As a feeling human being I do to, however, if war becomes too painless it may also become even more common.
Let's face it the only reason anyone ever quits a war and gives in is because they either run out of young men to throw at the enemy with guns, or they realize the cost is too high and quit sending in those young men and give up.
If you send in a bunch of robots, and young men quit getting killed, war becomes less painful, and it brings to mind a star trek episode (the OLD trek) I'm sure I don't even need to recap the episode here, we've all seen it right?
I have a feeling that my feelings are likely felt by many Koreans and people just about everywhere. That feeling is that I just ain't paying $18 for a CD. It isn't WORTH $18 to me to listen to the VAST majority of music out there. It's simply overpriced. Instead I'll listen to the digital music channel I get as part of my cable subscription, the radio, or I may even soon get Sirius or XM radio as well.
I love music, I listen to lots of it, but I just can't bring myself to believe that $15 - $18 is a fair price for a CD of music, by ANYONE, I can count on one hand, maybe both, the number of CDs or cassettes (or records) that I own that I would listen to and think "hell yeah this is WORTH $18" and the rest are simply worth less and most if I had to buy them AGAIN for the retail price (that I paid for OH so many of them) I wouldn't repurchase them, no way.
I can go buy "most" new movies for $14.99 a few go $19.99 but as a rule of thumb I can pick up a movie for about $15 or I can rent it for $2 (actually I use Netflix religiously). This, to me, is a good enough deal that I buy quite a few movies, and rent quite a few more (via Netflix). Pirating movies to me is an absurd thought, why spend hours and hours downloading a crappy copy when I can just Netflix it? The same for music, if I could pick up a CD for $7-$9 I wouldn't bother pirating it it'd be WORTH it to me to get the pretty insert and a "real copy" of it. Alternatively I feel like 99 cents per track of music is a bit high too, your average CD is around 10-15 tracks and that makes some CDs more expensive to buy online than in the store, I've yet to buy a single song of online music, and probably won't unless it gets cheaper. When it hits about a quarter per song, maybe 50 cents, then I'll probably buy into it. Hey it probably never will, and I won't buy any music online, life goes on I suppose.
I put a "personal price point" on music at about $8 per cd. I hop on Amazon.com and pick up used CDs for $2-$7 all the time, I've bought dozens and dozens. I'll PAY that for a CD rather than pirate it, gladly. I support the artists by going to their concerts, and by listening to their music and by telling others "hey check out..." but I'm growing increasingly pissed off at the price of CDs and I haven't bought a CD off the shelf in... hmm 2 years now? Maybe more.
I for one will shed nary a tear to hear that the RIAA and the "big music" companies are hurting, evolution happens to us all. Better things come along, new ways of doing things, faster, cheaper, ways of doing things, and you adapt or die. Hello RIAA, meet the Dodo.
Don't confuse prison for jail, your typical jail, where they hold arrestees, is not at all like prison. Most jails, while of course not pleasant, are pretty safe and relatively well controlled, typically fairly clean and and well kept. A rape in your average jail is pretty rare. Prison however, where you go after the trial, now that is a whole other ballgame and rape there is (supposedly) very very common and a huge problem.
My dad and several friends have spent varying amount of time in the county lockup (jail) of various places with the only real ill effect being well, jailed. Now I've never talked with anyone who spent time in a hardcore prison (medium plus security) I have known one or two who spent time in a minimum security prison and rape in the lesser prison securities is not as common yet does happen mainly if an inmate is fingered for something unpleasant. Child molesters come to mind, they have it rough if it is "leaked" to the general population what the pedo is in for.
Oh? I can't remember ever getting on a plane without showing some id to be honest, and I never considered it even possible to get on a plane and never confirm my Id to match my ticket. Just kinda seemed like a given to me.
Now when I gotta show my ID to cross the AL/TN state line to go ride around the mountains of TN or show my id to cross the AL/GA state line to go manage my servers or show id to cross the AL/MS line to visit relatives THEN I'm gonna be quite upset. I still can't see a problem with showing ID in order to board a plane.
Swim? Your own boat? Your own plane? Charter a plane to fly you. With MONEY you can be as anonymous as you want. I guess the message is "anonymity costs".
And you're gonna show your id the SECOND you get to Europe anyway, they're not letting you in without a passport.
If the airline wants to see your id to let you on THEIR plane it's THEIR business, DON'T FLY. DRIVE instead. When they setup checkpoints at state lines THEN it's time to get pissed, no one has a RIGHT to fly on an airplane anonymously, there are many reasons, one of which is WHAT IF THEY CRASH? A passenger list is gonna be handy in knowing WHO DIED. I mean come on people. I like a good government conspiracy as much as the next man but this is ridiculous to bitch about.
If you don't like the AIRLINE'S rules then DRIVE (take a bus? I've never ridden a bus do they check id too?).
This is why when I recently bought new cordless phones, I bought 900mhz phones instead of 2.4 so I couldn't have any worries. I've never been at all displeased with 900mhz and the range is excellent.
Ok karma burn coming up - what about people with a lazy eye? How do you know what they're REALLY looking at? The mouse pointer might end up out of bounds!
In my server cage I have a full tower with a basic mobo plus a 4 port (8 drive) Promise ATA100 raid controller with 8 120 gig drives. Cases aren't hard to find with around 7 internal 3.5 inch bays and 1 or 2 open 3.5 and 3 or 4 open 5.25 inch bays. I think I paid $45 for my case + 300W power supply then I threw a decent 450W PS in there that I think I gave like $55 for. Total storage is just about 600 gigs with RAID-5. It wasn't that expensive I had 3 or 4 120's lying around from server pulls and RMA returns. The pc itself is like a Celeron 1.7 or something I had lying around and I put a new cheapie DVD drive in there to rip with. Most expensive part I had to buy was the card which I believe was $69 or $99 from mwave.com. Popped RH9 on there and now I can ftp backups for 65 servers into one spot.
At home I have about 2.2 terabytes across 3 pc's, one has an onboard 4 port SATA raid controller and 4x160G drives for a total usable space of around 600 gigs, another has 4 or 5 80 gig drives, a 120 and a 60 in a Windows XP uhm, Volume set that's it of around 640 gigs! And another pc has an onboard ATA100 raid with 2 ports (4 drives) 120x4 and a 60gig to boot off of for a total of about 510 gigs usable.
I have all my DVD's and CD's ripped and I can play them from anywhere, I have PC's hooked to all my TV's and networked, and I removed the DVD players from the stereo cabinet, it was redundant. It's quite nifty actually.
You can put together a terabyte storage system for peanuts using basic stuff. Onboard 4 drive raid controller 4 250 gig drives boom there ya go. Install OS if your choice. Get more fancy, pop a 4 port ATA controller on there for 8 drives a bigger power supply and you could encroach on the 2 terabyte game without getting into "server class" products other than I'd spring for a "server class" power supply maybe redundant even.
If I thought my music were good enough I'd gladly give it to any dentist, elevator, etc who'd have it. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there making music who'd freely let it be used for this stuff maybe someone should make like a "sourceforge" for music and just let anyone use it who wants with a basic "gpl" of music. Maybe require a short "and now by " (or request it require is a strong word).
Is there something like this already maybe? I'm not a musician so music type things are not foremost in my mind.
If this is for just personal use god do NOT bother it isn't worth it, no way no how.
Business? Yes unfortunately I would, actually, I do. See, people have this ANNOYING habit of just emailing "stuff"@domain.com asking sales questions or support questions, or whatever. I get emails to sales, admin, billing, suppost, administrator, postmaster, and as sure as I ain't monitoring something, someone will just decide for some reason or another to email like "web@" or something equally silly and unused. The offchance of missing a pre-sales or post-sale support question just isn't worth it.
So I run with bayesian filters, RBL's, and other goodies to try and minimize spam, it's not too bad about 6 per day get through, this is just short of amazing. I'll see maybe, 1 or 2 false positives (real mail marked as spam) per month.
If this were a personal setup, no "money" involved I'd NEVER use the catch-all.
that the linux version is not as bloated (badly written?) as the Windows version.
My "media player" pc was a celeron 1.7 ghz 512M ram and I installed PowerDVD (because it was on a CD and I was too lazy to download WinDVD which is the player I usually use). Well I couldn't play DVD's with it, it hitched and jerked and paused so much I thought it was a bad DVD (except it was a DVD ripped to the harddrive, screw messing with those scratchable disks) so I tried another dvd image, and another, after 3 different movies played like a DVD that had been manhandled by my 3 year old, I was like "hmm", checked task manager and cpu usage was near 100% (just to play a DVD???). Installed Intervideo WinDVD 4 and put in my registration (yes I bought it) and it played FINE, perfect, no hitches, cpu usage was not bad, hovered in the 20-30% stage.
So to make a long story longer, here's hoping the Linux version isn't as bloated and/or badly written as the Windows version else you'll probably need a near 3Ghz machine just to play some darn DVD's!
is some enterprising virus writer make one that when it infects a pc - downloads mozilla, installs it and then sets it as the default browser.
I suspect most Joe Sixpacks would see mozilla fire up the next time they clicked "the internet" and shrug and keep going.
Or make a spyware that pops up windows telling people to install Mozilla "Tired of Popups? Click here to download a free internet browser that STOPS POPUPS" or something like that.
Maybe not the most moral of approaches to it but jesus how much more spyware, viruses, popups, and crap can people take?
Sad thing is I keep a Windows/IE box around myself and one of the biggest uses I have for it is to open those links (typically to videos) that just won't play right or at all in Linux/Mozilla. That and GAMES of course, not that I have much time to play any but when I do it's probably not a game with a linux client.
I could have nearly written that exact same reply, as a kid/teen I read all the time, sometimes 4 or 5 novels in a week during the summers. Sci fi and fantasy mostly, some Clancy and some L'Amour and other stuff. In college I read less, less time, after college much less, almost no books. However now I read a lot again, but I own my own company work out of the house and pretty much do what I want when I want, I'm finally reading the Wheel of Time, on book 5 now, been reading them for 2 weeks. I re-read the Harry Potter books the 2 weeks before the last movie to re-fresh myself for the movie.
Soon as I'm done with the Wheel of Time I'm gonna go searching for some good Sci Fi, maybe re-read some Heinlein classics or find something "new" just depends on what I browse into poking around Amazon or whatever.
So if you want time to read get laid off start your own company!
If you're making $65,000 in purchases per year you shouldn't NEED to worry about 10%!
I buy AT MOST a couple $K in stuff I "could" buy at Best Buy in a year - dvd's, cd's, computer "stuff", electronics, etc. If I saved 25% I'd maybe need a couple hundred bucks for all that trouble. However with some shopping around I can usually get just about the same "after rebate" price without a rebate and typically order it online and save a trip outside (laziness is a great motivator).
If I spend an hour of time getting a $25 rebate, including filling out the forms, clipping UPC codes, making copies of reciepts, etc, then I've lost money because I could have been doing something else during that hour to make money. Time IS money and wasting time dicking with rebates is money lost.
Side 1 - people suck - have you ever read any of these "deal forums" (Fat Wallet and AT Hot Deals are two I read from time to time. Jesus fucking christ these people would walk a mile through the desert barefoot while eating salted peanuts for a fucking $10 rebate. Sometimes the "sequence of events" required to get these deals is more fucking work than just well, working and BUYING it for regular price, pricematch here, rebate there, obscure coupon code over there, print someone's reciept from some other store in some other state, and you might get a $79 item for $64 or something equally lame. I get a chuckle at the enormous lengths people will go to to save a couple bucks.
Side 2 - Best Buy sucks - reading this site is like a traffic accident complete with ripped off limbs, you can't stop looking but you know you should. The damn near criminal "support policies" they push and push and push on you, and the "piggyback" magazine subscriptions make me want to do things that would get me on the news. I'm currently getting bills from Entertainment Weekly because when checking out at BB a few months ago I let them "send me 4 free issues" just to get them to shut the FUCK up. Now they want me to pay for the stupid magazine like I give two drops of spit about EW (ew is right).
I don't know who to root for in this fight... Best Buy or the "demon customers" socking it to them. Goddamn I hate rebates, I go out of my way to avoid deals involving rebates because they just PISS ME OFF so bad.
Agreed most kids do not have a CLUE how to do all this, however it's still their equipment, if the school wants to do this I say ISSUE a cheap whitebox PC to each student and only allow that pc on the network now it is NOT the student's property and the school is very welcome to do with it what they please.
If the school simply told me "you can't put YOUR computer on the network but you can use THIS one" then hey, that's policy like it or lump it. I wouldn't necessarily like this either BUT I could live with it. Maybe have a "request" feature to use your own pc but only if you can convince someone you won't be a nuisance with it, maybe offer a school-supplied "paid internet" port in each room where you can pay a few bucks to have a direct line to the internet for your own pc but it not be ON the school network.
Many solutions that don't involve someone else touching MY stuff! I'm selfish like that I guess heh.
Well I own the stupid thing and right now it's sitting in a closet unused so, I suppose if nothing else I can tinker with it with the open source stuff:) Thanks for the link I'll check it out, can't make this junky thing any WORSE I'm sure! haha
It's not "too" bad, good ones are about VHS quality bad ones are well, bad.
I have no use for 'em but my 3 year old loves 'em, shaky-cam Shrek 2 and shaky-cam Spiderman 2 are just the cat's meow to him, personally I'll wait for the DVD (might go see both movies AGAIN though, they're really good).
I still can't see how it costs them revenue, it's not like I'm gonna take my kid to watch either movie more or LESS times just because he has a shaky cam version to watch on his TV upstairs. Seems like sales records are broken on movies every few months and people seem to be flocking into the theaters in droves.
This thing had usb and ethernet options for networking, and some windows software you had to load, and frankly, it sucked HARD, and I mean HARD, $300 for what amounted to crap. It crashed regularly, playing more than a handful of mp3's was just about impossible, only about half or less of my videos even played on the damned thing, a TOTAL waste of money.
I got pissed and built a new PC and put my old PC by the TV and that was the absolute best way to do this, no stupid media center crap required, just switch my tv to input 2 and I'm THERE, I even pulled my DVD player out of my entertainment cabinet I like them better played off the computer, better image quality and remove one device from my overtaxed entertainment center.
For my basement theater I built a Shuttle XPC system and I have been happy as a clam with that little PC, added a WinTV PVR250 to it and it ROCKS I cannot sing the praises of that setup enough.
The school's right to "poke" stops where the network cable meets my NIC card, everything on the outside of the cable is their business, if they detect viruses/spam/P2P/anything else "not allowed" then by all means bust my ass for it. However no one, but me, logs into and uses my computer, period, unless you come with a search warrant and that warrant includes looking into my PC then you ain't peeking at it. You can ask, and most damned likely I'll show you, but that's the extent of it.
There was much the same discussion a while back when someone posted about the cable company "checking" their PC. Same rule applies, the cable company's, or school's rights end where my NIC card (or switch) begins. They're welcome to ask, and I'm welcome to say no. They're also welcome to turn off my uplink, everything has its consequences of course, go busting heads with the school you'll probably find your ethernet go black, but they're still not logging into my PC.
Tell me what's wrong, I'll fix it but don't think for a minute you're putting your grubby mitts on my keyboard without a court order (or asking nicely, but you're still not patching jack shit, I'm the only one with root).
Besides, I wouldn't run Windows on anything but a gaming machine anyway, I do my WORK on linux, so I can check email, open urls, etc etc etc without any fear I'm about to be infected by the "nasty virus of the day".
Showing your DL at a road block is one thing, you're on the road driving a car, I don't see it being Orwellian to ask to see your license to drive, HOWEVER if they ask to see the license/ID for a PASSENGER and the passenger declines and then shit gets started that IS getting to be too much. I suppose all they have to say is that the passenger "looked like someone who was wanted for something somewhere so they checked ID" those "probable cause" situations are really abusable by the police...
Also asking your name is one thing, asking to see ID is another. I don't always have ID on me, last I checked this wasn't against a law to be without an ID of course if I'm DRIVING then I have my license with me because well, that is a law but I don't, say, carry my license with me to go check the mail, or if my wife's driving I don't always have my wallet with me and feel no compunction to make sure I have it either.
Absolutely - $249 Dell Axim X30 with 802.11b and Bluetooth built right in I have the older X3i looks about the same except mine doesn't have bluetooth (no problem for me).
I don't understand why the Dell handhelds aren't a bigger conversation piece, when I shopped for a PDA I couldn't find anything even remotely as nice as the Dell for the price.
Hope your watch runs backward:) I downloaded this cd off of mp3search.ru in MP3 format "a couple days ago". So the "how long is" "days ago".
I hate to say it but I like it, I'm usually about heavier music but this is good I'll probably snag a "real" copy soon, probably outta Amazon's used cd marketplace (hey it's good but it ain't $14.99 good, hardly any music is THAT good).
Slashdot Mirror
As a feeling human being I do to, however, if war becomes too painless it may also become even more common.
Let's face it the only reason anyone ever quits a war and gives in is because they either run out of young men to throw at the enemy with guns, or they realize the cost is too high and quit sending in those young men and give up.
If you send in a bunch of robots, and young men quit getting killed, war becomes less painful, and it brings to mind a star trek episode (the OLD trek) I'm sure I don't even need to recap the episode here, we've all seen it right?
I have a feeling that my feelings are likely felt by many Koreans and people just about everywhere. That feeling is that I just ain't paying $18 for a CD. It isn't WORTH $18 to me to listen to the VAST majority of music out there. It's simply overpriced. Instead I'll listen to the digital music channel I get as part of my cable subscription, the radio, or I may even soon get Sirius or XM radio as well.
I love music, I listen to lots of it, but I just can't bring myself to believe that $15 - $18 is a fair price for a CD of music, by ANYONE, I can count on one hand, maybe both, the number of CDs or cassettes (or records) that I own that I would listen to and think "hell yeah this is WORTH $18" and the rest are simply worth less and most if I had to buy them AGAIN for the retail price (that I paid for OH so many of them) I wouldn't repurchase them, no way.
I can go buy "most" new movies for $14.99 a few go $19.99 but as a rule of thumb I can pick up a movie for about $15 or I can rent it for $2 (actually I use Netflix religiously). This, to me, is a good enough deal that I buy quite a few movies, and rent quite a few more (via Netflix). Pirating movies to me is an absurd thought, why spend hours and hours downloading a crappy copy when I can just Netflix it? The same for music, if I could pick up a CD for $7-$9 I wouldn't bother pirating it it'd be WORTH it to me to get the pretty insert and a "real copy" of it. Alternatively I feel like 99 cents per track of music is a bit high too, your average CD is around 10-15 tracks and that makes some CDs more expensive to buy online than in the store, I've yet to buy a single song of online music, and probably won't unless it gets cheaper. When it hits about a quarter per song, maybe 50 cents, then I'll probably buy into it. Hey it probably never will, and I won't buy any music online, life goes on I suppose.
I put a "personal price point" on music at about $8 per cd. I hop on Amazon.com and pick up used CDs for $2-$7 all the time, I've bought dozens and dozens. I'll PAY that for a CD rather than pirate it, gladly. I support the artists by going to their concerts, and by listening to their music and by telling others "hey check out..." but I'm growing increasingly pissed off at the price of CDs and I haven't bought a CD off the shelf in... hmm 2 years now? Maybe more.
I for one will shed nary a tear to hear that the RIAA and the "big music" companies are hurting, evolution happens to us all. Better things come along, new ways of doing things, faster, cheaper, ways of doing things, and you adapt or die. Hello RIAA, meet the Dodo.
Don't confuse prison for jail, your typical jail, where they hold arrestees, is not at all like prison. Most jails, while of course not pleasant, are pretty safe and relatively well controlled, typically fairly clean and and well kept. A rape in your average jail is pretty rare. Prison however, where you go after the trial, now that is a whole other ballgame and rape there is (supposedly) very very common and a huge problem.
My dad and several friends have spent varying amount of time in the county lockup (jail) of various places with the only real ill effect being well, jailed. Now I've never talked with anyone who spent time in a hardcore prison (medium plus security) I have known one or two who spent time in a minimum security prison and rape in the lesser prison securities is not as common yet does happen mainly if an inmate is fingered for something unpleasant. Child molesters come to mind, they have it rough if it is "leaked" to the general population what the pedo is in for.
Oh? I can't remember ever getting on a plane without showing some id to be honest, and I never considered it even possible to get on a plane and never confirm my Id to match my ticket. Just kinda seemed like a given to me.
Now when I gotta show my ID to cross the AL/TN state line to go ride around the mountains of TN or show my id to cross the AL/GA state line to go manage my servers or show id to cross the AL/MS line to visit relatives THEN I'm gonna be quite upset. I still can't see a problem with showing ID in order to board a plane.
Swim? Your own boat? Your own plane? Charter a plane to fly you. With MONEY you can be as anonymous as you want. I guess the message is "anonymity costs".
And you're gonna show your id the SECOND you get to Europe anyway, they're not letting you in without a passport.
If the airline wants to see your id to let you on THEIR plane it's THEIR business, DON'T FLY. DRIVE instead. When they setup checkpoints at state lines THEN it's time to get pissed, no one has a RIGHT to fly on an airplane anonymously, there are many reasons, one of which is WHAT IF THEY CRASH? A passenger list is gonna be handy in knowing WHO DIED. I mean come on people. I like a good government conspiracy as much as the next man but this is ridiculous to bitch about.
If you don't like the AIRLINE'S rules then DRIVE (take a bus? I've never ridden a bus do they check id too?).
This is why when I recently bought new cordless phones, I bought 900mhz phones instead of 2.4 so I couldn't have any worries. I've never been at all displeased with 900mhz and the range is excellent.
Ok karma burn coming up - what about people with a lazy eye? How do you know what they're REALLY looking at? The mouse pointer might end up out of bounds!
In my server cage I have a full tower with a basic mobo plus a 4 port (8 drive) Promise ATA100 raid controller with 8 120 gig drives. Cases aren't hard to find with around 7 internal 3.5 inch bays and 1 or 2 open 3.5 and 3 or 4 open 5.25 inch bays. I think I paid $45 for my case + 300W power supply then I threw a decent 450W PS in there that I think I gave like $55 for. Total storage is just about 600 gigs with RAID-5. It wasn't that expensive I had 3 or 4 120's lying around from server pulls and RMA returns. The pc itself is like a Celeron 1.7 or something I had lying around and I put a new cheapie DVD drive in there to rip with. Most expensive part I had to buy was the card which I believe was $69 or $99 from mwave.com. Popped RH9 on there and now I can ftp backups for 65 servers into one spot.
At home I have about 2.2 terabytes across 3 pc's, one has an onboard 4 port SATA raid controller and 4x160G drives for a total usable space of around 600 gigs, another has 4 or 5 80 gig drives, a 120 and a 60 in a Windows XP uhm, Volume set that's it of around 640 gigs! And another pc has an onboard ATA100 raid with 2 ports (4 drives) 120x4 and a 60gig to boot off of for a total of about 510 gigs usable.
I have all my DVD's and CD's ripped and I can play them from anywhere, I have PC's hooked to all my TV's and networked, and I removed the DVD players from the stereo cabinet, it was redundant. It's quite nifty actually.
You can put together a terabyte storage system for peanuts using basic stuff. Onboard 4 drive raid controller 4 250 gig drives boom there ya go. Install OS if your choice. Get more fancy, pop a 4 port ATA controller on there for 8 drives a bigger power supply and you could encroach on the 2 terabyte game without getting into "server class" products other than I'd spring for a "server class" power supply maybe redundant even.
If I thought my music were good enough I'd gladly give it to any dentist, elevator, etc who'd have it. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there making music who'd freely let it be used for this stuff maybe someone should make like a "sourceforge" for music and just let anyone use it who wants with a basic "gpl" of music. Maybe require a short "and now by " (or request it require is a strong word).
Is there something like this already maybe? I'm not a musician so music type things are not foremost in my mind.
No mod points else I'd use 'em so --- thanks this is exactly what I'm looking for and shall be searching for a local place to buy tomorrow.
If this is for just personal use god do NOT bother it isn't worth it, no way no how.
Business? Yes unfortunately I would, actually, I do. See, people have this ANNOYING habit of just emailing "stuff"@domain.com asking sales questions or support questions, or whatever. I get emails to sales, admin, billing, suppost, administrator, postmaster, and as sure as I ain't monitoring something, someone will just decide for some reason or another to email like "web@" or something equally silly and unused. The offchance of missing a pre-sales or post-sale support question just isn't worth it.
So I run with bayesian filters, RBL's, and other goodies to try and minimize spam, it's not too bad about 6 per day get through, this is just short of amazing. I'll see maybe, 1 or 2 false positives (real mail marked as spam) per month.
If this were a personal setup, no "money" involved I'd NEVER use the catch-all.
that the linux version is not as bloated (badly written?) as the Windows version.
My "media player" pc was a celeron 1.7 ghz 512M ram and I installed PowerDVD (because it was on a CD and I was too lazy to download WinDVD which is the player I usually use). Well I couldn't play DVD's with it, it hitched and jerked and paused so much I thought it was a bad DVD (except it was a DVD ripped to the harddrive, screw messing with those scratchable disks) so I tried another dvd image, and another, after 3 different movies played like a DVD that had been manhandled by my 3 year old, I was like "hmm", checked task manager and cpu usage was near 100% (just to play a DVD???). Installed Intervideo WinDVD 4 and put in my registration (yes I bought it) and it played FINE, perfect, no hitches, cpu usage was not bad, hovered in the 20-30% stage.
So to make a long story longer, here's hoping the Linux version isn't as bloated and/or badly written as the Windows version else you'll probably need a near 3Ghz machine just to play some darn DVD's!
is some enterprising virus writer make one that when it infects a pc - downloads mozilla, installs it and then sets it as the default browser.
I suspect most Joe Sixpacks would see mozilla fire up the next time they clicked "the internet" and shrug and keep going.
Or make a spyware that pops up windows telling people to install Mozilla "Tired of Popups? Click here to download a free internet browser that STOPS POPUPS" or something like that.
Maybe not the most moral of approaches to it but jesus how much more spyware, viruses, popups, and crap can people take?
Sad thing is I keep a Windows/IE box around myself and one of the biggest uses I have for it is to open those links (typically to videos) that just won't play right or at all in Linux/Mozilla. That and GAMES of course, not that I have much time to play any but when I do it's probably not a game with a linux client.
I could have nearly written that exact same reply, as a kid/teen I read all the time, sometimes 4 or 5 novels in a week during the summers. Sci fi and fantasy mostly, some Clancy and some L'Amour and other stuff. In college I read less, less time, after college much less, almost no books. However now I read a lot again, but I own my own company work out of the house and pretty much do what I want when I want, I'm finally reading the Wheel of Time, on book 5 now, been reading them for 2 weeks. I re-read the Harry Potter books the 2 weeks before the last movie to re-fresh myself for the movie.
Soon as I'm done with the Wheel of Time I'm gonna go searching for some good Sci Fi, maybe re-read some Heinlein classics or find something "new" just depends on what I browse into poking around Amazon or whatever.
So if you want time to read get laid off start your own company!
If you're making $65,000 in purchases per year you shouldn't NEED to worry about 10%!
I buy AT MOST a couple $K in stuff I "could" buy at Best Buy in a year - dvd's, cd's, computer "stuff", electronics, etc. If I saved 25% I'd maybe need a couple hundred bucks for all that trouble. However with some shopping around I can usually get just about the same "after rebate" price without a rebate and typically order it online and save a trip outside (laziness is a great motivator).
If I spend an hour of time getting a $25 rebate, including filling out the forms, clipping UPC codes, making copies of reciepts, etc, then I've lost money because I could have been doing something else during that hour to make money. Time IS money and wasting time dicking with rebates is money lost.
Side 1 - people suck - have you ever read any of these "deal forums" (Fat Wallet and AT Hot Deals are two I read from time to time. Jesus fucking christ these people would walk a mile through the desert barefoot while eating salted peanuts for a fucking $10 rebate. Sometimes the "sequence of events" required to get these deals is more fucking work than just well, working and BUYING it for regular price, pricematch here, rebate there, obscure coupon code over there, print someone's reciept from some other store in some other state, and you might get a $79 item for $64 or something equally lame. I get a chuckle at the enormous lengths people will go to to save a couple bucks.
Side 2 - Best Buy sucks - reading this site is like a traffic accident complete with ripped off limbs, you can't stop looking but you know you should. The damn near criminal "support policies" they push and push and push on you, and the "piggyback" magazine subscriptions make me want to do things that would get me on the news. I'm currently getting bills from Entertainment Weekly because when checking out at BB a few months ago I let them "send me 4 free issues" just to get them to shut the FUCK up. Now they want me to pay for the stupid magazine like I give two drops of spit about EW (ew is right).
I don't know who to root for in this fight... Best Buy or the "demon customers" socking it to them. Goddamn I hate rebates, I go out of my way to avoid deals involving rebates because they just PISS ME OFF so bad.
Really I'm not ranting...
Agreed most kids do not have a CLUE how to do all this, however it's still their equipment, if the school wants to do this I say ISSUE a cheap whitebox PC to each student and only allow that pc on the network now it is NOT the student's property and the school is very welcome to do with it what they please.
If the school simply told me "you can't put YOUR computer on the network but you can use THIS one" then hey, that's policy like it or lump it. I wouldn't necessarily like this either BUT I could live with it. Maybe have a "request" feature to use your own pc but only if you can convince someone you won't be a nuisance with it, maybe offer a school-supplied "paid internet" port in each room where you can pay a few bucks to have a direct line to the internet for your own pc but it not be ON the school network.
Many solutions that don't involve someone else touching MY stuff! I'm selfish like that I guess heh.
Well I own the stupid thing and right now it's sitting in a closet unused so, I suppose if nothing else I can tinker with it with the open source stuff :) Thanks for the link I'll check it out, can't make this junky thing any WORSE I'm sure! haha
It's not "too" bad, good ones are about VHS quality bad ones are well, bad.
I have no use for 'em but my 3 year old loves 'em, shaky-cam Shrek 2 and shaky-cam Spiderman 2 are just the cat's meow to him, personally I'll wait for the DVD (might go see both movies AGAIN though, they're really good).
I still can't see how it costs them revenue, it's not like I'm gonna take my kid to watch either movie more or LESS times just because he has a shaky cam version to watch on his TV upstairs. Seems like sales records are broken on movies every few months and people seem to be flocking into the theaters in droves.
This thing had usb and ethernet options for networking, and some windows software you had to load, and frankly, it sucked HARD, and I mean HARD, $300 for what amounted to crap. It crashed regularly, playing more than a handful of mp3's was just about impossible, only about half or less of my videos even played on the damned thing, a TOTAL waste of money.
I got pissed and built a new PC and put my old PC by the TV and that was the absolute best way to do this, no stupid media center crap required, just switch my tv to input 2 and I'm THERE, I even pulled my DVD player out of my entertainment cabinet I like them better played off the computer, better image quality and remove one device from my overtaxed entertainment center.
For my basement theater I built a Shuttle XPC system and I have been happy as a clam with that little PC, added a WinTV PVR250 to it and it ROCKS I cannot sing the praises of that setup enough.
The school's right to "poke" stops where the network cable meets my NIC card, everything on the outside of the cable is their business, if they detect viruses/spam/P2P/anything else "not allowed" then by all means bust my ass for it. However no one, but me, logs into and uses my computer, period, unless you come with a search warrant and that warrant includes looking into my PC then you ain't peeking at it. You can ask, and most damned likely I'll show you, but that's the extent of it.
There was much the same discussion a while back when someone posted about the cable company "checking" their PC. Same rule applies, the cable company's, or school's rights end where my NIC card (or switch) begins. They're welcome to ask, and I'm welcome to say no. They're also welcome to turn off my uplink, everything has its consequences of course, go busting heads with the school you'll probably find your ethernet go black, but they're still not logging into my PC.
Tell me what's wrong, I'll fix it but don't think for a minute you're putting your grubby mitts on my keyboard without a court order (or asking nicely, but you're still not patching jack shit, I'm the only one with root).
Besides, I wouldn't run Windows on anything but a gaming machine anyway, I do my WORK on linux, so I can check email, open urls, etc etc etc without any fear I'm about to be infected by the "nasty virus of the day".
Showing your DL at a road block is one thing, you're on the road driving a car, I don't see it being Orwellian to ask to see your license to drive, HOWEVER if they ask to see the license/ID for a PASSENGER and the passenger declines and then shit gets started that IS getting to be too much. I suppose all they have to say is that the passenger "looked like someone who was wanted for something somewhere so they checked ID" those "probable cause" situations are really abusable by the police...
Also asking your name is one thing, asking to see ID is another. I don't always have ID on me, last I checked this wasn't against a law to be without an ID of course if I'm DRIVING then I have my license with me because well, that is a law but I don't, say, carry my license with me to go check the mail, or if my wife's driving I don't always have my wallet with me and feel no compunction to make sure I have it either.
Absolutely - $249 Dell Axim X30 with 802.11b and Bluetooth built right in I have the older X3i looks about the same except mine doesn't have bluetooth (no problem for me). I don't understand why the Dell handhelds aren't a bigger conversation piece, when I shopped for a PDA I couldn't find anything even remotely as nice as the Dell for the price.
Hope your watch runs backward :) I downloaded this cd off of mp3search.ru in MP3 format "a couple days ago". So the "how long is" "days ago".
I hate to say it but I like it, I'm usually about heavier music but this is good I'll probably snag a "real" copy soon, probably outta Amazon's used cd marketplace (hey it's good but it ain't $14.99 good, hardly any music is THAT good).