Gee... heaven forbid you drop a few k on the woman you love for no other reason than it will make her happy. Hopefully for many years it will be something that brings fond thoughts to the surface when she looks at it. Perhaps long after you've joind the underground brigade in the cemetary.
"But look at the ethical and financial aspects of the issue" you say.
Yet many of you would think nothing of droping a few k on the latest and greatest gee whiz piece of electronics. Which may make you happy for a few months and then be worthless after a year or so if you are lucky and which will undoubtably end up in a landfill somewhere or littering the ground and poisoning the soil of some poor asian country for years and years.
Just because you don't get it doesn't mean its not meaningful to someone else.
There's nothing wrong with a little tradition now and then.
In what way pray tell was my post a "troll"? The point is valid.
Sorry to tell you but "you'll understand when you get older" is one of those things that infuriates young people but, in general (heaven forbid anyone speak in absolutes), is true, perspective and maturity mean a great deal, being smart isn't everything, being talented isn't everything.
The willingness to lie to get that yahoo mail account is part of the problem. It is indicitive of why minor's can not sign contracts (judgement, character, responsibility etc).
Talent and maturity are not linked. And while its not an absolute, maturity and age generally are.
Slashdot was on of the few places I didn't block ads from... the ads were targeted, non-obtrusive and were not an inconvenience, so fine, I let them come through to be supportive and even occassionally clicked on them.
That was past tense...as of now, ads from slashdot are blocked.
The large ads are offensive and are the beginning of a downward spiral.
Kids need computer skills no doubt, but guess what, you can cover that in a class or two when they get to high school if they haven't already been exposed to it.
Kids in school need to be learning history, math, sciences and english.
There is a time and place for everything, and jr high is not the place to be playing with computers.
Students might be for this but from what I've read and the people I've talked too its not very popular. We Mainers, if nothing else, tend to be praticle. The kids think "cool! a free computer!", the teachers think, "that should have been my raise, not another distraction for the class room" and most everyone else thinks "Damn it, 7th, 8th and 9th graders need to be learning math, science and english... and a chalk board and some paper are infinitely more practicle for that then this boondogle."
This all begs the question... will Magic Lantern be a virus? I believe its highly unlikely that the FBI will rely on virial distribution of Magic Lantern, its simply too unreliable. It would also put the virus into the wild making the likelihood of detection software developement all the more likely.
It would expose them to all kinds of liability, "oops, we didn't mean to log all your keystrokes Mr Gates, we thought we were infecting Bobo 'The Clown' Longfoot's machine, so sorry". If you need a search warant to put such a tool in place then they need to be danged sure that it _can't_ end up on someone elses machine.
It would probably be counter productive, if a crook is sophisticated enough to use encryption to begin with then he's probably going to make use of any means that will come about to detect such a virus. Which means he can take advantage of it - learning that he's being watched, using it to provide false information, etc etc.
"...the godawful Enterprise..." is drawing more comments then the rest of the post. There is a reason for that. Andromeda is lame, its hardly better then modern Saturday morning cartoons. Enterprise on the other hand is the best thing to happen to the Trek franchise since the original show.
It gives us characters we can care about. It gives us history, its interesting to see the beginings of things that were taken for granted in earlier series. It gives us incite and perspective with which we can better appreciate some of the things we already know about.
Vulcans seem more "real", they aren't treated as infalible as they were in other series. Its intriguing to see. The first contact with the Klingons was perhaps what we expected but yet from the very first they seem honorable. It will be fun to see the first contact with the other races that we know about.
Its refreshing to see what the rest of the universe looks like without the all powerful all pervasive Starfleet getting in the way. Hopefully there will be more glimplses of earth life beyond the frieghters. No more searching for excuses on why the transporter can't be used to save the day or why the replicators, just this once, can't produce what is needed. This crew is facing real limitations on ability and knowledge...it will make for better stories.
Yes, it has its problems...I find the opening annoying, lose the vocals, the imagry works and would be more powerful without them. The time travel crap that infested Voyager is threatening to raise its ugly head and I hope they can keep it to a minimum.
Andromeda? Who cares what happens to it. Give me Enterprise and Farscape and I'll be a happy camper.
The difference is that I pay one reasonable (relatively) fee per month for 50 or so channels.
This is more akin to subscribing to a magazine. I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. Then I discovered that I actually didn't have the time to get $30 or so of value from each one, instead I was simply skimming most of them. The result was that I greatly reduced the number that I subscribe too.
The same will be true of web sites. If they think the competition was bad before, wait until users have to start making choices about what web sites they have time to get real value from.
Note though, my first post didn't say I wasn't willing to pay for a _reasonable_ subscription and in my opinion that is now more then a few dollars a year to make up for my ad viewing.
My choice here is even easier then the magazines however as I can filter the ads from my end if they aren't reasonable in their pricing.
Same here. Slash dot is one of the few places I allow the ads to come through on. Anything more obtrusive then the banner ads will cause me to block them.
I would consider paying a subscription but it damn well be a payment on the order of what they lose from my not viewing the ads to begin with, ie no more then a few dollars a year (by that I mean 1 or 2), anything more then they aren't trying to recoup the lost ad revenue but are instead trying to make me pay for everyone elses use. I'm simply not willing to pay $20 or $30 a year for a dozen different web sites becuase they all discover suddenly that banner ads aren't cutting it (though they should point out to their advertisers that paying based on click through or some such is ludicris, newspaper, broadcast, bill boards etc are about building brand recognition and they don't expect everyone that sees an ad to suddenly visit the show room).
They are incredibly niave then and are ignoring the funtion other advertising venues serve.
Advertising is about brand recognition.
They have been trying to change that with the web. Suddenly it isn't about how many eyes in which demographic see our ad, its how many people actually are interested in the ad at that very moment to click through.
They've picked the wrong metric to measure by, simple as that, they should be looking at views and not click throughs.
Its not really all that shocking or disturbing. Capabilities and sensibilities of what looks "right" change over time. Have you watched an episode of TOS lately? If they made a show that, with nearly 35 years perspective, looked "older" and more "primative" then the original show, it wouldn't stand a chance, people would think some high school kids were screwing around with a camera.
Its ficition, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. They changed the klingon's appearance and everyone survived that and manage to put that great sudden anatomical shift out of mind. Its about the story.
Unfortunately, it is about the story, and while TOS looks primative from todays standards the storys were actually quite good, and if not good, at least somewhat unique. TNG and Voyager were just pathetic in their reliance on the same tired plot devices and spending nearly all their time explaining why they couldn't do somehting that we had seen their technology easily over come in the past.
Maybe this one will bring back some interesting stories. I'm pessimistic though, I loath time travel stories, at least those that aren't done "right", Voyager never did them right.
People see ads all day every day. Very few people react directly to those ads.
So... why are we hearing the lament that banner ads don't work? Of course they work, if it increases name recognition it works. Period.
Banner ads that aren't clicked on are every bit as effective as news paper ads that don't send people rushing to the store.
Instead, the time will come when someone decides to buy something and they are trying to determine which brand to get, they will go with the one they know and love (or the cheapest depending on the person).
Instead of comparing banner ad click throughs to regular ads, they should be compared to coupons or something that is equivelant. If you put out a newspaper ad that says "call this number for more information" and you get X calls then that number of calls is what should be compared to the click throughs, not the number of sales made via that banner.
Wouldn't it be simpler to alter window.open so that it checks to see if the new window will be completely obscured by the current window then check to see if that behavior is allowed?
Then you could have a simple perf that says, "block pop unders".
As for the hydras, a similar method could be used, if you allow a new window to be opened, mark the time and the count and disallow any requests that occur too soon from the same parent or child.
And would it matter? Why go to all the trouble. Encrypt the mp3, publish the key, put the file up.... two weeks from now change the key.
finger printing might make it more difficult for some folks but those who want to persist will create a few tools then others will pick them up and off they go again...
this is just a way for the lawyers to make more money when everyone has to come back because...gee...its not working like we thought it would.
China does not want the US to apologize. They know
that it is perhaps the one thing we can not do for our honor, to save our "face". Saying you're sorry for something that you didn't do is not honorable in any sense. Asking someone to apologize, especially for something they didn't do shows a total lack of "honor".
This buys them a lot of time. They see a lot of potential profit in this misadventure or they would not be risking the potential costs (what good will they had with the American people is rapidly vanashing, the most favored nation status that they faught so hard for which in turn leads to the WTO/World Bank access stuff, and on and on).
The stuff that is easily seen for them to gain...
-test the mettle of the new administration, see how they react to things
-heighten tensions surrounding Tiawan (especially as potential arms sales are on the horizon)
-time to disect the plane for whatever information can be found
-make an impression on other nations, puffing themselves up as it were, standing up to the big bad US
Really, these things are marketing hype. How many people holding a Microsoft Cert have you seen that you wouldn't let wash your car much less take care of your network? I can't speak to the specific certification in question but I think we would all be a lot better off if the HR types aren't allowed to just look for convienient labels and think they are indicative of any kind of skill or real knowledge.
IF WE REALLY WANT to become "professionals" in the sense of lawyers and doctors, (not neccessarily a good idea imo) then there needs to be some kind of centralized authority with fixed types of knowlege tests. That kind of certification might mean something. But all of these certifications promelgated by manufactures are simply another source of income and advertising.
Yes, the use tax predates the internet. And the imputous was NH etc.
Maine and NH are always fighting about taxes. They are currently awaiting action from the Supreme Court on territory issues which encompas the Portsmith Naval Shipyard. Maine has documentation that it owns it going way back, Maine provides all the services for the area (police, fire, snow removal etc) but.... if a NH citizen works there not only does Maine collect income tax from the them but also their spouse. So NH fights it by trying to annex the property. But I digress and ramble....
The use tax is one of my pet peaves. Its also applies to this discussion imo as it shows that the states already cover taxing the internet. As others have pointed out, the consumer is generally responsible for paying sales tax. Or in this case use tax. And they could care less about the vehicle by which the purchase was made.
This pretty much comes down to the the states wanting a new dilevery channel for an old tax. They want to make people in other states responsible for collecting the taxes for them.
Thats simply wrong. It is also short sighted. Any merchant that sells over the internet will generate income tax. The states should perhaps be encouraging this stuff instead of discouraging it. Merchants/manufactures can be anywhere now. Compete in that arena and attract business to the state and everyone benifits. Hound them to collect taxes for other states and you are increasing their costs and discouraging smaller outfits from trying and in turn reducing income taxes.
What will likely happen is that several states will gather together and found some sort of consortium and clearing house to handle this stuff. It will grow and pull in more and more states until there is a defacto national sales tax administered by the states. Politically difficult and imo wrong headed but its never stopped them before.
I realize that taxes have to be collected. I do disagree with the type and and the manner in which they are collected.
Can't collect sales tax? Then go for something called "use tax". Didn't keep your reciepts? Thats ok, based on your income you can use this handy little table to decide what ammount of self reported use tax you should pay us.
"What? You didn't buy anything out of state? Well then you can explicitly claim 0 but we're gonna look at those closely"
"Oh, you paid 3% sales tax to another state for the purchase? Well hmmm... we charge 5% for our sales tax so how about you pay us 2% use tax and we'll call it good."
Sounds like sales tax to me. Sounds unconstitutional to me, anyone have deep enough pockets to fight it?
Welcome to Maine. I understand a number of states use this same scam.
Last time I bought a PC from Micron they charged me sales tax. They have _no_ nexus here in Maine. But they decided it was easier to cooperate with the state for some bizarre reason.
This is all a big joke. Can't tax interstate trade? Well call it something different yet base it on the same thing. Something seriously needs to be done about this.
Perhaps its a good thing that the internet sales are gaining a lot of attention. Perhaps its time to stop the states from collecting any kind of tax based on sales (whether you explicitly call it sales tax or not) and let the feds collec it. Then dole it out back to the states based on some formula that takes into account revenue generated and population and keep a percentage for the US Treasurey and reduce or eliminate the income tax.
I really do wish these were more prevelent. There is something simply majestic in seeing these critters passing over head.
I would absolutely love to be able to take a cross country trip gliding above the ground at a relatively leisurely pace while being able to actually enjoy the traveling aspect of the trip. Something very difficult to do given the state of the highways and commercial aviation.
Of course they would probably try to cram in a hundred rows of 10 inch seats with 4 inches of leg room too...
Slashdot Mirror
If the gyroscope idea works so well why does it also have a traditional ball from desktop use? Why not use the gyro all the time?
Other then in a niche for presenters I don't see the value. Strange that they market it as a gaming device.
Gee... heaven forbid you drop a few k on the woman you love for no other reason than it will make her happy. Hopefully for many years it will be something that brings fond thoughts to the surface when she looks at it. Perhaps long after you've joind the underground brigade in the cemetary.
"But look at the ethical and financial aspects of the issue" you say.
Yet many of you would think nothing of droping a few k on the latest and greatest gee whiz piece of electronics. Which may make you happy for a few months and then be worthless after a year or so if you are lucky and which will undoubtably end up in a landfill somewhere or littering the ground and poisoning the soil of some poor asian country for years and years.
Just because you don't get it doesn't mean its not meaningful to someone else.
There's nothing wrong with a little tradition now and then.
In what way pray tell was my post a "troll"? The point is valid.
Sorry to tell you but "you'll understand when you get older" is one of those things that infuriates young people but, in general (heaven forbid anyone speak in absolutes), is true, perspective and maturity mean a great deal, being smart isn't everything, being talented isn't everything.
Neither is being older of course...
The willingness to lie to get that yahoo mail account is part of the problem. It is indicitive of why minor's can not sign contracts (judgement, character, responsibility etc).
Talent and maturity are not linked. And while its not an absolute, maturity and age generally are.
Its also available on 4DTV (big dish digital)
Slashdot was on of the few places I didn't block ads from... the ads were targeted, non-obtrusive and were not an inconvenience, so fine, I let them come through to be supportive and even occassionally clicked on them.
That was past tense...as of now, ads from slashdot are blocked.
The large ads are offensive and are the beginning of a downward spiral.
However, you can always try to save that show.
Kids need computer skills no doubt, but guess what, you can cover that in a class or two when they get to high school if they haven't already been exposed to it.
Kids in school need to be learning history, math, sciences and english.
There is a time and place for everything, and jr high is not the place to be playing with computers.
Perspective is a wonderful thing....
Students might be for this but from what I've read and the people I've talked too its not very popular. We Mainers, if nothing else, tend to be praticle. The kids think "cool! a free computer!", the teachers think, "that should have been my raise, not another distraction for the class room" and most everyone else thinks "Damn it, 7th, 8th and 9th graders need to be learning math, science and english... and a chalk board and some paper are infinitely more practicle for that then this boondogle."
It would expose them to all kinds of liability, "oops, we didn't mean to log all your keystrokes Mr Gates, we thought we were infecting Bobo 'The Clown' Longfoot's machine, so sorry". If you need a search warant to put such a tool in place then they need to be danged sure that it _can't_ end up on someone elses machine.
It would probably be counter productive, if a crook is sophisticated enough to use encryption to begin with then he's probably going to make use of any means that will come about to detect such a virus. Which means he can take advantage of it - learning that he's being watched, using it to provide false information, etc etc.
"...the godawful Enterprise..." is drawing more comments then the rest of the post. There is a reason for that. Andromeda is lame, its hardly better then modern Saturday morning cartoons. Enterprise on the other hand is the best thing to happen to the Trek franchise since the original show.
It gives us characters we can care about. It gives us history, its interesting to see the beginings of things that were taken for granted in earlier series. It gives us incite and perspective with which we can better appreciate some of the things we already know about.
Vulcans seem more "real", they aren't treated as infalible as they were in other series. Its intriguing to see. The first contact with the Klingons was perhaps what we expected but yet from the very first they seem honorable. It will be fun to see the first contact with the other races that we know about.
Its refreshing to see what the rest of the universe looks like without the all powerful all pervasive Starfleet getting in the way. Hopefully there will be more glimplses of earth life beyond the frieghters. No more searching for excuses on why the transporter can't be used to save the day or why the replicators, just this once, can't produce what is needed. This crew is facing real limitations on ability and knowledge...it will make for better stories.
Yes, it has its problems...I find the opening annoying, lose the vocals, the imagry works and would be more powerful without them. The time travel crap that infested Voyager is threatening to raise its ugly head and I hope they can keep it to a minimum.
Andromeda? Who cares what happens to it. Give me Enterprise and Farscape and I'll be a happy camper.
The difference is that I pay one reasonable (relatively) fee per month for 50 or so channels.
This is more akin to subscribing to a magazine. I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. Then I discovered that I actually didn't have the time to get $30 or so of value from each one, instead I was simply skimming most of them. The result was that I greatly reduced the number that I subscribe too.
The same will be true of web sites. If they think the competition was bad before, wait until users have to start making choices about what web sites they have time to get real value from.
Note though, my first post didn't say I wasn't willing to pay for a _reasonable_ subscription and in my opinion that is now more then a few dollars a year to make up for my ad viewing.
My choice here is even easier then the magazines however as I can filter the ads from my end if they aren't reasonable in their pricing.
Same here. Slash dot is one of the few places I allow the ads to come through on. Anything more obtrusive then the banner ads will cause me to block them.
I would consider paying a subscription but it damn well be a payment on the order of what they lose from my not viewing the ads to begin with, ie no more then a few dollars a year (by that I mean 1 or 2), anything more then they aren't trying to recoup the lost ad revenue but are instead trying to make me pay for everyone elses use. I'm simply not willing to pay $20 or $30 a year for a dozen different web sites becuase they all discover suddenly that banner ads aren't cutting it (though they should point out to their advertisers that paying based on click through or some such is ludicris, newspaper, broadcast, bill boards etc are about building brand recognition and they don't expect everyone that sees an ad to suddenly visit the show room).
Be interesting to see how this all shakes out:)
They are incredibly niave then and are ignoring the funtion other advertising venues serve.
Advertising is about brand recognition.
They have been trying to change that with the web. Suddenly it isn't about how many eyes in which demographic see our ad, its how many people actually are interested in the ad at that very moment to click through.
They've picked the wrong metric to measure by, simple as that, they should be looking at views and not click throughs.
Its ficition, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. They changed the klingon's appearance and everyone survived that and manage to put that great sudden anatomical shift out of mind. Its about the story.
Unfortunately, it is about the story, and while TOS looks primative from todays standards the storys were actually quite good, and if not good, at least somewhat unique. TNG and Voyager were just pathetic in their reliance on the same tired plot devices and spending nearly all their time explaining why they couldn't do somehting that we had seen their technology easily over come in the past.
Maybe this one will bring back some interesting stories. I'm pessimistic though, I loath time travel stories, at least those that aren't done "right", Voyager never did them right.
So... why are we hearing the lament that banner ads don't work? Of course they work, if it increases name recognition it works. Period.
Banner ads that aren't clicked on are every bit as effective as news paper ads that don't send people rushing to the store.
Instead, the time will come when someone decides to buy something and they are trying to determine which brand to get, they will go with the one they know and love (or the cheapest depending on the person).
Instead of comparing banner ad click throughs to regular ads, they should be compared to coupons or something that is equivelant. If you put out a newspaper ad that says "call this number for more information" and you get X calls then that number of calls is what should be compared to the click throughs, not the number of sales made via that banner.
Then you could have a simple perf that says, "block pop unders".
As for the hydras, a similar method could be used, if you allow a new window to be opened, mark the time and the count and disallow any requests that occur too soon from the same parent or child.
The subject pretty much covers it, I don't see many distinctions that can be made.
finger printing might make it more difficult for some folks but those who want to persist will create a few tools then others will pick them up and off they go again...
this is just a way for the lawyers to make more money when everyone has to come back because...gee...its not working like we thought it would.
China does not want the US to apologize. They know that it is perhaps the one thing we can not do for our honor, to save our "face". Saying you're sorry for something that you didn't do is not honorable in any sense. Asking someone to apologize, especially for something they didn't do shows a total lack of "honor". This buys them a lot of time. They see a lot of potential profit in this misadventure or they would not be risking the potential costs (what good will they had with the American people is rapidly vanashing, the most favored nation status that they faught so hard for which in turn leads to the WTO/World Bank access stuff, and on and on). The stuff that is easily seen for them to gain... -test the mettle of the new administration, see how they react to things -heighten tensions surrounding Tiawan (especially as potential arms sales are on the horizon) -time to disect the plane for whatever information can be found -make an impression on other nations, puffing themselves up as it were, standing up to the big bad US
IF WE REALLY WANT to become "professionals" in the sense of lawyers and doctors, (not neccessarily a good idea imo) then there needs to be some kind of centralized authority with fixed types of knowlege tests. That kind of certification might mean something. But all of these certifications promelgated by manufactures are simply another source of income and advertising.
The page comes up mostly blank under netscape.
Maine and NH are always fighting about taxes. They are currently awaiting action from the Supreme Court on territory issues which encompas the Portsmith Naval Shipyard. Maine has documentation that it owns it going way back, Maine provides all the services for the area (police, fire, snow removal etc) but.... if a NH citizen works there not only does Maine collect income tax from the them but also their spouse. So NH fights it by trying to annex the property. But I digress and ramble....
The use tax is one of my pet peaves. Its also applies to this discussion imo as it shows that the states already cover taxing the internet. As others have pointed out, the consumer is generally responsible for paying sales tax. Or in this case use tax. And they could care less about the vehicle by which the purchase was made.
This pretty much comes down to the the states wanting a new dilevery channel for an old tax. They want to make people in other states responsible for collecting the taxes for them.
Thats simply wrong. It is also short sighted. Any merchant that sells over the internet will generate income tax. The states should perhaps be encouraging this stuff instead of discouraging it. Merchants/manufactures can be anywhere now. Compete in that arena and attract business to the state and everyone benifits. Hound them to collect taxes for other states and you are increasing their costs and discouraging smaller outfits from trying and in turn reducing income taxes.
What will likely happen is that several states will gather together and found some sort of consortium and clearing house to handle this stuff. It will grow and pull in more and more states until there is a defacto national sales tax administered by the states. Politically difficult and imo wrong headed but its never stopped them before.
I realize that taxes have to be collected. I do disagree with the type and and the manner in which they are collected.
"What? You didn't buy anything out of state? Well then you can explicitly claim 0 but we're gonna look at those closely"
"Oh, you paid 3% sales tax to another state for the purchase? Well hmmm... we charge 5% for our sales tax so how about you pay us 2% use tax and we'll call it good."
Sounds like sales tax to me. Sounds unconstitutional to me, anyone have deep enough pockets to fight it?
Welcome to Maine. I understand a number of states use this same scam.
Last time I bought a PC from Micron they charged me sales tax. They have _no_ nexus here in Maine. But they decided it was easier to cooperate with the state for some bizarre reason.
This is all a big joke. Can't tax interstate trade? Well call it something different yet base it on the same thing. Something seriously needs to be done about this.
Perhaps its a good thing that the internet sales are gaining a lot of attention. Perhaps its time to stop the states from collecting any kind of tax based on sales (whether you explicitly call it sales tax or not) and let the feds collec it. Then dole it out back to the states based on some formula that takes into account revenue generated and population and keep a percentage for the US Treasurey and reduce or eliminate the income tax.
I would absolutely love to be able to take a cross country trip gliding above the ground at a relatively leisurely pace while being able to actually enjoy the traveling aspect of the trip. Something very difficult to do given the state of the highways and commercial aviation.
Of course they would probably try to cram in a hundred rows of 10 inch seats with 4 inches of leg room too...