Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 1
Just to be pedantic, no one is actually required to accept currency to settle a private debt. Not that it changes the thrust of your argument a whole lot, but private entities are not forbidden from rejecting US dollars (or pennies).
But stores love to imply that the switch is to HDTV in order to sell you a more expensive product. If pressed, they'll usually come clean with the real information, but unless you already have an idea of what's actually happening, they won't just volunteer that information.
Check it out, though. Radiohead isn't on a record label any more. So RIAA doesn't represent them for this album. Sure, somebody owns the rights to the first batch of their music, but if this takes hold and actually makes money for them, they won't go back to it at all. As it is, they could probably start their own label and destroy sales records anyway, considering that they're one of the most popular (and good) bands that I know.
I'm also not quite getting the basis of the lawsuit. Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?
No, but if by law they were the only grocery store in town, you could probably sue them for forcing you to buy bacon, cherry limeade, and clorox bleach if you wanted to buy eggs.
But you'll find that in very nearly 100% of the cases, it does in fact, lie somewhere in the middle. Yes, mathematically it could lie at one of the endpoints, but given that all sides are biased for themselves in some regard, it's not particularly likely.
Do you buy electronics as a means of storing your wealth? Personally, if I want something to put my money in that will stay valuable, I put it in mutual funds, or invest in some awesome company that I think is going to do well. Or I put it in the stupid 5% checking account if I don't feel like making any effort to grow it more than that. I certainly don't go out and buy a Nintendo DS as an investment strategy or anything.
If Tivo were bought by DirecTV, do you think that anyone who doesn't subscribe to DirecTV would be able to get one? Look at what DirecTV tried to do with Major League Baseball. They signed a deal to be the exclusive carrier of Extra Innings (which is the package with all the out of town games on the extra channels), and didn't want to let go of it until there was a giant uproar, John Effing Kerry got involved, and the cable companies started trying to throw their weight around.
The reason that Tivo is better than they think.
on
The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 2, Informative
Tivo is not beholden to cable companies. Cable companies are required by law to give you a cable card to use their service if you want it. Tivo has a cable card reader in their device to get all that video data. There's nothing legal that the cable company can do about it.
Program data? Tive has a warehouse full of monkeys that contact the networks directly and enter in all the data, or they contract with someone who does, or they have an agreement with the networks to pass xml files back and forth. This is not an issue.
Cable company DVR boxes? These things are pieces of shit. They consistently disable and fail to provide features that people want, and who's to say that cable companies won't just delete your programs remotely if they feel like it, by which I mean, if Fox nicely asks them to delete your episodes of 24 right before the DVD comes out or something.
Sure, Tivo is about to license their software interface to Comcast for their DVR boxes, but it's going to take a serious about face on the part of cable companies if their DVRs are ever going to be what people actually want and not some weirdo solution that tries to please content providers, cable company stiffs, and lastly consumers, and fails to please any of them.
Re:Wow, I didn't know that Ruby could do that!
on
Practical Ruby Gems
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· Score: 1
You're basically saying insurance companies should settle all frivolous lawsuits, because fighting them would be too expensive. Ignoring the fact that by doing so you're encouraging escalation of this bad behavior, which will eventually make settling more expensive than a few legal battles... Though, at that point, even if you do the right thing, you've gone too far, and it will cost even more to reverse the trend.
Not necessarily the case. Insurance companies settling all frivolous lawsuits isn't going to happen because they pay out from their own money. Sure, they may raise premiums in the future to make up the loss, but it's still on the insurance company to come up with the money. An ISP or website complying with a takedown is an externality because the results of complying are felt by the third party and not by the ISP. There may be some backlash from the third party who may feel that they have lost the service that they are paying for, but that's another matter, I think.
Well, at first guess, I'd say that Apple's 2% would proportionally come out of everyone else's. So Symbian would lose 71% of 2%, Windows Mobile will lose like 2% or whatever of Apple's 2%, etc. Microsoft's actual market is business people who need to run little pocket office apps and do shit tons of email. There's no compelling reason to state that Apple's stealing exclusively from Microsoft's market share.
It's going to be a regular game with expansion content available for download on Xbox Live (presumably in exchange for money). It's not going to be a Live Arcade game in its entirety.
Do you think that "most" means the same thing as "all"? Just because you have one anecdotal data point doesn't mean that most people aren't actually able to brush off insults as adults.
Well, if I already have the contents of all the files that I don't want you to have on your desktop, then I can take the MD5 of all of them and see if you do have bestiality porn in Washington State. Blizzard now has the ability to see what programs you have running alongside Warcraft because they have copies of all (a bunch) of these cheating programs and will check the hash of your executable against the ones that they have copies of to see if you're running them, if I'm to assume that what you've said above is correct.
Keep in mind that no single thing is likely to make people get pissed off en masse to put a stop to it, but every time you let a company go snooping on your system, and every time you let a company get away with this kind of hypocrisy in court, it makes it a little harder to put a stop to the snowball. So, yes, Blizzard getting a list of programs running on your PC is not the end of the world, but what if in the future Warden deletes the program without you knowing? Or what if the game decides that you're cheating and wrecks Windows, or sets off some WGA thing that accidentally invalidates your Windows license?
Or what if the government starts taxing WoW gold, and you get dragged into court for restraint of trade because you're making free gold by doing nothing when you should be a good little zombie moving and clicking on basilisks by the river? Sure, it probably won't happen, but it definitely won't happen if Blizzard isn't allowed to check or send that information back.
The name is actually ironic, just not in the way the GP meant it. With a name like that, you'd think they were about to kick Apple's ass with that thing, but it sure does suck, dunnit?
It won't be sad until some weird bastard uses the world's supply of grits in an attempt to make someone care. And that will suck, I mean, I like grits. I'd be sad if I couldn't have grits with breakfast anymore.
Well, he said IT, not programming. I don't know if all the stupid bubble companies had good programmers or not, but I do know that it's hard as hell to find a good IT guy who can handle the hell out of your office environment. Especially a development house that needs a prety diverse set of systems and tools to be quickly installed and configured.
My company, for example, ties together ASP.NET, SQL Server, CRM, Sharepoint Portal Server and Windows Sharepoint Services, Office on the server (don't ask), and a PDF generator with our software. Developers pretty much constantly need clean, fresh virtual servers nut just to do development on, but to test all manner of client configurations and install packages and scripts. And it's really tough to find someone who is versed enough not just with those pieces of software, but also with whatever scripting and automation tools needed to throw it all around with speed and grace. Don't even get me started on managing the corporate infrastructure, the web and mail server, the FTP server, internal networked file storage, the user accounts, etc. Sure, there are people who call themselves IT professionals, but by and large, the kind of people that can get the job done well are not as prevalent as I'd like them to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to be pedantic, no one is actually required to accept currency to settle a private debt. Not that it changes the thrust of your argument a whole lot, but private entities are not forbidden from rejecting US dollars (or pennies).
Actually, TFA mentions that the cost of shipping empty containers is very close to the cost of shipping laden ones.
Before you go lumping an entire ideology in with one guy's stupid opinion piece, let me ask you this: Who the fuck is Bill Sardi?
Motion Picture Association of America. I hope that gets caught before press time.
But stores love to imply that the switch is to HDTV in order to sell you a more expensive product. If pressed, they'll usually come clean with the real information, but unless you already have an idea of what's actually happening, they won't just volunteer that information.
That's happy tree dust. Don't breathe this.
Check it out, though. Radiohead isn't on a record label any more. So RIAA doesn't represent them for this album. Sure, somebody owns the rights to the first batch of their music, but if this takes hold and actually makes money for them, they won't go back to it at all. As it is, they could probably start their own label and destroy sales records anyway, considering that they're one of the most popular (and good) bands that I know.
No, but if by law they were the only grocery store in town, you could probably sue them for forcing you to buy bacon, cherry limeade, and clorox bleach if you wanted to buy eggs.
But you'll find that in very nearly 100% of the cases, it does in fact, lie somewhere in the middle. Yes, mathematically it could lie at one of the endpoints, but given that all sides are biased for themselves in some regard, it's not particularly likely.
Whatever. Worked for whoever lived on Rupert. Hell, they're probably the ones responsible for buying all those DVD box sets of crappy TV shows.
Numerous? Can you give us a smattering of that list?
Do you buy electronics as a means of storing your wealth? Personally, if I want something to put my money in that will stay valuable, I put it in mutual funds, or invest in some awesome company that I think is going to do well. Or I put it in the stupid 5% checking account if I don't feel like making any effort to grow it more than that. I certainly don't go out and buy a Nintendo DS as an investment strategy or anything.
If Tivo were bought by DirecTV, do you think that anyone who doesn't subscribe to DirecTV would be able to get one? Look at what DirecTV tried to do with Major League Baseball. They signed a deal to be the exclusive carrier of Extra Innings (which is the package with all the out of town games on the extra channels), and didn't want to let go of it until there was a giant uproar, John Effing Kerry got involved, and the cable companies started trying to throw their weight around.
Tivo is not beholden to cable companies. Cable companies are required by law to give you a cable card to use their service if you want it. Tivo has a cable card reader in their device to get all that video data. There's nothing legal that the cable company can do about it.
Program data? Tive has a warehouse full of monkeys that contact the networks directly and enter in all the data, or they contract with someone who does, or they have an agreement with the networks to pass xml files back and forth. This is not an issue.
Cable company DVR boxes? These things are pieces of shit. They consistently disable and fail to provide features that people want, and who's to say that cable companies won't just delete your programs remotely if they feel like it, by which I mean, if Fox nicely asks them to delete your episodes of 24 right before the DVD comes out or something.
Sure, Tivo is about to license their software interface to Comcast for their DVR boxes, but it's going to take a serious about face on the part of cable companies if their DVRs are ever going to be what people actually want and not some weirdo solution that tries to please content providers, cable company stiffs, and lastly consumers, and fails to please any of them.
2 points awarded out of 10. Poor effort.
python != ruby
Not necessarily the case. Insurance companies settling all frivolous lawsuits isn't going to happen because they pay out from their own money. Sure, they may raise premiums in the future to make up the loss, but it's still on the insurance company to come up with the money. An ISP or website complying with a takedown is an externality because the results of complying are felt by the third party and not by the ISP. There may be some backlash from the third party who may feel that they have lost the service that they are paying for, but that's another matter, I think.
Yeah, today"s excuse is... flips to May 12th... cosmic rays. Yeah, that's it.
Well, at first guess, I'd say that Apple's 2% would proportionally come out of everyone else's. So Symbian would lose 71% of 2%, Windows Mobile will lose like 2% or whatever of Apple's 2%, etc. Microsoft's actual market is business people who need to run little pocket office apps and do shit tons of email. There's no compelling reason to state that Apple's stealing exclusively from Microsoft's market share.
It's going to be a regular game with expansion content available for download on Xbox Live (presumably in exchange for money). It's not going to be a Live Arcade game in its entirety.
Do you think that "most" means the same thing as "all"? Just because you have one anecdotal data point doesn't mean that most people aren't actually able to brush off insults as adults.
Well, if I already have the contents of all the files that I don't want you to have on your desktop, then I can take the MD5 of all of them and see if you do have bestiality porn in Washington State. Blizzard now has the ability to see what programs you have running alongside Warcraft because they have copies of all (a bunch) of these cheating programs and will check the hash of your executable against the ones that they have copies of to see if you're running them, if I'm to assume that what you've said above is correct.
Keep in mind that no single thing is likely to make people get pissed off en masse to put a stop to it, but every time you let a company go snooping on your system, and every time you let a company get away with this kind of hypocrisy in court, it makes it a little harder to put a stop to the snowball. So, yes, Blizzard getting a list of programs running on your PC is not the end of the world, but what if in the future Warden deletes the program without you knowing? Or what if the game decides that you're cheating and wrecks Windows, or sets off some WGA thing that accidentally invalidates your Windows license?
Or what if the government starts taxing WoW gold, and you get dragged into court for restraint of trade because you're making free gold by doing nothing when you should be a good little zombie moving and clicking on basilisks by the river? Sure, it probably won't happen, but it definitely won't happen if Blizzard isn't allowed to check or send that information back.
The name is actually ironic, just not in the way the GP meant it. With a name like that, you'd think they were about to kick Apple's ass with that thing, but it sure does suck, dunnit?
It won't be sad until some weird bastard uses the world's supply of grits in an attempt to make someone care. And that will suck, I mean, I like grits. I'd be sad if I couldn't have grits with breakfast anymore.
Well, he said IT, not programming. I don't know if all the stupid bubble companies had good programmers or not, but I do know that it's hard as hell to find a good IT guy who can handle the hell out of your office environment. Especially a development house that needs a prety diverse set of systems and tools to be quickly installed and configured.
My company, for example, ties together ASP.NET, SQL Server, CRM, Sharepoint Portal Server and Windows Sharepoint Services, Office on the server (don't ask), and a PDF generator with our software. Developers pretty much constantly need clean, fresh virtual servers nut just to do development on, but to test all manner of client configurations and install packages and scripts. And it's really tough to find someone who is versed enough not just with those pieces of software, but also with whatever scripting and automation tools needed to throw it all around with speed and grace. Don't even get me started on managing the corporate infrastructure, the web and mail server, the FTP server, internal networked file storage, the user accounts, etc. Sure, there are people who call themselves IT professionals, but by and large, the kind of people that can get the job done well are not as prevalent as I'd like them to be.
2,000,000 hours = 228 years and 4 months or so. Who the hell cares if you make it to 5,000,000?