I really haven't had enough interest in an iPod to buy one. But if this goes through, I may buy one just to join in the classs action suit. I'd love to own a small piece of Universal, and especially a small piece of this jackass's skin. It would make a great bullseye on my dartboard.
I've been active for quite some time on a site dedicated to DIY tube guitar amps (ax84.com). We have a lounge area where anything goes, but the posting policy is quite loose, with all sorts of fun stuff occuring within [otherwise] on-topic threads as well.
After getting hit with several posts by auto-spammers, the maintainer instituted new rules.
You can register, which requires nothing more than a valid email address, handle and password (AFAIK, I registered when he was first testing logins). But we also have people who don't want to register for a variety of reasons-- from wanting to stay off the grid to just not caring. These people get a temporary login if they answer a question that is easy for humans, less easy for a bot. It could just as easily be a "pick the number from the image" thing or whatever.
At any rate this has been in place for a month or so, and I don't see any difference at all in the community. It's still a free-wheeling, fun place, but no spam. A win-win from where I sit. It's possible the non-registerers are unhappy, but since Chris included them in the discussions of how to handle things, and they are still there, I have to assume they're "happy enough". I am.
A friend of a friend was recently in Asia (don't recall whether this incident occurred in Cambodia or Thailand). He went to an internet cafe, where he had to pay in advance for the amount of time he wanted. But regardless of how much time he bought (1/2 hour in his case) the email client was set up to require you to log back in every 5 monutes. So he started hitting "save" at the end of every line.
People get shouted down for saying anythnig that isn't PC, regardless of who's defining PC at the moment. When I had problems with Mr. Clinton and his people, I wastreated as a pariah or (literally) shouted down. When I have problems with Mr. Bush and his people, I am treated as a pariah or told I'm nuts.
You need to either get the chip off your shoulder or get out of your intellectual ghetto.
Exactly the line of reasoning I took. Depending on how it's written, and if enforced fairly, it's a great idea. We've gone way too far into the absurd end of freedom of speech. What the people who favor this fail to see is:
1) It really can screw people up. 2) There is almost a backlash that goes waaaay back the other direction.
And they'll both be your fault if you're one of the folk pushing for "anything goes".
You believe in anarchy of speech? Fine. Just remember, teh door swings both ways, and when it's going the other way, it packs one hell fo a wallop.
We homeschooled our kids, and they got to play all these violent, dangerous games. If they occasionally got hurt, we taught them to get back up and keep going.
Fools! We should have upped our insurance and sued ourselves! We could be retired on a beach somewhere today...
This is undoubtedly mankind's fault for sending probes to other planets. I bet we melted the Martian polar ice caps as well. My relatives back on Mars are pretty pissed about that; I bet they retaliate soon.
The government should fear screwing the people. But the shoe's on the other foot, the people are now afraid of the government. Therefore the people have lost the power.
In many ways, this is no longer a government of, by or for the people.
FWIW, I've voted both Democrat and Republican over the years. These days a great many in both parties disgust me. I'll likely vote for Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas simply because he isn't Republican, Democrat, or a whiny old bat who seems to be trying to give grandmas a bad name.
Well, Linux. Both my kids were using Linux at an early age, including the command line. They still prefer Linux for most stuff when there's a choice. Games still Win, tho...
It costs my company several thousand dollars a year to deal with spam. As the IT Manager, I know.
Both here and at home it takes bandwidth, time, and system resources to deal with. All without my permission. Since my time is my most valuable commodity, it's worse than trespass; it's theft of my life.
Normally I'm not a fan of government intervention, but it sometimes is necessary. This is probably one of those times, where a reasonable law with stiff penalties could help.
But there are two problems I can see with this approach.
First, it would likely be years before the courts sorted out the lawsuits and we would know whether the law would really have any teeth.
Second, given our government's track record WRT respecting privacy the last century, do they really care, and can we trust them?
And this all assumes a reasonable law, which I'm no longer willing to assume is likely. So I guess there are three problems (at least).
As I approach old pfarthood, I despair of trusting the US government. It's a sad thing. OT1H I think the founding fathers did a heck of a job. OTOH I think Jefferson was right, and we needed a revolution every generation or so to keep power from becoming too concentrated. OTGH I wonder if it's possible to have such a revolution any more without wiping out the country because we waited way too long.
Color me cynical.
But by all means try. "Never give up! Never surrender!"
Lay down the law to force companies to pay attention to privacy. Let me decide if I want to waive that right. Don't force me to sign up for it (can you say, "Do Not Call list"? I knew you could.)
With Linux, at least, it's completely up to you and what you'll be doing.
I know of people happily using a 256MB swap space with 1GB or 2GB RAM.
On a basic system used for firewalling, I have no swap at all.
At work, we try to have 8GB, even on 1GB systems, because we do occasionally have batch jobs consume tons of memory, or giant databases loading into CAD apps, where drastic slowdownns are still better than lockups or crashes. But a screwup in making install disks resulted in a bunch of desktops with 1GB swap and 1GB or 2GB RAM, and only a couple of them have problems. Our proxy server and mail gateway have a small swap space as an emergency precaution since we never, ever want them to die. Slow is better than dead, and the monitoring software will catch the slowdown.
My file server at home has a swap the size of RAM, just to be safe. The "workstations" have swap spaces at least 2X RAM, just to be safe. Once in a while, doing something hairy in GIMP on a large image, this has saved one of our fannies.
I've been looking for the new, natural light CFLs but haven't found them locally, except in insanely expensive one-packs.
But I have a ceiling fan without a light dimmer, in which I put two "soft white" CFLs and two "natural light" incandescents, and the color is excellent. The CFLs seem to be as good as normal soft whites, but the "natural light" bulbs are even better. But it's a start. I wante dto do this throuhgout the house, but most of our rooms are on dimmers-- and we use them.
Slashdot Mirror
I really haven't had enough interest in an iPod to buy one. But if this goes through, I may buy one just to join in the classs action suit. I'd love to own a small piece of Universal, and especially a small piece of this jackass's skin. It would make a great bullseye on my dartboard.
That was my first thought. In 5 years, about 80% of the data will be too antiquated to be of more than historical (or perhaps trendy (sic)) value.
The dinosaurs smoked *really* big cigarettes...
I've been active for quite some time on a site dedicated to DIY tube guitar amps (ax84.com). We have a lounge area where anything goes, but the posting policy is quite loose, with all sorts of fun stuff occuring within [otherwise] on-topic threads as well.
After getting hit with several posts by auto-spammers, the maintainer instituted new rules.
You can register, which requires nothing more than a valid email address, handle and password (AFAIK, I registered when he was first testing logins). But we also have people who don't want to register for a variety of reasons-- from wanting to stay off the grid to just not caring. These people get a temporary login if they answer a question that is easy for humans, less easy for a bot. It could just as easily be a "pick the number from the image" thing or whatever.
At any rate this has been in place for a month or so, and I don't see any difference at all in the community. It's still a free-wheeling, fun place, but no spam. A win-win from where I sit. It's possible the non-registerers are unhappy, but since Chris included them in the discussions of how to handle things, and they are still there, I have to assume they're "happy enough". I am.
I keep the Sceptre of Death in my office.
It looks suspiciously like a 4 wood found next to a trash can, but works just fine for my purposes.
If Howard Stern's language is a "distinct advantage" someone needs a brain transplant.
A friend of a friend was recently in Asia (don't recall whether this incident occurred in Cambodia or Thailand). He went to an internet cafe, where he had to pay in advance for the amount of time he wanted. But regardless of how much time he bought (1/2 hour in his case) the email client was set up to require you to log back in every 5 monutes. So he started hitting "save" at the end of every line.
People get shouted down for saying anythnig that isn't PC, regardless of who's defining PC at the moment. When I had problems with Mr. Clinton and his people, I wastreated as a pariah or (literally) shouted down. When I have problems with Mr. Bush and his people, I am treated as a pariah or told I'm nuts.
You need to either get the chip off your shoulder or get out of your intellectual ghetto.
IMO.
Note that I'm not shouting. 8^)
Exactly the line of reasoning I took. Depending on how it's written, and if enforced fairly, it's a great idea. We've gone way too far into the absurd end of freedom of speech. What the people who favor this fail to see is:
1) It really can screw people up.
2) There is almost a backlash that goes waaaay back the other direction.
And they'll both be your fault if you're one of the folk pushing for "anything goes".
You believe in anarchy of speech? Fine. Just remember, teh door swings both ways, and when it's going the other way, it packs one hell fo a wallop.
Britain's Prime Minister and Queen jointly speak out, urging Parliament to immediately ban pick-axe handles, cars, roads, and the web. Film at 11.
We homeschooled our kids, and they got to play all these violent, dangerous games. If they occasionally got hurt, we taught them to get back up and keep going.
Fools! We should have upped our insurance and sued ourselves! We could be retired on a beach somewhere today...
Either way, I think "Libya Purchases ... Wind-up Laptops"
wins the "Best Headline of the Month" award.
This is undoubtedly mankind's fault for sending probes
to other planets. I bet we melted the Martian polar ice
caps as well. My relatives back on Mars are pretty pissed
about that; I bet they retaliate soon.
Since the news shows devolved into entertainment, it makes perfect sense for entertainment shows to devolve into news!
... it has a new, French Polynesian, "Hello World" theme!
If only it were "Hello Kitty" I dould download it at once for my niece.
Our business wouldn't be dumb enough to base its revenue stream on whether consumers who might not want to see our ads could block them.
While our sample size is much smaller (8 dual Opterons) we've had only one problem, and it's likely OS related.
The government should fear screwing the people. But the shoe's on the other foot, the people are now afraid of the government. Therefore the people have lost the power.
In many ways, this is no longer a government of, by or for the people.
FWIW, I've voted both Democrat and Republican over the years. These days a great many in both parties disgust me. I'll likely vote for Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas simply because he isn't Republican, Democrat, or a whiny old bat who seems to be trying to give grandmas a bad name.
Well, Linux. Both my kids were using Linux at an early age, including the command line. They still prefer Linux for most stuff when there's a choice. Games still Win, tho...
Thanks, we'd been wondering where grandpa was buried...
-Hagrid
Do you really think anyone in the GAO can even *see* numbers that small?
Now if the census bureau were having to take a census of laptops, they'd find them all in short order!
It costs my company several thousand dollars a year to deal with spam. As the IT Manager, I know.
Both here and at home it takes bandwidth, time, and system resources to deal with. All without my permission. Since my time is my most valuable commodity, it's worse than trespass; it's theft of my life.
Normally I'm not a fan of government intervention, but it sometimes is necessary. This is probably one of those times, where a reasonable law with stiff penalties could help.
But there are two problems I can see with this approach.
First, it would likely be years before the courts sorted out the lawsuits and we would know whether the law would really have any teeth.
Second, given our government's track record WRT respecting privacy the last century, do they really care, and can we trust them?
And this all assumes a reasonable law, which I'm no longer willing to assume is likely. So I guess there are three problems (at least).
As I approach old pfarthood, I despair of trusting the US government. It's a sad thing. OT1H I think the founding fathers did a heck of a job. OTOH I think Jefferson was right, and we needed a revolution every generation or so to keep power from becoming too concentrated. OTGH I wonder if it's possible to have such a revolution any more without wiping out the country because we waited way too long.
Color me cynical.
But by all means try. "Never give up! Never surrender!"
Lay down the law to force companies to pay attention to privacy. Let me decide if I want to waive that right. Don't force me to sign up for it (can you say, "Do Not Call list"? I knew you could.)
Yes, it depends.
With Linux, at least, it's completely up to you and what you'll be doing.
I know of people happily using a 256MB swap space with 1GB or 2GB RAM.
On a basic system used for firewalling, I have no swap at all.
At work, we try to have 8GB, even on 1GB systems, because we do occasionally have batch jobs consume tons of memory, or giant databases loading into CAD apps, where drastic slowdownns are still better than lockups or crashes. But a screwup in making install disks resulted in a bunch of desktops with 1GB swap and 1GB or 2GB RAM, and only a couple of them have problems. Our proxy server and mail gateway have a small swap space as an emergency precaution since we never, ever want them to die. Slow is better than dead, and the monitoring software will catch the slowdown.
My file server at home has a swap the size of RAM, just to be safe. The "workstations" have swap spaces at least 2X RAM, just to be safe. Once in a while, doing something hairy in GIMP on a large image, this has saved one of our fannies.
I've been looking for the new, natural light CFLs but haven't found them locally, except in insanely expensive one-packs.
But I have a ceiling fan without a light dimmer, in which I put two "soft white" CFLs and two "natural light" incandescents, and the color is excellent. The CFLs seem to be as good as normal soft whites, but the "natural light" bulbs are even better. But it's a start. I wante dto do this throuhgout the house, but most of our rooms are on dimmers-- and we use them.