Thanks a lot for ripping off our article instead of clicking on the link. I'm sure our 10-server cluster of highly tuned servers would be slashdotted in no time. If the click ratio on the English articles go down, we'll just have to stop making the. That's no threat, that's a fact.
I've been using cellphones since 1995, when they became popular with the GSM system. Since then I've had 5 cellphones, and the drop in quality is astounding. To illustrate this I'll tell the history of the phones.
The first "luggable" cellphones were sturdy bastards, made in steel and hard-ass PVC. My father has an old NMT450 phone, still going strong after almost twenty (!) years. It is big as a suitcase, but it works.
Ericsson "HotLine" was one of the first phones to really fit in your hand (Not like the Motorola "Dog bone". It too could go through hell, but not quite as though as the previous luggable phones. Fair enough, it was after all, made totally of plastic.
Then I bought my first phone, a Nokia 2110i. Huge by todays standards, sexy in 1995. The 2110 had a aluminium frame and plastic casing, and it was rather though. The plastics was durable but the design flaws started to appear as the phones became smaller. Two BIG flaws on the phone; tiny and flimsy antennae, always breaking off and huge display, cracking in two if you sat on the phone. I counted 5 friends with 2110, 4 had to get new displays and all had to get new antennaes.
Then I got a Bosch phone. This was my first 'cheap' phone. It was a nightmare to use, complex system, bad design, cheap keypad and bad display. Really a bad phone. But great value for the money.
Then I got the Nokia 3210, the first phone where you could switch the cover. Now what is the use of that. If that's not a kiddie-robbing marketing scheme, I don't know what is. The covers soon became wiggly, scratched and collected dust inside the phone. The keypad was nice to use, but the paint on the keys soon wore out. The software had to be upgraded, because of constant OS crashes. One day, I was tossing the phone on to the bed, but it hit the wall before the sheets. Display cracked, new phone.
Since I didn't have money for a new phone, I borrowed one from a friend. The Nokia 6110. It had huge memory, and a nice design. Nice menues and bad, bad keypad. The battery also fit badly and the battery poles rubbed on the contacts making the current less than optimal. Also, the display started dimming. This is an inherited design flaw, because the LCD is slightly movable. The rubs on the less-than-durable contacts on the PCB, wearing them out. I was amazed to see that the copper on the PCB was actually gone, therefore, zero contact.
My next phone was a Nokia 6210. Now this is a nice phone! To look at. I actually like the size, it fits in my hand. But why is the battery wiggly? Just like the 6110. And what the hell is wrong with the software? My 6210 crashed, crashed, froze, and crashed hundreds of times. It got better after a software upgrade, but it still crashed sometimes. It was stolen, and calls were place to Somalia for 10USD before I managed to block it. And, yeah, WAP sucks all ass.
Now I have a Sony Ericsson T68i. I'm greatly disappointed in theis phone. The case is the most flimsy I have ever seen. I'm afraid it will break at any time! The battery time is much less than the 6210. The OS is S-L-O-O-O-O-W. I was told that it has less software errors than Nokia, but after using it for two weeks, I doubt it. And it is the unuseful things that does this. It has been on the marked for half a year and there are four upgrades to the software. That's almost as much as Windows!
I want a phone that NEVER crashes. My 2110 went for two years without crashing. With a HUGE memory for SMS and phone numbers. I love games, on the PS2, not the phone. I dispise the bastard protocol WAP and GPRS makes me laugh.
Why can't I have a phone that works, not a wannabe PDA??
The Justice dept. has actually searched for a long time to be sure the defendant get a fair trial. This is part of the reason it took three years to start the trial.
Also, even though the Økokrim has been proven quite incompetent regarding computer matters, the judge is neutral and will rule accoring to law. Actuall, if the prosecutor dosn't know what she's talking about, the judge will lean in Jon's favour. It's a shocker, isn't it?
I'm a law student. I was almost born with a PDA in my hand, and I have no ambitions of becoming a politician. It makes me sad that most people think lawyers are RIAA-huggin' MPAA-lovin' bastards who only exist to screw over the public.
Most lawyers assist people like you and me in matters relating to law. That's it. If you are a divorce lawyer, it doesn't automatically make you more of a sleazeball than any other person. If you are a lawyer for a medium-sized mom-and-pop buisness, are you a scumbag?
I think it is time to realize that lawyers are humans like you and me. Some are assholes and some are hard-working honest people. That's life.
Actually, we are two. I write this on a PII/266 512MB RAM. And I'm a geek. I just didn't care to join the rat race of having the latest and greatest. I also write tech news for a large website, but do I need a SpeedFreek-machine to do this? Nope. For gaming, there's PS2. It all boils down to what you can get by with. I surf, write and manage some 40 000+ emails on this machine and it does that perfectly.
The WalMart machine does the same thing as mine, only quicker. How can it not be perfect for a Joe Schmoe?
As for the pop-ups go, the 'net will see less and less of them. It goes something like this:
A business (let us call it Business) starts up, like Salon, and is 100% reliable on income from e.g. ads. The business gets som start capital, but hits a slump. Cash flow problems ensue, so they have to attract advertisers, offering the advertisers what they can. Even annoying pop up ads. The market picks up again and ad space on the Business gets scarce. The Business can then get rid of the most annoying ads, the pop ups, since other ads will generate revenue in the future.
This is how the Internet will be saved from pop up advertising, as long as the normal ads can be used. I'm actually watching this happen, and I hope that pop ups in the future will be limited to messages from the site maintainers etc.
But what about: (From the article) Post:Is the story you told true? Ellen: Oh yeah, it's definitely true.
Post:What was the paper about? Ellen: It was about Chinatown, and the formation of Chinatowns in America. I lost like three pages of it; it was terrible. It was a really,
If the story is true, it doesn't matter if she knows the son of the director.
While doing a story for my paper, I talked to the Disney films distributor here. Buena Vista AS told me that films like Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) will not get a marketing budget. I'm guessing theis is because large-scale marketing is reserved for Disneys own films like Cinderella II (Cinderella I was the first (animated) film to win a Golden Bear, Spirited Away the seconf) and smaller films gets fuck all.
Now, if I could just go to the store and buy the DVD, things would be a little better. But noooo... The film industry are actively stopping me from buying region 1 films. Fine. When will the film I've been waiting to see for two years be released on region 2 dvd? Oh, never. Pissants.
This is the letter I sent to BMG Norway after they made their FUD webpage available:
To whom it may concern:
This spring, I heard that the band Kent was to release a new album. I like them, and promptly went to my Audiogalaxy page to download some tunes since a recording of a concert was available. Sure enough, the song "Dom Andra" was available and I downloaded it. An excellent song, I really liked it. This resulted in the buying of their album "Vapen och Ammunition" in a store down town. I was excited to hear the whole album and slammed up the volume to enjoy this record.
But the record had copy "protection".
This resulted in pops and skips on my Harman / Kardon player and an inferior music experience not worthy of this otherwise excellent album.
You state on your web page that you are wiling to help if the record is not able to play. I don't want your help. It is not more difficult than downloading the latest circumvention device on the 'net, rip the files and burn a CD, not a bastard digital laser disc (BDLD).
After looking at my bank statments [They pissed me off so much I actually did some research!], I noticed that I used approx. 400 NOK less a month after mid june this year. Guess what happened then? I case you don't know, Audiogalaxy was crippled and forced to shut down access to most of their songs. After I lost the ability to discover new commercial artists through Audiogalaxy, my spending on CDs has been cut by 50%. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it! Kent was the last BMG album I bought, I'd rather not listen to music than listen to cracks and pops on a BDLD.
...have anyone thought that the "chattering" a GSM 900/1800 cellphone makes in loudspeakers cannot be any good for airplane navigation equipment?
My phones (Nokia and Ericsson) interfere with ALL equipment containing a loudspeaker, sometimes from 4 meters away. They interfere with LCD/CRT displays. They interfere the pulse monitor on the excersise bike! No wonder they are forbidden in hospitals here.
Also, if the reception is weak, the phone jacks up the TX signal and the interference gets worse.
This cannot be good for sensitive airplane equipment.
I always thought the golden rule was "If you don't want anyone on the 'net to to see it, don't publish it!". That's what we use on our site, if a new music video is to be published monday at noon, it is uploaded 11:59 and linked 12:00.
AFAIK: There hasn't been a case like this in Scandinavia, so it could be interesting to see the outcome. Having read quite a lot of Norwegian and Swedish judgements on the subject, I think Intentia don't have a case as long as Reuters did not break any protection to get the documents.
There's a difference in personal freedom and freedom of the press. (And BTW, you are allowed to import HC porn as long as it is not abusive (rape, child porn, zoophilia etc.), but not sell it.)
The Hvit Valgallianse case was very, very special. The Supreme court was split into two camps;
1)Allow the statements because it is a political party and they have the freedom to express their political opinions no matter how disgusting they are. Banning the political program from being printed would be an effective ban on the party.
2)Deny the HV to print the program because it is not only racist, it is directly threating and in breach with the European Human Rights convention.
The party program was banned accoring to Norwegian civil penal code. I agree to this. Simply because it would limit the freedom and safety of a LARGE group, and violate their personal freedom.
Anyhoo, the power os the press here are wide. The goverment is actually obligated to assist the press in inquires and give the press effective tools to conduct investigations. One such tool is the postal journal of every goverment office. All that pass in or out of the office must be registered, and the press can access these journals via the net. Effective goverment control.
Also, we live in a small society. It is clearly more ttransparent than the US, and secrets can't be kept very effectively. Only a few goverment secrets have been sucessfully kept, like the surveilance of left wing radicals in the mid to late last century.
Furthermore, there is very little corruption in Norway. Largely due to the transparency factor. There's always some, but very little in comparison to similar (western countries). This also ensures that the press is more neutral, as they refuse to bribe persons for stories and deny bribes themselves.
The media is very independant from the commercial enteties. Examples have been given in this discussion, of media companies hindering their employees in making critical stories due to the outside pressure. This is totally absent here. A journalist student in Great Brittan (a friend and colleauge of mine) said that they were taught the rule of bribery: One day, the editor would approach you and instruct you to write a flattering article about a company or something similar. The teacher that that you then would have to "bite your teeth together and do it, if you want to keep your job".
This kinda frightened me, because now I can't trust commercial English media again. When I said to him that it would be unheard of to do something like that here, he was kinda surprised but in a positive way.
Disclaimer: IAALSAAWJIALMC (I am a law student and a working journalist in a large media company).
Gaute: Ikke sant at det suger når man ser på ZTV, og så er musikkvideoene sensurert? Aargh!;)
As a journalist in Norway, I often find the USAian dream of freedom to be a bit ironic. But to me, it seems that one of the major obstacles in the USAian media isn't the goverment but media itself.
The media companies seem to have virtually no self discipline and no system of chacks and balances. Here, the journalists' and the editors union hav agree upon a set of rules, the "be carful poster". This is an actual poster, found in every media desk with some self-imposed rules that we have to follow. Breaches can be brough in before the review board by anyone for free. The review board consits of thre journalists, three editors and thre members of the public. A critisism from the board is very serious for a jounalist, roughly the same as a kick in the nuts. This makes sure the media is always aware of the moral boundries.
Even more dangerous than the seemingly loos morals in the media desks, is the ownership conflict. It seems that USAian media have a hard time being objective when in comes to their own mother companies. Here we have NRK (www.nrk.no), a goverment own system of TV-stations, radiostations and internet sites. They are so aware of their own doing, that they rank as #1 in giving NRK harsh critisism. Only then can they be legitimate in the eyes of the public.
The constitution in Norway grants the press very, very, very wide liberties. There are a few restrictions such as the penal code 135A that prohibits racial and homophobic threats. But this is considered to be libery ensuring not hindering. Why? Because they right to be something is also an expression, as in homosexuality. Any threats to this is considered counter-active to liberty. The same apply to religion. We also have some arcane laws that protects that King, but not from critisism.
So, it may look like there's a clean up waiting in the US.
MS Wrote: "The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers, the software that enables your PC to communicate with your hardware."
I'd argue that it is not only the key, but the biggest headaches of Windows. Sadly, I have used a lot of Windows in my life (and Linux). Sp when my mom bough an iBook, it was a revelation. I mean, so many digital cameras functioning on it without ANY drivers? Amazing. Also, it seems that the drivers made for OSX is more stable in the long haul than the Windows drivers.
Yeah, I understand you arguments... I see that some states in the US have a similar system to ours, and it is a beginning. But the system from Verizon pisses me off, paying for a clumsy system to stop calls from people that bought the phone lists from Verizon anyway?
I don't think you can plead ignorance in the western law system. Ignorance to the law is irrelevant, at least it is here. You are allowed to make mistakes, but if you plan to call 500 000 persons to sell stocks, you better have your ass on the safe side of the law... Those that operate from overseas are annoying too. But I don't think there are too many of them. Dialing in from overseas is rather expensive. That is an advantage with the European Union, the same rules apply to telemarketeers all across the union and affiliated states so if you want to dial in from overseas, it'll be expensive as from Africa or Korea.
We have units in the police that handles these kinds of economical crimes. They have the time...:)
I often compare living in teh US to living here in Norway, Europe. It seems that we can learn a lot from each other, this time it is your turn to learn...;)
So. WHAT?!?! Are paying for hardware and services to stop telemarketeers? Aren't they obliged by law to check if your name is on a do-not-call list? A friend of mine in the US said that he had to pay to be on a do-not-call list, operated by the telemarketeers association. That is nothing short of insane. Paying people to not bother me? Hello; it's not very difficult to operate such lists.
I'm on the Norwegian goverments do-not-call list. There are three levels: 1) Any call accepted. 2) Commercial calls not allowed. 3) Neither commercial nor charitable calls allowed.
I'm already a member of the chartiable orgs i want to, so my do-not-call entry lists me as option 3. This is a free system, no fees. Any company that calls you even though you're on the list will face fines if you turn them in to the Consumer Council.
The paper I work for had a story about two people that got suckered in this kind of scam.... A business executive and a lawyer. The story is here!. Sorry, it is in Norwegian only.
Anyhoo, I guess it isn't just daftness that bring people into this kind of scam. Some get so focused on the prize, they never connect with their reason... In the linked story, a German buisnessman also attended meetings with the nigerian scammers, but realzied what was going on and left the meeting. The Norwegians weren't actually fooled for a lot of money, but rather used in a check fraud. This guy acutally had some 10 million dollars, because he cashed the false chack from the nigerians. Unfortunlately, he transfered most of the money to an account abroad and the he and the nigerians were caught.
When I studied social economics, we discusse a graph from Newsweek. The chart explained the weight trend of the american population i junction with trends on the fast food industry.
At every sudden jump in weight since 1945, the fast food industry introduced some kind of deal, like Burger Kings "Go Large" or McDs Super-sizing of menus. Our american teacher said that when the large fast food chains increased their menus, other food manufaturers did the same thing. The cost is marginal and the consumer is happy.
He also told us that the largest available McD menu here in Norway, is about the size of a small/medium adult menu in USA.
I don't know how the media ethic is in the US, but here in Scandinavia, a suicide is not reported by the media unless it is of grave importance for the public.
A suicide is probably the worst way of leaving this world, from the perspective of your next of kin. The fact that your spouse or child considered this world so awful that he / she could not bear it is a devastating thought. Many of the families blame themselves.
In the media, (Again; at least here) we have a special responsibility for observing that we follow the reasonable ethical guidelines. And one of the most important guideline is that innocent persons must be protected. If a person commits suicide, the remaining family should be left alone with their sorrow and not be hassled by the media. If the family wants to expose the problem, fine! Let's make a story and try to help this problem. But until that point, leave them alone.
Examples from the real world: The son of former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Bruntland commited suicide while she was in office. All the editors of the serious newspapers met and agreed that the death would be minimized in the papers, since it would not have an effect on the public. Only the sunday porn/ sports paper published the whole story in all its gory detail. If the prime minister was not capable of performing her task because of the incident, that would be another matter. But she was, and then she should be left alone.
This easter, a woman went missing in Oslo. Everyone thought she was murdered of abducted for two weeks. Her body was found hangning in a forest, and the media stopped writing about the incident because it was a suicide. Now, you could argue that a murder should not be written about either, since it's a tragedy for the family. But that is another discussion.
2) it'll hurt US manufacturing by making it easier for those foreigners to sell their products here (without conversion to US measurements)
Very true! in order to minimize trade restrictions in the EU, everything is standarized. When the EU is finished with the massive standardizing of everything from condoms to time to measurement, they will have a larger handicap in selling merchandise to the US, since the industry isn't that flexible anymore.
Re:In summary
on
Cyber-Attacks?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Well, when I was in the military, working on multimedia apps, I was impressed by the security precautions on the computers... We really wanted to make one of the servers accessible from the 'net because of the nature of the app. We applied to the HQ to be allowed to make the info on the server available from outside the secure digital phonelines. This was a "Restricted" server, the first security level in our classification system. The HQ said, "of course you can connect it to the 'net. On one condition; you must install a firewall". "No prob", I said. Then they answered; "oh yeah, one more demand. The firewall must be 100% intrusion secure, guaranteed by you personally. Not 99,9997%, not even 99,999999% but 100% secure. Then and only then can you put the server on the 'net." It never accessed the 'net.
Security in the military is amazing. At least here. Any computer net designed for "Classified" to "Secret" is not allowed to be connected to ANYTHING except a fiber-op LAN. No floppy, no HDD, Windows boots from servers. The parallel and serial ports are removed, keyboard cords are glued to the machine, cabinet locked with padlock... The network I spent most of my time on had nothing more secret than the SSN of several persons, but that info is "Classified" so we had the server in a EMP-safe, TEMPEST-classified locked concrete room. The fib-op was in concrete ducts, the switch cabinets were thin safes, backups were stored in two separate fireproof vaults... I dare you. Hack that server, my guess is that it is next to impossible, primarily because of the NoNet-policy. Any computer connected to the 'net is automatically classified as "Unsafe" no matter what firewall in between. A computer that is "Unsafe" is not allowed to be next to a secure computer(!). This is to avoid human confusion...
Nobody holds a gun to your head and says "You must buy Windows or we'll kill you" do they?
Yes. Microsoft did this (Albeit in a financial way) to a local company wanting to change from MS to Novell / Linux. The company (Now bankrupt) felt that MS didn't live up to their demands and wanted out of a contract binding the to upgrades and MS-only networking. MS says; Of course you can get out of the contract, just pay up the agreed upon fee. This fee was of course a mandatory part of the contract, non-negoitable and large enough to keep the struggeling company from affording anything else after getting out of the MS deal.
Uuhh... NO! There is such a thing as responsibility, and the IS/Mayor has got it in this case. You can't be in charge of the town, fuck up royally and then hope that someone will fix it. I have no doubt that many, many of the/. readers could fix the system, but they shouldn't. This is the fault of the mayor (since most of the articles point out that), and he should take the heat.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks a lot for ripping off our article instead of clicking on the link. I'm sure our 10-server cluster of highly tuned servers would be slashdotted in no time. If the click ratio on the English articles go down, we'll just have to stop making the. That's no threat, that's a fact.
I've been using cellphones since 1995, when they became popular with the GSM system. Since then I've had 5 cellphones, and the drop in quality is astounding. To illustrate this I'll tell the history of the phones.
The first "luggable" cellphones were sturdy bastards, made in steel and hard-ass PVC. My father has an old NMT450 phone, still going strong after almost twenty (!) years. It is big as a suitcase, but it works.
Ericsson "HotLine" was one of the first phones to really fit in your hand (Not like the Motorola "Dog bone". It too could go through hell, but not quite as though as the previous luggable phones. Fair enough, it was after all, made totally of plastic.
Then I bought my first phone, a Nokia 2110i. Huge by todays standards, sexy in 1995. The 2110 had a aluminium frame and plastic casing, and it was rather though. The plastics was durable but the design flaws started to appear as the phones became smaller. Two BIG flaws on the phone; tiny and flimsy antennae, always breaking off and huge display, cracking in two if you sat on the phone. I counted 5 friends with 2110, 4 had to get new displays and all had to get new antennaes.
Then I got a Bosch phone. This was my first 'cheap' phone. It was a nightmare to use, complex system, bad design, cheap keypad and bad display. Really a bad phone. But great value for the money.
Then I got the Nokia 3210, the first phone where you could switch the cover. Now what is the use of that. If that's not a kiddie-robbing marketing scheme, I don't know what is. The covers soon became wiggly, scratched and collected dust inside the phone. The keypad was nice to use, but the paint on the keys soon wore out. The software had to be upgraded, because of constant OS crashes. One day, I was tossing the phone on to the bed, but it hit the wall before the sheets. Display cracked, new phone.
Since I didn't have money for a new phone, I borrowed one from a friend. The Nokia 6110. It had huge memory, and a nice design. Nice menues and bad, bad keypad. The battery also fit badly and the battery poles rubbed on the contacts making the current less than optimal. Also, the display started dimming. This is an inherited design flaw, because the LCD is slightly movable. The rubs on the less-than-durable contacts on the PCB, wearing them out. I was amazed to see that the copper on the PCB was actually gone, therefore, zero contact.
My next phone was a Nokia 6210. Now this is a nice phone! To look at. I actually like the size, it fits in my hand. But why is the battery wiggly? Just like the 6110. And what the hell is wrong with the software? My 6210 crashed, crashed, froze, and crashed hundreds of times. It got better after a software upgrade, but it still crashed sometimes. It was stolen, and calls were place to Somalia for 10USD before I managed to block it. And, yeah, WAP sucks all ass.
Now I have a Sony Ericsson T68i. I'm greatly disappointed in theis phone. The case is the most flimsy I have ever seen. I'm afraid it will break at any time! The battery time is much less than the 6210. The OS is S-L-O-O-O-O-W. I was told that it has less software errors than Nokia, but after using it for two weeks, I doubt it. And it is the unuseful things that does this. It has been on the marked for half a year and there are four upgrades to the software. That's almost as much as Windows!
I want a phone that NEVER crashes. My 2110 went for two years without crashing. With a HUGE memory for SMS and phone numbers. I love games, on the PS2, not the phone. I dispise the bastard protocol WAP and GPRS makes me laugh.
Why can't I have a phone that works, not a wannabe PDA??
The Justice dept. has actually searched for a long time to be sure the defendant get a fair trial. This is part of the reason it took three years to start the trial.
Also, even though the Økokrim has been proven quite incompetent regarding computer matters, the judge is neutral and will rule accoring to law. Actuall, if the prosecutor dosn't know what she's talking about, the judge will lean in Jon's favour. It's a shocker, isn't it?
I'm a law student. I was almost born with a PDA in my hand, and I have no ambitions of becoming a politician. It makes me sad that most people think lawyers are RIAA-huggin' MPAA-lovin' bastards who only exist to screw over the public.
Most lawyers assist people like you and me in matters relating to law. That's it. If you are a divorce lawyer, it doesn't automatically make you more of a sleazeball than any other person. If you are a lawyer for a medium-sized mom-and-pop buisness, are you a scumbag?
I think it is time to realize that lawyers are humans like you and me. Some are assholes and some are hard-working honest people. That's life.
Actually, we are two. I write this on a PII/266 512MB RAM. And I'm a geek. I just didn't care to join the rat race of having the latest and greatest. I also write tech news for a large website, but do I need a SpeedFreek-machine to do this? Nope. For gaming, there's PS2. It all boils down to what you can get by with. I surf, write and manage some 40 000+ emails on this machine and it does that perfectly.
The WalMart machine does the same thing as mine, only quicker. How can it not be perfect for a Joe Schmoe?
As for the pop-ups go, the 'net will see less and less of them. It goes something like this:
A business (let us call it Business) starts up, like Salon, and is 100% reliable on income from e.g. ads.
The business gets som start capital, but hits a slump. Cash flow problems ensue, so they have to attract advertisers, offering the advertisers what they can. Even annoying pop up ads.
The market picks up again and ad space on the Business gets scarce.
The Business can then get rid of the most annoying ads, the pop ups, since other ads will generate revenue in the future.
This is how the Internet will be saved from pop up advertising, as long as the normal ads can be used. I'm actually watching this happen, and I hope that pop ups in the future will be limited to messages from the site maintainers etc.
But what about: (From the article)
Post:Is the story you told true?
Ellen: Oh yeah, it's definitely true.
Post:What was the paper about?
Ellen: It was about Chinatown, and the formation of Chinatowns in America. I lost like three pages of it; it was terrible. It was a really,
If the story is true, it doesn't matter if she knows the son of the director.
Now, if I could just go to the store and buy the DVD, things would be a little better. But noooo... The film industry are actively stopping me from buying region 1 films. Fine. When will the film I've been waiting to see for two years be released on region 2 dvd? Oh, never. Pissants.
This is excellent! Just what I've been looking for. And 20% cheaper than a commercial store. Thanks!
To whom it may concern:
This spring, I heard that the band Kent was to release a new album. I like them, and promptly went to my Audiogalaxy page to download some tunes since a recording of a concert was available. Sure enough, the song "Dom Andra" was available and I downloaded it. An excellent song, I really liked it. This resulted in the buying of their album "Vapen och Ammunition" in a store down town. I was excited to hear the whole album and slammed up the volume to enjoy this record.
But the record had copy "protection".
This resulted in pops and skips on my Harman / Kardon player and an inferior music experience not worthy of this otherwise excellent album.
You state on your web page that you are wiling to help if the record is not able to play. I don't want your help. It is not more difficult than downloading the latest circumvention device on the 'net, rip the files and burn a CD, not a bastard digital laser disc (BDLD).
After looking at my bank statments [They pissed me off so much I actually did some research!], I noticed that I used approx. 400 NOK less a month after mid june this year. Guess what happened then? I case you don't know, Audiogalaxy was crippled and forced to shut down access to most of their songs. After I lost the ability to discover new commercial artists through Audiogalaxy, my spending on CDs has been cut by 50%. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!
Kent was the last BMG album I bought, I'd rather not listen to music than listen to cracks and pops on a BDLD.
Sincerely,
Pål Unanue-Zahl
My phones (Nokia and Ericsson) interfere with ALL equipment containing a loudspeaker, sometimes from 4 meters away. They interfere with LCD/CRT displays. They interfere the pulse monitor on the excersise bike! No wonder they are forbidden in hospitals here.
Also, if the reception is weak, the phone jacks up the TX signal and the interference gets worse.
This cannot be good for sensitive airplane equipment.
AFAIK: There hasn't been a case like this in Scandinavia, so it could be interesting to see the outcome. Having read quite a lot of Norwegian and Swedish judgements on the subject, I think Intentia don't have a case as long as Reuters did not break any protection to get the documents.
The Hvit Valgallianse case was very, very special. The Supreme court was split into two camps;
1)Allow the statements because it is a political party and they have the freedom to express their political opinions no matter how disgusting they are. Banning the political program from being printed would be an effective ban on the party.
2)Deny the HV to print the program because it is not only racist, it is directly threating and in breach with the European Human Rights convention.
The party program was banned accoring to Norwegian civil penal code. I agree to this. Simply because it would limit the freedom and safety of a LARGE group, and violate their personal freedom.
Anyhoo, the power os the press here are wide. The goverment is actually obligated to assist the press in inquires and give the press effective tools to conduct investigations. One such tool is the postal journal of every goverment office. All that pass in or out of the office must be registered, and the press can access these journals via the net. Effective goverment control.
Also, we live in a small society. It is clearly more ttransparent than the US, and secrets can't be kept very effectively. Only a few goverment secrets have been sucessfully kept, like the surveilance of left wing radicals in the mid to late last century.
Furthermore, there is very little corruption in Norway. Largely due to the transparency factor. There's always some, but very little in comparison to similar (western countries). This also ensures that the press is more neutral, as they refuse to bribe persons for stories and deny bribes themselves.
The media is very independant from the commercial enteties. Examples have been given in this discussion, of media companies hindering their employees in making critical stories due to the outside pressure. This is totally absent here. A journalist student in Great Brittan (a friend and colleauge of mine) said that they were taught the rule of bribery: One day, the editor would approach you and instruct you to write a flattering article about a company or something similar. The teacher that that you then would have to "bite your teeth together and do it, if you want to keep your job".
This kinda frightened me, because now I can't trust commercial English media again. When I said to him that it would be unheard of to do something like that here, he was kinda surprised but in a positive way.
Disclaimer: IAALSAAWJIALMC (I am a law student and a working journalist in a large media company).
Gaute: Ikke sant at det suger når man ser på ZTV, og så er musikkvideoene sensurert? Aargh! ;)
The media companies seem to have virtually no self discipline and no system of chacks and balances. Here, the journalists' and the editors union hav agree upon a set of rules, the "be carful poster". This is an actual poster, found in every media desk with some self-imposed rules that we have to follow. Breaches can be brough in before the review board by anyone for free. The review board consits of thre journalists, three editors and thre members of the public. A critisism from the board is very serious for a jounalist, roughly the same as a kick in the nuts. This makes sure the media is always aware of the moral boundries.
Even more dangerous than the seemingly loos morals in the media desks, is the ownership conflict. It seems that USAian media have a hard time being objective when in comes to their own mother companies. Here we have NRK (www.nrk.no), a goverment own system of TV-stations, radiostations and internet sites. They are so aware of their own doing, that they rank as #1 in giving NRK harsh critisism. Only then can they be legitimate in the eyes of the public.
The constitution in Norway grants the press very, very, very wide liberties. There are a few restrictions such as the penal code 135A that prohibits racial and homophobic threats. But this is considered to be libery ensuring not hindering. Why? Because they right to be something is also an expression, as in homosexuality. Any threats to this is considered counter-active to liberty. The same apply to religion. We also have some arcane laws that protects that King, but not from critisism.
So, it may look like there's a clean up waiting in the US.
MS Wrote: "The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers, the software that enables your PC to communicate with your hardware."
I'd argue that it is not only the key, but the biggest headaches of Windows. Sadly, I have used a lot of Windows in my life (and Linux). Sp when my mom bough an iBook, it was a revelation. I mean, so many digital cameras functioning on it without ANY drivers? Amazing. Also, it seems that the drivers made for OSX is more stable in the long haul than the Windows drivers.
I don't think you can plead ignorance in the western law system. Ignorance to the law is irrelevant, at least it is here. You are allowed to make mistakes, but if you plan to call 500 000 persons to sell stocks, you better have your ass on the safe side of the law... Those that operate from overseas are annoying too. But I don't think there are too many of them. Dialing in from overseas is rather expensive. That is an advantage with the European Union, the same rules apply to telemarketeers all across the union and affiliated states so if you want to dial in from overseas, it'll be expensive as from Africa or Korea.
We have units in the police that handles these kinds of economical crimes. They have the time...
I often compare living in teh US to living here in Norway, Europe. It seems that we can learn a lot from each other, this time it is your turn to learn... ;)
So. WHAT?!?! Are paying for hardware and services to stop telemarketeers? Aren't they obliged by law to check if your name is on a do-not-call list? A friend of mine in the US said that he had to pay to be on a do-not-call list, operated by the telemarketeers association. That is nothing short of insane. Paying people to not bother me? Hello; it's not very difficult to operate such lists.
I'm on the Norwegian goverments do-not-call list. There are three levels: 1) Any call accepted. 2) Commercial calls not allowed. 3) Neither commercial nor charitable calls allowed.
I'm already a member of the chartiable orgs i want to, so my do-not-call entry lists me as option 3. This is a free system, no fees. Any company that calls you even though you're on the list will face fines if you turn them in to the Consumer Council.
I think this system is
Anyhoo, I guess it isn't just daftness that bring people into this kind of scam. Some get so focused on the prize, they never connect with their reason... In the linked story, a German buisnessman also attended meetings with the nigerian scammers, but realzied what was going on and left the meeting. The Norwegians weren't actually fooled for a lot of money, but rather used in a check fraud. This guy acutally had some 10 million dollars, because he cashed the false chack from the nigerians. Unfortunlately, he transfered most of the money to an account abroad and the he and the nigerians were caught.
So, don't let the greed rule ya!
I'm guessing Microsoft try to make a last dash for it...
At every sudden jump in weight since 1945, the fast food industry introduced some kind of deal, like Burger Kings "Go Large" or McDs Super-sizing of menus. Our american teacher said that when the large fast food chains increased their menus, other food manufaturers did the same thing. The cost is marginal and the consumer is happy.
He also told us that the largest available McD menu here in Norway, is about the size of a small/medium adult menu in USA.
A suicide is probably the worst way of leaving this world, from the perspective of your next of kin. The fact that your spouse or child considered this world so awful that he / she could not bear it is a devastating thought. Many of the families blame themselves.
In the media, (Again; at least here) we have a special responsibility for observing that we follow the reasonable ethical guidelines. And one of the most important guideline is that innocent persons must be protected. If a person commits suicide, the remaining family should be left alone with their sorrow and not be hassled by the media. If the family wants to expose the problem, fine! Let's make a story and try to help this problem. But until that point, leave them alone.
Examples from the real world: The son of former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Bruntland commited suicide while she was in office. All the editors of the serious newspapers met and agreed that the death would be minimized in the papers, since it would not have an effect on the public. Only the sunday porn/ sports paper published the whole story in all its gory detail. If the prime minister was not capable of performing her task because of the incident, that would be another matter. But she was, and then she should be left alone.
This easter, a woman went missing in Oslo. Everyone thought she was murdered of abducted for two weeks. Her body was found hangning in a forest, and the media stopped writing about the incident because it was a suicide. Now, you could argue that a murder should not be written about either, since it's a tragedy for the family. But that is another discussion.
Very true! in order to minimize trade restrictions in the EU, everything is standarized. When the EU is finished with the massive standardizing of everything from condoms to time to measurement, they will have a larger handicap in selling merchandise to the US, since the industry isn't that flexible anymore.
Security in the military is amazing. At least here. Any computer net designed for "Classified" to "Secret" is not allowed to be connected to ANYTHING except a fiber-op LAN. No floppy, no HDD, Windows boots from servers. The parallel and serial ports are removed, keyboard cords are glued to the machine, cabinet locked with padlock... The network I spent most of my time on had nothing more secret than the SSN of several persons, but that info is "Classified" so we had the server in a EMP-safe, TEMPEST-classified locked concrete room. The fib-op was in concrete ducts, the switch cabinets were thin safes, backups were stored in two separate fireproof vaults... I dare you. Hack that server, my guess is that it is next to impossible, primarily because of the NoNet-policy. Any computer connected to the 'net is automatically classified as "Unsafe" no matter what firewall in between. A computer that is "Unsafe" is not allowed to be next to a secure computer(!). This is to avoid human confusion...
Yes. Microsoft did this (Albeit in a financial way) to a local company wanting to change from MS to Novell / Linux. The company (Now bankrupt) felt that MS didn't live up to their demands and wanted out of a contract binding the to upgrades and MS-only networking. MS says; Of course you can get out of the contract, just pay up the agreed upon fee. This fee was of course a mandatory part of the contract, non-negoitable and large enough to keep the struggeling company from affording anything else after getting out of the MS deal.
Uuhh... NO! There is such a thing as responsibility, and the IS/Mayor has got it in this case. You can't be in charge of the town, fuck up royally and then hope that someone will fix it. I have no doubt that many, many of the /. readers could fix the system, but they shouldn't. This is the fault of the mayor (since most of the articles point out that), and he should take the heat.