so let me get this straight... people are going to move from snail mail to email because of anthrax? email has virii too. sircam anyone?
the predicted demise of snail mail is about as silly as saying that people are going to stop using microsoft outlook in droves because we all know how insecure it is. unforuntately, nobody is.
old news. this is old news. ever heard of SDMI? this whole 'new' idea of copy protection is not new news. this ball of yarn has been batted around for quite some time now.
nevertheless, it will never pass through congress. just like a cryptology ban probably won't as well. banks and internet commerce depend on crypto.
just because a bill is going to the floor doesn't mean it'll pass.
this is old news. search slashdot for some articles posted in december/january.
furthermore, i refuse to believe that apple computer would roll-over and play dead on this. nor will gateway... or dell. they aren't on any of those lists, and they are major players in the personal computing sector. motorola, amd, and western digital were absent from the list of industry titans as well.
speaking from experience... i know several people who have bought those tiny sony "mp3" players. after they took them home and realized how much of a pain in the ass sending music from the computer to the little network walkman would be, they either returned the device, or stopped using it. divx anyone?
hopefully the trial involving that russian programmer being hassled here in america will be seen before the courts, and the dmca will be declared unconstitutional.
who in the hell still watches basic over-the-air TV anymore? Most, if not all of my friends have cable or DirecTV. This means that the change in broadcasted TV from analog to digital is probably completely meaningless to most of America. Furthermore, where I live, Adelphia has set up digital cable service. And I absolutely hate it. The artifacting is horrible. The analog version of HBO looked 10x better than the digital version. I'm not *that* much of a videophile, but when I see globs of tiles instead of a clear black screen, I get slightly mift. From what I can tell, few care about that though. In the end the promise of more channels seems to be the draw to DTV. Are we going to see more broadcasted channels as a result of widespread HDTV use? Almost definitely not.
At any rate, if people actually cared about higher definition TV, Sony Wega's would sell like hot-cakes. Are they?
Call DirecTV. You can get all of the television you could possibly want. Better yet, get a DirectDUO... high-speed Internet and TV in one dual LNB dish.
The 21st amendment was enacted due to speakeasies and the rise of mobsters in america. those, and other problems, errupted from the passing of amendment 19 into law, hence its removal a short time later.
a bunch of mad wives lobbied for prohibition.
a nation of disgruntled americans promoted its removal.
on a side note...can anyone name a law recently brought to light, which helps we as americans... which aims to FURTHER our exagerated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H privilige to live in "The Land Of The Free?" i can't.
Maybe I'm missing something here... but I was under the impression that the United States Constitution had to be directly amended before a law revoking a right or behavior defined within it's text, could be set into place.
Example:
*Amendment XVIII - Prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
*Amendment XXI - Repeal of Amendment XVIII
Where in the DMCA does it state that Amendment I, my right to freedom of speech, has been repealed?
Article I.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I thought the Constitution trumped congressional bills, executive orders, and court precedents...
Maybe I'm missing something here... but I was under the impression that the United States Constitution had to be directly amended before a law revoking a right or behavior defined within it's text, could be set into place.
Example:
*Amendment XVIII - Prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
*Amendment XXI - Repeal of Amendment XVIII
Where in the DMCA does it state that Amendment I, my right to freedom of speech, has been repealed?
Article I.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I thought the Constitution trumped congressional bills, executive orders, and court precedents...
Personally, I feel that this is a great move on Microsoft's part. It will help curb compatibility issues, and help prevent faults from happening in the first place. The next step would to be, if it hasn't been done already, including protected memory support... a la Mac OS X, and others, into Windows XP.
Windows is their product, so they should be entitled to treat it how ever they please. Even though Microsoft exhibits monopolistic characteristics from time to time, they are not a monopoly. Blocking developers from implementing potentially crippling Windows drivers is a Good Thing, not a monopolistic(bad) thing. Furthermore, if developers feel that Microsoft is extorting money for driver rights, the developers will blow the whistle... perhaps moving their primary focus to another platform. Perhaps those same disgruntled developers will conjure up some wild hack, circumventing this driver installation block altogether.
If Microsoft wants to start some quality control over their platform, they should be able to. Perhaps this went a little off-topic, but don't hesitate to enlighten me if I have drawn a misconception or two.
once upon a time, i ventured in to the world of tcp/ip from home via my trusty 14.4 modem and a local isp. that trusty local isp, infinet, serverd my internet connection needs very well, providing unlimited connection time & a solaris(tm) shell for $20/month.
infinet was then bought by large regional provider by the name of voyager in either early '99 or '00. as of late, the company has switched hands yet again, now owned by corecomm, which swallowed voyager whole.
through the process, my email account never changed... the tech support got better, since it moved from a 8am-4pm long-distance number to a 24/7 toll-free number.... and my shell still works. not only that, but our homepage space has grown from 5mb to 20mb, and we can have up to three email accounts per subscription.
the coolest thing, for me at least, is the ability to use my isp all over the state, because there is a local number all over ohio. whenever kent state's internet goes down (which happens much too frequently) i can plug my modem into the phone line and get on at 56k.
i can understand the arguement against consolidation and such... but for me, the situation has been a winning one. gradually better, and more accessable tech support, more email accounts, more local numbers, more web space, et cetera.
I posted this a while back... but seeing that Kent's PR is in the toilet, I thought I'd add an extra turd or two.... seeing that what happened to me is complete bullshit...
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]." Evidence which was never hashed out during the trial.
Oh the joys of being a Kent State Student...
* The M-16 Fiasco
* The "War-Games" and computer confiscation blunder
I'm going to submit a patent for something I just came up with a few minutes ago...
Submitting an idea to a central registry, establishing intellectual property rights on rudimentary, perhaps already implemented concepts.
Next, I'm going to protect my patent at all costs... because I don't want society freely benefiting from my ingenious idea... and I have a credit card bill due soon...
I currently attend Kent State in northern Ohio, and napster.com is currently blocked. If you do get ahold of the Napster software, it is semi-useless because access to the original Napster servers is blocked as well. True, you can use other means to get through to file-sharing servers... but when Napster makes the move to a subscription business model, will colleges and universities remove their IP block on Napster's servers?
From what I have been told, Napster was blocked here at Kent for reasons steming more from the use of so much bandwidth... not the legal implications. Then I read about an obscure rule in our school's code, that states if you are caught in possession of MP3 files, you can be punished through strict disipliary probation. At any rate, what is everyone's opinion on this front?
How the hell is this offtopic? My comment had to do with Sega of America and Sega of Japan, and their apparent miscommunication and/or corporate disagreement.
SOA DENIED THE RUMOR, WHILE SOJ KEPT QUIET.
Is it really too hard to believe that the American division of Sega would like to take the company in one direction, while the Japanese parent wants to go in another? In any event... Sega announced that the rumor is true... as of Wednesday 24th @ 3:30.
Man! This reminds me... I'm gonna call DirectTV up tomorrow and cry that I don't think it's fair that they have the ability to ECM-zap my shady hacked access card to get all of the channels for free!! How dare they! It's almost as if they are trying to get rid of DirectTV pirates or something... what gives???! While I'm at it, I'm gonna call MaBell tomorrow too, and ask why my red-box stopped working a few years ago.
This has *nothing* to do with Gameboy. You don't go out with your mom or dad ( if you're underaged ) to sign a one-year contract for a Gameboy, along with a $35/month usage fee. Kids don't buy cellphones. Kids CAN NOT buy cellphones without their parents consent, with the *possible* execption of pickup-an-go prepaid cellular. Even when I turned eighteen, I failed the credit check, since I had a non-existant credit rating. I for one, can not see children buying cellphones in the near future. The only way this concept would fly, is the removal of the age restriction, which is currently eighteen years of age, plus credit checks. Furthermore, you have to be eighteen to sign any contract in the first place. Kids typically don't buy Handsprings to play videogames when their GameBoy has an actual control set, is $80 less... yadda yadda yadda...
I'm thinking GameBoy, and your analogy doesn't make sense whatsoever.
You do need to remember, that unlike Japan, American kids aren't as receptive to electronic fads. Pokemon is a rare exception to my broad generalization. Not only that... who would they be marketing this phone to? Cell phone users have to be at least eighteen to sign-up. True, parents typically buy their children a cell phone if they are underaged, but how many middle-school aged children carry cell phones? To my knowledge, very few. I grew up in an upper class neighborhood where high school kids typically drove around in BMWs and pricey SUVs... absolutely none of them cell phones. I asked my eighth-grade brother, and he confirmed this. Furthermore, kids where I grew up preferred to play their videogames in front of the TV... preferably with friends. Mario Kart, Contra, 007, Madden, blah, blah, blah, were all the rage.
Someone with a Dreamcast VMU please back my up in that those silly little games you can download from Jet Grind Radio, Sega GT, and others, and IMHO...simply aren't all that they're cracked up to be...
Slap me around and call me redundant... but I'm like several others that think this idea isn't a viable business deal. Speaking from a consumer's point of view... IMHO, Sega's potential Dreamcast on a chip, inside a DVD player may not be more or less profitable, but it's certainly a better idea than this.
On a somewhat similar train of thought, cell phone makers need to figure out some other issues before this potential Sega/Motorola thing sparks off a cellphone gaming blitz.
Phonebook: I love the idea behind fusionone.com, although it's not implemented that well. Get a way to centralize my Visor/Cell/Computer phone books so I don't have three different personal lists... Having a Nokia 6180 list, then a list in my Handspring became very annoying... "Hey! I have your number! Oh wait, I guess I left it on the Visor... whoops... can I have it again?"
Traveling features: Am I the only one who isn't annoyed by the fact that I can roam all over my state for free, but when I leave my "home" base market area, I lose the ability to recieve mail alerts, caller ID, et cetera? If I can roam and make/recieve calls, I should be able to keep my "home" features as well. (Sure! SprintPCS does this... but Sprint's coverage area and service are a joke.) I'm not an expert in cellular communications, protocols, et cetera... but my guess is that this could be very easliy implimented, seeing that damn near everyone I know has a Nokia 6180 or it's close cousins, on different networks. I venture to guess that there is only one way to trigger a phone to signal a voicemail alert, display Caller ID information... yadda yadda yadda...
I could go on about WAP, but that would just be long rant about it's pointlessness...
*funkdat*
Angry, confused & searching for answers
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 4
I have been fucked by this War On Drugs.
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
So now I have to go back to this horrible excuse for a higher education facility in a week to begin my Spring semester. I have pretty much lost any chance of transfering out until my probation runs out, since it won't be removed from my record until then, if ever. The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]."
Long story... now a simple question: Who do I turn to in this clear case of being fucked over?
The "PCs are better than Macs!" & "Macs are better than PCs" debates that always seem to spawn off of *any* Apple Computer related news. True, when I said "war," some probably felt that I was over exagerating the flame-war that always ensues... need proof?
Why is it that every time a/. article mentions Apple Computer, a giant war starts as to which is more powerful, a PC or Mac? False facts fly like "Apple's lowest priced comptuer is still over $1000" when in fact they sell an iMac for $799.
Obviously I'm going to be taking a little shit for the fact that my email is from mac.com... so I must be *clearly* Apple baised:p BAH. My very first comptuer was a 286 laptop, followed by a 386 desktop, and a Pentium 120. It wasn't until I left for college that I got my own Mac. Why? Because it fits my computing needs and desires.
Now you are probably wondering... "Gee thats great, get to the fucking point." My point is that regardless of what you like, what you know, and whom you support, a little research is clearly in order. I'm really growing tired of watching people spew misinformed posts on to the boards and positioning them as fact.
Everyone knows that knows what the DMCA is, and everything that entails knows that it is just as idiotic and ill-concieved as prohibition. Why don't a bunch of us get together and form a movement to get this piece of legislation overturned? At the very least, firing off letters to our congressmen with some rational arguements against it might bear some fruit.
I personally can't see this whole hard drive/ATA spec doomsday thing happening at all... but the idea that if it were to happen, and we can't do anything about it because of the DMCA is frightening.
Just my $0.02
Slashdot Mirror
so let me get this straight... people are going to move from snail mail to email because of anthrax? email has virii too. sircam anyone?
the predicted demise of snail mail is about as silly as saying that people are going to stop using microsoft outlook in droves because we all know how insecure it is. unforuntately, nobody is.
funk dat.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
old news. this is old news. ever heard of SDMI? this whole 'new' idea of copy protection is not new news. this ball of yarn has been batted around for quite some time now.
:-p
nevertheless, it will never pass through congress. just like a cryptology ban probably won't as well. banks and internet commerce depend on crypto.
just because a bill is going to the floor doesn't mean it'll pass.
you can climb out of my ass now.
this is old news. search slashdot for some articles posted in december/january.
furthermore, i refuse to believe that apple computer would roll-over and play dead on this. nor will gateway... or dell. they aren't on any of those lists, and they are major players in the personal computing sector. motorola, amd, and western digital were absent from the list of industry titans as well.
speaking from experience... i know several people who have bought those tiny sony "mp3" players. after they took them home and realized how much of a pain in the ass sending music from the computer to the little network walkman would be, they either returned the device, or stopped using it. divx anyone?
hopefully the trial involving that russian programmer being hassled here in america will be seen before the courts, and the dmca will be declared unconstitutional.
Why should I have to spend (read: donate, contribute, et cetera) my hard-earned money trying to defend what I feel are my basic and natural rights?
Money has completely fucked up American politics. Why throw more money into the pit?
The sad thing is that in 30 years, kids are going to look at our generation as completely nutty. That frightens me.
DTV != HDTV... however...
who in the hell still watches basic over-the-air TV anymore? Most, if not all of my friends have cable or DirecTV. This means that the change in broadcasted TV from analog to digital is probably completely meaningless to most of America. Furthermore, where I live, Adelphia has set up digital cable service. And I absolutely hate it. The artifacting is horrible. The analog version of HBO looked 10x better than the digital version. I'm not *that* much of a videophile, but when I see globs of tiles instead of a clear black screen, I get slightly mift. From what I can tell, few care about that though. In the end the promise of more channels seems to be the draw to DTV. Are we going to see more broadcasted channels as a result of widespread HDTV use? Almost definitely not.
At any rate, if people actually cared about higher definition TV, Sony Wega's would sell like hot-cakes. Are they?
Call DirecTV. You can get all of the television you could possibly want. Better yet, get a DirectDUO... high-speed Internet and TV in one dual LNB dish.
history class:
The 21st amendment was enacted due to speakeasies and the rise of mobsters in america. those, and other problems, errupted from the passing of amendment 19 into law, hence its removal a short time later.
a bunch of mad wives lobbied for prohibition.
a nation of disgruntled americans promoted its removal.
on a side note...can anyone name a law recently brought to light, which helps we as americans... which aims to FURTHER our exagerated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H privilige to live in "The Land Of The Free?" i can't.
I don't get it.
Example:
*Amendment XVIII - Prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
*Amendment XXI - Repeal of Amendment XVIII
Where in the DMCA does it state that Amendment I, my right to freedom of speech, has been repealed?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I thought the Constitution trumped congressional bills, executive orders, and court precedents...
Example:
*Amendment XVIII - Prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
*Amendment XXI - Repeal of Amendment XVIII
Where in the DMCA does it state that Amendment I, my right to freedom of speech, has been repealed?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I thought the Constitution trumped congressional bills, executive orders, and court precedents...
Personally, I feel that this is a great move on Microsoft's part. It will help curb compatibility issues, and help prevent faults from happening in the first place. The next step would to be, if it hasn't been done already, including protected memory support... a la Mac OS X, and others, into Windows XP.
Windows is their product, so they should be entitled to treat it how ever they please. Even though Microsoft exhibits monopolistic characteristics from time to time, they are not a monopoly. Blocking developers from implementing potentially crippling Windows drivers is a Good Thing, not a monopolistic(bad) thing. Furthermore, if developers feel that Microsoft is extorting money for driver rights, the developers will blow the whistle... perhaps moving their primary focus to another platform. Perhaps those same disgruntled developers will conjure up some wild hack, circumventing this driver installation block altogether.
If Microsoft wants to start some quality control over their platform, they should be able to. Perhaps this went a little off-topic, but don't hesitate to enlighten me if I have drawn a misconception or two.
infinet was then bought by large regional provider by the name of voyager in either early '99 or '00. as of late, the company has switched hands yet again, now owned by corecomm, which swallowed voyager whole.
through the process, my email account never changed... the tech support got better, since it moved from a 8am-4pm long-distance number to a 24/7 toll-free number.... and my shell still works. not only that, but our homepage space has grown from 5mb to 20mb, and we can have up to three email accounts per subscription.
the coolest thing, for me at least, is the ability to use my isp all over the state, because there is a local number all over ohio. whenever kent state's internet goes down (which happens much too frequently) i can plug my modem into the phone line and get on at 56k.
i can understand the arguement against consolidation and such... but for me, the situation has been a winning one. gradually better, and more accessable tech support, more email accounts, more local numbers, more web space, et cetera.
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]." Evidence which was never hashed out during the trial.
Oh the joys of being a Kent State Student...
* The M-16 Fiasco
* The "War-Games" and computer confiscation blunder
*Constant reminder of our great 1970 year
*Foreign speaking English teachers...
Submitting an idea to a central registry, establishing intellectual property rights on rudimentary, perhaps already implemented concepts.
Next, I'm going to protect my patent at all costs... because I don't want society freely benefiting from my ingenious idea... and I have a credit card bill due soon...
From what I have been told, Napster was blocked here at Kent for reasons steming more from the use of so much bandwidth... not the legal implications. Then I read about an obscure rule in our school's code, that states if you are caught in possession of MP3 files, you can be punished through strict disipliary probation. At any rate, what is everyone's opinion on this front?
SOA DENIED THE RUMOR, WHILE SOJ KEPT QUIET.
Is it really too hard to believe that the American division of Sega would like to take the company in one direction, while the Japanese parent wants to go in another? In any event... Sega announced that the rumor is true... as of Wednesday 24th @ 3:30.
feh.
Man! This reminds me... I'm gonna call DirectTV up tomorrow and cry that I don't think it's fair that they have the ability to ECM-zap my shady hacked access card to get all of the channels for free!! How dare they! It's almost as if they are trying to get rid of DirectTV pirates or something... what gives???! While I'm at it, I'm gonna call MaBell tomorrow too, and ask why my red-box stopped working a few years ago.
I'm thinking GameBoy, and your analogy doesn't make sense whatsoever.
Someone with a Dreamcast VMU please back my up in that those silly little games you can download from Jet Grind Radio, Sega GT, and others, and IMHO...simply aren't all that they're cracked up to be...
*funkdat*
On a somewhat similar train of thought, cell phone makers need to figure out some other issues before this potential Sega/Motorola thing sparks off a cellphone gaming blitz.
Phonebook: I love the idea behind fusionone.com, although it's not implemented that well. Get a way to centralize my Visor/Cell/Computer phone books so I don't have three different personal lists... Having a Nokia 6180 list, then a list in my Handspring became very annoying... "Hey! I have your number! Oh wait, I guess I left it on the Visor... whoops... can I have it again?"
Traveling features: Am I the only one who isn't annoyed by the fact that I can roam all over my state for free, but when I leave my "home" base market area, I lose the ability to recieve mail alerts, caller ID, et cetera? If I can roam and make/recieve calls, I should be able to keep my "home" features as well. (Sure! SprintPCS does this... but Sprint's coverage area and service are a joke.) I'm not an expert in cellular communications, protocols, et cetera... but my guess is that this could be very easliy implimented, seeing that damn near everyone I know has a Nokia 6180 or it's close cousins, on different networks. I venture to guess that there is only one way to trigger a phone to signal a voicemail alert, display Caller ID information... yadda yadda yadda...
I could go on about WAP, but that would just be long rant about it's pointlessness...
*funkdat*
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
So now I have to go back to this horrible excuse for a higher education facility in a week to begin my Spring semester. I have pretty much lost any chance of transfering out until my probation runs out, since it won't be removed from my record until then, if ever. The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]."
Long story... now a simple question: Who do I turn to in this clear case of being fucked over?
Try browsing this topic at +1 instead of +2...
Obviously I'm going to be taking a little shit for the fact that my email is from mac.com... so I must be *clearly* Apple baised :p BAH. My very first comptuer was a 286 laptop, followed by a 386 desktop, and a Pentium 120. It wasn't until I left for college that I got my own Mac. Why? Because it fits my computing needs and desires.
Now you are probably wondering... "Gee thats great, get to the fucking point." My point is that regardless of what you like, what you know, and whom you support, a little research is clearly in order. I'm really growing tired of watching people spew misinformed posts on to the boards and positioning them as fact.
funkdat.
Everyone knows that knows what the DMCA is, and everything that entails knows that it is just as idiotic and ill-concieved as prohibition. Why don't a bunch of us get together and form a movement to get this piece of legislation overturned? At the very least, firing off letters to our congressmen with some rational arguements against it might bear some fruit. I personally can't see this whole hard drive/ATA spec doomsday thing happening at all... but the idea that if it were to happen, and we can't do anything about it because of the DMCA is frightening. Just my $0.02