I'm not a gun nut. I don't own any weapons. I think of the NRA as an organization that tends toward paranoia, and which attracts more than its share of fringe, radical elements. But I am completely behind the rights protected by the 2nd Ammendment. The reasons the founders put that in the Bill of Rights still exist today.
If some people want to ban guns, their path is clear: an ammendment to the Constitution. They are perfectly welcome to try getting such a thing passed.
If you don't control it, you don't own it. At the risk of entering the realm of Conspiracy Theory, and with tinfoil hat firmly in place, I think it's pretty clear that "they" want to control the flow of information on the internet. Watch and see: the Great pr0n Crackdown is right around the corner.
Google was put into that position the minute they decided to buy DoubleClick. Before Google was a Big Deal, I had it set as my home page and it was my home page for almost a decade. I changed my browser home page the day I heard about the doubleclick deal. Google is on the inevitable path now that ends in a bad place. The way business works - especially a publicly traded business - they will have no choice but to adopt the evil ways of doubleclick. Shareholders will demand it.
I know they haven't done anything really bad yet, but that will change. Slowly. Maybe too slowly for the change to be perceptible on a month-to-month basis. The writing is on the wall. Google's motto was, "Do No Evil". Then they turn around and buy DoubleClick. It's not hard to figure out.
If low web ratings cause sites to go out of business then what's the thinking behind the other front page story that has the EU moving to ban online hate speech? Won't a lack of advertisers cause hate-speech sites to go dark after a short time? There seems to be some sort of disconnect here.
Oh, wait... I get it. Website ratings are (a) overrated and (b) meaningless when you get right down to it. Only sites that are dedicated to the proposition of making a profit really care about such things as ratings and advertising revenue. Objectionable sites, like those that promote hate-speech, don't care what their ratings are. The tooth fairy must pay their expenses and keep them from going out of business. Of course, that applies also to non-hate sites. Sites that are run out of a love or passion for a specific topic of interest. Sites maintained by enthusiasts or hobbyists who aren't worried about making a profit.
When you come right down to it you could eliminate every site that carries advertising on the web and I wouldn't notice. And hate-speech sites aren't exactly in my bookmark list either. I think the web would be a better place without advertising of any kind. Hence, my complete lack of remorse for any site that closes down because their ad revenue isn't making the nut. Too bad. I will continue to block all ads that I can.
At 134 million mph (one-fifth the speed of light) we could get there in a quick 5 generations or so. At the current record of about 25,000 mph (achieved by Stafford, Young and Cernan on May 26, 1969, almost 38 years ago), it would take more than half a million years to make the journey. I was getting all set to pack but I think there's gonna have to be a breakthrough or two first.
Just like legislation didn't fix the spam problem. What will fix it is harsh penalties that are actually carried out on companies that lose peoples' private data. Legislating the penalties would fix it. Legislating another slap-on-the-wrist law that says, "Don't do that!" won't fix anything. A handfull of large penalties, say $1,000 per name, making a big splash will get most places to clean up their act quickly. Lose data on 10,000 customers and get fined $10 million. Put the onus where it belongs: on the companies collecting the data. Personally I'd like to see an ammendment to the US Constitution that explicitly spells out the right to privacy. Technically that right is reserved to the people since it's not spelled out in the Constitution, but we've seen violations of rights by the government an awful lot over the last few decades. Even the ones that ARE spelled out in the Constitution. Pass an ammendment and then pass laws that impose consequences for violating it.
I think he was referring to TC being installed on the computer in the first place. Might be a good use for a "portable app", one that runs from a USB flash drive and leaves no trace on any of the system's hard drives that it was used. Then, make sure you've got the free VMware player and name your TC volumes whatever.vmdk. You can say the entire hard drive image got corrupted by Vista or something in a virtual machine.
Looks like it's only about 60 miles with a nice little island halfway in between. It'll be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere. Any anticipated economic potential will have to be weighed against the operational costs, however, which will surely entail full-time security checkpoints at both ends and in the middle to thwart any bad guys looking to blow it up. Those costs can't be insignificant.
Actually, it's not my problem or anyone else's. For every website that goes under there are 3 more waiting to take their place. There is no website I visit that is indispensible.
One of my domains (not an important one for business, thank goodness) expired. It was registered through GoDaddy and I decided to allow it to expire and re-register it somewhere else. After the grace period had elapsed, where you can re-activate it for an absurd fee, I tried to register it anew with another registrar. Too late! A speculator had obviously noticed it was a domain that had expired and snatched it up. I was pretty angry. Since then the domain has been active and is a traffic catcher for whoever owns it now. Like I said, it was not an important money-making domain so I really don't care that much, but I can see how this could be really bad for business. They've got you over a barrel at that point. I'm sure I could buy it back for an outrageous price if I really wanted (or needed) it. Screw that.
The slow slide of Google is clearly underway. This move is evil. Even if Google did nothing more than shut down all the dc servers permanently, this would still be evil. Why? Because they have enriched the people who profited from the DC hellspawn. Google just moved from my "Strongly Approve" list of companies to my "Hold" list.
They will convince people to switch just like they convince them to buy DRM technology, region-coded DVD players, and Microsoft Vista. Once the hardware manufacturers are on board there won't be any other choice. 99% of the population won't notice or care. Oh, they'll notice the marketing fluff that will convince them everything's fine and the new net is an "upgrade".
Another reason for the government to be in favor of this (idea tickled by the IRS-eBay story): automated tracking of every electronic payment. States looking to collect sales tax will throw their weight behind it too.
It's the same way with spam. Too many people are content to say it's only a problem if you're not using spam filters. They completely ignore the point that the spam exists in the first place and is transmitted hither and tither across the net, stealing bandwidth far and wide.
This is the Free Market at work. If there's a market for something then enterprising risk takers will rise to fill that need. I say this half in jest, but half seriously.
I've been spreading that idea far and wide to many people in many different forums. It's amazing how easy it is to convince people, too. Unlike the jump from Windows 3.1 to 95 or from Win98 to 2000, there's no compelling reason to switch (I actually refuse to say "upgrade"), and a whole bevy of reasons not to. It's a shame Microsoft's monopoly position in the market will force us all to switch sooner or later. I understand you can still get XP from Dell, but that probably won't last long.
If it's as accurate I can't wait to fly in a plane that's controlled this way. I am extremely skeptical of getting any accuracy from this setup. The state-of-the-art in speech recognition software is about the same as it was a decade ago, and machines are 50 times as fast with 8 times as much memory. Yet, quality has failed to improve measurably, and by "measurably" I mean the amount of time I have to spend cleaning up the text in a word processor after the speech has been "recognized". For that matter, does any OCR software - which has been around even longer than speech recognition software - work well enough that you don't have to spend a minute per page cleaning up after it?
This is a promising field, no doubt, and I hope researchers continue to work on it. But if past is prologue, I'm not holding my breath until it's really, really useful technology.
Just think about how ballistic some politicians would go if a simple demonstration were shown to them about the sites you can find with Google by searching for the words "tits" or "wide snatch". They'd be pushing for the internet to be closed down immediately if not sooner. I predict just such a demonstration will be forthcoming in the very near future. Just as soon as there's some new US scandal they want to divert attention away from. It will be the mother of all diversions and has the potential to really crimp the usefulness of the internet in the US.
They're not supportive of OSS in the realm of device drivers for Windows, that's for sure. Vista 64-bit version does not permit unsigned device drivers to be loaded. Period. That is going to shut out a lot of OSS projects aimed at controlling all the nifty hardware you can hook up to your machine. Microsoft's official reason for this is they want to make it harder for malware to infect a machine. The real reason probably has something to do with DRM.
I know I'm not. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer (or rather I am, but there's no such thing as a truly free market), but a long held belief of theirs is that government produces NOTHING. I don't necessarily agree with that statement 100%, but these new passports are emblematic of what the government is getting into the business of. They are getting into the business of providing security, and, quite frankly, they are not very good at it.
Of all the things I can think of that the government ought to produce for its citizens (efficiency, level playing fields, regulated markets, affordable health care) this garbage - fake security - isn't on the list.
Where good old corporate ripoffs and deceptive trade practices are just chalked up to hard-nosed business practices. Perfectly legal and ethical. And if they're not legal they should be. That's where we're headed. Back to the 1880s.
This is interesting coming as it does less than a year after Hyperion's deal to buy the maker of Focus, i.e. info builders, fell through. I wonder what now what will happen to the smaller players. Will they get bought out for a song, or whither and fold? It looks like that market is consolidating to only a few big players.
I have none and hope to keep it that way. At least until SP1, and long after that if possible. Aero has a nifty cool look to it? That's nice. No thanks. Why would I want to load up my machines with bloated DRM? Bill Gates was only against DRM until Microsoft started selling it.
How about a lawsuit disaster? IIRC it's fraud if you make a material statement that convinces someone to make a purchase ("this machine will run Vista") and that statement is false. Hell, that's not only a lawsuit disaster, it's a criminal activity disaster too!
For free I was able to have my signature orbiting Saturn. It's been there awhile, too. This pipsqueak private satellite has a 100-1 shot of even making it to Mars orbit.
And Valentine's Day? Let's just say my hotties call me Titan.
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I'm not a gun nut. I don't own any weapons. I think of the NRA as an organization that tends toward paranoia, and which attracts more than its share of fringe, radical elements. But I am completely behind the rights protected by the 2nd Ammendment. The reasons the founders put that in the Bill of Rights still exist today.
If some people want to ban guns, their path is clear: an ammendment to the Constitution. They are perfectly welcome to try getting such a thing passed.
I do, anyway. I don't trust Verisign, period.
If you don't control it, you don't own it. At the risk of entering the realm of Conspiracy Theory, and with tinfoil hat firmly in place, I think it's pretty clear that "they" want to control the flow of information on the internet. Watch and see: the Great pr0n Crackdown is right around the corner.
Google was put into that position the minute they decided to buy DoubleClick. Before Google was a Big Deal, I had it set as my home page and it was my home page for almost a decade. I changed my browser home page the day I heard about the doubleclick deal. Google is on the inevitable path now that ends in a bad place. The way business works - especially a publicly traded business - they will have no choice but to adopt the evil ways of doubleclick. Shareholders will demand it.
I know they haven't done anything really bad yet, but that will change. Slowly. Maybe too slowly for the change to be perceptible on a month-to-month basis. The writing is on the wall. Google's motto was, "Do No Evil". Then they turn around and buy DoubleClick. It's not hard to figure out.
If low web ratings cause sites to go out of business then what's the thinking behind the other front page story that has the EU moving to ban online hate speech? Won't a lack of advertisers cause hate-speech sites to go dark after a short time? There seems to be some sort of disconnect here.
Oh, wait... I get it. Website ratings are (a) overrated and (b) meaningless when you get right down to it. Only sites that are dedicated to the proposition of making a profit really care about such things as ratings and advertising revenue. Objectionable sites, like those that promote hate-speech, don't care what their ratings are. The tooth fairy must pay their expenses and keep them from going out of business. Of course, that applies also to non-hate sites. Sites that are run out of a love or passion for a specific topic of interest. Sites maintained by enthusiasts or hobbyists who aren't worried about making a profit.
When you come right down to it you could eliminate every site that carries advertising on the web and I wouldn't notice. And hate-speech sites aren't exactly in my bookmark list either. I think the web would be a better place without advertising of any kind. Hence, my complete lack of remorse for any site that closes down because their ad revenue isn't making the nut. Too bad. I will continue to block all ads that I can.
At 134 million mph (one-fifth the speed of light) we could get there in a quick 5 generations or so. At the current record of about 25,000 mph (achieved by Stafford, Young and Cernan on May 26, 1969, almost 38 years ago), it would take more than half a million years to make the journey. I was getting all set to pack but I think there's gonna have to be a breakthrough or two first.
Just like legislation didn't fix the spam problem. What will fix it is harsh penalties that are actually carried out on companies that lose peoples' private data. Legislating the penalties would fix it. Legislating another slap-on-the-wrist law that says, "Don't do that!" won't fix anything. A handfull of large penalties, say $1,000 per name, making a big splash will get most places to clean up their act quickly. Lose data on 10,000 customers and get fined $10 million. Put the onus where it belongs: on the companies collecting the data. Personally I'd like to see an ammendment to the US Constitution that explicitly spells out the right to privacy. Technically that right is reserved to the people since it's not spelled out in the Constitution, but we've seen violations of rights by the government an awful lot over the last few decades. Even the ones that ARE spelled out in the Constitution. Pass an ammendment and then pass laws that impose consequences for violating it.
I think he was referring to TC being installed on the computer in the first place. Might be a good use for a "portable app", one that runs from a USB flash drive and leaves no trace on any of the system's hard drives that it was used. Then, make sure you've got the free VMware player and name your TC volumes whatever.vmdk. You can say the entire hard drive image got corrupted by Vista or something in a virtual machine.
Looks like it's only about 60 miles with a nice little island halfway in between. It'll be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere. Any anticipated economic potential will have to be weighed against the operational costs, however, which will surely entail full-time security checkpoints at both ends and in the middle to thwart any bad guys looking to blow it up. Those costs can't be insignificant.
Actually, it's not my problem or anyone else's. For every website that goes under there are 3 more waiting to take their place. There is no website I visit that is indispensible.
One of my domains (not an important one for business, thank goodness) expired. It was registered through GoDaddy and I decided to allow it to expire and re-register it somewhere else. After the grace period had elapsed, where you can re-activate it for an absurd fee, I tried to register it anew with another registrar. Too late! A speculator had obviously noticed it was a domain that had expired and snatched it up. I was pretty angry. Since then the domain has been active and is a traffic catcher for whoever owns it now. Like I said, it was not an important money-making domain so I really don't care that much, but I can see how this could be really bad for business. They've got you over a barrel at that point. I'm sure I could buy it back for an outrageous price if I really wanted (or needed) it. Screw that.
The slow slide of Google is clearly underway. This move is evil. Even if Google did nothing more than shut down all the dc servers permanently, this would still be evil. Why? Because they have enriched the people who profited from the DC hellspawn. Google just moved from my "Strongly Approve" list of companies to my "Hold" list.
They will convince people to switch just like they convince them to buy DRM technology, region-coded DVD players, and Microsoft Vista. Once the hardware manufacturers are on board there won't be any other choice. 99% of the population won't notice or care. Oh, they'll notice the marketing fluff that will convince them everything's fine and the new net is an "upgrade".
Another reason for the government to be in favor of this (idea tickled by the IRS-eBay story): automated tracking of every electronic payment. States looking to collect sales tax will throw their weight behind it too.
It's the same way with spam. Too many people are content to say it's only a problem if you're not using spam filters. They completely ignore the point that the spam exists in the first place and is transmitted hither and tither across the net, stealing bandwidth far and wide.
This is the Free Market at work. If there's a market for something then enterprising risk takers will rise to fill that need. I say this half in jest, but half seriously.
I've been spreading that idea far and wide to many people in many different forums. It's amazing how easy it is to convince people, too. Unlike the jump from Windows 3.1 to 95 or from Win98 to 2000, there's no compelling reason to switch (I actually refuse to say "upgrade"), and a whole bevy of reasons not to. It's a shame Microsoft's monopoly position in the market will force us all to switch sooner or later. I understand you can still get XP from Dell, but that probably won't last long.
If it's as accurate I can't wait to fly in a plane that's controlled this way. I am extremely skeptical of getting any accuracy from this setup. The state-of-the-art in speech recognition software is about the same as it was a decade ago, and machines are 50 times as fast with 8 times as much memory. Yet, quality has failed to improve measurably, and by "measurably" I mean the amount of time I have to spend cleaning up the text in a word processor after the speech has been "recognized". For that matter, does any OCR software - which has been around even longer than speech recognition software - work well enough that you don't have to spend a minute per page cleaning up after it?
This is a promising field, no doubt, and I hope researchers continue to work on it. But if past is prologue, I'm not holding my breath until it's really, really useful technology.
Just think about how ballistic some politicians would go if a simple demonstration were shown to them about the sites you can find with Google by searching for the words "tits" or "wide snatch". They'd be pushing for the internet to be closed down immediately if not sooner. I predict just such a demonstration will be forthcoming in the very near future. Just as soon as there's some new US scandal they want to divert attention away from. It will be the mother of all diversions and has the potential to really crimp the usefulness of the internet in the US.
They're not supportive of OSS in the realm of device drivers for Windows, that's for sure. Vista 64-bit version does not permit unsigned device drivers to be loaded. Period. That is going to shut out a lot of OSS projects aimed at controlling all the nifty hardware you can hook up to your machine. Microsoft's official reason for this is they want to make it harder for malware to infect a machine. The real reason probably has something to do with DRM.
I know I'm not. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer (or rather I am, but there's no such thing as a truly free market), but a long held belief of theirs is that government produces NOTHING. I don't necessarily agree with that statement 100%, but these new passports are emblematic of what the government is getting into the business of. They are getting into the business of providing security, and, quite frankly, they are not very good at it.
Of all the things I can think of that the government ought to produce for its citizens (efficiency, level playing fields, regulated markets, affordable health care) this garbage - fake security - isn't on the list.
Where good old corporate ripoffs and deceptive trade practices are just chalked up to hard-nosed business practices. Perfectly legal and ethical. And if they're not legal they should be. That's where we're headed. Back to the 1880s.
This is interesting coming as it does less than a year after Hyperion's deal to buy the maker of Focus, i.e. info builders, fell through. I wonder what now what will happen to the smaller players. Will they get bought out for a song, or whither and fold? It looks like that market is consolidating to only a few big players.
I have none and hope to keep it that way. At least until SP1, and long after that if possible. Aero has a nifty cool look to it? That's nice. No thanks. Why would I want to load up my machines with bloated DRM? Bill Gates was only against DRM until Microsoft started selling it.
How about a lawsuit disaster? IIRC it's fraud if you make a material statement that convinces someone to make a purchase ("this machine will run Vista") and that statement is false. Hell, that's not only a lawsuit disaster, it's a criminal activity disaster too!
For free I was able to have my signature orbiting Saturn. It's been there awhile, too. This pipsqueak private satellite has a 100-1 shot of even making it to Mars orbit.
And Valentine's Day? Let's just say my hotties call me Titan.