I just think this is an example of very bad and exaggerated CGI. As it stands now, it is little more than a high tech shadow puppet. Some of the things, like the Hulk running as if he were in the gravity well of the moon rather than the earth, and the over the edge effects with the tanks cannot be fixed. OTOH, I do hope the body work is not final. As they say, we have the technology to rebuild him, and the science to do a better job.
It is important to remember that legislative intent in quite meaningless when it comes to administrative implementation or judicial review. All that matters in a bill is the words. It is the understanding of this fact that created the bill of rights. It is the misunderstanding of this fact that now allows our social security number to be used everywhere on every sheet of paper, as well as the resulting identity theft. Overly broad language and omissions are classics trick that legislators use to appease their corporate controllers wile maintaining plausible deniability with the general populous.
ACLU is loathed by many members of the judiciary The only reason the ACLU is loathed by the bench is because is now an extension of US corporate culture. Judicial review is the last hope for the U.S. general population to protect itself against an abusive corporate culture. As such it has become a major corporate initiative to fill all possible judicial positions with people that are partial to corporations. In Texas, for instance, all judges are bought and paid for by the major corporations.
It is certainly no surprise or anyone that has used FoxPro for many years. FoxPro itself is beautiful database technology that MS bought to acquire the incredible Rushmore technology. The MS (jet?) technology was crap by comparison.
Equally amazing was that MS supported FoxPro for Macintosh and Windows, and even more incredibly, they kept it running on both platforms when the created Visual Foxpro(VFP). Now, credit where credit is due. VFP is an incredible RAD environment. It is very easy to code complex business models and rules. By comparison, Access is a toy. It did not have the power and it did not have the cross platform capabilities. Access was fine for the manager who wanted to create a database of employees that spent too much time in the bathroom, but not for much else.
I think they were hoping that with the full integration of Rushmore technology into Access, which was maybe the 95 version, people would migrate. Did not happen. VFP was cross platform development(with the exception of report development) and runtime. It was fast, it was simple, it was effective. Access was not.
Now, if MS was in businesses of provided tool for customers, MS would have continued to support VFP for Windows, Mac, and today we would probably have a VFP for Linux. But, alas, MS is the business of maintaining a monopoly, and as such they made VFP a windows only product.
Which is why the do not want VFP to run in Linux. They want their tools to run on Windows only. They already fought the battle to make VFP single platform, They don't want to fight it again. (As an aside the viewpoint of MS can be seen by their definition of cross-platform, which means the application can run of different versions of windows, which, to an outside observer, is reasonable a single platform.)
Although most posters have either joked about or felt insulted by these finding, they may in fact be important and correct. The issue could be, as it is in many cases, that computer products are designed to meet the needs of the designer and not the full range of users. Those who have designed significant products will see the truth in this. We all have fallen to the trap of designing products that fit our use patterns at the expense of other people. We design products that play to our strengths, that minimize the effects of our weaknesses, which result in an overly specific product that is not fully usable by the general populous. This not only causes use problems with non-dominant groups, but also can cause systematic errors in the test itself.
As an example, let's look at the controversial SAT exam. This test has been, and may still be, written for, by, and of privately east coast educated white people. For example, when the ETS evaluats the suitability of questions, at least in the near past, the questions that make it onto the real test were those that upper class east-coast white people did best on. This not some because of some explicit prejudice, but merely because the conventional wisdom said upper class east coast white people, as a group, were better educated and smarted, and question that they did best with were in fact the best questions. The corollary is that minority off coast people were less educated, and if they did well on a question, it was obviously a bad question.
Which is to say that history is written by the victors, and critical usability and evaluation points are chosen by the managers and designers. In this case, the computer programs and usability tests may be biased to a male population. Perhaps the issue is not so much screen size, but rather the assumption that a certain pattern of use, or a certain problem solving method, is going to be primary for all users. This is an especially good possibility for 3D technology as it is not yet in wide use, and would be particularly susceptible to these aberrations.
The interesting thing is that the article does not pay attention to it's own introduction when it is suggesting solutions. All the solutions are unworkable. Free music is the future and those that figure out how to profit off it will succeed. It is not about corporate image. People shop and Walmart and buy MS not matter how irresponsible those companies are. It is not about Radio, because radio is now a non player. It is not about label loyalty, because the kids that buy music are going for an image, not the quality. And the labels already know their audiences, and know they are no longer will to spend large sums of money on the CD.
Let' start with the nonsense. First, they say sales have fallen $250 million in the past two years, from 1.2 billion to 950 million. That is a 20 percent drop, and is significant. As has been repeatedly stated, it is unclear how much of this is piracy and how much is caused by the fact that people simply have no disposable liquid funds. For instance, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 20% over the past year. In Canada 2002 starting with an 8% unemployment rate, and is still above 7%. I find the suggestion that unemployed people should continue to buy CDs, instead of say food, ridiculous.
Worldwide, the entire music business is still worth a whopping $66.6 billion (all figures Canadian) but only if you factor in cash-cow ventures such as sponsorship deals and tour profits that together account for some 40 per cent of all profits.
All I will say about this is that is same book cooking that the major athletic organizations use. The teams are losing money and putting the owners in poorhouse, but only because concessions and other promotions are listed as separate enterprises.
But the real tragedy of this article are the solutions. In the introduction text it is admitted that CDs are crap and are not making money. It is admitted that the money is to made in concerts. In the solutions it is admitted that radio sucks and the long term progress is to let people download songs. And yet the solutions listed are all about stopping download and repackaging CD. It is silly. If selling music isn't making money and concert are, then grow the concert business. If CDs aren't selling, simple economics says to drop the price. I am not going to pay 20 dollars for a CD when for $25 I can see an excellent local artist and purchase a one of the CDs.
The dropping of CD prices is critical. I see a kid buying a CD then selling copies for $5 with cover art(his cost about $2). If CDs were sold for $8-$15 dollars it would not only make them more attractive to a cash strapped population, but also cut into the underground market.
As has been said before this is not about saving musicians and artist, it is about saving a inefficient and antiquated bureaucracy. It is sad jobs will be lost, but jobs are being lost everywhere. Perhaps the guy who stuffs cocaine and cash into envelopes for the industry big wigs can be retrained to stuff envelopes at home. I get Spam offering me big buck for such work all the time.
I can see how it would be cool to have the display hang on the wall or sit in the middle of the room with no wires. OTOH, but it seems that the 2.4 GHZ spectrum is getting quite crowded. I suspect interference would be a problem, especially in densely populated areas. It seem to me that it would make much more sense to build such a unit with a single power/signal/sound cord. If there were no controls on the unit itself, i.e. the remote was the only controller, the form fact large maintained, without the ugly additional boxes.
This is now merely a law to allow SBC and earthlink to force DSL customers to pay $100 more a month, but it could easily go much further. A simple agreement with MS and the only OS you will be able to connect to ISP is the latest version of Windows, with is custom back door for the government, the only email you will be to use is Outlook, and the only browser you can use is IE, with is special advertiser friendly unclosable windows. Anything else will allow then to knock you off the network. Think about. If they are allowed to specify equipment, anything is possible. For example, currently SBC does not support Linux.
Of course the entire thing is silly. Banning user NAT might be defensible if the shipped DSL or Cable modems with fully configurable firewalls. If the security situation stays the same, I would want the ISP to be liable for any real and consequential damage done by someone breaking into a connected machine.
The VPN thing is a bit more arbitrarily. It is not a common or critically necessary, but such a restriction might arbitrarily hurt small businesses.
The encrypted email is a classic example of the corporation using fear to push unrelated priorities for profit. Like when the airlines were able to force every passenger to show an ID in order to get a boarding pass. What is next? We will not be able to use code when we make a telephone call? We will only be allowed to speak english or one or other two approved languages?
Such a wide open law screams of a bought and paid for government.
This is a general problem. The phone company is not going to spend money to fix it because it does not cost them money. In fact such a bad design may actually make them money. If a voice mail system is misconfigured, as so many insightful people have already stated, that is the stupid customers fault. The fact that the vendor designed a flawed process and a flawed security system is not an issue in the least.
I have recently seen a good example of such bogus security with scary implications. I use a phone system to schedule work. Once you call in all you need is a six digit code to schedule people for work, remove people from scheduled work, etc. A person who guesses a code could cause a lot of trouble, maybe even getting someone else fired. I myself have run across a code or two just by accident. This is a very expensive system, presumable designed by competent professionals. Yet they make such a fundamental mistake. Again, the vendor loses no money as a result of amateur security, and as long as all vendors have such a low level of security, there is no incentive to improve.
The price before rebate is the exact price one should think about, and is the price that should be advertised. After all, that is the amount of money that the store will require to let you have product, and once they have your money, they naturally want to keep it.
So the real fraudulent practice is advertising the price after rebate as the sale price. Even with an asterisk, this practice should be outlawed as misleading. The proper practice would be to advertise the sale price in large letters, then the rebate price, along with special restrictions in small letters.
On a side note, I have no problems with the PO Box restriction. They intend the rebates to be one per household, and this restriction merely insures compliance.
The solution, for the sake of argument, is as follows
First, if memory serves, the SBC software is OS9 only. I would not try to configure the OSX PPOE services, as the SBC tech support is horrible, and if you try to do the OSX thing, they are unlikely to be able to help. If you want to try to use the OSX setup instead of the router, feel free to try.
Second, you will need a PPOE capable router/firewall with a configurable MAC. The linksys is a good unit. There are others.
So, go ahead and boot into OS9. Go into configuration manager and create a set/configuration to hold the SBC setup. This will allow to quickly switch to the SBC setup later on for troubleshooting, but will also save you current configuration, if any.
Now start the installation. At some point, you will have to call tech support. Do not mention that you are doing anything different. Just follow their lead and do as they say. Some of it is silly, but they will get you up and running. Note all setting such as email, password, etc. You will need them later.
After you are up and running, disconnect the cable between the modem and computer from the modem and plug it into the router. Reboot the computer into OSX. Go into System preferences, click on network (be sure to choose the proper network interface in the drop down menu), then TCP/IP. Choose Using DHCP from the drop down menu, click apply now, and close.
Load a web browser on the computer and connect to the router. If it is a linksys, the address should be 192.168.1.1. All further instructions assume a Linksys. This will bring up the configuration menu. On the setup page type in your full SBC email address, the domain is probably sbcglobal.net, the username(full email again) and your password. Select PPOE from the drop down menu, and select either 'connect on demand' or 'keep alive'. The former might attract less attention. Click apply.
Go to the status page and type in a password for the router. This should be a strong password. Click apply.
Go to the DHCP tab, turn on the server, and click apply. Open the DHCP client table and note the MAC for your machine.
Now click the advance menu, and then the Mac Addr. clone tab. Type the Mac Address into the fields and click apply,
Plug a cable from the WAN connector on the router to the modem. At this point you should be good to go. The router will automatically connect to they network when needed. If it doesn't, first check all the lights on the router and modem. The modem will light if it senses a good network, the router will light if it senses the modem and computer(s). Next go to the configuration page and look at the status tab. This will tell you if the router is connected, and allow you to connect manually if there is a problem. If the direct connection is good, and you type in all the user and password information correctly, it should work like a charm.
This is, of course, in no way a reccomendation. It is just one of the many possible ways that one could connect an OSX machine to the SBC network.
Re:Reducing Network Traffic?
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FTC vs Spammers
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· Score: 1
This is the situation in most cases of inefficiency. If we limit ourselves to the original drain, i.e. the original spam, things may not be so bad. However, when one adds the hardware and software used to filter the spam, the forwarding of complaints to the offending company, the hosting company, the spammers, and the government, the true scale of the problem is apparent.
As an analogy we can look at the power consumption of a computer. At first the power needed for an inefficient processor and associated hardware does not seem so bad. However, when one factors in the fans that are needed to cool the components, and the air conditioner that is needed to cool the room, the bill starts stacking up.
In both cases the issue is not to blame secondary factors, but to fix the root problem.
games which install fully to your hard-drive but require the CD in to be played,
I know that games makes tons of money, and people who like to play games will pay a bunch of money in hardware and software just for the privilege to play those games.
OTOH, I wonder how many people are like me. I own the vast majority of the software I use, but have little patience for features that stand between me and using the software. I used to buy games on a regular basis before the copy protection is so cumbersome. Simcity is a good example.
I understand the need for copy protection on certain large very expensive packages that are sold one at a time to a small market. My patience is ended at these little $100 packages that are supposed to sold to hundreds of thousands of people. It is insulting, abusive, and disrespectful to the customer.
CDs which stop you from making a legal backup copy,
The other day I was at a small (about 100 people) concert local concert. As I usually do, I go to look to see if there are any CDs I want. While looking at the CDs, I notice one of them marked with some sort of MS branded technology. I immediately think, is this going to play on my car CD player? Is this going to play on my non MS computer? Am I going to be able to transfer this to my computer, which is my primary music player? Needless to say, I left that CD there, and very nearly did not buy a single CD from those musicians. I pay for entertainment and art, not complications
My understanding is that everyone on a particular cable network, i.e. neighbors, shares the same network and the same pipe. It is one of the major disadvantages of cable. Since the purpose of Rendezvous is to transmit connect information to everyone on the network, this is the expected result. I think it may be a basic security flaw as significant as the Windows problems, especially if the service is turned on by default, shares the resources by default, and uses weak default passwords.
I think we really need to educate everyone that a firewall is always needed between the home computer and broadband connections, even if there is only one computer connected. The ISP are not providing the firewall with the modems because they want to sell that service for more money, if they want to allow it at all.
Of course all the other rules apply. Turn off all services that are not needed. Use good passwords on the services that are. I am afraid that Apple is going down the road of reduced security and feature bloat.
The DCMA has nothing to do with security, or fixing security, or having better security. I have decided that the DCMA and laws like it are just another way to keep the average US citizen from using the courts to force corporations to behave. I think this case is a classic example.
There may very well be a systemic problem with this technology. The company very well may have decided to not fix the problem under the assumption that it would never result in enough lawsuits to affect profitability. Even if they did knew about the problems, the DCMA allows them to publicly state that there is no problem, keep the research that identifies the alleged problem from being scrutinized in a public forum, and may even keep sensitive documents from being scrutinized in a court setting. Likewise, by keeping the exploit from public view, the company minimizes the number of security breeches, which minimizes the chances that enough people will get hurt to create a large enough class action case and attract competent lawyers.
Of course, this doesn't help the parents or students that have had money stolen, or the student that cannot get a meal because the card is empty, or the student that gets raped in the dorm room. But we must protect company profits.
1) in many cases, the difference between contract and perm is unemployment and benefits during employment. You can still be fired without notice. Which of course explains why corporate culture has become so jaded. No one wants to form relationships they know are going to end suddenly.
2) I have seen few contracts over the past couple years that have, after taxes and other deductions worked out to better money than perm. In many cases, the contacts seems to be worth less than $10 an hour, net. Equivelent perm poitions netted at least $15.
Two wrongs do not make a right, and retribution is not a rational concept. OTOH, this is not about retribution.
What this is about is clearly showing the fallacy of the spammer logic. A spammer harvests email addresses, using the justification that it is publicly available information, and sends unsolicited commercial email to those addresses, using the justification that anyone should be able to send any email to anyone. The spammer charges money for service under the assumption that he or she is provided something of value.
Using the above logic, there is nothing wrong with posting an address. The address is publicly available, the spammer has not specifically opted out this week from every service, and there is no law, in general, that prevents anyone from calling or mailing anyone.
Now, unlike email, the spammer has some protection. There are legal limits to what a person can do over the phone or mail. For instance fraud, threats, and other illegal acts are not allowed in this traditional media. One can even get in trouble for mailing a certain pictures to households. But, since spammers seem to have no problem with fraud or naked pictures, and might even fight for their rights to threaten people, one would not think that a spammer would support laws restricting speech in any medium
In short, an action such as posting a spammer's address merely shows the spammer in a true light. A hypocrite. I do feel bad about the family, but people get their families into trouble for all sorts of reasons. That is why when one mates, it is better to choose a person who is ethical.
And much too complex. They should have looked at the Newtons. Mine have been singing to me for the past five years. After all this time, I find it quite conforting. All I have to do is turn on the backlight, and I have wonderfull musak quality noise. All they need to do is figure how to tune the high volage thingy.
where can i find this $1000 laptop with 17" screen
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LCD Price Fixing?
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Well, I can't get to the article but it certainly sounds like hogwash.
First, I would like to see the $1000 laptop. Does it have any hardware worth mentioning other than the display. From what I can see, a $1000 laptop has at best a 15" LCD, and a comparable LCD can be had for less than $400 retail. With markups, one would assume that the laptop LCD costs no more than $100. If one wants a 17" LCD, which one could purchase as a standalone unit for much less than $1000, the laptop with such as LCD would run at least $2000.
Second, retail markups are large and buying something as a unit will usually be cheaper than retail piecemeal of equivalent quality. Look at the iPod. As another example, many years ago I got a very good closeout deal on a bicycle frame. I found excellent Italian parts at equally good prices, and built a functional bicycle. Even with the good deals, it still cost my much more to build the bicycle than it would have to buy a prebuilt bicycle.
Third, and I have mentioned this before, the cost of a product is not an exact number, and the appropriate sale price less so. If it were, we would not have so many failed businesses. The are many costs that must be distributed among product lines, and it seldom makes sense to distribute these costs evenly. The LCD, especially the larger sizes, is new product and therefore is more likely to disproportionately support certain costs. This probably accounts for the 30-50% price difference between CRT and LCD monitors.
Let me just add that LCDs do not seem very expensive to me. True, the cost of a LCD television is about three times the cost of an tube television, but LCD televisions are kind of useless outside of the cool factor.
I could not agree more. Most Bruce Willis stuff, from Moonlighting in 1985 to the Fifth Element in 1997, in cartoonish in nature. Hudson Hawk, unlike the Die Hard stuff, is self aware of that fact.
The two nemesises of science fiction is time travel and imperfect technology. Used sparingly, these plot devices can be made to work. For example, The City on the Edge of Forever was a palatable time travel episode, and Star Wars uses the slightly imperfect and grungy Millennium Falcon to some good effect. However, most of the time they just mess up a story.
The problem with Enterprise is that the basis is time travel and crummy technology. It was doomed from the start. Both of these plot devices force the writers to cheat, back peddle, and generally create unbelievable plots. The best thing the writers can do is to assume a good enough ship, ditch the time travel arch, and concentrate on character development and other basics of good story telling.
this post is a consolidated reply and clarification.
First, my point is that no matter what our leaders say, no matter what the majority says, no matter what the law is, we all must take part in the democratic process, and part of that is openly speaking our minds, even if that view is unpopular. If a large percentage of the population has an unpopular view, it is irresponsible for a government who claims to be by the people and for the people to completely ignore that minority. For example, somewhere between ten and thirty percent of the population in the US opposes abortion to some significant degree. This is clearly a minority. The government could say that this is a whack minority (and indeed the lower number represents those that would oppose abortion in all cases), but the U.S. is a democracy, and as such has to take as many different opinions into account as possible when forming policy.
Democracy does work, and it works well. Our democracy tries to balance the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority, and the tyranny of the powerful and the tyranny of the masses. It does the former, for example, by a bicarmel legislative branch that gives a little extra power to the minority, with the knowledge that the majority will ultimately have the last say. It does the later, for example, by an electoral college for the president which allows the masses to suggest a President, while giving the powerful the actual power of election.
As far as eating children, reductio ad absurdum is not always the best way to make a counter argument. I was actually trying to keep most of the post a bit vague, so it could apply to all parties in our little conflict. I am sure many would agree that Bush has had to face too few consequences to be afraid of very much. Sadam obviously believes he an impervious leader of a sovereign nation. Both seem to have a bit of religious fundamentalism driving them. That said I will address the issue of children. There are people in the US government who deeply want to separate children from effective parents who love and care for them. Children have been given to qualified, loving, responsible, and deserving homosexual couples. These couples have passed all the tests and have proven themselves good parents. Legislation that seeks to prohibit homosexual couple from adopting children sometimes also seeks to remove children that have already been adopted by homosexual couples. The government may not eat them, but realistically, who is going to adopt this older black child, who is going to have emotional separation anxiety, when one can just go to eastern Europe and get a blue eye, blonde hair white child. It is interesting to note that many polls show a slight majority favoring adoption by gay couples.
In the last presidential election, irrespective of recounts and lawsuits, Bush did not receive 50% +1 of the votes. If we believe the final numbers, he did not even receive the most total popular votes. In fact, out of the about 206 million people who could vote, only about 50.5 million bothered to vote for Bush. That is less than 25%. I don't know what percentage of the eligible population voted in the fateful German election, but if it was around 75%, then Hitler's numbers would be comparable to Bush's.
I would add 'right' and 'wrong' only lead to uncivilized useless discussions. This issue I was addressing is whether democracy can be simplified to a number. If 51% of the people believe that persons with blue eyes should be banned from malls on Friday, should we pass a law to that effect. It may in fact be the right thing to do, but the majority view is not a sufficiently indicative condition.
Why is this news. Web pages are so bloated with ads, gratuitous graphics, useless animation, and calls to 10 different servers that set 20 different cookies that they barely meet usability guidelines in normal situations. Given this bloat is acceptable design, it is no wonder that the pages fail under stressful situation. There are a few exceptions to this,/. being one of them. Usually very good response, and apparently a good understanding of bottlenecks that can be removed to improve performance.
I would reference Home Page Usability in which rule #94 is to have an alternate home page for times of emergency. The New York Times had a successful deployment of such a page on 9/11, and seems to be meeting demand now. I wonder how many others agencies have emergency web pages set up that can better meet demand.
though this parent comment is more of a troll, there is one point that needs to be addressed
let's talk about democracy's role in all this. is ignoring war protests tantamount to ignoring democracy? no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most. that means the majority of Americans still support getting rid of Saddam.
This is troubling on so many levels. Democracy cannot be just about the majority and winning. Hitler was elected by a majority and no one had a problem with his attempted genocide. Slavery was considered ok by a majority people in the US for a very long time, and those who even thought about protesting or abolishing slavery, like Lincoln, were killed.
People risk their lives trying to bring unpopular issues to the frontline of political debates. In 1965 it was a demonstration in Selma, that results in the cold blooded murder of the minister James Reeb, presumable by a person intent on keeping black from achieving equal rights. Should Reeb have ignored Dr. Martin Luther King's plea for help in his effort to liberate the black population from oppression? Should the goverment have lables them terrorists??
In Dogma, right before Bartebly exacts holy vengeance on the boardroom of sinners, he has a speech in which he says
Fear. And therein lies the problem. None of you has anything left to fear anymore. You rest comfortably in seats of inscrutable power, hiding behind your false idol, far from judgment, lives shrouded in secrecy even from one another. But not from God.
And I think this is the issue. There are people so powerful, so spoiled, so in need of clue, that they respect and fear almost nothing. The exception are the few things demonstrable equally powerful. People this powerful feel that the world is there to service their needs. Furthermore, even if they claim to believe in God, that belief is not reflected in their actions. They do not have maturity or self control to realize that just because you can take something, doesn't mean you have to. In words from the original Star Trek, we can choose not to kill today.
As I mentioned such people will fear things or people that are equally powerful. For example, a few years ago Texas was in the midst of passing a hate crime bill. Dubya was governor. The impetus for this bill was the lynching and dragging of James Byrd, Jr in Jasper. The bill was not great, but it was needed. It was eventually supported by Dubya, after a bit of embarrassing publicity, and would have had very little trouble becoming law except for one problem. It not only wanted to protect minorities, but also homosexuals. There was a basis for this, as about 1/3 of all hate crimes are directed to homosexuals. Dubya could not afford to offend the religious right, so he fought to remove the protection for homosexuals, which killed the bill. From this we can see that those without power, homosexuals can be sacrificed, while there is genuine fear of the fundamentalist Christian right.
Slashdot Mirror
I just think this is an example of very bad and exaggerated CGI. As it stands now, it is little more than a high tech shadow puppet. Some of the things, like the Hulk running as if he were in the gravity well of the moon rather than the earth, and the over the edge effects with the tanks cannot be fixed. OTOH, I do hope the body work is not final. As they say, we have the technology to rebuild him, and the science to do a better job.
It is important to remember that legislative intent in quite meaningless when it comes to administrative implementation or judicial review. All that matters in a bill is the words. It is the understanding of this fact that created the bill of rights. It is the misunderstanding of this fact that now allows our social security number to be used everywhere on every sheet of paper, as well as the resulting identity theft. Overly broad language and omissions are classics trick that legislators use to appease their corporate controllers wile maintaining plausible deniability with the general populous.
ACLU is loathed by many members of the judiciary
The only reason the ACLU is loathed by the bench is because is now an extension of US corporate culture. Judicial review is the last hope for the U.S. general population to protect itself against an abusive corporate culture. As such it has become a major corporate initiative to fill all possible judicial positions with people that are partial to corporations. In Texas, for instance, all judges are bought and paid for by the major corporations.
Equally amazing was that MS supported FoxPro for Macintosh and Windows, and even more incredibly, they kept it running on both platforms when the created Visual Foxpro(VFP). Now, credit where credit is due. VFP is an incredible RAD environment. It is very easy to code complex business models and rules. By comparison, Access is a toy. It did not have the power and it did not have the cross platform capabilities. Access was fine for the manager who wanted to create a database of employees that spent too much time in the bathroom, but not for much else.
I think they were hoping that with the full integration of Rushmore technology into Access, which was maybe the 95 version, people would migrate. Did not happen. VFP was cross platform development(with the exception of report development) and runtime. It was fast, it was simple, it was effective. Access was not.
Now, if MS was in businesses of provided tool for customers, MS would have continued to support VFP for Windows, Mac, and today we would probably have a VFP for Linux. But, alas, MS is the business of maintaining a monopoly, and as such they made VFP a windows only product.
Which is why the do not want VFP to run in Linux. They want their tools to run on Windows only. They already fought the battle to make VFP single platform, They don't want to fight it again. (As an aside the viewpoint of MS can be seen by their definition of cross-platform, which means the application can run of different versions of windows, which, to an outside observer, is reasonable a single platform.)
As an example, let's look at the controversial SAT exam. This test has been, and may still be, written for, by, and of privately east coast educated white people. For example, when the ETS evaluats the suitability of questions, at least in the near past, the questions that make it onto the real test were those that upper class east-coast white people did best on. This not some because of some explicit prejudice, but merely because the conventional wisdom said upper class east coast white people, as a group, were better educated and smarted, and question that they did best with were in fact the best questions. The corollary is that minority off coast people were less educated, and if they did well on a question, it was obviously a bad question.
Which is to say that history is written by the victors, and critical usability and evaluation points are chosen by the managers and designers. In this case, the computer programs and usability tests may be biased to a male population. Perhaps the issue is not so much screen size, but rather the assumption that a certain pattern of use, or a certain problem solving method, is going to be primary for all users. This is an especially good possibility for 3D technology as it is not yet in wide use, and would be particularly susceptible to these aberrations.
Let' start with the nonsense. First, they say sales have fallen $250 million in the past two years, from 1.2 billion to 950 million. That is a 20 percent drop, and is significant. As has been repeatedly stated, it is unclear how much of this is piracy and how much is caused by the fact that people simply have no disposable liquid funds. For instance, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 20% over the past year. In Canada 2002 starting with an 8% unemployment rate, and is still above 7%. I find the suggestion that unemployed people should continue to buy CDs, instead of say food, ridiculous.
Worldwide, the entire music business is still worth a whopping $66.6 billion (all figures Canadian) but only if you factor in cash-cow ventures such as sponsorship deals and tour profits that together account for some 40 per cent of all profits.
All I will say about this is that is same book cooking that the major athletic organizations use. The teams are losing money and putting the owners in poorhouse, but only because concessions and other promotions are listed as separate enterprises.
But the real tragedy of this article are the solutions. In the introduction text it is admitted that CDs are crap and are not making money. It is admitted that the money is to made in concerts. In the solutions it is admitted that radio sucks and the long term progress is to let people download songs. And yet the solutions listed are all about stopping download and repackaging CD. It is silly. If selling music isn't making money and concert are, then grow the concert business. If CDs aren't selling, simple economics says to drop the price. I am not going to pay 20 dollars for a CD when for $25 I can see an excellent local artist and purchase a one of the CDs.
The dropping of CD prices is critical. I see a kid buying a CD then selling copies for $5 with cover art(his cost about $2). If CDs were sold for $8-$15 dollars it would not only make them more attractive to a cash strapped population, but also cut into the underground market.
As has been said before this is not about saving musicians and artist, it is about saving a inefficient and antiquated bureaucracy. It is sad jobs will be lost, but jobs are being lost everywhere. Perhaps the guy who stuffs cocaine and cash into envelopes for the industry big wigs can be retrained to stuff envelopes at home. I get Spam offering me big buck for such work all the time.
I can see how it would be cool to have the display hang on the wall or sit in the middle of the room with no wires. OTOH, but it seems that the 2.4 GHZ spectrum is getting quite crowded. I suspect interference would be a problem, especially in densely populated areas. It seem to me that it would make much more sense to build such a unit with a single power/signal/sound cord. If there were no controls on the unit itself, i.e. the remote was the only controller, the form fact large maintained, without the ugly additional boxes.
Of course the entire thing is silly. Banning user NAT might be defensible if the shipped DSL or Cable modems with fully configurable firewalls. If the security situation stays the same, I would want the ISP to be liable for any real and consequential damage done by someone breaking into a connected machine.
The VPN thing is a bit more arbitrarily. It is not a common or critically necessary, but such a restriction might arbitrarily hurt small businesses.
The encrypted email is a classic example of the corporation using fear to push unrelated priorities for profit. Like when the airlines were able to force every passenger to show an ID in order to get a boarding pass. What is next? We will not be able to use code when we make a telephone call? We will only be allowed to speak english or one or other two approved languages?
Such a wide open law screams of a bought and paid for government.
I have recently seen a good example of such bogus security with scary implications. I use a phone system to schedule work. Once you call in all you need is a six digit code to schedule people for work, remove people from scheduled work, etc. A person who guesses a code could cause a lot of trouble, maybe even getting someone else fired. I myself have run across a code or two just by accident. This is a very expensive system, presumable designed by competent professionals. Yet they make such a fundamental mistake. Again, the vendor loses no money as a result of amateur security, and as long as all vendors have such a low level of security, there is no incentive to improve.
So the real fraudulent practice is advertising the price after rebate as the sale price. Even with an asterisk, this practice should be outlawed as misleading. The proper practice would be to advertise the sale price in large letters, then the rebate price, along with special restrictions in small letters.
On a side note, I have no problems with the PO Box restriction. They intend the rebates to be one per household, and this restriction merely insures compliance.
First, if memory serves, the SBC software is OS9 only. I would not try to configure the OSX PPOE services, as the SBC tech support is horrible, and if you try to do the OSX thing, they are unlikely to be able to help. If you want to try to use the OSX setup instead of the router, feel free to try.
Second, you will need a PPOE capable router/firewall with a configurable MAC. The linksys is a good unit. There are others.
So, go ahead and boot into OS9. Go into configuration manager and create a set/configuration to hold the SBC setup. This will allow to quickly switch to the SBC setup later on for troubleshooting, but will also save you current configuration, if any.
Now start the installation. At some point, you will have to call tech support. Do not mention that you are doing anything different. Just follow their lead and do as they say. Some of it is silly, but they will get you up and running. Note all setting such as email, password, etc. You will need them later.
After you are up and running, disconnect the cable between the modem and computer from the modem and plug it into the router. Reboot the computer into OSX. Go into System preferences, click on network (be sure to choose the proper network interface in the drop down menu), then TCP/IP. Choose Using DHCP from the drop down menu, click apply now, and close.
Load a web browser on the computer and connect to the router. If it is a linksys, the address should be 192.168.1.1. All further instructions assume a Linksys. This will bring up the configuration menu. On the setup page type in your full SBC email address, the domain is probably sbcglobal.net, the username(full email again) and your password. Select PPOE from the drop down menu, and select either 'connect on demand' or 'keep alive'. The former might attract less attention. Click apply.
Go to the status page and type in a password for the router. This should be a strong password. Click apply.
Go to the DHCP tab, turn on the server, and click apply. Open the DHCP client table and note the MAC for your machine.
Now click the advance menu, and then the Mac Addr. clone tab. Type the Mac Address into the fields and click apply,
Plug a cable from the WAN connector on the router to the modem. At this point you should be good to go. The router will automatically connect to they network when needed. If it doesn't, first check all the lights on the router and modem. The modem will light if it senses a good network, the router will light if it senses the modem and computer(s). Next go to the configuration page and look at the status tab. This will tell you if the router is connected, and allow you to connect manually if there is a problem. If the direct connection is good, and you type in all the user and password information correctly, it should work like a charm.
This is, of course, in no way a reccomendation. It is just one of the many possible ways that one could connect an OSX machine to the SBC network.
As an analogy we can look at the power consumption of a computer. At first the power needed for an inefficient processor and associated hardware does not seem so bad. However, when one factors in the fans that are needed to cool the components, and the air conditioner that is needed to cool the room, the bill starts stacking up.
In both cases the issue is not to blame secondary factors, but to fix the root problem.
I know that games makes tons of money, and people who like to play games will pay a bunch of money in hardware and software just for the privilege to play those games.
OTOH, I wonder how many people are like me. I own the vast majority of the software I use, but have little patience for features that stand between me and using the software. I used to buy games on a regular basis before the copy protection is so cumbersome. Simcity is a good example.
I understand the need for copy protection on certain large very expensive packages that are sold one at a time to a small market. My patience is ended at these little $100 packages that are supposed to sold to hundreds of thousands of people. It is insulting, abusive, and disrespectful to the customer.
CDs which stop you from making a legal backup copy,
The other day I was at a small (about 100 people) concert local concert. As I usually do, I go to look to see if there are any CDs I want. While looking at the CDs, I notice one of them marked with some sort of MS branded technology. I immediately think, is this going to play on my car CD player? Is this going to play on my non MS computer? Am I going to be able to transfer this to my computer, which is my primary music player? Needless to say, I left that CD there, and very nearly did not buy a single CD from those musicians. I pay for entertainment and art, not complications
I think we really need to educate everyone that a firewall is always needed between the home computer and broadband connections, even if there is only one computer connected. The ISP are not providing the firewall with the modems because they want to sell that service for more money, if they want to allow it at all.
Of course all the other rules apply. Turn off all services that are not needed. Use good passwords on the services that are. I am afraid that Apple is going down the road of reduced security and feature bloat.
There may very well be a systemic problem with this technology. The company very well may have decided to not fix the problem under the assumption that it would never result in enough lawsuits to affect profitability. Even if they did knew about the problems, the DCMA allows them to publicly state that there is no problem, keep the research that identifies the alleged problem from being scrutinized in a public forum, and may even keep sensitive documents from being scrutinized in a court setting. Likewise, by keeping the exploit from public view, the company minimizes the number of security breeches, which minimizes the chances that enough people will get hurt to create a large enough class action case and attract competent lawyers.
Of course, this doesn't help the parents or students that have had money stolen, or the student that cannot get a meal because the card is empty, or the student that gets raped in the dorm room. But we must protect company profits.
2) I have seen few contracts over the past couple years that have, after taxes and other deductions worked out to better money than perm. In many cases, the contacts seems to be worth less than $10 an hour, net. Equivelent perm poitions netted at least $15.
What this is about is clearly showing the fallacy of the spammer logic. A spammer harvests email addresses, using the justification that it is publicly available information, and sends unsolicited commercial email to those addresses, using the justification that anyone should be able to send any email to anyone. The spammer charges money for service under the assumption that he or she is provided something of value.
Using the above logic, there is nothing wrong with posting an address. The address is publicly available, the spammer has not specifically opted out this week from every service, and there is no law, in general, that prevents anyone from calling or mailing anyone.
Now, unlike email, the spammer has some protection. There are legal limits to what a person can do over the phone or mail. For instance fraud, threats, and other illegal acts are not allowed in this traditional media. One can even get in trouble for mailing a certain pictures to households. But, since spammers seem to have no problem with fraud or naked pictures, and might even fight for their rights to threaten people, one would not think that a spammer would support laws restricting speech in any medium
In short, an action such as posting a spammer's address merely shows the spammer in a true light. A hypocrite. I do feel bad about the family, but people get their families into trouble for all sorts of reasons. That is why when one mates, it is better to choose a person who is ethical.
Of course, let us not forgot that Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge nine months before the other DNA formulation.
And much too complex. They should have looked at the Newtons. Mine have been singing to me for the past five years. After all this time, I find it quite conforting. All I have to do is turn on the backlight, and I have wonderfull musak quality noise. All they need to do is figure how to tune the high volage thingy.
First, I would like to see the $1000 laptop. Does it have any hardware worth mentioning other than the display. From what I can see, a $1000 laptop has at best a 15" LCD, and a comparable LCD can be had for less than $400 retail. With markups, one would assume that the laptop LCD costs no more than $100. If one wants a 17" LCD, which one could purchase as a standalone unit for much less than $1000, the laptop with such as LCD would run at least $2000.
Second, retail markups are large and buying something as a unit will usually be cheaper than retail piecemeal of equivalent quality. Look at the iPod. As another example, many years ago I got a very good closeout deal on a bicycle frame. I found excellent Italian parts at equally good prices, and built a functional bicycle. Even with the good deals, it still cost my much more to build the bicycle than it would have to buy a prebuilt bicycle.
Third, and I have mentioned this before, the cost of a product is not an exact number, and the appropriate sale price less so. If it were, we would not have so many failed businesses. The are many costs that must be distributed among product lines, and it seldom makes sense to distribute these costs evenly. The LCD, especially the larger sizes, is new product and therefore is more likely to disproportionately support certain costs. This probably accounts for the 30-50% price difference between CRT and LCD monitors.
Let me just add that LCDs do not seem very expensive to me. True, the cost of a LCD television is about three times the cost of an tube television, but LCD televisions are kind of useless outside of the cool factor.
I could not agree more. Most Bruce Willis stuff, from Moonlighting in 1985 to the Fifth Element in 1997, in cartoonish in nature. Hudson Hawk, unlike the Die Hard stuff, is self aware of that fact.
The problem with Enterprise is that the basis is time travel and crummy technology. It was doomed from the start. Both of these plot devices force the writers to cheat, back peddle, and generally create unbelievable plots. The best thing the writers can do is to assume a good enough ship, ditch the time travel arch, and concentrate on character development and other basics of good story telling.
First, my point is that no matter what our leaders say, no matter what the majority says, no matter what the law is, we all must take part in the democratic process, and part of that is openly speaking our minds, even if that view is unpopular. If a large percentage of the population has an unpopular view, it is irresponsible for a government who claims to be by the people and for the people to completely ignore that minority. For example, somewhere between ten and thirty percent of the population in the US opposes abortion to some significant degree. This is clearly a minority. The government could say that this is a whack minority (and indeed the lower number represents those that would oppose abortion in all cases), but the U.S. is a democracy, and as such has to take as many different opinions into account as possible when forming policy.
Democracy does work, and it works well. Our democracy tries to balance the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority, and the tyranny of the powerful and the tyranny of the masses. It does the former, for example, by a bicarmel legislative branch that gives a little extra power to the minority, with the knowledge that the majority will ultimately have the last say. It does the later, for example, by an electoral college for the president which allows the masses to suggest a President, while giving the powerful the actual power of election.
As far as eating children, reductio ad absurdum is not always the best way to make a counter argument. I was actually trying to keep most of the post a bit vague, so it could apply to all parties in our little conflict. I am sure many would agree that Bush has had to face too few consequences to be afraid of very much. Sadam obviously believes he an impervious leader of a sovereign nation. Both seem to have a bit of religious fundamentalism driving them. That said I will address the issue of children. There are people in the US government who deeply want to separate children from effective parents who love and care for them. Children have been given to qualified, loving, responsible, and deserving homosexual couples. These couples have passed all the tests and have proven themselves good parents. Legislation that seeks to prohibit homosexual couple from adopting children sometimes also seeks to remove children that have already been adopted by homosexual couples. The government may not eat them, but realistically, who is going to adopt this older black child, who is going to have emotional separation anxiety, when one can just go to eastern Europe and get a blue eye, blonde hair white child. It is interesting to note that many polls show a slight majority favoring adoption by gay couples.
In the last presidential election, irrespective of recounts and lawsuits, Bush did not receive 50% +1 of the votes. If we believe the final numbers, he did not even receive the most total popular votes. In fact, out of the about 206 million people who could vote, only about 50.5 million bothered to vote for Bush. That is less than 25%. I don't know what percentage of the eligible population voted in the fateful German election, but if it was around 75%, then Hitler's numbers would be comparable to Bush's.
I would add 'right' and 'wrong' only lead to uncivilized useless discussions. This issue I was addressing is whether democracy can be simplified to a number. If 51% of the people believe that persons with blue eyes should be banned from malls on Friday, should we pass a law to that effect. It may in fact be the right thing to do, but the majority view is not a sufficiently indicative condition.
I would reference Home Page Usability in which rule #94 is to have an alternate home page for times of emergency. The New York Times had a successful deployment of such a page on 9/11, and seems to be meeting demand now. I wonder how many others agencies have emergency web pages set up that can better meet demand.
let's talk about democracy's role in all this. is ignoring war protests tantamount to ignoring democracy? no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most. that means the majority of Americans still support getting rid of Saddam.
This is troubling on so many levels. Democracy cannot be just about the majority and winning. Hitler was elected by a majority and no one had a problem with his attempted genocide. Slavery was considered ok by a majority people in the US for a very long time, and those who even thought about protesting or abolishing slavery, like Lincoln, were killed.
People risk their lives trying to bring unpopular issues to the frontline of political debates. In 1965 it was a demonstration in Selma, that results in the cold blooded murder of the minister James Reeb, presumable by a person intent on keeping black from achieving equal rights. Should Reeb have ignored Dr. Martin Luther King's plea for help in his effort to liberate the black population from oppression? Should the goverment have lables them terrorists??
In Dogma, right before Bartebly exacts holy vengeance on the boardroom of sinners, he has a speech in which he says
Fear. And therein lies the problem. None of you has anything left to fear anymore. You rest comfortably in seats of inscrutable power, hiding behind your false idol, far from judgment, lives shrouded in secrecy even from one another. But not from God.
And I think this is the issue. There are people so powerful, so spoiled, so in need of clue, that they respect and fear almost nothing. The exception are the few things demonstrable equally powerful. People this powerful feel that the world is there to service their needs. Furthermore, even if they claim to believe in God, that belief is not reflected in their actions. They do not have maturity or self control to realize that just because you can take something, doesn't mean you have to. In words from the original Star Trek, we can choose not to kill today.
As I mentioned such people will fear things or people that are equally powerful. For example, a few years ago Texas was in the midst of passing a hate crime bill. Dubya was governor. The impetus for this bill was the lynching and dragging of James Byrd, Jr in Jasper. The bill was not great, but it was needed. It was eventually supported by Dubya, after a bit of embarrassing publicity, and would have had very little trouble becoming law except for one problem. It not only wanted to protect minorities, but also homosexuals. There was a basis for this, as about 1/3 of all hate crimes are directed to homosexuals. Dubya could not afford to offend the religious right, so he fought to remove the protection for homosexuals, which killed the bill. From this we can see that those without power, homosexuals can be sacrificed, while there is genuine fear of the fundamentalist Christian right.