For perfect performance, yeah. But I've run SQL-based servers that have much less RAM than the db they're serving, and performance on the db is just fine. Actually, overseeing an MS-SQL-based system that saw constant use by over 500 people at a time, doing constant lookups and modify's. The db was over 3GB, and the server ran on a Pentium 3/500 with 512MB of RAM. Now, I don't care how much crap you use on your PC, you're not going to have more than 500 simultaneous I/Os to the file system going on. And even if you do, you're going to be running it on something better than a P3/500 with 512MB of RAM... (Since this OS will come out far enough in the future that 512MB will be standard, or less than standard.)
Sorry... Got so into my rant I forgot to include: "I also use a large number of Macintoshes running all levels of the MacOS as a hobby, and have a Linux-based router at home, as well as supporting Linux-based and NT-based servers in a previous job. I honestly have no preference in OS in general (I think Linux is the best server OS, MacOS X is the best 'general consumer appliance' OS, and Mandrake/Gnome, MacOS X, and WinXP are tied as far as general-use desktop.)"
hehe... I hate it when I go so far off on a tangent that I forget to include a point I meant to make in my opening sentence.
But, the point isn't to have a 'better file system', but to do away with the concept of a file system altogether. Instead of having 'files', you'll just have code, and information. Programs will reside in one part of the disk, formatted one way; and data will reside not in individual files, but as a record in the document database. It really is a good idea. Obviously, I haven't seen the technical specs on how MS is going to implement it, but if they do it right, this is the way data should be stored. As data, not 'files'.
Let's think about the age-old 'desktop' metaphor that has been abused to death. Which is easier: 1. Going through your filing cabinets to find the folder that contains the exact piece of paper you want, or 2. Telling your secretary (who has a photographic memory) to give you the 'Johnson file'? With old filesystems, you are using option 1. Yeah, if you know exactly where the file is (such as on your desktop,) you can get to it faster, and you CAN have your forgetful secretary search for it, but with option 2, the secretary always knows exactly where your piece of paper is, and has it for you a few seconds after you ask for it. Which would you prefer?
Someone got it right. If I had any mod points, I'd mod you up. I am one of those rare platform-neutral people. I use WinXP on my main PC because I play some Win-only games, and I actually prefer MS Office to any currently available Open Office (so shoot me, I actually like an MS product) and I think XP is by far the best OS to come out of Redmond since... Uh, I was going to say DOS, but that didn't actually come from Redmond, and really wasn't any good.
I actually like the task panes that XP adds to folders, and Office uses. They are how the UI should work. You should have your data, and you should have a list of things you can do with it. To me, a perfect world would be one where there are no independent programs, per se, only a uniform interface for the computer where all your data is readily accessible, and you work on your data, without having to worry about which program does what. For that, Microsoft's new FS is perfect.
Heck, I forsee that Microsoft is going to divide what we currently call the 'PC' into seperate machines. You'll have your 'Office' appliance, where you have this database-based data store, with one interface on boot that just displays your data, you work with it without seperate 'applications', you just work in the one main interface to do everything office-wise. Think of a hybrid between Office and Windows XP. No discernible filesystem, no 'Windows' directory, only a list of your documents, and your contact/organizational data (calendar, email, all the 'Outlook' functions.) You have a task box on the side/top/bottom that shows what you can do with your data, and you just work your data, you don't worry about any OS type issues.
The second box is the 'multimedia' box. This is what Apple is going for. For this to be perfect, you wouldn't even have an OS interface, you'd just choose what task you want to do, along with a list of your current projects. When you plug in a camera/camcorder/music player/etc, it asks you what task you want to do, and helps you do it easily. If Apple keeps their momentum in this field, Microsoft has no chance in this arena.
The third area is gaming and home entertainment. This is where the X-Box (and "Home Station"?) come in. Microsoft wants gaming to be a no-interface kind of thing. With no disc, you surf the web or watch TV, with a disc, you play games.
Obviously, MSN comes in here, as well as MSN broadband. They want every home to have MSN broadband connected to a 'home gateway' (MS will probably release one of these, probably a re-badged LinkSys combo DSL/cable modem and 802.11a router.) From this gateway, you'll have highspeed access for your Home Station connected to your TV, your MS iMedia (bad imitation of the new iMac in functionality), and your "MS Desktop Office", which will be the office-type machine that uses this new FS.
Businesses will have the closed-box, headless.Net Server, along with a network of "MS Desktop Office"s...
At least, that's Microsoft's vision. They don't want to rule the OS market, or the Office software market. They want to move to have *NO* independent PCs, but own every category of seperate information appliance.
I had the displeasure of finding this out the hard way. I was actually playing around with the speech recognition, but I thought I had turned it off (and muted the mic.) Every once in awhile, I'd get static characters, with an occasional word mixed in. I use a Logitech wireless 'desktop' keyboard and mouse set, and I thought it was my fiance's wireless set interfering with mine (they're about 20' away, a room apart.) After much troubleshooting (including plugging in a wired kb and mouse) I still couldn't figure out what it was. Until I happened to bump my headset/microphone off it's holder, and saw a bunch of extra text appear. That's when I finally figured that out. The annoying thing still refuses to turn itself off, no matter how many times I tell it I hate it. If it weren't for the fact that I actually like to play with it once in a while, I'd uninstall it.
Okay, I apologize. The orignal comment seemed to imply that the poster thought that 'radio' frequencies travelled significantly slower than visible light frequencies. So I assumed that the user was fairly ignorant of the topic, and used laymans terms. Yes, as you point out, it is true that radio frequencies travel slower in the interstellar medium than visible light frequencies, the difference is not large enough for the average person to care about.
e.g. Who cares if it takes an extra 15 seconds for the radio waves to reach us from across the galaxy?
Actually, as has been pointed out by another reader, light and "radio" are both just various wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. In a vacuum, they travel the same speed. On Earth, radio is slower because air affects radio wavelengths and visible light differently.
I work for an ISP. We only advertize for residential use, our contract states that we are only for residential use. However, we allow you to do pretty much whatever you want with the connection. If you want to use our connection to run a company, that's fine by us. BUT, our contract states that we guarantee NOTHING. If your service goes out, we will give you a proportional credit for the downtime. Nothing more. This is the reality of using residential connections for business use. We don't even guarantee any specific speed, just a 384 minimum download (our sales people seem to think otherwise, though.) Heck, the phone companys we contract through (national DSL) don't guarantee ANY speed. As long as you have a connection, most telcos won't even troubleshoot line issues for us. In fact, with some ISPs, if you tell them you're using their residential account for business use, they'll either start charging you a business rate, or they'll just cancel your account (Comcast, anyone?)
If you plan on running a business, or making money in any way off of your internet connection, purchase something that is designed for businesses, and is guaranteed. When you call your residential ISP and complain that you are losing thousands of dollars (or, my personal favorite "I had to send my five employees home without pay today, and they have kids to feed!") you're not going to get any sympathy. We sell to home users, and it's not our fault that you weren't wise enough to choose a guaranteed business connection to risk your income on.
Ask any residential ISP technician, you'll get the exact same attitude I just gave you. Yes, we are more than willing to try to help you, but if you whine and yell about the fact that the connection has been down for "two whole hours!" then don't expect us to sympathize. Getting mad at the residential technicians isn't going to help a thing. If anything, if you get a particularly bad or mean technician, he'll just blow you off for your attitude. (I always try to remain polite and professional, and always TRY to help as best I can, but some techs will just blow off annoying customers.)
And, yes, I have been responsible for a business' internet connection. Thank god the CEO listened and was willing to pay for a T1, rather than DSL...
Except, Slashdot is not becoming a pay site. You're just paying to have ads removed. Only if your comments ended up in a 'subscriber-only' section would your statement be true. Also, by merely posting on Slashdot, you have granted them a limited-use license to store and display your comments as they see fit. (They had a story about it awhile back, when they were wanting to use comments in a book that I don't think every actually came out.)
Just like usenet. If you ever post on a newsgroup, guess what, someone's making money off your post. There are companies that charge for usenet access, so you'd have to send a letter to each and every one of them, as well.
I always thought it was an odd choice for the WB network to choose the frog as mascot for their network... Heck, I got the point of that cartoon when I was 10.
Yeah. Since I started studying Quantum Physics (which I freely admit I don't even come close to fully understanding) I've obviously forgotten my relativity. I guess I should have looked up the equation first...
Sorry, you're defenition is backwards. It takes longer for those at home, it takes real-time for those on the ship. Example:
You're travelling to Alpha Centauri, 3 light years away. You travel at.99c. For you, on the ship, it takes about 3 years to get to Alpha Centauri. Then you immediately turn around and travel back. Total time for you, about 6 years. But, when you get home, it will be about 50 years later.
Perhaps, but it's overridden by your right to vote, even if you're out of town on election day.
Or, if you live in the state of Oregon, you ONLY vote by mail. How do we know that us voters in Oregon don't have party people standing over our shoulders?
They've been here for awhile. Pioneer has had them available on car stereos since at least 1996. Note I have yet to see one that does red. All of the ones I have seen are EITHER blue OR green. They are not full color. The current ones are also usually 4-bit (16 shades.)
Yes, but there are lots of us (especially those of us without kids) who couldn't give a damn about what is important 'as a species' or about the best thing 'for society'. I care more about a free and open society, so my kids can decide for themselves what they want to do when they grow up. Not what someone else decides for them...
"I'm sorry, you can't fight, you have to be a cook, because of where your ancestors are from."
"I'm sorry, you can't be a doctor, because you happen to have an extra branch on one of your chromosomes."
"I'm sorry. You have to die now, because you had the audacity to be born to someone who believed a certain way."
That's what happens when 'society' decides what is appropriate.
Give me liberty, or give me death. To me that means I think you should be able to do believe what you want to believe, say what you want to say, do what you want to do. As long as it does not infringe on the ability of others to do the same. *THAT* is freedom.
I am perfectly fine with the idea of a national database fully connected to all federal agencies, state agencies, and even private agencies.
What I don't want is a national ID card. Or even 50 state ID cards, or 4 credit cards, 2 library cards, 2 student ID cards, an ATM card, a subway card, a frequent buyer card, ad nauseum... I want biometric ID for everything. Screw an ATM machine, and a credit card swiper, and police asking for lic and reg. I want an optical (or fingerprint, facial, whatever) scanner that IDs you, and lets you do anything, anywhere. No PIN number, no account number, no nothing. Just a bio-scan. Heck, I'm sick of 10 email addresses, four phone numbers, two addresses plus a post office box....
Okay, so that's unreasonable. But all we really need is one ID number, with biometric ID backup. I should be able to freely give out my 'personal ID number' such as a SS# to anyone, at any time, with no fear of being abused, beacuse in order to do anything as me, you'd need to be me. Not even needing that number would be preferable, and fine with me (my full name is unique on the planet,) but all those John Smiths and Bill Johnsons would have problems. (Maybe name+birthdate? Nah, there's got to be more than one John Smith born on 1/1/50.)
So, if someone can find a way to uniquely identify each person on the globe with an easily remembered, (and transmitted via text,) and combine it with a universal, cheap biometric identifier, you'll be a billionaire.
Yes, the usual defenition of 'spam' is when it is sent to multiple people. However, the legal defenition of 'UCE' or Unsolicited Commercial Email (as defined by the state of Washington, possibly others) is that the recipient did not ask for it (as Neil didn't), that it is commercial in nature (soliciting business is definitely commercial), and, of course, that it be email. It doesn't have to be bulk.
As for the spam I recieve? 90% of it lists either only me in the To line, or no To line at all. So I have no way of knowing how many people it was sent to. My most recent was an ad by some random reseller for Dish Network. The 'To' line lists only my email address. And it claims to have been an opt-in email. I recieved it on my hotmail address (which I have NEVER given out to ANYONE, I only use it to see how much spam I can collect.) and my Yahoo address, and my AT&T Broadband address. Very thorough spamming, I must say. (Heck, I got it twice on the AT&T account.)
Oh yeah, the Hotmail account gets about 5 pieces of spam a day. *WITH* it set to the most restrictive spam filtering, on auto-delete.
Come on, we need to make a concerted effort to get Minesweeper up to number 1! I mean, it's available on many different platforms (Minus the Microsoft copyright, at least) so there's got to be more than 21 million users of Minesweeper!
Am I the only lucky SOB out there with a Vaio that's never had problems? (I do not know, nor have I ever, had any financial stake in Sony.) I bought a Vaio PCG-C1X over two years ago now. It wasn't quite state of the art, but come on, how can you beat such a cute little computer with an integrated digital camera? Well, after two years, many drops, thumps, bumps, and kicks (I was pissed off at Windows,) it still runs perfectly. The hard drive has acquired about 15 bad sectors, but I've had 3 supposed 'server' drives die completely in the same period of time. The hardware still functions perfectly. Yeah, the case may be a little chipped, dented, scratched, and in some places actually broken (the silly little door that hides the VGA-out port. Why do companies insist on putting silly little cheap plastic doors on notebooks?) But, it still works fine. In fact, it dual boots Mandrake and Windows XP just fine. Yes, Windows XP on a Pentium MMX 266 with 64MB of RAM. Scary thought, but it's snappier than Windows Me.
Why? Nowhere does it say that they guarantee that a CD will work in any given CD player. Nowhere does it say you are allowed to copy that CD. In fact, it specifically tells you that you can't.
They've already tried this in Europe, with no warning stickers. While there was a huge outcry from music enthusiasts (well, mostly slashdot-reading geeks,) they're still doing it, over a year later.
Slashdot Mirror
For perfect performance, yeah. But I've run SQL-based servers that have much less RAM than the db they're serving, and performance on the db is just fine. Actually, overseeing an MS-SQL-based system that saw constant use by over 500 people at a time, doing constant lookups and modify's. The db was over 3GB, and the server ran on a Pentium 3/500 with 512MB of RAM. Now, I don't care how much crap you use on your PC, you're not going to have more than 500 simultaneous I/Os to the file system going on. And even if you do, you're going to be running it on something better than a P3/500 with 512MB of RAM... (Since this OS will come out far enough in the future that 512MB will be standard, or less than standard.)
Sorry... Got so into my rant I forgot to include: "I also use a large number of Macintoshes running all levels of the MacOS as a hobby, and have a Linux-based router at home, as well as supporting Linux-based and NT-based servers in a previous job. I honestly have no preference in OS in general (I think Linux is the best server OS, MacOS X is the best 'general consumer appliance' OS, and Mandrake/Gnome, MacOS X, and WinXP are tied as far as general-use desktop.)"
hehe... I hate it when I go so far off on a tangent that I forget to include a point I meant to make in my opening sentence.
But, the point isn't to have a 'better file system', but to do away with the concept of a file system altogether. Instead of having 'files', you'll just have code, and information. Programs will reside in one part of the disk, formatted one way; and data will reside not in individual files, but as a record in the document database. It really is a good idea. Obviously, I haven't seen the technical specs on how MS is going to implement it, but if they do it right, this is the way data should be stored. As data, not 'files'.
Let's think about the age-old 'desktop' metaphor that has been abused to death. Which is easier: 1. Going through your filing cabinets to find the folder that contains the exact piece of paper you want, or 2. Telling your secretary (who has a photographic memory) to give you the 'Johnson file'? With old filesystems, you are using option 1. Yeah, if you know exactly where the file is (such as on your desktop,) you can get to it faster, and you CAN have your forgetful secretary search for it, but with option 2, the secretary always knows exactly where your piece of paper is, and has it for you a few seconds after you ask for it. Which would you prefer?
Someone got it right. If I had any mod points, I'd mod you up. I am one of those rare platform-neutral people. I use WinXP on my main PC because I play some Win-only games, and I actually prefer MS Office to any currently available Open Office (so shoot me, I actually like an MS product) and I think XP is by far the best OS to come out of Redmond since... Uh, I was going to say DOS, but that didn't actually come from Redmond, and really wasn't any good.
.Net Server, along with a network of "MS Desktop Office"s...
I actually like the task panes that XP adds to folders, and Office uses. They are how the UI should work. You should have your data, and you should have a list of things you can do with it. To me, a perfect world would be one where there are no independent programs, per se, only a uniform interface for the computer where all your data is readily accessible, and you work on your data, without having to worry about which program does what. For that, Microsoft's new FS is perfect.
Heck, I forsee that Microsoft is going to divide what we currently call the 'PC' into seperate machines. You'll have your 'Office' appliance, where you have this database-based data store, with one interface on boot that just displays your data, you work with it without seperate 'applications', you just work in the one main interface to do everything office-wise. Think of a hybrid between Office and Windows XP. No discernible filesystem, no 'Windows' directory, only a list of your documents, and your contact/organizational data (calendar, email, all the 'Outlook' functions.) You have a task box on the side/top/bottom that shows what you can do with your data, and you just work your data, you don't worry about any OS type issues.
The second box is the 'multimedia' box. This is what Apple is going for. For this to be perfect, you wouldn't even have an OS interface, you'd just choose what task you want to do, along with a list of your current projects. When you plug in a camera/camcorder/music player/etc, it asks you what task you want to do, and helps you do it easily. If Apple keeps their momentum in this field, Microsoft has no chance in this arena.
The third area is gaming and home entertainment. This is where the X-Box (and "Home Station"?) come in. Microsoft wants gaming to be a no-interface kind of thing. With no disc, you surf the web or watch TV, with a disc, you play games.
Obviously, MSN comes in here, as well as MSN broadband. They want every home to have MSN broadband connected to a 'home gateway' (MS will probably release one of these, probably a re-badged LinkSys combo DSL/cable modem and 802.11a router.) From this gateway, you'll have highspeed access for your Home Station connected to your TV, your MS iMedia (bad imitation of the new iMac in functionality), and your "MS Desktop Office", which will be the office-type machine that uses this new FS.
Businesses will have the closed-box, headless
At least, that's Microsoft's vision. They don't want to rule the OS market, or the Office software market. They want to move to have *NO* independent PCs, but own every category of seperate information appliance.
I had the displeasure of finding this out the hard way. I was actually playing around with the speech recognition, but I thought I had turned it off (and muted the mic.) Every once in awhile, I'd get static characters, with an occasional word mixed in. I use a Logitech wireless 'desktop' keyboard and mouse set, and I thought it was my fiance's wireless set interfering with mine (they're about 20' away, a room apart.) After much troubleshooting (including plugging in a wired kb and mouse) I still couldn't figure out what it was. Until I happened to bump my headset/microphone off it's holder, and saw a bunch of extra text appear. That's when I finally figured that out. The annoying thing still refuses to turn itself off, no matter how many times I tell it I hate it. If it weren't for the fact that I actually like to play with it once in a while, I'd uninstall it.
Apparently nobody finds this kind of humor funny... I got rated down for a similar joke a few weeks ago.
Okay, I apologize. The orignal comment seemed to imply that the poster thought that 'radio' frequencies travelled significantly slower than visible light frequencies. So I assumed that the user was fairly ignorant of the topic, and used laymans terms. Yes, as you point out, it is true that radio frequencies travel slower in the interstellar medium than visible light frequencies, the difference is not large enough for the average person to care about.
e.g. Who cares if it takes an extra 15 seconds for the radio waves to reach us from across the galaxy?
Actually, as has been pointed out by another reader, light and "radio" are both just various wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. In a vacuum, they travel the same speed. On Earth, radio is slower because air affects radio wavelengths and visible light differently.
I work for an ISP. We only advertize for residential use, our contract states that we are only for residential use. However, we allow you to do pretty much whatever you want with the connection. If you want to use our connection to run a company, that's fine by us. BUT, our contract states that we guarantee NOTHING. If your service goes out, we will give you a proportional credit for the downtime. Nothing more. This is the reality of using residential connections for business use. We don't even guarantee any specific speed, just a 384 minimum download (our sales people seem to think otherwise, though.) Heck, the phone companys we contract through (national DSL) don't guarantee ANY speed. As long as you have a connection, most telcos won't even troubleshoot line issues for us. In fact, with some ISPs, if you tell them you're using their residential account for business use, they'll either start charging you a business rate, or they'll just cancel your account (Comcast, anyone?)
If you plan on running a business, or making money in any way off of your internet connection, purchase something that is designed for businesses, and is guaranteed. When you call your residential ISP and complain that you are losing thousands of dollars (or, my personal favorite "I had to send my five employees home without pay today, and they have kids to feed!") you're not going to get any sympathy. We sell to home users, and it's not our fault that you weren't wise enough to choose a guaranteed business connection to risk your income on.
Ask any residential ISP technician, you'll get the exact same attitude I just gave you. Yes, we are more than willing to try to help you, but if you whine and yell about the fact that the connection has been down for "two whole hours!" then don't expect us to sympathize. Getting mad at the residential technicians isn't going to help a thing. If anything, if you get a particularly bad or mean technician, he'll just blow you off for your attitude. (I always try to remain polite and professional, and always TRY to help as best I can, but some techs will just blow off annoying customers.)
And, yes, I have been responsible for a business' internet connection. Thank god the CEO listened and was willing to pay for a T1, rather than DSL...
Except, Slashdot is not becoming a pay site. You're just paying to have ads removed. Only if your comments ended up in a 'subscriber-only' section would your statement be true. Also, by merely posting on Slashdot, you have granted them a limited-use license to store and display your comments as they see fit. (They had a story about it awhile back, when they were wanting to use comments in a book that I don't think every actually came out.)
Just like usenet. If you ever post on a newsgroup, guess what, someone's making money off your post. There are companies that charge for usenet access, so you'd have to send a letter to each and every one of them, as well.
Okay, not only do they have 'sponsored links', but now they have pop-unders, and those obnoxious overlayed flash ads.
I knew there was a reason I hadn't used any engine other than Google for a long time now...
I always thought it was an odd choice for the WB network to choose the frog as mascot for their network... Heck, I got the point of that cartoon when I was 10.
Yeah. Since I started studying Quantum Physics (which I freely admit I don't even come close to fully understanding) I've obviously forgotten my relativity. I guess I should have looked up the equation first...
[wanders off, whistling innocently at his gaffe.]
Sorry, you're defenition is backwards. It takes longer for those at home, it takes real-time for those on the ship. Example:
.99c. For you, on the ship, it takes about 3 years to get to Alpha Centauri. Then you immediately turn around and travel back. Total time for you, about 6 years. But, when you get home, it will be about 50 years later.
You're travelling to Alpha Centauri, 3 light years away. You travel at
Or, if you live in the state of Oregon, you ONLY vote by mail. How do we know that us voters in Oregon don't have party people standing over our shoulders?
They've been here for awhile. Pioneer has had them available on car stereos since at least 1996. Note I have yet to see one that does red. All of the ones I have seen are EITHER blue OR green. They are not full color. The current ones are also usually 4-bit (16 shades.)
Yes, but there are lots of us (especially those of us without kids) who couldn't give a damn about what is important 'as a species' or about the best thing 'for society'. I care more about a free and open society, so my kids can decide for themselves what they want to do when they grow up. Not what someone else decides for them...
"I'm sorry, you can't fight, you have to be a cook, because of where your ancestors are from."
"I'm sorry, you can't be a doctor, because you happen to have an extra branch on one of your chromosomes."
"I'm sorry. You have to die now, because you had the audacity to be born to someone who believed a certain way."
That's what happens when 'society' decides what is appropriate.
Give me liberty, or give me death. To me that means I think you should be able to do believe what you want to believe, say what you want to say, do what you want to do. As long as it does not infringe on the ability of others to do the same. *THAT* is freedom.
I have a hard enough time remembering my IPv4 addy! (Oh, wait... I have ATTBI now, it changes every couple hours...)
I am perfectly fine with the idea of a national database fully connected to all federal agencies, state agencies, and even private agencies.
What I don't want is a national ID card. Or even 50 state ID cards, or 4 credit cards, 2 library cards, 2 student ID cards, an ATM card, a subway card, a frequent buyer card, ad nauseum... I want biometric ID for everything. Screw an ATM machine, and a credit card swiper, and police asking for lic and reg. I want an optical (or fingerprint, facial, whatever) scanner that IDs you, and lets you do anything, anywhere. No PIN number, no account number, no nothing. Just a bio-scan. Heck, I'm sick of 10 email addresses, four phone numbers, two addresses plus a post office box....
Okay, so that's unreasonable. But all we really need is one ID number, with biometric ID backup. I should be able to freely give out my 'personal ID number' such as a SS# to anyone, at any time, with no fear of being abused, beacuse in order to do anything as me, you'd need to be me. Not even needing that number would be preferable, and fine with me (my full name is unique on the planet,) but all those John Smiths and Bill Johnsons would have problems. (Maybe name+birthdate? Nah, there's got to be more than one John Smith born on 1/1/50.)
So, if someone can find a way to uniquely identify each person on the globe with an easily remembered, (and transmitted via text,) and combine it with a universal, cheap biometric identifier, you'll be a billionaire.
Yes, the usual defenition of 'spam' is when it is sent to multiple people. However, the legal defenition of 'UCE' or Unsolicited Commercial Email (as defined by the state of Washington, possibly others) is that the recipient did not ask for it (as Neil didn't), that it is commercial in nature (soliciting business is definitely commercial), and, of course, that it be email. It doesn't have to be bulk.
As for the spam I recieve? 90% of it lists either only me in the To line, or no To line at all. So I have no way of knowing how many people it was sent to. My most recent was an ad by some random reseller for Dish Network. The 'To' line lists only my email address. And it claims to have been an opt-in email. I recieved it on my hotmail address (which I have NEVER given out to ANYONE, I only use it to see how much spam I can collect.) and my Yahoo address, and my AT&T Broadband address. Very thorough spamming, I must say. (Heck, I got it twice on the AT&T account.)
Oh yeah, the Hotmail account gets about 5 pieces of spam a day. *WITH* it set to the most restrictive spam filtering, on auto-delete.
Come on, we need to make a concerted effort to get Minesweeper up to number 1! I mean, it's available on many different platforms (Minus the Microsoft copyright, at least) so there's got to be more than 21 million users of Minesweeper!
Minesweeper forever!!!
A-HA! So everything that is wrong with Windows XP is all al Qaeda's fault!
Maybe this story should have been filed under It's funny, laugh.
Cute. Can't even agree on a spelling of the word within the same sentence?
Am I the only lucky SOB out there with a Vaio that's never had problems? (I do not know, nor have I ever, had any financial stake in Sony.) I bought a Vaio PCG-C1X over two years ago now. It wasn't quite state of the art, but come on, how can you beat such a cute little computer with an integrated digital camera? Well, after two years, many drops, thumps, bumps, and kicks (I was pissed off at Windows,) it still runs perfectly. The hard drive has acquired about 15 bad sectors, but I've had 3 supposed 'server' drives die completely in the same period of time. The hardware still functions perfectly. Yeah, the case may be a little chipped, dented, scratched, and in some places actually broken (the silly little door that hides the VGA-out port. Why do companies insist on putting silly little cheap plastic doors on notebooks?) But, it still works fine. In fact, it dual boots Mandrake and Windows XP just fine. Yes, Windows XP on a Pentium MMX 266 with 64MB of RAM. Scary thought, but it's snappier than Windows Me.
Why? Nowhere does it say that they guarantee that a CD will work in any given CD player. Nowhere does it say you are allowed to copy that CD. In fact, it specifically tells you that you can't.
They've already tried this in Europe, with no warning stickers. While there was a huge outcry from music enthusiasts (well, mostly slashdot-reading geeks,) they're still doing it, over a year later.