The part I think you're getting at is that having naked pictures of a 16yo is different than having naked pictures of an 8yo.
Nope, my point is that the double standards the justice system uses are utterly meaningless and illogical. Setting boundaries is fine, but if you're going to say someone is an adult at x age, you should probably not have a half dozen x's.
Off the top of my head, I can think of different standards for -Voting -Sexual consent -Alcohol -ID reqs to enter the USA (you're an adult at 14 according to dhs) -And, of course, the completly arbitrary "you did something real bad, so we are going to kill you, but since we can't do that to a child, you're now magically an adult" southern justice age limit.
Or, because as more and more time goes on, teachers start teaching students how to pass the test, as opposed to actually teaching the material.
This may or may not be intentional, but if you create an environment where teachers are "graded" by the success of their students on standardized tests, eventually someone will tell a teacher whose students did not score well on the test to go look at how a more "successful" teacher teaches. The same thing happens on this side of the pond;) with SATs, etc. Hundreds of large companies hold seminars, do private tutoring, etc only on "how to get a good grade on the SAT". I'm guessing at least a billion dollars a year is spent on this sort of thing. It "helps" that the SAT folks are quite happy with this situation and don't change their exam beyond switching a few questions around (they get $40 for every test, pay nothing for facilities (schools host) and basically have swimming pools full of money).
While it may not be that visible in England, tutors know what works and teach that, and I'm sure more than a few professors drop hints along the way. In Canada, there is less emphasis on SATs (or was when I graduated a few years back) and more on provincial exams (at least in B.C.). There isn't that much of a difference though. You'd go to a history 12 class and 3/4 of the year would be studying history, and the remainder looking at provincial exams from previous years, information on how to answer questions so the graders would, etc, etc. And just like in the case with the SATs, the provincial exams don't change all that much from year to year, so the opportunity is there for people to figure out the test.
Anyways, I'm not saying that standards should be thrown out the window - but when you have standards that are written so precisely that you can essentially guess what is on the exam, it is natural for teachers to stress those parts and ignore the rest. The material ignored is for the "benefit" of those with, shall we say "diminished capacity". People apparently believe that some people can only be expected to learn X facts per year and as a result, the rest doesn't get covered (or is covered, but is glossed over) And so grades go up, even though graduates know less. The fact that they know less usually isn't a problem - in most fields, you don't care if your employees know when / where Napoleon got his butt kicked (or even who he was), but the fact that most graduates have virtually no ability to think creatively is the most important problem.
Sticking 25+ mb images on your server and submitting it for a slashdotting. Still, quite cool. He did a good job of describing the effects - made it informative, yet simple enough for most people to understand.
You should see the amount of cops and fire fighters that show up when a hot chick is stuck in handcuffs or found bound in the trunk of a car as part of a kinky game;)
The point was that toshiba makes a bunch of other products, but the first couple dozen search results are exclusively people bitching about laptops and pdas. Sort of odd, no?
I'd say thinkpads (pre-lenovo) are the most reliable, but I suppose everyone has their preference.
And, as a result, they don't look like idiots when plugging in a scanner BSOD's their box in front of a couple of thousand people;) That all said, even non-fanboys have to admit that there is something about an apple keynote that is a bit different than what the rest of the industry has. You don't see people actually "excited" about a Microsoft event (or really, any computer related event). The vast majority are actually quite boring and to be completely honest, I think the only "excited" people at these events are those getting free food, swag or the latest copy of vs.net and a xp pro CD. I'm not saying that the events aren't informative, and I'm not advocating that people turn release events and conventions into E3, but it would be nice if some events tried to be a bit more like apple.
Toshiba has had one of the worst records for laptop manufacturer's out there, both in terms of reliability and the people who they hire for "support". This isn't exactly news, people have been complaining about them for years. Google "toshiba sucks" and you're going to get results about laptops and PDAs. To those who don't know, Toshiba makes a lot of other things BESIDES laptops and PDAs (stuff like, oh, I don't know, something to do with propeller milling for submarines;). The worst thing is, they have techs that you can actually understand, but talking to their techs is like talking to the retarded child of a 7-11 employee.
That said, once you actually talk to someone without an indian accent, you're set. The folks they still have here are quite reasonable and easy to deal with. Probably the fastest way to do this is to file a BBB claim or contact their registered agent directly. Still, if don't want to cough up blood from a newly formed ulcer, get a warranty from another company (i.e. not toshiba). Not dealing with their support is easily worth $150ish.
The DVP642 is pretty cool, but it dies after 6-8 months for a lot of people. Since it has a 3 month warranty, you're SOL. There are a lot of pissed off people reviewing this on amazon and other sites.
Netflix's days are numbered so long as bandwidth continues to increase.
Maybe, but is bandwidth actually increasing? For virtually all ISPs, if you transfer a lot of data, you will get bitched at and ISPs will threaten to pull your connection or threaten you with "breach of contract fees" for going over their (usually secret, unmentioned in the TOS or advertising, possibly written down on a webpage 32 clicks in from their homepage) bandwidth limit.
I'm going to be moving in the next couple of days to a fairly major city in Canada (Kelowna BC). I've looked through all my options and there is not a single ISP that allows for more than 60 gigs combined up/down transfer montly. I was a bit pissed when I discovered this. (ok, one offers 100 gigs (wow!) under a "premium business account", but it costs $160 a month, and of course, services like fractional T1s, et al are available, although they are stupidly expensive)
This isn't isolated to the Great White North either - browse around for a bit and Comcast (80ish gigs) and generally all the big ISPs are sending out nasty letters and suspending people's accounts. This would seem to me to be a trend that is becoming common among isps. And in case you were wondering, there are no signs that the limit is increasing, even as speeds are decreasing (i.e. the speeds of cable internet in the last few years)
What I'm trying to say is that, unless this changes (and I really doubt it will - since someone is going to eventually sue them for false advertising, they are going to lose and as a result, they will publish a limit and enforce it to the letter), there really isn't a market for downloading anything that resembles high quality video because these ISPs want to cripple your connections so they save a few extra pennies on the bandwith bill.
Of course, the ISPs could bring in their own systems, while crippling the internet access to prevent competitors from, well, competing, but aside from Comcast's attempt, every company who has tried to do an on-demand type movie service that included more than 100 titles at a time has failed miserably - even Comcast isn't doing too hot with their on-demand service - and this doesn't just go back a few years, but to the 80s and 90s when people were experimenting with movies over a telephone line (i.e. dsl).
Don't. 10 is shit - especially if you run slower computers. The resident scanner is a memory pig and slows machines down significantly. Also, if you have win2k boxes with office 2k, it breaks the install and constantly wants the users to insert the installation medium. We had a ball of fun upgrading to 10.
Come now, 1.4 million people COMPLAINED to the feds. Many, many others were also called and some people bought whatever they were selling - and seeing as this is directv - a great deal of money changed hands as a result of this telemarketing effort.
Of course they made more money. They had 1.4 million complaints - and no doubt most people didn't file a complaint and bought whatever they were selling.
True, but I've seen people buy $50 Monster _POWER_ CABLES for their computers. Just because it is stupid, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. If you think I'm full of shit (and I completely understand, I was completely shocked when I discovered it) Click here to see a $50 power cable
Or, perhaps, the guy who got assaulted didn't commit a crime and the manager got confused and picked on the wrong guy. Which is probably part of the reason that store employees aren't allowed to drag people out of cars because they think they may of have stolen something. They are not infallible, they are not the police.
And a nametag? Please. The only thing a nametag does is to pretty much ensure that you can sue the company whose name is on the tag for civil damages.
And it is sort of a pain in the ass to find out the car's speed by hooking into the car's wiring. Not impossible, mind you, there are ways to get this data, but doing it by gps is just a lot easier.
Wait, correct me if I'm wrong, You're not, it is crappy.
but it sounds like not only was Bellsouth planning to donate a damaged building to the city, Correct, they have a damaged building that they have no desire to fix and most likely "exchanged" it for a tax write off or similar future consideration. The value of that consideration will, of course, far exceed the cost of building a new building. Perhaps the city would agree to re-pave all the streets that BS will rip up when laying new lines, etc, etc.
but now they're rescinding their offer. Well, sort of. They are still going to "give" the building to the city, get their tax break or whatnot, not going have to pay to fix the building, but have still received insurance money and are now hoping to kill a potential competitor by "giving the building" away. Again. -ish.
I'm guessing they just wanted to move out of the area since office space won't be worth a damn in NOLA for the next few months (the whole power and comm wires soaked and "a lot of our employees are elsewhere" thing) Then, once the rest of the building is done (in a year or two - and assuming that they actually want a building there, it will probably be much cheaper for them to move the jobs to a small city elsewhere (where they will get a tax break for "bringing jobs into the community" or something similar)), they will be able to hire construction workers for cheap because of the surplus of workers. If they do decide to build a building in nola, they will probably get another 10 year-ish tax break for "bringing jobs back" to the area. Oh, and in the old building, guess who provides the datacomm and phone services? Of course, the rates will have to go up (and not come down) as a result of Katrina.
If you think the execs behind this aren't walking around giggling madly about how badly they are milking the city, be more cynical.
I guess when I make a mistake and step on your toe you're going to bash me in the head with a club? How about gouging out my eye if I ring your doorbell by mistake because I have the wrong address...
Hold on, let me go fetch some straw, a pole and some string.
Well then, perhaps we should, oh, I don't know, make it illegal for a manager to do such a stupid thing. Oh... wait...
And to be clear, this isn't just a simple case of mistaken identity. If true, it involves assault - to say nothing of battery (ok, not really an Oregon thing, we define it as assault in xth degree), reckless endangerment, possibly manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide if the vehicle was left in gear and ran over someone. I'm quite sure there are a couple dozen misdemeanors as well as the civil stuff you can add on top of this, but I don't think we need to.
And while I suppose it depends on your state, the use of "deadly physical force" may be justified in this situation. "Deadly physical force" (defined as "force readily capable of causing death or serious physical injury") is only lawful when it is used against a person reasonably believed to be attempting to commit a felony involving the threatened or imminent use of physical force against a person ORS 161.219. While there may be some debate as to whether getting pulled out of a car window and dropped on the pavement is assault 3 or 4, it clearly isn't the same as poking someone in the chest.
To reiterate - if this story is true, the fry's manager did "A Fucking Stupid Thing" (TM). You can't use mistaken identity as a "get out of jail and absolve yourself of all responsibility" card in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
The part I think you're getting at is that having naked pictures of a 16yo is different than having naked pictures of an 8yo.
Nope, my point is that the double standards the justice system uses are utterly meaningless and illogical. Setting boundaries is fine, but if you're going to say someone is an adult at x age, you should probably not have a half dozen x's.
Off the top of my head, I can think of different standards for
-Voting
-Sexual consent
-Alcohol
-ID reqs to enter the USA (you're an adult at 14 according to dhs)
-And, of course, the completly arbitrary "you did something real bad, so we are going to kill you, but since we can't do that to a child, you're now magically an adult" southern justice age limit.
Or, because as more and more time goes on, teachers start teaching students how to pass the test, as opposed to actually teaching the material.
;) with SATs, etc. Hundreds of large companies hold seminars, do private tutoring, etc only on "how to get a good grade on the SAT". I'm guessing at least a billion dollars a year is spent on this sort of thing. It "helps" that the SAT folks are quite happy with this situation and don't change their exam beyond switching a few questions around (they get $40 for every test, pay nothing for facilities (schools host) and basically have swimming pools full of money).
This may or may not be intentional, but if you create an environment where teachers are "graded" by the success of their students on standardized tests, eventually someone will tell a teacher whose students did not score well on the test to go look at how a more "successful" teacher teaches.
The same thing happens on this side of the pond
While it may not be that visible in England, tutors know what works and teach that, and I'm sure more than a few professors drop hints along the way.
In Canada, there is less emphasis on SATs (or was when I graduated a few years back) and more on provincial exams (at least in B.C.). There isn't that much of a difference though. You'd go to a history 12 class and 3/4 of the year would be studying history, and the remainder looking at provincial exams from previous years, information on how to answer questions so the graders would, etc, etc. And just like in the case with the SATs, the provincial exams don't change all that much from year to year, so the opportunity is there for people to figure out the test.
Anyways, I'm not saying that standards should be thrown out the window - but when you have standards that are written so precisely that you can essentially guess what is on the exam, it is natural for teachers to stress those parts and ignore the rest.
The material ignored is for the "benefit" of those with, shall we say "diminished capacity". People apparently believe that some people can only be expected to learn X facts per year and as a result, the rest doesn't get covered (or is covered, but is glossed over)
And so grades go up, even though graduates know less.
The fact that they know less usually isn't a problem - in most fields, you don't care if your employees know when / where Napoleon got his butt kicked (or even who he was), but the fact that most graduates have virtually no ability to think creatively is the most important problem.
Yet, at the same time, the 16 year old (hell, 14 year old) is old enough and mature enough to be tried as an adult and sentenced as an adult.
Cool eh?
Sticking 25+ mb images on your server and submitting it for a slashdotting.
Still, quite cool. He did a good job of describing the effects - made it informative, yet simple enough for most people to understand.
Never mind that google groups doesn't host binaries... of course, there is always ascii porn.
You should see the amount of cops and fire fighters that show up when a hot chick is stuck in handcuffs or found bound in the trunk of a car as part of a kinky game ;)
*cough* Fax (330) 877-0853 *cough* black paper in a roll *cough*
HAHA, the reporter loaded up the website and refreshed it twice in the video. Maybe she's one of us?
The point was that toshiba makes a bunch of other products, but the first couple dozen search results are exclusively people bitching about laptops and pdas.
Sort of odd, no?
I'd say thinkpads (pre-lenovo) are the most reliable, but I suppose everyone has their preference.
And, as a result, they don't look like idiots when plugging in a scanner BSOD's their box in front of a couple of thousand people ;)
That all said, even non-fanboys have to admit that there is something about an apple keynote that is a bit different than what the rest of the industry has. You don't see people actually "excited" about a Microsoft event (or really, any computer related event).
The vast majority are actually quite boring and to be completely honest, I think the only "excited" people at these events are those getting free food, swag or the latest copy of vs.net and a xp pro CD.
I'm not saying that the events aren't informative, and I'm not advocating that people turn release events and conventions into E3, but it would be nice if some events tried to be a bit more like apple.
Toshiba has had one of the worst records for laptop manufacturer's out there, both in terms of reliability and the people who they hire for "support". This isn't exactly news, people have been complaining about them for years. Google "toshiba sucks" and you're going to get results about laptops and PDAs. ;). The worst thing is, they have techs that you can actually understand, but talking to their techs is like talking to the retarded child of a 7-11 employee.
To those who don't know, Toshiba makes a lot of other things BESIDES laptops and PDAs (stuff like, oh, I don't know, something to do with propeller milling for submarines
That said, once you actually talk to someone without an indian accent, you're set. The folks they still have here are quite reasonable and easy to deal with. Probably the fastest way to do this is to file a BBB claim or contact their registered agent directly.
Still, if don't want to cough up blood from a newly formed ulcer, get a warranty from another company (i.e. not toshiba). Not dealing with their support is easily worth $150ish.
For an added laugh, go take a look at their "worst products of the year"
Lowest score? 3.5 and the Toshiba Satellite M35X-S163 was rated 4.2.
So yeah, basically whore shills.
Probably heat dissipation. Decoding such hi-res stuff tends to keep things a bit toasty in the box.
The DVP642 is pretty cool, but it dies after 6-8 months for a lot of people.
Since it has a 3 month warranty, you're SOL.
There are a lot of pissed off people reviewing this on amazon and other sites.
Netflix's days are numbered so long as bandwidth continues to increase.
Maybe, but is bandwidth actually increasing?
For virtually all ISPs, if you transfer a lot of data, you will get bitched at and ISPs will threaten to pull your connection or threaten you with "breach of contract fees" for going over their (usually secret, unmentioned in the TOS or advertising, possibly written down on a webpage 32 clicks in from their homepage) bandwidth limit.
I'm going to be moving in the next couple of days to a fairly major city in Canada (Kelowna BC). I've looked through all my options and there is not a single ISP that allows for more than 60 gigs combined up/down transfer montly.
I was a bit pissed when I discovered this.
(ok, one offers 100 gigs (wow!) under a "premium business account", but it costs $160 a month, and of course, services like fractional T1s, et al are available, although they are stupidly expensive)
This isn't isolated to the Great White North either - browse around for a bit and Comcast (80ish gigs) and generally all the big ISPs are sending out nasty letters and suspending people's accounts. This would seem to me to be a trend that is becoming common among isps. And in case you were wondering, there are no signs that the limit is increasing, even as speeds are decreasing (i.e. the speeds of cable internet in the last few years)
What I'm trying to say is that, unless this changes (and I really doubt it will - since someone is going to eventually sue them for false advertising, they are going to lose and as a result, they will publish a limit and enforce it to the letter), there really isn't a market for downloading anything that resembles high quality video because these ISPs want to cripple your connections so they save a few extra pennies on the bandwith bill.
Of course, the ISPs could bring in their own systems, while crippling the internet access to prevent competitors from, well, competing, but aside from Comcast's attempt, every company who has tried to do an on-demand type movie service that included more than 100 titles at a time has failed miserably - even Comcast isn't doing too hot with their on-demand service - and this doesn't just go back a few years, but to the 80s and 90s when people were experimenting with movies over a telephone line (i.e. dsl).
Don't. 10 is shit - especially if you run slower computers. The resident scanner is a memory pig and slows machines down significantly. Also, if you have win2k boxes with office 2k, it breaks the install and constantly wants the users to insert the installation medium.
We had a ball of fun upgrading to 10.
Come now, 1.4 million people COMPLAINED to the feds. Many, many others were also called and some people bought whatever they were selling - and seeing as this is directv - a great deal of money changed hands as a result of this telemarketing effort.
Of course they made more money. They had 1.4 million complaints - and no doubt most people didn't file a complaint and bought whatever they were selling.
*golf clap*
I say well done Sir!
True, but I've seen people buy $50 Monster _POWER_ CABLES for their computers.
Just because it is stupid, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it.
If you think I'm full of shit (and I completely understand, I was completely shocked when I discovered it)
Click here to see a $50 power cable
Or, perhaps, the guy who got assaulted didn't commit a crime and the manager got confused and picked on the wrong guy.
Which is probably part of the reason that store employees aren't allowed to drag people out of cars because they think they may of have stolen something.
They are not infallible, they are not the police.
And a nametag? Please. The only thing a nametag does is to pretty much ensure that you can sue the company whose name is on the tag for civil damages.
And it is sort of a pain in the ass to find out the car's speed by hooking into the car's wiring.
Not impossible, mind you, there are ways to get this data, but doing it by gps is just a lot easier.
Wait, correct me if I'm wrong,
You're not, it is crappy.
but it sounds like not only was Bellsouth planning to donate a damaged building to the city,
Correct, they have a damaged building that they have no desire to fix and most likely "exchanged" it for a tax write off or similar future consideration.
The value of that consideration will, of course, far exceed the cost of building a new building. Perhaps the city would agree to re-pave all the streets that BS will rip up when laying new lines, etc, etc.
but now they're rescinding their offer.
Well, sort of. They are still going to "give" the building to the city, get their tax break or whatnot, not going have to pay to fix the building, but have still received insurance money and are now hoping to kill a potential competitor by "giving the building" away.
Again.
-ish.
I'm guessing they just wanted to move out of the area since office space won't be worth a damn in NOLA for the next few months (the whole power and comm wires soaked and "a lot of our employees are elsewhere" thing)
Then, once the rest of the building is done (in a year or two - and assuming that they actually want a building there, it will probably be much cheaper for them to move the jobs to a small city elsewhere (where they will get a tax break for "bringing jobs into the community" or something similar)), they will be able to hire construction workers for cheap because of the surplus of workers. If they do decide to build a building in nola, they will probably get another 10 year-ish tax break for "bringing jobs back" to the area.
Oh, and in the old building, guess who provides the datacomm and phone services? Of course, the rates will have to go up (and not come down) as a result of Katrina.
If you think the execs behind this aren't walking around giggling madly about how badly they are milking the city, be more cynical.
I guess when I make a mistake and step on your toe you're going to bash me in the head with a club? How about gouging out my eye if I ring your doorbell by mistake because I have the wrong address...
Hold on, let me go fetch some straw, a pole and some string.
Well then, perhaps we should, oh, I don't know, make it illegal for a manager to do such a stupid thing.
Oh... wait...
And to be clear, this isn't just a simple case of mistaken identity. If true, it involves assault - to say nothing of battery (ok, not really an Oregon thing, we define it as assault in xth degree), reckless endangerment, possibly manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide if the vehicle was left in gear and ran over someone.
I'm quite sure there are a couple dozen misdemeanors as well as the civil stuff you can add on top of this, but I don't think we need to.
And while I suppose it depends on your state, the use of "deadly physical force" may be justified in this situation.
"Deadly physical force" (defined as "force readily capable of causing death or serious physical injury") is only lawful when it is used against a person reasonably believed to be attempting to commit a felony involving the threatened or imminent use of physical force against a person ORS 161.219. While there may be some debate as to whether getting pulled out of a car window and dropped on the pavement is assault 3 or 4, it clearly isn't the same as poking someone in the chest.
To reiterate - if this story is true, the fry's manager did "A Fucking Stupid Thing" (TM). You can't use mistaken identity as a "get out of jail and absolve yourself of all responsibility" card in this case.