No one is going to give their "good" money for some silly activist stunt like this.
I have to disagree. What if it were done through the EFF or some such? They're a respected organization to which people don't seem to mind giving money. They could start a fund specifically for such actions. And as pointed out in the article referenced, once a point was made, the shares could be liquidated with the proceeds being put towards the next cause.
The idea is a good one. If they put say 1% of their donations into such a pool, and never invested more than 50% of what was there, they could always be assured of having some cash handy for the next cause. By not investing the entire amount, they could deal with the inevitable losses due to stock dropping if they're successful.
Perhaps these will be fast enough to justify the folks at M$ adding a background process to clean up after Windows, instead of pausing my Pinball game to do a mega-swap.
I don't fully understand how it is the Linux community in particular seems to attract so many of these people that have so much anger.
IMHO, the problem lies in the self-esteem of the average geek or haxx0r dood. "I can't dance, I'm too skinny (or fat), I'm too afraid to talk to girls... But boy-o-boy can I hack!"
As the technology becomes more and more accessible, the average dood becomes less and less 31337. While they know something the average person doesn't, they can justify their shortcomings. Nobody wants to be average at something and below-average in everything else.
The public library is such a crappy place to whack off to pr0n anyway.
It's not just about pr0n though. It's the whole censorship thing. For instance, if you allow access to Altavista, kiddies can get access to banned literature. At least I'm guessing it's banned in the Holland Library. Next thing you know, it's showing up in a plain brown wrapper at the unsuspecting parents' house.
Open access can also lead to open research into crime. It's not all pipe bombs. You can actually get pictorial details of RAPE.
There are some arguments to be made in favour of the censorware. For instance, suppose your aging and unindoctrinated grandmother accidentally enters www.whitehouse.com thinking she's checking on the president's latest bout of good work... She's in for a surprise. With NetNanny, CyberSitter, SurfWatch, or CyberPatrol in place, she won't be shocked into cardiac arrrest. (And if she does survive, she'll NEVER get rid of the annoying pop-up windows that show up when you try to close the browser.)
Personally, I'm against censorware in general, but there are arguments to be made for it. Perhaps what's needed is a new dot-xxx domain for outright pron sites... But then who'll decide what is or isn't classified as such...?
I was referring to where I am... Alberta. We DO get the odd July snowfall. Since I've been in Calgary, I've seen it snow every month of the year... and not just in the mountains.
I'm especially looking forward to the day that "Mike talks about something." It's good to see that they're sparing no expense in advertising too. Great slogan... "It's not the longest URL on the net, but it's close" and "2.3 it's fast, it's scalable, it's buggy. AC." While the lineup looks interesting, the promos look cheesy, and that may very well prevent it from being taken seriously. But then again, I haven't used up the travel expense budget yet, and they're promising no snow... Nice thought, after having my car doors frozen shut the other day.
Just checked the stock price... it's up $20 so far today. What does it take to smarten up Wall Street? Are they just impressed with the way that Yahoo recovered? Maybe it's like New Coke. "We were vulnerable, but now we're NOT! Give us more money!"
But why would you need clones, when you can live forever!!!??? This guy has it all figured out. And while you're there, you can find out how the whole universe works too (Hint: it's all megs).
This doesn't do away with the Darwin model of evolution, it just gets it started differently. Kind of like relativity expanded on Newtonian physics.
It also doesn't get rid of the "creation" problem. In no way does it explain where all the stuff came from in the first place. No answer is given for those who'd incessantly argue "But what happened before that?"
It also doesn't explain what's outside the universe. It does propose the infinity of possible universes, but my take on the author's mention of this is that they're all overlaid, not side-by-side.
In short, it's possibly an advancement on the current best answer, but it still leaves a lot of the tricky stuff up to "God."
Having been enjoying this type of contest for years, I'm surprised that the NSA doesn't step in and shut it down. Picture Mitnick giving the NSA the decryption algorithm for his data in the form of super-obfuscated braile-reading C code.
Of course, I'm personally of the opinion that if you were supposed to be able to read it, they wouldn't call it "code."
Projects that are spec'd verbally have a habit of feature-creeping, and it's tough to pin down at what point the project grew. Don't be afraid to spell things out to a client ("If you want this feature, we'll have to re-design the database, and that'll probably add a week to the project. At $xxx per hour, that'll cost you...")
Remuneration can also be a touchy issue. For example, if you're dealing with a stock option scenario. An agreement to take partial payment for a project in stock can be an easy source of "misunderstanding." If the price rises, it's easy for a client to argue that "I meant the price when the project is finished." However, if it drops, then the number of shares will undoubtedly be calculated from the value at the project's inception.
Basically, anything that might be open to interpretation should be in writing (including agreements between partners).
And one last piece of advice... If whomever you are dealing with has used a lawyer to draw up some documentation, it's probably in your best interest to splurge to have your own lawyer look at it. Their a tricky bunch!
nothing personal, but if the American educational system wasn't such a travesty, you might remember hearing about the capital being burned to the ground during the war of 1812...
It's not necessarily about making things idiot-proof. Things can be improved without sacrifice. When you re-compile your kernel, do you use "make config" or "make xconfig" usually? What if instead of makefile's, you had to specify all your options on a command line. That's what the whole interface argument is (should be) about. It's not about making everything Windowsy, it's about making things more convenient and intuitive for users in general, not just newbies.
I see several posts arguing that no graphical user interface is needed. While true in most cases, consider the difference in terms of RP Games. I'm sure there are those who'd argue that Zork is still the king of all games (and Fortran is the game-writing language of choice), but most of us would rather play Hack than Zork.
And what about the graphic tiles introduced for Hack. Now you don't have to know that a brown "d" is a jackal on level 3.
Bring on Quake, and it's a whole new game. They're all essentially the same, but the difference between a real-time graphical view out the eyes of the character is so much better than "You are in a maze of twisty little passages. #>"
A good part of the credit for the lack of a friendly interface has to go to the folks who keep saying "If they can't figure it out, that just proves they're not worthy to use it." This response seems to occur regularly on Slashdot whenever a criticism is levelled at Linux useability and installability.
And besides, who'd want a Nova, when you can get a perfectly good Dart Swinger for the same price...?
Slashdot Mirror
I have to disagree. What if it were done through the EFF or some such? They're a respected organization to which people don't seem to mind giving money. They could start a fund specifically for such actions. And as pointed out in the article referenced, once a point was made, the shares could be liquidated with the proceeds being put towards the next cause.
The idea is a good one. If they put say 1% of their donations into such a pool, and never invested more than 50% of what was there, they could always be assured of having some cash handy for the next cause. By not investing the entire amount, they could deal with the inevitable losses due to stock dropping if they're successful.
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Actually, they categorically deny such rumours so strongly that they have a link on their website to the denial.
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But by that time the Service Pack that makes it stable-ish might be out...
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My Jennicam window has updated twice while waiting for it to load.
And it looks like she's waiting for it too...
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IMHO, the problem lies in the self-esteem of the average geek or haxx0r dood. "I can't dance, I'm too skinny (or fat), I'm too afraid to talk to girls... But boy-o-boy can I hack!"
As the technology becomes more and more accessible, the average dood becomes less and less 31337. While they know something the average person doesn't, they can justify their shortcomings. Nobody wants to be average at something and below-average in everything else.
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It's not just about pr0n though. It's the whole censorship thing. For instance, if you allow access to Altavista, kiddies can get access to banned literature. At least I'm guessing it's banned in the Holland Library. Next thing you know, it's showing up in a plain brown wrapper at the unsuspecting parents' house.
Open access can also lead to open research into crime. It's not all pipe bombs. You can actually get pictorial details of RAPE.
There are some arguments to be made in favour of the censorware. For instance, suppose your aging and unindoctrinated grandmother accidentally enters www.whitehouse.com thinking she's checking on the president's latest bout of good work... She's in for a surprise. With NetNanny, CyberSitter, SurfWatch, or CyberPatrol in place, she won't be shocked into cardiac arrrest. (And if she does survive, she'll NEVER get rid of the annoying pop-up windows that show up when you try to close the browser.)
Personally, I'm against censorware in general, but there are arguments to be made for it. Perhaps what's needed is a new dot-xxx domain for outright pron sites... But then who'll decide what is or isn't classified as such...?
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Rumour has it that they're negotiating with AOL for some high-tech proprietary access client software... ;)
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ebay - up 3
amazon - up 8
yahoo - up 19
What if you did this the day BEFORE your IPO?
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It also doesn't get rid of the "creation" problem. In no way does it explain where all the stuff came from in the first place. No answer is given for those who'd incessantly argue "But what happened before that?"
It also doesn't explain what's outside the universe. It does propose the infinity of possible universes, but my take on the author's mention of this is that they're all overlaid, not side-by-side.
In short, it's possibly an advancement on the current best answer, but it still leaves a lot of the tricky stuff up to "God."
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A forehead VCR... who'd buy that????
Of course, I'm personally of the opinion that if you were supposed to be able to read it, they wouldn't call it "code."
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A forehead VCR... who'd buy that????
Projects that are spec'd verbally have a habit of feature-creeping, and it's tough to pin down at what point the project grew. Don't be afraid to spell things out to a client ("If you want this feature, we'll have to re-design the database, and that'll probably add a week to the project. At $xxx per hour, that'll cost you...")
Remuneration can also be a touchy issue. For example, if you're dealing with a stock option scenario. An agreement to take partial payment for a project in stock can be an easy source of "misunderstanding." If the price rises, it's easy for a client to argue that "I meant the price when the project is finished." However, if it drops, then the number of shares will undoubtedly be calculated from the value at the project's inception.
Basically, anything that might be open to interpretation should be in writing (including agreements between partners).
And one last piece of advice... If whomever you are dealing with has used a lawyer to draw up some documentation, it's probably in your best interest to splurge to have your own lawyer look at it. Their a tricky bunch!
- - - -
A forehead VCR... who'd buy that????
nothing personal, but if the American educational system wasn't such a travesty, you might remember hearing about the capital being burned to the ground during the war of 1812...
It's not necessarily about making things idiot-proof. Things can be improved without sacrifice. When you re-compile your kernel, do you use "make config" or "make xconfig" usually? What if instead of makefile's, you had to specify all your options on a command line. That's what the whole interface argument is (should be) about. It's not about making everything Windowsy, it's about making things more convenient and intuitive for users in general, not just newbies.
I see several posts arguing that no graphical user interface is needed. While true in most cases, consider the difference in terms of RP Games. I'm sure there are those who'd argue that Zork is still the king of all games (and Fortran is the game-writing language of choice), but most of us would rather play Hack than Zork.
And what about the graphic tiles introduced for Hack. Now you don't have to know that a brown "d" is a jackal on level 3.
Bring on Quake, and it's a whole new game. They're all essentially the same, but the difference between a real-time graphical view out the eyes of the character is so much better than "You are in a maze of twisty little passages. #>"
A good part of the credit for the lack of a friendly interface has to go to the folks who keep saying "If they can't figure it out, that just proves they're not worthy to use it." This response seems to occur regularly on Slashdot whenever a criticism is levelled at Linux useability and installability.
And besides, who'd want a Nova, when you can get a perfectly good Dart Swinger for the same price...?
Perhaps somebody reminded them of the way MS handled the "joint development" of OS/2 with IBM, and Monolith saw the lack of light at the end...
Not mine, but I like the morphage...
Somebody has way too much time.
If Friends were filmed in Wisconscin