That would be annoying, because I set up automatic monthly billing so that I just get my checking account debited automatically every month. Anyway, here's the details of the line item "Taxes/Surcharges/Regulatory" from my March bill:
Taxes and Regulatory Charges FEDERAL TAX 0.94 MASSACHUSETTS STATE SALES TAX - SERVICES & USAGE 1.52 MASSACHUSETTS STATE WIRELESS 911 SURCHARGE 0.30 Surcharges and Fees FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND 0.40 FEDERAL E911 0.30 FEDERAL TELEPHONE NUMBER POOLING 0.47
Total: $3.93
Notice I get hit for 911 twice, first for statewide, then again for federal. Oh well - this is the price I pay for not having a land-line:) I dunno - I think I'll stick getting screwed with Sprint rather than trying to get screwed with another provider. I wonder why it says "SURCHARGE" for the MA 911 item, even though it's not in the "SURCHARGE" section? Oh well...
(Why is this post "lame" if HTML formatted, but not "lame" if posted in "Code" mode? Hmm...)
Those are the only flaws you find with that post? Oh, come on...
First of all, 713 is not the established base for being "childish" in Michael's world. Apparently, 713 is somewhere over whatever Michael thinks is a normal comment rate. (Since he has a mere 97, it's gotta be something low...) Secondly, I pulled the number of years out of my ass. It would be possible to calculate the days or something, but I don't really care enough about Michael to put, like, effort into it.
Also, I know that the FortKnox account has only been around since like the beginning of 2000 or so since that's about the time I registered my account and my UID is slightly lower. Finally, I doubt anyone really cares what Michael has to say. Lord knows I don't read Slashdot for the editors' comments. If Slashdot didn't have an active user community posting comments, I wouldn't be here. There are better sources of repeated news and poorly reported facts. I can find other people who willfully release DDOS attacks on poor webservers while refusing to even offer the courtesy of simply warning a site of impending doom.
Actually, for an interesting comparison, compare FortKnox's user page to michael's - notice which page looks far more like the owner of a troll... (Hint: my vote goes to the owner of "Replies: 22; Score:-1, Flamebait".)
Besides, it was a joke. I don't actually want to get dragged into the "Michael is an ass" debate, although I definately get the feeling that most of the editors actively hate the vocal Slashdot croud and would wish they'd just leave if it wasn't for the page views they generate.
Besides, you're just upset because you're less childish on the Michael Childish Rating Scheme if you take comments over time into effect:)
Hey, that Michael quote is two years old! I'm sure Michael doesn't believe that anymore.
If we assume that Slashdot was 4 years old when he said that, we get an allotted 178.25 comments annually before you become a child. Since that comment was 2 years ago, that means we have an additional 356.5 allotted comments before becoming a child. Add to the preexisting limit, and you are given 1069.5 comments currently before becoming a child.
So, as you can see, you are misquoting Michael, because by the 713 figure, I am a child, but with the modified figure, I am not. While you are still three times as childy.
Uh, to pretend I'm on topic, this post scratched an itch of being completely pointless but accomplished what I, the author, wanted it to do - make fun of Michael, and use poorly thought out and badly executed math to update the figure. And isn't that what most OSS projects are started for, anyway? If the author is happy with it, then it is successful, right?
My father ran a test-XP machine for a while that ran just fine on a 400MHz(?) PII using 256MB of RAM, running full "eye candy" mode. Don't remember if it was 32-bit or 16-bit color, but it definately was at least 16-bit. It got a little iffy when playing MP3s, but otherwise, it was just fine, on the 15" CRT. I don't remember the exact system specs, as he was borrowing the machine from work to evaluate the OS, and it's since been returned.
Not that I'm a raving Windows fan, although it is my primary desktop, I more tolerate it than enjoy it. (I just find it easier to tolerate XP than to tolerate either Gnome or KDE.) At least until I can afford a PowerBook...:)
Dumping a bunch of white people on the moon or mars won't improve the lives of the vast majority of the people living on earth.
Odd, it did the last time we tried...
Let's see, where to start... well, there's Velcro and Tang... Er, anyway. Some things that benefit everyone:
Weather satellites, which warn of impending storms and helping people to be prepared, saving thousands of lives. As well as helping reduce property damage by warning people to board up before they get hit.
Smoke dectors, which almost everyone has, to help people get out of their houses should fire break out. Fire fighters wear materials developed by NASA which help them save lives. Medicine has been improved as well.
Now for some links: Space program benefits us all, an article on how the space program is important (although it doesn't list any good examples), and Inventions (Spinoffs) from Space, a list of space inventions, including a game for children to play.
The space program benefits everyone, even if they don't immediately recognize the benefits. Yeah, the deal that blacks/African Americans/whatever is PC got sucks, and racism plagues America to this day. But there's no reason to take it out on the space program, which has helped everyone.
I don't have to be a big name corporate muckity muck to be able to publish a press release or a newspaper. If my chosen medium is the Internet then there is nothing that the US Government can do to legally stop me.
Yeah, you have the freedom of speech, but everyone else has the freedom to ignore you. And that's why things like this will pass and the vast majority will ignore you. Releasing a press release will probably not reach anyone. The press might read it, decide it's boring, and then drop it. So that doesn't help. Publishing your own newspaper won't help either, because only your friends will read it, and everyone else will just toss it. Trust me - I don't care what you write. I already get my news from AOL Times Warner through my local paper, I don't need another paper poorly written by a couple of weirdo computer freaks.
The fact that you aren't a "big name corporate muickity muck" pretty much guarentees that no one will read your paper or listen to your press release. No one really cares about what you have to say. Just like no one cares about what Slashdot has to say or any of the individual posters have to say. Stop a random person on the street and ask them about the DMCA and chances are very high that they won't know what the hell it is, or, if they do, think it's a good thing to protect Hollywood from the hackers on the Internet. Chances are rather slim that you randomly found another person concerned with the DMCA.
Now I have to admit that the above is very trollish and inflammatory, so now I want to put the above into context. It's meant to put things into the context of the adverage American, the people who watch Joe Millionaire and Survior and American Idol, the people who were more concerned with the President getting a BJ than with Bosnia. In all honesty, I hope I'm being overly cynical. But if past performance is any indicator of the future, I doubt that anyone will be able to get people to care about something like this. Most people would rather just assume that while they don't understand the issue, the people purposing the laws must, and therefore assume that it's in their best interest. Most people also still believe that wealth==morality, and that if the rich argue for something, it must be right, while those poorer are just upset because they don't have the same riches.
Only time will tell, but I just can't find any hope. No one really cares, unless the talking heads on the TV screen say it. And I can't think of any way to change that. Maybe someone else can find hope, but unless CNN starts talking about these issues, I doubt the majority will care, assuming that the government knows best.
Ever speed? Ever jaywalk? Ever put change into someone elses parking mater to be a nice guy? Ever walk off with someone's pen or lighter? Congradulations, you're a criminal.
Depends on your definition of criminal...
The way you're using the word, breaking any law makes you a criminal. However, there's a reason that laws are broken into two classes. Everything you listed above is a misdemeanor. Most misdemeanors carry a small fine (well, as small as $150-$500), or a couple of days in jail.
Stealing phone service is (potentially) a felony. A felony will cause you to go to prison, and may cause you to forfeit firearm rights, voting rights, and the right to be allowed in lawabiding society. (Whether this is morally right is dubious...) Most people would consider a "criminal" to be someone who commited a felony, not just anyone who broke the law.
So yeah - repeatedly tricking the system into giving you free calls can easily be considered criminal behavior. The motivation was to prevent having to pay for the desired service, which many people would consider immoral (like I do). Most of the things you've listed aren't really criminal behavior (except speeding, to some, who can shove it:)) - these behaviors are within society's norms. Stealing phone service generally isn't - most of society expects people to pay for the services they use.
So while I believe that people can change, and that having at one point stealing service does not irrevocably mark you as a criminal, not accepting it as a past misdeed is dishonest at best.
(Oh, and "alot" is two words. You mean "A LOT". How many people say "alittle"? Sorry, along with "loose" vs "lose", that's one of my pet peeves.)
Actually, I think the grand-parent poster - er, the one who you were replying to - knew exactly what he was talking about, but got the "Table PC" mixed in there due to the incorrect use of the term in the headline.
A Tablet PC might be more useful than this "airplanel V150", but the V150 seems to be targeted to no one. To reiterate his points:
It's priced at £1000 (plus tax) - that's something like $1500, I think (or $1594, accoring to this page). For that much, you can easily buy a cheap laptop, which alone is more than capable of acting as a remote display for a Windows XP Pro box. (Trust me, I know some people who use old Pentium laptops to connect to their Windows XP machines. Not terribly fast, but it works... Total cost was like $100 for laptops + 802.11b cards. Of course, they don't have a stylus, and it's much bulkier.) Of course, with the laptop, you can still use it without the host parent computer.
With a laptop, you can move it anywhere and still use it. With the V150, you have about 30 meteand still use the basirs from the wireless APs until it becomes useless. You can't just take the V150 into the office and use it - it needs to be on the same network as the computer. (Or not - even still, the point probably still stands that effectively it needs to be on the same network to be useful. I'll conceed this point to anyone with real facts.)
When you realize that the V150 is useless without a desktop PC anyway, your total cost comes to the cost of a laptop - unless you're planning on making your existing desktop more portable around the house.
In other words, the "airpanel V150" is an expensive flatscreen monitor that is minimally useful, a pain to set up, and offers nothing better than a laptop would. A real TabletPC would be far more useful than this thing, and probably only be a little more expensive (if the desktop cost were included). I think that was the original poster's point - this thing isn't really that much more useful than a laptop.
"Most of this is due to the failures of Microsoft's basic idea, although ViewSonic must bear some of the blame for not really trying to ease the pain."
The review authors seem to think that most of the fundamental flaws are the way that the Microsoft software interacts with the user, not the way ViewSonic implemented it. (Except for the base-stand stupidity and the non-functional PC-card, which ViewSonic takes the blame on.)
Most of the problems seem to lie with the way Microsoft implements its Remote Desktop software, and not specifically with the device: detecting the wrong wireless network and offering no way to correct it, requiring Windows XP Pro, and the various faults that lie within the Remote Desktop system. (One user at a time on the PC, can't "switch users", issues with sound...)
Other problems may lie with either: forcing the user to by a WinXP Pro upgrade license, like it or not (I already have XP Pro, could I remove the extra ~$200 off the price?), offering a poor explanation of how to set up the wireless network, making it easy to set up an open network, and poor documentation about how the software detects the network.
So, to repeat them: both companies must share the blame. ViewSonic made the crappy hardware, Microsoft made the crappy software. Together, they make a crappy product.
So use one of your other IM accounts, add only yourself as your buddy, and send it in:)
I have at least four accounts, so everyone must have several! (Of course, I only signed up for two - my ICQ account sorta became an AIM account, and my Netscape mail account also became an AIM account. And then there's the one I retired to switch to a consistant cross-IM naming scheme.)
You mean you're not on your own buddy list? I'm on my own buddy list! It makes sense.
Because there's really no other good way to monitor your warning level. (Or take a quick peak at your profile, with working hyperlinks.) So I know several people who have themselves on their own buddy list. It is actually useful.
Probably because the Radio section is devoted to the Slashdot radio show Geeks in Space - which is dead. (They can't produce it any more since they no longer live in the same states any more.)
Hense, the section has effectively been retired. I suppose it could be repurposed, but I somehow doubt that will happen. Besides, a new section called "music" would make more sense.
Considering that it is April 9th, and I woke up to the sight of snow out my (open) window, I have to wonder: what is the chilling effect, and how do I stop it? Damn that terrorist Jet Stream!
(Or I could just close the window, but my Athlon XP tends to overheat when that happens. (Mainly due to overactive heat and a poorly placed thermostat.))
(Oh, and I'm from Massachusetts, and no, snow isn't really "normal" this time of year, although it has happened in the past this time of year, so it's not unheard of.)
Re:A trojan for DRM
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And imagine that you can already boot Linux off an EFI PC.
Oh, you did know that, right? You can download ELILO straight off Intel's EFI section. (An observant reader will notice that it's actually hosted by HP's research lab, although I can't actually find the info there.)
Of course, you can also read about EFI and Linux from RedHat.
I wouldn't worry, somehow. Plus EFI is mostly used with the new Itanium architecture. I'm sure Linux will be able to survive the impending DRM apocolypse.
To expand on the whole "storing the EFI on the harddrive" issue - I've got to wonder the following:
How does the EFI get onto the harddrive in the first place? If I build a new PC or simply upgrade an old one, do I have to buy a harddrive/motherboard combo? Or is there a stub installed on the board itself? (Which then requires the remainder to be loaded off a CD-ROM, for example.)
If I want to upgrade the hard drive on an EFI-based computer, is it possible to copy the EFI data from old drive to new drive in an easy manner? Or is this just another time for dd?
Can I use existing hard drives with the EFI, or are "special" hard drives required? Or will this require repartitioning an existing hard drive? If so, will this require a "new EFI-compatible" partition format? And if so, will it be possible for tools like Partition Magic to alter the table format without data-loss?
Obviously, what happens when the harddrive becomes corrupted or otherwise fails?
Does it really store the EFI on the hard drive, or is this a journalistic mistake? When I went looking for answers to these questions on the Web, I found no mention of where the EFI is stored.
There are ways this could work - if, for example, the EFI only used the hard drive to store extensions to the EFI. I suppose the bottom line is that I don't see the usefulness of storing "firmware" data on a hard drive, especially when a lot of the problems listed can easily be solved using flash ROM. I would imagine that today, 8MB would be plenty to store even the most complicated firmware implementation. 8MB flash is relatively cheap, so I would imagine it would make a far better choice of persistant, writable storage than a hard drive.
But I'm open to seeing how this will work. I'm assuming that replacing the BIOS is a worthy goal - since I don't work with it directly, I don't know the problems PC-designers are running into. Added to the fact I'm not entirely sure what the EFI is supposed to do, I'm not sure at all why we need the EFI or whether it's even a useful solution. (From my understanding, it is the bridge between the OS and the hardware, effectively being a platform-independant driver store. But I'm not sure.)
Yep - like the Java API documentation. For something that is forcibly complete due to JavaDocs, some of it is mindnumbingly useless.
The most recent example is the "virtual key" codes in the KeyEvent Java class. Namely, what is the difference between VK_PLUS
and VK_ADD!?
You can look up their values - VK_ADD is 107, VK_PLUS is 521 - so they aren't synonyms. My guess would be one is produced using "Shift-Equals" on many keyboards, and the other is next to the 6 and the 9 on the numeric pad. But the docs helpfully don't say which is which. (Fortunately, simply looking to see if the character field is "+" is probably sufficient.)
(Also look for VK_SEPARATER, which is included for backwards compatibility, and VK_SEPARATOR, which replaces it. There are numerous instances of spelling errors throughout the Java API. Plus, this is another VK for which I have no clue where it is on the keyboard - maybe it isn't present on PC-104 QWERTY boards?)
But, yes, the most frusterating experience I have had in programming isn't from my own code, but from trying to figure out official documentation. Especially when the documentation is provably wrong - no, you can't use a comma-separated list as a value to cursor in IE6's CSS, despite the documentation saying that it works.
I know there are other, worse examples, but this is what comes to mind. (I remember spending an entire summer trying to get Java code to call an Oracle stored procedure, and failing. I spent a lot of time reading Slashdot that summer, while trying to come up with another method to force it to work. We finally decided it was impossible.)
Of course, incomplete and incorrect documentation are not just found in commerical software - many open source libraries are even worse.
Well, let's see. The author of "Fortunate Son" tried to car bomb his former employer, was convicted of embezzeling money, and was found dead when police were trying to arrest him for credit card fraud. (Source: Washington Post) Ooo - Hatfield must be a good source, then.
But he's backing up his assertions with outside, third party sources. All anonymous. Hmm...
Trust factor: zero. Probablility of this guy trying to make a buck off of a controversial subject: very good.
Post a link suggesting that this guy was anything but a profiteer, trying to make a buck by bringing down a target that many others wanted to see fall. Go ahead - the Googlewashing of "Fortunate Son" made it practically impossible for me to find out anything about the book or him, other than the vast collection of people I group with the "Michael Moore" hyper-anti-conservative croud.
Want to see a WinXP BSOD? Ask my younger brother to play a video game on his computer twice in a row. Some time after the second starts up - BANG! PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. I've accomplished the same. I don't know what caused it, since it occured while I was out. I came back to see a wonderful BSOD.
So I can tell you from first-hand experience, the WinXP BSOD looks exactly like the Win2K BSOD which presumably looks like the WinNT BSOD.
if I were to post anonymously, even though I live in WV, would I be guilty of a felony in MI since that's where the server lives?
No. Because the server now lives in CA:P.
Also, it's doubtful that would be considered illegal anyway because you aren't preventing the server from determining where you're posting from, just people reading your post. I want you to tell me where I'm posting this message from, including IP. Unless you have access to the server logs, you can't - because that info isn't in the post information displayed. I'm making no effort to mask my identity to the Slashdot servers.
However, my understanding was that this only applied to my ISP. I'm also making no effort to hide the origin from my ISP. So I'm in the clear based on that law. (Although IANAL, and even if I were, I'm not in Michigan, so I still wouldn't be able to give good legal advice:)) Once it gets to the Slashdot servers, telling them to withhold user information in the post should be considered OK. After all, my reading your post, even if anonymous, does not involve you concealing your point of origin. It just means I don't know who posted the given post.
(Another reading might make Slashdot allowing anonymous posting illegal, but people who post anonymously would still be in the clear. Maybe.)
I don't know. Just stay away from Michigan for a while:).
All cheaters should have their IP and user name out on a CS ban list
NOT IP! However, if it's CS, then their WON-ID is fair game. (The WON-ID is a globally unique player identifier, which Half-Life (and hense CS) allows banning by. Unfortunately, such IDs are only given to Internet servers. LAN servers receive bogus WON-IDs, and players must be banned by IP.)
While I'm not currently on a dynamic IP, I am on a recycled IP. I have no idea what the person who had it before me did. It would suck to get banned from games because someone who had your IP once cheated. Many games now give out a unique ID per install, based on the CD-key.
There would also need to be a policy of how people got off the list. Something like after a week or so should be enough to teach cheaters to stop being asses. Of course, if using WON-ID, the cheater could probably work around by reinstalling the game using a new CD-key, but that would be a major hassle. Hopefully enough to keep them off for most of the time - two minutes cheating, then five minutes reinstalling should get annoying fast.
Until someone writes a cheat to rewrite the IDs. You know, maybe IP isn't such a bad idea, as long as it gets removed after a set period of time or there's an arbitration procedure.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be annoying, because I set up automatic monthly billing so that I just get my checking account debited automatically every month. Anyway, here's the details of the line item "Taxes/Surcharges/Regulatory" from my March bill:
:) I dunno - I think I'll stick getting screwed with Sprint rather than trying to get screwed with another provider. I wonder why it says "SURCHARGE" for the MA 911 item, even though it's not in the "SURCHARGE" section? Oh well...
Taxes and Regulatory Charges
FEDERAL TAX 0.94
MASSACHUSETTS STATE SALES TAX - SERVICES & USAGE 1.52
MASSACHUSETTS STATE WIRELESS 911 SURCHARGE 0.30
Surcharges and Fees
FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND 0.40
FEDERAL E911 0.30
FEDERAL TELEPHONE NUMBER POOLING 0.47
Total: $3.93
Notice I get hit for 911 twice, first for statewide, then again for federal. Oh well - this is the price I pay for not having a land-line
(Why is this post "lame" if HTML formatted, but not "lame" if posted in "Code" mode? Hmm...)
In keeping with the fire and lizard themes, how about "Salamander" for the browser?
I think we need a /. poll on this issue - let the Slashdot croud weigh in! Here's my suggestion:
Should Mozilla change Firebird's name?
First of all, 713 is not the established base for being "childish" in Michael's world. Apparently, 713 is somewhere over whatever Michael thinks is a normal comment rate. (Since he has a mere 97, it's gotta be something low...) Secondly, I pulled the number of years out of my ass. It would be possible to calculate the days or something, but I don't really care enough about Michael to put, like, effort into it.
Also, I know that the FortKnox account has only been around since like the beginning of 2000 or so since that's about the time I registered my account and my UID is slightly lower. Finally, I doubt anyone really cares what Michael has to say. Lord knows I don't read Slashdot for the editors' comments. If Slashdot didn't have an active user community posting comments, I wouldn't be here. There are better sources of repeated news and poorly reported facts. I can find other people who willfully release DDOS attacks on poor webservers while refusing to even offer the courtesy of simply warning a site of impending doom.
Actually, for an interesting comparison, compare FortKnox's user page to michael's - notice which page looks far more like the owner of a troll... (Hint: my vote goes to the owner of "Replies: 22; Score:-1, Flamebait".)
Besides, it was a joke. I don't actually want to get dragged into the "Michael is an ass" debate, although I definately get the feeling that most of the editors actively hate the vocal Slashdot croud and would wish they'd just leave if it wasn't for the page views they generate.
Besides, you're just upset because you're less childish on the Michael Childish Rating Scheme if you take comments over time into effect :)
If we assume that Slashdot was 4 years old when he said that, we get an allotted 178.25 comments annually before you become a child. Since that comment was 2 years ago, that means we have an additional 356.5 allotted comments before becoming a child. Add to the preexisting limit, and you are given 1069.5 comments currently before becoming a child.
So, as you can see, you are misquoting Michael, because by the 713 figure, I am a child, but with the modified figure, I am not. While you are still three times as childy.
Uh, to pretend I'm on topic, this post scratched an itch of being completely pointless but accomplished what I, the author, wanted it to do - make fun of Michael, and use poorly thought out and badly executed math to update the figure. And isn't that what most OSS projects are started for, anyway? If the author is happy with it, then it is successful, right?
Not that I'm a raving Windows fan, although it is my primary desktop, I more tolerate it than enjoy it. (I just find it easier to tolerate XP than to tolerate either Gnome or KDE.) At least until I can afford a PowerBook... :)
Odd, it did the last time we tried...
Let's see, where to start... well, there's Velcro and Tang... Er, anyway. Some things that benefit everyone:
Weather satellites, which warn of impending storms and helping people to be prepared, saving thousands of lives. As well as helping reduce property damage by warning people to board up before they get hit.
Smoke dectors, which almost everyone has, to help people get out of their houses should fire break out. Fire fighters wear materials developed by NASA which help them save lives. Medicine has been improved as well.
Now for some links: Space program benefits us all, an article on how the space program is important (although it doesn't list any good examples), and Inventions (Spinoffs) from Space, a list of space inventions, including a game for children to play.
The space program benefits everyone, even if they don't immediately recognize the benefits. Yeah, the deal that blacks/African Americans/whatever is PC got sucks, and racism plagues America to this day. But there's no reason to take it out on the space program, which has helped everyone.
Yeah, you have the freedom of speech, but everyone else has the freedom to ignore you. And that's why things like this will pass and the vast majority will ignore you. Releasing a press release will probably not reach anyone. The press might read it, decide it's boring, and then drop it. So that doesn't help. Publishing your own newspaper won't help either, because only your friends will read it, and everyone else will just toss it. Trust me - I don't care what you write. I already get my news from AOL Times Warner through my local paper, I don't need another paper poorly written by a couple of weirdo computer freaks.
The fact that you aren't a "big name corporate muickity muck" pretty much guarentees that no one will read your paper or listen to your press release. No one really cares about what you have to say. Just like no one cares about what Slashdot has to say or any of the individual posters have to say. Stop a random person on the street and ask them about the DMCA and chances are very high that they won't know what the hell it is, or, if they do, think it's a good thing to protect Hollywood from the hackers on the Internet. Chances are rather slim that you randomly found another person concerned with the DMCA.
Now I have to admit that the above is very trollish and inflammatory, so now I want to put the above into context. It's meant to put things into the context of the adverage American, the people who watch Joe Millionaire and Survior and American Idol, the people who were more concerned with the President getting a BJ than with Bosnia. In all honesty, I hope I'm being overly cynical. But if past performance is any indicator of the future, I doubt that anyone will be able to get people to care about something like this. Most people would rather just assume that while they don't understand the issue, the people purposing the laws must, and therefore assume that it's in their best interest. Most people also still believe that wealth==morality, and that if the rich argue for something, it must be right, while those poorer are just upset because they don't have the same riches.
Only time will tell, but I just can't find any hope. No one really cares, unless the talking heads on the TV screen say it. And I can't think of any way to change that. Maybe someone else can find hope, but unless CNN starts talking about these issues, I doubt the majority will care, assuming that the government knows best.
Depends on your definition of criminal...
The way you're using the word, breaking any law makes you a criminal. However, there's a reason that laws are broken into two classes. Everything you listed above is a misdemeanor. Most misdemeanors carry a small fine (well, as small as $150-$500), or a couple of days in jail.
Stealing phone service is (potentially) a felony. A felony will cause you to go to prison, and may cause you to forfeit firearm rights, voting rights, and the right to be allowed in lawabiding society. (Whether this is morally right is dubious...) Most people would consider a "criminal" to be someone who commited a felony, not just anyone who broke the law.
So yeah - repeatedly tricking the system into giving you free calls can easily be considered criminal behavior. The motivation was to prevent having to pay for the desired service, which many people would consider immoral (like I do). Most of the things you've listed aren't really criminal behavior (except speeding, to some, who can shove it :)) - these behaviors are within society's norms. Stealing phone service generally isn't - most of society expects people to pay for the services they use.
So while I believe that people can change, and that having at one point stealing service does not irrevocably mark you as a criminal, not accepting it as a past misdeed is dishonest at best.
(Oh, and "alot" is two words. You mean "A LOT". How many people say "alittle"? Sorry, along with "loose" vs "lose", that's one of my pet peeves.)
A Tablet PC might be more useful than this "airplanel V150", but the V150 seems to be targeted to no one. To reiterate his points:
It's priced at £1000 (plus tax) - that's something like $1500, I think (or $1594, accoring to this page). For that much, you can easily buy a cheap laptop, which alone is more than capable of acting as a remote display for a Windows XP Pro box. (Trust me, I know some people who use old Pentium laptops to connect to their Windows XP machines. Not terribly fast, but it works... Total cost was like $100 for laptops + 802.11b cards. Of course, they don't have a stylus, and it's much bulkier.) Of course, with the laptop, you can still use it without the host parent computer.
With a laptop, you can move it anywhere and still use it. With the V150, you have about 30 meteand still use the basirs from the wireless APs until it becomes useless. You can't just take the V150 into the office and use it - it needs to be on the same network as the computer. (Or not - even still, the point probably still stands that effectively it needs to be on the same network to be useful. I'll conceed this point to anyone with real facts.)
When you realize that the V150 is useless without a desktop PC anyway, your total cost comes to the cost of a laptop - unless you're planning on making your existing desktop more portable around the house.
In other words, the "airpanel V150" is an expensive flatscreen monitor that is minimally useful, a pain to set up, and offers nothing better than a laptop would. A real TabletPC would be far more useful than this thing, and probably only be a little more expensive (if the desktop cost were included). I think that was the original poster's point - this thing isn't really that much more useful than a laptop.
"Most of this is due to the failures of Microsoft's basic idea, although ViewSonic must bear some of the blame for not really trying to ease the pain."
The review authors seem to think that most of the fundamental flaws are the way that the Microsoft software interacts with the user, not the way ViewSonic implemented it. (Except for the base-stand stupidity and the non-functional PC-card, which ViewSonic takes the blame on.)
Most of the problems seem to lie with the way Microsoft implements its Remote Desktop software, and not specifically with the device: detecting the wrong wireless network and offering no way to correct it, requiring Windows XP Pro, and the various faults that lie within the Remote Desktop system. (One user at a time on the PC, can't "switch users", issues with sound...)
Other problems may lie with either: forcing the user to by a WinXP Pro upgrade license, like it or not (I already have XP Pro, could I remove the extra ~$200 off the price?), offering a poor explanation of how to set up the wireless network, making it easy to set up an open network, and poor documentation about how the software detects the network.
So, to repeat them: both companies must share the blame. ViewSonic made the crappy hardware, Microsoft made the crappy software. Together, they make a crappy product.
A quine is a program that, when run, exactly reproduces its source code. Nifty - although not particularly useful, it's still kinda neat.
Anyway, find quines in, uh, many languages at The Quine Page.
I have at least four accounts, so everyone must have several! (Of course, I only signed up for two - my ICQ account sorta became an AIM account, and my Netscape mail account also became an AIM account. And then there's the one I retired to switch to a consistant cross-IM naming scheme.)
Because there's really no other good way to monitor your warning level. (Or take a quick peak at your profile, with working hyperlinks.) So I know several people who have themselves on their own buddy list. It is actually useful.
Hense, the section has effectively been retired. I suppose it could be repurposed, but I somehow doubt that will happen. Besides, a new section called "music" would make more sense.
(Or I could just close the window, but my Athlon XP tends to overheat when that happens. (Mainly due to overactive heat and a poorly placed thermostat.))
(Oh, and I'm from Massachusetts, and no, snow isn't really "normal" this time of year, although it has happened in the past this time of year, so it's not unheard of.)
Oh, you did know that, right? You can download ELILO straight off Intel's EFI section. (An observant reader will notice that it's actually hosted by HP's research lab, although I can't actually find the info there.)
Of course, you can also read about EFI and Linux from RedHat.
I wouldn't worry, somehow. Plus EFI is mostly used with the new Itanium architecture. I'm sure Linux will be able to survive the impending DRM apocolypse.
- How does the EFI get onto the harddrive in the first place? If I build a new PC or simply upgrade an old one, do I have to buy a harddrive/motherboard combo? Or is there a stub installed on the board itself? (Which then requires the remainder to be loaded off a CD-ROM, for example.)
- If I want to upgrade the hard drive on an EFI-based computer, is it possible to copy the EFI data from old drive to new drive in an easy manner? Or is this just another time for dd?
- Can I use existing hard drives with the EFI, or are "special" hard drives required? Or will this require repartitioning an existing hard drive? If so, will this require a "new EFI-compatible" partition format? And if so, will it be possible for tools like Partition Magic to alter the table format without data-loss?
- Obviously, what happens when the harddrive becomes corrupted or otherwise fails?
- Does it really store the EFI on the hard drive, or is this a journalistic mistake? When I went looking for answers to these questions on the Web, I found no mention of where the EFI is stored.
There are ways this could work - if, for example, the EFI only used the hard drive to store extensions to the EFI. I suppose the bottom line is that I don't see the usefulness of storing "firmware" data on a hard drive, especially when a lot of the problems listed can easily be solved using flash ROM. I would imagine that today, 8MB would be plenty to store even the most complicated firmware implementation. 8MB flash is relatively cheap, so I would imagine it would make a far better choice of persistant, writable storage than a hard drive.But I'm open to seeing how this will work. I'm assuming that replacing the BIOS is a worthy goal - since I don't work with it directly, I don't know the problems PC-designers are running into. Added to the fact I'm not entirely sure what the EFI is supposed to do, I'm not sure at all why we need the EFI or whether it's even a useful solution. (From my understanding, it is the bridge between the OS and the hardware, effectively being a platform-independant driver store. But I'm not sure.)
The most recent example is the "virtual key" codes in the KeyEvent Java class. Namely, what is the difference between VK_PLUS and VK_ADD !? You can look up their values - VK_ADD is 107, VK_PLUS is 521 - so they aren't synonyms. My guess would be one is produced using "Shift-Equals" on many keyboards, and the other is next to the 6 and the 9 on the numeric pad. But the docs helpfully don't say which is which. (Fortunately, simply looking to see if the character field is "+" is probably sufficient.)
(Also look for VK_SEPARATER , which is included for backwards compatibility, and VK_SEPARATOR , which replaces it. There are numerous instances of spelling errors throughout the Java API. Plus, this is another VK for which I have no clue where it is on the keyboard - maybe it isn't present on PC-104 QWERTY boards?)
But, yes, the most frusterating experience I have had in programming isn't from my own code, but from trying to figure out official documentation. Especially when the documentation is provably wrong - no, you can't use a comma-separated list as a value to cursor in IE6's CSS, despite the documentation saying that it works.
I know there are other, worse examples, but this is what comes to mind. (I remember spending an entire summer trying to get Java code to call an Oracle stored procedure, and failing. I spent a lot of time reading Slashdot that summer, while trying to come up with another method to force it to work. We finally decided it was impossible.)
Of course, incomplete and incorrect documentation are not just found in commerical software - many open source libraries are even worse.
How to dual-boot Windows NT/2000/XP with Linux using NTLDR
You should be able to set up Linux without needing a boot disk, although I would really, really, really recommend against trying it.
But he's backing up his assertions with outside, third party sources. All anonymous. Hmm...
Trust factor: zero. Probablility of this guy trying to make a buck off of a controversial subject: very good.
Post a link suggesting that this guy was anything but a profiteer, trying to make a buck by bringing down a target that many others wanted to see fall. Go ahead - the Googlewashing of "Fortunate Son" made it practically impossible for me to find out anything about the book or him, other than the vast collection of people I group with the "Michael Moore" hyper-anti-conservative croud.
So I can tell you from first-hand experience, the WinXP BSOD looks exactly like the Win2K BSOD which presumably looks like the WinNT BSOD.
Yep. Windows - secure at any MHz.
No. Because the server now lives in CA :P.
Also, it's doubtful that would be considered illegal anyway because you aren't preventing the server from determining where you're posting from, just people reading your post. I want you to tell me where I'm posting this message from, including IP. Unless you have access to the server logs, you can't - because that info isn't in the post information displayed. I'm making no effort to mask my identity to the Slashdot servers.
However, my understanding was that this only applied to my ISP. I'm also making no effort to hide the origin from my ISP. So I'm in the clear based on that law. (Although IANAL, and even if I were, I'm not in Michigan, so I still wouldn't be able to give good legal advice :)) Once it gets to the Slashdot servers, telling them to withhold user information in the post should be considered OK. After all, my reading your post, even if anonymous, does not involve you concealing your point of origin. It just means I don't know who posted the given post.
(Another reading might make Slashdot allowing anonymous posting illegal, but people who post anonymously would still be in the clear. Maybe.)
I don't know. Just stay away from Michigan for a while :).
NOT IP! However, if it's CS, then their WON-ID is fair game. (The WON-ID is a globally unique player identifier, which Half-Life (and hense CS) allows banning by. Unfortunately, such IDs are only given to Internet servers. LAN servers receive bogus WON-IDs, and players must be banned by IP.)
While I'm not currently on a dynamic IP, I am on a recycled IP. I have no idea what the person who had it before me did. It would suck to get banned from games because someone who had your IP once cheated. Many games now give out a unique ID per install, based on the CD-key.
There would also need to be a policy of how people got off the list. Something like after a week or so should be enough to teach cheaters to stop being asses. Of course, if using WON-ID, the cheater could probably work around by reinstalling the game using a new CD-key, but that would be a major hassle. Hopefully enough to keep them off for most of the time - two minutes cheating, then five minutes reinstalling should get annoying fast.
Until someone writes a cheat to rewrite the IDs. You know, maybe IP isn't such a bad idea, as long as it gets removed after a set period of time or there's an arbitration procedure.
Bleh. Cheaters suck.