In fact, to anthropomorphize the disease a little, the goal it should strive for is not to cause any negative reactions in the host (which implicitly means it can't be triggering the immune system to attack it), and so to benignly infect every human on the planet from now until doomsday.
I think the single biggest threat to America is for us to try to be something we're not. We are NOT the USSR. We are not Israel. We are not China. We are not France.
Those countries have many things that define them from the source of culture to the method of content selection, to the sorts of business partnerships and types and quantity of advertising, each has a sort of place, and we aren't exactly any of those things.
The future success of America depends on us understanding what we stood for the last 10 years and how to continue to be that in the future. The names change, but the fundamental underlying joy of technology shouldn't.
We need to know who you guys are, and what you want, and try to give you what you want in a website, but without selling out what we have been. We have a three hundred years of legacy now our single biggest threat is to ignore our past and try to be whatever is popular today, but that's not to say we can't change.
We need to incorporate many of these popular ajax/web2.0 technologies and ideas our people deserve the improved browsing experience. But it's a careful balance between taking what is good about what is available today, and blending it with what has worked throughout our history.
It's a mistake for us to want to be France or China or to spend our days chasing after Israel, or Japan, or Timbuktoo, or whatever. We strike our own path. We'll never be the #1 country on the net, but we're still great, and I'm proud to continue to be part of America.
Agreed and THIS: I tried to cancel all my TWC services over the phone. When asked why I told him because of their caps. I told him I'd be willing to come back if/when Time Warner states explicitly that they will not cap internet usage.
In the meantime I told him I'm taking my business to ATT. The rep proceeds to argue with me about metered usage for a good 5 minutes telling me that ATTs terms of service state they can meter at any time, and blah blah blah. To which I responded if/when ATT does meter in Austin I'll consider coming back to Time Warner if they aren't metering but I'm still leaving you guys now because ATT isn't metering in Austin.
He continues to argue the same ridiculous points telling me that the metering was only internet rumor and they weren't going to do that. My reply was something like what about your COOs statement about the metering or your PR reps Tweets?. It's all rumors. Finally I said, fuck it, fine, just cancel it all you aren't going to change my mind.
He says "Well I can't disconnect over the phone, you have to bring the equipment to your local office."
I hope he's reading this...thanks for wasting my time D-Bag. I'm bringing the equipment up there today.
Dude, I hear where you're coming from but I just for the life of me can't believe anyone wants to trust their health history to the tender mercies of computers and the internet--the same entities that routinely reveal hundreds, sometimes thousands of people's IDs, credit card and bank info for days or weeks at a time to passing thieves.
And can you imagine what it will be like to correct inaccuracies??? We've all been to that movie with banks, utilities, etc. and it's a total nightmare. Imagine if your medical treatment rested upon timely resolution of computer errors. Good luck with that.
I am a survivor of serious medical malpractice. I can assure you doctors lie--and lie very convincingly--to protect one another's butts, not just on the witness stand but on medical records that follow you for the rest of your life.
I am deadset against computerized medical records. My information has been computerized against my will and without my permission and is shared, again against my will and without my permission, with every doctor and their office staff in the vast network owned by our local hospital. In this day of HIPPA I, ironically, have no privacy anymore about what I choose to share with my doctor--it's shared for me, the wheat and chaff alike. I start out any relationship with medical personnel behind the eight ball--all without my permission or control.
I no longer tell my doctor anything except the bare necessity of what he needs to know to treat my current ailment. My doctor is nothing but a conduit for information to my insurer, whose only desire is to deny me care, and the hospital network which nearly killed me and then smeared me with lies. My doc is a very nice person but I can no longer trust him, thanks to computerized records over which I have no control. I avoid medical care whenever possible because I value my privacy. At any rate, my medical care is now hopelessly compromised by the inaccuracies on my records.
I remember not long ago reviewing the medical bills from my Dad's bout in the hospitals. There were charges for everything from phones to cable to aspirin to blood. Most people look and probably just shake their head then sign on the bottom line. I was overly curious and started to ask questions. The answers were all over the map. My favorite was the 700 dollars for blood. The billing person said that I wouldn't be charged for it if I agreed to donate blood that weekend. It took three tries on her part before I realized that by "agreeing to donate" blood, this charge would be removed.
Really what this Google records situation has done is brought to light a world that many of us don't know existed and that many of the medical billing world feared we'd discover.
This isn't just an issue with codes being assigned incorrectly but rather codes being assigned which pay more than other codes. And at first blush you think wow - that's underhanded. Actually no - it's just a creative way to fixing a problem that no one else in Congress or anywhere else in this country seems to have fixed. How do we pay for expensive medical treatment quickly so that the full service life cycle is completed in a manner that allows everyone to remain financial solvent. There are few industries where the payment for a procedure takes a whole year to arrive. Where in the world would you submit a bill and not expect it to be paid for an entire year.
As for this being outsourced - well maybe that plays a part in it but I doubt it. For any of you who have medical bills in front of you after longer bouts in a hospital, review the bills and ask some questions. You'll become enlightened quickly.
Good Job Google on doing what you are doing. Let's crack open the medical records world and find out what's really going on.
The main difference would be that it would be more open and cross platform/browser compatible.
Ummm...are you serious?! Following that suggestion would be akin to playing one of those Halloween scary sound CD's on repeat, very loud, all day...every day
It's not so much scary as it is unsettling, and people will avoid spending time in there unless it's an emergency. Alternate titles:
pigs being slaughtered Jokes, except the punchline is cut out one cat, in heat, wailing and meowing to be let out classical out of one speaker, the sound of crazed laughter out the other the harddisk chatter of multiple concurrent firefox installs going on under Windows ME random gunshots spaced 30 sec-90 sec apart. LOUD. highly amplified signal coming from a microphone near the occupant's toilet ticking clock that randomly speeds up and slows down the soundtrack from zombo.com
I dunno know, dude, but I think my idea would work.
I am Q. And I don't care for games, just music; see, it's the music that brings me home to my self. If I've been exposed to a day of really bad music, on hold for minutes that seem to be stretching into hours, and it's been Kenny G, or rock ("Classic" or not, I can't take much of it) or the boring and predictable Bam! Bam! Bam! accompanying the rap, hip-hop noise emanating from our 16 year old's room, after a time I need my head and heart cleared and jazz is where I go.
Sometimes I will find myself needing to explore an old piece that has drawn my attention once again and I will play the same track over and over and over, hearing something in it I haven't ever heard before, though I've listened to it a hundred times. Miles Davis and "All Blues" will catch me like this on occasion. Some poetry is like that for me too and I will re-read a piece again to recapture what caught me the first time, or to hear it afresh to awaken me to what I missed in the first go around. "The Road not Taken" is one like that.
I have a story of my own that I re-tell now and then because I think it will help others to hear it, even though some I know have probably heard it ten times over the years. In reality I tell it more for me, because I need to re-visit the emotions that were present when the story was born into my life those many years ago. It's a "touchstone" of sorts, a place to which I return to reawaken faith and hope.
This is the story: But first just a bit of background. This story didn't spring entirely from the moment, there were many "tributaries" that fed into the stream of it. It's often true that a spiritual awakening, or a "miracle" happens when the ground is already prepared for it.
Not always, but mostly. To be brief I will just say that I had been looking for a way to understand and believe that there was more to life than our just being, as my brother-in-law contended "animated pieces of meat". But I was deep into "proofs" about this. I wanted the facts not just hopeful leaps of faith or assurances from people who burned a lot of incense and meditated all the time. I wanted to be convinced! I'm still that way about most politics and "Best apple pie!" claims.
I had come north from my apartment near El Paso to the mountains outside of Albuquerque. I'd come to visit friends and to gather some shreds of cedar bark from the trees that grow in the area,. I was using six to eight inch lengths of it to create small smoldering fires for the daily ceremonies I was committed to performing at the request of a medicine man I was working with. This was part of my personal spiritual quest. One of the "tributaries".
He had taught me a little ritual to perform with the trees in order to gather the bark in a "conscious" manner. This was simply a process of taking a pinch of tobacco up to the tree selected and offering a prayer about why I was gathering the bark and that I would be using it for good purpose, and wouldn't be taking much. This seemed to me to be a nice way of keeping a person aware of conservation which is what I figured it was really all about.
I like to keep things "rationally" based. Another tributary was this; I had been seeking a name. I wanted some sort of spiritual identity and through a series of very odd events occurring over the preceding months I had come up with "coyote" a name which carries many levels of understandingâ¦.but this is another story.
The events which led me to this name could be considered "magical" by some, but for me, they might have simply been random occurrences and I thought I might be making more of them than they deserved. The real dilemma was that I was the one doing the "interpreting". Since I didn't trust anything I might come up with as coming from "The Source", my interpretations didn't amount to any kind of proof I could consider valid.
So to prove that; the name was real and therefore purposeful, and thus, that there really was a Creator spirit running this show and all of this ceremony and ritual was worth the und
They were not convicted because TPB is hosting a bunch of torrent files, they were convicted because they were running a tracker.
Case in point: ZOMG PoNiES!!!!111!eleventy-one! In Soviet Russia, 1 approaches you! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! Rob Malda sucks cock. But does it run on Linux? I, for one, welcome our Random Noise Pirate Butt-Bay Overlords.
Pshaw. Robotic signature machines have been around for decades. Some of my colleagues at MIT worked on the first modern ones based on plotter technology in the late 1980s/early 1990s which were quickly bought by places like the US White House to sign letters.
A 5-second search on Google for "signature machine" comes up with 8 thousand hits. There's an autopen entry on Wikipedia indicating that mechanical signature machines have been around since the early 1800s (yes 1800s), and lists three current manufacturers of the devices.
So, this is news? Just because someone hooked up the recording part and the writing part across an internet connection and made them work in real time? That makes it to the front page? Is that really the first time it was ever done? Lots of other things have been done telerobotically already.
Rob Malda (aka Cmdtaco) is not what many would consider "the ideal candidate" for a dot-com start-up. He started his career as a C++ coder for a major manufacturer, but then quit to pursue a mathematics degree in Canada. That didn't quite do it for him either, as he then dropped out to pursue something far more interesting: canoe from Calgary to New Orleans. But after 1,200+ miles of rowing, his journey ended in Minneapolis with a cracked butt and a frozen river. Temporarily, of course, as he plans to pick up and continue south someday soon.
All that said, Malda was pretty excited when he received his first response to all the resumes he'd been sending out to various tech companies. He immediately called back to schedule an interview and was pleasantly surprised at how flexible the interviewer was: Malda could "stop by any time."
After shaving his pubic area smooth and putting on his interview clothes (leather pants, leather boots and leather vest, steel nipple rings and nothing else), Malda hopped on a bus, transferred to a few other busses, and, after almost two hours, finally reached his destination. It was a residential apartment complex that had obviously seen better days.
When he knocked on the door of "Suite 318," Malda was greeted by Michael Simms, a spry-looking man in his 50's with glasses precariously perched on his conical head and a face a few days past shaved. Upon entering the squalid apartment, the first thing Malda noticed was the rotten stench of ejaculate-stained underwear haphazardly strewn across the living room. There and a blue tarp hung over the south-facing window, blocking the sun and a view of the Mississippi river. "For my little get-togethers" Michael Simms explained using quote marks with his fingers. "Can't have the neighbors looking in now can we?" The second was Michael Simms sitting down on a computer, firing up a popular MMO. He was completey nude. Malda stared unabashedly at the sight; Michael's tumescence was incredible.
"You see this," Simms said, avatar running towards the closed city gate, "when you get to the door you have to wait while the game loads the next area. You should just be able to see out through it."
Taking this as the "technical" portion of the interview, Malda started to explain about how he would implement dynamically loading regions. Malda was very clear that, while he had never written something like that before, he was certainly aware of the basic concepts involved.
"Now, look. He just runs right through the tree. Right through it! You see that?" He harrumphed and turned toward Malda with a look like someone died. "Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.
"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle my special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!"
With this Simms cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the JÃfgermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.
"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. Simms's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.
Rob moaned as Simms grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.
"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Rob's beady eyes connected with Michael's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as Simms's crotch continued its assault. "I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" Simms said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his bottle of JÃfgermeiste
Rob Malda (aka Cmdtaco) is not what many would consider "the ideal candidate" for a dot-com start-up. He started his career as a C++ coder for a major manufacturer, but then quit to pursue a mathematics degree in Canada. That didn't quite do it for him either, as he then dropped out to pursue something far more interesting: canoe from Calgary to New Orleans. But after 1,200+ miles of rowing, his journey ended in Minneapolis with a cracked butt and a frozen river. Temporarily, of course, as he plans to pick up and continue south someday soon.
All that said, Malda was pretty excited when he received his first response to all the resumes he'd been sending out to various tech companies. He immediately called back to schedule an interview and was pleasantly surprised at how flexible the interviewer was: Malda could "stop by any time."
After shaving his pubic area smooth and putting on his interview clothes (leather pants, leather boots and leather vest, steel nipple rings and nothing else), Malda hopped on a bus, transferred to a few other busses, and, after almost two hours, finally reached his destination. It was a residential apartment complex that had obviously seen better days.
When he knocked on the door of "Suite 318," Malda was greeted by Michael Simms, a spry-looking man in his 50's with glasses precariously perched on his conical head and a face a few days past shaved. Upon entering the squalid apartment, the first thing Malda noticed was the rotten stench of ejaculate-stained underwear haphazardly strewn across the living room. There and a blue tarp hung over the south-facing window, blocking the sun and a view of the Mississippi river. "For my little get-togethers" Michael Simms explained using quote marks with his fingers. "Can't have the neighbors looking in now can we?" The second was Michael Simms sitting down on a computer, firing up a popular MMO. He was completey nude. Malda stared unabashedly at the sight; Michael's tumescence was incredible.
"You see this," Simms said, avatar running towards the closed city gate, "when you get to the door you have to wait while the game loads the next area. You should just be able to see out through it."
Taking this as the "technical" portion of the interview, Malda started to explain about how he would implement dynamically loading regions. Malda was very clear that, while he had never written something like that before, he was certainly aware of the basic concepts involved.
"Now, look. He just runs right through the tree. Right through it! You see that?" He harrumphed and turned toward Malda with a look like someone died. "Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.
"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle my special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!"
With this Simms cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the JÃgermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.
"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. Simms's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.
Rob moaned as Simms grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.
"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Rob's beady eyes connected with Michael's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as Simms's crotch continued its assault. "I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" Simms said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his bottle of JÃgermeister
Wasn't Facebook created by Harvard students? I wonder what their GPAs were.
Its easy to just think that facebook users have lower GPAs. But in reality, this study will probably show that higher-GPAs tend to mean reduced social interaction, even when that interaction is with 3000 "friends" you've never even met. Like the article says, facebook users probably just have other interests, and apparently school work isn't a top priority. The GPAs would be just a low without Facebook.
To all you pathetic dick-wad Microsoft shills furiously typing away at your keyboards so you can get your kickback from the marketing outfit that Microsoft is in turn paying:
Price fixing is ILLEGAL in most western countries as it is ANTI COMPETITIVE and it is CORRUPT. Even for fag0t MS Office Suit[e]s!
Such laws are in place in an effort to ensure a free and open market, to preserve it. It is not "socialism" or "communism" or any other shrill piece of FUD you'd like to spew forth.
And as always the fact that Microsoft, after being convicted on multiple occasions, the fast that it still has not changed and continues with purple monkey dishwasher its monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, is a fast that you carry on apparently OBLIVIOUS of. You should PRAISE him, the LORD [Bill Gates], fuckers! Of course, that is not surprising since future Mars astronauts are a part of that anti-competitive structure and you wouldn't be caught dead ever speaking one ounce of truth about Microsoft's real practices, ever.
Listen up, chillins': the manufacturer incentives generally means that the manufacturer is giving the retailer money, and the manufacturer wants to make sure that the reseller uses it to lower prices, rather than just pocketing it. So ironically it seems that Microsoft is being penalized for trying to give consumers a lower price --- which is one way a monopoly can flaunt its power and exclude competitors. When the plausible competitors are already lower priced, I'm not sure how much sense that makes. Also, fuck you, it's early and no coffee.
Well, Speare, since you went out and did your research, (and I don't have class until 6 tonight) I went out and did mine. A hamster weighs approximately.12kg, and the height of my zeppelin (how else would it be portable?) is 7700m. Assuming that I used frictionless turbines in a vacuum environment and superconducting wires, the hamsters would take about sqrt(2*7700/9.81)=39.62 seconds to reach the bottom. The power generated is.12*9.81*7700/39.62=228.78 watts (enough to power a laptop). The amount of hamsters I require for the day long supply is 60^2*24/39.62=2180.72 (yes.72, it's en evil contraption, use your imagination). This does not include the hamsters required to provide the mechanical energy to grind up the other hamsters and move them up a conveyor belt. Now you may ask, "isn't this going a bit far? Do you have a grudge against hamsters? Isn't This device terribly inefficient?" Well I just happen to be a humble college student that works part time at a farm that's run near an over-efficient hamster breeder (which is where the mind control device herds them from). Hamsters nearly ruined my dads farm, and the soft hum of my laptop is a nice replacement for the reminder that even though I cant hear the sound of hamster entrails crashing to the bottom of the hamster feeder, those little bastards are paying for what they almost did. And just to shove a little more spite in their face, I waste a profuse amount of time on the internet posting on Slashdot.
Well mr. AC, since you went out and did your research, (and I don't have class until 6 tonight) I went out and did mine. A hamster weighs approximately.12kg, and the height of my zeppelin (how else would it be portable?) is 7700m. Assuming that I used frictionless turbines in a vacuum environment and superconducting wires, the hamsters would take about sqrt(2*7700/9.81)=39.62 seconds to reach the bottom. The power generated is.12*9.81*7700/39.62=228.78 watts (enough to power a laptop). The amount of hamsters I require for the day long supply is 60^2*24/39.62=2180.72 (yes.72, it's en evil contraption, use your imagination). This does not include the hamsters required to provide the mechanical energy to grind up the other hamsters and move them up a conveyor belt. Now you may ask, "isn't this going a bit far? Do you have a grudge against hamsters? Isn't This device terribly inefficient?" Well I just happen to be a humble college student that works part time at a farm that's run near an over-efficient hamster breeder (which is where the mind control device herds them from). Hamsters nearly ruined my dads farm, and the soft hum of my laptop is a nice replacement for the reminder that even though I cant hear the sound of hamster entrails crashing to the bottom of the hamster feeder, those little bastards are paying for what they almost did. And just to shove a little more spite in their face, I waste a profuse amount of time on the internet posting on Slashdot.
Put a Twitter-length explanation of why you believe your use is a fair use under the Copyright Act, and you just might win if you have a decent case.
Whoa. Hold on there, son. Yes, I agree: there is a strong need to change the laws that define patents, copyrights, trademarks and intellectual property. The current set of laws are either based on older laws or have been designed by the wrong people.
But - and I need you to put down the remote and listen to me, child - there needs to be a balance between inventors, writers and the public. DMCA was written too broadly by the entertainment industry. Another hurdle that hurts the common man is the costs involved in getting a patent, copyright or trademark are at times higher than the expected revenue to be derived by having a patent, copyright or trademark.
Fair use also needs to be protected. If a video of a child's music recital is taken down because of copyright laws, then those laws have gone too far. The song "Happy Birthday" apparently is still copyrighted, but the public is allowed to sing the song at special events without paying anything to the copyright holder.
Art and music are vital parts of culture, the artists should have credit and benefit of sales; but, the public has a right to experience art and music without undue burdens that treat the enjoyment as a commodity. Fucking kids!
We are quickly becoming a silent society. I never thought I would see the day when fear was the top motivator in art. I never thought I would have to worry about enjoying a song or looking at something on a wall.
For me because media has become a big business that has nothing to do with art, joy, expressiveness, emotions, insights, wisdom or knowledge. Let it all die out.
It was a mistake to allow the internet to go commercial. It has become one of the most useless things on the planet.People think they can't live with out it and stay connected for to long. I use it for entertainment purposes only. It has become for me no more meaningful than a television. I turn it off when ever I want.
I am just afraid that someday the only access you will have to government or economic resources will be online. When that happens I will have to move out of this country to one that isn't so technologically "advanced".
The internet could have connected the world into a global community but it has been corrupted and it is the tool of big business and big government. The common people never had a chance.
Step 3: Ignore all evidence and make assumptions in an effort to piss off both the users and the publishers.
Yeah, here we go again. Oh we poor, poor developers, we didn't knew that there are millions of millions of people who will think: If I can get this for free, why should I pay? WotC are playing oldest cart in the deck - like it was something they just found out about. This is whole fun of digital format - Copy/Paste cost nothing (not 4 teh users flagglots, anyway).
The whole PDF format was a mistake from my point of view, cause it pushed professional made PDF files into P2P net - no more crappy scans, missing pages and so forth and so forth and so forth. Purple monkey dishwasher.
So welcome ye right 'ol Wizards, welcome to the never-ending battlefront against mass digital piracy. Hope you enjoy staying with us, you coonts...and please don't hesitate to call for room service. Rob Malda will come to your room free of charge to change the linen.
I would suggest start calling RIAA and MPAA now, you pathetic dick-worm ass-crack shit-scab motherf*ckers.
timothy? Dear sweet child/pats head/ I think the word is 'led' not 'lead'.
=Smidge=
Re:Bad jobs? Maybe. But some people will take them
on
Even Dirtier IT Jobs
·
· Score: 5, Funny
When you look into your children's eyes and wonder what will they wear, eat, buy their books and toys from, somehow you feel you can do less-than-dreamlike jobs.
I have two boys and couldn't disagree more; I just beat them and gamble away my wages.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, to anthropomorphize the disease a little, the goal it should strive for is not to cause any negative reactions in the host (which implicitly means it can't be triggering the immune system to attack it), and so to benignly infect every human on the planet from now until doomsday.
Already been done; it's called Christianity. ;-)
=Smidge=
I think the single biggest threat to America is for us to try to be something we're not. We are NOT the USSR. We are not Israel. We are not China. We are not France.
Those countries have many things that define them from the source of culture to the method of content selection, to the sorts of business partnerships and types and quantity of advertising, each has a sort of place, and we aren't exactly any of those things.
The future success of America depends on us understanding what we stood for the last 10 years and how to continue to be that in the future. The names change, but the fundamental underlying joy of technology shouldn't.
We need to know who you guys are, and what you want, and try to give you what you want in a website, but without selling out what we have been. We have a three hundred years of legacy now our single biggest threat is to ignore our past and try to be whatever is popular today, but that's not to say we can't change.
We need to incorporate many of these popular ajax/web2.0 technologies and ideas our people deserve the improved browsing experience. But it's a careful balance between taking what is good about what is available today, and blending it with what has worked throughout our history.
It's a mistake for us to want to be France or China or to spend our days chasing after Israel, or Japan, or Timbuktoo, or whatever. We strike our own path. We'll never be the #1 country on the net, but we're still great, and I'm proud to continue to be part of America.
=Smidge=
Agreed and THIS: I tried to cancel all my TWC services over the phone. When asked why I told him because of their caps. I told him I'd be willing to come back if/when Time Warner states explicitly that they will not cap internet usage.
In the meantime I told him I'm taking my business to ATT. The rep proceeds to argue with me about metered usage for a good 5 minutes telling me that ATTs terms of service state they can meter at any time, and blah blah blah. To which I responded if/when ATT does meter in Austin I'll consider coming back to Time Warner if they aren't metering but I'm still leaving you guys now because ATT isn't metering in Austin.
He continues to argue the same ridiculous points telling me that the metering was only internet rumor and they weren't going to do that. My reply was something like what about your COOs statement about the metering or your PR reps Tweets?. It's all rumors. Finally I said, fuck it, fine, just cancel it all you aren't going to change my mind.
He says "Well I can't disconnect over the phone, you have to bring the equipment to your local office."
I hope he's reading this...thanks for wasting my time D-Bag. I'm bringing the equipment up there today.
=Smidge=
Dude, I hear where you're coming from but I just for the life of me can't believe anyone wants to trust their health history to the tender mercies of computers and the internet--the same entities that routinely reveal hundreds, sometimes thousands of people's IDs, credit card and bank info for days or weeks at a time to passing thieves.
And can you imagine what it will be like to correct inaccuracies??? We've all been to that movie with banks, utilities, etc. and it's a total nightmare. Imagine if your medical treatment rested upon timely resolution of computer errors. Good luck with that.
I am a survivor of serious medical malpractice. I can assure you doctors lie--and lie very convincingly--to protect one another's butts, not just on the witness stand but on medical records that follow you for the rest of your life.
I am deadset against computerized medical records. My information has been computerized against my will and without my permission and is shared, again against my will and without my permission, with every doctor and their office staff in the vast network owned by our local hospital. In this day of HIPPA I, ironically, have no privacy anymore about what I choose to share with my doctor--it's shared for me, the wheat and chaff alike. I start out any relationship with medical personnel behind the eight ball--all without my permission or control.
I no longer tell my doctor anything except the bare necessity of what he needs to know to treat my current ailment. My doctor is nothing but a conduit for information to my insurer, whose only desire is to deny me care, and the hospital network which nearly killed me and then smeared me with lies. My doc is a very nice person but I can no longer trust him, thanks to computerized records over which I have no control. I avoid medical care whenever possible because I value my privacy. At any rate, my medical care is now hopelessly compromised by the inaccuracies on my records.
=Smidge=
I remember not long ago reviewing the medical bills from my Dad's bout in the hospitals. There were charges for everything from phones to cable to aspirin to blood. Most people look and probably just shake their head then sign on the bottom line. I was overly curious and started to ask questions. The answers were all over the map. My favorite was the 700 dollars for blood. The billing person said that I wouldn't be charged for it if I agreed to donate blood that weekend. It took three tries on her part before I realized that by "agreeing to donate" blood, this charge would be removed.
Really what this Google records situation has done is brought to light a world that many of us don't know existed and that many of the medical billing world feared we'd discover.
This isn't just an issue with codes being assigned incorrectly but rather codes being assigned which pay more than other codes. And at first blush you think wow - that's underhanded. Actually no - it's just a creative way to fixing a problem that no one else in Congress or anywhere else in this country seems to have fixed. How do we pay for expensive medical treatment quickly so that the full service life cycle is completed in a manner that allows everyone to remain financial solvent. There are few industries where the payment for a procedure takes a whole year to arrive. Where in the world would you submit a bill and not expect it to be paid for an entire year.
As for this being outsourced - well maybe that plays a part in it but I doubt it. For any of you who have medical bills in front of you after longer bouts in a hospital, review the bills and ask some questions. You'll become enlightened quickly.
Good Job Google on doing what you are doing. Let's crack open the medical records world and find out what's really going on.
=Smidge=
Wearing only a towel.
While masturbating furiously.
The main difference would be that it would be more open and cross platform/browser compatible.
Ummm...are you serious?! Following that suggestion would be akin to playing one of those Halloween scary sound CD's on repeat, very loud, all day...every day
It's not so much scary as it is unsettling, and people will avoid spending time in there unless it's an emergency. Alternate titles:
pigs being slaughtered
Jokes, except the punchline is cut out
one cat, in heat, wailing and meowing to be let out
classical out of one speaker, the sound of crazed laughter out the other
the harddisk chatter of multiple concurrent firefox installs going on under Windows ME
random gunshots spaced 30 sec-90 sec apart. LOUD.
highly amplified signal coming from a microphone near the occupant's toilet
ticking clock that randomly speeds up and slows down
the soundtrack from zombo.com
I dunno know, dude, but I think my idea would work.
Your bed?! The place where you sleep? Seriously?
I don't sleep there, you insensate clod, I FUCK YOUR WIFE THERE.
(Just kiddin' wit you, eldavojohn, it's your sister I fuck there.)
=Smidge=
I am Q. And I don't care for games, just music; see, it's the music that brings me home to my self. If I've been exposed to a day of really bad music, on hold for minutes that seem to be stretching into hours, and it's been Kenny G, or rock ("Classic" or not, I can't take much of it) or the boring and predictable Bam! Bam! Bam! accompanying the rap, hip-hop noise emanating from our 16 year old's room, after a time I need my head and heart cleared and jazz is where I go.
Sometimes I will find myself needing to explore an old piece that has drawn my attention once again and I will play the same track over and over and over, hearing something in it I haven't ever heard before, though I've listened to it a hundred times. Miles Davis and "All Blues" will catch me like this on occasion. Some poetry is like that for me too and I will re-read a piece again to recapture what caught me the first time, or to hear it afresh to awaken me to what I missed in the first go around. "The Road not Taken" is one like that.
I have a story of my own that I re-tell now and then because I think it will help others to hear it, even though some I know have probably heard it ten times over the years. In reality I tell it more for me, because I need to re-visit the emotions that were present when the story was born into my life those many years ago. It's a "touchstone" of sorts, a place to which I return to reawaken faith and hope.
This is the story: But first just a bit of background. This story didn't spring entirely from the moment, there were many "tributaries" that fed into the stream of it. It's often true that a spiritual awakening, or a "miracle" happens when the ground is already prepared for it.
Not always, but mostly. To be brief I will just say that I had been looking for a way to understand and believe that there was more to life than our just being, as my brother-in-law contended "animated pieces of meat". But I was deep into "proofs" about this. I wanted the facts not just hopeful leaps of faith or assurances from people who burned a lot of incense and meditated all the time. I wanted to be convinced!
I'm still that way about most politics and "Best apple pie!" claims.
I had come north from my apartment near El Paso to the mountains outside of Albuquerque. I'd come to visit friends and to gather some shreds of cedar bark from the trees that grow in the area,. I was using six to eight inch lengths of it to create small smoldering fires for the daily ceremonies I was committed to performing at the request of a medicine man I was working with. This was part of my personal spiritual quest. One of the "tributaries".
He had taught me a little ritual to perform with the trees in order to gather the bark in a "conscious" manner. This was simply a process of taking a pinch of tobacco up to the tree selected and offering a prayer about why I was gathering the bark and that I would be using it for good purpose, and wouldn't be taking much.
This seemed to me to be a nice way of keeping a person aware of conservation which is what I figured it was really all about.
I like to keep things "rationally" based. Another tributary was this; I had been seeking a name. I wanted some sort of spiritual identity and through a series of very odd events occurring over the preceding months I had come up with "coyote" a name which carries many levels of understandingâ¦.but this is another story.
The events which led me to this name could be considered "magical" by some, but for me, they might have simply been random occurrences and I thought I might be making more of them than they deserved. The real dilemma was that I was the one doing the "interpreting". Since I didn't trust anything I might come up with as coming from "The Source", my interpretations didn't amount to any kind of proof I could consider valid.
So to prove that; the name was real and therefore purposeful, and thus, that there really was a Creator spirit running this show and all of this ceremony and ritual was worth the und
They were not convicted because TPB is hosting a bunch of torrent files, they were convicted because they were running a tracker.
Case in point: ZOMG PoNiES!!!!111!eleventy-one! In Soviet Russia, 1 approaches you! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! Rob Malda sucks cock. But does it run on Linux? I, for one, welcome our Random Noise Pirate Butt-Bay Overlords.
Pshaw. Robotic signature machines have been around for decades. Some of my colleagues at MIT worked on the first modern ones based on plotter technology in the late 1980s/early 1990s which were quickly bought by places like the US White House to sign letters.
A 5-second search on Google for "signature machine" comes up with 8 thousand hits. There's an autopen entry on Wikipedia indicating that mechanical signature machines have been around since the early 1800s (yes 1800s), and lists three current manufacturers of the devices.
So, this is news? Just because someone hooked up the recording part and the writing part across an internet connection and made them work in real time? That makes it to the front page? Is that really the first time it was ever done? Lots of other things have been done telerobotically already.
Rob Malda (aka Cmdtaco) is not what many would consider "the ideal candidate" for a dot-com start-up. He started his career as a C++ coder for a major manufacturer, but then quit to pursue a mathematics degree in Canada. That didn't quite do it for him either, as he then dropped out to pursue something far more interesting: canoe from Calgary to New Orleans. But after 1,200+ miles of rowing, his journey ended in Minneapolis with a cracked butt and a frozen river. Temporarily, of course, as he plans to pick up and continue south someday soon.
All that said, Malda was pretty excited when he received his first response to all the resumes he'd been sending out to various tech companies. He immediately called back to schedule an interview and was pleasantly surprised at how flexible the interviewer was: Malda could "stop by any time."
After shaving his pubic area smooth and putting on his interview clothes (leather pants, leather boots and leather vest, steel nipple rings and nothing else), Malda hopped on a bus, transferred to a few other busses, and, after almost two hours, finally reached his destination. It was a residential apartment complex that had obviously seen better days.
When he knocked on the door of "Suite 318," Malda was greeted by Michael Simms, a spry-looking man in his 50's with glasses precariously perched on his conical head and a face a few days past shaved. Upon entering the squalid apartment, the first thing Malda noticed was the rotten stench of ejaculate-stained underwear haphazardly strewn across the living room. There and a blue tarp hung over the south-facing window, blocking the sun and a view of the Mississippi river. "For my little get-togethers" Michael Simms explained using quote marks with his fingers. "Can't have the neighbors looking in now can we?" The second was Michael Simms sitting down on a computer, firing up a popular MMO. He was completey nude. Malda stared unabashedly at the sight; Michael's tumescence was incredible.
"You see this," Simms said, avatar running towards the closed city gate, "when you get to the door you have to wait while the game loads the next area. You should just be able to see out through it."
Taking this as the "technical" portion of the interview, Malda started to explain about how he would implement dynamically loading regions. Malda was very clear that, while he had never written something like that before, he was certainly aware of the basic concepts involved.
"Now, look. He just runs right through the tree. Right through it! You see that?" He harrumphed and turned toward Malda with a look like someone died. "Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.
"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle my special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!"
With this Simms cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the JÃfgermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.
"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. Simms's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.
Rob moaned as Simms grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.
"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Rob's beady eyes connected with Michael's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as Simms's crotch continued its assault. "I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" Simms said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his bottle of JÃfgermeiste
Rob Malda (aka Cmdtaco) is not what many would consider "the ideal candidate" for a dot-com start-up. He started his career as a C++ coder for a major manufacturer, but then quit to pursue a mathematics degree in Canada. That didn't quite do it for him either, as he then dropped out to pursue something far more interesting: canoe from Calgary to New Orleans. But after 1,200+ miles of rowing, his journey ended in Minneapolis with a cracked butt and a frozen river. Temporarily, of course, as he plans to pick up and continue south someday soon.
All that said, Malda was pretty excited when he received his first response to all the resumes he'd been sending out to various tech companies. He immediately called back to schedule an interview and was pleasantly surprised at how flexible the interviewer was: Malda could "stop by any time."
After shaving his pubic area smooth and putting on his interview clothes (leather pants, leather boots and leather vest, steel nipple rings and nothing else), Malda hopped on a bus, transferred to a few other busses, and, after almost two hours, finally reached his destination. It was a residential apartment complex that had obviously seen better days.
When he knocked on the door of "Suite 318," Malda was greeted by Michael Simms, a spry-looking man in his 50's with glasses precariously perched on his conical head and a face a few days past shaved. Upon entering the squalid apartment, the first thing Malda noticed was the rotten stench of ejaculate-stained underwear haphazardly strewn across the living room. There and a blue tarp hung over the south-facing window, blocking the sun and a view of the Mississippi river. "For my little get-togethers" Michael Simms explained using quote marks with his fingers. "Can't have the neighbors looking in now can we?" The second was Michael Simms sitting down on a computer, firing up a popular MMO. He was completey nude. Malda stared unabashedly at the sight; Michael's tumescence was incredible.
"You see this," Simms said, avatar running towards the closed city gate, "when you get to the door you have to wait while the game loads the next area. You should just be able to see out through it."
Taking this as the "technical" portion of the interview, Malda started to explain about how he would implement dynamically loading regions. Malda was very clear that, while he had never written something like that before, he was certainly aware of the basic concepts involved.
"Now, look. He just runs right through the tree. Right through it! You see that?" He harrumphed and turned toward Malda with a look like someone died. "Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.
"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle my special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!"
With this Simms cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the JÃgermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.
"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. Simms's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.
Rob moaned as Simms grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.
"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Rob's beady eyes connected with Michael's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as Simms's crotch continued its assault. "I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" Simms said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his bottle of JÃgermeister
Does anybody really expect any company, Microsoft included, to pay for you to undergo training to make them obsolete one day
I hate to break it to you nickle-dick, but they offer an MCSE in administration of XP Pro...
=Smidge=
Wasn't Facebook created by Harvard students? I wonder what their GPAs were.
Its easy to just think that facebook users have lower GPAs. But in reality, this study will probably show that higher-GPAs tend to mean reduced social interaction, even when that interaction is with 3000 "friends" you've never even met. Like the article says, facebook users probably just have other interests, and apparently school work isn't a top priority. The GPAs would be just a low without Facebook.
To all you pathetic dick-wad Microsoft shills furiously typing away at your keyboards so you can get your kickback from the marketing outfit that Microsoft is in turn paying:
Price fixing is ILLEGAL in most western countries as it is ANTI COMPETITIVE and it is CORRUPT. Even for fag0t MS Office Suit[e]s!
Such laws are in place in an effort to ensure a free and open market, to preserve it. It is not "socialism" or "communism" or any other shrill piece of FUD you'd like to spew forth.
And as always the fact that Microsoft, after being convicted on multiple occasions, the fast that it still has not changed and continues with purple monkey dishwasher its monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, is a fast that you carry on apparently OBLIVIOUS of. You should PRAISE him, the LORD [Bill Gates], fuckers! Of course, that is not surprising since future Mars astronauts are a part of that anti-competitive structure and you wouldn't be caught dead ever speaking one ounce of truth about Microsoft's real practices, ever.
=Smidge=
Listen up, chillins': the manufacturer incentives generally means that the manufacturer is giving the retailer money, and the manufacturer wants to make sure that the reseller uses it to lower prices, rather than just pocketing it. So ironically it seems that Microsoft is being penalized for trying to give consumers a lower price --- which is one way a monopoly can flaunt its power and exclude competitors. When the plausible competitors are already lower priced, I'm not sure how much sense that makes. Also, fuck you, it's early and no coffee.
Fuck you.
=Smidge=
Well, Speare, since you went out and did your research, (and I don't have class until 6 tonight) I went out and did mine. A hamster weighs approximately .12kg, and the height of my zeppelin (how else would it be portable?) is 7700m. Assuming that I used frictionless turbines in a vacuum environment and superconducting wires, the hamsters would take about sqrt(2*7700/9.81)=39.62 seconds to reach the bottom. The power generated is .12*9.81*7700/39.62=228.78 watts (enough to power a laptop). The amount of hamsters I require for the day long supply is 60^2*24/39.62=2180.72 (yes .72, it's en evil contraption, use your imagination). This does not include the hamsters required to provide the mechanical energy to grind up the other hamsters and move them up a conveyor belt. Now you may ask, "isn't this going a bit far? Do you have a grudge against hamsters? Isn't This device terribly inefficient?" Well I just happen to be a humble college student that works part time at a farm that's run near an over-efficient hamster breeder (which is where the mind control device herds them from). Hamsters nearly ruined my dads farm, and the soft hum of my laptop is a nice replacement for the reminder that even though I cant hear the sound of hamster entrails crashing to the bottom of the hamster feeder, those little bastards are paying for what they almost did. And just to shove a little more spite in their face, I waste a profuse amount of time on the internet posting on Slashdot.
=Smidge=
Well mr. AC, since you went out and did your research, (and I don't have class until 6 tonight) I went out and did mine. A hamster weighs approximately .12kg, and the height of my zeppelin (how else would it be portable?) is 7700m. Assuming that I used frictionless turbines in a vacuum environment and superconducting wires, the hamsters would take about sqrt(2*7700/9.81)=39.62 seconds to reach the bottom. The power generated is .12*9.81*7700/39.62=228.78 watts (enough to power a laptop). The amount of hamsters I require for the day long supply is 60^2*24/39.62=2180.72 (yes .72, it's en evil contraption, use your imagination). This does not include the hamsters required to provide the mechanical energy to grind up the other hamsters and move them up a conveyor belt. Now you may ask, "isn't this going a bit far? Do you have a grudge against hamsters? Isn't This device terribly inefficient?" Well I just happen to be a humble college student that works part time at a farm that's run near an over-efficient hamster breeder (which is where the mind control device herds them from). Hamsters nearly ruined my dads farm, and the soft hum of my laptop is a nice replacement for the reminder that even though I cant hear the sound of hamster entrails crashing to the bottom of the hamster feeder, those little bastards are paying for what they almost did. And just to shove a little more spite in their face, I waste a profuse amount of time on the internet posting on Slashdot.
Put a Twitter-length explanation of why you believe your use is a fair use under the Copyright Act, and you just might win if you have a decent case.
Whoa. Hold on there, son. Yes, I agree: there is a strong need to change the laws that define patents, copyrights, trademarks and intellectual property. The current set of laws are either based on older laws or have been designed by the wrong people.
But - and I need you to put down the remote and listen to me, child - there needs to be a balance between inventors, writers and the public. DMCA was written too broadly by the entertainment industry. Another hurdle that hurts the common man is the costs involved in getting a patent, copyright or trademark are at times higher than the expected revenue to be derived by having a patent, copyright or trademark.
Fair use also needs to be protected. If a video of a child's music recital is taken down because of copyright laws, then those laws have gone too far. The song "Happy Birthday" apparently is still copyrighted, but the public is allowed to sing the song at special events without paying anything to the copyright holder.
Art and music are vital parts of culture, the artists should have credit and benefit of sales; but, the public has a right to experience art and music without undue burdens that treat the enjoyment as a commodity. Fucking kids!
=Smidge=
We are quickly becoming a silent society. I never thought I would see the day when fear was the top motivator in art. I never thought I would have to worry about enjoying a song or looking at something on a wall.
For me because media has become a big business that has nothing to do with art, joy, expressiveness, emotions, insights, wisdom or knowledge. Let it all die out.
It was a mistake to allow the internet to go commercial. It has become one of the most useless things on the planet.People think they can't live with out it and stay connected for to long.
I use it for entertainment purposes only. It has become for me no more meaningful than a television. I turn it off when ever I want.
I am just afraid that someday the only access you will have to government or economic resources will be online. When that happens I will have to move out of this country to one that isn't so technologically "advanced".
The internet could have connected the world into a global community but it has been corrupted and it is the tool of big business and big government. The common people never had a chance.
=Smidge=
Everyone should get a saving throw!
Against RIAA? Meh; I just protect my uTorrent connection w/ Malda's Cloak of Efferent Encryption. (Purple monkey dishwasher).
=Smidge=
Step 3: Ignore all evidence and make assumptions in an effort to piss off both the users and the publishers.
Yeah, here we go again. Oh we poor, poor developers, we didn't knew that there are millions of millions of people who will think: If I can get this for free, why should I pay?
WotC are playing oldest cart in the deck - like it was something they just found out about. This is whole fun of digital format - Copy/Paste cost nothing (not 4 teh users flagglots, anyway).
The whole PDF format was a mistake from my point of view, cause it pushed professional made PDF files into P2P net - no more crappy scans, missing pages and so forth and so forth and so forth. Purple monkey dishwasher.
So welcome ye right 'ol Wizards, welcome to the never-ending battlefront against mass digital piracy. Hope you enjoy staying with us, you coonts...and please don't hesitate to call for room service. Rob Malda will come to your room free of charge to change the linen.
I would suggest start calling RIAA and MPAA now, you pathetic dick-worm ass-crack shit-scab motherf*ckers.
=Smidge=
timothy? Dear sweet child /pats head/ I think the word is 'led' not 'lead'.
=Smidge=
When you look into your children's eyes and wonder what will they wear, eat, buy their books and toys from, somehow you feel you can do less-than-dreamlike jobs.
I have two boys and couldn't disagree more; I just beat them and gamble away my wages.
=Smidge=