Ok, maybe I'm picking nits here, but this isn't an editorial. Dave Barry, for those who aren't familiar with him, is a humor writer who pens his weekly column for the Miami Herald. This was just his latest. The Miami Herald has an archive of his past columns (click on the 'Living' section and then on Dave Barry's picture). If you liked this Playstation one, you ought to check out his earlier work. His greatest piece, IMO, (not on the MH site as far as I know, but available here), titled "Days of Swine and Bozos," which is a very funny sendup of political corruption and incompetence in Miami government.
So they licensed the hardware design to other companies to build, and are leeching off of the companies' revenues. Hey, it's better than sucking dry the wallets and coffers of the consumers.... [snip]... The "TiVo runs Linux" issue seems to be the only beneficial aspect of TiVo; the rest reeks of the capitalist status quo.
So, basically your criticism is that TiVo is grubbing for profits, while Replay was taking the noble path of losing its investor's asses? Remind me not to nominate you for CEO of any company I have stock in.
closure with a President with the qualifications of a head of lettuce is still closure
This is what you're left with, the same criticism that's been leveled against every Republican since Ike. The guy manages to graduate from two more post-grad schools than his opponent, qualifies as a combat pilot, and governs a large state with distinction, and still he's a dunderhead. As I write this, I'm watching George W. addressing the nation, having been certified the winner in Florida. He's classy enough to call for a coming-together and an end to the divisivness. Let's see if his opponents can match him.
The ZDNet article says that "Moravec gives us 40 or 50 years until robots outsmart us." I think Moravec is ignoring the likelihood that we humans will end up using this and attendant technologies to augment our own capabilities. (To that end, I hereby claim first rights on the 'Brain Pilot' trademark). I suspect that we'll be a whole lot like the Borg (although probably invisibly) in the forseeable future.
We have an unwritten constitution:) Because it's unwritten, Phony Tony got away with the RIP bill. I doubt an actual constitution would help.
Didn't I read that the UK was on the verge of codifying citizen rights in some form? And wasn't RIP pushed thru in order to get it done before those rights got enumerated?
I'm not sure why ISPs even bother having elaborate AUSs anyway. It's pretty clear from their behavior that they may as well just write "We have the right to do any damn thing we please regarding how you use our service. Lump it." It would certainly save a lot of reading.
For the lazy among us, there's a leetspeak translator. Uses somewhat different rules, so the translation of the above isn't perfect, but it's a help. The page also caused a script error in my IE, but Netscape worked ok. It'll also translate into leetspeak. My secret shame is that I find this sort of thing fun.
The real solution is for browsers to not save any cookies to disk without your express approval. IE allows you to disable stored cookies, and allow per-session cookies (internet options->security->custom, halfway down).
Try doing this and remaining logged in on SlashDot. You can't, which means it isn't a real solution. I think we need a lot more control over the cookies. I'd find it a useful feature to be able to restrict cookie use to only the site that placed it. I.E. none of this DoubleClick third-party stuff that lets site A see what my site B cookie contains. That would eliminate the ability to track activity from site to site, at least.
We're going to see a lot more of this in the future.
I'm not a big fan of using the courts to punish every perceived wrong, but in this case, I say good. Take a look at this article in the New York Times (free registration required to view it). Those spam emails you get frequently contain HTML that allows the sender to obtain access to your browser cookies and tie your online activities to your identity. Not to mention being able to obtain your IP number and derive your location from it (Postel Services offers this feature for free in its HTML email service. Great way to stalk someone). Legislation doesn't seem to be forthcoming to curb these abuses, so at the moment the courts are the only weapon available.
The reason that ribbon cables are flat is to preserve the phase relationships of multiple signals in a cable while at the same time reducing in-cable interference to a reasonable level.
There's one more reason: it's cheaper. Ribbon cables use insulation-displacement connectors which are gang-crimped onto the cable in one operation. Easy, fast, and reliable. And since very few of us actually care, a manufacturer is going to go with whatever saves money.
When I need an image for my own "devious projects," I usually start with Corbis Images. It has a huge selection and the samples are frequently good enough for my purposes. I use Photoshop to remove the Corbis mark and have what I need. Of course, this is only good for purposes where violating copyright isn't an issue, such as making a joke image to email to a friend, creating a mockup web page to show to a client, etc. I wouldn't recommend doing this for something that would get noticed.
instead of hooking it up to BLOCK images in email, why not take the reverse idea, and hook it up to a search engine. You could electronically index the web, rate quality, etc.
This is exactly what I thought as I read this item. This is probably a good indication that someone somewhere is actually working on this.
You'd be the next dot.com millionaire.
I've just mailed my patent application to the USPTO. Now all I've gotta do is wait for the first infringment, and I can start building my mansion.:-)
The EPA does not inspect your trash. But if they find your monitor at an unsafe waste site, you are 100% responsible for cleaning up that entire site. More than that, if the EPA finds any connection, however tenuous, between a business 'dumping' at a Superfund site and a successor business, they'll come after you. One guy got dragged into a Superfund site cleanup because he bought some used trucks from the going-out-of-business dumper (before anyone knew about the toxic site situation). Kafka couldn't have written a better law than Superfund.
Every time this comes up, labor unions squawk that they need vast sums of government money for their members to retool and retrain, and conservatives say "in your dreams pal. Buy your own tools and education." Also, our present system is so deeply entwined in our everyday life (walls are 8 feet high, paper is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, nuts and bolts are in fractional inches, etc.) that a conversion would be wrenching indeed (pun intended).
The SlashDot effect is taking a toll, so I can't look to see if this is answered. The TiVo has barely-adequate processor power to do the functions it presently handles. I'm wondering if the increased processor load imposed by a higher-bandwidth download might cause problems if record and/or playback is going on at the same time. Or can the ethernet connection handling be dropped in priority so that the other time-critical functions take precedence?
If the final outcome is that Bush retains the electoral college votes and Gore the popular, whoever ultimately takes the White House is going to have a rough time. The opposition is going to carp endlessly that he doesn't have a 'mandate' and that he's in office illegitimately. With the narrowest of margins in the congress, I see this as a recipe for gridock. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. For us.
I've always wondered something: In an employment environment where techies can get a new job by turning into a different driveway in the morning, why do people continue to work for tyrants? How come your ex-boss' company still has employees? And even more to the point, how come none of them have turned him in to the BSA?
This would be fun: as an employee of, oh say, Microsoft, go around some evening and install Oracle products on your fellow employees computers. Then rat out the company to the BSA. Wonder if the BSA would pursue its largest member?
The BSA relies on employee (or ex-employee) snitches. Once they have an informant, they can either persuade a law enforcement agency to get a warrant or go the civil route and subpoena your records. I've also heard tell of licensing agreements that give the vendors permission to inspect your premises and computers 24/7 to make sure your software is legit. I'm sure the vendor could assign its inspection rights to the BSA. Of course, that begs the question of how they know you've got any of that software whose licensing agreement lets them do this.
Genuine turnout stats are tough to come by since the Motor Voter law made it much more difficult to purge the voter rolls. There's a lot of deadwood sitting on the books, making it look like they're staying home.
but to suggest that greens should prefer loosing because of that is a bit over the top, isn't it?
I wasn't suggesting that they should prefer losing, but that they should prepare themselves to repel boarders if they succeed in attaining 5% of the vote. The barbarians will be at their doors. (Mixed metaphors. Gotta love 'em.)
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, maybe I'm picking nits here, but this isn't an editorial. Dave Barry, for those who aren't familiar with him, is a humor writer who pens his weekly column for the Miami Herald. This was just his latest. The Miami Herald has an archive of his past columns (click on the 'Living' section and then on Dave Barry's picture). If you liked this Playstation one, you ought to check out his earlier work. His greatest piece, IMO, (not on the MH site as far as I know, but available here), titled "Days of Swine and Bozos," which is a very funny sendup of political corruption and incompetence in Miami government.
So, basically your criticism is that TiVo is grubbing for profits, while Replay was taking the noble path of losing its investor's asses? Remind me not to nominate you for CEO of any company I have stock in.
This is what you're left with, the same criticism that's been leveled against every Republican since Ike. The guy manages to graduate from two more post-grad schools than his opponent, qualifies as a combat pilot, and governs a large state with distinction, and still he's a dunderhead. As I write this, I'm watching George W. addressing the nation, having been certified the winner in Florida. He's classy enough to call for a coming-together and an end to the divisivness. Let's see if his opponents can match him.
The ZDNet article says that "Moravec gives us 40 or 50 years until robots outsmart us." I think Moravec is ignoring the likelihood that we humans will end up using this and attendant technologies to augment our own capabilities. (To that end, I hereby claim first rights on the 'Brain Pilot' trademark). I suspect that we'll be a whole lot like the Borg (although probably invisibly) in the forseeable future.
Didn't I read that the UK was on the verge of codifying citizen rights in some form? And wasn't RIP pushed thru in order to get it done before those rights got enumerated?
I'm not sure why ISPs even bother having elaborate AUSs anyway. It's pretty clear from their behavior that they may as well just write "We have the right to do any damn thing we please regarding how you use our service. Lump it." It would certainly save a lot of reading.
For the lazy among us, there's a leetspeak translator. Uses somewhat different rules, so the translation of the above isn't perfect, but it's a help. The page also caused a script error in my IE, but Netscape worked ok. It'll also translate into leetspeak. My secret shame is that I find this sort of thing fun.
Try doing this and remaining logged in on SlashDot. You can't, which means it isn't a real solution. I think we need a lot more control over the cookies. I'd find it a useful feature to be able to restrict cookie use to only the site that placed it. I.E. none of this DoubleClick third-party stuff that lets site A see what my site B cookie contains. That would eliminate the ability to track activity from site to site, at least.
I'm not a big fan of using the courts to punish every perceived wrong, but in this case, I say good. Take a look at this article in the New York Times (free registration required to view it). Those spam emails you get frequently contain HTML that allows the sender to obtain access to your browser cookies and tie your online activities to your identity. Not to mention being able to obtain your IP number and derive your location from it (Postel Services offers this feature for free in its HTML email service. Great way to stalk someone). Legislation doesn't seem to be forthcoming to curb these abuses, so at the moment the courts are the only weapon available.
There's one more reason: it's cheaper. Ribbon cables use insulation-displacement connectors which are gang-crimped onto the cable in one operation. Easy, fast, and reliable. And since very few of us actually care, a manufacturer is going to go with whatever saves money.
You mean the Eschelon Drop? We don't like to talk about that ...
When I need an image for my own "devious projects," I usually start with Corbis Images. It has a huge selection and the samples are frequently good enough for my purposes. I use Photoshop to remove the Corbis mark and have what I need. Of course, this is only good for purposes where violating copyright isn't an issue, such as making a joke image to email to a friend, creating a mockup web page to show to a client, etc. I wouldn't recommend doing this for something that would get noticed.
This is exactly what I thought as I read this item. This is probably a good indication that someone somewhere is actually working on this.
You'd be the next dot.com millionaire.
I've just mailed my patent application to the USPTO. Now all I've gotta do is wait for the first infringment, and I can start building my mansion. :-)
The EPA does not inspect your trash. But if they find your monitor at an unsafe waste site, you are 100% responsible for cleaning up that entire site. More than that, if the EPA finds any connection, however tenuous, between a business 'dumping' at a Superfund site and a successor business, they'll come after you. One guy got dragged into a Superfund site cleanup because he bought some used trucks from the going-out-of-business dumper (before anyone knew about the toxic site situation). Kafka couldn't have written a better law than Superfund.
Every time this comes up, labor unions squawk that they need vast sums of government money for their members to retool and retrain, and conservatives say "in your dreams pal. Buy your own tools and education." Also, our present system is so deeply entwined in our everyday life (walls are 8 feet high, paper is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, nuts and bolts are in fractional inches, etc.) that a conversion would be wrenching indeed (pun intended).
You forgot the last part: "What's your card number?"
The SlashDot effect is taking a toll, so I can't look to see if this is answered. The TiVo has barely-adequate processor power to do the functions it presently handles. I'm wondering if the increased processor load imposed by a higher-bandwidth download might cause problems if record and/or playback is going on at the same time. Or can the ethernet connection handling be dropped in priority so that the other time-critical functions take precedence?
If the final outcome is that Bush retains the electoral college votes and Gore the popular, whoever ultimately takes the White House is going to have a rough time. The opposition is going to carp endlessly that he doesn't have a 'mandate' and that he's in office illegitimately. With the narrowest of margins in the congress, I see this as a recipe for gridock. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. For us.
I've always wondered something: In an employment environment where techies can get a new job by turning into a different driveway in the morning, why do people continue to work for tyrants? How come your ex-boss' company still has employees? And even more to the point, how come none of them have turned him in to the BSA?
This would be fun: as an employee of, oh say, Microsoft, go around some evening and install Oracle products on your fellow employees computers. Then rat out the company to the BSA. Wonder if the BSA would pursue its largest member?
The BSA relies on employee (or ex-employee) snitches. Once they have an informant, they can either persuade a law enforcement agency to get a warrant or go the civil route and subpoena your records. I've also heard tell of licensing agreements that give the vendors permission to inspect your premises and computers 24/7 to make sure your software is legit. I'm sure the vendor could assign its inspection rights to the BSA. Of course, that begs the question of how they know you've got any of that software whose licensing agreement lets them do this.
Genuine turnout stats are tough to come by since the Motor Voter law made it much more difficult to purge the voter rolls. There's a lot of deadwood sitting on the books, making it look like they're staying home.
If Gore wins, just announce that you'd like to stay in Miami with your uncle and Janet Reno II will send you to Cuba for free.
Kuro5hin had a story about this on Nov. 1. Here .
I wasn't suggesting that they should prefer losing, but that they should prepare themselves to repel boarders if they succeed in attaining 5% of the vote. The barbarians will be at their doors. (Mixed metaphors. Gotta love 'em.)