There is no creativity in television anymore; every "new" show is basically a clone of a previously aired crappy show, with different people doing different stupid things.
For so-called "good" programming, people are supposed to pay for cable or satellite. Theoretically, this would be a good if it were not for the facts that it appears to have the same lack of creativity as broadcast, and also that you are paying for the ads that try to sell you something in which you're not even remotely interested.
PBS, which is funded by the taxpayers, is begging for contributions usually 1-2 weeks each month, and consistantly airing the same three shows over and over again (these shows are usually doo-wop specials that are of no interest to people in this demographic).
Tampon commercials during dinnertime - what can be more appetizing than that; makes me wanna run right out to the store!
I did a quick google for "George Carlin" and "7 words", and the first thing that came up was a link to this article
I never even knew about this case, but find it quite interesting. That led me to the parent article, which is about the regulation of [what some people consider to be] indecent speech.
IMHO, kids are going to learn these words anyway, and to have them be "taboo" is to make them more appealing for kids to use.
What would happen with the servers?
on
Microsoft Eyeing AOL?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Given that a great majority of the infrastructure at AOL is based on various flavors of *NIX, what would happen to those systems? Would Microsoft require the company to migrate everything over to Windows? What about applications that have never been built for Windows? Would those applications be replaced as well? With what?
and I like this law. In fact, I LOVE all laws and restrictions passed by the BuSh administration and CONgress. I also LOVE corporations, and the idea that the government knows everything I say, think, and do. I love the government, especially the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, FTC, SEC, and mostly, the white house.
By restricting access, car manufacturers can ensure quality, and knowledge about a car.
This sounds quite like the argument for closed source software. In an ideal world, I would say that this is a good enough idea. However, ask yourself this: how many closed source software companies really make much of an effort to ensure quality and knowledge about their products?
Is Windows more stable than Linux because the little guy can't tweak and recompile it?
Re:TV sucks lives...Millions and counting...
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Retro Vision
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· Score: 1
Probably a fair deal of \.ers
backslashdot.org: News for NT Nerds. Stuff that...
You have a valid point. I definitely agree that we need to have some controls in place to prevent this from happening again. Also, it will take a long while to clean up the mess that we've created.
Perhaps I should rephrase my comment in a less emotional manner: Those currently in power in the US are simply criminals and they should be treated as such (prosecuted and given a fair trial). Once they are no longer in a position to cause any more damage, we can then begin the process of cleaning up and preventing future mistakes.
We've actually managed to elect a Republican President who's too liberal for many liberals.
Really? Too liberal?
IMHO, this whole thing is not about ideaology, nor is it about right or left politics. In fact, it's not about politics at all. It's about greed. These greedy bastards are using the tools of politics, fear, removal of civil liberties, and easy access (for a few people) to consolidated information for their own financial gain.
Even when Bush is out of office next year, he will retire a very wealthy man, as well as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, several Generals and Admirals, and some media "pundits". There is surely enough wealth in this country to be spread amongst the 100 most greedy bastards; the rest of us can go a-beggin'.
We need more than a political solution to this problem. We need to throw these greedy fuckers in Jail and let them be raped like they've been raping the rest of the world for years.
I heard the headline that "Opportunity has plunged into the atmosphere of Mars," and I couldn't help adding to this in my head, "as well as Spirit, Motivation, Job Prospects, and Hope."
There was a very similar post about this in August on Slashdot It seems now that Maryland is finally catching on, too.
It seems to me that there are a few things that could be done to ensure proper and accurate elections
Allow exit polling by the press again
Have the voting machines print paper receipts
Do not let convicted felons be on the board or otherwise associated with the companies that sell / manage these machines. After all, they are not even allowed to vote themselves, so why should they be allowed to control the systems that count our votes?
"*somethingsomething* IT! " - CS is *not* IT. Its like comparing the doctor's receptionist to the doctor. I'm not belittling the receptionist or the IT people - both the doctors and the CS folks need their records/networks organized and maintained with skill - but they do fundamentally different things.
Ok. I'll respond to the troll. As a major in CS, you probably do not have much experience actualy working in the field. One thing you have to remember is that IT != programming; programming is a subset of IT. Ask any successful programmer, and they will tell you that they became successful by understanding the theories and platforms on which their code is based/written, as well as having clear requirements from the beginning, long before hacking out any code. Yes, this sounds like I am supporting your argument; however, there is one major difference: most successful programmers and other IT folks do not have a degree in CS.
I would like to hear your take on this agrument ten years from now, and see if it remains the same.
Here's another example of issues created by having call centers outside the customer's country:
I had recently bought a cable modem, and installed it myself. I only needed the cable company (Comcast, in this case) to come out and screw in the coax at the cable distro box outside my house.
The field tech was sent to the wrong house to begin with, and when I called to find out where he was, my call was routed to a call center in Canada (I live in the US). The person who answered the call in Canada had no access to my local account information and could not contact the field tech to find out where he was. It is their corporate policy not to give their "offshore" call centers access to this information; I assume it is because they do not trust the people in these call centers?
I had to reschedule the appointment. This is the very brief version, as it actually took 68 - I am not kidding - phone calls over the periond of six days to eventually get the cable screwed in.
The only reason that I continue using their service is that they are a monopoly in my area, and DSL is not available at my house.
Here's an experience I had at work (where we have several hundred Dell servers):
As part of our support contract with Dell, they sent an onsite hardware tech to perform all hardware maintenance for us. Sound pretty good? NOT! This guy turned out to be completely clueless. The first few servers he worked on, he Fsck'd up 4 of the SCSI drives, and we had to rebuild the server from scratch then restore from the previous night's backup. For the fourth one, he performed maintenance on the worng server (and fsck'd it up too), and it's users were dead in the water for two days while he figured out how to fix it (these users use that server for reporting to the SEC - not good).
The US election process went downhill with the ban on exit polling. That was the only way for people to have an idea of how the election was really going (provided the media reported accurately).
Using computerized voting machines would be ok if two conditions were net:
The voting machines and the voting applications were OSS, and
Exit polls are allowed and accurate
Then, we would be able to confirm the accuracy ofthe machines themselves, and have further confirmation with the exit polls.
I try not to be/think "partisan". But the truth is, the best possible chance Liberty has of making a comeback is (just about) anything non-Republican. The best possible chance of getting any non-Republican power back is in the hands of the Democrats!
I used to vote Republican or Democratic, whichever I thought was better at the time. Lately, though, that choice seems to have become: "Which of these candidates is the least-worse?" Now, most of the Democratic candidates seem to talk out of both sides of their mouth; they say one thing to please the people, then vote to please whomever has given them the most money. It seems that most of the Democratic politicians have really become Republicans, and are not really liberal any more.
Remember that liber means free. When these right wingnuts bash liberals, they are bashing freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it said, "Seeing-Eye Computer Goes Blind"
Don't you mean try to change your tastes to match the programming?
I haven't been able to find any more of the sordid details about it, but I do remember this
I never even knew about this case, but find it quite interesting. That led me to the parent article, which is about the regulation of [what some people consider to be] indecent speech.
IMHO, kids are going to learn these words anyway, and to have them be "taboo" is to make them more appealing for kids to use.
Would Microsoft require the company to migrate everything over to Windows? What about applications that have never been built for Windows? Would those applications be replaced as well? With what?
This could be interesting.
[sic]
It appears as though it cannnot handle a slashdotting.
This sounds quite like the argument for closed source software. In an ideal world, I would say that this is a good enough idea. However, ask yourself this: how many closed source software companies really make much of an effort to ensure quality and knowledge about their products?
Is Windows more stable than Linux because the little guy can't tweak and recompile it?
backslashdot.org: News for NT Nerds. Stuff that...
Oh. Nevermind.
Perhaps I should rephrase my comment in a less emotional manner: Those currently in power in the US are simply criminals and they should be treated as such (prosecuted and given a fair trial). Once they are no longer in a position to cause any more damage, we can then begin the process of cleaning up and preventing future mistakes.
Really? Too liberal?
IMHO, this whole thing is not about ideaology, nor is it about right or left politics. In fact, it's not about politics at all. It's about greed. These greedy bastards are using the tools of politics, fear, removal of civil liberties, and easy access (for a few people) to consolidated information for their own financial gain.
Even when Bush is out of office next year, he will retire a very wealthy man, as well as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, several Generals and Admirals, and some media "pundits". There is surely enough wealth in this country to be spread amongst the 100 most greedy bastards; the rest of us can go a-beggin'.
We need more than a political solution to this problem. We need to throw these greedy fuckers in Jail and let them be raped like they've been raping the rest of the world for years.
-- End of Rant.
I am still trying to figure out how this will help my blind dog named Spot drive safer. Dammed pooch keeps causing my insurance premiums to increase!
I heard the headline that "Opportunity has plunged into the atmosphere of Mars," and I couldn't help adding to this in my head, "as well as Spirit, Motivation, Job Prospects, and Hope."
It seems now that Maryland is finally catching on, too.
Ok. I'll respond to the troll. As a major in CS, you probably do not have much experience actualy working in the field. One thing you have to remember is that IT != programming; programming is a subset of IT. Ask any successful programmer, and they will tell you that they became successful by understanding the theories and platforms on which their code is based/written, as well as having clear requirements from the beginning, long before hacking out any code. Yes, this sounds like I am supporting your argument; however, there is one major difference: most successful programmers and other IT folks do not have a degree in CS.
I would like to hear your take on this agrument ten years from now, and see if it remains the same.
I had recently bought a cable modem, and installed it myself. I only needed the cable company (Comcast, in this case) to come out and screw in the coax at the cable distro box outside my house.
The field tech was sent to the wrong house to begin with, and when I called to find out where he was, my call was routed to a call center in Canada (I live in the US). The person who answered the call in Canada had no access to my local account information and could not contact the field tech to find out where he was. It is their corporate policy not to give their "offshore" call centers access to this information; I assume it is because they do not trust the people in these call centers?
I had to reschedule the appointment. This is the very brief version, as it actually took 68 - I am not kidding - phone calls over the periond of six days to eventually get the cable screwed in.
The only reason that I continue using their service is that they are a monopoly in my area, and DSL is not available at my house.
The thing I liked most about my job when I was a DBA was taking a dump. I used to take them every night.
As part of our support contract with Dell, they sent an onsite hardware tech to perform all hardware maintenance for us. Sound pretty good? NOT!
This guy turned out to be completely clueless. The first few servers he worked on, he Fsck'd up 4 of the SCSI drives, and we had to rebuild the server from scratch then restore from the previous night's backup. For the fourth one, he performed maintenance on the worng server (and fsck'd it up too), and it's users were dead in the water for two days while he figured out how to fix it (these users use that server for reporting to the SEC - not good).
These machines can be infected through their internet connections, but cannot be maintained remotely?
Why are they even connected to the internet in the first place?
Using computerized voting machines would be ok if two conditions were net:
- The voting machines and the voting applications were OSS, and
- Exit polls are allowed and accurate
Then, we would be able to confirm the accuracy ofthe machines themselves, and have further confirmation with the exit polls.You could always install the BSOD screensaver and set is as the default. I did this to my manager.
I used to vote Republican or Democratic, whichever I thought was better at the time. Lately, though, that choice seems to have become: "Which of these candidates is the least-worse?" Now, most of the Democratic candidates seem to talk out of both sides of their mouth; they say one thing to please the people, then vote to please whomever has given them the most money. It seems that most of the Democratic politicians have really become Republicans, and are not really liberal any more.
Remember that liber means free. When these right wingnuts bash liberals, they are bashing freedom.