* Driving, per say, isn't a right; however, freedom to travel without producing papers is. Read up on the actual law for a "driver's license"...it's not as bad as the conspiracy nuts make it out to be, but it's not what you think it is either. Much like the "opt-out Social Security System" that seems to be pretty darn mandatory.
* Driving on public roads doesn't automagically negate your rights...especially when "We the People" are "The Public" and paid for those roads.
* We apparently have different definitions of "public safety". Preserving such safety does not warranty *ANY ONE* to violate said rights. Hence, the cops not being able to roust you on the road just because you're on it ("Sir, we pulled you over because we don't like your face."). Personally, I'm all for such things as "Kill someone while DUI, get a bullet on the spot", but I'm a capricious bastard that way.
* Rules of the road are implemented as any other civil rule of law: by whomever is in power at the time for whatever gain they may get from it (including, but not limited to, personal sexual gratification from knowing they can make others do what they want.) We had 55MPH held over from the '70s to appease the MADD loonies instead of something based on actual science and current socio-political circumstances.
* Some police find it a demeaning task; others fall into the above catagory of power-trippers.
* So basically you'll be all for writing automatic tickets when you pass a given 1/4 mile stretch randomly chosen by the state? No appeal, no ability to explain that you were going 8MPH over the posted limit to get around a dangerous driver? These days Big Brother gets just as much of a whacking as Nazis, but it really does push to a very scary future, don't you think?
* Under no legal standard that I'm aware of is anyone required to be a mobile snitch for the law. For other victims of American Education who didn't bother to get better informed later: our system of law is *POSTSCRIPTIVE* not *PRESCRIPTIVE*. "Innocent until proven guilty" means "do whatever you like, but if we catch you, your ass is grass". Much like the Ten Commandments, you're free to be an asshole, but you can't whine later that you didn't know there was a punishment for getting caught.
* Planes are a lot different from cars. My car can't wind up in your living room unless there's a road nearby. My plane can destroy your remote log cabin and you'd never know it until someone contacted you. The ability to cause harm is much more limited and requirements for operation are way lower for a car. Applying a blanket standard for wildly different things is rather silly and, well, unsafe for the public, eh?
Time to stop pandering to the narrow-minded nimrod special interests and actually excercise some Freedom for a change.
Kingstrum
"He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandon all hope of ever behaving 'normally.'"
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
So the industry gets caught -- yet again! -- with their hand in the cookie jar, cooking their own damn charts by having big hits played in the middle of the night shift as "ads" to avoid soiling themselves with the 'payola' scarlet letter. Now, their lobby groups wants to prevent people from 'cherry-picking' tunes off super-snazzy digital radio?
WTF?
If it's an open secret that most music now is shit and every album is designed to have one, maybe two, big hit(s) to draw in the suckers, what's the problem? Doesn't this solve the industries lagging money woes and distribution issues? They simply drop free (ad-driven) radio as a medium and move exclusively to digital (subscription) radio, demand a huge jack in price and a big 'ole piece o' the pie.
No fuss, no muss. The broadcast flags become unnecessary (in the beginning at least), as they^H^H^H^H^H the artists are being paid for their 'labors'.
Personally, with the advent of studios in a box and whatnot, I'd think more performers would forego big studios altogether, hit the road and sell CDs out the backs of their cars. A groundswell starts and you use the Internet for world-wide distribution outside the usual chains. That is, of course, assuming it really is still 'all about the music' and not mere, grubby cash and swishy lifestyle perks.
Odd that...
Kingstrum
*Whose* benchmarks are they going to use? The last year or so, the PLA/Central Committee have been pushing their own CPU, their own WiFi standard, and more. So will they now create their own benchmarks, put themselves at the top of some "One-True-List", berate "that other list" as a puppet of Capitalist Pigs & Running Dog Lackeys, and brag about how fast the Great Firewall filters out "unsocial" and "counterproductive" dissident thought?
Or will they leave all that to the FCC & DoJ to "purify" our airwaves and Internet sources?
Can't have a free population looking at naughty bits and expressing "dissent" opinions...
"If you've run out of luck, it doesn't matter how long your penis is." -- Juvenal
As a recently laid-off A/V repair tech/installer/programmer ("why yes, I used to work for Mighty Colossal Shitheads, Inc."), my advice: stay the hell away from all of them! Projectors are great until they break or you experience a lamp failure. Unless you really have a space that needs filled, simply avoid them.
If you absolutely must have one, of all the brands we used to service Sharp's seemed to have the best record of least repair. {Note: I have no relationship to Sharp whatsoever.} All of the ones that get big press -- InFocus/Proxima, Epson, Sony, etc. -- were in for repairs on a very steady basis. Make sure the unit will cover all of the signals (and the ranges) you might want to throw at it. Find out the details on service, should you ever need it (you will). Over all, your best bet may be to find a local dealer of several different brands and take a few of your own test DVDs/tapes and ask to see a demo.
Also if you get one, find out how old the model is (gives you a rough idea how soon it will go out of production &/or whether the firmware has been tested) and for "BOB"s sake!, find out how much a replacement lamp is *BEFORE* you buy anything. In the course of less than 6 months the entire industry went from a range of lamp replacement times to a flat "90 days from purchase"...no matter how long it was sitting on your shelf. Nothing gets people more pissed off than to discover their brand new projector has a 3-year repair warranty, but the lamp is only covered for the first 3 months...and on day 91 when it goes out, they've got to pony up anywhere from $300 to ~$2k (very high end, true theater units) for a new light bulb.
If you opt to avoid a projector, *DO NOT* get some piece of crap plasma as a substitute. The dirty little secret the industry doesn't point out is that you're buying the TV version of a fluorescent bulb...and once the noble gas inside begins to lose cohesion, you've got yourself one nice big picture frame. The fact that most are rated for less than 20,000 hours (with a greater than 50% failure rate after 2 years) doesn't really make me feel any better.
I've had the same 32" CRT TV for nearly 8 years now...perfect picture, perfect sound, a bitch to lug around when you move.
The 2nd disk of the Slackware box set is (and has been for a number of years now) a "live" disc suitable for use as a recovery/rescue disc. I've used it for years with great success before KNOPPIX was even a gleam in a German engineer's eye.
Quite a few folks would ask me "why can't Win98 do that?" as I was booting up their crapped out machines and recovering whole HDDs worth of files. All in all, a very nice bonus from a rock-solid distribution.
The genius that is Patrick Volkerding...
Got Slack?
Kingstrum
After reviewing all the other suggestions and comments, I've got to say I still love my Timbuk2 bags. Most of the other ones I looked at 4 years ago sucked or were questionable at best. Got a DeeDog and I've been very happy with it ever since. It's quite roomy and well-nigh indestructible. I grabbed a large laptop sleeve when they were first offered and its had everything from a Compaq 7792DMT to a ThinkPad 600E/X to my new baby TP T22. Perfect, glove-like fit and the handles make it easy to pop out of the D'Dog and tote independently.
I was *extremely pissed* that a month after I bought the D'Dog they came out with their Commuter laptop bags. It had everything I wanted -- including a handle! I've used all kinds of bags over the years and discovered it really depends on how you plan to use the bag and what you plan to carry. Literally got a brand new Commute bag yesterday and it's sweet: built-in laptop sleeve (they've got a bigger model for larger Powerbooks, et. al.), plenty of pockets, a molded foam side/back piece, and a freakin' handle. Looks like a very nice soft-sided briefcase with a gray racing stripe down the middle. My trusty old DeeDog is now doing duty as my work laptop/junk bag so that I don't have to have 10 little containers laying about.
Don't have an iPod, so I have no use for an iPod holder, but I did buy a couple of the Ditty Bags and a snazzy "non-slip" shoulder pad. Since another post mentioned they weren't "really waterproof", I plan to test this over the holiday break...just to be sure.
For the money, it can't be beat. The only thing I saw on the other sites mentioned was a couple had some camo prints that might have been interesting, but I got this mostly to replace a very badly aging "sissy" Jansport soft-side that's lasted almost 10 years. This one's fun, but all business.
To all the folks who harped on the "made in China" angle for the Commute: *shrug* sucks, I'd much prefer folks in SF making them, but face facts: 90-95% of everything you buy that is mass assembled was made by one of nearly 1.8 billion chinese workers...including that rather pricey laptop your so snootily lugging around. At this point it seems like the best way to help them is pour as much business as we can their way until the ChiCom gov't is so overwhelmed or overthrown (finally). In that American companies seem to be real eager to jump at the chance to ship precious IT jobs overseas and pay Indian workers half what their American counterparts make, might be time to come down off that high horse and help us regular folk find some practical solutions.
Actually, they can watch a 20 year-old movie that did it first:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086443/
Haven't seen it in years, but was pretty good and Fred Ward got off to a good start. Always wanted the helmet he had (pop-up compass, magnifier, etc.)...aaahhh, the future seems to take longer and longer to get here.
Kingstrum
* - First, it becomes public that many of the top SCO execs are cashing in big stock options as they get pumped in the media as the thorn in Linux side. Several collect tens of millions of dollars from stock not worth a nickle prior to the IBM "lawsuit".
* - Next, we never actually see any of the "evidence" that is to be used in the case, just small portions of what is promised to be "major violations of IP" that they may -- or may not -- actually own. This issue gets set aside and taken as a given that they just own it all...even the stuff that's long been known to be in public domain.
* - Now, after a speculative report on possible billions of dollars in licensing that might be collected (assuming they have any claims of substance and they win the lawsuit) and sweet talk from a large investment bank, suddenly some dipshit VC gives them a lousy $50 million...and they now have $61 million in the bank. This being very odd since their last SEC filing mentioned that all of this was very speculative and, if it doesn't pan out, they may be tits up.
* - Finally, throughout the whole thing, every promise to keep on point and it's "just a licensing spat" continue to be proven false and the threats expand to encompass just about anything ever touched by Linux.
Now I'm not a lawyer nor a stock broker, but it sure seems to me like this is just a slow-motion Bait-n-Switch with a Pyramid Scam/Stock Swindle twist. In the '90's we used to call this a "Pump-n-Dump" (build up the buzz, sell off the stock, run to the Bahamas). Apparently the boys in the boardroom figure if they just make their money on the front end, fine; but, if it turns out they might actually have something like $3 billion coming to them on the back end, so much the better.
Wonder if anyone has contacted the SEC and DoJ to see if this is all on the up-and-up...?
Oddly enough, the one thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet is that SCO has no leg to stand on because, well gee, Linux source code is "Open Source" -- so they were just as able to review the code as anyone else on the planet.
Wouldn't this be a HUGE lapse in due-diligence on the part of SCO's people? As a for-profit company, I would think you'd have at least one legal intern looking over the source code before getting into bed with the "Rebel Alliance" of the software industry.
All in all, nice to see IBM putting these piss ants in their place...now just to wait til their stock bottoms out and we all get together and buy them out for $10 and fire these assholes.
Seems to me that one of the primary reasons for having living, breathing people in space is to see how people can/will adapt to the rigors of outer space. We sent monkeys and dogs originally for safety reasons, but eventually we wanted to know what would happen to humans. Dogs and computers couldn't describe the heightened sense of awareness and euphoria that space travel seems to inspire in homo sapiens.
Basically, astronauts are the lab rats we keep sending into space to get the ball rolling.
The thing that amazes me is that in this day and age, we would still need to take 10-20 years to build a replacement system for the shuttles. Seems to me modern materials and high-end CAD/CAM would've cut the time to less than 5 years, tops.
On the other hand, its been pretty sad that especially in this country, commerical interests -- who stand to make untold billions off of space-based initatives -- haven't bothered to sink a dime into their own private efforts, but instead have milked at the public teat...just like every other time it seems. Personally, I'm hoping things like the X Project and other private space efforts start to pay off and show the way to letting some of us realize our personal desire to depart the cradle of life and move out into the backyard that is our universe.
So this is it? We're reduced to begging for scraps and collecting alums once every 50 years?!
Pardon my French, but "fuck that shit!"...
I'm all for Free Markets, but I think some balance (by regulation, if necessary) must be maintained, even if it is just because Big Business has shown in the last hundred years that our perpetuation and extension of the Frankenstein monster we call "corporations" only feeds their appetites for more.
I might go along with this if it were something like: return all copyright and patent durations to their original, Constitutional assigned lengths, then at the end of that period a fee of $1US is assessed. Then every year (or six months, or even month, as decided by "We the People") thereafter, the fee is *exponetially* increased. Most reasonable people will keep it up for a few years or so, then once we start talking real money, it reverts back to public domain.
Think about all the bad '80s music...how many of those copyright holders would pay thousands of dollars to keep a song in the vain hope it might get used somday in a Gap ad?
While I certainly have philosophical disagreements with some things that get thrown around as "Libertarian", I feel the core holds; thus, an old Robert Heinlein quote comes to mind:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit." -- Robert Heinlein, from "Life-Line"
I think that's about as reasonable as it gets.
TANSTAAFL,
Kingstrum
Nothing like fighting an old battle over and over and over again I suppose...
First, let us start by taking note that the original poster, nor any of the replies I read, even bothered to quote the passage in contension; so, here's the language -- verbatium:
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
As clearly stated, the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms shall *NOT* be infringed.
Period.
Now an obvious oversight many people make is overlooking the commas in the above quote. They are used in this instance to tie the individual bits together. In this case to make it clear that the people should be free and unencumbered by the government to bear arms so that they may come to the aid of their fellow citizens in times of trouble or unrest. This being logically consistant with both the ideals set forth in the rest of the founding documents, and one of the cornerstones of an free society: Freedom has a price.
You're either willing to pay that price or you are not, in which case you won't be free for very long. Furthermore, the right to self-defense has always been held as sacred given that a person cannot be free if they are hindered by law or moral which allows someone else to violate, or even kill, you.
For the sake of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am probably one of a handful of people in this forum who has had to kill another human being in self-defense. I did so with full faculties and would do so again in order to protect myself or others from lethal force. As a Libertarian I do not believe in being an agressor or instigator of violence, but I will *NEVER* give up my right to self-defense...nor by 9mm Glock.
I never served in the military, and I still contend that a standing army has brought us nothing but grief; however, if called to defend this country, I'd be one of the first men on the line, because I recognize that by accepting the freedoms I have, I must also be willing to pay the price...even if that means dying in the attempt.
As to why the Supreme Court (and other lesser courts) have chosen to "interprete" the Constitution instead of doing their jobs and using it as a litmus test to be applied to any law which rises to challenge it, well, I could go on all day about judical predujice and rampant stupidity, but that gets boring pretty fast. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once quipped that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." I contend that it is, and we're all in this one together, boys & girls.
Heed the wise words of Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Kingstrum
"An armed society is a polite society." - Robert A. Heinlein
This command notifies the uniquely identified user when someone with the desired unique identifier, {nick}, enters the multipicity of concurrent, independent communcation system of distributed servers.
If you're using a UNIX client, then you are most likely aware of the ability to log onto *multiple, concurrent, independent communication system of distributed servers on completely seperate networks!* A proper comparison would be, oh, say an AIM client that could also do ICQ or IRC or any of the number of other chat-type systems.
If you're using a Windows-based client, then you most likely think mIRC == IRC. Seek help from your friendly neighborhood UNIX guru.
I'm willing to bet this was done (on DALnet anyways) at least 4 - 5 years before AIM was even a gleam in the eye of some dumbass greedhead. Not that any of this matters, for as we all know, the USPTO is open for business and whoring itself out to the highest bidder.
Kingstrum
"That high-pitched whirling sound? That's the Founding Fathers having a go over DMCA, copyright extensions, & Patent Office bullshit."
Re:Not what you might think....
on
AOL Patents IM
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· Score: 1
Prior Art Counter-claim:
IRC: "/notify {nick}"
This command notifies the uniquely identified user when someone with the desired unique identifier, {nick}, enters the multipicity of concurrent, independent communcation system of distributed servers.
If you're using a UNIX client, then you are most likely aware of the ability to log onto *multiple, concurrent, independent communication system of distributed servers on completely seperate networks!* A proper comparison would be, oh, say an AIM client that could also do ICQ or IRC or any of the number of other chat-type systems.
If you're using a Windows-based client, then you most likely think mIRC == IRC. Seek help from your friendly neighborhood UNIX guru.
I'm willing to bet this was done (on DALnet anyways) at least 4 - 5 years before AIM was even a gleam in the eye of some dumbass greedhead. Not that any of this matters, for as we all know, the USPTO is open for business and whoring itself out to the highest bidder.
Kingstrum
"That high-pitched whirling sound? That's the Founding Fathers having a go over DMCA, copyright extensions, & Patent Office bullshit."
I eagerly await the day when X is replaced by a much better structure, but why on earth would I want to replace *everything* -- from simple ASCII text on up -- with someone else's dipshit idea of "the Next Great Thing"? PDF? I say "buy a clue!"
Wanna talk bloat? Have you bothered to check what your memory usage is lately?
Quartz? Sure, very sweet, and I'm even hoping that some of that snazzy tech leaks back and influences whatever replaces X. However, I would hope that the Free/Open version DOES NOT take a page from Apple's new playbook and screw people out of one of the best parts: skins, themes, and the ability to tweak to your heart's content.
And finally...gee, how to put this nicely?...Ummm, OS X IS NOT UNIX! [look at the definition of "netinfo"] I've been hearing all this harping about how it is a "revelation" and "UNIX GUI done right", etc. ad naseum. Sadly OS X has more in common with Windows than it does UNIX. It lends itself to some of RedHat's goofiness and I gave up on them a loooooooong time ago.
Now before the whining sets in "it's all supposed to be so easy" and "real people shouldn't have to edit text files to use UNIX", I say "bullshit!" I have yet to meet the person who was born knowing Windows, let alone computers; so why is it that the world suddenly has some great fear of LEARNING? Read a man page, get a clue, hack around, and have some fun for BOB's sake! Think of a GUI as the hard candy shell around the nut of your system: Fancy, nice to look at, but not really the point. Personally, I prefer a customized FVWM2 with all the bells and whistles I want. Not Apple, not RedHat, not some other knob with grandiose ideas of providing me a "pleasent user experience".
Why such confusion over something so simple?
on
The Python Cookbook
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· Score: 1
I'm still teaching myself the deeper mysteries of Python, but its always been my favorite language: clean, simple, easy to learn, and very powerful. So, while I understand the reviewer's confusion over the author's methodology, I'm more troubled by the fact that the writers seem to have overlooked one of the nicest features of Python:
*poof* Instant time machine. Your snazzy 1.5.2 classic scripts can now use facilities they didn't have before. It would seem easier to write a good chapter covering this element, let people know that it's available, then use 2.x.x for all of your examples. Anyone who needs to catch up (or stay behind, relative to your perspective) can do so with very little pain.
Beats the hell out of starting over from scratch.
Given the EU's habit of regulating everything, I'm a bit surprised they haven't weighed in to save what is apparently a pretty key piece of IT infrastructure for the whole region. Or at least one of the smaller countries leveraging themselves to become the principal Net provider for the continent.
"The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg -- Backbone provider to All of Europa! Bow and tremble before us...All your packets are belong to us now!"
Hell, if I had a few billion laying around, I'd love to dabble in the speculative bandwidth market for a huge chunk of the captive audience...
Kingstrum, CCNA, Student of the Grand Teachings of Our Dread Lord Pitr...
What if this decisions is used as leverage to convince governments around the world that they need to adopt Passport (or it's succesor)/.Net/Next-Big-Bucket-o'-Shit M$ churns out to handle things like -- *dum dum dum!* Digital Rights Management!
"Why yes Mr. Clinton, we could use this system to put naked pictures of you on the net...but why? Most people want to take that kind of thing off--oh, wait..."
"Microsoft -- helping the rich and famous manage their public image through absolute control and domination of all Media!...well, at least the stuff AOL-TimeWarner et. al. don't already rule with an iron fist..."
"Idiotic international laws, meet common sense; common sense, meet idiotic inter--oh my God! He's chewing off the nose of common sense!"
I'm sorry, could you phrase your question in the form of a virus ?
*wink wink, nudge nudge*
Wouldn't it be a pity if some wretched soul were to send out a virus whose sole purpose was to leave a copy of DeCSS in every computer it touched? Maybe buried 12 folders deep in some random spot on half the world's Windows boxes...
The MPAA's own servers hosting a pop-up ad with the minimal Perl script showing up every now and then...
Seems to me the "troublemakers" in our midst have been laying down on the job...so let's get going, boyos and girlos!
Hmmm...well "compan-ies" implies that there is more than *ONE* company providing the service. At this point I thought we had all agreed to give up and turn it all over to the AOL-TimeWarner-Leviathan...
Oddly enough, I don't see many "Bob's Cable TV" trucks any more...they say TimeWarner and have that mystical, all-seeing eye plastered on the side. Guess the Boob Tube is watching us now... I'm happy with my DSL and rabbits ears, thank you very much!
The ruling however does confuse me a bit, since Ma Bell used the same arguments Back In the Days ("we built it, it's ours, screw them all!"), but that was before telecommunications became a buzzword and a multi-billion dollar sector with drooling hoards fighting for every last scrap of bandwidth and customers. Now *THE* Cable Company has bought out all the legislators they need to get their way.
Bully for them...
That high-pitched whirling sound you hear is Teddy Roosevelt and Nikola Tesla spinning like Dervishes in their respective graves. Enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, where to begin...
* Driving, per say, isn't a right; however, freedom to travel without producing papers is. Read up on the actual law for a "driver's license"...it's not as bad as the conspiracy nuts make it out to be, but it's not what you think it is either. Much like the "opt-out Social Security System" that seems to be pretty darn mandatory.
* Driving on public roads doesn't automagically negate your rights...especially when "We the People" are "The Public" and paid for those roads.
* We apparently have different definitions of "public safety". Preserving such safety does not warranty *ANY ONE* to violate said rights. Hence, the cops not being able to roust you on the road just because you're on it ("Sir, we pulled you over because we don't like your face."). Personally, I'm all for such things as "Kill someone while DUI, get a bullet on the spot", but I'm a capricious bastard that way.
* Rules of the road are implemented as any other civil rule of law: by whomever is in power at the time for whatever gain they may get from it (including, but not limited to, personal sexual gratification from knowing they can make others do what they want.) We had 55MPH held over from the '70s to appease the MADD loonies instead of something based on actual science and current socio-political circumstances.
* Some police find it a demeaning task; others fall into the above catagory of power-trippers.
* So basically you'll be all for writing automatic tickets when you pass a given 1/4 mile stretch randomly chosen by the state? No appeal, no ability to explain that you were going 8MPH over the posted limit to get around a dangerous driver? These days Big Brother gets just as much of a whacking as Nazis, but it really does push to a very scary future, don't you think?
* Under no legal standard that I'm aware of is anyone required to be a mobile snitch for the law. For other victims of American Education who didn't bother to get better informed later: our system of law is *POSTSCRIPTIVE* not *PRESCRIPTIVE*. "Innocent until proven guilty" means "do whatever you like, but if we catch you, your ass is grass". Much like the Ten Commandments, you're free to be an asshole, but you can't whine later that you didn't know there was a punishment for getting caught.
* Planes are a lot different from cars. My car can't wind up in your living room unless there's a road nearby. My plane can destroy your remote log cabin and you'd never know it until someone contacted you. The ability to cause harm is much more limited and requirements for operation are way lower for a car. Applying a blanket standard for wildly different things is rather silly and, well, unsafe for the public, eh?
Time to stop pandering to the narrow-minded nimrod special interests and actually excercise some Freedom for a change.
Kingstrum
"He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandon all hope of ever behaving 'normally.'"
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
So the industry gets caught -- yet again! -- with their hand in the cookie jar, cooking their own damn charts by having big hits played in the middle of the night shift as "ads" to avoid soiling themselves with the 'payola' scarlet letter. Now, their lobby groups wants to prevent people from 'cherry-picking' tunes off super-snazzy digital radio?
WTF?
If it's an open secret that most music now is shit and every album is designed to have one, maybe two, big hit(s) to draw in the suckers, what's the problem? Doesn't this solve the industries lagging money woes and distribution issues? They simply drop free (ad-driven) radio as a medium and move exclusively to digital (subscription) radio, demand a huge jack in price and a big 'ole piece o' the pie.
No fuss, no muss. The broadcast flags become unnecessary (in the beginning at least), as they^H^H^H^H^H the artists are being paid for their 'labors'.
Personally, with the advent of studios in a box and whatnot, I'd think more performers would forego big studios altogether, hit the road and sell CDs out the backs of their cars. A groundswell starts and you use the Internet for world-wide distribution outside the usual chains. That is, of course, assuming it really is still 'all about the music' and not mere, grubby cash and swishy lifestyle perks.
Odd that...
Kingstrum
*Whose* benchmarks are they going to use? The last year or so, the PLA/Central Committee have been pushing their own CPU, their own WiFi standard, and more. So will they now create their own benchmarks, put themselves at the top of some "One-True-List", berate "that other list" as a puppet of Capitalist Pigs & Running Dog Lackeys, and brag about how fast the Great Firewall filters out "unsocial" and "counterproductive" dissident thought?
Or will they leave all that to the FCC & DoJ to "purify" our airwaves and Internet sources?
Can't have a free population looking at naughty bits and expressing "dissent" opinions...
"If you've run out of luck, it doesn't matter how long your penis is."
-- Juvenal
As a recently laid-off A/V repair tech/installer/programmer ("why yes, I used to work for Mighty Colossal Shitheads, Inc."), my advice: stay the hell away from all of them! Projectors are great until they break or you experience a lamp failure. Unless you really have a space that needs filled, simply avoid them.
If you absolutely must have one, of all the brands we used to service Sharp's seemed to have the best record of least repair. {Note: I have no relationship to Sharp whatsoever.} All of the ones that get big press -- InFocus/Proxima, Epson, Sony, etc. -- were in for repairs on a very steady basis. Make sure the unit will cover all of the signals (and the ranges) you might want to throw at it. Find out the details on service, should you ever need it (you will). Over all, your best bet may be to find a local dealer of several different brands and take a few of your own test DVDs/tapes and ask to see a demo.
Also if you get one, find out how old the model is (gives you a rough idea how soon it will go out of production &/or whether the firmware has been tested) and for "BOB"s sake!, find out how much a replacement lamp is *BEFORE* you buy anything. In the course of less than 6 months the entire industry went from a range of lamp replacement times to a flat "90 days from purchase"...no matter how long it was sitting on your shelf. Nothing gets people more pissed off than to discover their brand new projector has a 3-year repair warranty, but the lamp is only covered for the first 3 months...and on day 91 when it goes out, they've got to pony up anywhere from $300 to ~$2k (very high end, true theater units) for a new light bulb.
If you opt to avoid a projector, *DO NOT* get some piece of crap plasma as a substitute. The dirty little secret the industry doesn't point out is that you're buying the TV version of a fluorescent bulb...and once the noble gas inside begins to lose cohesion, you've got yourself one nice big picture frame. The fact that most are rated for less than 20,000 hours (with a greater than 50% failure rate after 2 years) doesn't really make me feel any better.
I've had the same 32" CRT TV for nearly 8 years now...perfect picture, perfect sound, a bitch to lug around when you move.
Kingstrum
Best. Lawsuit. Ever.
Can't wait to see these guys paraded in handcuffs on their very own "walk of shame"...
*sniff sniff* Smells like...justice.
But I'm sure this'll all blow over for a case of Pepsi and a snazzy new iBook...
Kingstrum
Why do people still think PDF is an *OPEN* format?
Kingstrum
"I got your Acrobat right here, pal!"
The 2nd disk of the Slackware box set is (and has been for a number of years now) a "live" disc suitable for use as a recovery/rescue disc. I've used it for years with great success before KNOPPIX was even a gleam in a German engineer's eye.
Quite a few folks would ask me "why can't Win98 do that?" as I was booting up their crapped out machines and recovering whole HDDs worth of files. All in all, a very nice bonus from a rock-solid distribution.
The genius that is Patrick Volkerding...
Got Slack?
Kingstrum
After reviewing all the other suggestions and comments, I've got to say I still love my Timbuk2 bags. Most of the other ones I looked at 4 years ago sucked or were questionable at best. Got a DeeDog and I've been very happy with it ever since. It's quite roomy and well-nigh indestructible. I grabbed a large laptop sleeve when they were first offered and its had everything from a Compaq 7792DMT to a ThinkPad 600E/X to my new baby TP T22. Perfect, glove-like fit and the handles make it easy to pop out of the D'Dog and tote independently.
I was *extremely pissed* that a month after I bought the D'Dog they came out with their Commuter laptop bags. It had everything I wanted -- including a handle! I've used all kinds of bags over the years and discovered it really depends on how you plan to use the bag and what you plan to carry. Literally got a brand new Commute bag yesterday and it's sweet: built-in laptop sleeve (they've got a bigger model for larger Powerbooks, et. al.), plenty of pockets, a molded foam side/back piece, and a freakin' handle. Looks like a very nice soft-sided briefcase with a gray racing stripe down the middle. My trusty old DeeDog is now doing duty as my work laptop/junk bag so that I don't have to have 10 little containers laying about.
Don't have an iPod, so I have no use for an iPod holder, but I did buy a couple of the Ditty Bags and a snazzy "non-slip" shoulder pad. Since another post mentioned they weren't "really waterproof", I plan to test this over the holiday break...just to be sure.
For the money, it can't be beat. The only thing I saw on the other sites mentioned was a couple had some camo prints that might have been interesting, but I got this mostly to replace a very badly aging "sissy" Jansport soft-side that's lasted almost 10 years. This one's fun, but all business.
To all the folks who harped on the "made in China" angle for the Commute: *shrug* sucks, I'd much prefer folks in SF making them, but face facts: 90-95% of everything you buy that is mass assembled was made by one of nearly 1.8 billion chinese workers...including that rather pricey laptop your so snootily lugging around. At this point it seems like the best way to help them is pour as much business as we can their way until the ChiCom gov't is so overwhelmed or overthrown (finally). In that American companies seem to be real eager to jump at the chance to ship precious IT jobs overseas and pay Indian workers half what their American counterparts make, might be time to come down off that high horse and help us regular folk find some practical solutions.
Satisfied Timbuk2 bag owner,
Kingstrum, H.M./S.H.
Actually, they can watch a 20 year-old movie that did it first:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086443/
Haven't seen it in years, but was pretty good and Fred Ward got off to a good start. Always wanted the helmet he had (pop-up compass, magnifier, etc.)...aaahhh, the future seems to take longer and longer to get here.
Kingstrum
Hmmm, let's see:
* - First, it becomes public that many of the top SCO execs are cashing in big stock options as they get pumped in the media as the thorn in Linux side. Several collect tens of millions of dollars from stock not worth a nickle prior to the IBM "lawsuit".
* - Next, we never actually see any of the "evidence" that is to be used in the case, just small portions of what is promised to be "major violations of IP" that they may -- or may not -- actually own. This issue gets set aside and taken as a given that they just own it all...even the stuff that's long been known to be in public domain.
* - Now, after a speculative report on possible billions of dollars in licensing that might be collected (assuming they have any claims of substance and they win the lawsuit) and sweet talk from a large investment bank, suddenly some dipshit VC gives them a lousy $50 million...and they now have $61 million in the bank. This being very odd since their last SEC filing mentioned that all of this was very speculative and, if it doesn't pan out, they may be tits up.
* - Finally, throughout the whole thing, every promise to keep on point and it's "just a licensing spat" continue to be proven false and the threats expand to encompass just about anything ever touched by Linux.
Now I'm not a lawyer nor a stock broker, but it sure seems to me like this is just a slow-motion Bait-n-Switch with a Pyramid Scam/Stock Swindle twist. In the '90's we used to call this a "Pump-n-Dump" (build up the buzz, sell off the stock, run to the Bahamas). Apparently the boys in the boardroom figure if they just make their money on the front end, fine; but, if it turns out they might actually have something like $3 billion coming to them on the back end, so much the better.
Wonder if anyone has contacted the SEC and DoJ to see if this is all on the up-and-up...?
Oddly enough, the one thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet is that SCO has no leg to stand on because, well gee, Linux source code is "Open Source" -- so they were just as able to review the code as anyone else on the planet.
Wouldn't this be a HUGE lapse in due-diligence on the part of SCO's people? As a for-profit company, I would think you'd have at least one legal intern looking over the source code before getting into bed with the "Rebel Alliance" of the software industry.
All in all, nice to see IBM putting these piss ants in their place...now just to wait til their stock bottoms out and we all get together and buy them out for $10 and fire these assholes.
Kingstrum
Seems to me that one of the primary reasons for having living, breathing people in space is to see how people can/will adapt to the rigors of outer space. We sent monkeys and dogs originally for safety reasons, but eventually we wanted to know what would happen to humans. Dogs and computers couldn't describe the heightened sense of awareness and euphoria that space travel seems to inspire in homo sapiens.
Basically, astronauts are the lab rats we keep sending into space to get the ball rolling.
The thing that amazes me is that in this day and age, we would still need to take 10-20 years to build a replacement system for the shuttles. Seems to me modern materials and high-end CAD/CAM would've cut the time to less than 5 years, tops.
On the other hand, its been pretty sad that especially in this country, commerical interests -- who stand to make untold billions off of space-based initatives -- haven't bothered to sink a dime into their own private efforts, but instead have milked at the public teat...just like every other time it seems. Personally, I'm hoping things like the X Project and other private space efforts start to pay off and show the way to letting some of us realize our personal desire to depart the cradle of life and move out into the backyard that is our universe.
Here's hoping...
So this is it? We're reduced to begging for scraps and collecting alums once every 50 years?!
Pardon my French, but "fuck that shit!"...
I'm all for Free Markets, but I think some balance (by regulation, if necessary) must be maintained, even if it is just because Big Business has shown in the last hundred years that our perpetuation and extension of the Frankenstein monster we call "corporations" only feeds their appetites for more.
I might go along with this if it were something like: return all copyright and patent durations to their original, Constitutional assigned lengths, then at the end of that period a fee of $1US is assessed. Then every year (or six months, or even month, as decided by "We the People") thereafter, the fee is *exponetially* increased. Most reasonable people will keep it up for a few years or so, then once we start talking real money, it reverts back to public domain.
Think about all the bad '80s music...how many of those copyright holders would pay thousands of dollars to keep a song in the vain hope it might get used somday in a Gap ad?
While I certainly have philosophical disagreements with some things that get thrown around as "Libertarian", I feel the core holds; thus, an old Robert Heinlein quote comes to mind:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the
courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or
turned back, for their private benefit."
-- Robert Heinlein, from "Life-Line"
I think that's about as reasonable as it gets.
TANSTAAFL,
Kingstrum
Nothing like fighting an old battle over and over and over again I suppose...
First, let us start by taking note that the original poster, nor any of the replies I read, even bothered to quote the passage in contension; so, here's the language -- verbatium:
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
As clearly stated, the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms shall *NOT* be infringed.
Period.
Now an obvious oversight many people make is overlooking the commas in the above quote. They are used in this instance to tie the individual bits together. In this case to make it clear that the people should be free and unencumbered by the government to bear arms so that they may come to the aid of their fellow citizens in times of trouble or unrest. This being logically consistant with both the ideals set forth in the rest of the founding documents, and one of the cornerstones of an free society: Freedom has a price.
You're either willing to pay that price or you are not, in which case you won't be free for very long. Furthermore, the right to self-defense has always been held as sacred given that a person cannot be free if they are hindered by law or moral which allows someone else to violate, or even kill, you.
For the sake of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am probably one of a handful of people in this forum who has had to kill another human being in self-defense. I did so with full faculties and would do so again in order to protect myself or others from lethal force. As a Libertarian I do not believe in being an agressor or instigator of violence, but I will *NEVER* give up my right to self-defense...nor by 9mm Glock.
I never served in the military, and I still contend that a standing army has brought us nothing but grief; however, if called to defend this country, I'd be one of the first men on the line, because I recognize that by accepting the freedoms I have, I must also be willing to pay the price...even if that means dying in the attempt.
As to why the Supreme Court (and other lesser courts) have chosen to "interprete" the Constitution instead of doing their jobs and using it as a litmus test to be applied to any law which rises to challenge it, well, I could go on all day about judical predujice and rampant stupidity, but that gets boring pretty fast. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once quipped that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." I contend that it is, and we're all in this one together, boys & girls.
Heed the wise words of Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Kingstrum
"An armed society is a polite society." - Robert A. Heinlein
Prior Art Counter-claim:
IRC: "/notify {nick}"
This command notifies the uniquely identified user when someone with the desired unique identifier, {nick}, enters the multipicity of concurrent, independent communcation system of distributed servers.
If you're using a UNIX client, then you are most likely aware of the ability to log onto *multiple, concurrent, independent communication system of distributed servers on completely seperate networks!* A proper comparison would be, oh, say an AIM client that could also do ICQ or IRC or any of the number of other chat-type systems.
If you're using a Windows-based client, then you most likely think mIRC == IRC. Seek help from your friendly neighborhood UNIX guru.
I'm willing to bet this was done (on DALnet anyways) at least 4 - 5 years before AIM was even a gleam in the eye of some dumbass greedhead. Not that any of this matters, for as we all know, the USPTO is open for business and whoring itself out to the highest bidder.
Kingstrum
"That high-pitched whirling sound? That's the Founding Fathers having a go over DMCA, copyright extensions, & Patent Office bullshit."
Prior Art Counter-claim:
IRC: "/notify {nick}"
This command notifies the uniquely identified user when someone with the desired unique identifier, {nick}, enters the multipicity of concurrent, independent communcation system of distributed servers.
If you're using a UNIX client, then you are most likely aware of the ability to log onto *multiple, concurrent, independent communication system of distributed servers on completely seperate networks!* A proper comparison would be, oh, say an AIM client that could also do ICQ or IRC or any of the number of other chat-type systems.
If you're using a Windows-based client, then you most likely think mIRC == IRC. Seek help from your friendly neighborhood UNIX guru.
I'm willing to bet this was done (on DALnet anyways) at least 4 - 5 years before AIM was even a gleam in the eye of some dumbass greedhead. Not that any of this matters, for as we all know, the USPTO is open for business and whoring itself out to the highest bidder.
Kingstrum
"That high-pitched whirling sound? That's the Founding Fathers having a go over DMCA, copyright extensions, & Patent Office bullshit."
Ye Gods, Man! Have you gone insane?!
I eagerly await the day when X is replaced by a much better structure, but why on earth would I want to replace *everything* -- from simple ASCII text on up -- with someone else's dipshit idea of "the Next Great Thing"? PDF? I say "buy a clue!"
Wanna talk bloat? Have you bothered to check what your memory usage is lately?
Quartz? Sure, very sweet, and I'm even hoping that some of that snazzy tech leaks back and influences whatever replaces X. However, I would hope that the Free/Open version DOES NOT take a page from Apple's new playbook and screw people out of one of the best parts: skins, themes, and the ability to tweak to your heart's content.
And finally...gee, how to put this nicely?...Ummm, OS X IS NOT UNIX! [look at the definition of "netinfo"] I've been hearing all this harping about how it is a "revelation" and "UNIX GUI done right", etc. ad naseum. Sadly OS X has more in common with Windows than it does UNIX. It lends itself to some of RedHat's goofiness and I gave up on them a loooooooong time ago.
Now before the whining sets in "it's all supposed to be so easy" and "real people shouldn't have to edit text files to use UNIX", I say "bullshit!" I have yet to meet the person who was born knowing Windows, let alone computers; so why is it that the world suddenly has some great fear of LEARNING? Read a man page, get a clue, hack around, and have some fun for BOB's sake! Think of a GUI as the hard candy shell around the nut of your system: Fancy, nice to look at, but not really the point. Personally, I prefer a customized FVWM2 with all the bells and whistles I want. Not Apple, not RedHat, not some other knob with grandiose ideas of providing me a "pleasent user experience".
I'm still teaching myself the deeper mysteries of Python, but its always been my favorite language: clean, simple, easy to learn, and very powerful. So, while I understand the reviewer's confusion over the author's methodology, I'm more troubled by the fact that the writers seem to have overlooked one of the nicest features of Python:
from __future__ import *
*poof* Instant time machine. Your snazzy 1.5.2 classic scripts can now use facilities they didn't have before. It would seem easier to write a good chapter covering this element, let people know that it's available, then use 2.x.x for all of your examples. Anyone who needs to catch up (or stay behind, relative to your perspective) can do so with very little pain.
Beats the hell out of starting over from scratch.
"My God...it's full of penguins!"
or
"What's the GREEN pill do?"
The idiocy of the original DivX format, now with bigger, meatier chunks of spyware...
Hmmmm, I propose: "DivX-Man 2k2+"
Funny, but I always thought of Sony, et. al. as *CONSUMER* electronics companies, not slack-jawed Yes Men for the Hollywood Mafia.
*shrug* Live and learn...I guess this means I'm going to have to give up my MiniDisc toys and grab a Zaurus instead.
-K
As long as none of them are things like:
"Dead Parrot II: When Zombie Birds Attack!"
or
"Two men slapping each other with codfish"
or
"Minister of Funny Ways to Fold Your Arms"
Maybe the boys'll do them as a bit at the Aspen Comedy festival for Comedy Central. I just might have to break down for cable to see that...
Kingstrum
Given the EU's habit of regulating everything, I'm a bit surprised they haven't weighed in to save what is apparently a pretty key piece of IT infrastructure for the whole region. Or at least one of the smaller countries leveraging themselves to become the principal Net provider for the continent.
"The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg -- Backbone provider to All of Europa! Bow and tremble before us...All your packets are belong to us now!"
Hell, if I had a few billion laying around, I'd love to dabble in the speculative bandwidth market for a huge chunk of the captive audience...
Kingstrum, CCNA, Student of the Grand Teachings of Our Dread Lord Pitr...
And it only gets worse!
What if this decisions is used as leverage to convince governments around the world that they need to adopt Passport (or it's succesor)/.Net/Next-Big-Bucket-o'-Shit M$ churns out to handle things like -- *dum dum dum!* Digital Rights Management!
"Why yes Mr. Clinton, we could use this system to put naked pictures of you on the net...but why? Most people want to take that kind of thing off--oh, wait..."
"Microsoft -- helping the rich and famous manage their public image through absolute control and domination of all Media!...well, at least the stuff AOL-TimeWarner et. al. don't already rule with an iron fist..."
"Idiotic international laws, meet common sense; common sense, meet idiotic inter--oh my God! He's chewing off the nose of common sense!"
Kingstrum
I'm sorry, could you phrase your question in the form of a virus ?
*wink wink, nudge nudge*
Wouldn't it be a pity if some wretched soul were to send out a virus whose sole purpose was to leave a copy of DeCSS in every computer it touched? Maybe buried 12 folders deep in some random spot on half the world's Windows boxes...
The MPAA's own servers hosting a pop-up ad with the minimal Perl script showing up every now and then...
Seems to me the "troublemakers" in our midst have been laying down on the job...so let's get going, boyos and girlos!
Hmmm...well "compan-ies" implies that there is more than *ONE* company providing the service. At this point I thought we had all agreed to give up and turn it all over to the AOL-TimeWarner-Leviathan...
Oddly enough, I don't see many "Bob's Cable TV" trucks any more...they say TimeWarner and have that mystical, all-seeing eye plastered on the side. Guess the Boob Tube is watching us now...
I'm happy with my DSL and rabbits ears, thank you very much!
The ruling however does confuse me a bit, since Ma Bell used the same arguments Back In the Days ("we built it, it's ours, screw them all!"), but that was before telecommunications became a buzzword and a multi-billion dollar sector with drooling hoards fighting for every last scrap of bandwidth and customers. Now *THE* Cable Company has bought out all the legislators they need to get their way.
Bully for them...
That high-pitched whirling sound you hear is Teddy Roosevelt and Nikola Tesla spinning like Dervishes in their respective graves. Enjoy.
=K