Is this dangerous? I heard this on the radio today and that was what struck me.
So if we use this to power Australia like they suggest, what are the consequences. That would mean stealing a lot of heat from the Earth that is trapped in these geothermal "deposits" (since it sounds like they found concentrated areas of heat higher up than usual). If we cool those down (which is what will happen when we extract heat from them) then what will happen? Will it effect the ground in any way? I'm thinking of towns where they used to mine salt or coal or something and the ground later started to collapse because the stuff was gone. While they are not removing rock, would removing the heat cause problems later? For example: remove the heat -> things cool down -> rocks contract from cooling -> empty space -> fissues?
Anyone know? I realize this would probably be a long-term problem (not something that would show up for a long time). Would this not be a problem because the ground could slowly adjust as we removed the heat, or would the heat stay high until the last minute then plummet (sorta like batteries do) causing problems?
Sorry, but the title of your comment made me think of this and I just had to post it.
I don't know what they have to say,
it makes no difference anyway -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!
Your proposition may be good,
but let's have one thing understood -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it!
I'm opposed to it.
On general principles I'm opposed to it.
For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn -
"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it,
"I'm against it!"
From Horse Feathers - The 1932 Marx Brothers' film.
Not Possible, Permissions, Jails/Sandboxes, Others
on
'Protecting' Perl Code?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
My first though was it isn't possible. After all, it's root. Root is supposed to be able to do anything.
My second though was permissions. Why do the students need root access? Couldn't you make some new account that had permissions to do anything but access that one directory?
My last thought is a sandbox (or I think the BSD concept of a Jail is the same idea). If you were to run Linux on Linux (Xen, or just some other sandbox, maybe even chroot) then you could give them root, while keeping them out of the true root.
It's a tough situation. Does it really have to be on that server? You can't stick it on a new server your company buys for the purpose and donates (what is more important, My last idea (a bit extreme, I would think) would be to modify the Perl interpreter to run the perl code through a decryption algorithm first (so the source on disk would be encrypted so it couldn't be read). With open source software, there is no reason this isn't possible (would hurt performance though).
Does Perl support some kind of tolkenizing? When you run a Python script you get the.pyo (I think) file that is basically the cached compiled Python byte code. Can you do that with Perl? It isn't perfect (can be disassembled back into Perl, but without variable names, etc) but it is better than plain text.
Re:Halo 1/2 on XBox 360 looking good at 720p
on
Master Chief Revisited
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· Score: 2, Informative
First off, do you really think the XBox 360 (somewhere around a GeForce 8800 maybe) will have trouble with FSAA and running at 720p for a game that is designed for an XBox (GeForce 2.5, maybe 3)? I bet the 360 could produce an image almost as good as an original XBox in software.
That said, don't forget that this is "free." If you own Halo or Halo 2 and buy an XBox 360 (and with Halo 3 coming some day, many fans (and most all of the hard core will), you get this visual upgrade for free.
Halo 1/2 on XBox 360 looking good at 720p
on
Master Chief Revisited
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Bungie's Anniversary Page has shots of Halo 1 and 2 on the XBox 360 in 720p (including comparisons with 480p) so you can see how good things can look.
I went to a Catholic highschool about 5 years ago and as a senior in biology there was a girl in my class that was the same way (which amazed me).
But in my Catholic school, teaching evolution went something like this: "I'm about to teach you evolution. The Church supports it. You don't have to believe it. (teach evolution like a public school would)". I don't even think that was neccessary.
This is the thing that confuses me. The Vatican supports evolution because it makes perfect sense (evolution never says there is no God, God could be directing evolution). Now I know that the ID people aren't Roman Catholic, but you would think they were the media portrays it. Most stories I've heard have two sides: the scientists/"normal people" (who seem to be portrayed as atheists most of the time) and the ID proponents (who are described as religeous people). Thus all religeous people (specifically Christians) don't like evolution.
Yeah right.
This would have been over long ago if in every report about this "debate", the media would point this fact (that the Vadican supports evolution) do dispell this fact. I have to wonder how many Catholics even know this, and how many support evolution and think they disagree with their religion on that point.
This whole thing is rediculous. Atheists support evolution. The roman catholoic church supports evolution. Just about ever major religon supports it. A few nuts start a fuss though and all of a sudden there is a "religious war" between the "religous" (radial fundamentalists) and the "sane people" (everyone else).
This whole thing just confirms that old quote (paraphrased): "Evil triumphs when good men stand idly by."
Note that I don't think that the fundamentalists are evil. But you can't let that little group remove evolution from schools. The "good men" need to stop standing idly by. If even 10% of the "good men" were to stand up and say "No way," then this debate would end FAST. Pure supiriority of numbers.
I have to disagree. Now school is obviously different from a job (schools don't care (to a degree) if you pass or fail, they got their money), so take this wouldn't apply to your situation.
The solution to the problem you describe is simple: you need to be fired. If you are playing games all the time and not getting your work done, the then you need to cure the problem (you have no self control), not he symptom (you play games).
If a good employee wants to play CS during his lunch hour, I say why not. If he reads/. once in a while but still gets all his work done, let him have it. If it takes a little stress off and isn't harming things, then what is the problem?
It's self control. If an employee keeps stealing stuff, what do you do? Nail everything down so he can't take it, or have him arrested?
Locking things down unnecessarily (obviously, some stuff must be) because of one bad egg will only annoy the other employees and decrease their productivity because you don't "trust" them. I'm not saying let them roam free, but they don't have to be in a cage either. Zoos have animals trapped, but the enclosures are designed not to seem to bad to the animals. Same kind of thing for employees (note: sorry about the zoo comparison, but it was a easy way to make the point).
Very true. You can see this in open source software too. Give a geek a programming job that seems "pointless" to him and while you may get results (you are paying him, after all) they won't begin to compare to what you would get if you gave them something that piqued their curiosity. Not many people want to mess with some things in open source (X Windows protocol replacement? Not much progress), but other more "interesting" problems (kernel scheduler, block scheduler, Out-Of-Memory Killer heuristics, etc.) are always getting attention from people who want to try something to see if it works or try to solve an interesting puzzle.
You need the mice.
PS: Money is only a short-term mouse, and like many drugs, its effect weakens each time you use it.
Why? We are the kind of people he wants to know how to manage, right? And there is never any shortage of comments to stories about how bad a place is to work, how the bosses don't know how to deal with the geeks, and (rarely) about the kinds of things the "great ones" do to keep their employees happy.
While you'll have to take this stuff with a pinch of salt (some of it will be like asking a 1st grader what they want for dinner and being told candy), much of it will be great advice that will be hard to get elsewhere.
At my current job (just a temporary gig while I'm in school) I don't have many of those kind of problems, but I can tell you that there is not much that would kill my productivity more that reason #1 the parent listed.
I have a major engineering mindset, and I always have. So having meetings that I deem useless would infuriate me. I understand having meetings once in a while, and I understand they are not always about my area but I must attend. That makes sense, I don't mind hearing about what else is going on, I may find it interesting or be able to offer a different viewpoint now and then.
But to continuously stick me into meetings that I have no place at would kill me. Not only would they take me away from work I could be doing and break my momentum of what I am doing, but it would infuriate me. That would kill my morale and make me want to do my job less. When is the next time they'll pull me away from what I'm doing for something that doesn't matter.
If you have employees with an engineering mindset (engineers, geeks, and many "regular" people), remember that logic is key. Pointless tasks and mandatory attendance to regularly unrelated meetings will be like throwing a people personal in the cubicle in the back room where they never see anyone.
I've read this article too (I submitted it to/., but I guess he beat me to it).
I don't think the article is meant to be taken seriously. It is part of their "launch coverage" (read: we need to fill time). It is interesting to look at, and some of the coincidences are surprising, but I think it is meant as a laugh.
Either way, when you get to the second page, that is when the article becomes more serious. Many of the 10 reasons the XBox 360 will succeed show why a similarity from the previous page isn't so similar after-all.
An example of this is on the first page, they show both the DC and the 360 have a way to connect to the internet (modem, and ethernet) and tout playing against your friends and such. On the second page, they point out the difference between the modem (yeah, you can use it) and XBox Live (already established, successful, high speed, and there is a good broadband penetration).
This is just one of those "Isn't this interesting" articles, sort of like those things about the similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy. While many of them are kind of eerie, many of the similarities are a stretch and you can see people were just reaching for another connection.
I think the idea behind using the voucher is twofold. First, you have to use the voucher for the intended purpose, or throw it away. You can't spend the voucher on yourself. Second, by providing the vouchers people who couldn't afford to give the $100 to a software developer can give the voucher the government gave them instead.
The cynic in me says "Just cut my taxes the $100" or "With vouchers you can keep the money without paying me interest until it is cashed" and such, but frankly I think it would be a good idea as long as there are a few simple rules (must be given to an open source project, no using it to buy Battlefield 2, for example).
DARPANet's eventual fate and the way it was designed shows one good point. The internet is designed so that it works on anything. Whether you use DSL, Dial-Up, Cable, T1, Satellite, Cell Phone, or whatever, the internet is exactly the same. It doesn't matter what the underlying physical medium is. This was designed this way for one good reason: it's better for the network. If you need to switch out your token-ring network with 802.11g, the computers will still be able to access the internet. You won't need a new web browser. You won't need a new e-mail client. The design decisions were made because they had merit, with no eye to potential profit and ability to lock-in users to the specific system.
Because the government has no fiduciary interest in the software (the government is, after all, simply an agent of the people; they won't be selling it) you don't have those kind of problems. If the government funded some development, they would have no reason to utter phrases such as the following in planning meetings:
Forget the bugs, we have to get this out in time for (Christmas rush, tax season, whatever)
Once we get their money, then we'll work on fixing the bugs
Let's push the release up to ahead of our competitor's product to eat into their sales
Let's wait until after our competitor releases their product since ours is better. We don't want them having some feature we don't so we lose sales.
etc.
I think we all know what the internet would look like if we let the corporations of today design it. You'd have the Sprint-ernet, the Comcast-ernet, the Time Warner-net, etc; and none could talk to any of the others, without an extra free per month. After all, you can't let your cable modem customers go to DSL when the price is lower can you? You need lock-in!.
While this wouldn't work for everything (games, for example) I could see it doing good for some things.
OK, I just realized that I totally misread your question. I don't remember there being any open source software in the GPL sense, but I think there was some that would give you the source with purchase. That said, if you can't find any, you can always build your own.
I don't know of any specifically. But the only part you'd really need to make would be something to turn 3D models (which you could always make in Blender or some such) into the G-Code file to feed the machine.
If you have some tools, you can build your own quite cheap and make a great machine. A guy named John C. Kleinbauer sells plans on his website for a couple of different machines. Once you buy plans, you get access to his "inner circle" BBS (can't remember the name) where he personally supports his plans, he and other members talk about their machines, what they are building, tips, etc.
It's a great little community.
By going this way you can save cash on the machine to buy the software, but they also mention software you can use that is either cheap or free.
There is nothing wrong with an online degree that I can think of, as long as you get it from a real school. DeVry, Keller Graduate, University of Phoenix Online, and many state/community colleges offer online degrees in various subjects.
As long as it is backed by a real school, I see no problem at all.
Re:Does anyone actually USE Google Desktop?
on
Google Desktop 2 Live
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· Score: 4, Informative
I've installed it on all the family Windows boxes, and it is helpful once in a while at finding documents (my parents are permanently unorganized in file structure). The ability of search your web history is neat, I'd probably use that a lot.
That said, I spend almost all my time on my Mac, so I have Spotlight.
I LOVE Spotlight.
With a quick key combination (based on keyboard placement, it would be like Alt-Space in the windows world) and then just type in stuff. The name of a document. A person's name. The name of an appointment. The name of a bookmark. The name of a folder. Some text in a document that I can't remember the name of. The name of a function in one of my programming projects (then just chose the header file it finds). It is fantastic. I even use it to launch programs (although I would prefer a version of the Run command in Windows, that is the one thing I miss). I know about Quicksilver and such but Spotlight works well enough for this.
It does seem to have gotten faster with the 10.4.3 update as well. Before sometimes I could type something in and it would take 15+ seconds for the first result to show up (this is a 1.677 GHz PB with 1GB of RAM), now the first results are always there in under a second (note, internal hard drive only; I don't know how it'd deal with multiple 800GB volumes some people use).
If you get Google Desktop and start using it, I think you'll love it (note: I've turned off the sidebar, just seems annoying to me). All it needs is a key command (Win-G maybe?) to launch it (note: might exist, haven't looked). While not as convenient as Spotlight (Google Desktop pulls up a web browser then you have to click, with spotlight I can use arrow keys, return, and various key combos), it will still be a major boon to you.
Now I'm a VERY organized person, and I still am. But now I can find that document by typing a few letters, instead of opening a few folders.
And if you accidently save something to the wrong place, it can be a GODSEND in finding it.
As far out as some things sound, that will never happen. Remember that the process of seceding from England and forming the US involved a boycott (Boston Tea Party anyone?). They were also used in the grape boycott (Caesar Chavez) and various other projects.
You can't outlaw a boycott. Ignoring the reasons above, you are talking about imposing a mandatory consumption law.
Ask the revolutionary era French how the Gabelle (salt tax) turned out. Oh that's right, it was one of the things that lead to the overthrow of the government.
If you get the boycott in the media and organized (best example? Possibly Caesar Chavez and his grape boycott) then they can't claim "See? Piracy is making it worse" because every time they do someone will say "not that giant boycott that is going on against you?"
I think it is interesting you say a boycott won't work, but suggest scare tactics by posting the pictures of RIAA/MPAA members. The instant you try that they'll start claiming it's a "hit list" and try to get you arrested.
UPDATE: They'll tell you when it's time (should have kept reading!)
"4.3 No less than four (4) nor more than seven (7) days before the end of the Class Benefit for each Class Member, Netflix will send an email to the Class Member reminding the Class Member that that he or she may elect not to renew the service at the benefit level (emphasis mine). Such email shall, at minimum, " [tell you what level you are now at, how much it will cost to stay at that level, how to change your level back, and the date you must change it by not to be charged for a 2nd month at that level].
Good for them. Based on this, why bother to submit the little extra "and that's how they'll get you" part to Slashdot? Oh, that's right, they probably didn't read it.
I got the e-mail this morning. I'm glad you pointed that out. Here is the info (top of page 8):
"... Netflix shal be permitted to automatically renew the upgraded service automatically at the end of the upgraded month at Netflix's regular subscription rate for the upgraded program, unless and until the Class Member cancels the service or modifies his or her subscription."
PS: What's with the scanned in PDF. This was OBVIOUSLY typed on a computer, why not just give us a text PDF instead? I HATE IT when places do that. It's even worse that the scanning is crooked by a few degrees. Someone just doesn't take pride in their job.:)
Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi
Since I seriously doubt a hunger strike will get us anywhere, a boycott is the only legal means of change we have left that will probably work (short of a MAJOR uprising on politicians to put laws in place to fix this/investigate the RIAA/MPAA under the RICO act).
No, I'm just pointing out that MS has an option here, they aren't being unilaterally shut out.
It would be a problem if Washington were to go with another standard (Washing state? Never happen), and the Oregon another, then Utah another, etc. But at a certain point (perhaps when Oregon came up on the list I just gave) then they can argue "Hey! We support this fine open format. And this one. Why don't you pick one of those."
Right now, the only open standards that are supported by Word that I can think of are plain text and RTF, neither of which is very attractive.
Slashdot Mirror
But if that heat built up over millions of years, it would be possible to drain in if we take energy out fast enough.
So if we use this to power Australia like they suggest, what are the consequences. That would mean stealing a lot of heat from the Earth that is trapped in these geothermal "deposits" (since it sounds like they found concentrated areas of heat higher up than usual). If we cool those down (which is what will happen when we extract heat from them) then what will happen? Will it effect the ground in any way? I'm thinking of towns where they used to mine salt or coal or something and the ground later started to collapse because the stuff was gone. While they are not removing rock, would removing the heat cause problems later? For example: remove the heat -> things cool down -> rocks contract from cooling -> empty space -> fissues?
Anyone know? I realize this would probably be a long-term problem (not something that would show up for a long time). Would this not be a problem because the ground could slowly adjust as we removed the heat, or would the heat stay high until the last minute then plummet (sorta like batteries do) causing problems?
I don't know what they have to say,
it makes no difference anyway -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!
Your proposition may be good,
but let's have one thing understood -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it!
I'm opposed to it.
On general principles I'm opposed to it.
For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn -
"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it,
"I'm against it!"
From Horse Feathers - The 1932 Marx Brothers' film.
My second though was permissions. Why do the students need root access? Couldn't you make some new account that had permissions to do anything but access that one directory?
My last thought is a sandbox (or I think the BSD concept of a Jail is the same idea). If you were to run Linux on Linux (Xen, or just some other sandbox, maybe even chroot) then you could give them root, while keeping them out of the true root.
It's a tough situation. Does it really have to be on that server? You can't stick it on a new server your company buys for the purpose and donates (what is more important, My last idea (a bit extreme, I would think) would be to modify the Perl interpreter to run the perl code through a decryption algorithm first (so the source on disk would be encrypted so it couldn't be read). With open source software, there is no reason this isn't possible (would hurt performance though).
Does Perl support some kind of tolkenizing? When you run a Python script you get the .pyo (I think) file that is basically the cached compiled Python byte code. Can you do that with Perl? It isn't perfect (can be disassembled back into Perl, but without variable names, etc) but it is better than plain text.
That said, don't forget that this is "free." If you own Halo or Halo 2 and buy an XBox 360 (and with Halo 3 coming some day, many fans (and most all of the hard core will), you get this visual upgrade for free.
Bungie's Anniversary Page has shots of Halo 1 and 2 on the XBox 360 in 720p (including comparisons with 480p) so you can see how good things can look.
But in my Catholic school, teaching evolution went something like this: "I'm about to teach you evolution. The Church supports it. You don't have to believe it. (teach evolution like a public school would)". I don't even think that was neccessary.
Yeah right.
This would have been over long ago if in every report about this "debate", the media would point this fact (that the Vadican supports evolution) do dispell this fact. I have to wonder how many Catholics even know this, and how many support evolution and think they disagree with their religion on that point.
This whole thing is rediculous. Atheists support evolution. The roman catholoic church supports evolution. Just about ever major religon supports it. A few nuts start a fuss though and all of a sudden there is a "religious war" between the "religous" (radial fundamentalists) and the "sane people" (everyone else).
This whole thing just confirms that old quote (paraphrased): "Evil triumphs when good men stand idly by."
Note that I don't think that the fundamentalists are evil. But you can't let that little group remove evolution from schools. The "good men" need to stop standing idly by. If even 10% of the "good men" were to stand up and say "No way," then this debate would end FAST. Pure supiriority of numbers.
-- A fed up Kansan Catholic.
The solution to the problem you describe is simple: you need to be fired. If you are playing games all the time and not getting your work done, the then you need to cure the problem (you have no self control), not he symptom (you play games).
If a good employee wants to play CS during his lunch hour, I say why not. If he reads /. once in a while but still gets all his work done, let him have it. If it takes a little stress off and isn't harming things, then what is the problem?
It's self control. If an employee keeps stealing stuff, what do you do? Nail everything down so he can't take it, or have him arrested?
Locking things down unnecessarily (obviously, some stuff must be) because of one bad egg will only annoy the other employees and decrease their productivity because you don't "trust" them. I'm not saying let them roam free, but they don't have to be in a cage either. Zoos have animals trapped, but the enclosures are designed not to seem to bad to the animals. Same kind of thing for employees (note: sorry about the zoo comparison, but it was a easy way to make the point).
You need the mice.
PS: Money is only a short-term mouse, and like many drugs, its effect weakens each time you use it.
While you'll have to take this stuff with a pinch of salt (some of it will be like asking a 1st grader what they want for dinner and being told candy), much of it will be great advice that will be hard to get elsewhere.
I have a major engineering mindset, and I always have. So having meetings that I deem useless would infuriate me. I understand having meetings once in a while, and I understand they are not always about my area but I must attend. That makes sense, I don't mind hearing about what else is going on, I may find it interesting or be able to offer a different viewpoint now and then.
But to continuously stick me into meetings that I have no place at would kill me. Not only would they take me away from work I could be doing and break my momentum of what I am doing, but it would infuriate me. That would kill my morale and make me want to do my job less. When is the next time they'll pull me away from what I'm doing for something that doesn't matter.
If you have employees with an engineering mindset (engineers, geeks, and many "regular" people), remember that logic is key. Pointless tasks and mandatory attendance to regularly unrelated meetings will be like throwing a people personal in the cubicle in the back room where they never see anyone.
I don't think the article is meant to be taken seriously. It is part of their "launch coverage" (read: we need to fill time). It is interesting to look at, and some of the coincidences are surprising, but I think it is meant as a laugh.
Either way, when you get to the second page, that is when the article becomes more serious. Many of the 10 reasons the XBox 360 will succeed show why a similarity from the previous page isn't so similar after-all.
An example of this is on the first page, they show both the DC and the 360 have a way to connect to the internet (modem, and ethernet) and tout playing against your friends and such. On the second page, they point out the difference between the modem (yeah, you can use it) and XBox Live (already established, successful, high speed, and there is a good broadband penetration).
This is just one of those "Isn't this interesting" articles, sort of like those things about the similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy. While many of them are kind of eerie, many of the similarities are a stretch and you can see people were just reaching for another connection.
The cynic in me says "Just cut my taxes the $100" or "With vouchers you can keep the money without paying me interest until it is cashed" and such, but frankly I think it would be a good idea as long as there are a few simple rules (must be given to an open source project, no using it to buy Battlefield 2, for example).
Because the government has no fiduciary interest in the software (the government is, after all, simply an agent of the people; they won't be selling it) you don't have those kind of problems. If the government funded some development, they would have no reason to utter phrases such as the following in planning meetings:
I think we all know what the internet would look like if we let the corporations of today design it. You'd have the Sprint-ernet, the Comcast-ernet, the Time Warner-net, etc; and none could talk to any of the others, without an extra free per month. After all, you can't let your cable modem customers go to DSL when the price is lower can you? You need lock-in!.
While this wouldn't work for everything (games, for example) I could see it doing good for some things.
I don't know of any specifically. But the only part you'd really need to make would be something to turn 3D models (which you could always make in Blender or some such) into the G-Code file to feed the machine.
It's a great little community.
By going this way you can save cash on the machine to buy the software, but they also mention software you can use that is either cheap or free.
As long as it is backed by a real school, I see no problem at all.
That said, I spend almost all my time on my Mac, so I have Spotlight.
I LOVE Spotlight.
With a quick key combination (based on keyboard placement, it would be like Alt-Space in the windows world) and then just type in stuff. The name of a document. A person's name. The name of an appointment. The name of a bookmark. The name of a folder. Some text in a document that I can't remember the name of. The name of a function in one of my programming projects (then just chose the header file it finds). It is fantastic. I even use it to launch programs (although I would prefer a version of the Run command in Windows, that is the one thing I miss). I know about Quicksilver and such but Spotlight works well enough for this.
It does seem to have gotten faster with the 10.4.3 update as well. Before sometimes I could type something in and it would take 15+ seconds for the first result to show up (this is a 1.677 GHz PB with 1GB of RAM), now the first results are always there in under a second (note, internal hard drive only; I don't know how it'd deal with multiple 800GB volumes some people use).
If you get Google Desktop and start using it, I think you'll love it (note: I've turned off the sidebar, just seems annoying to me). All it needs is a key command (Win-G maybe?) to launch it (note: might exist, haven't looked). While not as convenient as Spotlight (Google Desktop pulls up a web browser then you have to click, with spotlight I can use arrow keys, return, and various key combos), it will still be a major boon to you.
Now I'm a VERY organized person, and I still am. But now I can find that document by typing a few letters, instead of opening a few folders.
And if you accidently save something to the wrong place, it can be a GODSEND in finding it.
You can't outlaw a boycott. Ignoring the reasons above, you are talking about imposing a mandatory consumption law.
Ask the revolutionary era French how the Gabelle (salt tax) turned out. Oh that's right, it was one of the things that lead to the overthrow of the government.
I think it is interesting you say a boycott won't work, but suggest scare tactics by posting the pictures of RIAA/MPAA members. The instant you try that they'll start claiming it's a "hit list" and try to get you arrested.
UPDATE: They'll tell you when it's time (should have kept reading!)
"4.3 No less than four (4) nor more than seven (7) days before the end of the Class Benefit for each Class Member, Netflix will send an email to the Class Member reminding the Class Member that that he or she may elect not to renew the service at the benefit level (emphasis mine). Such email shall, at minimum, " [tell you what level you are now at, how much it will cost to stay at that level, how to change your level back, and the date you must change it by not to be charged for a 2nd month at that level].
Good for them. Based on this, why bother to submit the little extra "and that's how they'll get you" part to Slashdot? Oh, that's right, they probably didn't read it.
"... Netflix shal be permitted to automatically renew the upgraded service automatically at the end of the upgraded month at Netflix's regular subscription rate for the upgraded program, unless and until the Class Member cancels the service or modifies his or her subscription."
PS: What's with the scanned in PDF. This was OBVIOUSLY typed on a computer, why not just give us a text PDF instead? I HATE IT when places do that. It's even worse that the scanning is crooked by a few degrees. Someone just doesn't take pride in their job. :)
Since I seriously doubt a hunger strike will get us anywhere, a boycott is the only legal means of change we have left that will probably work (short of a MAJOR uprising on politicians to put laws in place to fix this/investigate the RIAA/MPAA under the RICO act).
It would be a problem if Washington were to go with another standard (Washing state? Never happen), and the Oregon another, then Utah another, etc. But at a certain point (perhaps when Oregon came up on the list I just gave) then they can argue "Hey! We support this fine open format. And this one. Why don't you pick one of those."
Right now, the only open standards that are supported by Word that I can think of are plain text and RTF, neither of which is very attractive.