My opinion will probably be an unpopular one on Slashdot, but a job's a job. There should be an impartiality regulator in all goernments, something of an Inquisition who can thoroughly investigate the lives, private and public, of high level government employees. I understand the recording industry and actual careers like law are more than a little different, but just because someone has been working for McDonalds for a few years doesn't mean they're going to go work for KFC and actively sabotage them. In practice, in the US, officials with this background have proven time and time again they are NOT impartial, but all people have the right to quit one job and work somewhere else. Everyone here treats a recording industry job like the slaver tatoo in Fallout 2. A permanent black mark that everyone will recognise on sight.
I don't mean to say we shouldn't care where our officials come from, by all means be wary, but not everyone is going to be evil (I think that may be the biggest compliment I've ever paid anyone).
That explains the poor performances better than just faking users. They're actors and all the jobs selling deoderant and feminine hygiene products are taken by people with sightly more talent (but not so much as to be regulars on a soap...), so they actually ARE telling real life stories of their jobs!
This is probably blasphemy to a lot of/.ers, but the new seasons, 2005 onwards, are alright. Good a place as any to start. I've been meaning to go back and watch the whole Trial of a Timelord season, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Of course, I'll probably be alone in this opinion since this is apparently the same planet where people think wifi gives them rashes... Imagine telling one of those people to live next door to a nuclear plant!
Without an earthquake (one of the biggest in recorded history, I might add) to disrupt the reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi plant could have continued happily along with no major problems. Good time to be somewhere else, granted, but this is hardly a disaster yet. As long as non-essential personnel get the hell out of there, and as long as they either get the reaction under control or start taking steps now to contain a meltdown, there should be no major issues. A bit of contamination, but Hiroshima AND Chernobyl are both relatively safe, compared to what nuclear doomsayers would have us believe about the lasting effects. Yes, I know the halflife of Plutonium is somewhere up around forty thousand years (give or take), but Plutonium won't comprise the majority of the contamination. Most of the decayed elements will be smaller radioactive isotopes with far far shorter halflives (years, decades maybe, not millennia), like Iodine, or Caesium. In fact, there's been more negative impact from coal and oil based power, even since the advent of nuclear power; hell, even if we include nuclear WEAPONS, there's been far more negative environmental impact made by fossil fuels than radiation. If I had a choice of living next door to a nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, I'd pick nuclear any day of the week.
Nuclear power is only bad when something goes horribly wrong. Consider how many nuclear reactors there are in the world. How many reactive cores are currently operating. Now exactly how many times have we had a Chernobyl-scale disaster? One of the reasons Chernobyl got so far out of hand, I hear, was because the information output, such as it was in that era, just couldn't keep up with changing conditions inside the reactor. You'd have people working on information ten, fifteen minutes old, patching up lost causes the whole time. Chernobyl was of cheap, shoddy construction, even for then, and we learned so much from it - mostly in the "what NOT to do" category. Every year, there's a good dozen stories crop up on Slashdot about some new miracle bacteria or algae that just LOVES eating what we'd call radioactive waste, so storage and disposal of radioactive materials will eventually cease to be a problem. It would be cool if we could find a use for these radiation-eating bacteria, but hey, you can't have your pony and eat it too.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
If she's dumb enough to be with him, she probably had no idea what it was worth. That, or she thought a $16,000 ring meant he must have mortgaged a kidney, or something.
I think receiving stolen property is a crime just so fences can't hide behind saying they unknowingly purchased stolen goods. It also probably has some relevance to money laundering in organised crime. Usually those who legitimately didn't know are just let off.
If the copyright lobby (I'll rather generously use the term "lobby", rather than "fascists") wants a government agency or a copyright police, I'm surprised they haven't established an industry taskforce with the powers they need. Their own three letter organisation, with the power to spy on, and arrest, regular citizens; sanctioned by the government. I could understand if the FBI were investigating copyright (though I'd consider it a grievous misuse of resources). I could understand if the ATF suddenly became ATFIP (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Intellectual Property), since they deal in enforcement of licensing already. But what on earth does copying that floppy have to do with homeland security?
Wifi battery life is no trouble for my Dell Streak. Thing is HUGE, and has a decent battery to match. I get days out of mine, while my iPhone-bearing co-workers pretty much charge theirs every day. I stroll around with wifi on all the time, because I forget about it, and usually have wireless tethering going to my iPad too.
I'd like it if my calls would automatically switch from cellular to wifi as I connect to networks (like wheI come home, or get to work, for instance). Cellular SIM in the phone as a fallback for being on the go, with the majority of my calls being routed over a fixed line after the wifi access point.
Oh their conclusions sound right, it's just disappointing that the only voice of connom sense in the industry is speaking out of commercial interest. They'd be saying the same thing if the internet were a veritable ghost town. If a telco would man up and say "we need more infrastructure", that would be worthy of applause. All I'm hearing from them right now, though, is "we need less customers", and I'd be happy to oblige if we had real alternatives in Australia. There's Telstra, who's coverage is nowhere near the public perception, Optus, who've drastically oversold their network, then there's Voda and the others, who've all got no coverage, and oversell their network. I want to see telcos, or maybe even the ACCC impose regional subscriber caps based on proof of the ISPs ability to keep their promises of speed and reliability.
The uncensored release of Duke Nukem Forever, here in Australia, I'm convinced is a plot from the censorship lobby. Once it's been out for a week, there'll be a media shitstorm stirred up by the likes of Michael Arkins saying "this is what we protect you from, it's regrettable this one made it past our screening, but surely you can see we must outright ban such vulgarity!".
Exaclty why I pirate ebooks. Australian publishers need to get their shit together. Either I pirate an ebook, or I have to spoof my IP and use a fake american address, all to pay for something that violates Australian copyright law anyway. Usually when I pirate an ebook, I have the dead tree on my shelf for looks, but some books aren't as portable as I'd like. I'd love it if dead trees came with a redemption code for an electronic copy, too, but I can't even legally purchase the ebooks I want. One step at a time.
Edit: I've never tried spoofing my IP to buy overseas. Seemed like too much trouble for no legal difference when IRC was right there.
I am surprised, and disappointed in Slashdot, that I had to scroll so far to find a Buggalo comment. I was beginning to despair I'd have to create one myself! Buggalo should have been in the first post!
There have been people talking to ghosts or at least claiming to know how to find them for thousands of years. Research some traditional methods, in particular ones based in alchemy or feng shui, because of how rules-based they are. Feng shui isn't just something modern interior desingers learn to look hip and enlightened, it was also a set of rules for observing and shaping the world, more generally, so any feng shui principles (or rather any scientific essence you can garner from them) may be worthwhile. Combine the traditional methods with scientific observation and repetition, and some non-haunted baseline measurements as you already suggested.
With all the rules and thorough documentation of feng shui, they may have been onto something.
Well, the only buttons on an E1080T or E1081T are the ten digits, #, *, your four directions, okay, and I believe left and right selection keys. Basically the same layout as any ordinary phone in the last ten years. There's also the Nokia 1208, which is just as basic. A better choice might be the B2700 or B2710 from Samsung. They're designed for outdoor use, and meant to be all but bullet proof. One would hope Samsung made the screens sunlight legible, since their target market is tradesmen and mountain climbers.
And believe me when I say, I know my customers, and in this city, the people I'm complaining about far outnumber those with brains. I take comfort in the knowledge the zombie apocalypse could never start here, they'd starve.
Slashdot Mirror
My opinion will probably be an unpopular one on Slashdot, but a job's a job. There should be an impartiality regulator in all goernments, something of an Inquisition who can thoroughly investigate the lives, private and public, of high level government employees. I understand the recording industry and actual careers like law are more than a little different, but just because someone has been working for McDonalds for a few years doesn't mean they're going to go work for KFC and actively sabotage them. In practice, in the US, officials with this background have proven time and time again they are NOT impartial, but all people have the right to quit one job and work somewhere else. Everyone here treats a recording industry job like the slaver tatoo in Fallout 2. A permanent black mark that everyone will recognise on sight.
I don't mean to say we shouldn't care where our officials come from, by all means be wary, but not everyone is going to be evil (I think that may be the biggest compliment I've ever paid anyone).
Isn't this how The Simpsons were encouraged to save?
That explains the poor performances better than just faking users. They're actors and all the jobs selling deoderant and feminine hygiene products are taken by people with sightly more talent (but not so much as to be regulars on a soap...), so they actually ARE telling real life stories of their jobs!
Did they have Aperture Science Super Colliding Super Buttons?
This is probably blasphemy to a lot of /.ers, but the new seasons, 2005 onwards, are alright. Good a place as any to start. I've been meaning to go back and watch the whole Trial of a Timelord season, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Blah blah FACEBOOK blah ARREST blah!
Of course, I'll probably be alone in this opinion since this is apparently the same planet where people think wifi gives them rashes... Imagine telling one of those people to live next door to a nuclear plant!
Without an earthquake (one of the biggest in recorded history, I might add) to disrupt the reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi plant could have continued happily along with no major problems. Good time to be somewhere else, granted, but this is hardly a disaster yet. As long as non-essential personnel get the hell out of there, and as long as they either get the reaction under control or start taking steps now to contain a meltdown, there should be no major issues. A bit of contamination, but Hiroshima AND Chernobyl are both relatively safe, compared to what nuclear doomsayers would have us believe about the lasting effects. Yes, I know the halflife of Plutonium is somewhere up around forty thousand years (give or take), but Plutonium won't comprise the majority of the contamination. Most of the decayed elements will be smaller radioactive isotopes with far far shorter halflives (years, decades maybe, not millennia), like Iodine, or Caesium. In fact, there's been more negative impact from coal and oil based power, even since the advent of nuclear power; hell, even if we include nuclear WEAPONS, there's been far more negative environmental impact made by fossil fuels than radiation. If I had a choice of living next door to a nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, I'd pick nuclear any day of the week.
Nuclear power is only bad when something goes horribly wrong. Consider how many nuclear reactors there are in the world. How many reactive cores are currently operating. Now exactly how many times have we had a Chernobyl-scale disaster? One of the reasons Chernobyl got so far out of hand, I hear, was because the information output, such as it was in that era, just couldn't keep up with changing conditions inside the reactor. You'd have people working on information ten, fifteen minutes old, patching up lost causes the whole time. Chernobyl was of cheap, shoddy construction, even for then, and we learned so much from it - mostly in the "what NOT to do" category. Every year, there's a good dozen stories crop up on Slashdot about some new miracle bacteria or algae that just LOVES eating what we'd call radioactive waste, so storage and disposal of radioactive materials will eventually cease to be a problem. It would be cool if we could find a use for these radiation-eating bacteria, but hey, you can't have your pony and eat it too.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
If she's dumb enough to be with him, she probably had no idea what it was worth. That, or she thought a $16,000 ring meant he must have mortgaged a kidney, or something.
I think receiving stolen property is a crime just so fences can't hide behind saying they unknowingly purchased stolen goods. It also probably has some relevance to money laundering in organised crime. Usually those who legitimately didn't know are just let off.
If the copyright lobby (I'll rather generously use the term "lobby", rather than "fascists") wants a government agency or a copyright police, I'm surprised they haven't established an industry taskforce with the powers they need. Their own three letter organisation, with the power to spy on, and arrest, regular citizens; sanctioned by the government. I could understand if the FBI were investigating copyright (though I'd consider it a grievous misuse of resources). I could understand if the ATF suddenly became ATFIP (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Intellectual Property), since they deal in enforcement of licensing already. But what on earth does copying that floppy have to do with homeland security?
I'll stick to my human horn, thanks.
Wifi battery life is no trouble for my Dell Streak. Thing is HUGE, and has a decent battery to match. I get days out of mine, while my iPhone-bearing co-workers pretty much charge theirs every day. I stroll around with wifi on all the time, because I forget about it, and usually have wireless tethering going to my iPad too.
I'd like it if my calls would automatically switch from cellular to wifi as I connect to networks (like wheI come home, or get to work, for instance). Cellular SIM in the phone as a fallback for being on the go, with the majority of my calls being routed over a fixed line after the wifi access point.
Oh their conclusions sound right, it's just disappointing that the only voice of connom sense in the industry is speaking out of commercial interest. They'd be saying the same thing if the internet were a veritable ghost town. If a telco would man up and say "we need more infrastructure", that would be worthy of applause. All I'm hearing from them right now, though, is "we need less customers", and I'd be happy to oblige if we had real alternatives in Australia. There's Telstra, who's coverage is nowhere near the public perception, Optus, who've drastically oversold their network, then there's Voda and the others, who've all got no coverage, and oversell their network. I want to see telcos, or maybe even the ACCC impose regional subscriber caps based on proof of the ISPs ability to keep their promises of speed and reliability.
Network hardware vendor releases report encouraging more spending in network hardware!
Quickly! Someone compile a report on how much oil Libya has so they can present a compelling case to the US Government to intervene!
Not even that, RTFS - Summary!
The uncensored release of Duke Nukem Forever, here in Australia, I'm convinced is a plot from the censorship lobby. Once it's been out for a week, there'll be a media shitstorm stirred up by the likes of Michael Arkins saying "this is what we protect you from, it's regrettable this one made it past our screening, but surely you can see we must outright ban such vulgarity!".
Subject says it all really. Wow, Mario game on new Nintendo handheld? STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES!
Exaclty why I pirate ebooks. Australian publishers need to get their shit together. Either I pirate an ebook, or I have to spoof my IP and use a fake american address, all to pay for something that violates Australian copyright law anyway. Usually when I pirate an ebook, I have the dead tree on my shelf for looks, but some books aren't as portable as I'd like. I'd love it if dead trees came with a redemption code for an electronic copy, too, but I can't even legally purchase the ebooks I want. One step at a time.
Edit: I've never tried spoofing my IP to buy overseas. Seemed like too much trouble for no legal difference when IRC was right there.
I am surprised, and disappointed in Slashdot, that I had to scroll so far to find a Buggalo comment. I was beginning to despair I'd have to create one myself! Buggalo should have been in the first post!
There have been people talking to ghosts or at least claiming to know how to find them for thousands of years. Research some traditional methods, in particular ones based in alchemy or feng shui, because of how rules-based they are. Feng shui isn't just something modern interior desingers learn to look hip and enlightened, it was also a set of rules for observing and shaping the world, more generally, so any feng shui principles (or rather any scientific essence you can garner from them) may be worthwhile. Combine the traditional methods with scientific observation and repetition, and some non-haunted baseline measurements as you already suggested.
With all the rules and thorough documentation of feng shui, they may have been onto something.
It was a stupid name anyway. They should have called it "Crippled-video-chat-aping-video-call"
Well, the only buttons on an E1080T or E1081T are the ten digits, #, *, your four directions, okay, and I believe left and right selection keys. Basically the same layout as any ordinary phone in the last ten years. There's also the Nokia 1208, which is just as basic. A better choice might be the B2700 or B2710 from Samsung. They're designed for outdoor use, and meant to be all but bullet proof. One would hope Samsung made the screens sunlight legible, since their target market is tradesmen and mountain climbers.
And believe me when I say, I know my customers, and in this city, the people I'm complaining about far outnumber those with brains. I take comfort in the knowledge the zombie apocalypse could never start here, they'd starve.