I wonder how many people still mispronounce "gigabyte" thanks to Doc Brown in Back to the Future.
Jokes aside, the prefixes "kilo-" and "giga-" respectively mean 1,000 and 1,000,000, not 1,024 and 1,048,576. I am definitely on the consumers' side here; an as-advertised 80 GB hard drive actually holds about 76 GB of data.
If nothing else, it's about damn time someone sets a binding standard -- since computers operate on powers of 2, let's respect that in our advertisements.
Finally, it occurs to me that they should be suing Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, etc., not Dell, HP, Gateway...
I had no problem reading through that jumbled bit of stuff on the articles teaser. I think people would have more trouble with words whose letters can be scrambed (1) to form phonetically sound jumbles of letters or (2) to form actual words. I can think of dozens of word pairs that contain the same letters and begin and end with the same two. I can also think of several ways to rearrange the spelling of a single word and come up with something that definitely isn't a word but that can definitely have a clear and easy pronunciation. It occurs to me that these words are where the problem would occur.
Dsxleiics of the wrlod, yuor pootisin? (I just wanted that to include "poot".)
Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother, unsolicited bulk e-mail, "spam," as a burden of using the Internet.
Um, can I take a rain check on that? Here's hoping for (speculating that) another ruling, in a follow-up case to be initiated in the not-too-distant future, will send this back the other way. Ads are a nuisance, and all most of us do to them any way is close them out. Anything that causes users to accidentally click on something and send them into a nightmarish loop of ads and "Internet grafitti" (as I call it) undermines the free will of the user.
Ads should be clear about what they are advertising and where they are taking the user. Ads should not falsely represent themselves or their intentions. Ads should not "pop-up" or "pop-under" in an attempt to trick users into supporting something they would never click in the first place if given an actual choice about it.
On this note, I think the Opera web browser (if you haven't paid to register) handles ads very well -- setting them aside in the upper right-hand corner of the browser, off the web page itself. Now, if only they could work on removing the pop-up and pop-under ads that plague the Internet and somehow maneuver those into a special advertising block or window of the browser, then we'd be making progress.
Again, the problem is choice. A user should never accidentally click on any ad he didn't wish to see in the first place. That would essentially be the same as a television ad running on top of your television program instead of during the commercial breaks -- that has been outlawed, and so too should Internet advertisements that get in the way of your browsing.
(So let's use the Opera/AIM method: if you've gotta have ads, put them in one place and out of the way of the application's useful area. Allow users to pay a registration fee to disable or hide the ads. Quit trying to trick users into clicking the ads; the trickery is not good salesmanship, but the commercial equivalent of entrapment, the kind of thing monopolies are accused of.)
I guarantee you I would get something similar to a minimal passing grade according to this. Since middle school, teachers have warned me that my unique writing style will either be my greatest asset or my worst enemy on standardized writing tests.
Take your best A-papers and even some scholarly articles from real journals. I bet several of them score par for the course. Standardizing tests has gotten bad enough with unique skills and knowledge being required in different places; standardizing the criteria for measuring writing skills is just stupid, especially considering that there are dozens of ways to manipulate a sentence in the English language and have it still make perfect grammatical sense.
That, in my opinion, is the essence of this language. Nearly every rule has an exception, and that allows for a wide variety of styles, with regard both to diction and to usage.
....but I like to keep an open mind. Let's see how this thing works in action.
You seem to forget... Two out of every three jurors in this country include a liberal bedwetter who cringes at the site of violence and a neoconservative hardass who fears social meltdown. Jury selection being what it is, it wouldn't be difficult at all to find a jury sympathetic to the victims of a violent act. You'd better believe they'll find a way to deliver the blame to anyone who could look guilty in order to persuade the public that the threat is gone.
Solve the problem by killing the cause? No... This is America! We solve our problems by killing anything remotely associated with the undesired effects.
I've got an old laptop (AMD K62 300 MHz, 3.1 GB, Win98) that stopped working about six months ago, so I promptly bought a huge, fast, screaming monster of a laptop... Any suggestions on what to do with it? Testing gravity is always fun, but that's been done.
3. Bane was found unconscious at the scene where several other ships had previously been destroyed. Bane was unconscious long before Neo and the Nebuchadnezzar's crew was picked up. This is made obvious by the crew's discussion about him later. He's been onboard for a while, and they hint that only he knows what really happened at the "massacre", but he's too... unconscious to share what he knows.
1. There was no EMP; the Hammer arrived too quickly. The EMP blast would have fried the ship.
2. Neo did not stop the Sentinels; the Sentinels stopped (or did something to) Neo. Those Sentinels were not there to destroy Neo, but they were there to extract "the one" and carry him... somewhere... So here's the problem: how does Neo get back to his body?
I'll own the DVDs, and I'd rather throw a co-ed pizza/beer/LOTR party than sit in a theatre for ten hours. I don't think I'll be seeing them in theatres either.
However, that 11:00 showing of Return of the King on December 16 is looking attractive...
For people who know nothing about computers (is that possible anymore?), maybe an option for this automatic update would be good. But we already have that now with the Windows Critical Update Notification application. To force updates down our throats would piss several of us off, especially when some of those updates actually hinder the performance of a system.
For instance, a couple years ago, on two different computers, I had installed a few Windows updates, and my F6 hotkey to highlight the location bar in Explorer stopped working. Now, some of you might not care about this, but I *hate* using the mouse unless I really need to, and I try to live my life on computers with hotkeys whenever possible. When one stops working following a regularly scheduled update, I get pissed. (In other news, I'd like help with that if anyone knows how to cure it!)
Err... I meant to say that an option is fine, but don't ram it down my throat. I like to be aware of updates as they occur, and I like to be the one that gives the final approval of any software that is installed/updated onto my system.
Re:"With all the SCO news lately..."
on
SCO Nigerian Spam
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· Score: 1
You think posting a reply requires me to read the news associated with it? You need to learn more about how the world works. The point I made gave no indicated of and did not require my reading of the article here.
"With all the SCO news lately..."
on
SCO Nigerian Spam
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· Score: 0, Troll
I'd like to point out that there's just as much news about everything else in the world, but with everything else, Slashdot uses a little more discretion in publishing stories about it. Here's an idea: limit SCO news to a maximum of one update per day, combining unique story submissions into something more like a feature.
I don't know about you, but I've grown so tired of "all the SCO news lately" that I've stopped reading it. This isn't to say that it isn't newsworthy, but it feels like overkill.
I've been hearing about accessibility and other potentially imposing guidelines for quite some time, and I've always been curious: is there any plan to try to enforce the guidelines? Or are they intended to be recommended standards to be followed throughout a more libertarian kind of world wide web?
The reason I ask is that I can certainly understand why official government and commercial web sites might need to be held to rather strict standards -- the freedom of speech does not apply to them nearly to the extent that it does to the private individual. But speaking of the private individual, should you and I also be subject to enforcement of web guidelines even in our personal, private web space?
On one hand, this article highlights why I don't run Linux at home: I do all my productive work using Windows software. My employers use Microsoft Windows and Office products, and my school requires any electronic work to be done on Windows machines (unless you're one of the few who have a non-Windows machine that can generate Windows-compatible outputs -- good application software should do this without much problem).
On the other hand, I don't believe Linux needs to revolve around Windows. For a competitive market, Linux can and should stand on its own and effectively divide the market. Will productivity sag? Certainly, but only at first. The operating system software does not need to be compatible -- the networking and application software does.
I'm not anti-Linux, and I'm definitely not anti-Microsoft. Sure, some of the rules have been abused and others perhaps broken, but a large part of what Microsoft has accomplished is simply because it used the resources provided (fairly) to earn a superior position in the market. Make your arguments about browser bundling, insider deals, and so on, but I think disallowing those things is antithetical to the idea of free trade and a free economy. Microsoft earned its position naturally; inferior competitors are supposed to fall from the market until they can put up a competitive product.
Think about it: Microsoft has been accused of abusing market power by (1) artificially inflating prices when its prices have been set "too high" and (2) undercutting its competitors when its prices are "too low", and (3) Microsoft has been accused of price-fixing and collusion when its prices are on par with the market price. Antitrust laws are both good and bad, because while they break up bad abuses of market power, they also break up natural mono-/olipolies that may actually be better for the market.
My point is that Linux, Apple, Netscape, and some of Microsoft's other competitors may be pursuing some angles antithetical to their principles. Some accuse Microsoft of anti-competitive practices, when they themselves would prefer to restrict Microsoft's ability to compete with them. I wouldn't accuse Linux of this, but other corporate entities are in it for themselves, not the other competitors in the market, and they would love nothing more than to be the next ones on top. (I get the idea that Linux supporters are a bit more socialist in their approach, not wanting to hoard the benefits, but only wanting nominal credit for their contributions.)
Sorry if this message doesn't make too much sense. I tried to cram a lot of ideas into only a few paragraphs...
It was full of spy/ad-ware and I hated the narrow search options. Damn them for having the largest P2P network! In retrospect, however, lucky me. For now.
Also, it's good to see that my theory (and, well, lots of other people's theory too) held true: that KaZaA would be systematically erased in the same fashion as Napster soon after officially recognizing the RIAA. Ballsy move, but ultimately stupid.
Finally, I hate to agree with Michael Jackson due to a rather gaping hole in his credibility, but he's right about one thing: It isn't right to steal music, but jail is certainly not the answer. (One is thus led to ask if anyone has been put in jail for digital music copyright violations. I know they can be, but has anyone?)
The point isn't the deterrence of 101 seconds verus 14 seconds. If the difference is exponential, as one would expect it to be depending on available memory, the encryption, and filesizes, then the point is the deterrence of potentially several days (several hours at least) versus several minutes.
I think the world can agree that a cracker not a hacker is willing to wait one minute for a password cracking tool, but much less willing to wait several minutes, several hours, or even several days -- unless, of course, the plan were foolproof, traceless, and really worth the risk.
1. Sue your customers, and make a bunch of penniless college kids into martyrs.
2. Gain support from your clients (REVENUE!)
3. Lose support from your consumers, those same college kids whose checks used to pay your salaries, but you've sued them all into financial oblivion because you wouldn't listen to reason (and that reason has been telling you all along that information is meant to be free, the internet is meant to be free, and music is meant to be heard), and they kept downloading anyway.
Imagine a notice from the RIAA if all music in the world were suddenly declared free (as in free speech, not as in free beer) according to the terms of the GPL:
All digital music is henceforth be
copylefted according to the terms of the General Public License. Each digital music file is its own source and may be edited with common audio software. Any copylefted music file is and any derivative file of the original or any derivative is by terms of the GPL also copylefted and free to be modified and redistributed.
Note 1: By terms of the GPL, a verbatim copy of the GPL must be included with each distribution of the software -- let's say in the ID3 comment field (pretend it fits).
Note 2: The original copyright holder still may put restrictions on the original copyrighted work, but once set free, the copylefted work and any derivatives can not have its usage, modification, or redistribution in any way restricted.
Note 3: The original copyright holder's original creative work are still protected under trademark, trade secret, and/or patent law. The digital copy is not the original work and is not protected or restricted by such laws, but instead is protected by copyright law according to the terms of the end user license agreement, in this case the GPL.
Michael Jackson isn't insane, and he isn't stupid. He's definitely a little weird, but that's mostly a result of never having a chance to grow up like the rest of us. He's a big kid who's been making adult decisions since he was six.
That said, he has a healthy brain and limited common sense, but he isn't an idiot. He's one of my favorite entertainers of all time simply because he understands the purpose of entertainment.
Slashdot Mirror
Jokes aside, the prefixes "kilo-" and "giga-" respectively mean 1,000 and 1,000,000, not 1,024 and 1,048,576. I am definitely on the consumers' side here; an as-advertised 80 GB hard drive actually holds about 76 GB of data.
If nothing else, it's about damn time someone sets a binding standard -- since computers operate on powers of 2, let's respect that in our advertisements.
Finally, it occurs to me that they should be suing Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, etc., not Dell, HP, Gateway...
Dsxleiics of the wrlod, yuor pootisin? (I just wanted that to include "poot".)
Um, can I take a rain check on that? Here's hoping for (speculating that) another ruling, in a follow-up case to be initiated in the not-too-distant future, will send this back the other way. Ads are a nuisance, and all most of us do to them any way is close them out. Anything that causes users to accidentally click on something and send them into a nightmarish loop of ads and "Internet grafitti" (as I call it) undermines the free will of the user.
Ads should be clear about what they are advertising and where they are taking the user. Ads should not falsely represent themselves or their intentions. Ads should not "pop-up" or "pop-under" in an attempt to trick users into supporting something they would never click in the first place if given an actual choice about it.
On this note, I think the Opera web browser (if you haven't paid to register) handles ads very well -- setting them aside in the upper right-hand corner of the browser, off the web page itself. Now, if only they could work on removing the pop-up and pop-under ads that plague the Internet and somehow maneuver those into a special advertising block or window of the browser, then we'd be making progress.
Again, the problem is choice. A user should never accidentally click on any ad he didn't wish to see in the first place. That would essentially be the same as a television ad running on top of your television program instead of during the commercial breaks -- that has been outlawed, and so too should Internet advertisements that get in the way of your browsing.
(So let's use the Opera/AIM method: if you've gotta have ads, put them in one place and out of the way of the application's useful area. Allow users to pay a registration fee to disable or hide the ads. Quit trying to trick users into clicking the ads; the trickery is not good salesmanship, but the commercial equivalent of entrapment, the kind of thing monopolies are accused of.)
Take your best A-papers and even some scholarly articles from real journals. I bet several of them score par for the course. Standardizing tests has gotten bad enough with unique skills and knowledge being required in different places; standardizing the criteria for measuring writing skills is just stupid, especially considering that there are dozens of ways to manipulate a sentence in the English language and have it still make perfect grammatical sense.
That, in my opinion, is the essence of this language. Nearly every rule has an exception, and that allows for a wide variety of styles, with regard both to diction and to usage.
....but I like to keep an open mind. Let's see how this thing works in action.
Solve the problem by killing the cause? No... This is America! We solve our problems by killing anything remotely associated with the undesired effects.
I've got an old laptop (AMD K62 300 MHz, 3.1 GB, Win98) that stopped working about six months ago, so I promptly bought a huge, fast, screaming monster of a laptop... Any suggestions on what to do with it? Testing gravity is always fun, but that's been done.
Any excuse to mention the name Slartibartfast is justification enough for a slashdot story. Good work, guys!
3. Bane was found unconscious at the scene where several other ships had previously been destroyed. Bane was unconscious long before Neo and the Nebuchadnezzar's crew was picked up. This is made obvious by the crew's discussion about him later. He's been onboard for a while, and they hint that only he knows what really happened at the "massacre", but he's too ... unconscious to share what he knows.
2. Neo did not stop the Sentinels; the Sentinels stopped (or did something to) Neo. Those Sentinels were not there to destroy Neo, but they were there to extract "the one" and carry him... somewhere... So here's the problem: how does Neo get back to his body?
However, that 11:00 showing of Return of the King on December 16 is looking attractive...
No!! What are you doings? You'll ruins it! Stupid fat hobbit!
You just didn't get Matrix Reloaded. :-)
For instance, a couple years ago, on two different computers, I had installed a few Windows updates, and my F6 hotkey to highlight the location bar in Explorer stopped working. Now, some of you might not care about this, but I *hate* using the mouse unless I really need to, and I try to live my life on computers with hotkeys whenever possible. When one stops working following a regularly scheduled update, I get pissed. (In other news, I'd like help with that if anyone knows how to cure it!)
Err... I meant to say that an option is fine, but don't ram it down my throat. I like to be aware of updates as they occur, and I like to be the one that gives the final approval of any software that is installed/updated onto my system.
You think posting a reply requires me to read the news associated with it? You need to learn more about how the world works. The point I made gave no indicated of and did not require my reading of the article here.
I don't know about you, but I've grown so tired of "all the SCO news lately" that I've stopped reading it. This isn't to say that it isn't newsworthy, but it feels like overkill.
The reason I ask is that I can certainly understand why official government and commercial web sites might need to be held to rather strict standards -- the freedom of speech does not apply to them nearly to the extent that it does to the private individual. But speaking of the private individual, should you and I also be subject to enforcement of web guidelines even in our personal, private web space?
On the other hand, I don't believe Linux needs to revolve around Windows. For a competitive market, Linux can and should stand on its own and effectively divide the market. Will productivity sag? Certainly, but only at first. The operating system software does not need to be compatible -- the networking and application software does.
I'm not anti-Linux, and I'm definitely not anti-Microsoft. Sure, some of the rules have been abused and others perhaps broken, but a large part of what Microsoft has accomplished is simply because it used the resources provided (fairly) to earn a superior position in the market. Make your arguments about browser bundling, insider deals, and so on, but I think disallowing those things is antithetical to the idea of free trade and a free economy. Microsoft earned its position naturally; inferior competitors are supposed to fall from the market until they can put up a competitive product.
Think about it: Microsoft has been accused of abusing market power by (1) artificially inflating prices when its prices have been set "too high" and (2) undercutting its competitors when its prices are "too low", and (3) Microsoft has been accused of price-fixing and collusion when its prices are on par with the market price. Antitrust laws are both good and bad, because while they break up bad abuses of market power, they also break up natural mono-/olipolies that may actually be better for the market.
My point is that Linux, Apple, Netscape, and some of Microsoft's other competitors may be pursuing some angles antithetical to their principles. Some accuse Microsoft of anti-competitive practices, when they themselves would prefer to restrict Microsoft's ability to compete with them. I wouldn't accuse Linux of this, but other corporate entities are in it for themselves, not the other competitors in the market, and they would love nothing more than to be the next ones on top. (I get the idea that Linux supporters are a bit more socialist in their approach, not wanting to hoard the benefits, but only wanting nominal credit for their contributions.)
Sorry if this message doesn't make too much sense. I tried to cram a lot of ideas into only a few paragraphs...
Also, 223-239 are for government usage, and 240-254 are mostly for testing but may be used to some limited extent for, err, I don't remember what for.
Also, it's good to see that my theory (and, well, lots of other people's theory too) held true: that KaZaA would be systematically erased in the same fashion as Napster soon after officially recognizing the RIAA. Ballsy move, but ultimately stupid.
Finally, I hate to agree with Michael Jackson due to a rather gaping hole in his credibility, but he's right about one thing: It isn't right to steal music, but jail is certainly not the answer. (One is thus led to ask if anyone has been put in jail for digital music copyright violations. I know they can be, but has anyone?)
I think the world can agree that a cracker not a hacker is willing to wait one minute for a password cracking tool, but much less willing to wait several minutes, several hours, or even several days -- unless, of course, the plan were foolproof, traceless, and really worth the risk.
Say it ain't so!
1. Sue your customers, and make a bunch of penniless college kids into martyrs.
2. Gain support from your clients (REVENUE!)
3. Lose support from your consumers, those same college kids whose checks used to pay your salaries, but you've sued them all into financial oblivion because you wouldn't listen to reason (and that reason has been telling you all along that information is meant to be free, the internet is meant to be free, and music is meant to be heard), and they kept downloading anyway.
4.
5. CHAPTER 11 or BUST!
That said, he has a healthy brain and limited common sense, but he isn't an idiot. He's one of my favorite entertainers of all time simply because he understands the purpose of entertainment.
That would leave 254. You forgot Subpoeona 128, which is reserved for loopback functions, which is how all the RIAA employees get their free music.