One is that he has invented the whole situation. It's relatively unlikely that you can program and you cannot get a programming job. It may happen, but that's not my experience.
I would guess you didn't do much sending out of resumes or interviewing. It's hard to get work if you don't have what they want, and it seemed like every time I think I knew what employers want, and I had that, they raise the requirements even higher. Even where the extra requirements serve no purpose and wouldn't matter. But remember, the whole idea of using resumes and interviewing is to screen people out not to find people; there are always lots of people looking for work, the idea is to screen out ones that, for whatever reason, you don't want to bother with.
I remember a few years ago that I sent out, in one month, some 900 resumes, that was when places started having you fax them, but before e-mail was available. To get two, count them, two interviews. One of them I got asked a question, which really helped: they asked if I had done any web sites. Which I hadn't. I hadn't thought of it. So, the first thing I did was, I decided on a theme and set up one to show what I could do. On the strength of that - it had to be, I hadn't changed anything else - I was able to get hired at two different places, one for a short-term technical support job, and later for a longer term one. Even though I never did any website development, the fact I could do it, showed that I did have technical experience and the capacity to do other technical work.
Two is that he has a problem that is impossible to tell from the distance, like an attitude in the interview, things like that.
That's quite possible. But still, some companies just do interviews to test the waters and see what's out there, some because they want to offer the job to a specific person but have to show they've done some interviews, and some so they can fake out the requirements for using H1B visa candidates, by pretending they tried to find someone but no one is available to fill the position.
Getting a job has never been easy - with very few exceptions - even when there supposedly was a shortage of programmers. This goes back over twenty-five years; when I started programming we sometimes used punched cards. First computer I ever worked on ran four terminals in 56K of memory (no, that's K, not meg) and 256K of disk space. And did a fairly good job. Ahh, the memories.
Don't know how I missed this on the post I just made, that should say that you could give each of 1000 customers the equivalent of 1mb of guaranteed bandwidth at the $35 a month rate. I forgot to include the count. If you sold it to 2000 customers, the figure would be 512K symmetric for maybe $20 a month. Or you could simply sell anyone as much bandwidth as they wanted to buy, for $35 per 1024K of bandwidth per month. If someone wants a 10M bandwidth, it costs them $350. But they have guaranteed connectivity, it's not a sham. Which is why Comcast can sell you a connection claiming it's 16 meg at $55 a month, because it's not guaranteed, they have to be offering a minimum of 10 other people the same 16 meg a month to afford that price for that much bandwidth.
I looked it up a few months ago, for the Washington D.C. area, if you can get to the nearest interconnect point, which I think is in Warrenton, Virginia, about 40 miles from DC, 1 gigabit Internet symmetric is about $11,000 per month. If you presume you're going to give each customer the equivalent of 1 mb of guaranteed bandwidth, the cost per customer is $12.00 per month. Adding in an estimate of perhaps $5 a month to cover general repair costs (this is what it costs to support a phone line in most commercial offices), maybe $5 to cover costs of the physical plant and payments for running a line to Warrenton, and perhaps 100% of the monthly fee to allow for actual operations, you could sell 1mb guaranteed symmetric with some burstability for around $35 a month, and you wouldn't have to care what the customers used it for.
Remember, the internet runs over the *phone* network. The big cellphone/telecommunications providers own most of that. AT&T and Verizon are both Tier 1 providers with huge networks. It's almost *guaranteed* the Comcast is paying AT&T and/or Verizon for bandwidth and/or transit. And yet, Verizon and AT&T are competing with them.
And the same is true for most of the other cable TV providers in the United States. They have been offering phone and internet service for the past 5 years or so, but only because the telcos weren't doing it. They are now. The cable companies are FUCKED.
Actually, you can get unpaid peering with most larger providers if your traffic with them is very high and more-or-less symmetric. A company as large as Comcast has its own internal network and probably has significant peerage arrangements with other providers. I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast didn't qualify as a Tier 1 provider themselves in view of their size.
If you do huge volumes, AT&T, MCI, AOL and several others will do unpaid peerage, provided you don't use them for transit (traffic being transferred to another network than the peer's). So Comcast's transit needs might be significantly less than you would think. And if they had any brains, they'd find out where large volumes of traffic are going and peer with them. For example, if I was running a large ISP I'd want to have peering arrangements with Google (for both Google and for Youtube) and perhaps Yahoo and a few other very big providers, because that would significantly reduce the amount I'd have to pay for transit, and the customers would get much better service. But rather than do that, a lot of ISPs want to argue that Google and such should be paying them for carrying their content, not realizing that the content the customers can get to is the reason they are buying service from you.
Well, for more than 30 years I've had unlimited local phone service on my (residential) phone line. This was the same when I got it from GTE in Long Beach, California; Pacific Bell in La Mirada, California; C&P Telephone of Washington, D.C; from C&P Telephone of Maryland, then when it changed its name to Bell Atlantic of Maryland (and Bell Atlantic of Virginia), then when competitive local service came along, from Starpower/RCN in Maryland and Virginia, then from Cavalier when someone other than Verizon of Virginia offered DSL service (Verizon is the new name for Bell Atlantic and now GTE).
It meant that from all these different companies I could make all the calls I want to anyone, anywhere within the service area, for as long as I want to call. Or make no calls at all, only receive them. Or not use the phone at all. In any case, I'd pay the same rate.
Next came nationwide unlimited service for flat rate (which I believe included Canada) first from Comcast (at $33 a month) when I bought Triple Play, and now from YMax Magic Jack (at $20 a year (and no, that's not an error, the phone service costs $35 for the device plus $6 shipping, which includes 1 year of service and additional years are $19.95) with their VOIP service). It doesn't matter how much or how little I use, I pay the same rate because they sell unlimited service.
There was a big, similar squawk from phone companies back about 20 years ago or so when people started taking advantage of what was promised, unlimited service, to use it to call BBSs for hours on end.
Well, these services are tariffed, they have to tell publicly if there are limits. This is why companies like Comcast do not like Net Neutrality. They want to make claims they couldn't possibly fullfil.
Now, obviously no phone company can truly offer everyone unlimited service, but if they were going to set limits they would have had to publish them in the tariff schedules, and thus openly admit exactly what the restrictions were. This is why Comcast doesn't want to say anything because rather than admit they are overselling the service, they are putting in amorphous 'caps' of service in which customers have no idea what the limit is or how to know if they are close to it. A 'cancel on overuse' without a way to know what is overuse is a clear red flag indicating misconduct on the part of the cable company.
They want to pretend or make it sound like they offer unlimited service while at the same time cutting off people for going over some unstated, unannounced limit, and not giving them a means to know what the limit is or how close they are.
If they can tell someone is using a lot, they are obviously metering, and could inform people. But that would represent honorable conduct by a professional organization, something Comcast is incapable of being. Like call them and find out how much a service is, you can't find out unless you tell them where you're at, because in places where they have no competitors the price is significantly higher. One time I tried to use an advertised discount but could not get it, that was only available in certain areas, e.g. ones where Comcast has serious competition.
As for unprofessional, I had Comcast for triple play where I used to live; every time I called them for service, they were always late, at least an hour or more in every case, and I had to call them to find out when someone was going to show up. I had Peapod for grocery delivery probably twice a month. In the nine months I think they were late two or maybe three times, and in every case, they called me well in advance to tell me they were going to be late. This is despite the fact that the Comcast service ended up costing twice as much as the advertised rate, usually running $196 a month, not the alleged $99 public rate.
I mean, I'm still trying to figure out why my high-speed internet now costs $59 a month after the $24 a month promotional period, but apparently if I add phone service the price is $48 a month (for both services). As much as I dislike Verizon I'm moving to them because I can get Naked DSL (DSL without phone service) for $19 a month. I don't need 16 mbps service at this price, I can live with 768K.
As much as I detest and hate spam, I can find nothing wrong with the decision of the Virginia Supreme Court. I have actually read the decision so I do understand what is being said.
First, the statute does not ban all unauthorized use of the mail servers targeted by the defendant, thus the statute in question is not an 'anti-trespass' ordinance as the Commonwealth would claim. This point, they're correct on, and a statute written that way would essentially make ALL unsolicited e-mail sent to someone illegal unless you had prior permission, the same way you can't just cross someone's land without permission. If you post something on Slashdot or on a usenet news article, and I send you a message to ask you a question either because I liked your article or I disagreed with it, as it would stand, that sort of a message violates the statute and would conceivably be chargeable as trespass (or trespass to chattels) we made all unauthorized use of someone's mail server to either be criminal or an action which could be sued over.
Second, the statute does not differentiate between types of messages that have less (or no) protection, such as pure commercial speech, pornography or obscenity, and a message which might be offensive to others but is neither a commercial nor pornographic nor obscene.
On this point, they're correct too. While the Commonwealth is claiming it would not use the law to target non-commercial speech, there's nothing in the law that says it can't. I am thinking of the 'Jesus is Coming' spam that went out a few years ago that was sent by Clarence Thomas (no, it's someone else, not the U.S. Supreme Court Justice). I for one would go after something like that because that's also spam, however then we do have First Amendment issues.
Third, even if fixing the statute to take some e-mail out would stand muster, the court cannot rewrite the statute, that's the legislature's job. The court could conceivably strike portions of the statute to save its constitutionality, it cannot add to the statute or give it a limiting construction; that would mean the judiciary is legislating, something it isn't supposed to do.
Fourth, there's no fraud, because it didn't matter what the sender address was, the mail system would have accepted it whether it was a real address or a bogus one. Fraud requires someone to rely to their detriment on your false information
There's no way to send e-mail anonymously unless you put something false or misleading into the sender address, thus the First Amendment protection on anonymous communications is violated because it prohibits distributing mail with a false header, and that's the only way you can send anonymous mail. (If you say, 'use a remailer' then the remailer can be subpoenaed and their records checked.)
In short, the law comes up short. I don't like the idea of spam but you can't throw the (constitutional) baby out with the (spam) bathwater.
If you go to the Wyoming state website, the links that go to the state statutes and the texts of the statutes themselves are marked with copyright notices (irrelevant, copyright notices became optional in the U.S. twenty years ago), and the state claims that the laws may not be used commercially, supposedly that you can't sell it (because the state either gets a commission or it gets free law books from the publishing companies in exchange for giving them exclusivity or some special right to publish them).
Some cities try this too, because they get free copies of their statutes for the city and their libraries for allowing a company to have an exclusive right to reprint. The Mitchie Company is or was big in this area. However, a federal court has ruled that where a city incorporated a national model code into its city ordinances (with permission of the code publisher) the code as adopted became public domain.
So there is clearly case law supporting that statutes are not copyrightable.
The guy who wants to raise this issue has two possible choices; wait to see if they sue him, or he can go to court himself, if the state is close, and sue for a declaratory judgment that the state's statutes are not copyrightable.
While states do have the capacity to hold copyright - contrary to some posters opinions here, it is only the U.S. Federal government that in many cases does not or cannot copyright its works - it is generally considered that statute laws, even of state governments, are not copyrightable. It's considered against public policy since someone defending a case may have to quote from many statutes, and there can be a point where one's copying would be more than that permissible under fair use.
This also includes court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court declared more than 100 years ago (in Wheaton v. Peters) that its decisions were not copyrightable, and this has generally been the rule for all court decisions. Even the Berne Convention, which tries to put as many things as possible under automatic copyright protection, indicates that signatory countries have the right to decide whether or not there is protection for statute laws or court decisions.
I think this is mostly inertia among those (lawyers) who supposedly should know better but either think they can get away with it or don't care. I saw some stuff once, in English, on a Japanese website, I think it was a Japanese Government website, that had a copyright notice including "all rights reserved."
That's a "statement of rights reservation" in order to claim certain privileges under the Buenos Aires Convention of 1912. Only thing is, the BA Convention is applicable only for works published by those who are residents (or corporations domesticated under) the countries which are signatories to the convention, which is the U.S., Mexico and about a dozen or so South American countries. Japan is not a signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention, but it is a signatory to the Berne Convention. So is every member of the Buenos Aires Convention, and Berne gives greater protections that Buenos Aires does, so BA has been effectively a dead letter since 2000 when the last member of the BA convention - Honduras - became a signatory to Berne. The use of "all rights reserved" by a Japanese organization provides them with absolutely no benefit whatsoever!
Can they accuse you of domainsquatting if you ask for money or something like that?
Seems like I've heard similar horror stories of people losing their domains because they asked someone to make an offer.
I think the case here is probably that they made the demand first. But the fact remains, if it's your own name it's automatically for a legitimate purpose and a cybersquatting claim will fail.
I own every version of Paul Robinson I could buy, of the 14 versions using "PaulRobinson" or "Paul-Robinson" and ending in.BIZ,.COM,.INFO,.NAME,.NET,.ORG, and.US, I own 9 of them including both versions of.US,.ORG and.INFO. If there's someone else named Paul Robinson - and there are, I've shared e-mail or spoken with at least 10 other people with the same name as myself, including a man who was the system manager of the computer system at the college I studied at - he has no more right to argue cybersquatting than I would against the owners of the other 5 domains I couldn't get (or couldn't afford).
Isn't it illegal to trick someone into doing something illegal?
That's entrapment, and it only applies as a defense for a criminal prosecution. However, if the other side makes an offer, then when the person accepts or makes a counter-offer, uses that in a suit to claim cybersquatting, there may be grounds of unclean hands to defeat that claim.
As you probably noticed yourself, it's likely a legal trap;
I don't think he said that so much as he asked what his options were.
if you show that you're interested in taking money for the domain name, they will then use that as an argument during legal proceedings that you're a domain name squatter.
Again, no, they made the offer to him first; he didn't ask them for anything; they asked him. Also, even if it is their trademark, and is registered in the U.S., they have to show an improper purpose to claim domain name squatting. If it's his own name, it's automatically a proper purpose and he could even offer to sell it to them first and it cannot ever be cybersquatting.
To argue otherwise - that if someone makes me an unsolicited offer to buy something I own causes me to be unable to sell it to them would be ridiculous; it would leave every single company who wanted to legally acquire a domain from someone else in the position that they could never buy a domain from someone who had it because the other party could never sell it to them even though they are a willing purchaser and therefore it would frustrate a company that wants to obtain a domain from someone who has it and might be willing to sell it.
I took a look at some websites, and in order for a use to actually be cybersquatting, all of the following must be true:
the domain name registrant had a bad-faith intent to profit from the trademark
the trademark was distinctive at the time the domain name was first registered
the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to the trademark, and
the trademark qualifies for protection under federal trademark laws -- that is, the trademark is distinctive and its owner was the first to use the trademark in commerce.
Since the guy is using the domain to get mail, he has a legitimate use of the domain, even if it wasn't his own name. Since it is his name, no matter what he's using it for, the use is automatically in good faith (short of him using it to run a criminal enterprise).
This is a trademark issue. If you ask for money for a domain name that includes their trademark, then they have a legal case against you for domain squatting.
Not if they came to him first. And not if his name is the same as theirs. I can open a store called "Paul Robinson's Department Store" and the currently existing Robinson's Department Store (actually J.W. Robinson or Robinson-May depending on what part of the U.S. they're in) chain has no grounds to stop me (especially if I included the note "Not affiliated with the J.W. Robinson Co." on the entrance door of my store); one may always use one's birth name (or married name in the case of a woman, since men don't change their names when they get married) to do business even if it is identical to an existing company in the same line of business.
Further, they would have to argue that they are well known in the United States and also that he has no legitimate use for the domain. As I just pointed out, one always has a legitimate use of one's own name.
Several years ago I registered a domain name for something I was trying which I was thinking about. Some guy, whose last name was the same as the domain I registered asked me if I'd be interested in selling it. Well, I needed the money so I quoted a reasonable offer. After the check cleared I did a change of the owner from me to him.
I took his personal check because he was in the U.S., the rules are very different when it's an international transaction. (I once paid for a shareware registration to a guy in Canada using a personal check drawn on a U.S. bank, I presume Canadian banks have no problem handling those; but I wouldn't accept anything but a guaranteed payment for an international transaction.)
Since the possibility of fraud is high when the buyer is outside the same country (on low value transactions where there's no money to chase them if you can't recover it), you make sure it's a guaranteed payment. I would suggest either wire transfer (and make sure the payment additionally includes your bank's incoming wire transfer fee) or Western Union for the same reason scammers use them: so the money is guaranteed and can't be revoked or a fraudulent transfer such as a forged check. Especially since the funds transfer is from a foreign country, it might cost you $30 or more to clear a check issued on a bank in some other country, presuming you don't get the check back in six or eight weeks as a forgery. If they want a written bill of sale or something, fine. But you get guaranteed payment before they get the domain.
Another option if the amount of the sale is not over the limit: set up a new, fresh account using Paypal or Google Checkout that goes to a new checking account at a bank (other than the one you do business with now) that will allow you to open one with no monthly fee (and check the paperwork they give you, sometimes they sneak fees in there), then, once the transfer clears, take all the money out except a token amount ($1) in cash, and then deposit the cash in your other account. Or close the account as you no longer need it.
This way, they can't undo the transaction and you've got the cash. Even if they try to reverse the transaction, the bank can't reverse it because you didn't use paper; if you took a bank check from them they could reverse the payment to your bank. Also you don't want to use the same bank as your own because they can use set off if the other side tries to renege on the transaction.
In fact, if they are going to use wire transfer, use a new account because I suspect the information needed for an incoming wire is the same as could be used for an outgoing one, and they might be able to siphon money out of your account. Or check with your bank to find out how to have a wire transfer that doesn't allow them to extract money from you, but I think wire transfers are ridiculous because of the fact that your bank charges you for the incoming transfer as well.
Automatic red flag: if they offer you more and want you to arrange something to send them money back. 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% of the time it's a scam for them to rip someone else off and leave you on the hook to make the person they stole from whole, since they can't be found, but you can.
I just went and looked it up for an example transaction, a Western Union transfer of $1,000 from Netherlands to the U.S. is about 711 Euros and costs around 41 Euros for the transaction, probably less than it would cost them for both ends of a wire transfer. If you're charging less than $1000 for the domain, the transfer fee to them will probably be less.
If you do these things and the transaction goes through, it hasn't cost you anything but a little time and you've protected yourself.
Otherwise it's no different from selling anything you own to someone else. A domain name has a registered owner, you transfer the registration to someone else, they own it. Most personal property doesn't have registered owners, if you sell something they just t
Don't worry, Gordon Freeman will take care of them. I've seen him kill hundreds of zombies. Or maybe I was seeing something, I don't remember exactly; perhaps I had something to do with it.
As I write on my blog, there's a big group of - for lack of a better name - crackpots who go around claiming the Bush (Jr.) Administration had something to do with the 9/11 events or in the destruction of the two towers. Which is ridiculous for the simple reason I point out: "the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that. The current administration's staffing policies have been directed toward political cronyism and connections, even at the expense of even bare competence. From what I've seen, anyone working there that has any self respect or common sense has quit."
It's pointless to argue that they have the kind of people smart enough to pull off this sort of thing and keep it secret. If they were that good, they'd have been able to cover up the whole fake "weapons of mass destruction" issue in order to make it look like they really were present in Iraq.
I noted a similar incident a long time ago, as I pointed out once in this message which was nothing more than one organization filing for the domain name of another, (Sprint registering for the name "MCI.NET") but rather humorous in the result.
It has been a standard practice for years that while memory manufacturers measure in 1024^2 megabytes and 1024^3 gigabytes, disk drive manufacturers have been measuring in 1000^2 megabytes and 1000^3 gigabytes. I have an article on my blog about this, how my new computer has a certain amount claimed on the box, but Windows shows a lower amount, which when you use the two different figures it does match, while the box on my new computer says it's a 400gb drive, it is correct if you use 1000^3 gigabytes, but it is only 373gb if you use 1024^3 gigabytes.
For decades, TV (and computer monitor) manufacturers have announced the size of the picture tube diagonally, which gets you a larger number than either horizontal or vertical measurement. And they have generally openly admitted that their measurements are diagonal; every ad for TV specifically says that.
I suspect that the drive manufacturers are getting in trouble and losing lawsuits because they do not explicitly state that they are using 1000^3 sized gigabytes rather than the 1024^3 sized that people normally expect.
It's an attempt to cheat people when you're not honest about what you're doing. I mean, I may not particularly like them using the slightly sleazy method of the 6% shortage by using 1000^3 size but as long as they're straightforward about it, I have no problem with them using that method.
I think we had an article here a few months ago when the last manufacturer of reel-to-reel audio tape closed. I can remember when I purchased a slide rule in the stationery section of Woolworths. Both no longer exist; I can't even remember the last time I saw a slide rule. Yet, I'm sure there will be places and applications where a slide rule might be more appropriate than either a hand-held computer or a calculator. Perhaps they'll be around again in the future. They still make buggy whips and equipment for horses, but a lot less than they did back around 1908 even though there are a lot more people now than there were then.
There are actually some musical groups that still release recordings on vinyl. And a number of people who still have large record collections; in fact my brother wants a new needle for his phonograph as a birthday present.
Technology changes things, and sometimes some things become less interesting than others. Chess is still popular on physical chessboards even though we have chess servers and chess playing programs, for a number of reasons including no need for electricity.
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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> -- My Blog
New York can very constitutionally tax goods that are used in New York. And it can reach Amazon to enforce it because Amazon has "purposefully availed" itself of the New York market by advertising there and shipping orders there. See the case Asahi Metal.
Uh, no they can't. In Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court 480 U.S. 102 (1987), the court found the exact opposite of your claim; the forum state lacked sufficient contacts to have jurisdiction over the plaintiff in the case. You might also want to look up Complete Auto Transit v. Brady, for the rules (a four-part test) on when a state tax violates interstate commerce. Further, this issue has long since been settled with the 1992 Quill case (504 US 298). "In Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the Supreme Court explained that a business had to be physically present in a state before that state could require the business to collect use tax on its behalf." (Tax Foundation Website)
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Paul Robinson My Blog
While I've not read the report and I suspect it's based on a number of either inadequately grounded or misapplied conclusions, I think that the whole idea is incorrect because it "places the cart before the horse," in that it looks at men who come from the Middle East, see that many of them have tended to go into technological occupations, and presume from that a terrorist mindset.
It's like a discussion I got into once by some nutjob who thought the answer to the problem of terrorists from that region attacking the U.S. was to nuke the whole Middle East, even countries that had nothing to do with what happened in New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. I pointed out that if you make an unprovoked attack against millions of people for something that 99.9995% of them had nothing to do with and no control over, the survivors will respond with a viciousness and anger that will make the events of 9/11 look like a love tap. And not all of the people who are supportive of their causes are in the Middle East, unless you plan to nuke parts of Europe too. As those attacks changed a few thousand military and relatives of those killed in minor events prior to this (like the U.S.S. Cole or military barracks bombings), to millions of Americans outraged over these events, doing something stupid like that will create, instead of perhaps 10,000 or 50,000 committted terrorists willing to die for their cause, 1,000,000 or 5,000,000 really angry people willing to commit murder of people in the U.S. or die in response attacks to avenge the unprovoked and unwarranted killing of millions of innocent people. And we will have deserved it.
I'd like to simply point out that Middle East societies had - possibly before they got too badly infected by their military campaign known as the Islamic religion - a long history of scientific and engineering progress, much going back to before the existence of the Roman Empire. We are constantly digging up relics showing really advanced technological development of devices and artifacts that ran with either water or wind power or used complicated counterweight and various simple machines to do very complicated tasks.
Let's not forget that they built huge pyramids using nothing more than engineering knowhow (in addition to lots of grunt labor) in ways that today, we would find extremely difficult to duplicate without powered tools. And very hard to do even with them.
Basically, you keep copies of files in order to be able to restore them if something happens to your originals. But, outside of disposing of redundant or useless information (like, say, a copy of a receipt for payment after the time they can sue you for non-payment and it's no longer needed for tax purposes), disposal of information in large organizations has a strong implication that it's done for nefarious purposes.
What I mean by that is that typically large organizations keep voluminous records in case they're going to get sued (or are questioned about their actions before congress in the case of a government agency, which can amount to the same thing for your career), which means destroying records often indicates you fear the information will be detrimental to your side if it gets subpoenaed.
I kind of learned this accidentally because of my own practices. When I was going on-line and talking to women, I kept everything; e-mails, transcripts of IM chats, anything dealing with anyone I spoke to. The simple reason was that if I ever met the lady, and it turned out she was underage, I would have regular, documented proof that I was under the impression she was at least 18. I found out later some guys got busted because they talked on-line to some girl, and went to meet her to go to a motel, and got busted when they showed up, and evidence from on-line communication showed they clearly believed the girl was jail bait, in some cases, under 14.
Which goes right along with the whole point: If you're doing something wrong, your paperwork is what's going to hang you; if you're not into wrongdoing, your paperwork is what's going to save you.
Paul Robinson - My Blog
Sometimes the problem is figuring out where the problem is, or exactly what code paths are being used. Here is a suggestion I got from a magazine which presented a way to provide for tracing of either procedures or code segments. Now, this was done for Visual Basic, but it can be done from any language that provides for dynamic variables that have an initializer and a destroyer.
In VB, you have a variable tied to a class, which is declared in the procedure (a sub or function in VB) you want to mark. You create (or instantiate) that variable at the start of the procedure, assigning its name to the procedure. And that's it. When you call the variable's init code it writes out the name of the procedure beginning and the time, and saves both.
When the procedure ends, the variable's lifespan is up, and the destroy method is automatically invoked to clean up the class for that variable. So it can now give the name of the procedure that is exiting, and how long it ran for. Or how much CPU time. Or anything else you want to report. The practice works automatically as long as a local variable of a class which is declared in a procedure is automatically destroyed when the procedure that instantiated it ends.
If you need to get indicators for less than a full procedure, you do an explicit call on the variable's destroy method at the point you want to indicate a piece of code you're monitoring ends.
So you end up getting a listing showing procedure 1 start, procedure 2 start, procedure 3 start (time), procedure 3 end (time), procedure 4 start (time), and nothing further, you know that procedure 4 is where it's hanging up. You also know how long it's running up to the point it hangs. This is very similar to the READY TRACE and RESET TRACE that's been available in Cobol for decades.
This is really helpful when you have a long-running program or one that handles a lot of different events and such, and you don't necessarily know what is happening or the execution path. The program can tell you what it's doing, or you can even write the information to a log file or the registry (for Windows-based programs). It's really great for applications because you can selectively enable or disable the practice at run time, and as such, you can track down an error causing a program to hang or be not responsive down to the precise line of code where the problem is, if you need to. Or you can simply use it to monitor which paths are being executed.
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Paul Robinson - My Blog
I think I'll stick with my keyboard from Inland. Sure, it's just a plain black keyboard, standard 110 key or whatever it is, and it isn't very fancy, but, then again, it only costs $8.00. I can't see spending as much as my monitor for a keyboard.
Are you actually claiming you think the game ends at Chell's "victory candescence?" In case you're actually thinking the game ends there - which I doubt is likely - if you get killed there it starts you over again a little earlier in the level, I think just before you enter the fire, and it will keep doing this forever, or until you figure out how to escape being "baked". In case you did believe that was then end, here's a hint.
When you are about to get to the fire, and you can see the cement wall in front of you above the railing, point your portal gun at the wall above the walkway in front of you, and fire a portal. Turn to your left, and fire a portal low on the wall below you, then jump into that portal. You want it to be low enough that you fall into it; if you miss, you end up in the slag and have to try again. When you do make the jump, it lands you on the (concrete) platform above the fire, where the real challenge in level 19 actually begins.
What I've found really helpful are the video walkthroughs on You Tube showing how to complete the levels. There were times when I had to "go to the videotape" to figure out how to solve some of the problems. Sometimes it can be amazing to watch. One guy figured a way to get the companion cube back before the end scene in the game, by committing suicide in the fire 3 times before incinerating the cube, then firing the blue portal at the entrance door (which causes it to disappear, the door is not a valid target), then firing the yellow portal at the center of the far edge of the ceiling in the workstation area in the room where GlaDOS is located, the companion cube then falls out of the ceiling!
Actually there is a tool to make maps for portal and the SDK even includes a copy of one of the levels - the one where GlaDOS says the test is impossible - so you can see what it takes to construct a level. And to put it bluntly, it's a lot of [expletive deleted] work!
Long before I bought The Orange Box - in fact, about four months before I'd ever even heard of Portal (I only got it about a week ago) - I wrote in my blog, back in June, an article about the tools which are available for designing maps for these games. And the Hammer map editor for Half-Life 2 / Portal is either as complicated as the one for Half-Life I / Quake III or even more so. These tools are very difficult to work with and hard to use. Notwithstanding that the maps involved are extremely intricate to do all the things necessary to implement the game. Somehow I wonder why the full "3D immersion" feature so skillfully implemented in the editor for Duke Nukem 3 was never tried for any of the other games. And we've got more capability now; Duke Nukem did a 3-D immersion in a DOS-based application; we now have all of the graphics capability and mouse capacity and all the other features of graphical user interfaces, and yet, sometimes they don't take advantage of all the power that is available.
The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce.
This quote alone shows his lack of understanding, perhaps lack of intelligence and definite misunderstanding of finance. He may be a fairly good businessman or he's just lucky he's got other people to handle his affairs. But he obviously knows very little about the cost of things. Let's examine the issue, shall we?
First, someone has to dig holes in the ground
have mining equipment to dig the holes
have miners to go into the holes
and blast out rock
rock has to be crushed and ground for the processor
then refined and processed to extract the ore
Okay, let's say that it costs about $10 a ton to process ore-bearing rock, and your intent is to make a profit of at least $2 a ton. If you can extract, say, 6 pounds of copper per ton (which I think is about right), and you can wholesale it out at $2 a pound and make a profit. But if you have to process 40 tons or ore to get enough gold to make one ounce, then you have to charge around $400 an ounce (or whatever gold costs now) when dividing up costs between the two ores. Simmons probably thinks gold grows on trees, I'd be surprised if he even knows that people mine it like coal or copper. Or I wonder if he'd realize that because on 40 tons of ore they can get, say, 2880 ounces of copper (troy ounces: 12 ounces per pound) and one ounce of gold, then gold should, on the basis of scarcity, be 2880 times as expensive as one ounce of copper. Since, in our example, copper costs about 16c an ounce, an ounce of gold would then cost $480.00. Or whatever the numbers are, you can probably get the idea from what I've just said. Gold is much more scarce than copper in ore-bearing rock, thus it costs a lot more.
Now, I don't know whether his line There's no real use for it meant no use for gold, or he, in effect, is saying there is no reason gold should be so expensive. Obviously the second reason is wrong, and as for the first, there's no use for gold except fillings, electrical components, anti-corrosive plating in thousands of applications from marine connections to flatware, and a store of wealth. Yeah, I guess there really isn't any use for gold or any reason it's expensive. No reason at all.
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I'm going to guess that it's two things
I'm also going to guess that it's two things :o)
One is that he has invented the whole situation. It's relatively unlikely that you can program and you cannot get a programming job. It may happen, but that's not my experience.
I would guess you didn't do much sending out of resumes or interviewing. It's hard to get work if you don't have what they want, and it seemed like every time I think I knew what employers want, and I had that, they raise the requirements even higher. Even where the extra requirements serve no purpose and wouldn't matter. But remember, the whole idea of using resumes and interviewing is to screen people out not to find people; there are always lots of people looking for work, the idea is to screen out ones that, for whatever reason, you don't want to bother with.
I remember a few years ago that I sent out, in one month, some 900 resumes, that was when places started having you fax them, but before e-mail was available. To get two, count them, two interviews. One of them I got asked a question, which really helped: they asked if I had done any web sites. Which I hadn't. I hadn't thought of it. So, the first thing I did was, I decided on a theme and set up one to show what I could do. On the strength of that - it had to be, I hadn't changed anything else - I was able to get hired at two different places, one for a short-term technical support job, and later for a longer term one. Even though I never did any website development, the fact I could do it, showed that I did have technical experience and the capacity to do other technical work.
Two is that he has a problem that is impossible to tell from the distance, like an attitude in the interview, things like that.
That's quite possible. But still, some companies just do interviews to test the waters and see what's out there, some because they want to offer the job to a specific person but have to show they've done some interviews, and some so they can fake out the requirements for using H1B visa candidates, by pretending they tried to find someone but no one is available to fill the position.
Getting a job has never been easy - with very few exceptions - even when there supposedly was a shortage of programmers. This goes back over twenty-five years; when I started programming we sometimes used punched cards. First computer I ever worked on ran four terminals in 56K of memory (no, that's K, not meg) and 256K of disk space. And did a fairly good job. Ahh, the memories.
Don't know how I missed this on the post I just made, that should say that you could give each of 1000 customers the equivalent of 1mb of guaranteed bandwidth at the $35 a month rate. I forgot to include the count. If you sold it to 2000 customers, the figure would be 512K symmetric for maybe $20 a month. Or you could simply sell anyone as much bandwidth as they wanted to buy, for $35 per 1024K of bandwidth per month. If someone wants a 10M bandwidth, it costs them $350. But they have guaranteed connectivity, it's not a sham. Which is why Comcast can sell you a connection claiming it's 16 meg at $55 a month, because it's not guaranteed, they have to be offering a minimum of 10 other people the same 16 meg a month to afford that price for that much bandwidth.
I looked it up a few months ago, for the Washington D.C. area, if you can get to the nearest interconnect point, which I think is in Warrenton, Virginia, about 40 miles from DC, 1 gigabit Internet symmetric is about $11,000 per month. If you presume you're going to give each customer the equivalent of 1 mb of guaranteed bandwidth, the cost per customer is $12.00 per month. Adding in an estimate of perhaps $5 a month to cover general repair costs (this is what it costs to support a phone line in most commercial offices), maybe $5 to cover costs of the physical plant and payments for running a line to Warrenton, and perhaps 100% of the monthly fee to allow for actual operations, you could sell 1mb guaranteed symmetric with some burstability for around $35 a month, and you wouldn't have to care what the customers used it for.
Remember, the internet runs over the *phone* network. The big cellphone/telecommunications providers own most of that. AT&T and Verizon are both Tier 1 providers with huge networks. It's almost *guaranteed* the Comcast is paying AT&T and/or Verizon for bandwidth and/or transit. And yet, Verizon and AT&T are competing with them.
And the same is true for most of the other cable TV providers in the United States. They have been offering phone and internet service for the past 5 years or so, but only because the telcos weren't doing it. They are now. The cable companies are FUCKED.
Actually, you can get unpaid peering with most larger providers if your traffic with them is very high and more-or-less symmetric. A company as large as Comcast has its own internal network and probably has significant peerage arrangements with other providers. I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast didn't qualify as a Tier 1 provider themselves in view of their size.
If you do huge volumes, AT&T, MCI, AOL and several others will do unpaid peerage, provided you don't use them for transit (traffic being transferred to another network than the peer's). So Comcast's transit needs might be significantly less than you would think. And if they had any brains, they'd find out where large volumes of traffic are going and peer with them. For example, if I was running a large ISP I'd want to have peering arrangements with Google (for both Google and for Youtube) and perhaps Yahoo and a few other very big providers, because that would significantly reduce the amount I'd have to pay for transit, and the customers would get much better service. But rather than do that, a lot of ISPs want to argue that Google and such should be paying them for carrying their content, not realizing that the content the customers can get to is the reason they are buying service from you.
It meant that from all these different companies I could make all the calls I want to anyone, anywhere within the service area, for as long as I want to call. Or make no calls at all, only receive them. Or not use the phone at all. In any case, I'd pay the same rate.
Next came nationwide unlimited service for flat rate (which I believe included Canada) first from Comcast (at $33 a month) when I bought Triple Play, and now from YMax Magic Jack (at $20 a year (and no, that's not an error, the phone service costs $35 for the device plus $6 shipping, which includes 1 year of service and additional years are $19.95) with their VOIP service). It doesn't matter how much or how little I use, I pay the same rate because they sell unlimited service.
There was a big, similar squawk from phone companies back about 20 years ago or so when people started taking advantage of what was promised, unlimited service, to use it to call BBSs for hours on end.
Well, these services are tariffed, they have to tell publicly if there are limits. This is why companies like Comcast do not like Net Neutrality. They want to make claims they couldn't possibly fullfil.
Now, obviously no phone company can truly offer everyone unlimited service, but if they were going to set limits they would have had to publish them in the tariff schedules, and thus openly admit exactly what the restrictions were. This is why Comcast doesn't want to say anything because rather than admit they are overselling the service, they are putting in amorphous 'caps' of service in which customers have no idea what the limit is or how to know if they are close to it. A 'cancel on overuse' without a way to know what is overuse is a clear red flag indicating misconduct on the part of the cable company.
They want to pretend or make it sound like they offer unlimited service while at the same time cutting off people for going over some unstated, unannounced limit, and not giving them a means to know what the limit is or how close they are.
If they can tell someone is using a lot, they are obviously metering, and could inform people. But that would represent honorable conduct by a professional organization, something Comcast is incapable of being. Like call them and find out how much a service is, you can't find out unless you tell them where you're at, because in places where they have no competitors the price is significantly higher. One time I tried to use an advertised discount but could not get it, that was only available in certain areas, e.g. ones where Comcast has serious competition.
As for unprofessional, I had Comcast for triple play where I used to live; every time I called them for service, they were always late, at least an hour or more in every case, and I had to call them to find out when someone was going to show up. I had Peapod for grocery delivery probably twice a month. In the nine months I think they were late two or maybe three times, and in every case, they called me well in advance to tell me they were going to be late. This is despite the fact that the Comcast service ended up costing twice as much as the advertised rate, usually running $196 a month, not the alleged $99 public rate.
I mean, I'm still trying to figure out why my high-speed internet now costs $59 a month after the $24 a month promotional period, but apparently if I add phone service the price is $48 a month (for both services). As much as I dislike Verizon I'm moving to them because I can get Naked DSL (DSL without phone service) for $19 a month. I don't need 16 mbps service at this price, I can live with 768K.
As much as I detest and hate spam, I can find nothing wrong with the decision of the Virginia Supreme Court. I have actually read the decision so I do understand what is being said.
First, the statute does not ban all unauthorized use of the mail servers targeted by the defendant, thus the statute in question is not an 'anti-trespass' ordinance as the Commonwealth would claim. This point, they're correct on, and a statute written that way would essentially make ALL unsolicited e-mail sent to someone illegal unless you had prior permission, the same way you can't just cross someone's land without permission. If you post something on Slashdot or on a usenet news article, and I send you a message to ask you a question either because I liked your article or I disagreed with it, as it would stand, that sort of a message violates the statute and would conceivably be chargeable as trespass (or trespass to chattels) we made all unauthorized use of someone's mail server to either be criminal or an action which could be sued over.
Second, the statute does not differentiate between types of messages that have less (or no) protection, such as pure commercial speech, pornography or obscenity, and a message which might be offensive to others but is neither a commercial nor pornographic nor obscene.
On this point, they're correct too. While the Commonwealth is claiming it would not use the law to target non-commercial speech, there's nothing in the law that says it can't. I am thinking of the 'Jesus is Coming' spam that went out a few years ago that was sent by Clarence Thomas (no, it's someone else, not the U.S. Supreme Court Justice). I for one would go after something like that because that's also spam, however then we do have First Amendment issues.
Third, even if fixing the statute to take some e-mail out would stand muster, the court cannot rewrite the statute, that's the legislature's job. The court could conceivably strike portions of the statute to save its constitutionality, it cannot add to the statute or give it a limiting construction; that would mean the judiciary is legislating, something it isn't supposed to do.
Fourth, there's no fraud, because it didn't matter what the sender address was, the mail system would have accepted it whether it was a real address or a bogus one. Fraud requires someone to rely to their detriment on your false information
There's no way to send e-mail anonymously unless you put something false or misleading into the sender address, thus the First Amendment protection on anonymous communications is violated because it prohibits distributing mail with a false header, and that's the only way you can send anonymous mail. (If you say, 'use a remailer' then the remailer can be subpoenaed and their records checked.)
In short, the law comes up short. I don't like the idea of spam but you can't throw the (constitutional) baby out with the (spam) bathwater.
Some cities try this too, because they get free copies of their statutes for the city and their libraries for allowing a company to have an exclusive right to reprint. The Mitchie Company is or was big in this area. However, a federal court has ruled that where a city incorporated a national model code into its city ordinances (with permission of the code publisher) the code as adopted became public domain.
So there is clearly case law supporting that statutes are not copyrightable.
The guy who wants to raise this issue has two possible choices; wait to see if they sue him, or he can go to court himself, if the state is close, and sue for a declaratory judgment that the state's statutes are not copyrightable.
While states do have the capacity to hold copyright - contrary to some posters opinions here, it is only the U.S. Federal government that in many cases does not or cannot copyright its works - it is generally considered that statute laws, even of state governments, are not copyrightable. It's considered against public policy since someone defending a case may have to quote from many statutes, and there can be a point where one's copying would be more than that permissible under fair use.
This also includes court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court declared more than 100 years ago (in Wheaton v. Peters) that its decisions were not copyrightable, and this has generally been the rule for all court decisions. Even the Berne Convention, which tries to put as many things as possible under automatic copyright protection, indicates that signatory countries have the right to decide whether or not there is protection for statute laws or court decisions.
I think this is mostly inertia among those (lawyers) who supposedly should know better but either think they can get away with it or don't care. I saw some stuff once, in English, on a Japanese website, I think it was a Japanese Government website, that had a copyright notice including "all rights reserved."
That's a "statement of rights reservation" in order to claim certain privileges under the Buenos Aires Convention of 1912. Only thing is, the BA Convention is applicable only for works published by those who are residents (or corporations domesticated under) the countries which are signatories to the convention, which is the U.S., Mexico and about a dozen or so South American countries. Japan is not a signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention, but it is a signatory to the Berne Convention. So is every member of the Buenos Aires Convention, and Berne gives greater protections that Buenos Aires does, so BA has been effectively a dead letter since 2000 when the last member of the BA convention - Honduras - became a signatory to Berne. The use of "all rights reserved" by a Japanese organization provides them with absolutely no benefit whatsoever!
Can they accuse you of domainsquatting if you ask for money or something like that?
Seems like I've heard similar horror stories of people losing their domains because they asked someone to make an offer.
I think the case here is probably that they made the demand first. But the fact remains, if it's your own name it's automatically for a legitimate purpose and a cybersquatting claim will fail.
I own every version of Paul Robinson I could buy, of the 14 versions using "PaulRobinson" or "Paul-Robinson" and ending in .BIZ, .COM, .INFO, .NAME, .NET, .ORG, and .US, I own 9 of them including both versions of .US, .ORG and .INFO. If there's someone else named Paul Robinson - and there are, I've shared e-mail or spoken with at least 10 other people with the same name as myself, including a man who was the system manager of the computer system at the college I studied at - he has no more right to argue cybersquatting than I would against the owners of the other 5 domains I couldn't get (or couldn't afford).
Isn't it illegal to trick someone into doing something illegal?
That's entrapment, and it only applies as a defense for a criminal prosecution. However, if the other side makes an offer, then when the person accepts or makes a counter-offer, uses that in a suit to claim cybersquatting, there may be grounds of unclean hands to defeat that claim.
As you probably noticed yourself, it's likely a legal trap;
I don't think he said that so much as he asked what his options were.
if you show that you're interested in taking money for the domain name, they will then use that as an argument during legal proceedings that you're a domain name squatter.
Again, no, they made the offer to him first; he didn't ask them for anything; they asked him. Also, even if it is their trademark, and is registered in the U.S., they have to show an improper purpose to claim domain name squatting. If it's his own name, it's automatically a proper purpose and he could even offer to sell it to them first and it cannot ever be cybersquatting.
To argue otherwise - that if someone makes me an unsolicited offer to buy something I own causes me to be unable to sell it to them would be ridiculous; it would leave every single company who wanted to legally acquire a domain from someone else in the position that they could never buy a domain from someone who had it because the other party could never sell it to them even though they are a willing purchaser and therefore it would frustrate a company that wants to obtain a domain from someone who has it and might be willing to sell it.
I took a look at some websites, and in order for a use to actually be cybersquatting, all of the following must be true:
Since the guy is using the domain to get mail, he has a legitimate use of the domain, even if it wasn't his own name. Since it is his name, no matter what he's using it for, the use is automatically in good faith (short of him using it to run a criminal enterprise).
This is a trademark issue. If you ask for money for a domain name that includes their trademark, then they have a legal case against you for domain squatting.
Not if they came to him first. And not if his name is the same as theirs. I can open a store called "Paul Robinson's Department Store" and the currently existing Robinson's Department Store (actually J.W. Robinson or Robinson-May depending on what part of the U.S. they're in) chain has no grounds to stop me (especially if I included the note "Not affiliated with the J.W. Robinson Co." on the entrance door of my store); one may always use one's birth name (or married name in the case of a woman, since men don't change their names when they get married) to do business even if it is identical to an existing company in the same line of business.
Further, they would have to argue that they are well known in the United States and also that he has no legitimate use for the domain. As I just pointed out, one always has a legitimate use of one's own name.
Several years ago I registered a domain name for something I was trying which I was thinking about. Some guy, whose last name was the same as the domain I registered asked me if I'd be interested in selling it. Well, I needed the money so I quoted a reasonable offer. After the check cleared I did a change of the owner from me to him.
I took his personal check because he was in the U.S., the rules are very different when it's an international transaction. (I once paid for a shareware registration to a guy in Canada using a personal check drawn on a U.S. bank, I presume Canadian banks have no problem handling those; but I wouldn't accept anything but a guaranteed payment for an international transaction.)
Since the possibility of fraud is high when the buyer is outside the same country (on low value transactions where there's no money to chase them if you can't recover it), you make sure it's a guaranteed payment. I would suggest either wire transfer (and make sure the payment additionally includes your bank's incoming wire transfer fee) or Western Union for the same reason scammers use them: so the money is guaranteed and can't be revoked or a fraudulent transfer such as a forged check. Especially since the funds transfer is from a foreign country, it might cost you $30 or more to clear a check issued on a bank in some other country, presuming you don't get the check back in six or eight weeks as a forgery. If they want a written bill of sale or something, fine. But you get guaranteed payment before they get the domain.
Another option if the amount of the sale is not over the limit: set up a new, fresh account using Paypal or Google Checkout that goes to a new checking account at a bank (other than the one you do business with now) that will allow you to open one with no monthly fee (and check the paperwork they give you, sometimes they sneak fees in there), then, once the transfer clears, take all the money out except a token amount ($1) in cash, and then deposit the cash in your other account. Or close the account as you no longer need it.
This way, they can't undo the transaction and you've got the cash. Even if they try to reverse the transaction, the bank can't reverse it because you didn't use paper; if you took a bank check from them they could reverse the payment to your bank. Also you don't want to use the same bank as your own because they can use set off if the other side tries to renege on the transaction.
In fact, if they are going to use wire transfer, use a new account because I suspect the information needed for an incoming wire is the same as could be used for an outgoing one, and they might be able to siphon money out of your account. Or check with your bank to find out how to have a wire transfer that doesn't allow them to extract money from you, but I think wire transfers are ridiculous because of the fact that your bank charges you for the incoming transfer as well.
Automatic red flag: if they offer you more and want you to arrange something to send them money back. 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% of the time it's a scam for them to rip someone else off and leave you on the hook to make the person they stole from whole, since they can't be found, but you can.
I just went and looked it up for an example transaction, a Western Union transfer of $1,000 from Netherlands to the U.S. is about 711 Euros and costs around 41 Euros for the transaction, probably less than it would cost them for both ends of a wire transfer. If you're charging less than $1000 for the domain, the transfer fee to them will probably be less.
If you do these things and the transaction goes through, it hasn't cost you anything but a little time and you've protected yourself.
Otherwise it's no different from selling anything you own to someone else. A domain name has a registered owner, you transfer the registration to someone else, they own it. Most personal property doesn't have registered owners, if you sell something they just t
Don't worry, Gordon Freeman will take care of them. I've seen him kill hundreds of zombies. Or maybe I was seeing something, I don't remember exactly; perhaps I had something to do with it.
As I write on my blog, there's a big group of - for lack of a better name - crackpots who go around claiming the Bush (Jr.) Administration had something to do with the 9/11 events or in the destruction of the two towers. Which is ridiculous for the simple reason I point out: "the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that. The current administration's staffing policies have been directed toward political cronyism and connections, even at the expense of even bare competence. From what I've seen, anyone working there that has any self respect or common sense has quit." It's pointless to argue that they have the kind of people smart enough to pull off this sort of thing and keep it secret. If they were that good, they'd have been able to cover up the whole fake "weapons of mass destruction" issue in order to make it look like they really were present in Iraq.
I noted a similar incident a long time ago, as I pointed out once in this message which was nothing more than one organization filing for the domain name of another, (Sprint registering for the name "MCI.NET") but rather humorous in the result.
It has been a standard practice for years that while memory manufacturers measure in 1024^2 megabytes and 1024^3 gigabytes, disk drive manufacturers have been measuring in 1000^2 megabytes and 1000^3 gigabytes. I have an article on my blog about this, how my new computer has a certain amount claimed on the box, but Windows shows a lower amount, which when you use the two different figures it does match, while the box on my new computer says it's a 400gb drive, it is correct if you use 1000^3 gigabytes, but it is only 373gb if you use 1024^3 gigabytes.
For decades, TV (and computer monitor) manufacturers have announced the size of the picture tube diagonally, which gets you a larger number than either horizontal or vertical measurement. And they have generally openly admitted that their measurements are diagonal; every ad for TV specifically says that.
I suspect that the drive manufacturers are getting in trouble and losing lawsuits because they do not explicitly state that they are using 1000^3 sized gigabytes rather than the 1024^3 sized that people normally expect.
It's an attempt to cheat people when you're not honest about what you're doing. I mean, I may not particularly like them using the slightly sleazy method of the 6% shortage by using 1000^3 size but as long as they're straightforward about it, I have no problem with them using that method.
--Paul Robinson — My Blog
I think we had an article here a few months ago when the last manufacturer of reel-to-reel audio tape closed. I can remember when I purchased a slide rule in the stationery section of Woolworths. Both no longer exist; I can't even remember the last time I saw a slide rule. Yet, I'm sure there will be places and applications where a slide rule might be more appropriate than either a hand-held computer or a calculator. Perhaps they'll be around again in the future. They still make buggy whips and equipment for horses, but a lot less than they did back around 1908 even though there are a lot more people now than there were then.
There are actually some musical groups that still release recordings on vinyl. And a number of people who still have large record collections; in fact my brother wants a new needle for his phonograph as a birthday present.
Technology changes things, and sometimes some things become less interesting than others. Chess is still popular on physical chessboards even though we have chess servers and chess playing programs, for a number of reasons including no need for electricity.
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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> -- My Blog
-- Paul Robinson My Blog
While I've not read the report and I suspect it's based on a number of either inadequately grounded or misapplied conclusions, I think that the whole idea is incorrect because it "places the cart before the horse," in that it looks at men who come from the Middle East, see that many of them have tended to go into technological occupations, and presume from that a terrorist mindset.
It's like a discussion I got into once by some nutjob who thought the answer to the problem of terrorists from that region attacking the U.S. was to nuke the whole Middle East, even countries that had nothing to do with what happened in New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. I pointed out that if you make an unprovoked attack against millions of people for something that 99.9995% of them had nothing to do with and no control over, the survivors will respond with a viciousness and anger that will make the events of 9/11 look like a love tap. And not all of the people who are supportive of their causes are in the Middle East, unless you plan to nuke parts of Europe too. As those attacks changed a few thousand military and relatives of those killed in minor events prior to this (like the U.S.S. Cole or military barracks bombings), to millions of Americans outraged over these events, doing something stupid like that will create, instead of perhaps 10,000 or 50,000 committted terrorists willing to die for their cause, 1,000,000 or 5,000,000 really angry people willing to commit murder of people in the U.S. or die in response attacks to avenge the unprovoked and unwarranted killing of millions of innocent people. And we will have deserved it.
I'd like to simply point out that Middle East societies had - possibly before they got too badly infected by their military campaign known as the Islamic religion - a long history of scientific and engineering progress, much going back to before the existence of the Roman Empire. We are constantly digging up relics showing really advanced technological development of devices and artifacts that ran with either water or wind power or used complicated counterweight and various simple machines to do very complicated tasks.
Let's not forget that they built huge pyramids using nothing more than engineering knowhow (in addition to lots of grunt labor) in ways that today, we would find extremely difficult to duplicate without powered tools. And very hard to do even with them.
Paul Robinson My BlogBasically, you keep copies of files in order to be able to restore them if something happens to your originals. But, outside of disposing of redundant or useless information (like, say, a copy of a receipt for payment after the time they can sue you for non-payment and it's no longer needed for tax purposes), disposal of information in large organizations has a strong implication that it's done for nefarious purposes.
What I mean by that is that typically large organizations keep voluminous records in case they're going to get sued (or are questioned about their actions before congress in the case of a government agency, which can amount to the same thing for your career), which means destroying records often indicates you fear the information will be detrimental to your side if it gets subpoenaed.
I kind of learned this accidentally because of my own practices. When I was going on-line and talking to women, I kept everything; e-mails, transcripts of IM chats, anything dealing with anyone I spoke to. The simple reason was that if I ever met the lady, and it turned out she was underage, I would have regular, documented proof that I was under the impression she was at least 18. I found out later some guys got busted because they talked on-line to some girl, and went to meet her to go to a motel, and got busted when they showed up, and evidence from on-line communication showed they clearly believed the girl was jail bait, in some cases, under 14.
Which goes right along with the whole point: If you're doing something wrong, your paperwork is what's going to hang you; if you're not into wrongdoing, your paperwork is what's going to save you.
Paul Robinson - My Blog
Sometimes the problem is figuring out where the problem is, or exactly what code paths are being used. Here is a suggestion I got from a magazine which presented a way to provide for tracing of either procedures or code segments. Now, this was done for Visual Basic, but it can be done from any language that provides for dynamic variables that have an initializer and a destroyer.
In VB, you have a variable tied to a class, which is declared in the procedure (a sub or function in VB) you want to mark. You create (or instantiate) that variable at the start of the procedure, assigning its name to the procedure. And that's it. When you call the variable's init code it writes out the name of the procedure beginning and the time, and saves both.
When the procedure ends, the variable's lifespan is up, and the destroy method is automatically invoked to clean up the class for that variable. So it can now give the name of the procedure that is exiting, and how long it ran for. Or how much CPU time. Or anything else you want to report. The practice works automatically as long as a local variable of a class which is declared in a procedure is automatically destroyed when the procedure that instantiated it ends.
If you need to get indicators for less than a full procedure, you do an explicit call on the variable's destroy method at the point you want to indicate a piece of code you're monitoring ends.
So you end up getting a listing showing procedure 1 start, procedure 2 start, procedure 3 start (time), procedure 3 end (time), procedure 4 start (time), and nothing further, you know that procedure 4 is where it's hanging up. You also know how long it's running up to the point it hangs. This is very similar to the READY TRACE and RESET TRACE that's been available in Cobol for decades.
This is really helpful when you have a long-running program or one that handles a lot of different events and such, and you don't necessarily know what is happening or the execution path. The program can tell you what it's doing, or you can even write the information to a log file or the registry (for Windows-based programs). It's really great for applications because you can selectively enable or disable the practice at run time, and as such, you can track down an error causing a program to hang or be not responsive down to the precise line of code where the problem is, if you need to. Or you can simply use it to monitor which paths are being executed.
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Paul Robinson - My Blog
I think I'll stick with my keyboard from Inland. Sure, it's just a plain black keyboard, standard 110 key or whatever it is, and it isn't very fancy, but, then again, it only costs $8.00. I can't see spending as much as my monitor for a keyboard.
Are you actually claiming you think the game ends at Chell's "victory candescence?" In case you're actually thinking the game ends there - which I doubt is likely - if you get killed there it starts you over again a little earlier in the level, I think just before you enter the fire, and it will keep doing this forever, or until you figure out how to escape being "baked". In case you did believe that was then end, here's a hint.
When you are about to get to the fire, and you can see the cement wall in front of you above the railing, point your portal gun at the wall above the walkway in front of you, and fire a portal. Turn to your left, and fire a portal low on the wall below you, then jump into that portal. You want it to be low enough that you fall into it; if you miss, you end up in the slag and have to try again. When you do make the jump, it lands you on the (concrete) platform above the fire, where the real challenge in level 19 actually begins.
What I've found really helpful are the video walkthroughs on You Tube showing how to complete the levels. There were times when I had to "go to the videotape" to figure out how to solve some of the problems. Sometimes it can be amazing to watch. One guy figured a way to get the companion cube back before the end scene in the game, by committing suicide in the fire 3 times before incinerating the cube, then firing the blue portal at the entrance door (which causes it to disappear, the door is not a valid target), then firing the yellow portal at the center of the far edge of the ceiling in the workstation area in the room where GlaDOS is located, the companion cube then falls out of the ceiling!
Actually there is a tool to make maps for portal and the SDK even includes a copy of one of the levels - the one where GlaDOS says the test is impossible - so you can see what it takes to construct a level. And to put it bluntly, it's a lot of [expletive deleted] work!
Long before I bought The Orange Box - in fact, about four months before I'd ever even heard of Portal (I only got it about a week ago) - I wrote in my blog, back in June, an article about the tools which are available for designing maps for these games. And the Hammer map editor for Half-Life 2 / Portal is either as complicated as the one for Half-Life I / Quake III or even more so. These tools are very difficult to work with and hard to use. Notwithstanding that the maps involved are extremely intricate to do all the things necessary to implement the game. Somehow I wonder why the full "3D immersion" feature so skillfully implemented in the editor for Duke Nukem 3 was never tried for any of the other games. And we've got more capability now; Duke Nukem did a 3-D immersion in a DOS-based application; we now have all of the graphics capability and mouse capacity and all the other features of graphical user interfaces, and yet, sometimes they don't take advantage of all the power that is available.
This quote alone shows his lack of understanding, perhaps lack of intelligence and definite misunderstanding of finance. He may be a fairly good businessman or he's just lucky he's got other people to handle his affairs. But he obviously knows very little about the cost of things. Let's examine the issue, shall we?
Okay, let's say that it costs about $10 a ton to process ore-bearing rock, and your intent is to make a profit of at least $2 a ton. If you can extract, say, 6 pounds of copper per ton (which I think is about right), and you can wholesale it out at $2 a pound and make a profit. But if you have to process 40 tons or ore to get enough gold to make one ounce, then you have to charge around $400 an ounce (or whatever gold costs now) when dividing up costs between the two ores. Simmons probably thinks gold grows on trees, I'd be surprised if he even knows that people mine it like coal or copper. Or I wonder if he'd realize that because on 40 tons of ore they can get, say, 2880 ounces of copper (troy ounces: 12 ounces per pound) and one ounce of gold, then gold should, on the basis of scarcity, be 2880 times as expensive as one ounce of copper. Since, in our example, copper costs about 16c an ounce, an ounce of gold would then cost $480.00. Or whatever the numbers are, you can probably get the idea from what I've just said. Gold is much more scarce than copper in ore-bearing rock, thus it costs a lot more.
Now, I don't know whether his line There's no real use for it meant no use for gold, or he, in effect, is saying there is no reason gold should be so expensive. Obviously the second reason is wrong, and as for the first, there's no use for gold except fillings, electrical components, anti-corrosive plating in thousands of applications from marine connections to flatware, and a store of wealth. Yeah, I guess there really isn't any use for gold or any reason it's expensive. No reason at all.