>Because, Santa, receiving AOL CDs doesn't cost you a penny, whereas receiving spam EMail does cost you.
I would argue that point. Many are pointing out that spam costs the end user because it inflates the IPS's operating costs which are then passed on to the end user. Get rid of spam, reduce the ISP's costs, reduce the end-user's monthly bill, right?
Assuming that is the case, doesn't the same thing sort-of apply to the USPS? Did they not just raise rates again? Isn't it possible or even likely that some of the cost of building up USPS infrastructure to be able to handle all that junk mail ends up being passed on to consumers in the form of postage rate increases?
Ok, maybe not that much. The junk mailers obviously have to pay postage, but I'm wondering if that bulk rate has gone up as much (proportionally) as 1st-class postage has over the years. Just a thought.
While you have a valid point about product placement, the original poster's point about choosing an OS based on movies or tv shows still stands, IMO. Yep, Gateway has a strong brand identity and placing it on tv shows and movies probably works as well as Coca-Cola or McDonald's, but...
This is kind of a different animal, isn't it? If there were redhat logos or some other readily identifiable image to create an advert 'impression', then yeah, I would probably agree. But this is a glimpse of a desktop that probably only people who are already familiar with will recognize. I don't think it's the same thing as having Kramer carry around a bucket of KFC.
>You're fooling yourself if you think that mass consumer awarness is what killed Divx
I didn't say anything of the sort, did I? I just said they tried and failed. You are correct that the reason it failed is because CC was alone in trying to promote the idea. That's my point. CC failed by trying to draw consumers voluntarily with the allure of convenience (hey, why ever take a movie back to blockbuster!) when it would have been much much more effective if everyone in the industry had jumped on the bandwagon and there was simply no other choice.
There wasn't a compelling business case for the others so they stood by and watched it fail. I'm just wondering aloud if this issue with digital tv copy protection might be a prelude to PPV of tv in general.
I think they're more worried about people copying pay-per-view movies.
Interesting. Especially when everything becomes pay-per-view. So Circuit City failed with a voluntary PPV system for DVD movies, but someone has figured out that if you make it cumpulsory and put the controls into the sets themselves, you can shove it down the consumer's throats and get away with it, eh?
Nope, you don't hardly get any less arbitrary than that, do ya?;-) A unit of measure based on 1/4 of the circumference of the Earth isn't going to be any less arbitrary to ET than the length of some Royal English Dude's, erm... foot.
Now, if you came up with a measure that was based on the wavelength of light emitted by Hydrogen fusion or some other such pan-galactic standard, then you could argue non-arbitrary!:-)
No, but I had the mental image of a bunch of students doing this as a prank. A couple of art students working on this for a few months and then someone borrowing their dad's 1/2 ton and a bunch of guys driving out to the park in the middle of the night to plant this thing.
I guess it is not the end of the world if it was the work of an internet cafe or something, just kind of takes the gleam out of my eye as I chuckle about someone just going out and pulling this _cool_ prank vs some commercial enterprise doing this for publicity (if that is in fact their motivation)
hmmm.... I didn't get the impression they were looking for an average/representative person to ask questions. They did say 'ordinary' not 'average' - by this I took it to mean someone out of the crowd, instead of well-known figure as they usually pick for these top-10 question/interview thingies.
Actually, thought it was 'ordinary', not 'average'... still, I would not describe him as ordinary by any standard.
And yes, I agree that the slashdot 'community' is very diverse. Clinton is probably what most of us would point to as an outstanding example of the kind of person that/. attracts. Not average or ordinary (or even representative) by any standard I can think of, but certainly a well-regarded, intelligent and technically capable young individual that I want to think is out there reading and contributing.
Sometimes I tend to think of the average or ordinary/.'er as goatsex, hotgrits, penis bird signal 11, osm types -- it is nice to read something that gives me some hope for the current crop of 'teenage computer geeks' that are capable of more than posting garbage and actually contribute to our slice of society.
GENRE - PLATFORM DEFINITION - A hybrid of adventure and puzzle elements. A character explores a free roaming environment while seeking out hidden items or solving conspicuous objectives.
Still, quite a bit different than what I had always assumed was meant by 'platform'.
I've never heard of that either. I always thought of consoles to be platforms (ps2, sega, nintendo, etc), not the type of game (side scroller as in mario, crash bandicoot, sonic, etc), but doing a quick google search comes up with this page at about.com which seems to list 'platform' games as the original poster describes.
I guess I learn something everyday I read/.
>you shouldn't give away the version of the OS then you make it easier for script kiddies...
Someone pointed out that all of the machines in the domain appear to be running default-install 6.1 release with all the default services enabled.
This has to scream 'crack me!' If he doesn't bother turning off telnet or at least customizing the welcome message, there's little doubt he has kept up with security patches.
>having our measure of time bound to when the sun rises is silly
Sure, no problem - I'm sure after a few years we'll all get used to sending our kids out to school 4 hours after the sun sets so that the huge percentage of people who must coordinate communication across continents will have an easy time of it!
>what happens in a hundred or so years when people aren't even living on earth and they don't HAVE a sunrise?
I don't know. I'm sure we'll think of something. Maybe like having lights programmed to go on and off at something approximating a healthy sleep-wake cycle?
(I'm not usually this much of a sarcastic SOB, that just make me laugh. Nice Troll)
think the difference is interesting science... interesting to more than a handful of people who find mathematics remotely entertaining.
This isn't a slam - I find the stuff interesting. My point is that there is probably a much broader appeal in the science of SETI.
The chances of locating some signal from space originated by intelligent life is, of course, very very small. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of people think it is non-zero. The potential impact to human society of discovering ET intelligent life is huge. That's what draws people, I would think. (plus, it is a pretty screensaver).
It is a lot easier for people to understand the potential impact of SETI than that of discovering Golomb rulers.
Why? The word is spelled correctly. It is just the wrong word. And no, the grammar checker doesn't catch that, I just tried it. (yep, I have a Win 2K box here with office 2000 - I don't like MS software, but I like my job well enough to put up with it).
Wow, I stand corrected. Thank you for enlightening me.
So they said individuals are not guaranteed by the US constitution that states must recognize their votes cast in a presidential election. The state has the power to name the slate of electors, it is up to them to empower individual citizens though state law to give them a say in the process?
I guess not being a constitutional scholar, that still doesn't read to me as "people have no constitutional right to vote in America".
No, I didn't read the rulings. Reminds me of what I saw on the Daily Show last night where a couple of reporters got copies of the court's opinions late the other night and were trying to skim through the 65 pages while live on the air to pick out the important statements. Funny as hell seeing the one guy come running up to the other and then the two of them muttering to themselves as they read the legalese.
(exceedingly OT, but not posting AC because already above karma kap - mod away!)
>Well, as the supreme court of the United States just ruled, people have no constitutional right
to vote in America
Sheesh. I'm not happy about the outcome of the election or the mangled process that transpired after 11/7 - but I would hardly say the SC ruled that 'mericans have no constitutional right to vote.
What happened is they brought a merciful end to a hopeless process of challenge, appeal, suits and spins. Was the law upheld? Was the will of the 'majority' thwarted? Does it even matter which dickhead 'A' or dickhead 'B' becomes president?
I don't have the answers to these questions. All I know is that what the US Supreme Court did didn't make any less sense than what the Fla SC was doing. Now it is over and we have a president with the IQ equivalent to a used wad of masking tape. I seriously doubt that recounting ballots up until 1/19/01 would have substantially changed that outcome.
Seen this before many a time. I remember an unreal mod that was started which was going to be based on southpark, or maybe the simpsons. One C&D letter later, and the project team folded their tent and replaced their webpage with a copy of the letter and a short note saying goodbye - their project had been "foxed".
They weren't a commercial company, just a bunch of fans who thought they could make something cool. The IP owners found out, sent a lawyer-letter and left the team with little choice but to throw up their hands and walk away. Afterall, a bunch of volunteers aren't going to hire a lwayer so they can keep their non-profit project going.
I remembered another one that was in the works to do a wolfenstein mod and id sent a letter. They weren't dicks about it, asked nicely for them to shut it down. From what I remember, id claimed they had to defend their copyright in each and every instance they learned of, regardless of how non-threatening it was or they risked losing a legal leg to stand on if some commercial entity were to start selling shrink-wrap games based on id's IP.
What I wondered at the time was, can id license the wolf-3d stuff to this mod team for, say $1 and thus get around this supposed legal pitfal and still support the community?
The cynic in me says the 'whiners' care more about the stat than any actual interruption in the machine's service.
Personally, a reboot isn't that big of a deal for something like a kernel upgrade. Beats the hell out of having to reboot for an IP change or the like in versions of NT prior to 5/2000.
Slashdot Mirror
I would argue that point. Many are pointing out that spam costs the end user because it inflates the IPS's operating costs which are then passed on to the end user. Get rid of spam, reduce the ISP's costs, reduce the end-user's monthly bill, right?
Assuming that is the case, doesn't the same thing sort-of apply to the USPS? Did they not just raise rates again? Isn't it possible or even likely that some of the cost of building up USPS infrastructure to be able to handle all that junk mail ends up being passed on to consumers in the form of postage rate increases?
Ok, maybe not that much. The junk mailers obviously have to pay postage, but I'm wondering if that bulk rate has gone up as much (proportionally) as 1st-class postage has over the years. Just a thought.
>Lie-nucks 6.2?
:-p
Shit dude, don't you know Linux 7.0 (tiny type: RedHat, huge type LINUX 7.0) came out a couple months ago!?
*Disclaimer - I have nothing against RedHat, I just wish their packaging was less over-the-top.
Anyone know what 'skullbocks' are? I'm assuming I'm just not hip/tech enough to know what this means. ;-)
While you have a valid point about product placement, the original poster's point about choosing an OS based on movies or tv shows still stands, IMO. Yep, Gateway has a strong brand identity and placing it on tv shows and movies probably works as well as Coca-Cola or McDonald's, but...
This is kind of a different animal, isn't it? If there were redhat logos or some other readily identifiable image to create an advert 'impression', then yeah, I would probably agree. But this is a glimpse of a desktop that probably only people who are already familiar with will recognize. I don't think it's the same thing as having Kramer carry around a bucket of KFC.
>You're fooling yourself if you think that mass consumer awarness is what killed Divx
I didn't say anything of the sort, did I? I just said they tried and failed. You are correct that the reason it failed is because CC was alone in trying to promote the idea. That's my point. CC failed by trying to draw consumers voluntarily with the allure of convenience (hey, why ever take a movie back to blockbuster!) when it would have been much much more effective if everyone in the industry had jumped on the bandwagon and there was simply no other choice.
There wasn't a compelling business case for the others so they stood by and watched it fail. I'm just wondering aloud if this issue with digital tv copy protection might be a prelude to PPV of tv in general.
Interesting. Especially when everything becomes pay-per-view. So Circuit City failed with a voluntary PPV system for DVD movies, but someone has figured out that if you make it cumpulsory and put the controls into the sets themselves, you can shove it down the consumer's throats and get away with it, eh?
Nope, you don't hardly get any less arbitrary than that, do ya? ;-) A unit of measure based on 1/4 of the circumference of the Earth isn't going to be any less arbitrary to ET than the length of some Royal English Dude's, erm... foot.
"The distance from the pole to the equator was divided into ten million parts to constitute the meter "
Now, if you came up with a measure that was based on the wavelength of light emitted by Hydrogen fusion or some other such pan-galactic standard, then you could argue non-arbitrary! :-)
No, but I had the mental image of a bunch of students doing this as a prank. A couple of art students working on this for a few months and then someone borrowing their dad's 1/2 ton and a bunch of guys driving out to the park in the middle of the night to plant this thing.
I guess it is not the end of the world if it was the work of an internet cafe or something, just kind of takes the gleam out of my eye as I chuckle about someone just going out and pulling this _cool_ prank vs some commercial enterprise doing this for publicity (if that is in fact their motivation)
Bet they just GPL it, though.
Make sure to preview and check those links! ;-)
hmmm.... I didn't get the impression they were looking for an average/representative person to ask questions. They did say 'ordinary' not 'average' - by this I took it to mean someone out of the crowd, instead of well-known figure as they usually pick for these top-10 question/interview thingies.
Actually, thought it was 'ordinary', not 'average'... still, I would not describe him as ordinary by any standard.
/. attracts. Not average or ordinary (or even representative) by any standard I can think of, but certainly a well-regarded, intelligent and technically capable young individual that I want to think is out there reading and contributing.
/.'er as goatsex, hotgrits, penis bird signal 11, osm types -- it is nice to read something that gives me some hope for the current crop of 'teenage computer geeks' that are capable of more than posting garbage and actually contribute to our slice of society.
And yes, I agree that the slashdot 'community' is very diverse. Clinton is probably what most of us would point to as an outstanding example of the kind of person that
Sometimes I tend to think of the average or ordinary
Kind of like MTV showing the 'top 10 videos of the Millennium' last newyear's eve.
Yeah, that made a lot of sense... none of those videos made in the 1600's even compared to 'lucky star'!
Well, nintendogen.com has a slightly different definition:
Still, quite a bit different than what I had always assumed was meant by 'platform'.
I've never heard of that either. I always thought of consoles to be platforms (ps2, sega, nintendo, etc), not the type of game (side scroller as in mario, crash bandicoot, sonic, etc), but doing a quick google search comes up with this page at about.com which seems to list 'platform' games as the original poster describes. I guess I learn something everyday I read /.
>you shouldn't give away the version of the OS then you make it easier for script kiddies...
Someone pointed out that all of the machines in the domain appear to be running default-install 6.1 release with all the default services enabled.
This has to scream 'crack me!' If he doesn't bother turning off telnet or at least customizing the welcome message, there's little doubt he has kept up with security patches.
>having our measure of time bound to when the sun rises is silly
Sure, no problem - I'm sure after a few years we'll all get used to sending our kids out to school 4 hours after the sun sets so that the huge percentage of people who must coordinate communication across continents will have an easy time of it!
>what happens in a hundred or so years when people aren't even living on earth and they don't HAVE a sunrise?
I don't know. I'm sure we'll think of something. Maybe like having lights programmed to go on and off at something approximating a healthy sleep-wake cycle?
(I'm not usually this much of a sarcastic SOB, that just make me laugh. Nice Troll)
This isn't a slam - I find the stuff interesting. My point is that there is probably a much broader appeal in the science of SETI.
The chances of locating some signal from space originated by intelligent life is, of course, very very small. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of people think it is non-zero. The potential impact to human society of discovering ET intelligent life is huge. That's what draws people, I would think. (plus, it is a pretty screensaver).
It is a lot easier for people to understand the potential impact of SETI than that of discovering Golomb rulers.
who that guy in the green fatigues with the funny little beret was waiting outside WalMart at midnight a few weeks ago was!
Why? The word is spelled correctly. It is just the wrong word. And no, the grammar checker doesn't catch that, I just tried it. (yep, I have a Win 2K box here with office 2000 - I don't like MS software, but I like my job well enough to put up with it).
Wow, I stand corrected. Thank you for enlightening me.
So they said individuals are not guaranteed by the US constitution that states must recognize their votes cast in a presidential election. The state has the power to name the slate of electors, it is up to them to empower individual citizens though state law to give them a say in the process?
I guess not being a constitutional scholar, that still doesn't read to me as "people have no constitutional right to vote in America".
No, I didn't read the rulings. Reminds me of what I saw on the Daily Show last night where a couple of reporters got copies of the court's opinions late the other night and were trying to skim through the 65 pages while live on the air to pick out the important statements. Funny as hell seeing the one guy come running up to the other and then the two of them muttering to themselves as they read the legalese.
(exceedingly OT, but not posting AC because already above karma kap - mod away!)
>Well, as the supreme court of the United States just ruled, people have no constitutional right
to vote in America
Sheesh. I'm not happy about the outcome of the election or the mangled process that transpired after 11/7 - but I would hardly say the SC ruled that 'mericans have no constitutional right to vote.
What happened is they brought a merciful end to a hopeless process of challenge, appeal, suits and spins. Was the law upheld? Was the will of the 'majority' thwarted? Does it even matter which dickhead 'A' or dickhead 'B' becomes president?
I don't have the answers to these questions. All I know is that what the US Supreme Court did didn't make any less sense than what the Fla SC was doing. Now it is over and we have a president with the IQ equivalent to a used wad of masking tape. I seriously doubt that recounting ballots up until 1/19/01 would have substantially changed that outcome.
Can we please stop belly-aching about it now?
Gee sorry...
Oh wait, I didn't say copyright - wha??
Seen this before many a time. I remember an unreal mod that was started which was going to be based on southpark, or maybe the simpsons. One C&D letter later, and the project team folded their tent and replaced their webpage with a copy of the letter and a short note saying goodbye - their project had been "foxed".
They weren't a commercial company, just a bunch of fans who thought they could make something cool. The IP owners found out, sent a lawyer-letter and left the team with little choice but to throw up their hands and walk away. Afterall, a bunch of volunteers aren't going to hire a lwayer so they can keep their non-profit project going.
I remembered another one that was in the works to do a wolfenstein mod and id sent a letter. They weren't dicks about it, asked nicely for them to shut it down. From what I remember, id claimed they had to defend their copyright in each and every instance they learned of, regardless of how non-threatening it was or they risked losing a legal leg to stand on if some commercial entity were to start selling shrink-wrap games based on id's IP.
What I wondered at the time was, can id license the wolf-3d stuff to this mod team for, say $1 and thus get around this supposed legal pitfal and still support the community?
yeah, but does it reset the uptime in top? ;-)
The cynic in me says the 'whiners' care more about the stat than any actual interruption in the machine's service.
Personally, a reboot isn't that big of a deal for something like a kernel upgrade. Beats the hell out of having to reboot for an IP change or the like in versions of NT prior to 5/2000.