You could make the argument that eBay is killing every industry, because anything bought there is one more thing that wasn't bought new.
Sadly, the day when eBay was a great cool place to buy someone else's used junk is fading fast. eBay is turning into a giant crappy flea market infested with junk imitation Ginsu knives and cheap Chinese tools. eBay is encouraging this trend by making it harder and harder for the little guy to sell.
You've got to be joking. Our pets may be consuming food that starving people in 3rd world countries would eat, but we (the pet owners) sure wouldn't.
And they produce endless amounts of satisfaction, amusement, and loving feelings - all things we happily pay for. Believe me, I waste lots more money and resources on junk that returns little to me than I spend on cat food.
If robots can produce those same benefits for people, then more power to them! I have my doubts that they can/will anytime soon but that's just my opinion. If no one tries, then it will certainly never happen. I think it's great that someone is trying.
As for the rest of the world, I say to them - sucks to be you. Sounds cold, eh? Well it is. I'm not losing sleep or majorly depriving myself because I'm more fortunate than much of the world.
it took windows a while to become usable after v1.0;-)
Now that may be the understatement of the day! What with "a while" being somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 years. Microsoft would give up on the X-Box long before then but I think it's premature to count them out. As with any new hardware, it only awaits a compelling application (game in this case). I would guess they're working very hard to develop that one game that will make people want their X-Box.
I haven't been in a library for a long, long time but in my youth the librarians ran their libraries like little kingdoms. They were not a bit bashful about asking you to shut up, move, or leave and right or wrong, that's what we did.
I wonder if anyone has bothered to ask the librarians themselves what should be done?
Filtering just won't work. There's too many sites just like mine that will easily slip under the radar of the nanny-software companies. Some kid will be reading Slashdot - see my sig at the bottom and go 'oh, boobies!'. One click later...
So this law is deeply flawed and should be thrown out. It appears that is the sentiment here and I would have to agree.
But, would anyone else agree that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed somehow? Should kids (or adults for that matter) be able to view whatever the hell they want on a public PC in a public library? I would love to hear some of the big brains here suggest alternative solutions.
Sadly, all that I can think of is good old fashioned human supervision.
The Disney channel is not part of our basic cable package (Comcast). It's not even part of the extended package. I pay ~$60/month for cable TV and don't get Disney.
We are! There are still lots of good jobs that demand very specialized or obscure knowledge. If you have that kind of experience you can expect to be recruited agressively.
We could use a couple more developers *right now* but they just aren't available. Our choices are to use contractors (which we are doing) or spend 6 months or more training someone in-house before they even begin to be productive.
The review touched on it but I think it's important to note that being smart doesn't make you a good manager. In my career I've seen great programmers promoted to management positions simply because they (the company) couldn't think of any other way to reward them for being good.
In a department I used to work for, the best programmer is now riding herd on all the programmers. He's a great coder but not a great manager. But, the culture is that you have to keep getting promoted or there must be something wrong with you so up the ladder he went.
Now, when he fails as a manager what happens? He can't really go back to being a coder - too much like a demotion.
The root of the problem is the concept of a salary range for a given job. People can't get a raise because they are max'd out for their job. Want to make more? Leave the job you're good at and move to management. It ain't right but that's the way it is.
Add to the other reasons why this is not "like a TiVo" that the software doesn't manage how recorded programs are kept (ie - keep until I delete, keep until a certain date, keep a certain number of days, etc). Also, TiVo will record a show regardless of what channel it's on, and is smart enough not to record an episode that's been recorded in the last 30 days.
Also, TiVo lets me enter shows to watch for and record when and if they do show up in program listings (the Wish List function) - a feature I use a lot. Having said all that, it does seem that cards like this are getting closer to the functionality of dedicated PVR's and I am delighted to see them catching up. I'm not in love with TiVo, just what it does. If someone finally does manage to do it better, I'll happily jump ship.
While I don't think it did justice to the book, the mini-series was way better than that god-awful movie version.
Their treatment of Dune definately gives me hope that they'll do at least a passable job with The Forever War. Just don't let Dino have anything to do with it - please!
If Comedy Central can get away with what they do on South Park (and obviously they do), there's NO reason the SciFi channel can't deal with the homosexuality, forced sex, etc of The Forever War.
Get some plastic scratch remover if the surface isn't painted. It's a lot like rubbing compound for cars. You should be able to find it at bigger hardware stores.
I've used it to remove scratches from plexiglas aquariums. Takes some patience and elbow grease but it works.
I don't have a yahoo.com email address... or do I? Honestly, I never thought about it. When I made my Yahoo ID to join the groups did it automagically make and email account for that ID?
Slashdot Mirror
But who decides what it porn? Is my site (in my .sig below) porn?
I don't think so but I'll wager I could find quite a few who would disagree.
Apple would switch from IE,
Check out a recent Apple Ad
Note that there's no IE icon in the dock. I think this is very significant.
You could make the argument that eBay is killing every industry, because anything bought there is one more thing that wasn't bought new.
Sadly, the day when eBay was a great cool place to buy someone else's used junk is fading fast. eBay is turning into a giant crappy flea market infested with junk imitation Ginsu knives and cheap Chinese tools. eBay is encouraging this trend by making it harder and harder for the little guy to sell.
what do they produce and what do they consume?
You've got to be joking. Our pets may be consuming food that starving people in 3rd world countries would eat, but we (the pet owners) sure wouldn't.
And they produce endless amounts of satisfaction, amusement, and loving feelings - all things we happily pay for. Believe me, I waste lots more money and resources on junk that returns little to me than I spend on cat food.
If robots can produce those same benefits for people, then more power to them! I have my doubts that they can/will anytime soon but that's just my opinion. If no one tries, then it will certainly never happen. I think it's great that someone is trying.
As for the rest of the world, I say to them - sucks to be you. Sounds cold, eh? Well it is. I'm not losing sleep or majorly depriving myself because I'm more fortunate than much of the world.
it took windows a while to become usable after v1.0 ;-)
Now that may be the understatement of the day! What with "a while" being somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 years.
Microsoft would give up on the X-Box long before then but I think it's premature to count them out. As with any new hardware, it only awaits a compelling application (game in this case). I would guess they're working very hard to develop that one game that will make people want their X-Box.
I believe it mentioned something about people looking for a way to half-escape reality.
Why can't people do this the good old-fashioned way - with drugs and alcohol?
And its little "don't open new windows except in response to a mouse click" option all the more. I haven't seen a pop-up in a year!
I haven't been in a library for a long, long time but in my youth the librarians ran their libraries like little kingdoms. They were not a bit bashful about asking you to shut up, move, or leave and right or wrong, that's what we did.
I wonder if anyone has bothered to ask the librarians themselves what should be done?
Filtering just won't work. There's too many sites just like mine that will easily slip under the radar of the nanny-software companies. Some kid will be reading Slashdot - see my sig at the bottom and go 'oh, boobies!'. One click later...
So this law is deeply flawed and should be thrown out. It appears that is the sentiment here and I would have to agree.
But, would anyone else agree that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed somehow? Should kids (or adults for that matter) be able to view whatever the hell they want on a public PC in a public library? I would love to hear some of the big brains here suggest alternative solutions.
Sadly, all that I can think of is good old fashioned human supervision.
Since when do kids need to be lured to do things they shouldn't?
The Disney channel is not part of our basic cable package (Comcast). It's not even part of the extended package. I pay ~$60/month for cable TV and don't get Disney.
Not that I care or want it, just pointing it out.
As I understand it, it's not the CPU cycles that are so valuable to them, but the users bandwidth.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
everyone would have the option to turn it off.
I'd be more impressed if they had the option to turn it on.
Who the hell is recruiting anybody anymore?
We are! There are still lots of good jobs that demand very specialized or obscure knowledge. If you have that kind of experience you can expect to be recruited agressively.
We could use a couple more developers *right now* but they just aren't available. Our choices are to use contractors (which we are doing) or spend 6 months or more training someone in-house before they even begin to be productive.
The review touched on it but I think it's important to note that being smart doesn't make you a good manager. In my career I've seen great programmers promoted to management positions simply because they (the company) couldn't think of any other way to reward them for being good.
In a department I used to work for, the best programmer is now riding herd on all the programmers. He's a great coder but not a great manager. But, the culture is that you have to keep getting promoted or there must be something wrong with you so up the ladder he went.
Now, when he fails as a manager what happens? He can't really go back to being a coder - too much like a demotion.
The root of the problem is the concept of a salary range for a given job. People can't get a raise because they are max'd out for their job. Want to make more? Leave the job you're good at and move to management. It ain't right but that's the way it is.
Add to the other reasons why this is not "like a TiVo" that the software doesn't manage how recorded programs are kept (ie - keep until I delete, keep until a certain date, keep a certain number of days, etc). Also, TiVo will record a show regardless of what channel it's on, and is smart enough not to record an episode that's been recorded in the last 30 days.
Also, TiVo lets me enter shows to watch for and record when and if they do show up in program listings (the Wish List function) - a feature I use a lot.
Having said all that, it does seem that cards like this are getting closer to the functionality of dedicated PVR's and I am delighted to see them catching up. I'm not in love with TiVo, just what it does. If someone finally does manage to do it better, I'll happily jump ship.
While I don't think it did justice to the book, the mini-series was way better than that god-awful movie version.
Their treatment of Dune definately gives me hope that they'll do at least a passable job with The Forever War. Just don't let Dino have anything to do with it - please!
If Comedy Central can get away with what they do on South Park (and obviously they do), there's NO reason the SciFi channel can't deal with the homosexuality, forced sex, etc of The Forever War.
Of course you can get it serviced. It's an Apple, you take it to an Apple service department just like you would a Macintosh.
How do we do it?
VOLUME!!!
Jeeze - of all days when I want mod points I get them today when the only real options will be +1 Funny or -1 Dipshit
Oh well, I'll save them for tomorrow.
Sort of like Slashdot, eh? I can get the news lots of places. I hang out here for the discussion!
Get some plastic scratch remover if the surface isn't painted. It's a lot like rubbing compound for cars. You should be able to find it at bigger hardware stores.
I've used it to remove scratches from plexiglas aquariums. Takes some patience and elbow grease but it works.
I don't have a yahoo.com email address ... or do I? Honestly, I never thought about it. When I made my Yahoo ID to join the groups did it automagically make and email account for that ID?
Off to check I guess.
I belong to a couple dozen Yahoo! groups and got no such email.
But a much better solution would be to not let the cat be alone outdoors, ever.
The cat will live a longer, healthier life this way.