That's already been taking care of with the article on The Economist. That's about the only periodical I can think of where heads of state and CEOs both read (and who both appear in the letters section from time to time).
Ahhh yes, the power of Visual Basic. I like how professional the software is, it doesn't even say you need the Runtime libraries. Their website is mostly filled with "technical questions" about how to order the software.
The attitude to directed advertising programs or "spyware" on Slashdot. Especially when you step outside the parochial echochamber that is Slashdot discourse and speak to people who actually use these programs. On the whole, they are actually happy to get these novelties for "free", like the funny little desktop buddy, or the search bar, weather report or stopwatch.
They are happy to get a girl that dances to your mp3s. However, they are not happy to also get a program that tracks their information and generally screws up the system. If that was part of the install process (WE WILL MONITOR ALL WEBSITES YOU VISIT!) then I guarantee a lot less people will be actually happy. The/. is not actually happy because we know what it does. To them, they just clicked on a kitten screensaver.
I was thinking of that as well, and realized it's easier with ebay. You've got a shipping address at least. However, if you bought it at something like a farmer's market or flea market then you're safe. However, they usually won't have counterfeit-strength machinery.
I remember reading an article a long time ago in Esquire, I believe. Basically the author owned up to counterfeiting in the mid-80s using nothing more than a regular color printer and some paper dyed in tea. He said it worked best to make copies of $20s and use them at stores where you bought a single cheap item and the clerk was usually a bored teen. For example, flower shops. He said convenience stores and such usually were wise to the whole game.
He said his friend and him made about $1500 in fake money that summer and spent it all that way. They had a close brush near the end and gave up but said that it was pretty easy.
Like they say, do it big, do it once, disappear. Otherwise you'll get caught.
I especially like this picture, which seems to almost be a spy shot froma James Bond movie, or as one of the posters commented, "Looks very Thunderbirds-ish."
"If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system." - Associated Press, 2004
"Sun has always believed that a computer connected to a network is much more valuable than a disconnected one. The network is a resource with far more information and service capability than any one computer. It can provide access to its information and services to anyone, anyplace, anytime, on any type of device... The network does not replace the desktop; it extends it, makes it easier to use and much more ubiquitous. It's no longer a question of whether the complexity of software and computing will be moved onto the network. It's a question of how fast will it happen." - Pat Sueltz, Sun Microsystems, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal Nov 15, 1999.
To think that five years later we're discussing a search engine as a competitor to Microsoft. I can't think of anything that sounds more 1999 than that. The main difference here is, of course, that unlike Sun, you don't need to buy a Google "server" to run these services. They already exist. If Google acquires other web-based businesses (let's say, a direct Salesforce.com competitor or Salesforce.com itself, it's only a billion dollars), then they can very rapidly muscle into this.
Unfortunately, as someone else mentioned, there isn't much news in this article. I guess it justs gives us/.ers the chance to discuss Google which we haven't done in 4 days so we're getting a bit antsy. Larry and Sergei, by the way, are cashing out stock to the tune of $1bn each. For those not following the stock, it's up about 65-70% since it's debut.
I'm just waiting for Google to release the "true iPod killer" which can index 5 Libraries of Congress in a minute and weighs less than 1/1000th of a Volkswagen.
Summary: "It looks like Ridley Scott, director of Gladiator and Alien is doing it."
Article: "Now the tricky part is, apparently Ridley Scott has seen the materials before. And subsequently passed on doing it.... Don't know if Ridley's budged."
Tricky on the part of Warner Brothers. They know Halo 2 did well, so they "leak" some baseless information regarding Ridley Scott being attached to the project, hopefully get enough response to trade rags say things like "gaming fans around the globe have already begun wetting themselves with excitement" and then go back to Scott Free and say, "Hey, look, we've got all this support now!"
By the time the movie comes out, it will have 7 writers, star Paul Walker as Master Chief, and be directed by Tony Scott, he of "Top Gun" fame.
As much as it's not an executable, I still consider it "software" -- no thanks.
Re:Whiskey?
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That, simply, is impossible. Good Vodka tastes good because it has very little impurities. The best are some of the "cleanest" vodkas.
Scotch, on the other hand, is all ABOUT the impurities. Witness something like the Laphroaig, which (and this is the producer talking) asks you to drink it and "release the pungent, earthy aroma of blue peat smoke" -- Macallan speaks of an "after taste of heavily toasted oak wood" in their 1971 30-yr old run -- clearly, they are not concerned with impurities. Some even produce "unchilfiltered" Scotch which has actual shards of Scotchy goodness floating around in the bottle.
That being said, some blended Scotch is OK, but not anything like single-malt. As much as I enjoy Scotch, I also like to drink JD and Crown Royal, which I'm sure means someone will take my Scotchy badge away from me.
That might be true. But if you put an overrated Vodka (say, Belvedere or Grey Goose) next to a good but cheap vodka (Svedka, for example) some people won't be able to tell the difference but will gladly pony up another $4 for the "upscale" martini.
Personally, I like Svedka, Three Olives, Tito's, and Stoli Oranj, but I am not a big vodka drinker. I will go through two handles of whisk(e)y before a smaller vodka bottle is even dented.
I completely agree. The whole "super-premium" spirits division is completely ridiculous. Vodka should never be over $20/L especially since Vodka, by definition, should have almost no taste or odor (besides the alcohol itself). You're gonna have flavored vodkas of course (the Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate I like, although there are stranger offerings.
A good Scotch is worth $50+. I don't think people can really distinguish a $50 from a $20 vodka. It's all marketing directed at those that want to seem connoiseurs at glitzy and overrated martini bars. It is the next fad, and it's idiotic.
Again, they were only "recalibrated" because NEP's servers came back online after a 4+ hour downtime. During that downtime, exit poll information changed. Can we apply Occam's Razor to this? What is more likely, that a server went down, or that hundreds of pollsters across the nation cooperated with other people and allowed some shadowy nefarious sysadmin to change all the exit numbers?
I mentioned it in my original message, and I will have to mention it AGAIN.
This is from the Washington Post.
". ..a server at Edison/Mitofsky malfunctioned shortly before 11 p.m. The glitch prevented access to any exit poll results until technicians got a backup system operational at 1:33 a.m. yesterday.
"The crash occurred barely minutes before the consortium was to update its exit polling with the results of later interviewing that found Bush with a one-point lead. Instead, journalists were left relying on preliminary exit poll results released at 8:15 p.m., which still showed Kerry ahead by three percentage points.
The data "changed" because the NEP was not collecting data for five hours. Stop trying to believe that 51% of the country is lying when they say they wanted Bush to win.
I'm not a Bush supporter, but this is the same extremist idiotic crap that has turned people off the Democratic Party. Yeah, sure, Rove sat there in a bunker a mile under the Earth's surface and orchestrated the whole damn thing. Spend some time grooming some real candidates.
I see your Pearl and raise you a Tito's Vodka. Micro-batch pot distilled in Texas, this is some of the smoothest damn vodka I have ever had, and it is sometimes cheaper than Absolut. It comes in a regular glass bottle with a sticker that says "Tito's" -- no hand-painted anything, no fuss, just some of the best vodka you have ever tasted.
The only exit polls which showed Kerry winning were early results from the National Exit Pool, and were only reported on sites like DrudgeReport. The problem was that taking a sliver of the NEP is completely inaccurate. There's a reason major news organizations are very conservative with the data. It's just not 100% accurate. Less so early in the day.
Of course someone will say that late at night Bush's exit poll numbers suddenly jumped up. This too, was caused by a server failure in the NEP which hadn't updated the exit poll information.
Bush did not win by mass conspiracy. There is no cover up.
I'd actually be really interested in what it's like for business owners, the self-employed, or contractors. Nothing tires me more than hearing complaints piled on to a company about how everything they do is wrong, and yet the person doesn't think of possibly competing with them by starting their own company. Now, I know there's lots of exceptions, but anyone that laughs at this idea doesn't realize that's how businesses start. You either develop something brand new no one has ever done before* or you find someone that does something poorly and/or expensively and go against them and do it better and/or at a lower price. I'm not recommending to develop a flying car or become your own VoIP provider, but there's probably a thousand things you're good at that people will gladly pay you money for.
Sorry about the rant/tirade.
So how is business looking for business owners? Better? Worse? And I'm sure readers want to know, are you hiring?
(Just interested in the responses, myself).
* Humor: And then get sued into oblivion by a patent-holder wholly unrelated to your idea (some chicken-feed manufacturer, for example).
I'm pretty sure he means a governing council in Internet2. Sort of like the university administrators that report Joe Dorm if he does anything bad enough.
I don't know. A LOT of "Free as in Beer" programs I have followed over the years have taken ages to have any updates, usually because the other person does not have enough time to follow the project. The examples are numerous and I don't want to single anybody out, because I'm not complaining. In the cracks "scene" I think it's more of a rep that these (highly skilled) programmers are trying to maintain. That or access to software/media FTPs.
NFO files do more than brag or supply installation instructions; they testify that the ware is a bona fide release, guaranteed to work. And this is more than just posturing; a group's reputation is paramount. Each release is painstakingly beta-tested. These are their products now, their labors of love. Nobody wants to find a "bad crack" in his hands after a seven-hour download. Nobody wants to be accused of being "unprofessional." Nobody wants the ignominy of anything like the bad crack for Autodesk's 3D Studio that made the rounds in 1992. For all intents and purposes it ran correctly, all features seemed 100 percent functional. Except that the dedongled program slowly and subtly corrupted any 3-D model built with it. After a few hours of use, a mesh would become a crumpled mass of broken triangles, irrevocably damaged. Cleverly, Autodesk had used the dongle to create a dynamic vector table within the program. Without the table, the program struggled to create mathematically accurate geometry - and eventually failed. Many a dodgy CAD house saw its cost-cutting measures end in ruin. Autodesk support forums and newsgroups were flooded with strangely unregistered users moaning about the "bug in their version of 3D Studio." A rectified "100 percent cracked" version appeared soon after, but the damage was done. The Myth of the Bad Crack was born, and the pirate groups' reputations tarnished.
If "Valve" releases a bad CD crack, so be it. It's not really from Valve so there's no recourse. If that's what they're doing, I don't see a problem with it. Makes the pirate's job that much harder.
A HD capture card where the signal is then transmitted through RF?
At first sounds like someone recording a symphony for an eventual release on SACD but then using their mom's answering machine to record the concert.
I looked into it a bit more. The RF is actually a coaxial input. Which means it's the same exact input you'd get from, say, Comcast or your local cable provider. I don't have time to do a lot of research but isn't this what you're looking for? Is there something I'm missing?
I will try to answer these questions with a minimum of pretentiousness.
That's the average over a time period. Usually I will only buy one or maybe two and then go on a stock-up spree where I get, for example, 3 or 4 Funkadelic albums, or more Keith Jarrett records, or trying to complete some singles from a specific band. I do almost no shopping at music-only chain stores (Tower, Sam Goody) or online (with the exception of import CD singles). I shop almost exclusively at a local record store and are more than happy to buy a CD or two on a whim during these stock-ups simply because it is being featured. Usually the clerks will have a small write-up "Linkin Park meets Winston Marsalis!" that seems to get my attention. Also, a lot of these CDs come from places that are either used-cd or deep-discount warehouses. We're talking average cost of a CD $6 or below. The other day I got Songs in the Key of X, Beautiful Stranger, White Town's Women in Technology, and about 5-6 other CDs for $1 each. I would say safely the price of each CD I buy is, on average, under $10.
The only "chain" music store I ever support is the Virgin Megastore on Times Square because their music selection is ridiculous. Not as expansive as Amoeba in LA, for example, or stocked with obscure titles like Kim's Video in NYC, but it does the trick.
Some other parent asked about which labels I support, and I don't really support specific labels. If I see something interesting, the artist being on Nonesuch or Astralwerks or Def Jux might get me off the fence into the "buy" side but I figure as I'm not supporting ClearChannel-approved entertainers, I'm ok.
As far as the parent, I honestly expanded by knowledge of music and my musical vocabulary about ten-fold once I hit college and downloaded gigabytes upon gigabytes of different music. I was introduced to George Benson, the Greyboy Allstars, MC Paul Barman, the Rolling Stones (i.e. not their classic-rock staples), etc. To this day, I still have friends approach me about good music they've heard, etc. Previously I've recommended sites like PopMatters, Pitchfork, and AMG for a good way to browse around and find out new artists.
Slashdot Mirror
That's already been taking care of with the article on The Economist. That's about the only periodical I can think of where heads of state and CEOs both read (and who both appear in the letters section from time to time).
Google Zeitgeist shows Firefox the #10 search in October in Germany.
Sadly, using that above piece of evidence, Firefox is still not as popular a web browser as (apparently) Christina Aguilera.
Ahhh yes, the power of Visual Basic. I like how professional the software is, it doesn't even say you need the Runtime libraries. Their website is mostly filled with "technical questions" about how to order the software.
Let's hope they address that.
They are happy to get a girl that dances to your mp3s. However, they are not happy to also get a program that tracks their information and generally screws up the system. If that was part of the install process (WE WILL MONITOR ALL WEBSITES YOU VISIT!) then I guarantee a lot less people will be actually happy. The
I was thinking of that as well, and realized it's easier with ebay. You've got a shipping address at least. However, if you bought it at something like a farmer's market or flea market then you're safe. However, they usually won't have counterfeit-strength machinery.
I remember reading an article a long time ago in Esquire, I believe. Basically the author owned up to counterfeiting in the mid-80s using nothing more than a regular color printer and some paper dyed in tea. He said it worked best to make copies of $20s and use them at stores where you bought a single cheap item and the clerk was usually a bored teen. For example, flower shops. He said convenience stores and such usually were wise to the whole game.
He said his friend and him made about $1500 in fake money that summer and spent it all that way. They had a close brush near the end and gave up but said that it was pretty easy.
Like they say, do it big, do it once, disappear. Otherwise you'll get caught.
That's even funnier considering your User ID.
I especially like this picture, which seems to almost be a spy shot froma James Bond movie, or as one of the posters commented, "Looks very Thunderbirds-ish."
Easy. He was using a Z-bot.
"If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system." - Associated Press, 2004
/.ers the chance to discuss Google which we haven't done in 4 days so we're getting a bit antsy. Larry and Sergei, by the way, are cashing out stock to the tune of $1bn each. For those not following the stock, it's up about 65-70% since it's debut.
"Sun has always believed that a computer connected to a network is much more valuable than a disconnected one. The network is a resource with far more information and service capability than any one computer. It can provide access to its information and services to anyone, anyplace, anytime, on any type of device... The network does not replace the desktop; it extends it, makes it easier to use and much more ubiquitous. It's no longer a question of whether the complexity of software and computing will be moved onto the network. It's a question of how fast will it happen." - Pat Sueltz, Sun Microsystems, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal Nov 15, 1999.
To think that five years later we're discussing a search engine as a competitor to Microsoft. I can't think of anything that sounds more 1999 than that. The main difference here is, of course, that unlike Sun, you don't need to buy a Google "server" to run these services. They already exist. If Google acquires other web-based businesses (let's say, a direct Salesforce.com competitor or Salesforce.com itself, it's only a billion dollars), then they can very rapidly muscle into this.
Unfortunately, as someone else mentioned, there isn't much news in this article. I guess it justs gives us
I'm just waiting for Google to release the "true iPod killer" which can index 5 Libraries of Congress in a minute and weighs less than 1/1000th of a Volkswagen.
Summary: "It looks like Ridley Scott, director of Gladiator and Alien is doing it."
... Don't know if Ridley's budged."
Article: "Now the tricky part is, apparently Ridley Scott has seen the materials before. And subsequently passed on doing it.
Tricky on the part of Warner Brothers. They know Halo 2 did well, so they "leak" some baseless information regarding Ridley Scott being attached to the project, hopefully get enough response to trade rags say things like "gaming fans around the globe have already begun wetting themselves with excitement" and then go back to Scott Free and say, "Hey, look, we've got all this support now!"
By the time the movie comes out, it will have 7 writers, star Paul Walker as Master Chief, and be directed by Tony Scott, he of "Top Gun" fame.
Furthermore, it keeps saying "No software to install!" then asks me to download a registry modifier...
0 010 00438o rd"=""
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\America Online\AOL Instant Messenger (TM)\CurrentVersion\Proxy]
"Enabled"=dword:00000
"Host"="proxy.imsmarter.net"
"Port"=dword:00
"Protocol"="SOCKS4"
"Username"=""
"Passw
As much as it's not an executable, I still consider it "software" -- no thanks.
That, simply, is impossible. Good Vodka tastes good because it has very little impurities. The best are some of the "cleanest" vodkas.
Scotch, on the other hand, is all ABOUT the impurities. Witness something like the Laphroaig, which (and this is the producer talking) asks you to drink it and "release the pungent, earthy aroma of blue peat smoke" -- Macallan speaks of an "after taste of heavily toasted oak wood" in their 1971 30-yr old run -- clearly, they are not concerned with impurities. Some even produce "unchilfiltered" Scotch which has actual shards of Scotchy goodness floating around in the bottle.
That being said, some blended Scotch is OK, but not anything like single-malt. As much as I enjoy Scotch, I also like to drink JD and Crown Royal, which I'm sure means someone will take my Scotchy badge away from me.
That might be true. But if you put an overrated Vodka (say, Belvedere or Grey Goose) next to a good but cheap vodka (Svedka, for example) some people won't be able to tell the difference but will gladly pony up another $4 for the "upscale" martini.
Personally, I like Svedka, Three Olives, Tito's, and Stoli Oranj, but I am not a big vodka drinker. I will go through two handles of whisk(e)y before a smaller vodka bottle is even dented.
I completely agree. The whole "super-premium" spirits division is completely ridiculous. Vodka should never be over $20/L especially since Vodka, by definition, should have almost no taste or odor (besides the alcohol itself). You're gonna have flavored vodkas of course (the Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate I like, although there are stranger offerings.
A good Scotch is worth $50+. I don't think people can really distinguish a $50 from a $20 vodka. It's all marketing directed at those that want to seem connoiseurs at glitzy and overrated martini bars. It is the next fad, and it's idiotic.
Again, they were only "recalibrated" because NEP's servers came back online after a 4+ hour downtime. During that downtime, exit poll information changed. Can we apply Occam's Razor to this? What is more likely, that a server went down, or that hundreds of pollsters across the nation cooperated with other people and allowed some shadowy nefarious sysadmin to change all the exit numbers?
This is from the Washington Post.
The data "changed" because the NEP was not collecting data for five hours. Stop trying to believe that 51% of the country is lying when they say they wanted Bush to win.
I'm not a Bush supporter, but this is the same extremist idiotic crap that has turned people off the Democratic Party. Yeah, sure, Rove sat there in a bunker a mile under the Earth's surface and orchestrated the whole damn thing. Spend some time grooming some real candidates.
I see your Pearl and raise you a Tito's Vodka. Micro-batch pot distilled in Texas, this is some of the smoothest damn vodka I have ever had, and it is sometimes cheaper than Absolut. It comes in a regular glass bottle with a sticker that says "Tito's" -- no hand-painted anything, no fuss, just some of the best vodka you have ever tasted.
And it's distilled six times.
Plain and simple, repeat after me: Exit polls showed Bush winning .
The only exit polls which showed Kerry winning were early results from the National Exit Pool, and were only reported on sites like DrudgeReport. The problem was that taking a sliver of the NEP is completely inaccurate. There's a reason major news organizations are very conservative with the data. It's just not 100% accurate. Less so early in the day.
Of course someone will say that late at night Bush's exit poll numbers suddenly jumped up. This too, was caused by a server failure in the NEP which hadn't updated the exit poll information.
Bush did not win by mass conspiracy. There is no cover up.
Either way, the system needs to be changed.
I'd actually be really interested in what it's like for business owners, the self-employed, or contractors. Nothing tires me more than hearing complaints piled on to a company about how everything they do is wrong, and yet the person doesn't think of possibly competing with them by starting their own company. Now, I know there's lots of exceptions, but anyone that laughs at this idea doesn't realize that's how businesses start. You either develop something brand new no one has ever done before* or you find someone that does something poorly and/or expensively and go against them and do it better and/or at a lower price. I'm not recommending to develop a flying car or become your own VoIP provider, but there's probably a thousand things you're good at that people will gladly pay you money for.
Sorry about the rant/tirade.
So how is business looking for business owners? Better? Worse? And I'm sure readers want to know, are you hiring?
(Just interested in the responses, myself).
* Humor: And then get sued into oblivion by a patent-holder wholly unrelated to your idea (some chicken-feed manufacturer, for example).
I'm pretty sure he means a governing council in Internet2. Sort of like the university administrators that report Joe Dorm if he does anything bad enough.
I don't know. A LOT of "Free as in Beer" programs I have followed over the years have taken ages to have any updates, usually because the other person does not have enough time to follow the project. The examples are numerous and I don't want to single anybody out, because I'm not complaining. In the cracks "scene" I think it's more of a rep that these (highly skilled) programmers are trying to maintain. That or access to software/media FTPs.
3D!?! Excellent. I had grown tired of the 2D cardboard characters in Titanic and was hoping he would end that streak.
If "Valve" releases a bad CD crack, so be it. It's not really from Valve so there's no recourse. If that's what they're doing, I don't see a problem with it. Makes the pirate's job that much harder.
A HD capture card where the signal is then transmitted through RF?
At first sounds like someone recording a symphony for an eventual release on SACD but then using their mom's answering machine to record the concert.
I looked into it a bit more. The RF is actually a coaxial input. Which means it's the same exact input you'd get from, say, Comcast or your local cable provider. I don't have time to do a lot of research but isn't this what you're looking for? Is there something I'm missing?
I will try to answer these questions with a minimum of pretentiousness.
That's the average over a time period. Usually I will only buy one or maybe two and then go on a stock-up spree where I get, for example, 3 or 4 Funkadelic albums, or more Keith Jarrett records, or trying to complete some singles from a specific band. I do almost no shopping at music-only chain stores (Tower, Sam Goody) or online (with the exception of import CD singles). I shop almost exclusively at a local record store and are more than happy to buy a CD or two on a whim during these stock-ups simply because it is being featured. Usually the clerks will have a small write-up "Linkin Park meets Winston Marsalis!" that seems to get my attention. Also, a lot of these CDs come from places that are either used-cd or deep-discount warehouses. We're talking average cost of a CD $6 or below. The other day I got Songs in the Key of X, Beautiful Stranger, White Town's Women in Technology, and about 5-6 other CDs for $1 each. I would say safely the price of each CD I buy is, on average, under $10.
The only "chain" music store I ever support is the Virgin Megastore on Times Square because their music selection is ridiculous. Not as expansive as Amoeba in LA, for example, or stocked with obscure titles like Kim's Video in NYC, but it does the trick.
Some other parent asked about which labels I support, and I don't really support specific labels. If I see something interesting, the artist being on Nonesuch or Astralwerks or Def Jux might get me off the fence into the "buy" side but I figure as I'm not supporting ClearChannel-approved entertainers, I'm ok.
As far as the parent, I honestly expanded by knowledge of music and my musical vocabulary about ten-fold once I hit college and downloaded gigabytes upon gigabytes of different music. I was introduced to George Benson, the Greyboy Allstars, MC Paul Barman, the Rolling Stones (i.e. not their classic-rock staples), etc. To this day, I still have friends approach me about good music they've heard, etc. Previously I've recommended sites like PopMatters, Pitchfork, and AMG for a good way to browse around and find out new artists.
Cheers.