It has been my experience that a superior power forcing the weak to give up their rights is merely an indication of that power flagrantly trying to hide the truth of their wrongdoing.
And I do speak from experience: this same fascist stupidity went on when I worked at the New York Academy of Art in 2003. While trying to hide their money laundering and blatant theft of student funds, the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer tried to silence dissenters with bribes and distracted those who couldn't be bought by assigning them to implement ridiculous security measures and burying them in paperwork.
I hate paperwork.
Bah, I've nothing intelligent to add here. I'm going back to watching Star Trek re-runs.
Maybe I'm blind as a bat (and granted I don't speak German) but where did it say that this guy is a priest? Browsing through the website, I couldn't find a mention.
I'm sure this has been done on other sci fi series (maybe even Trek since I gave it up after DS9 started trying to be B5 in its later seasons)... but imagine the confusion and angst of two Siskos... or two Picards or... UGH... two Janeways! Mirror universe, eat your heart out!;-)
...I bought a Sony Hi8 camcorder (sans LCD screen) in 1999. Only a little over a year later, I bought a Canon ZR10 miniDV camcorder. I've since been through 2 ZR10 replacements and a free upgrade to an Optura Pi (because I continued to complain, pester and threaten until I got my way -- yay PMS!). Said Optura Pi has now broken down once (no longer under warranty) and is also exhibiting the same quality issues (mosaic noise, tape eating, etc) that the ZR10's did.
I'm tempted to blame this on the shoddy workmanship in general that seems to have plagued consumer electronics lately, like NewtonsLaw suggested. However, I offer this nugget of truth as well -- the smaller a piece of electronic equipment is, the smaller its interal components (chips and the like) must be. I strongly believe that it is the primary cause of the problems of today's devices. These smaller components can't take the heat that the device generates and then craps out much earlier than a larger, older device.
Just something to think about.. Canon basically told me to take a flying leap when I suggested that heat/miniaturization was an inherent problem with the ZR10 (every single other colleague of mine who purchased a ZR10 had the same problems, ending with a $800 paperweight, like me).
There's a much easier way to twart the vast majority of telemarketers. Many of them use a computerized dialing system -- the system dials each number for the hapless telemarketer, and assuming it doesn't hear an error code sound (i.e. the multi-tone that means a number is out of service or disconnected), it then connects the person's headset to the number. If it doesn't connect, then it hangs up, takes that number off its internal list, and tries the next one. Thus the reason a lot of the time you'll say "hello" ten times before someone responds.
The simple, cheap solution to getting rid of these annoying buggers is to put one of those multi-tone error sounds (I'm sure there's a technical name for it, but I have no idea what it is) at the beginning of your answering machine message. If you think it's annoying or confusing, eh, make a joke out of it. My answering machine message goes like this: "*error tones* You have reached xxx-wxyz. I'm sorry, but we're not interested in any new products or services. So if you're not a telemarketer, please leave a brief message after the tone."
Simple as pie. The tone takes you off the automated lists, and you now have a clever little answering machine message. Voila!
--=Maj
Re:this reminds me of a trick for telemarketers
on
He Writes Back
·
· Score: 1
Also reminds me of the best anti-telemarketer gag I ever saw put into play... You know how in college all those friggin' credit card companies spam you to hell and back? Well our entire dorm was being harassed by Citibank Visa/MC for about a week, and it got to the point where I just left my phone off the hook. Anyone who had to talk to me could use IM.
However, my friend Jeremy was one step ahead. when Citibank called him, his reply was a grunted "Can you call back in five minutes? I was in the middle of masturbating..."
Taco once again proves his prophetic powers... the site's already MIA. Granted, that's just 'cause it's been slashdotted to the Seventh Circle of Hell, but hey...
If I may ask... are you happy with your Pocket PC? The extended warranty runs out on my Palm IIIx in Dec 2002. I know that my luck, the thing will go belly up mere days after the warranty runs out. As I originally thought that I'd be buying a replacement now, I had been looking at Pocket PCs, but found them way too expensive (my price range would be $200-300 and thus I'd have to look at older Pocket PC models) and actually a bit too powerful (believe it or not... can I still call myself a geek after that comment?). I use my palm pilot as a glorified appointment book and also keep my personal writings in it (via Smartdoc). I think the major thing that really appeals to me about the Pocket PCs is that I can run a version of Word on it.
Just the other day, my faithful old Palm IIIx bit the big one -- it spontaneously stopped working. I called Palm this afternoon to arrange a replacement, being reasonably certain that even though I had an extended warranty, I would be almost certainly get the run around from customer service. Boy, was I wrong! Not only did they honor my extended warranty, they've shipped out a IIIx replacement that will supposedly be here on Thursday.
I thought for sure that with all the handheld problems cropping up of late that Palm would follow in the footsteps of other companies, changing their policies as they pleased. But I'm happy to report that that's not the case.
I'll probably get flamed back to medieval times (sans nifty anachronistic weapons) for attempting to defend a slashdot editor, but here goes anyway.
I maintained a website for an actor for over 2 years, and we used to do periodic phone interviews. Fans would submit questions through a form on the website, I would round up the best of the bunch, and then ask the actor. I would then record his answers on a tape recorder connected to the phone (thank you, Radio Shack) and transcribe the interview word-for-word, as everyone's been clamouring for in this instance.
Now here comes the swat to all you complaining bozos... if the Very Busy Actor calls you and actually has time to sit down and do an interview, you cannot and do not say "I'm sorry man, but now's not a good time for me." No matter how nice a celebrity is, or how much he/she/it would love to do an interview, they're always going to be pressed for time (unless they're a former child-star or an ex-football player;-)).
You thoughtless idjuts should thank ChrisD for doing the best he could with the resources at his disposal. Be glad you got what you got!
...that they changed it from "Revenge of the Jedi" because the upcoming Star Trek movie had the working title "The Vengeance of Khan" (Trek 2 - one of the even #'s, yay!)... The Trek people changed it to the ever cheesy "Wrath of Khan" and the Star Wars folks decided at the last minute that "Revenge" wasn't a suitable business for a Jedi to be getting mixed up in.
Or at least that's what I read in one of Shatner's "memoir" books... god only knows why I voluntarily READ that trash, one never knows how much is true and how much is 110% "Billshit"...
It seems to me that everyone's missing another crucial point here... namely that this all happened at a bad time to judge "usage." Why? Because think about who the #1 users of Napster are/were. Stumped? College kids. And where are college kids in the months from May through September? That's right, at least 90% of them are miles from their beloved ethernet connections. Sure, some (like myself) have access to cablemodems or better at home or at a summer job, but the majority of students go back to a dialup connection.
I think it would be wise to WAIT until September/October to make a reliable estimate of usage dropoff.
"Information is the lowest level of thinking, as opposed to higher levels like judgment, interpretation, evaluation, or mastering great ideas," Roszak explained. "Take an idea like 'All men are created equal.' That's not information - it's a moral assertion about human equality.
Funny, I did a paper last semester on that very topic -- an interpretation of Jefferson's various assertions in the Declaration of Independence. That was one of my favorite classes, taught by one of my favorite professors at the University of Delaware, David Allmendinger. That was the second class I chose to take with him, because I had enjoyed his first class so much. Unlike other dull lecture-based multiple choice history classes, once you get up into the 300-400 level here, you are FORCED to begin analyzing and interpreting the material given. The professors do a wonderful job, IMHO, of introducing you to this way of thinking, and the best thing for any student to do is to take at least one workshop-sized class during their college career. I can't tell you how much I learned and how much my way of thinking expanded after taking these classes.
So my contention is this -- it's not the fault of computers that kids are losing their analytical skills. It is the fault of the students themselves for not TAKING these classes that are so infinitely valuable (because *gasp* they have to THINK!) and to a lesser extent it is the fault of professors in that more of them don't teach in this way.
Not really. Microsoft does not get it right on the first try, or the second, or the third. Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up. For instance Win98 runs significantly slower than win95 which did likewise compared to win3.1. Why is it that win9x is not being criticized for being bloated and ugly? Because the hardware is good enough now that the relative level of bloat has dropped. The system can handle the crappy code better thanks to more memory, etc. So we criticise it for being unstable instead...
So its not that WinCE finally got it right, its that palm OS minimalist approach hasn't kept up with the technology where WinCE was too demanding to start with and the tech has grown into it.
What I want to know is, why hasn't a TV "docudrama" been produced of this yet? And don't look at me funny and tell me I that's the most tasteless and horrible thing you've ever heard... worse, equally tactless exploitative television programs have aired in the past. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and we not-so-fondly remembered the half dozen OJ docudramas that were all over the airwaves before the trial had even started.
Just something that piqued my curiosity.
--=Major
Yes, and the info was in previous /. posts...
on
The History of Pong
·
· Score: 1
All the info you seek can be found in the comments on this article:
Yeah I had one of those things too, when they first came out. My boss gave me one to be a guinea pig.. was fine with me. Essentially I got a free beeper for 6 months, heh. it was real nifty but I had plenty of problems with it. you only get about 90% of your beeps, even less when you're in a concrete building (as apposed to wood).. which really sucks. They're pretty unreliable and didn't sell too well - we got a LOT of returns... prolly 75% of ppl who bought them returned them like, within the week.
I wonder what the morons are gonna do about the people they owe airtime;P
Slashdot Mirror
Captain Klaa is currently sought for questioning.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Klaa
It has been my experience that a superior power forcing the weak to give up their rights is merely an indication of that power flagrantly trying to hide the truth of their wrongdoing. And I do speak from experience: this same fascist stupidity went on when I worked at the New York Academy of Art in 2003. While trying to hide their money laundering and blatant theft of student funds, the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer tried to silence dissenters with bribes and distracted those who couldn't be bought by assigning them to implement ridiculous security measures and burying them in paperwork. I hate paperwork. Bah, I've nothing intelligent to add here. I'm going back to watching Star Trek re-runs.
We own a tiny classified ads business, man.
Cool. Ads for what?
That's not the point... it's COMPLEX.
With all this sudden hooplah about duct taping your houses to be airtight, I just wanna pose two questions to the masses:
;-)
1) How are you supposed to get back inside once you've duct taped the house shut
and
2) Who's the lucky family member who gets to do it?
That's not even taking into consideration things like suffocation and duct taping AFTER a bioterrorist strike...
--=Maj
Maybe I'm blind as a bat (and granted I don't speak German) but where did it say that this guy is a priest? Browsing through the website, I couldn't find a mention.
I'm sure this has been done on other sci fi series (maybe even Trek since I gave it up after DS9 started trying to be B5 in its later seasons)... but imagine the confusion and angst of two Siskos... or two Picards or... UGH... two Janeways! Mirror universe, eat your heart out! ;-)
--=Maj
...I bought a Sony Hi8 camcorder (sans LCD screen) in 1999. Only a little over a year later, I bought a Canon ZR10 miniDV camcorder. I've since been through 2 ZR10 replacements and a free upgrade to an Optura Pi (because I continued to complain, pester and threaten until I got my way -- yay PMS!). Said Optura Pi has now broken down once (no longer under warranty) and is also exhibiting the same quality issues (mosaic noise, tape eating, etc) that the ZR10's did.
I'm tempted to blame this on the shoddy workmanship in general that seems to have plagued consumer electronics lately, like NewtonsLaw suggested. However, I offer this nugget of truth as well -- the smaller a piece of electronic equipment is, the smaller its interal components (chips and the like) must be. I strongly believe that it is the primary cause of the problems of today's devices. These smaller components can't take the heat that the device generates and then craps out much earlier than a larger, older device.
Just something to think about.. Canon basically told me to take a flying leap when I suggested that heat/miniaturization was an inherent problem with the ZR10 (every single other colleague of mine who purchased a ZR10 had the same problems, ending with a $800 paperweight, like me).
--=Maj
There's a much easier way to twart the vast majority of telemarketers. Many of them use a computerized dialing system -- the system dials each number for the hapless telemarketer, and assuming it doesn't hear an error code sound (i.e. the multi-tone that means a number is out of service or disconnected), it then connects the person's headset to the number. If it doesn't connect, then it hangs up, takes that number off its internal list, and tries the next one. Thus the reason a lot of the time you'll say "hello" ten times before someone responds.
The simple, cheap solution to getting rid of these annoying buggers is to put one of those multi-tone error sounds (I'm sure there's a technical name for it, but I have no idea what it is) at the beginning of your answering machine message. If you think it's annoying or confusing, eh, make a joke out of it. My answering machine message goes like this: "*error tones* You have reached xxx-wxyz. I'm sorry, but we're not interested in any new products or services. So if you're not a telemarketer, please leave a brief message after the tone."
Simple as pie. The tone takes you off the automated lists, and you now have a clever little answering machine message. Voila!
--=Maj
Also reminds me of the best anti-telemarketer gag I ever saw put into play... You know how in college all those friggin' credit card companies spam you to hell and back? Well our entire dorm was being harassed by Citibank Visa/MC for about a week, and it got to the point where I just left my phone off the hook. Anyone who had to talk to me could use IM.
However, my friend Jeremy was one step ahead. when Citibank called him, his reply was a grunted "Can you call back in five minutes? I was in the middle of masturbating..."
They never called him again. Lucky bastard.
--=Major
Yeah this'll last. Right.
Taco once again proves his prophetic powers... the site's already MIA. Granted, that's just 'cause it's been slashdotted to the Seventh Circle of Hell, but hey...
--=Major
If I may ask... are you happy with your Pocket PC? The extended warranty runs out on my Palm IIIx in Dec 2002. I know that my luck, the thing will go belly up mere days after the warranty runs out. As I originally thought that I'd be buying a replacement now, I had been looking at Pocket PCs, but found them way too expensive (my price range would be $200-300 and thus I'd have to look at older Pocket PC models) and actually a bit too powerful (believe it or not... can I still call myself a geek after that comment?). I use my palm pilot as a glorified appointment book and also keep my personal writings in it (via Smartdoc). I think the major thing that really appeals to me about the Pocket PCs is that I can run a version of Word on it.
--=Major
Just the other day, my faithful old Palm IIIx bit the big one -- it spontaneously stopped working. I called Palm this afternoon to arrange a replacement, being reasonably certain that even though I had an extended warranty, I would be almost certainly get the run around from customer service. Boy, was I wrong! Not only did they honor my extended warranty, they've shipped out a IIIx replacement that will supposedly be here on Thursday.
I thought for sure that with all the handheld problems cropping up of late that Palm would follow in the footsteps of other companies, changing their policies as they pleased. But I'm happy to report that that's not the case.
--=Major
Even number? (i.e. not an odd arabic numeral)
or
Even number? (i.e. yet more flat and unfeeling)
I'll probably get flamed back to medieval times (sans nifty anachronistic weapons) for attempting to defend a slashdot editor, but here goes anyway.
;-)).
I maintained a website for an actor for over 2 years, and we used to do periodic phone interviews. Fans would submit questions through a form on the website, I would round up the best of the bunch, and then ask the actor. I would then record his answers on a tape recorder connected to the phone (thank you, Radio Shack) and transcribe the interview word-for-word, as everyone's been clamouring for in this instance.
Now here comes the swat to all you complaining bozos... if the Very Busy Actor calls you and actually has time to sit down and do an interview, you cannot and do not say "I'm sorry man, but now's not a good time for me." No matter how nice a celebrity is, or how much he/she/it would love to do an interview, they're always going to be pressed for time (unless they're a former child-star or an ex-football player
You thoughtless idjuts should thank ChrisD for doing the best he could with the resources at his disposal. Be glad you got what you got!
Thus endeth the rant.
--=Major
I can see it now...
"Bye mom, I'm off to sch---*THOOOOM!*"
"Oh, the humanity... poor little Timmy!"
--=Maj
...that they changed it from "Revenge of the Jedi" because the upcoming Star Trek movie had the working title "The Vengeance of Khan" (Trek 2 - one of the even #'s, yay!)... The Trek people changed it to the ever cheesy "Wrath of Khan" and the Star Wars folks decided at the last minute that "Revenge" wasn't a suitable business for a Jedi to be getting mixed up in.
Or at least that's what I read in one of Shatner's "memoir" books... god only knows why I voluntarily READ that trash, one never knows how much is true and how much is 110% "Billshit"...
--=Major
It seems to me that everyone's missing another crucial point here... namely that this all happened at a bad time to judge "usage." Why? Because think about who the #1 users of Napster are/were. Stumped? College kids. And where are college kids in the months from May through September? That's right, at least 90% of them are miles from their beloved ethernet connections. Sure, some (like myself) have access to cablemodems or better at home or at a summer job, but the majority of students go back to a dialup connection.
I think it would be wise to WAIT until September/October to make a reliable estimate of usage dropoff.
--=Major
"Information is the lowest level of thinking, as opposed to higher levels like judgment, interpretation, evaluation, or mastering great ideas," Roszak explained. "Take an idea like 'All men are created equal.' That's not information - it's a moral assertion about human equality.
Funny, I did a paper last semester on that very topic -- an interpretation of Jefferson's various assertions in the Declaration of Independence. That was one of my favorite classes, taught by one of my favorite professors at the University of Delaware, David Allmendinger. That was the second class I chose to take with him, because I had enjoyed his first class so much. Unlike other dull lecture-based multiple choice history classes, once you get up into the 300-400 level here, you are FORCED to begin analyzing and interpreting the material given. The professors do a wonderful job, IMHO, of introducing you to this way of thinking, and the best thing for any student to do is to take at least one workshop-sized class during their college career. I can't tell you how much I learned and how much my way of thinking expanded after taking these classes.
So my contention is this -- it's not the fault of computers that kids are losing their analytical skills. It is the fault of the students themselves for not TAKING these classes that are so infinitely valuable (because *gasp* they have to THINK!) and to a lesser extent it is the fault of professors in that more of them don't teach in this way.
--=Major
Not really. Microsoft does not get it right on the first try, or the second, or the third. Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up. For instance Win98 runs significantly slower than win95 which did likewise compared to win3.1. Why is it that win9x is not being criticized for being bloated and ugly? Because the hardware is good enough now that the relative level of bloat has dropped. The system can handle the crappy code better thanks to more memory, etc. So we criticise it for being unstable instead...
So its not that WinCE finally got it right, its that palm OS minimalist approach hasn't kept up with the technology where WinCE was too demanding to start with and the tech has grown into it.
What I want to know is, why hasn't a TV "docudrama" been produced of this yet? And don't look at me funny and tell me I that's the most tasteless and horrible thing you've ever heard... worse, equally tactless exploitative television programs have aired in the past. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and we not-so-fondly remembered the half dozen OJ docudramas that were all over the airwaves before the trial had even started.
Just something that piqued my curiosity.
--=Major
All the info you seek can be found in the comments on this article:
m l
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/01/1424204.sht
--=Maj
Yeah I had one of those things too, when they first came out. My boss gave me one to be a guinea pig.. was fine with me. Essentially I got a free beeper for 6 months, heh. it was real nifty but I had plenty of problems with it. you only get about 90% of your beeps, even less when you're in a concrete building (as apposed to wood).. which really sucks. They're pretty unreliable and didn't sell too well - we got a LOT of returns... prolly 75% of ppl who bought them returned them like, within the week.
;P
I wonder what the morons are gonna do about the people they owe airtime
--Maj