The biggest thing that anyone has managed to sneak into my theatre without either me or my staff catching on is an entire case of beer. Case and all. We found the empties and the box on the auditorium floor after the show was over.
Depends on your situation. I own a business that is open downtown late-at-night. (A movie theatre.)
I get my share of odd occurrences here after all of the other downtown businesses are closed. A parked car caught fire a while back, I had a little girl of about 7 run in the door one night in her nightgown and bare feet, "Mommy's boyfriend is hitting her and she told me to run here and tell you."
An old lady sat down on the bench in front of my theatre a while back and appeared to have lost her mind.
Drunks, traffic accidents, burglar alarms, you-name-it. I see it here, and call 911 on a fairly regular basis.
I was, once. I called to report a burglary in progress at the restaurant across the street from me. And got to listen to "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line..." for a few minutes before I could talk to anyone.
I put in an official complaint about that to our City Council, afterward.
I don't know of any adblocker -- certainly not the ones that I use -- that block text based ads. In fact, if I had the option to block Google-style ads, I probably wouldn't turn it on
This does just exactly that. So now you've seen one....
iD has had some of the harshest copy protection in history.
Nope. Alchemy Mindworks has them beat.
Observe:
Oh yes, should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that. We are Alchemy Mindworks Inc.
And for the rest of theater, I WILL have the movie restarted if the annoyance is significant.
Not with modern platter technology, you won't. Unless you want to wait for the length of time that it will take for the current run of the film to go through and wind back onto the platter before getting your restart.
Platters have no "rewind" or "back up" function, unless the projectionist cranks it backward by hand, which is next-to-impossible to do with one person and almost-impossible to do with two.
[W]ould anything with product activation be considered Spyware? Probably not. Part of the definition of "spy" is secrecy. And? "Our intent was clearly described on page 47 (Clause 1837, sub-part B) of the agreement that came with the software."
Where and how do you draw the line regarding "informed consent to"... spying? "He clicked that he agrees." "He signed the contract." "He downloaded the software." And on and on.
I do not actually see my property taxes. They are sent directly to my mortgage company,
Strange. Around here people who have their property taxes paid through their mortgage payment receive a copy of their tax notice, as well as the mortgage holder.
to be produced and sent in to a ratings board, who then nitpicks a series of random encounters that they think may the game too violent and send it back with a list of things that would need to be taken out to avoid an AO rating?
It's my understanding that they don't do that, though. The MPAA ratings board hangs a rating on a movie and that's that. If the producer wants to chop it down to get a lower rating he has to play a kind of guessing game to determine what he has to remove to get the lower rating. The board won't "make suggestions" due to their fear of interfering with the producer's artistic expression.
If you multiply that out by the 590,000 votes cast, then you see why electronic balloting is a necessity.
Actually, I fail to see that.
If it's worth the effort to set up a vote for these offices, then is it not worth the effort to insure that the votes are accurately recorded and correctly counted?
"It's takes too long to count the ballots" is not a valid answer.
In my experience I would say that email has only really worked its way down to very small businesses in about the last three years. For about ten years before that, if you were in business you had to have a fax machine "I'll fax that to you", heard ten times a day. Now, you still have to have the fax machine but everyone also expects to be able to send you email.
At risk of sounding stupid, why is it massively cool?
I never look at my keyboard when I type; I learned to type in high school on old manual Underwoods that didn't have any markings on the keys at all (special design for schools, I guess) and have never, ever, had the urge to look at the keys when I'm typing.
So what's the point of this keyboard, and why would I want to give up my trusty Microsoft Natural keyboard (that and Sidewinder joysticks are the only Microsoft products actually worth having) to use one?
One explanation for additional delay in case of a not yet disclosed or not yet exploited problem may be more thorough testing, so it may not even be a bad thing.
The problem with this is simply that you can never know that a given exploit is NOT being taken advantage of somewhere. "It's safe for now; nobody knows about it." Meanwhile someone is quietly carrying the goods out of the back door somewhere.
Just because a flaw isn't being broadcast from the rooftops doesn't mean that it's not being quitely exploited.
That's my concern with the concept of "responsible disclosure." If I have a vulnerable system I want to know about it even if there is no current fix available. I can always make physical or software changes to avoid problems if I know about them, right up to pulling the plug if I have to. If I know about the problem. Otherwise I can be merrily carrying out my normal routine while someone is getting ready to pull the rug out from under me.
Tell me if there is a problem and I can deal with it or not as I choose. If I don't know about the problem, I don't have that choice.
There is a concept known as a "vexatious litigant". You can find all sorts of information about that on Google, but the general gist is that if you are filing frivolous lawsuits you can be made to stop doing so.
What happens if the person you are suing happens to be a lawyer? If I take Dewey, Cheetham & Howe to small claims court for whatever damage I figure they did to me, who comes to the hearing on their behalf if lawyers aren't allowed into the room? The janitor?
A small business that I do some consulting for has stacks (literally) of CD's containing clipart in WMF format. Based on that, I would say that WMF appears to be a common format for commercial-off-the-shelf clipart disks.
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It's fun to see how much you can bring in,
I own a movie theatre.
The biggest thing that anyone has managed to sneak into my theatre without either me or my staff catching on is an entire case of beer. Case and all. We found the empties and the box on the auditorium floor after the show was over.
the system could automatically deprioritize calls coming from the same location as those already being answered.
That could be really dangerous.
How does you calling in the fire across the street help me when I'm having a heart attack at the same time in my living room 100 feet away?
Depends on your situation. I own a business that is open downtown late-at-night. (A movie theatre.)
I get my share of odd occurrences here after all of the other downtown businesses are closed. A parked car caught fire a while back, I had a little girl of about 7 run in the door one night in her nightgown and bare feet, "Mommy's boyfriend is hitting her and she told me to run here and tell you."
An old lady sat down on the bench in front of my theatre a while back and appeared to have lost her mind.
Drunks, traffic accidents, burglar alarms, you-name-it. I see it here, and call 911 on a fairly regular basis.
And I live in a small town of 5000 people.
I've never been put on hold, though
I was, once. I called to report a burglary in progress at the restaurant across the street from me. And got to listen to "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line..." for a few minutes before I could talk to anyone.
I put in an official complaint about that to our City Council, afterward.
I don't know of any adblocker -- certainly not the ones that I use -- that block text based ads. In fact, if I had the option to block Google-style ads, I probably wouldn't turn it on
This does just exactly that. So now you've seen one....
iD has had some of the harshest copy protection in history.
Nope. Alchemy Mindworks has them beat.
Observe:
Oh yes, should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that.
We are
Alchemy Mindworks Inc.
Why in the world wouldn't you just purchase a good laptop in the first place and avoid all of that "replacing" stuff?
Or does nobody make a good laptop anymore?
(Serious question -- I have never paid much attention to laptops.
And for the rest of theater, I WILL have the movie restarted if the annoyance is significant.
Not with modern platter technology, you won't. Unless you want to wait for the length of time that it will take for the current run of the film to go through and wind back onto the platter before getting your restart.
Platters have no "rewind" or "back up" function, unless the projectionist cranks it backward by hand, which is next-to-impossible to do with one person and almost-impossible to do with two.
"My name is Dr. X. I will be sitting in the very back row on the right hand side. If any emergency call comes in for me, please let me know."
I happen to own a movie theatre....
"You must live in the United States" to win a prize, according to their website.
this could get them in trouble for violating various disabilities acts
And religious discrimination too. Book of Revelations, "mark of the beast" and all that sort of thing.
[W]ould anything with product activation be considered Spyware?
Probably not. Part of the definition of "spy" is secrecy.
And? "Our intent was clearly described on page 47 (Clause 1837, sub-part B) of the agreement that came with the software."
Where and how do you draw the line regarding "informed consent to"... spying? "He clicked that he agrees." "He signed the contract." "He downloaded the software." And on and on.
so this kind of punshment
Why are you, a paying customer, deserving of punishment?
Are things so bad in "corporateland" that the customers must now submit to punishment?
"Thank you sir, may I have another."
Just wondering....
I do not actually see my property taxes. They are sent directly to my mortgage company,
Strange. Around here people who have their property taxes paid through their mortgage payment receive a copy of their tax notice, as well as the mortgage holder.
It's not like they're going to be issuing press releases regarding their top-secret research.
No, but he might be talking to/interviewing/standing beside the water cooler with someone who does top-secret research.
to be produced and sent in to a ratings board, who then nitpicks a series of random encounters that they think may the game too violent and send it back with a list of things that would need to be taken out to avoid an AO rating?
It's my understanding that they don't do that, though. The MPAA ratings board hangs a rating on a movie and that's that. If the producer wants to chop it down to get a lower rating he has to play a kind of guessing game to determine what he has to remove to get the lower rating. The board won't "make suggestions" due to their fear of interfering with the producer's artistic expression.
If you multiply that out by the 590,000 votes cast, then you see why electronic balloting is a necessity.
Actually, I fail to see that.
If it's worth the effort to set up a vote for these offices, then is it not worth the effort to insure that the votes are accurately recorded and correctly counted?
"It's takes too long to count the ballots" is not a valid answer.
In my experience I would say that email has only really worked its way down to very small businesses in about the last three years. For about ten years before that, if you were in business you had to have a fax machine "I'll fax that to you", heard ten times a day. Now, you still have to have the fax machine but everyone also expects to be able to send you email.
Who has a e-mail name that appears in a DICTIONARY?
Me.
I run a theatre and my email address is theatre@myisp. (I also have theater@myisp because a lot of people can't spell theatre correctly.)
(it IS massively cool).
At risk of sounding stupid, why is it massively cool?
I never look at my keyboard when I type; I learned to type in high school on old manual Underwoods that didn't have any markings on the keys at all (special design for schools, I guess) and have never, ever, had the urge to look at the keys when I'm typing.
So what's the point of this keyboard, and why would I want to give up my trusty Microsoft Natural keyboard (that and Sidewinder joysticks are the only Microsoft products actually worth having) to use one?
One explanation for additional delay in case of a not yet disclosed or not yet exploited problem may be more thorough testing, so it may not even be a bad thing.
The problem with this is simply that you can never know that a given exploit is NOT being taken advantage of somewhere. "It's safe for now; nobody knows about it." Meanwhile someone is quietly carrying the goods out of the back door somewhere.
Just because a flaw isn't being broadcast from the rooftops doesn't mean that it's not being quitely exploited.
That's my concern with the concept of "responsible disclosure." If I have a vulnerable system I want to know about it even if there is no current fix available. I can always make physical or software changes to avoid problems if I know about them, right up to pulling the plug if I have to. If I know about the problem. Otherwise I can be merrily carrying out my normal routine while someone is getting ready to pull the rug out from under me.
Tell me if there is a problem and I can deal with it or not as I choose. If I don't know about the problem, I don't have that choice.
There is a concept known as a "vexatious litigant". You can find all sorts of information about that on Google, but the general gist is that if you are filing frivolous lawsuits you can be made to stop doing so.
What happens if the person you are suing happens to be a lawyer? If I take Dewey, Cheetham & Howe to small claims court for whatever damage I figure they did to me, who comes to the hearing on their behalf if lawyers aren't allowed into the room? The janitor?
A small business that I do some consulting for has stacks (literally) of CD's containing clipart in WMF format. Based on that, I would say that WMF appears to be a common format for commercial-off-the-shelf clipart disks.
Why would you let them on?
Because you want to spread your views, share your opinion, make your feelings about a particular issue known.
You might want to have people read your poetry, view photos of your sculptures, read your original recipe for chokecherry wine.
And so on. You get the idea.
You know... That whole information sharing thing that the Internet is all about.