The Washington Post has really gone to the dogs. They actually used The Onion as a source for this article:
Breathed has lamented the state of modern newspaper cartooning, which has had to deal with papers fitting more and more comics into a smaller and smaller space.
"Pity the poor modern comic page," Breathed said in a 2001 interview with the humor newspaper the Onion. "Frames the size of thumbnails. . . . It's just a page of inky blur that only a 10-year-old's eyes could focus upon."
Oh well, at least they did not source the article from slashdot.:P
Aaaah, excuse me, I didn't realize having to quit school and spend "an indeterminate amount of time" in a psychiatric ward was a "Good Thing."
No one said he was in a psych ward. They have said he is undergoing therapy. This is never a bad thing, and I think the parents' overreaction to all of this is the biggest trauma of all. He also has not quit school. Honestly, this whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the parents.
So the kid is being made fun of at school? This may be a News flash but he probably was being made fun of before. Not only that, but millions of kids get made fun of in school. Even the popular kids get made fun of; this is part of the rite of passage. Very few become psychologically damaged as a result, and those are just not getting it.
He doesn't want a movie career, so the fame part doesn't enter into it at all.
How do you know what he wants? Clearly no one has asked him. His parents' complete disregard for his feelings and what he wants weighs in here as well (and is incidentally probably the more damaging aspect of his life). Besides, he has already shown that he likes acting like a jedi for the camera, so who's to say he won't like replacing jarjar?
> If this kid had played along with the joke instead of turtling, not only would he be fine mentally, he'd be more popular.
As the AC said, "Did you GO to high school?" I don't caer if it's the coolest fucking thing in the world, he's gonna get made fun of because he's smarter than the other kids (Hell, I still couldn't do any video editing). He was laughing at himself when he made the video, but when others publish it and try to steal his money & equipment, then there is something wrong. I agree lawsuits aren't the answer, I think revenge would be appropriate. Kill them. If I were that kid and people like that did that shit to me? I'd be in prison the rest of my life because they'd be dead. Very. Fucking. Dead.
Which makes you out as even more maladjusted than this kid's parents. Jesus, you are going to kill someone because they published a video you made in which you made an ass of yourself out on the 'net? Even though it made you the most famous kid in the world and gave you a shot at a movie career?
The fact of the matter is that this kid is not a "cool kid" and apparently neither are you. But being able to laugh at yourself, having a good attitude about something like this, is the right, and cool, thing to do. Yes, this was probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to this kid, and I feel his pain. But it is probably the best thing to happen to him because it is a good lesson for life and stands a chance of turning it around for the better. I agree with the original poster that if this kid laughs it off and does not make a bigger ass of himself he will seem cooler. Maybe then he will actually learn something applicable to life in High School.:P
1. Invade the house of some shifty-looking arab down the block because you "suspect he has a really, really big gun somewhere". 2. Claim "George W. Bush inspired me to do it". 3. Do some serious time in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. 4. ??? 5. Profit!
These days I would not be surprised if they put the arab in jail instead.
MOOT not mute. Is this the latest american fuck up with the english language?
No, it is a pretty old one. Like many others (such as "could of,' et al) it stems from a lack of vocabulary as well as functional illiteracy. Americans seem to read almost nothing anymore, and get their language from TV or speech. This leads to mistakes like the above. If the poster had learned the phrase by reading it, he/she would not have made the mistake.
Even better, how about you become the "close friend" of the bank robber and stick to him like glue until he gets nervous and disarms the bomb. What's he going to do, blow you up?
Well, he could always shoot you in the head, or otherwise kill you; then he could call and complain that his pizza has not shown up yet and can they please send another driver...;)
"Visual Basic is built into Windows and even wen you trurn it off installing Office applications like Outlook or Word turns it back on. Then, for good measure, it might turn itself on again later after you turn it off again"
Thank you, that is a much more informative response than modding me -1 Troll. It could be argued, I suppose, that being uninformed about Windows internals makes me a troll, but if that's the case then so be it:-).
I don't know.. knowing about windows infernals is not a good thing. It is kind of like reading a Forbidden Tome from call of Cthulu.. the more you know about windows the more insane you will become. Personally, this is why I have been diving into Unix. But then I did learn vi as well; oh well, at least it is not emacs!:)
As for mr moderator, they don't knwo what they are doing, and will be caught in m2 I am sure.
What Microsoft Ad? Are you saying that SCO is a sub of Microsoft? If you are, the aren't you supposed to say M$ or Macroshaft or something like that?
Recent shenanighans aside, the picture appears in the advert for SCO Authentication for Active Directory, which would have had to involve MS developers since they do not allow reverse engineering of it and do not allow the specs to be released except under the "I promise and swear I will never work on any non microsoft software" license.
.. is that if you get caught in such a situation, don't go through with the bank robbery.
Rather, stop at the nearest police officer you see; and if you don't see a police officer before you see a bank or a government building with security, go into the building and ask them to call the bomb disposal squad for you. Rip off your shirt to prove it, and say "I'm going out to the parking lot. This isn't a bank robbery, but someone wants it to be; and if I don't get help quick, I'm going to die."
The problem with that scenario is that it probably would mean you and the police die, since the real bank robber would be watching you and ready to detonate the device remotely if you deviated from his plan. Alternately, it would be possible for mr evil terrorist bank robber to rig a device with a gps such that if you deviated from a preset course mr bomb blows up and kills you.
Slow down there, you just insulted several million americans. Did you know that in some states in the US like Florida and Ohio, federal minimum wage doesn't apply? They are paid just over $2 per hour. If they weren't tipped, they would walk home with almost nothing.
Not only that, but they are taxed on their tips, and their tips seem to be taxed more than normal wages. I never figured out why, but my witholding for overtime and tips was always far more than witholding for normal wages. I guess the taxman likes to punish people who work harder. Add to this the fact that since it is always assumed tipped employees lie about their tips, many restaurants simply add an assumed gratuity and report this number to the IRS as your tips. This means if someone does not tip you you get doubly screwed, since not only are you out a tip, but you are getting dinged on your $2 an hour as well.
At at least one waiter job I had, close to 100% of my $2 an hour got witheld for taxes on my "tips," so not getting tips at all meant not getting paid at all.
People who don't tip are classless, bereft of culture, and completely uncivilized. I would actually place them below terrorists and child molestors in the scale of human worth, since in their case they have no excuse unless you count that their parents did not teach them any better. Basically, if you go to a restaurant, order a pizza, or take a taxi without tipping you are saying that person should do their job for free. Don't you realize taxi drivers pay something on the order of $100 a night just for the honour of driving a taxi and if you don't tip them they may not go home with anything?
Oh and the above is still way off. Standard etiquette requires a gratuity of 15-20%. I usually give 20% rounded up when I tip people. I also do not accept the argument of "well I tip when I can afford to." If you can't afford the tip, you can't really afford the meal, and are asking your waiter to pay for it for you since you are so much poorer than them. Schmuck.
And a "critical" flaw in Visual Basic? Since when did anybody use Visual Basic for anything critical anyway? I thought that was for newbies and wannabes.
Unless Microsoft is really telling us that Windows is written in Basic. That would just be too funny:-)...
The critical flaw is that Visual Basic is built into Windows and even wen you trurn it off installing Office applications like Outlook or Word turns it back on. Then, for good measure, it might turn itself on again later after you turn it off again. Visual basic being built into these apps and into windows is the major reason these worms and viruses work. So, yes, Visual Basic is used for wannabes.. people who write windows viruses. VB was designed to make writing such viruses easier and windows was designed to make it easier to spread them.
Re:GSM has been Toast for years
on
Cracking GSM
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· Score: 1
In the US, GSM is still a security improvement, weak as it is, because the government bullied the digital cell phone system developers into using even weaker and more broken algorithms (back when they could pretend they were worried about Commie Spies rather than trying to facilitate illegal wiretapping.)
No worries, now they can pretend they are worried about terrorists flying planes into buildings when they are really just trying to facilitate illegal wiretapping.;)
The average artist (that you've) never heard of) fails, and declares bankruptcy. That's about $1.5M lost by the label, using Love's numbers. Saying the label doesn't take a risk on a band is like saying a bank doesn't take a risk on a loan. And the odds of a band becoming successful, even after being signed, aren't that great.
Again, you haven't been listening, and did not pay attention in the article. It is illegal for an artist to declare bankruptcy on debt to a record label due to legislation they were able to get passed which, IMHO violates artists' rights. So, no, the label does not lose anything. Besides, again, they do not sign anyone unless they know they are going to sell cds which they get all but $0.20 of the proceeds if the artist does not owe them money, and all of it if they do. Trust me, the label gets their money.
They most certainly can declare bankruptcy. The record labels are just like any other creditor. You can file bankruptcy. Where are you getting your information?
Artists are not allowed to declare bankruptcy on debts to record labels. There are a lot of debts you cannot escape through bankruptcy, such as student loans, IRS debt, and debt to record labels.
If they wind up in arrears to the record companies when they are "wildly successful" it is because of poor money management.
No, it is due to predatory contracts that place the artist in debt to the record company for "production costs" from the beginning and then give the record company the lion's share of the proceeds from CDs and sometimes even from concerts. I am thinking of one artist in particular who received several awards for her debut album, which made millions of dollars, and had a successful tour, but since she only received a few cents per cd and that was to go immediately to toward this debt, she ended up receiving nothing and instead being in debt to the record label.
The fact of the matter is that the record companies do make the majority of the profits, and take the majority of the risk. But the fact still remains, the artists make more money than they should in any event. Musicians, actors, and athletes are getting paid for doing what they love, and should be grateful they don't have to go get a real job like the rest of us.
The fact of the matter is that the record labels risk nothing. Firstly, they only sign acts they think they can make money on. secondly, even if the band completely fails they will at least break even because every record company contract requires the artist to pay all the costs of promotion and production of albums and then some. And again they get the lion's share of the cd price and very likely some of the concert ticket revenue, none of which counts toward the artist's debt to the record company. It's just cake.
The artist is the one taking the risk because they are taking on a mountain of debt and trying to pay it off with pennies. The record company will make money no matter what they do.
I think $12.00 is too much for a CD, but I won't buy the argument that we shouldn't buy CD's because the poor pampered artists are getting ripped off.
It sounds to me like you are a little bitter toward artists and plagued with a misconception of how they live. First off, not every artist is Madonna or even Eminem. Most just starve to death , kill themselves, or fade into obscurity. Of the very few who are "lucky" enough to sign a record deal most just get screwed and will die poor. It is very very hard to make any kind of money in the system the record companies have constructed, unless you are the record company. It also sounds to me like you either did not read or did not grok the article by Courtney Love you were complaining about. I don't know about you, but I would imagine she knows more about the record industry than the two of us put together.
I'm not shedding any tears for artists. They signed the contracts of their own free will. What Love fails to consider is how often a label advances a band $1 and presses cds for $500K, and doesn't get any of that money back because the band flopped.
She does not fail to consider this at all. The label absolutely gets their money no matter what happens, because the artist is liable for the production costs and must pay it back no matter what. They also cannot declare bankruptcy. So if they end up getting their Mcdonald's wages or any future album sales garnished, taht's all well and good with the label, because they *will* collect.
You also fail to understand that even when bands are wildly successful, they often end up in arrears to the record companies precisely because of the structure of tehse agreements. NO the label takes 0 chance on anyone, period.
English is open source and we make it up as we go along.
True, but the dictionary is the accepted authority on official spelling. Yes, someone did die and make Webster King. Actually before the founding of the colonies the Queen of England commissioned the creation of a dictionary because the French had created one and England did not want to be behind. That wasn't Webster, Webster being an American who made an American dictionary, but Webster became recognized as an authority on language in America.
The whole point is that you can't have an official standardized spelling without creating an official recognized standard. The standard was created when the dictionaries were commissioned.
Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.
Sadly, Lesbian GNU/Linux appears to be a hoax, like mslinux and Jesux. It is too bad. I think the porn-get is something that could be worked on. There are some apps in sourceforge to help get porn, but really this is something that has not been properly refined. I think it would be neat to work on some Free Software that grabs Free Porn from the net and maybe even displays it or launches the requisite apps. It shoudl be cross-platform, too.
Just think, if Joe Sixpack downloads this easy porn getter software from C|net for his XP box, and sees it is Free Software with a GPL License and works on Linux, he gets introduced to these concepts and maybe when he is done looking at porn he will check them out, too. Unless he just takes a nap.;)
Other than the fact that is has a neato-keeno wizard to do some configuration chores, the article does little to explain how Mandrake is different or why it is a better choice.
They said it comes with a cute Gnome and KDE Theme that are almost the same except the colours are off. BUy it now for only $199!:)
I agree, this article told us absolutely nothing about Mandrake 9.1 or why it is any better. Personally, I think Mandrake has a long way to go. They are supposed to be the Linux flagship for the desktop, but they have not gotten any closer or come up with anything since Mandrake 6 or so. Also there is the troubling reliance on RPM which needs to come to an end. e need a better system for installing apps on Linux that is superior to any other in ease-of use to get anywhere.
For me, the source-based distributions' install processes are the easiest and best ever, but the problem there is you need broadband, horsepower (in terms of large memory, disk and cpu dedicated just to installing software), and time to deal with this. Plus, if the source files become unavailable, you are hosed. (this last is a *very* common problem. Many/most projects only keep the source for the very latest point-release on their ftp sites, and even mirrors tend to follow suit.)
So probably for Joe Sixpack we will have to have binary packaging systems, which brings us back to the old problem again. And sadly we have not yet got there as far as dealing with packaging systems properly in Linux.
I think it was a joke, haven't you ever had an assignment for a certain number of pages and increased your fontsize, linespacing, margins etc to make the text you wrote spread out over the required number of pages? I know that it would still work using your method, but I think that's not really the point.
This is, of course, why linespacing has always been specified by exasperated professors, and, of late, font size/font as well.
Using the wrong vowel isn't a logical idiocy like asking where the "Any Key" is. It's a simple failure of having learned every possible word by rote.
No, it is the logical idiocy of failing to RTFM. Standardized consistent spellings coincided with the rise of dictionaries, which are the authority on spelling and usage of words. Every child should have learnt in grammar school (they did in *my* day, by God!) that if they were not absolutely certain of the proper spelling or usage of a word they should consult a dictionary. If you do not, you have failed to RTFM.
Dictionaries are there precisely because humans cannot necessarily be expected to remember by rote every word which must be spelt, particularly in English or French which mutually created insidious spellings on purpose and then infected one another with them. People using computers attached to the internet have no excuse, since almost every application, even on Linux, has at least the possibility of using a spelling checker automatically, and there exist a plethora of reference resources on the web including Merriam-Webster and Google which can be used for free (gratis).
Slashdot has no spelling checker but you are attached to the internet and there is a preview button for a reason. If you misspell things you are just being lazy. Now, if you go over my posts you will see typos because sometimes I am being lazy myself. Personally I blame computers for getting people used to automatic spell checks instead of making people proofread their work, and ephemeral communications like email and chat in which typos are acceptable in the interest of expedience, thus training people to be lazier typists. Perhaps we should go back to the old days when people got rapped on the knuckles with a ruler for making writing mistakes..;)
A lot of companies don't employ developers, particularly the smaller ones who are most vulnerable to an OSS project dying.
Even if you do, the cost of entry is simply too high a price for many. I've looked at some of the source code for Mozilla and OpenOffice, and it was line noise to me. (I'm a professional programmer with several years of experience using all of the relevant languages and technologies in other contexts.) The frameworks involved are simply too large to grok without background material.
In real companies working on large (MLOC) projects, one of the biggest problems is inadequate documentation when the project first gets going. As the early developers move to other projects or leave, the knowledge of "why" is lost, and all that remains is the "how". As knowledge of the "how" also fades over time, it is impossible to replace without the "why". Eventually, the project becomes usable but effectively unmaintainable, because even if you bring in the smartest programmers in the world, they can't find their way around millions of lines of code without background knowledge.
This is why almost all of the development on each of the major projects is now done by a very small group of people, many of them sponsored by major organisations to work on it full-time. The "mass contribution" idea simply doesn't scale in practice, on current evidence.
Sure, there are a very few people out there with enough knowledge to work effectively on a large OSS project without months getting up to speed, but for any given project, it's a vanishingly small number. Unless you can find one, if you want to make anything more than a trivial change, you're all out of luck. This is why the "you're safe, anyone can change it" claims are misleading.
You are right in that it is misleading to think that it is easy to make changes. It is also true that many companies do not currently hire developers. However, there are several factors at work here.
In the case you posit here, where the OSS project just dies, you are right about the mess left behind for anyone who wants to use it. After all, it is the same for any dead project or one which one company buys from another. But ultimately, we are talking about a customer using an OSS product, who is able to get things done with that product and wants to kep using it. In such a case, they may only need to make small changes. That is still an investment which should not be taken on lightly, but it is better than any alternative.
As for not being able to afford to buy developers, it is interesting that companies have millions of dollars to spend on closed-source software without support, but not hundreds of thousands to pay for humans to support and maintain OSS for them. That does not make a lot of sense to me unless the OSS just simply does not cut the mustard for your project and you need it now.
Still, I wonder why more companies do not divert some of the licensing fee fundage to teams of coders to make the feature changes that they need to make that OSS work for them. After all, most OSS/Free Software is developed 100% on a shoestring. Their budget approaches zero. Every developer hired by any company to work on that project and make it work for that company is a big bonus for both the company and the project.
I completely agree with your criticisms about logistics as well. But we have to weigh the alternative here. When you use a custom-built, closed-source application written for netware 3.1 to run your business, and time goes by and you find you need this app to work on Netware 6 or god forbid Win2k or something, what do you do? If MSOffice 97 works fine for you but all of a sudden MS makes Office 97 not work and you can't open and work with documents, or, once again you get on that upgrade treadmill ofr OS and hardware and can't get Office 97 to work for you, what choices do you have?
If you use Free Software you have at leats a chance
So... you install Windows in VMWare, install DRMOffice, open document, and screen cap the VMWare session. Or use Terminal Services, rdesktop, vnc, insert_favourite_dmca_circumvention_tool_here...
You expect the office assistant to do that? First off s/he would have to be technically competent enough to do it (in which case they are misplaced), and secondly they would have to have permissions to perform such modificatios to their PC. Not altogether likely.
As for the joker who said "you'd have to lock down/ cripple the entire OS to stop this" well that is the frigging point! In the future, DRM will ensure that the video cable from the computer to the monitor is DRM scrambled and the OS is riddled through with DRM protections. Microsoft is absolutely working toward making sure sally Secretary does not send out those sensitive Halloween documents. This is also why companies will buy it.
I thought the guy who suggested "people who don't like it can use OpenOffice" was the biggest joker of all. The whole point is that the person with the data you need to see for your business (or to see what the hell ABC Corp is up to with your wetlands/jobs/401k) will be using MSOffice so that you will not be able to read them no matter what you use.
In short, no this will not stop a determined, technically savvy attacker from stealing corporate secrets by any stretch of the imagination. BUt it will stop whistleblowers and prevent any Microsoft Competition. That is the importnat thing here.
Yes, dumbass, and this isn't Palladium. Unless you see demons lurking in every conceivable manifestation of client-server computing, there's no problem here.
Well, in the case of unix, daemons are generally lurking in most manifstations of client-server computing, and it is a good thing to kill as many of them as you can and ensure they are not resurrected by init.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The Washington Post has really gone to the dogs. They actually used The Onion as a source for this article:
Breathed has lamented the state of modern newspaper cartooning, which has had to deal with papers fitting more and more comics into a smaller and smaller space.
"Pity the poor modern comic page," Breathed said in a 2001 interview with the humor newspaper the Onion. "Frames the size of thumbnails. . . . It's just a page of inky blur that only a 10-year-old's eyes could focus upon."
Oh well, at least they did not source the article from slashdot. :P
Aaaah, excuse me, I didn't realize having to quit school and spend "an indeterminate amount of time" in a psychiatric ward was a "Good Thing."
No one said he was in a psych ward. They have said he is undergoing therapy. This is never a bad thing, and I think the parents' overreaction to all of this is the biggest trauma of all. He also has not quit school. Honestly, this whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the parents.
So the kid is being made fun of at school? This may be a News flash but he probably was being made fun of before. Not only that, but millions of kids get made fun of in school. Even the popular kids get made fun of; this is part of the rite of passage. Very few become psychologically damaged as a result, and those are just not getting it.
He doesn't want a movie career, so the fame part doesn't enter into it at all.
How do you know what he wants? Clearly no one has asked him. His parents' complete disregard for his feelings and what he wants weighs in here as well (and is incidentally probably the more damaging aspect of his life). Besides, he has already shown that he likes acting like a jedi for the camera, so who's to say he won't like replacing jarjar?
> If this kid had played along with the joke instead of turtling, not only would he be fine mentally, he'd be more popular.
As the AC said, "Did you GO to high school?" I don't caer if it's the coolest fucking thing in the world, he's gonna get made fun of because he's smarter than the other kids (Hell, I still couldn't do any video editing). He was laughing at himself when he made the video, but when others publish it and try to steal his money & equipment, then there is something wrong. I agree lawsuits aren't the answer, I think revenge would be appropriate. Kill them. If I were that kid and people like that did that shit to me? I'd be in prison the rest of my life because they'd be dead.
Very. Fucking. Dead.
Which makes you out as even more maladjusted than this kid's parents. Jesus, you are going to kill someone because they published a video you made in which you made an ass of yourself out on the 'net? Even though it made you the most famous kid in the world and gave you a shot at a movie career?
The fact of the matter is that this kid is not a "cool kid" and apparently neither are you. But being able to laugh at yourself, having a good attitude about something like this, is the right, and cool, thing to do. Yes, this was probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to this kid, and I feel his pain. But it is probably the best thing to happen to him because it is a good lesson for life and stands a chance of turning it around for the better. I agree with the original poster that if this kid laughs it off and does not make a bigger ass of himself he will seem cooler. Maybe then he will actually learn something applicable to life in High School. :P
Ever try cutting a sleeping bag with a chainsaw?
Make sure it's someone else's chainsaw.
More importantly, make sure to get out of the sleeping bag first. For extra points, use someone else's chainsaw on their sleeping bag with them in it.
1. Invade the house of some shifty-looking arab down the block because you "suspect he has a really, really big gun somewhere".
2. Claim "George W. Bush inspired me to do it".
3. Do some serious time in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
4. ???
5. Profit!
These days I would not be surprised if they put the arab in jail instead.
MOOT not mute. Is this the latest american fuck up with the english language?
No, it is a pretty old one. Like many others (such as "could of,' et al) it stems from a lack of vocabulary as well as functional illiteracy. Americans seem to read almost nothing anymore, and get their language from TV or speech. This leads to mistakes like the above. If the poster had learned the phrase by reading it, he/she would not have made the mistake.
Even better, how about you become the "close friend" of the bank robber and stick to him like glue until he gets nervous and disarms the bomb. What's he going to do, blow you up?
Well, he could always shoot you in the head, or otherwise kill you; then he could call and complain that his pizza has not shown up yet and can they please send another driver... ;)
"Visual Basic is built into Windows and even wen you trurn it off installing Office applications like Outlook or Word turns it back on. Then, for good measure, it might turn itself on again later after you turn it off again"
Thank you, that is a much more informative response than modding me -1 Troll. It could be argued, I suppose, that being uninformed about Windows internals makes me a troll, but if that's the case then so be it :-).
I don't know.. knowing about windows infernals is not a good thing. It is kind of like reading a Forbidden Tome from call of Cthulu.. the more you know about windows the more insane you will become. Personally, this is why I have been diving into Unix. But then I did learn vi as well; oh well, at least it is not emacs! :)
As for mr moderator, they don't knwo what they are doing, and will be caught in m2 I am sure.
What Microsoft Ad? Are you saying that SCO is a sub of Microsoft? If you are, the aren't you supposed to say M$ or Macroshaft or something like that?
Recent shenanighans aside, the picture appears in the advert for SCO Authentication for Active Directory, which would have had to involve MS developers since they do not allow reverse engineering of it and do not allow the specs to be released except under the "I promise and swear I will never work on any non microsoft software" license.
Rather, stop at the nearest police officer you see; and if you don't see a police officer before you see a bank or a government building with security, go into the building and ask them to call the bomb disposal squad for you. Rip off your shirt to prove it, and say "I'm going out to the parking lot. This isn't a bank robbery, but someone wants it to be; and if I don't get help quick, I'm going to die."
The problem with that scenario is that it probably would mean you and the police die, since the real bank robber would be watching you and ready to detonate the device remotely if you deviated from his plan. Alternately, it would be possible for mr evil terrorist bank robber to rig a device with a gps such that if you deviated from a preset course mr bomb blows up and kills you.
Slow down there, you just insulted several million americans. Did you know that in some states in the US like Florida and Ohio, federal minimum wage doesn't apply? They are paid just over $2 per hour. If they weren't tipped, they would walk home with almost nothing.
Not only that, but they are taxed on their tips, and their tips seem to be taxed more than normal wages. I never figured out why, but my witholding for overtime and tips was always far more than witholding for normal wages. I guess the taxman likes to punish people who work harder. Add to this the fact that since it is always assumed tipped employees lie about their tips, many restaurants simply add an assumed gratuity and report this number to the IRS as your tips. This means if someone does not tip you you get doubly screwed, since not only are you out a tip, but you are getting dinged on your $2 an hour as well.
At at least one waiter job I had, close to 100% of my $2 an hour got witheld for taxes on my "tips," so not getting tips at all meant not getting paid at all.
People who don't tip are classless, bereft of culture, and completely uncivilized. I would actually place them below terrorists and child molestors in the scale of human worth, since in their case they have no excuse unless you count that their parents did not teach them any better. Basically, if you go to a restaurant, order a pizza, or take a taxi without tipping you are saying that person should do their job for free. Don't you realize taxi drivers pay something on the order of $100 a night just for the honour of driving a taxi and if you don't tip them they may not go home with anything?
Oh and the above is still way off. Standard etiquette requires a gratuity of 15-20%. I usually give 20% rounded up when I tip people. I also do not accept the argument of "well I tip when I can afford to." If you can't afford the tip, you can't really afford the meal, and are asking your waiter to pay for it for you since you are so much poorer than them. Schmuck.
And a "critical" flaw in Visual Basic? Since when did anybody use Visual Basic for anything critical anyway? I thought that was for newbies and wannabes.
Unless Microsoft is really telling us that Windows is written in Basic. That would just be too funny :-)...
The critical flaw is that Visual Basic is built into Windows and even wen you trurn it off installing Office applications like Outlook or Word turns it back on. Then, for good measure, it might turn itself on again later after you turn it off again. Visual basic being built into these apps and into windows is the major reason these worms and viruses work. So, yes, Visual Basic is used for wannabes.. people who write windows viruses. VB was designed to make writing such viruses easier and windows was designed to make it easier to spread them.
In the US, GSM is still a security improvement, weak as it is, because the government bullied the digital cell phone system developers into using even weaker and more broken algorithms (back when they could pretend they were worried about Commie Spies rather than trying to facilitate illegal wiretapping.)
No worries, now they can pretend they are worried about terrorists flying planes into buildings when they are really just trying to facilitate illegal wiretapping. ;)
The average artist (that you've) never heard of) fails, and declares bankruptcy. That's about $1.5M lost by the label, using Love's numbers. Saying the label doesn't take a risk on a band is like saying a bank doesn't take a risk on a loan. And the odds of a band becoming successful, even after being signed, aren't that great.
Again, you haven't been listening, and did not pay attention in the article. It is illegal for an artist to declare bankruptcy on debt to a record label due to legislation they were able to get passed which, IMHO violates artists' rights. So, no, the label does not lose anything. Besides, again, they do not sign anyone unless they know they are going to sell cds which they get all but $0.20 of the proceeds if the artist does not owe them money, and all of it if they do. Trust me, the label gets their money.
They most certainly can declare bankruptcy. The record labels are just like any other creditor. You can file bankruptcy. Where are you getting your information?
Artists are not allowed to declare bankruptcy on debts to record labels. There are a lot of debts you cannot escape through bankruptcy, such as student loans, IRS debt, and debt to record labels.
If they wind up in arrears to the record companies when they are "wildly successful" it is because of poor money management.
No, it is due to predatory contracts that place the artist in debt to the record company for "production costs" from the beginning and then give the record company the lion's share of the proceeds from CDs and sometimes even from concerts. I am thinking of one artist in particular who received several awards for her debut album, which made millions of dollars, and had a successful tour, but since she only received a few cents per cd and that was to go immediately to toward this debt, she ended up receiving nothing and instead being in debt to the record label.
The fact of the matter is that the record companies do make the majority of the profits, and take the majority of the risk. But the fact still remains, the artists make more money than they should in any event. Musicians, actors, and athletes are getting paid for doing what they love, and should be grateful they don't have to go get a real job like the rest of us.
The fact of the matter is that the record labels risk nothing. Firstly, they only sign acts they think they can make money on. secondly, even if the band completely fails they will at least break even because every record company contract requires the artist to pay all the costs of promotion and production of albums and then some. And again they get the lion's share of the cd price and very likely some of the concert ticket revenue, none of which counts toward the artist's debt to the record company. It's just cake.
The artist is the one taking the risk because they are taking on a mountain of debt and trying to pay it off with pennies. The record company will make money no matter what they do.
I think $12.00 is too much for a CD, but I won't buy the argument that we shouldn't buy CD's because the poor pampered artists are getting ripped off.
It sounds to me like you are a little bitter toward artists and plagued with a misconception of how they live. First off, not every artist is Madonna or even Eminem. Most just starve to death , kill themselves, or fade into obscurity. Of the very few who are "lucky" enough to sign a record deal most just get screwed and will die poor. It is very very hard to make any kind of money in the system the record companies have constructed, unless you are the record company. It also sounds to me like you either did not read or did not grok the article by Courtney Love you were complaining about. I don't know about you, but I would imagine she knows more about the record industry than the two of us put together.
I'm not shedding any tears for artists. They signed the contracts of their own free will. What Love fails to consider is how often a label advances a band $1 and presses cds for $500K, and doesn't get any of that money back because the band flopped.
She does not fail to consider this at all. The label absolutely gets their money no matter what happens, because the artist is liable for the production costs and must pay it back no matter what. They also cannot declare bankruptcy. So if they end up getting their Mcdonald's wages or any future album sales garnished, taht's all well and good with the label, because they *will* collect.
You also fail to understand that even when bands are wildly successful, they often end up in arrears to the record companies precisely because of the structure of tehse agreements. NO the label takes 0 chance on anyone, period.
English is open source and we make it up as we go along.
True, but the dictionary is the accepted authority on official spelling. Yes, someone did die and make Webster King. Actually before the founding of the colonies the Queen of England commissioned the creation of a dictionary because the French had created one and England did not want to be behind. That wasn't Webster, Webster being an American who made an American dictionary, but Webster became recognized as an authority on language in America.
The whole point is that you can't have an official standardized spelling without creating an official recognized standard. The standard was created when the dictionaries were commissioned.
Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.
Sadly, Lesbian GNU/Linux appears to be a hoax, like mslinux and Jesux. It is too bad. I think the porn-get is something that could be worked on. There are some apps in sourceforge to help get porn, but really this is something that has not been properly refined. I think it would be neat to work on some Free Software that grabs Free Porn from the net and maybe even displays it or launches the requisite apps. It shoudl be cross-platform, too.
Just think, if Joe Sixpack downloads this easy porn getter software from C|net for his XP box, and sees it is Free Software with a GPL License and works on Linux, he gets introduced to these concepts and maybe when he is done looking at porn he will check them out, too. Unless he just takes a nap. ;)
Other than the fact that is has a neato-keeno wizard to do some configuration chores, the article does little to explain how Mandrake is different or why it is a better choice.
They said it comes with a cute Gnome and KDE Theme that are almost the same except the colours are off. BUy it now for only $199! :)
I agree, this article told us absolutely nothing about Mandrake 9.1 or why it is any better. Personally, I think Mandrake has a long way to go. They are supposed to be the Linux flagship for the desktop, but they have not gotten any closer or come up with anything since Mandrake 6 or so. Also there is the troubling reliance on RPM which needs to come to an end. e need a better system for installing apps on Linux that is superior to any other in ease-of use to get anywhere.
For me, the source-based distributions' install processes are the easiest and best ever, but the problem there is you need broadband, horsepower (in terms of large memory, disk and cpu dedicated just to installing software), and time to deal with this. Plus, if the source files become unavailable, you are hosed. (this last is a *very* common problem. Many/most projects only keep the source for the very latest point-release on their ftp sites, and even mirrors tend to follow suit.)
So probably for Joe Sixpack we will have to have binary packaging systems, which brings us back to the old problem again. And sadly we have not yet got there as far as dealing with packaging systems properly in Linux.
I think it was a joke, haven't you ever had an assignment for a certain number of pages and increased your fontsize, linespacing, margins etc to make the text you wrote spread out over the required number of pages? I know that it would still work using your method, but I think that's not really the point.
This is, of course, why linespacing has always been specified by exasperated professors, and, of late, font size/font as well.
Word is even more dominant on Macs than Windows. What are you using -- Simpletext? BBedit?
Probably AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, which is cheaper and better than Office and maintained by Apple.
Using the wrong vowel isn't a logical idiocy like asking where the "Any Key" is. It's a simple failure of having learned every possible word by rote.
No, it is the logical idiocy of failing to RTFM. Standardized consistent spellings coincided with the rise of dictionaries, which are the authority on spelling and usage of words. Every child should have learnt in grammar school (they did in *my* day, by God!) that if they were not absolutely certain of the proper spelling or usage of a word they should consult a dictionary. If you do not, you have failed to RTFM.
Dictionaries are there precisely because humans cannot necessarily be expected to remember by rote every word which must be spelt, particularly in English or French which mutually created insidious spellings on purpose and then infected one another with them. People using computers attached to the internet have no excuse, since almost every application, even on Linux, has at least the possibility of using a spelling checker automatically, and there exist a plethora of reference resources on the web including Merriam-Webster and Google which can be used for free (gratis).
Slashdot has no spelling checker but you are attached to the internet and there is a preview button for a reason. If you misspell things you are just being lazy. Now, if you go over my posts you will see typos because sometimes I am being lazy myself. Personally I blame computers for getting people used to automatic spell checks instead of making people proofread their work, and ephemeral communications like email and chat in which typos are acceptable in the interest of expedience, thus training people to be lazier typists. Perhaps we should go back to the old days when people got rapped on the knuckles with a ruler for making writing mistakes.. ;)
A lot of companies don't employ developers, particularly the smaller ones who are most vulnerable to an OSS project dying.
Even if you do, the cost of entry is simply too high a price for many. I've looked at some of the source code for Mozilla and OpenOffice, and it was line noise to me. (I'm a professional programmer with several years of experience using all of the relevant languages and technologies in other contexts.) The frameworks involved are simply too large to grok without background material.
In real companies working on large (MLOC) projects, one of the biggest problems is inadequate documentation when the project first gets going. As the early developers move to other projects or leave, the knowledge of "why" is lost, and all that remains is the "how". As knowledge of the "how" also fades over time, it is impossible to replace without the "why". Eventually, the project becomes usable but effectively unmaintainable, because even if you bring in the smartest programmers in the world, they can't find their way around millions of lines of code without background knowledge.
This is why almost all of the development on each of the major projects is now done by a very small group of people, many of them sponsored by major organisations to work on it full-time. The "mass contribution" idea simply doesn't scale in practice, on current evidence.
Sure, there are a very few people out there with enough knowledge to work effectively on a large OSS project without months getting up to speed, but for any given project, it's a vanishingly small number. Unless you can find one, if you want to make anything more than a trivial change, you're all out of luck. This is why the "you're safe, anyone can change it" claims are misleading.
You are right in that it is misleading to think that it is easy to make changes. It is also true that many companies do not currently hire developers. However, there are several factors at work here.
In the case you posit here, where the OSS project just dies, you are right about the mess left behind for anyone who wants to use it. After all, it is the same for any dead project or one which one company buys from another. But ultimately, we are talking about a customer using an OSS product, who is able to get things done with that product and wants to kep using it. In such a case, they may only need to make small changes. That is still an investment which should not be taken on lightly, but it is better than any alternative.
As for not being able to afford to buy developers, it is interesting that companies have millions of dollars to spend on closed-source software without support, but not hundreds of thousands to pay for humans to support and maintain OSS for them. That does not make a lot of sense to me unless the OSS just simply does not cut the mustard for your project and you need it now.
Still, I wonder why more companies do not divert some of the licensing fee fundage to teams of coders to make the feature changes that they need to make that OSS work for them. After all, most OSS/Free Software is developed 100% on a shoestring. Their budget approaches zero. Every developer hired by any company to work on that project and make it work for that company is a big bonus for both the company and the project.
I completely agree with your criticisms about logistics as well. But we have to weigh the alternative here. When you use a custom-built, closed-source application written for netware 3.1 to run your business, and time goes by and you find you need this app to work on Netware 6 or god forbid Win2k or something, what do you do? If MSOffice 97 works fine for you but all of a sudden MS makes Office 97 not work and you can't open and work with documents, or, once again you get on that upgrade treadmill ofr OS and hardware and can't get Office 97 to work for you, what choices do you have?
If you use Free Software you have at leats a chance
So... you install Windows in VMWare, install DRMOffice, open document, and screen cap the VMWare session. Or use Terminal Services, rdesktop, vnc, insert_favourite_dmca_circumvention_tool_here...
You expect the office assistant to do that? First off s/he would have to be technically competent enough to do it (in which case they are misplaced), and secondly they would have to have permissions to perform such modificatios to their PC. Not altogether likely.
As for the joker who said "you'd have to lock down/ cripple the entire OS to stop this" well that is the frigging point! In the future, DRM will ensure that the video cable from the computer to the monitor is DRM scrambled and the OS is riddled through with DRM protections. Microsoft is absolutely working toward making sure sally Secretary does not send out those sensitive Halloween documents. This is also why companies will buy it.
I thought the guy who suggested "people who don't like it can use OpenOffice" was the biggest joker of all. The whole point is that the person with the data you need to see for your business (or to see what the hell ABC Corp is up to with your wetlands/jobs/401k) will be using MSOffice so that you will not be able to read them no matter what you use.
In short, no this will not stop a determined, technically savvy attacker from stealing corporate secrets by any stretch of the imagination. BUt it will stop whistleblowers and prevent any Microsoft Competition. That is the importnat thing here.
Yes, dumbass, and this isn't Palladium. Unless you see demons lurking in every conceivable manifestation of client-server computing, there's no problem here.
Well, in the case of unix, daemons are generally lurking in most manifstations of client-server computing, and it is a good thing to kill as many of them as you can and ensure they are not resurrected by init. :)