Ufortuantely, it seems that a common settlement for class action suits is not a check for everyone. A few times I've gotten notice in the mail that as a user of XYZ Long Distance, I was overcharged for services, so someone sued them in a class-action and here's my share of the settlement. The will be a piece of paper in the letter that looks like a check, but it's actually a certificate with a code that entitles me to 50% off calls I make up to some small dollar amount. Whoopee - I basically get a coupon to keep doing with the same business that screwed me previously. I suppose the equivalent for Ralsky would be allowing his recipients/victims to have 50% off of any mass mailings that they want to do - hardly an optimum solution. I think that Ralsky and his ilk should be required to manually type out e-mails of apology to every person they spammed. When they are done sending these out, they can get out of jail. Also, they should be fed Spam, or equivalent canned meat products such as Treet or store-brand Spam knockoffs, for two meals a day. Three would be more poetic, but even spammers deserve some rights.
Wow, I disagree with almost everything is your post except for the last para. X2 was the best movie of the summer (that I saw of course). I loved that they set up the end so well, and that the end sets up the next onbe so well...
Revolutions was such a huge letdown after the buildup from Reloaded though. There was nothing as wild as the stairway/chase sequence, and the ending left me... flat I guess. Also, the big fight with Smith, after the rain-soaked walk through the city filled with Smiths, was just a letdown. Neo and Smith slamming into one another at Mach 5 over and over again is pretty boring after all that came before. And the scenes with the Merovingian seemed like they had been cut down from something much longer. And from the Animatrix and Reloaded, the Kid seemed like he would have some bigger impact. After all, he saved himself, something even Neo didn't pull off. I did like the subway station and the ending for Neo and Trinity and the Big Giant Head of sentinels, and lots of other bits, but the whole thing was overall a disappointment. Mileage varies.
Reloaded was a great action flick, that me setup for a deep philosophical film with kickass action sequences. Unfortunately, Revolutions wasa hurried mess with a crappy ending.
You sound like someone who should never see the movie version of a really good book[1]. The compromises for making a commercially viable film are generally antagonistic towards a really faithful adaptation. In other words, they are almost guaranteed to cut out/mangle your favorite parts. In essence, your 6th paragraph is exactly right - for you. Some of us, on the other hand, like to see a filmmaker try to scale Everest, even if they lose style points doing so,
Btw, the Eowyn/Faramir subplot was not really excised - it was just presented totally in shorthand. My wife, who hasn't read the books, had no problems realizing that they hooked up. The Lingering Glance At The End Of The Movie Between A Potential Couple is standard Hollywood shorthand for "They lived happily ever after."
[1] - This is why _The Godfather_ was a good 'beach read', but a great couple of movies. Same for Crichton - sometimes.
I think that if I gave my family members a certificate for computer support, they would feel like they could only call me that one time, rather than everytime they move their taskbar accidently. Hey, I like this idea...
Of course, then there's my mom who not only replied "Don't get me anything" when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, but proceeded to say "Barnes & Noble gift card" for my two aunts, four cousins, and both my grandparents when I asked her what they wanted. I was tempted to do it and say "This crappy gift is courtesy of your daughter/sister/aunt."
Re: RAH's influence. I think it's pretty significant that during coverage of the moon landings, RAH was the 'color commentator' for CBS (iirc). Not Asimov, who wrote more (a _lot_ more) nonfiction science pieces than RAH. Also, RAH conciously worked at getting his short fiction into the Saturday Evening Post and the like, not just sf mags. Outside of the US, Clarke is probably a bigger influence on engineers, though. And you're right about Campbell's influence, Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke were the writers, but Campbell bought and published their work and to aome extent also directed the course. Obviously, he influence was greater on newer writers.
On the rec.art.sf.written discussion group, some claimed, and was pretty univerally agreeed with (a true rarity), that every RAH novel was on some huge fan's favorite list AND on some huge fan's most-hated list. My fav - _Friday_, unless it's _Harsh Mistress_, my least favorite - _Number of the Beast_. Spung indeed.
Of course, there is a big question concerning whether the government should allow caching of their web pages. Correction of information could always be perceived as a cover-up.
I feel that the government NOT allowing people to keep copies of what the government said to be harder to buy than allowing for errors by the feds. If they are going in and changing the page anyway, why not put a footnote that says "This page was changed on Oct. 31, 2003 because the sentence 'The French are huge consumers of cheese,' originally read 'The French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys.' We apologize for any confusion."
You should actually try OO.o. You can open.doc,.xls and.ppt with no problems. You can set the default format in OO.o to be MS's and people will open your docs with no trouble. Btw, installation and configuration (including changing the desktop shortcuts to say something like "Text = MS Word") of OO.o to match OXP probably takes less time than installing and registering OXP does. I've been throwing on the desktops of most of my users (we have an old app that requires Access, so those users get OXP) for a couple of months and I haven't any complaints about it. Certainly, there hasn't been "hours and hours" of fighting with it.
Actually, if the suits at @stake were more scared than ethical MS probably didn't have to pressure them. If you are a smallish company whose biggest client is a monopolistic giant and one of your employees very publicly criticizes them, that employee is almost guaranteed to be gone. This is probably even more likely if that criticism is directed at what is already a sore point of that client. That really sucks for the employee and for the consumer, but unfortunately that is the most likely outcome. In this case it's also bad for @stake since they could use this instance as an example of them being truly independent and not just MS puppets, which would give their reports saying "MS is plenty safe and getting better" more cred.
Re:hypocrisy, rhetoric: is it time for something n
on
RIAA Bits
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Back in Mozart's time, only a very tiny minority of artists could support themselves by being an artist, and that generally meant finding a rich benefactor. Are you telling me that's better?
A thought just popped into my head (insert joke here). That's really not that different than what we have now. Most of the people who are musicians do not support themselves full time in that manner and probably spend more on their career/hobby than they make. Most of the few who do have contracts with record companies (of wildly varying sizes), giving them in effect, rich benefactors (who may be trying to screw them). Sony == Emperor of Austria, while indie label == Prince of Tinyhaven. Of course, irking the Emperor means you may lose your head, while irking CEO of Sony means No Contract For You. Just a thought anyway.
I'm reading this while I was on hold with Quark to find out why the 11 copies of Quark XPress I ordered yesterday to be shipped overnight haven't arrived yet. After ~30 minutes on hold, I finally got a person and found out that they don't know when the boxes will be shipped, but they'll send me an e-mail to let me know.
You may want to be a little more careful with your use of the words 'anything' and 'anyone'. From a strict interpretation of your post, if I can't sell your CD collection on the street for $50, we're living in a socialist society. (How'd I get your CDs? I bought them from this guy whose name and description I have suddenly forgotten.) That would mean that capitalism is actually a kleptocracy, which is probably not what you had in mind.
AIUI, you don't have to have 100% market saturation to be considered a monopoly. Also, you don't get nailed with anti-trust violations just by being a monopoly. If you are a dominant player in the market ("huge market share" in your words) and you abuse that power ("leveraged it in nasty ways to try to maintain it and to try to make people pay them more" in your wordsa)You May Be Violating Anti-Trust Laws. While abusing your monopoly on computer OS's isn't as big a deal as doing it on generating electricity or making antibiotics, I still think MS qualified for anti-trust protection.
However, as an earlier poster pointed out, it was perfectly legal for them to then sell/trade your name and number to another company. The national DNC list has come about because a great deal of telemarketers have abused their right to make phone calls. The bad apples have spoiled it for everyone else. Too bad the telemarketers haven't cleaned themselves up before the feds finally had to get involved.
If the doc in the ER is checking his e-mail whilst trying to bring patient Doe back from death's door, there's already big problems at the hospital.
A well organized (pardon the pun) organlegging ring is basically Burke & Hare writ large, and while very scary, it presumes a level of conspiratorial homicidal intent that would be pretty hard to come by in a remotely ethical society.
Hmmm, there are a couple of ways to take that though...
You would think that there would be some sort of way for the RIAA to tell the difference between a rap song and an astrophysics lecture though. The fact that they threatened someone without a valid reason (w/c/sh)ould expose them to some sort of potential civil action at least, or criminal extortion charges at worst. I'm not familiar with the details of the incident, but it sounds like the equivalent of realizing somebody in jeans and a tee-shirt picked your pocket so you started threatening everyone you saw who had jeans on.
Btw, I like how you referred to Usher as 'the alleged singer'.
What problems have you had with opening MS Word docs? I've been using OO.o for a while, using myself as a test subject to see if we could replace all/some of our MS Office suites with something comparable. I haven't noticed any problems, but I'd like to hear what other people have issues with.
To enter into a contract, both parties have to sign, and it has to be witnessed.
That's not true. If you go into Your Friendly Neighborhood Pizza Joint and ask for a large with everything you have entered into a contract to pay for a large with everything, eventhough you didn't sign anything. You can't claim that you don't have to pay after the fact because you didn't sign a piece of paper, or even verbally say "I'll pay you $18 for the pizza". Or even if they put anchovies on it.
Pretty tangential though. Ms. Lewinsky pretty actively pursued Bill by flashing him her undergarments, etc. That sounds a lot different than the usual "If you want that promotion..." sexual harassment.
Not that I would be too surprised if there were such incidents (other than the stupidity factor), but the burden is on the accuser.
Btw, this is the most civil disagreement I've ever had on/. We'll probably be kicked off soon.
Actually, Poindexter was one of Reagan's 'cronies' - he was National Security Advisor. This lead to his (later overturned) conviction in the Iran-Contra scandal. This is related to TIA becuase Poindexter works for the Office of Information Awareness and was convicted (but won on appeal) for destroying documents in an attempt to cover-up possible wrongdoings by the government.
Slashdot Mirror
Ufortuantely, it seems that a common settlement for class action suits is not a check for everyone. A few times I've gotten notice in the mail that as a user of XYZ Long Distance, I was overcharged for services, so someone sued them in a class-action and here's my share of the settlement. The will be a piece of paper in the letter that looks like a check, but it's actually a certificate with a code that entitles me to 50% off calls I make up to some small dollar amount. Whoopee - I basically get a coupon to keep doing with the same business that screwed me previously. I suppose the equivalent for Ralsky would be allowing his recipients/victims to have 50% off of any mass mailings that they want to do - hardly an optimum solution. I think that Ralsky and his ilk should be required to manually type out e-mails of apology to every person they spammed. When they are done sending these out, they can get out of jail. Also, they should be fed Spam, or equivalent canned meat products such as Treet or store-brand Spam knockoffs, for two meals a day. Three would be more poetic, but even spammers deserve some rights.
Wow, I disagree with almost everything is your post except for the last para. X2 was the best movie of the summer (that I saw of course). I loved that they set up the end so well, and that the end sets up the next onbe so well...
Revolutions was such a huge letdown after the buildup from Reloaded though. There was nothing as wild as the stairway/chase sequence, and the ending left me ... flat I guess. Also, the big fight with Smith, after the rain-soaked walk through the city filled with Smiths, was just a letdown. Neo and Smith slamming into one another at Mach 5 over and over again is pretty boring after all that came before. And the scenes with the Merovingian seemed like they had been cut down from something much longer. And from the Animatrix and Reloaded, the Kid seemed like he would have some bigger impact. After all, he saved himself, something even Neo didn't pull off. I did like the subway station and the ending for Neo and Trinity and the Big Giant Head of sentinels, and lots of other bits, but the whole thing was overall a disappointment. Mileage varies.
Reloaded was a great action flick, that me setup for a deep philosophical film with kickass action sequences. Unfortunately, Revolutions wasa hurried mess with a crappy ending.
You sound like someone who should never see the movie version of a really good book[1]. The compromises for making a commercially viable film are generally antagonistic towards a really faithful adaptation. In other words, they are almost guaranteed to cut out/mangle your favorite parts. In essence, your 6th paragraph is exactly right - for you. Some of us, on the other hand, like to see a filmmaker try to scale Everest, even if they lose style points doing so,
Btw, the Eowyn/Faramir subplot was not really excised - it was just presented totally in shorthand. My wife, who hasn't read the books, had no problems realizing that they hooked up. The Lingering Glance At The End Of The Movie Between A Potential Couple is standard Hollywood shorthand for "They lived happily ever after."
[1] - This is why _The Godfather_ was a good 'beach read', but a great couple of movies. Same for Crichton - sometimes.
I think that if I gave my family members a certificate for computer support, they would feel like they could only call me that one time, rather than everytime they move their taskbar accidently. Hey, I like this idea...
Of course, then there's my mom who not only replied "Don't get me anything" when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, but proceeded to say "Barnes & Noble gift card" for my two aunts, four cousins, and both my grandparents when I asked her what they wanted. I was tempted to do it and say "This crappy gift is courtesy of your daughter/sister/aunt."
Re: RAH's influence. I think it's pretty significant that during coverage of the moon landings, RAH was the 'color commentator' for CBS (iirc). Not Asimov, who wrote more (a _lot_ more) nonfiction science pieces than RAH. Also, RAH conciously worked at getting his short fiction into the Saturday Evening Post and the like, not just sf mags. Outside of the US, Clarke is probably a bigger influence on engineers, though. And you're right about Campbell's influence, Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke were the writers, but Campbell bought and published their work and to aome extent also directed the course. Obviously, he influence was greater on newer writers.
Also, Vinge does rock.
On the rec.art.sf.written discussion group, some claimed, and was pretty univerally agreeed with (a true rarity), that every RAH novel was on some huge fan's favorite list AND on some huge fan's most-hated list. My fav - _Friday_, unless it's _Harsh Mistress_, my least favorite - _Number of the Beast_. Spung indeed.
BTW, 'Rosebud' is a sled.
Of course, there is a big question concerning whether the government should allow caching of their web pages. Correction of information could always be perceived as a cover-up.
I feel that the government NOT allowing people to keep copies of what the government said to be harder to buy than allowing for errors by the feds. If they are going in and changing the page anyway, why not put a footnote that says "This page was changed on Oct. 31, 2003 because the sentence 'The French are huge consumers of cheese,' originally read 'The French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys.' We apologize for any confusion."
You should actually try OO.o. You can open .doc, .xls and .ppt with no problems. You can set the default format in OO.o to be MS's and people will open your docs with no trouble. Btw, installation and configuration (including changing the desktop shortcuts to say something like "Text = MS Word") of OO.o to match OXP probably takes less time than installing and registering OXP does. I've been throwing on the desktops of most of my users (we have an old app that requires Access, so those users get OXP) for a couple of months and I haven't any complaints about it. Certainly, there hasn't been "hours and hours" of fighting with it.
"Why don't you put her in charge!?!"
Actually, if the suits at @stake were more scared than ethical MS probably didn't have to pressure them. If you are a smallish company whose biggest client is a monopolistic giant and one of your employees very publicly criticizes them, that employee is almost guaranteed to be gone. This is probably even more likely if that criticism is directed at what is already a sore point of that client. That really sucks for the employee and for the consumer, but unfortunately that is the most likely outcome. In this case it's also bad for @stake since they could use this instance as an example of them being truly independent and not just MS puppets, which would give their reports saying "MS is plenty safe and getting better" more cred.
Back in Mozart's time, only a very tiny minority of artists could support themselves by being an artist, and that generally meant finding a rich benefactor. Are you telling me that's better?
A thought just popped into my head (insert joke here). That's really not that different than what we have now. Most of the people who are musicians do not support themselves full time in that manner and probably spend more on their career/hobby than they make. Most of the few who do have contracts with record companies (of wildly varying sizes), giving them in effect, rich benefactors (who may be trying to screw them). Sony == Emperor of Austria, while indie label == Prince of Tinyhaven. Of course, irking the Emperor means you may lose your head, while irking CEO of Sony means No Contract For You. Just a thought anyway.
I'm reading this while I was on hold with Quark to find out why the 11 copies of Quark XPress I ordered yesterday to be shipped overnight haven't arrived yet. After ~30 minutes on hold, I finally got a person and found out that they don't know when the boxes will be shipped, but they'll send me an e-mail to let me know.
Luzrek -
You may want to be a little more careful with your use of the words 'anything' and 'anyone'. From a strict interpretation of your post, if I can't sell your CD collection on the street for $50, we're living in a socialist society. (How'd I get your CDs? I bought them from this guy whose name and description I have suddenly forgotten.) That would mean that capitalism is actually a kleptocracy, which is probably not what you had in mind.
nobody69
AIUI, you don't have to have 100% market saturation to be considered a monopoly. Also, you don't get nailed with anti-trust violations just by being a monopoly. If you are a dominant player in the market ("huge market share" in your words) and you abuse that power ("leveraged it in nasty ways to try to maintain it and to try to make people pay them more" in your wordsa)You May Be Violating Anti-Trust Laws. While abusing your monopoly on computer OS's isn't as big a deal as doing it on generating electricity or making antibiotics, I still think MS qualified for anti-trust protection.
However, as an earlier poster pointed out, it was perfectly legal for them to then sell/trade your name and number to another company. The national DNC list has come about because a great deal of telemarketers have abused their right to make phone calls. The bad apples have spoiled it for everyone else. Too bad the telemarketers haven't cleaned themselves up before the feds finally had to get involved.
If the doc in the ER is checking his e-mail whilst trying to bring patient Doe back from death's door, there's already big problems at the hospital.
A well organized (pardon the pun) organlegging ring is basically Burke & Hare writ large, and while very scary, it presumes a level of conspiratorial homicidal intent that would be pretty hard to come by in a remotely ethical society.
Hmmm, there are a couple of ways to take that though...
You would think that there would be some sort of way for the RIAA to tell the difference between a rap song and an astrophysics lecture though. The fact that they threatened someone without a valid reason (w/c/sh)ould expose them to some sort of potential civil action at least, or criminal extortion charges at worst. I'm not familiar with the details of the incident, but it sounds like the equivalent of realizing somebody in jeans and a tee-shirt picked your pocket so you started threatening everyone you saw who had jeans on.
Btw, I like how you referred to Usher as 'the alleged singer'.
luugi -
What problems have you had with opening MS Word docs? I've been using OO.o for a while, using myself as a test subject to see if we could replace all/some of our MS Office suites with something comparable. I haven't noticed any problems, but I'd like to hear what other people have issues with.
To enter into a contract, both parties have to sign, and it has to be witnessed.
That's not true. If you go into Your Friendly Neighborhood Pizza Joint and ask for a large with everything you have entered into a contract to pay for a large with everything, eventhough you didn't sign anything. You can't claim that you don't have to pay after the fact because you didn't sign a piece of paper, or even verbally say "I'll pay you $18 for the pizza". Or even if they put anchovies on it.
aka "nobody69 is Beating A Dead Horse"
/. We'll probably be kicked off soon.
Pretty tangential though. Ms. Lewinsky pretty actively pursued Bill by flashing him her undergarments, etc. That sounds a lot different than the usual "If you want that promotion..." sexual harassment.
Not that I would be too surprised if there were such incidents (other than the stupidity factor), but the burden is on the accuser.
Btw, this is the most civil disagreement I've ever had on
Actually, Poindexter was one of Reagan's 'cronies' - he was National Security Advisor. This lead to his (later overturned) conviction in the Iran-Contra scandal. This is related to TIA becuase Poindexter works for the Office of Information Awareness and was convicted (but won on appeal) for destroying documents in an attempt to cover-up possible wrongdoings by the government.