False. Go back and read what the great-great-great grandparent said: "The PC should be sufficiently disabled to either lose networking capability, or require a windows reinstall." That's vandalism. That's no different than advocating stealing someone's steering wheel from their car so it can no longer be driven. It's destruction of personal property, invasion of a private home/land, and a waste of the owner's money trying to get his car or PC fixed.
>>>the next time you try to stop before hitting a pedestrian, your car will sail right through them.
False. The existence of a bot on my PC doesn't endanger my life. Nor does it stop me from using that PC to surf the net, listen to MP3s, or watch bittorent-downloaded tv shows.
My analogy was better, because my analogy gets at the heart of the matter - My personal property (car or pc) has been disabled through home invasion. And whether the "invader" does it for a motive of greed, or a motive of "doing a favor" does not matter because it's still an invasion of privacy & vandalism.
Some people pay full price. My friend from China paid full price for an Acura car, because he didn't know he was supposed to haggle. He thought the price on the window was what everyone paid - just like in a store.
>>>Or would you prefer to continue to wallow in ignorant bliss as your computer spews forth tens of thousands of spam each day to the rest of the world? People that take THAT attitude, I have no problem with seeing them get their drives formatted. >>>
Spammail merely makes you delete a few messages per day. Annoying? Yes absolutely, but not that bad. BUT formatting my hard drive is going to cost me a few hundred dollars in (a) lost music, movies that I purchased and (b) time to restore everything. You sir are no better than the vandals who have been "keying" cars in my local city.
>>>I hereby nominate parent for "most moronic Slashdot comment of the year".
No. The most moronic I've read on slashdot is: "After February 17, broadcast television will no longer exist so you might as well sell your antenna." What's worse is that I heard that same statement coming from about ten different posters.
>>>The computer's already part of the botnet, disabling the botnet and alerting the users (to the best of your ability) is the ethical thing to do.
Riiiiight. Since slashdot loves car analogies, let's suppose I left my keys laying on my table, where the keys are visible to anyone walking past the front window.
While leaving your keys in plain sight is supremely stupid, does it justify your invading my home, grabbing the keys, opening my car, removing the steering wheel, and leaving a "get your car serviced" message??? Is this the ethical thing to do?!?!? No. The cops would arrest you and prosecute you for home invasion, vandalism of property, and require you to reimburse any expenses I incurred trying to get my car operational again.
The exact same crimes apply to your idea to disable my private PC inside my home.
A better analogy would be if I left my keys laying on my kitchen table, where the keys are visible to anyone walking past the front window.
While leaving your keys in plain sight is supremely stupid, does it justify your invading my home, grabbing the keys, opening my car, removing the steering wheel, and leaving a "get your car serviced" message??? No. You would be prosecuted for home invasion, vandalism of property, and be required to reimburse any expenses I incurred trying to get my car operational again.
The exact same crimes equally apply to the great-grandparent's idea to disable the PC in my private house.
The road to tyranny is paved with good intentions. Most of the men who we study in history class as "evil" would have repeated the exact same phrase: "I'm doing you a favor" as they burned books, or raided homes, or whatever other anti-human rights crime they committed.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The ends don't justify the means.
Whether the hijacker is some Asshole in Russia using my PC to spam emails, or some asshole on slashdot disabling my net connection with a "spend $100 to fix your machine at a service center", they are still assholes. They both deserve to spend time in jail for theft of property; theft of money; and invasion of a private home.
I'm reminded of the story of Stalin, who was trying to rebuild Russia into a modern nation - a noble goal. The problem was that he achieved his goal by throwing millions into Siberian prisons and deathcamps. Stalin justified his acts by saying, "You need to crack the shell to make a scrambled egg." i.e. Kill a few million people to make Russia a modern industrial nation.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The ends don't justify the means. Disabling someone else's machine is immoral, no matter what your goal might be.
My computer isn't infected, but let's suppose it is. I know for a FACT that it's not spewing spam because I don't have an email account setup on this machine. So no account; no spamming; no problem.
But YOU on the other hand want to disable my computer and make it non-operational. For a problem that doesn't even exist. There's a word for people like you who want to break my $3000 machine: It starts with A and ends with "hole".
Supreme Commander/General Eisenhower warned us to be wary of the military-industrial complex's desire to create wars just to keep themselves in business, and we already caught them in a recent lie (WMDs in Iraq that never existed). How do we know this "computer war" happened and is not just another made-up story to try to get trillions more dollars & keep the military-industrial companies employed?
I work for these people, and frankly I don't trust them. I'd personally be happy to give up my job in order to bring the Congressional budget into the black & reduce taxpayer burdens, but I know many of my colleagues would not. They want to keep their jobs regardless of cost (or lies).
Antitrust legislation was created as a way to breakup 1800s-era monopolies like Standard Oil. What many historians ignore is that Standard Oil was only a *temporary* monopoly for about ten years. What later happened was that other oil companies (mostly in Texas) arose and undercut Standard's market share, thereby restoring a competitive environment.
That's true in virtual every case. A company establishes a monopoly, but it's only a temporary one because other competitors either (a) innovate and kill off the previous technology or (b) learn to undersell the monopoly company. One obvious example is the CD monopoly which was held by Sony & Philips over music distribution, but after about ten years ceased to exist due to other formats like DVD Audio and MP3s being used to provide music.
Now there are such things as "natural monopolies" like cable television, where it makes more sense to have one single company run one wire, rather than run ten wires. However even those natural monopolies are slowly but surely eroding away. Cable companies no longer hold a monopoly, thanks to television distribution by satellite, by phone line (DSL), and by internet (either wired or wireless). And now thanks to cheap fiber, it's technically feasible to have 3 or 4 cable companies serve each home and let the customer decide which company he wants.
Monopolies do not last forever. Therefore there's no need for government to break them up. In 99.99% of the cases the natural laws of economics will do that automatically.
Well I get equally frustrated with Slashdotters who claim U.S. broadcast tv will be ending in February, and those channels will be available for internet or cellphones or whatever. I can understand the average in-duh-vidual on the street believing that, but what's the excuse for a supposed "slashdot nerd" to believe such nonsense?
To quote Bill Cosby: "C'mon people!"
(shrug). I have a spare CM4228 I'll be selling this December. It's not technically an "HD" model, but if that's what it takes to sell it to the typical idiot consumer, then I'll advertise it as a "HD CM4228" just to get it out of my inventory. Otherwise it won't sell because consumers think they need HD.
>>>London's problem is that its reliance on banking makes it parasitic, and when the banking system goes tits up it's rason d'etre goes with it
At least it's not as bad-off as poor Iceland.
>>>we have the picture of trainers produced for a couple of dollars in the 3rd world and sold for a hundred.
What's a "trainer"? In the U.S. most things that are made for cheap in Asia also sell for cheap in Walmart. Just this morning I got a printer for $20. The markup on that item, once you take into account cross-pacific shipping costs, was probably only 200%. That's not exploitive at all.
Let me simplify things: According to the U.S. study I keep referencing, the metropolitan state of Maryland pays (for example) 100 million in taxes. That same state receives 50 million in government services and monetary handouts.
Meanwhile the rural state of Nebraska pays, say, 1 million in taxes, and they receive 50 million in government services/subsidies. In effect you have a redistribution of cash from the urban states to the rural states.
I have not seen any studies for England, but I suspect a similar phenomenon is happening - a flow of cash from the urban to the rural.
I don't know about "enterprise" marketing, but in retail marketing that's called false advertising. If you advertise a list price but never sell anything at that price, it's an illegal and misleading act. HP should be held to the exact-same standards.
So HP salespeople are deceitful, trying to mislead customers into making them feel they got a good bargain (even though they paid exactly what everyone else pays). Sorry but I prefer honesty. I prefer openness. Same as any other retailer like Walmart or JCPenney. The list price is there for all to see, and not hidden behind a bunch of marketing BS, and sleight of hand.
I'd tell HP to go frak off. If I want to tell my friends, colleagues, whoever that I was able to get HP software for 50% off the list price, that's my right of free speech to do so. If HP does not like it, then too bad. My mouth is my mouth and I will continue using it no matter what the HP CEO thinks about it. He can bend over and sck my ___ for all I care.
Stupid arrogant corporations. I hate them. They are becoming modern-day versions of kings & tyrants.
Why should I (and others) waste ~$100 dragging our computers to Best Buy or some other service center? Your proposal violates multiple individual rights (right of property, right of labor, right of money). It's my damn computer, my damn money, and *I* will decide whether or not to take it to the service center.
Stay the hell away from both my computer and my wallet. (I'm not angry, just flabbergasted that you think it's acceptable behavior to hijack other people's personal property and money.)
Yes because what the computer misinterprets as "silence" often contains music at a low volume, and since these MP3-320s are aimed at audiophiles they want to be able to hear those quiet passages, not have them be expunged by bad VBR encoding.
In the video world the equivalent would be a fire-lit scene which the computer mistakenly decides is "all black" and renders as a macroblocked mess. (As example, watch the firelit scenes on the Star Trek DS9 DVDs. Complete crap.)
>>>You are absolutely right, it does. It's universally true that urban areas are net contributers.
I don't think you understood my point. In the U.S. study it showed that urban areas paid more tax dollars than they received. In other words, the money was flowing from the metropolitan states to the rural farming states in the form of subsidies.
If the London situation was examined closely, I suspect the same would be true... i.e. London and its nearby suburbs are paying more taxes than receiving, because the money is flowing to "the north" rustbelt (where people are jobless or underpaid).
I'd say that *I'm* more wealthy because I have an investment in natural resources. I can later sell that investment when iron ore becomes scarce & retire on the proceeds. All you have is an expensive toy that will turn to rust in 20-or-so years and be worth only $1000 (if you're lucky; my mom's 1987 BMW is only worth $500).
Wealth can be created, but not through the printing of money (as the great-grandparent claimed). Wealth is created through (a) more efficient processes, like using machines to build a pyramid instead of slaves, or (b) increasing scarcity of a resource, like oil or land. But the idea that you can print twice as many Euros and suddenly be twice as rich, does not work. All you've done is double the amount of paper; you have not created wealth.
The Olympics started in 1896. Since that time people have become LESS physically fit, not better, therefore the claim that the Olympics encourages people to be "more active" has been proven false.
As for investing dollars in athletes, let's consider the cash of ice skater Sasha Cohen. In addition to private donations, millions of taxpayer dollars have also been invested in her training. And what was the final result of that training? A 20-something woman who has retired from her sport ("past her prime") and has no future prospects. So in effect the millions invested gained next-to-nothing.
And I'm not just picking on Miss Cohen. We could substitute any typical athlete in that equation and get the same result. Investing taxpayer dollars in sports is the true black hole, because it ultimately leads to no career for that athlete.
And yes schools need improvement, but they still generate a better outcome (educated persons who can read, write, et cetera) than the outcome of sports (an old broken body & a retired athlete sitting on his/her ass).
Something I will never understand is why poor people congregate inside cities. If I were in that situation, I'd search for a suburban job at MCdonalds or Walmart or something similar, and then move out of the city and into an apartment within walking distance of my new job. I would not continue living in the squalor of the city.
My next step would be to "move up" to a factory job or management job. To continue sitting in a city slum like a couch potato makes no sense.
Even though the 1080i x30fps has about 3 times more pixels than 480p x60fps, the addition of depth perception provides far more information to the human brain. Which would you rather watch? - A flat video of the Victoria Secret fashion show? - A "deep" video where the curves stand-out and look touchable?
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, Give Me 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>All the suggestion does is alert you to it.
False. Go back and read what the great-great-great grandparent said: "The PC should be sufficiently disabled to either lose networking capability, or require a windows reinstall." That's vandalism. That's no different than advocating stealing someone's steering wheel from their car so it can no longer be driven. It's destruction of personal property, invasion of a private home/land, and a waste of the owner's money trying to get his car or PC fixed.
>>>the next time you try to stop before hitting a pedestrian, your car will sail right through them.
False. The existence of a bot on my PC doesn't endanger my life. Nor does it stop me from using that PC to surf the net, listen to MP3s, or watch bittorent-downloaded tv shows.
My analogy was better, because my analogy gets at the heart of the matter - My personal property (car or pc) has been disabled through home invasion. And whether the "invader" does it for a motive of greed, or a motive of "doing a favor" does not matter because it's still an invasion of privacy & vandalism.
Some people pay full price. My friend from China paid full price for an Acura car, because he didn't know he was supposed to haggle. He thought the price on the window was what everyone paid - just like in a store.
>>>Or would you prefer to continue to wallow in ignorant bliss as your computer spews forth tens of thousands of spam each day to the rest of the world? People that take THAT attitude, I have no problem with seeing them get their drives formatted.
>>>
Spammail merely makes you delete a few messages per day. Annoying? Yes absolutely, but not that bad. BUT formatting my hard drive is going to cost me a few hundred dollars in (a) lost music, movies that I purchased and (b) time to restore everything. You sir are no better than the vandals who have been "keying" cars in my local city.
>>>I hereby nominate parent for "most moronic Slashdot comment of the year".
No. The most moronic I've read on slashdot is: "After February 17, broadcast television will no longer exist so you might as well sell your antenna." What's worse is that I heard that same statement coming from about ten different posters.
>>>The computer's already part of the botnet, disabling the botnet and alerting the users (to the best of your ability) is the ethical thing to do.
Riiiiight. Since slashdot loves car analogies, let's suppose I left my keys laying on my table, where the keys are visible to anyone walking past the front window.
While leaving your keys in plain sight is supremely stupid, does it justify your invading my home, grabbing the keys, opening my car, removing the steering wheel, and leaving a "get your car serviced" message??? Is this the ethical thing to do?!?!? No. The cops would arrest you and prosecute you for home invasion, vandalism of property, and require you to reimburse any expenses I incurred trying to get my car operational again.
The exact same crimes apply to your idea to disable my private PC inside my home.
A better analogy would be if I left my keys laying on my kitchen table, where the keys are visible to anyone walking past the front window.
While leaving your keys in plain sight is supremely stupid, does it justify your invading my home, grabbing the keys, opening my car, removing the steering wheel, and leaving a "get your car serviced" message??? No. You would be prosecuted for home invasion, vandalism of property, and be required to reimburse any expenses I incurred trying to get my car operational again.
The exact same crimes equally apply to the great-grandparent's idea to disable the PC in my private house.
>>>I'm doing you a favor
The road to tyranny is paved with good intentions. Most of the men who we study in history class as "evil" would have repeated the exact same phrase: "I'm doing you a favor" as they burned books, or raided homes, or whatever other anti-human rights crime they committed.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The ends don't justify the means.
Whether the hijacker is some Asshole in Russia using my PC to spam emails, or some asshole on slashdot disabling my net connection with a "spend $100 to fix your machine at a service center", they are still assholes. They both deserve to spend time in jail for theft of property; theft of money; and invasion of a private home.
I'm reminded of the story of Stalin, who was trying to rebuild Russia into a modern nation - a noble goal. The problem was that he achieved his goal by throwing millions into Siberian prisons and deathcamps. Stalin justified his acts by saying, "You need to crack the shell to make a scrambled egg." i.e. Kill a few million people to make Russia a modern industrial nation.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The ends don't justify the means. Disabling someone else's machine is immoral, no matter what your goal might be.
My computer isn't infected, but let's suppose it is. I know for a FACT that it's not spewing spam because I don't have an email account setup on this machine. So no account; no spamming; no problem.
But YOU on the other hand want to disable my computer and make it non-operational.
For a problem that doesn't even exist.
There's a word for people like you who want to break my $3000 machine:
It starts with A and ends with "hole".
How do we know this attack even happened?
Supreme Commander/General Eisenhower warned us to be wary of the military-industrial complex's desire to create wars just to keep themselves in business, and we already caught them in a recent lie (WMDs in Iraq that never existed). How do we know this "computer war" happened and is not just another made-up story to try to get trillions more dollars & keep the military-industrial companies employed?
I work for these people, and frankly I don't trust them. I'd personally be happy to give up my job in order to bring the Congressional budget into the black & reduce taxpayer burdens, but I know many of my colleagues would not. They want to keep their jobs regardless of cost (or lies).
Antitrust legislation was created as a way to breakup 1800s-era monopolies like Standard Oil. What many historians ignore is that Standard Oil was only a *temporary* monopoly for about ten years. What later happened was that other oil companies (mostly in Texas) arose and undercut Standard's market share, thereby restoring a competitive environment.
That's true in virtual every case. A company establishes a monopoly, but it's only a temporary one because other competitors either (a) innovate and kill off the previous technology or (b) learn to undersell the monopoly company. One obvious example is the CD monopoly which was held by Sony & Philips over music distribution, but after about ten years ceased to exist due to other formats like DVD Audio and MP3s being used to provide music.
Now there are such things as "natural monopolies" like cable television, where it makes more sense to have one single company run one wire, rather than run ten wires. However even those natural monopolies are slowly but surely eroding away. Cable companies no longer hold a monopoly, thanks to television distribution by satellite, by phone line (DSL), and by internet (either wired or wireless). And now thanks to cheap fiber, it's technically feasible to have 3 or 4 cable companies serve each home and let the customer decide which company he wants.
Monopolies do not last forever. Therefore there's no need for government to break them up. In 99.99% of the cases the natural laws of economics will do that automatically.
Well I get equally frustrated with Slashdotters who claim U.S. broadcast tv will be ending in February, and those channels will be available for internet or cellphones or whatever. I can understand the average in-duh-vidual on the street believing that, but what's the excuse for a supposed "slashdot nerd" to believe such nonsense?
To quote Bill Cosby: "C'mon people!"
(shrug). I have a spare CM4228 I'll be selling this December. It's not technically an "HD" model, but if that's what it takes to sell it to the typical idiot consumer, then I'll advertise it as a "HD CM4228" just to get it out of my inventory. Otherwise it won't sell because consumers think they need HD.
>>>London's problem is that its reliance on banking makes it parasitic, and when the banking system goes tits up it's rason d'etre goes with it
At least it's not as bad-off as poor Iceland.
>>>we have the picture of trainers produced for a couple of dollars in the 3rd world and sold for a hundred.
What's a "trainer"? In the U.S. most things that are made for cheap in Asia also sell for cheap in Walmart. Just this morning I got a printer for $20. The markup on that item, once you take into account cross-pacific shipping costs, was probably only 200%. That's not exploitive at all.
Let me simplify things: According to the U.S. study I keep referencing, the metropolitan state of Maryland pays (for example) 100 million in taxes. That same state receives 50 million in government services and monetary handouts.
Meanwhile the rural state of Nebraska pays, say, 1 million in taxes, and they receive 50 million in government services/subsidies. In effect you have a redistribution of cash from the urban states to the rural states.
I have not seen any studies for England, but I suspect a similar phenomenon is happening - a flow of cash from the urban to the rural.
I don't know about "enterprise" marketing, but in retail marketing that's called false advertising. If you advertise a list price but never sell anything at that price, it's an illegal and misleading act. HP should be held to the exact-same standards.
So HP salespeople are deceitful, trying to mislead customers into making them feel they got a good bargain (even though they paid exactly what everyone else pays). Sorry but I prefer honesty. I prefer openness. Same as any other retailer like Walmart or JCPenney. The list price is there for all to see, and not hidden behind a bunch of marketing BS, and sleight of hand.
I'd tell HP to go frak off. If I want to tell my friends, colleagues, whoever that I was able to get HP software for 50% off the list price, that's my right of free speech to do so. If HP does not like it, then too bad. My mouth is my mouth and I will continue using it no matter what the HP CEO thinks about it. He can bend over and sck my ___ for all I care.
Stupid arrogant corporations. I hate them. They are becoming modern-day versions of kings & tyrants.
I object.
Why should I (and others) waste ~$100 dragging our computers to Best Buy or some other service center? Your proposal violates multiple individual rights (right of property, right of labor, right of money). It's my damn computer, my damn money, and *I* will decide whether or not to take it to the service center.
Stay the hell away from both my computer and my wallet. (I'm not angry, just flabbergasted that you think it's acceptable behavior to hijack other people's personal property and money.)
Thanks for the correction.
Yes because what the computer misinterprets as "silence" often contains music at a low volume, and since these MP3-320s are aimed at audiophiles they want to be able to hear those quiet passages, not have them be expunged by bad VBR encoding.
In the video world the equivalent would be a fire-lit scene which the computer mistakenly decides is "all black" and renders as a macroblocked mess. (As example, watch the firelit scenes on the Star Trek DS9 DVDs. Complete crap.)
>>>You are absolutely right, it does. It's universally true that urban areas are net contributers.
I don't think you understood my point. In the U.S. study it showed that urban areas paid more tax dollars than they received. In other words, the money was flowing from the metropolitan states to the rural farming states in the form of subsidies.
If the London situation was examined closely, I suspect the same would be true... i.e. London and its nearby suburbs are paying more taxes than receiving, because the money is flowing to "the north" rustbelt (where people are jobless or underpaid).
I'd say that *I'm* more wealthy because I have an investment in natural resources. I can later sell that investment when iron ore becomes scarce & retire on the proceeds. All you have is an expensive toy that will turn to rust in 20-or-so years and be worth only $1000 (if you're lucky; my mom's 1987 BMW is only worth $500).
Wealth can be created, but not through the printing of money (as the great-grandparent claimed). Wealth is created through (a) more efficient processes, like using machines to build a pyramid instead of slaves, or (b) increasing scarcity of a resource, like oil or land. But the idea that you can print twice as many Euros and suddenly be twice as rich, does not work. All you've done is double the amount of paper; you have not created wealth.
The Olympics started in 1896. Since that time people have become LESS physically fit, not better, therefore the claim that the Olympics encourages people to be "more active" has been proven false.
As for investing dollars in athletes, let's consider the cash of ice skater Sasha Cohen. In addition to private donations, millions of taxpayer dollars have also been invested in her training. And what was the final result of that training? A 20-something woman who has retired from her sport ("past her prime") and has no future prospects. So in effect the millions invested gained next-to-nothing.
And I'm not just picking on Miss Cohen. We could substitute any typical athlete in that equation and get the same result. Investing taxpayer dollars in sports is the true black hole, because it ultimately leads to no career for that athlete.
And yes schools need improvement, but they still generate a better outcome (educated persons who can read, write, et cetera) than the outcome of sports (an old broken body & a retired athlete sitting on his/her ass).
Something I will never understand is why poor people congregate inside cities. If I were in that situation, I'd search for a suburban job at MCdonalds or Walmart or something similar, and then move out of the city and into an apartment within walking distance of my new job. I would not continue living in the squalor of the city.
My next step would be to "move up" to a factory job or management job. To continue sitting in a city slum like a couch potato makes no sense.
Even though the 1080i x30fps has about 3 times more pixels than 480p x60fps, the addition of depth perception provides far more information to the human brain. Which would you rather watch? - A flat video of the Victoria Secret fashion show? - A "deep" video where the curves stand-out and look touchable?
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, Give Me 3D.