good eyesight. I wear glasses, infact I wear trifocals, yep pretty bad. Can I use one of these products?
It will probably depend on whether you can focus your eyes on something that's only an inch or so away. If not, perhaps you'd need to get a corrective lens added to the thing. I have to think that the makers won't want to exclude a significant portion of the population (particularly a segment that has the most disposable icome), and so will have made some accomodation.
Go sit in a cafe with a laptop, or what the heck, with cyber glasses. Be completely into yourself for a while, have fun. *Everbody* will notice. Nobody will think 'what a geek'.
You're right. Generally they'll think, "What a pretentious ass." That and, "If I have to endure the clicking while he types one more email, I'm going over there to strangle him." Playing with technotoys in cafes and the like tend to make me think the person just craves attention. And just wait for voice recognition in these devices. Then I will have to start strangling people.
Hah! When I went to work today it was my boss telling me what to do, not the government! Government isn't the only controlling power in our lives, most workers probably deal with their employer more than than the State.
In terms of thought control, governments are hardly alone in censoring. In fact private media which produces the bulk of censorable material and has more opportunity to censor than the government. And it does just that in order to make money and to present a good corporate image in the public mind. Churches, political parties, etc... also censor, it's not just a government thing.
The big difference here is that you have the ability to walk away from your corporate/religious/institutional oppressors. Walking away from your government is a much more difficult proposition.
Finally corporations are often the ones who call down the full power of the State for their own purposes. Like Britian using gunboats to open the opium market in China, or American intervention in the Middle East. It's also usually the State that smashes picket lines at the behest of some corporation.
A great argument for limiting the power of the state. If it isn't given the powers necessary to oppress, it's not going to be an effective tool of the evil corporations.
Companies see profits in getting their customers, and more importantly there non-customers to view their image as positive. Once the company is seen in a positive light, or at least in a position of power and penetrates the mainstream, they are able to manipulate under-informed people into the way they think.
However, corporations are by and large limited to using suasion as opposed to naked force, which is the province of government. If I don't believe their argument that shopping at Wal-Mart is for losers and go there anyway, there's nothing they can do. If I decide that the government argument that tobacco smoking is harmful is a crock and light up in an office building, I'm in trouble. There are legitimate limits that can be placed on corporations to keep them from exploiting the 'under-informed' as you put it. We need the equivalent limitations placed on government.
Being a Canadian, I'm proud that my country can have such a high level of gov't involvement while not stomping on individual rights
This brings to mind my favorite story about Canada. A Canadian guy took his dog to a vet, and the vet decided that the dog needed a cat scan to diagnose its problem. The vet said the dog could get it within a day or two. The guy happened to know that the waiting list for humans was weeks to months and asked how it was possible to get the dog done so quickly. The vet said that the same equipment was used as for humans, but that since it was for-profit work, there was no waiting list for animals! When this story came out in the newspapers, naturally the Canadian government changed the rules so that humans wouldn't have to wait as long. JUST KIDDING! What really happened was the the rules were changed so that animals could no longer get cat scans. Benevolent government in action.
This brings up the other problem of companies influence in gov't. Once the companies become giants, they also get a say in the political arena. Obviously, and as many people already now, you "bribe" so long as the marginal cost of bribing is less than the marginal benefit of paying the bribe..
Exactly. And you know why this is a problem? Because we cede too much power to government in the first place! If governmental power were limited, bribing would be an ineffective strategy because government wouldn't have the ability to implement whatever it is that the briber is attempting.
I'm far less concerned about big corporations than I am about big government. The former wants to make money. The latter wants to tell you what to do, what to think, and how to behave, and will exercise the full power of the state if you resist. Don't believe me? Try (U.S., state of California, but the general principals apply everywhere): riding a motorcycle without a helmet, driving a car without a seatbelt, getting silicon breast implants, making an 'insensitive' remark (however presently defined by the arbitors of such things) at your workplace or college campus (or in private, if you happen to be the owner of a major-league sports team), fly on a commercial sircraft without having your identity recorded, etc. Government is assuming greater and greater power over our lives. Each incursion is done for the best of reasons, but ultimately add up to giving government control over you. And it plays into the paranoia about increasing corporate intrusion, since giving government these powers allows corporations to, via political contributions, access to these same tools. Focus your fears on the greater evil: creeping governmental intrusiveness and nannyism.
I've thought about using a Dremel to cut holes in a spare drive-bay cover to mount some serial ports. I'd need to get ports with longer cables to make them reach, and there'd be some difficulty in mounting the port on the plate. Glue could work, or a metal plate could be attached to the back of the plastic one and the port could be mounted in it. A newer case (where the drive bay panels have metal plates already installed, for RF shielding) would make this easier.
If you're going to do that, you may as well buy the Frontx unit and make new holes in it for whatever additional type of ports you want. They leave some blank areas for their future port types. (Come to think of it, maybe that's what I ought to be doing...)
Not true. If carefully used, modern tools like Zeroknowledge System Freedom can make it impossible to trace items back to you. All transactions are strongly encrypted, no records are kept, and the traffic can be made to pass through 3 servers in different political jurisdictions. If one used a particular ZKS nym just a few times, the likelihood of discovery of one's true identity is effectively nil.
What you need to do is simply setup a server and get ftp/shell access to it and then make sure whatever you're doing is legal in that jurisdiction and that they're not a WIPO member or friendly to the Red, White and Blue Empire (that would be us, folks).
Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to work either. The U.S. gov't has just successfully prosecuted an American citizen for running an internet gambling site based in Antigua (he himself was in Antigua too, at the time of the 'violation', and the site is legal in Antigua). His crime seems to be that he is an American and was allowing Americans to access his site. So, it appears that doing something that is legal in the place where you are and is theoretically outside of U.S. jurisdiction is not necessarily a defense, if you're a U.S. citizen.
Ever see how difficult it is to get the permits to build an 80' tower in suburbia. Friggin' nightmare, man.
Make the tower a giant flagpole for a rainbow flag and accuse anyone who opposes it of homophobia. Bureaucrasts will usually run for cover when someone says that they're discriminating against some favored group...
I have to agree with the sentiment of 'tough luck, 8-bit users'. I'll use web-safe colors if it doesn't cost me anything (like on a page background color or simple drawing, for example), but most of the time I assume my visitors will have at least 16-bit color. I've had people who had 8-bit color look at these pages and they don't seem to mind; they're so accustomed to everything looking bad that my pages don't stand out any more than the others in that regard.
This thing looks like an attempt to combine the functions of Tivo, WebTV, DirecTV, Diamond Rio, and Playstation. I love my Swiss Army knife, but each of its many tools are poor substitutes for those made specifically for a given purpose; I'm guessing that the Nokia Media Terminal is probably the same. While it might be better than nothing at all and provide some basic level of these sort of services, I suspect that people wanting serious functionality in one or more of these areas will become dissatisfied pretty fast.
California, like all governmental entities, thinks it can't do with one dime less money that it presently gets, even though it's running a multibillion dollar budget surplus. In fact, if you've been paying attention, you've heard them whining that they don't get enough money as-is. They wail that [police|fire|education|health care] will all be jeopardized unless they extract at least 10% more revenue than they presently do. If you don't think politics matters, take a look at how much you're paying in taxation at all levels. A typical family of 4 pays over 50%. That's over half of the money you've busted your butt for. Then if you still manage to accumulate a large enough nest egg, they want over half of that as well. That's money you've already been taxed on. (By the way, for purposes of whether your estate gets taxed at 55%, it's not your home equity, it's your home value at time of death. I.e. it doesn't matter if you have a huge mortgage - it's the raw value of the house that counts. Neat, huh?) If you don't want to continue getting shorn like a sheep, start paying attention, write letters to your representatives (they pay attention, believe me) and vote accordingly. And don't fall for that "we'll have to cut our police and fire if we don't get this money". That's the old Washington Monument ploy (the Park Service always used to threaten to close the popular Washington Monument if its budget got cut.) They always trot out the stuff the public wants, conveniently ignoring the crap that no voter would give a damn about. Start writing.
God damn usa companies sometimes are so anal about exporting, dumb assses
Let's see, your gripe is that the U.S. won't sell you any Sony (Japan) or Phillips (Netherlands) Tivo units for PAL? May I respectfully suggest that your complaint ain't with us...
How about we let people decide for themselves whether - or if - to "give to the community". Bitching about how someone "won't share" is a whiny, sanctimonious attitude more worthy of socialists.
Waste your points and moderate this down all you want. My karma is descending toward the new limit of 50 anyway.
This presupposes our ability to deform our minds sufficiently that we can even conceive of what might require an antipatent. That's a problem for me; in my wildest dreams, I'd never have figured out that XORing repeatedly to produce a blinking disply cursor would be a patentable concept. How about one-click ordering - would any of you ever have thought that something so obvious needed protecting? I've spent a lot of years getting my brain aligned - I'm worried that thinking in this way could get it seriously out of balance.
You have to take your chances on SlashDot, not to mention the sources people use in their postings. I recall the recent Mac Cube episode. Someone leaked what turned out to be accurate photos of the the thing, yet one guy did an elaborate analysis of how it had to be a hoax faked in Photoshop. You never know until you know.
On the bright side, where else can you see such a collection of flamers and trolls every single day of the week, every hour of the day?:)
news:alt.revenge For stupidity, histrionics, flames, trolls, and studied viciousness even SlashDot can't hold a candle to it.
Merit frequently has nothing to do with these cases. The target will settle just to avoid the possibility of a runaway jury socking it with an enormous award, or to avoid a protracted, debilitating legal battle. Microsoft has the resources to fight, so maybe they won't cave in, but many do.
I know we're not lawyers here but don't you at least watch TV?
That comment explains where you get your knowledge of the legal system. In class actions, someone is the plaintiff, whether it's 'The People of California' or individual persons. The story should have said who was bringing the suit, since that's an important factor. Maybe you should crack a book and learn something before making yourself an even greater self-embarrassment by posting a bunch of spleen-venting drivel.
With all of these suits going forward, just the process of notifying the class members is going to cost a fortune. I've bought at least 40-50 MSFT products/upgrades over the years. If they can't figure out that I'm one person, my mailbox is going to be flooded.
On another front, I wonder if this will turn out to be another one of those "my lawyers sued Microsoft and all I got was this lousy $10 voucher" deals. One guess.
Wow. I hadn't heard of the retraction. Quite a dress rehearsal for when it really happens. Wonder if this will be a wake-up call for the Screen Actors Guild, which will negotiate a "no artificial humans" clause in future contracts?
I see this as a continuation of a trend. Consider the recent advent of Ananova, the artificial newscaster, and the announced intention to use a completely computer-generated 'actress' in a major upcoming movie (sorry, the title and leading actor escape me for the moment). The day is approaching when movies can be made with no live actors at all while appearing to feature real humans. I can see a couple of things happening as a result: 1) actors who are completely artificial creations who never lived, and 2) living (or once-living) actors 'licensing' their images for use in a film, but never having to appear before a camera. Of course, movies will continue to be made with live humans in them, just as live theater productions continue today, but increasing amounts of content will be artificially generated, for the lower cost if nothing else. Maybe the actors can act in their street clothes and have the wardrobe added later. Maybe location shots will be a rare event. Anything is possible when you can create whatever you want on a computer. The world is definitely going to change.
My question is does giving it to other organizations, (Army, Navy, etc) would be distribution.
One can make a good argument that the answer is 'yes'. When I worked for a U.S. Navy laboratory, we couldn't, for example, get a license for unlimited use of a software package for the lab and then let the entire U.S. Navy use it. There's some point at which you're dealing with a separate entity, even if it's within the overall organization. Perhaps someone familiar with the GPL could elaborate on how it defines the boundaries.
Slashdot Mirror
good eyesight. I wear glasses, infact I wear trifocals, yep pretty bad. Can I use one of these products?
It will probably depend on whether you can focus your eyes on something that's only an inch or so away. If not, perhaps you'd need to get a corrective lens added to the thing. I have to think that the makers won't want to exclude a significant portion of the population (particularly a segment that has the most disposable icome), and so will have made some accomodation.
Go sit in a cafe with a laptop, or what the heck, with cyber glasses. Be completely into yourself for a while, have fun. *Everbody* will notice. Nobody will think 'what a geek'.
You're right. Generally they'll think, "What a pretentious ass." That and, "If I have to endure the clicking while he types one more email, I'm going over there to strangle him." Playing with technotoys in cafes and the like tend to make me think the person just craves attention. And just wait for voice recognition in these devices. Then I will have to start strangling people.
Hah! When I went to work today it was my boss telling me what to do, not the government! Government isn't the only controlling power in our lives, most workers probably deal with their employer more than than the State. In terms of thought control, governments are hardly alone in censoring. In fact private media which produces the bulk of censorable material and has more opportunity to censor than the government. And it does just that in order to make money and to present a good corporate image in the public mind. Churches, political parties, etc... also censor, it's not just a government thing.
The big difference here is that you have the ability to walk away from your corporate/religious/institutional oppressors. Walking away from your government is a much more difficult proposition.
Finally corporations are often the ones who call down the full power of the State for their own purposes. Like Britian using gunboats to open the opium market in China, or American intervention in the Middle East. It's also usually the State that smashes picket lines at the behest of some corporation.
A great argument for limiting the power of the state. If it isn't given the powers necessary to oppress, it's not going to be an effective tool of the evil corporations.
Companies see profits in getting their customers, and more importantly there non-customers to view their image as positive. Once the company is seen in a positive light, or at least in a position of power and penetrates the mainstream, they are able to manipulate under-informed people into the way they think.
However, corporations are by and large limited to using suasion as opposed to naked force, which is the province of government. If I don't believe their argument that shopping at Wal-Mart is for losers and go there anyway, there's nothing they can do. If I decide that the government argument that tobacco smoking is harmful is a crock and light up in an office building, I'm in trouble. There are legitimate limits that can be placed on corporations to keep them from exploiting the 'under-informed' as you put it. We need the equivalent limitations placed on government.
Being a Canadian, I'm proud that my country can have such a high level of gov't involvement while not stomping on individual rights
This brings to mind my favorite story about Canada. A Canadian guy took his dog to a vet, and the vet decided that the dog needed a cat scan to diagnose its problem. The vet said the dog could get it within a day or two. The guy happened to know that the waiting list for humans was weeks to months and asked how it was possible to get the dog done so quickly. The vet said that the same equipment was used as for humans, but that since it was for-profit work, there was no waiting list for animals! When this story came out in the newspapers, naturally the Canadian government changed the rules so that humans wouldn't have to wait as long. JUST KIDDING! What really happened was the the rules were changed so that animals could no longer get cat scans. Benevolent government in action.
This brings up the other problem of companies influence in gov't. Once the companies become giants, they also get a say in the political arena. Obviously, and as many people already now, you "bribe" so long as the marginal cost of bribing is less than the marginal benefit of paying the bribe..
Exactly. And you know why this is a problem? Because we cede too much power to government in the first place! If governmental power were limited, bribing would be an ineffective strategy because government wouldn't have the ability to implement whatever it is that the briber is attempting.
I'm far less concerned about big corporations than I am about big government. The former wants to make money. The latter wants to tell you what to do, what to think, and how to behave, and will exercise the full power of the state if you resist. Don't believe me? Try (U.S., state of California, but the general principals apply everywhere): riding a motorcycle without a helmet, driving a car without a seatbelt, getting silicon breast implants, making an 'insensitive' remark (however presently defined by the arbitors of such things) at your workplace or college campus (or in private, if you happen to be the owner of a major-league sports team), fly on a commercial sircraft without having your identity recorded, etc. Government is assuming greater and greater power over our lives. Each incursion is done for the best of reasons, but ultimately add up to giving government control over you. And it plays into the paranoia about increasing corporate intrusion, since giving government these powers allows corporations to, via political contributions, access to these same tools. Focus your fears on the greater evil: creeping governmental intrusiveness and nannyism.
Thanks to Bob Rivers of Twisted Tunes, there's a perfect theme song for the show. Click here (ISDN line speed or better required. 28.8k version here) .
I've thought about using a Dremel to cut holes in a spare drive-bay cover to mount some serial ports. I'd need to get ports with longer cables to make them reach, and there'd be some difficulty in mounting the port on the plate. Glue could work, or a metal plate could be attached to the back of the plastic one and the port could be mounted in it. A newer case (where the drive bay panels have metal plates already installed, for RF shielding) would make this easier.
...)
If you're going to do that, you may as well buy the Frontx unit and make new holes in it for whatever additional type of ports you want. They leave some blank areas for their future port types. (Come to think of it, maybe that's what I ought to be doing
Not true. If carefully used, modern tools like Zeroknowledge System Freedom can make it impossible to trace items back to you. All transactions are strongly encrypted, no records are kept, and the traffic can be made to pass through 3 servers in different political jurisdictions. If one used a particular ZKS nym just a few times, the likelihood of discovery of one's true identity is effectively nil.
What you need to do is simply setup a server and get ftp/shell access to it and then make sure whatever you're doing is legal in that jurisdiction and that they're not a WIPO member or friendly to the Red, White and Blue Empire (that would be us, folks).
Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to work either. The U.S. gov't has just successfully prosecuted an American citizen for running an internet gambling site based in Antigua (he himself was in Antigua too, at the time of the 'violation', and the site is legal in Antigua). His crime seems to be that he is an American and was allowing Americans to access his site. So, it appears that doing something that is legal in the place where you are and is theoretically outside of U.S. jurisdiction is not necessarily a defense, if you're a U.S. citizen.
Ever see how difficult it is to get the permits to build an 80' tower in suburbia. Friggin' nightmare, man.
...
Make the tower a giant flagpole for a rainbow flag and accuse anyone who opposes it of homophobia. Bureaucrasts will usually run for cover when someone says that they're discriminating against some favored group
I have to agree with the sentiment of 'tough luck, 8-bit users'. I'll use web-safe colors if it doesn't cost me anything (like on a page background color or simple drawing, for example), but most of the time I assume my visitors will have at least 16-bit color. I've had people who had 8-bit color look at these pages and they don't seem to mind; they're so accustomed to everything looking bad that my pages don't stand out any more than the others in that regard.
This thing looks like an attempt to combine the functions of Tivo, WebTV, DirecTV, Diamond Rio, and Playstation. I love my Swiss Army knife, but each of its many tools are poor substitutes for those made specifically for a given purpose; I'm guessing that the Nokia Media Terminal is probably the same. While it might be better than nothing at all and provide some basic level of these sort of services, I suspect that people wanting serious functionality in one or more of these areas will become dissatisfied pretty fast.
California, like all governmental entities, thinks it can't do with one dime less money that it presently gets, even though it's running a multibillion dollar budget surplus. In fact, if you've been paying attention, you've heard them whining that they don't get enough money as-is. They wail that [police|fire|education|health care] will all be jeopardized unless they extract at least 10% more revenue than they presently do. If you don't think politics matters, take a look at how much you're paying in taxation at all levels. A typical family of 4 pays over 50%. That's over half of the money you've busted your butt for. Then if you still manage to accumulate a large enough nest egg, they want over half of that as well. That's money you've already been taxed on. (By the way, for purposes of whether your estate gets taxed at 55%, it's not your home equity, it's your home value at time of death. I.e. it doesn't matter if you have a huge mortgage - it's the raw value of the house that counts. Neat, huh?) If you don't want to continue getting shorn like a sheep, start paying attention, write letters to your representatives (they pay attention, believe me) and vote accordingly. And don't fall for that "we'll have to cut our police and fire if we don't get this money". That's the old Washington Monument ploy (the Park Service always used to threaten to close the popular Washington Monument if its budget got cut.) They always trot out the stuff the public wants, conveniently ignoring the crap that no voter would give a damn about. Start writing.
God damn usa companies sometimes are so anal about exporting, dumb assses
...
Let's see, your gripe is that the U.S. won't sell you any Sony (Japan) or Phillips (Netherlands) Tivo units for PAL? May I respectfully suggest that your complaint ain't with us
now's the time to give to the community.
How about we let people decide for themselves whether - or if - to "give to the community". Bitching about how someone "won't share" is a whiny, sanctimonious attitude more worthy of socialists. Waste your points and moderate this down all you want. My karma is descending toward the new limit of 50 anyway.
This presupposes our ability to deform our minds sufficiently that we can even conceive of what might require an antipatent. That's a problem for me; in my wildest dreams, I'd never have figured out that XORing repeatedly to produce a blinking disply cursor would be a patentable concept. How about one-click ordering - would any of you ever have thought that something so obvious needed protecting? I've spent a lot of years getting my brain aligned - I'm worried that thinking in this way could get it seriously out of balance.
You have to take your chances on SlashDot, not to mention the sources people use in their postings. I recall the recent Mac Cube episode. Someone leaked what turned out to be accurate photos of the the thing, yet one guy did an elaborate analysis of how it had to be a hoax faked in Photoshop. You never know until you know.
:)
On the bright side, where else can you see such a collection of flamers and trolls every single day of the week, every hour of the day?
news:alt.revenge
For stupidity, histrionics, flames, trolls, and studied viciousness even SlashDot can't hold a candle to it.
Merit frequently has nothing to do with these cases. The target will settle just to avoid the possibility of a runaway jury socking it with an enormous award, or to avoid a protracted, debilitating legal battle. Microsoft has the resources to fight, so maybe they won't cave in, but many do.
I know we're not lawyers here but don't you at least watch TV?
That comment explains where you get your knowledge of the legal system. In class actions, someone is the plaintiff, whether it's 'The People of California' or individual persons. The story should have said who was bringing the suit, since that's an important factor. Maybe you should crack a book and learn something before making yourself an even greater self-embarrassment by posting a bunch of spleen-venting drivel.
With all of these suits going forward, just the process of notifying the class members is going to cost a fortune. I've bought at least 40-50 MSFT products/upgrades over the years. If they can't figure out that I'm one person, my mailbox is going to be flooded.
On another front, I wonder if this will turn out to be another one of those "my lawyers sued Microsoft and all I got was this lousy $10 voucher" deals. One guess.
Wow. I hadn't heard of the retraction. Quite a dress rehearsal for when it really happens. Wonder if this will be a wake-up call for the Screen Actors Guild, which will negotiate a "no artificial humans" clause in future contracts?
I see this as a continuation of a trend. Consider the recent advent of Ananova, the artificial newscaster, and the announced intention to use a completely computer-generated 'actress' in a major upcoming movie (sorry, the title and leading actor escape me for the moment). The day is approaching when movies can be made with no live actors at all while appearing to feature real humans. I can see a couple of things happening as a result: 1) actors who are completely artificial creations who never lived, and 2) living (or once-living) actors 'licensing' their images for use in a film, but never having to appear before a camera. Of course, movies will continue to be made with live humans in them, just as live theater productions continue today, but increasing amounts of content will be artificially generated, for the lower cost if nothing else. Maybe the actors can act in their street clothes and have the wardrobe added later. Maybe location shots will be a rare event. Anything is possible when you can create whatever you want on a computer. The world is definitely going to change.
cool idea please.save.us (Lifeboat manufacturer) come.with.us (FBI) gotothebackoftheb.us (Ku Klux Klan) help.us (United Way Charities)
For those interested, here's a related story in Business Week: Hollywood vs. the Hackers vs. Free Speech.
My question is does giving it to other organizations, (Army, Navy, etc) would be distribution.
One can make a good argument that the answer is 'yes'. When I worked for a U.S. Navy laboratory, we couldn't, for example, get a license for unlimited use of a software package for the lab and then let the entire U.S. Navy use it. There's some point at which you're dealing with a separate entity, even if it's within the overall organization. Perhaps someone familiar with the GPL could elaborate on how it defines the boundaries.