribed a medication called Tricor for the high triglycerides, but there's not a whole lot of information on the 'net about it, which makes me kind of uneasy about taking it.
I think a lot of what was said in this article makes sense. We've been so crazed about low-fat foods that now everything's pumped up with complex sugars to make them still taste good, and it had the opposite effect of what was intended. Type II diabetes is constantly rising, the number of obese people is rising, all starting about the time these low-fat guidelines began.
I think with most things in life, moderation is the most important thing to keep in mind. Most people are too polarized in their thought, they can't see the grey areas. These people find it easier to either completely eliminate something from their lives, or go at it obsessively.
It's a bit sobering to me to realize I have a gram of fat per dL floating freely in my bloodstream, so I'm probably going to cut down significantly on my carbs, but I know you have to behave like a freak to eliminate them completely, so I will still eat the bun with my hamburger, but I may skip over the fries.
If anyone else has any experience with Tricor, I'd appreciate your comments...
Re:Smart Move for Ebay, bad for paypal people.
on
Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 2
I've been wondering why PayPal hasn't taken the leadership role in online micropayments. I suppose some websites have dontation boxes where you can toss them 25 cents or a dollar, where that almost works like micropayments, but I'd really like to see someone start to use micropayments to keep some sites alive.
I can sort of understand why Microsoft want to do this, reduction of support costs, push to get people to move over to a largely unsucessfully taken up OS
Most companies would get their customers to move up to the latest OS by lowering the price; MS *never* lowers the price of their software, hence they have to use gun-in-the-ribs methods. Just look at a copy of Windows 98 on the shelf, it's still $89. Prices are supposed to go down with time for older products. They don't with MS.
Yeah, this reminds me of that commercial about some long-life battery, where it shows a whole football-sized stadium of people using flash cameras, and all but one stop working (becuase that one has such-and-such long-life battery). I kept thinking about how moronic that commercial was.
I've also often seen people try to take flash pictures of things through glass, while taking the picture perpendicular to the plane of the glass.
Somebody in this thread estimated 70%, but I think that person forgot about Sturgeon's Law.
I wonder what would come out of an "AOLice" Bot? I'm sure the conversations would go on for much longer, and reveal even more juicy details about the victim's lives:)
The problem I've had with non-qwerty keyboards is that unix seems to be designed for qwerty, as you'll notice most of the common commands (ls, ps, pwd, cd) seem to be fairly "comfortable" to type, whereas when I was playing around with using dvorak once for a few weeks, it just felt much more awkward to type unix commands.
I'm figuring that not only will this kind of software allow people to get around censorship, but wouldn't it also create a P2P-style anonymizer? This would pretty much make logging of user activity useless for criminal investigations. Would the "host" of a benevolent node on this network be liable for illegal activity that was routed through hir machine?
I've always had a bit of that sort of sentimentality about inanimate objects and I've wondered if there was a name for it.
I've been trying to be better about not thinking of things that way, mostly because most people (in American anyway) don't seem to think that way, and tend to just abuse their belongings until it's time to chuck it in the trash and get a new one.
I hate to throw things away, so I've become quite a packrat sometimes. Lately I notice the best solution is to give things away, as it eases my anxiety about throwing away something which has "served me well", but is no longer useful enough to me for me to keep it around.
Thanks for sharing... I'll have to look more into this, though it's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way:)
Most users would see more of a performance increase by purchasing an 80GB IDE drive and buying ooh-gobs of RAM with the savings.
That comment makes me wonder why drives and/or controllers don't come with one or two SIMM/DIMM slots? Can you imagine the speed increase you'd get if you could add 256MB of memory to a drive's cache for $60 or so?
Slashdot Mirror
I've been occasionally kicking around the idea of setting up a website that shows how much of a tangent the ads are skewed from the real thing these days. I was thinking about putting up a picture of the ad right next to an equally-arranged picture of the real thing... I wonder if this would be of any interest?
Ah, yet another vision of the future which will never come to be (like flying cars). And who's going to pay for access to this database? It's not going to sit online for free, consuming hundreds if not thousands of watts of power and kilo/megabits of bandwidth in some rack somewhere.
Didn't the late 90s show that the 'net can *not* provide useful, reliable information, for free? Sometimes you can find an online source which fits two of those three, but most of the time it's only one.
There's no financial incentive to making the masses smarter. As a matter of fact, I'm sure some large-corporate executives would find it in their best interests that the public remain as ignorant as possible, so they won't be aware of what they're buying, eating, smelling in the water, etc.
That's all and good except your ISP has already cut you off because it's easier for them to cut off one customer than being the middleman in a legal battle.
Hmm.. I wonder if a parallel array of Marx Generators might come in handy in these gauss gun experiments...
Yeah, but the date at least has a marginal chance of resulting in your spreading your genetic material on to future generations, which is basically the whole reason we're here in the first place... ;-)
That's ridiculous. For one thing, a restaurant actually loses something if that customer doesn't pay, while the software company doesn't. They also provided personal service to the customers, whereas a warez obtainer does all of the work hirself.
Not all analogies work out, espeically when it comes to the difference between the tangible, physical world, and the intangible world of data. And I think THAT is the reason why we're going to be screwed by politicians and lobbyists who use bad analogies against the computer-enthusiast society.
Is there a term for this? If not, someone must invent one. It must be a fairly unique word which is distinct enough to make it clear that companies do not lose money to people who would never have bought something in the first place. It seems like lately this concept has been explained over and over (software, mp3s, movies, etc), but until we label it, it will never sink in.
I will concede that a portion of the people would have purchased it if there were no piracy, but there has to be a stop to this incessant and inane meme that, for example, one million users illegally downloading software "X", valued at $100 per copy is not a net loss to the company of 100 million dollars - maybe one million, maybe five million, maybe ten million - but no way in hell 100% of the people who copied the software would have bought it if piracy never existed.
DIE MEME DIE!
I know the trouble it is to get my system back up to speed after re-installing windows. I can't imagine if I have to go through whatever hurdles will be necessary to re-authenticate my license to dozens of various applications, and hundreds or thousands of media files. And when was the last time any customer database system ever worked perfectly. I have a feeling at least one out of a hundred people will get "lost" in the system and will have to be re-issued new authentication tokens, and will have to re-apply for the license to all of their software. Ugh.
Actually, I'm hoping for the opposite: that our 3D algorithms keep up with the CPU speed increases. Imagine if you could turn the realisim up even higher, to such a degree that you get even more realistic images/animations (with a detailed physics model), at the cost of taking all night or an eight hour workday to render on a 2Ghz machine.
[As Homer Simpson, sarcastically]
Ooooh.. disrupt the local flooora and fauuuna? Oh, we wouldn't want to do that now would we!
[Proceeds to do donuts in his 10gpm-guzzling Canynero, in a bright grassy meadow, as the wildlife disperses in a chaotic manner]
All kidding aside, give me a break. I'm all for conservation, but if damming up a river as an alternative to burning oil, gas, or coal and filling the air with millions of tons of crap isn't considered an alternative (aka newable and clean) form of energy, then you need to take your flora and fauna with you to keep them safe on your next trip to fantasyland.
I had two ATI All-In-Wonder cards, and I finally abandoned them when I got tired of constantly hearing about bugfixes coming "soon" that never came. That, and I really hated their application software for TV and video capture. I hate overdone metaphor GUI's.
I wonder if we had a portable way to monitor our blood sugar, triglycerides, and cholesterol if that would help a lot with this diet plan. Imagine if you could check these at least once a day and graph them, they might be encouraging enough to help you follow healthy food intake practices, and probably contribute a lot of information if everyone contributed their numbers and corresponding habits to a knowledge base.
This "mitochondria" sounds like a good thing. Where can I get more!?
Seriously though, I have thought this for a long time, assuming I have a very low count (or inefficient) mitochondria, as both myself and my mom and my siblings are always tired all the time, but my dad seems to be able to get by on 4 hours sleep every night, and has been for as long as I can remember. Since the father has no contribution to the child's mitochondria, this makes sense in my family's situation. I just wish there were a way to teach my cells to "grow" some extra mitochondria. :)
I quit caffeine right about the same time I started on provigil, and I don't really recall suffering any bad side effects, other than a very mild headache at night as the provigil started to wear off.
I have a family history of diabetes, but I've been tested for that with a blood glucose tolerance test and that came back negative for diabetes. I just got perscribed a medication called Tricor for the high triglycerides, but there's not a whole lot of information on the 'net about it, which makes me kind of uneasy about taking it.
I think a lot of what was said in this article makes sense. We've been so crazed about low-fat foods that now everything's pumped up with complex sugars to make them still taste good, and it had the opposite effect of what was intended. Type II diabetes is constantly rising, the number of obese people is rising, all starting about the time these low-fat guidelines began.
I think with most things in life, moderation is the most important thing to keep in mind. Most people are too polarized in their thought, they can't see the grey areas. These people find it easier to either completely eliminate something from their lives, or go at it obsessively.
It's a bit sobering to me to realize I have a gram of fat per dL floating freely in my bloodstream, so I'm probably going to cut down significantly on my carbs, but I know you have to behave like a freak to eliminate them completely, so I will still eat the bun with my hamburger, but I may skip over the fries.
If anyone else has any experience with Tricor, I'd appreciate your comments...
I've been wondering why PayPal hasn't taken the leadership role in online micropayments. I suppose some websites have dontation boxes where you can toss them 25 cents or a dollar, where that almost works like micropayments, but I'd really like to see someone start to use micropayments to keep some sites alive.
Most companies would get their customers to move up to the latest OS by lowering the price; MS *never* lowers the price of their software, hence they have to use gun-in-the-ribs methods. Just look at a copy of Windows 98 on the shelf, it's still $89. Prices are supposed to go down with time for older products. They don't with MS.
I've also often seen people try to take flash pictures of things through glass, while taking the picture perpendicular to the plane of the glass.
Somebody in this thread estimated 70%, but I think that person forgot about Sturgeon's Law.
I wonder what would come out of an "AOLice" Bot? I'm sure the conversations would go on for much longer, and reveal even more juicy details about the victim's lives :)
The problem I've had with non-qwerty keyboards is that unix seems to be designed for qwerty, as you'll notice most of the common commands (ls, ps, pwd, cd) seem to be fairly "comfortable" to type, whereas when I was playing around with using dvorak once for a few weeks, it just felt much more awkward to type unix commands.
I'm figuring that not only will this kind of software allow people to get around censorship, but wouldn't it also create a P2P-style anonymizer? This would pretty much make logging of user activity useless for criminal investigations. Would the "host" of a benevolent node on this network be liable for illegal activity that was routed through hir machine?
I've been trying to be better about not thinking of things that way, mostly because most people (in American anyway) don't seem to think that way, and tend to just abuse their belongings until it's time to chuck it in the trash and get a new one.
I hate to throw things away, so I've become quite a packrat sometimes. Lately I notice the best solution is to give things away, as it eases my anxiety about throwing away something which has "served me well", but is no longer useful enough to me for me to keep it around.
Thanks for sharing... I'll have to look more into this, though it's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way :)
I remember on the Amiga, I once got the error: "Please insert disk into drive DH0:". Ah those were the days. :)
That comment makes me wonder why drives and/or controllers don't come with one or two SIMM/DIMM slots? Can you imagine the speed increase you'd get if you could add 256MB of memory to a drive's cache for $60 or so?