Re:Hidden Slashdot posts
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
I know this must be happening for most Slashdot readers because the topics I don't see have maybe a dozen posts after a day. So is it happening to you too?
Yes. I don't understand this completely, but I think some stories are posted only to their specific sections, such as "Apple" or "Apache" and don't automatically make the first page. Thus the Slashdot editors can choose which specific stories show up on the home page.
I would wager that an omniscient diety had exactly nothing to do with it.
Otherwise you're suggesting that the Gnome programmers received divine inspiration, and as such the Gnome source code should become a religious text. While one might argue that one can find religion in the Linux kernel source code, extending that analogy to Gnome will merely aggravate the KDE zealots (who believe their desktop environment is the true word of God!)
We have enough religious wars for one planet already...
The problem is when the State and Corporations collaborate to create monopolies and then force you to purchase their products and services. Auto insurance would be a good example.
How so? I don't have insurance.
. . .
Granted, I don't have a car or even a driver's license (I'm old enough to get one if that's what you were thinking).
You could argue the same thing about gasoline. "Oh, horror, the oil industry is trying to gouge me and kill my family! Look at the prices they charge for gas!" Who exactly forced you to buy a car?
There are quite a few alternatives, such as public transit and riding a bicycle (or even a Segway). You got yourself into this "conspiracy" and if you don't like it, vote with your wallet.
It's not really an open source issue, it's an issue of open protocols, which is far more important than open source.
So you're saying this is more akin to the SMB/CIFS issue... in which case I'd have to agree with you. Actually it seems very similar, especially if what some of the previous posters' comments are accurate; Honda only sells the manuals to their dealers/mechanics... but I'll bet you don't have to sign an NDA (yet) or some other restrictive contract limiting your ability to disseminate their proprietary information.
Wow, our story submitter really tortured that data. Fortunately, it confessed before things really got ugly:
In comparison, only 2,000 UFOs are spotted every year in the United States represent, making just 0.0002 sightings per square kilometer
And exactly how much bigger is the USA compared to Scotland?
I recommend visiting the Circle Makers website. It's very interesting, and humorous, especially when one considers how worked up people get about aliens coming down (in the middle of the night of course) and carving intricate patters into our fields.
The best part is how it all started out as a joke while intoxicated, but soon they purposely propagated the myth of alien artists, and then would "stage" alien lights, etc using props to please the believers who had come to observe the "aliens." Great stuff to be found on the site.
At home I've been using a system of somewhat complex Sendmail filters and header checks which validate a message's headers before the message is officially accepted (according to the client). I use this to stop spam by effectively bouncing the message even after the entire body has been sent -- but the message bounces before the (evil) SMTP session is closed.
However, Sendmail's options for this are rather limited and at the moment I'm evaluating a Postfix/SpamAssassin/Razor setup to flag and filter spam. It seems to me that SpamAssassin can only filter messages which have been accepted by the MTA (same with Razor). To me, this is unacceptable.
What I'd like is the following:
Line by line checking of the SMTP session, specifically the DATA phase. If any line matches my ruleset (and thus is spam), immediately return an error code (553 you're an evil spammer) and then disconnect the client. I think Postfix allows for this but I'm not sure (Postfix says it will for a long pause prior to the error as well, which is nice).
SpamAssassin/Razor filtering after the DATA phase (after a "." on a line by itself) but prior to the return of the message accepted code. This would enable me to still "bounce" messages directly to the sending server, while not actually accepting the message.
Different rulesets (perhaps some global, some site specific) for different domains/addresses. Eg, I want firstsite.com to use a very restrictive check of the headers (both for proper format and against SpamAssassin), while secondsite.com only uses SpamAssassin and doesn't check for silly header mistakes.
Right now, Sendmail does a pretty good job for me, but I have a problem with valid messages getting rejected because the sender's MTA does stupid things, like use improperly formed Message-IDs or leaves them out entirely.
So, aside from swapping your entire music collection with a buddy -- why in the world would you care if you can take the drive out and replace it?
Well, if you have a laptop:
Not everyone has USB 2 yet. In fact, I can't think of one laptop that has USB 2 built in. Sure, they might exist. But no one has them anyways.
However, with this sort of removable hard drive, you can copy your music collection over a PCMCIA (PCI) interface rather than agonizing as your files copy over USB 1.x.
That alone is worth something. Granted, most users will be people who only own a desktop machine, and thus have no PCMCIA slot. But if you have a laptop this is fantastic.
However, I won't buy one because I simply don't need it.
The thymus is a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years.
Human trials of what? An immune system? So the un-authorized trials of billions of people over the last hundred thousand years are invalid (pun intended)?
In any case, I definitely agree; this "immune system" scientists have been proposing definitely needs more clinical research before we can allow one to be used on real people.
I decided to do an install of Gentoo 1.1 on my Ultra 30 in order to replace my Debian install (which I was testing and hadn't actually got around to using just yet).
Compiling stage 2 took hours. Granted, the UltraSparc was only at 300 Mhz. But you better have a lot of time to do your compiles. Anyways, I built GCC 2.95 but I'm guessing it was built as a 32-bit binary. I didn't want to spend the time compiling everything else as 32-bit considering how long stage 2 took, especially when I got some sort of OpenSSL error.
So I decided to re-install, this time choosing to compile GCC 3.1 first. Again, this took hours but did succeed. So I fired off the bootstrap script and GCC 3.1 tried to compile again. Unfortunately, this failed, and I was again left with a non-working Gentoo install.
I thought I'd give Gentoo another try and decided to cheat using the Stage 3 tarball. I was able to compile the kernel with egcs64 and was able to boot. However, I ended up having some sort of problem with my keyboard map. At that point, I'd had enough and decided to wipe it clean and reinstall Debian unstable.
Just a few days ago I wiped the system clean once again and did a bit of the install of SuSE 7.3 and I was definitely impressed by the installer. It was the first time I'd used SuSE, so it made a good impression.
Next I think I'll try Splack.
Gentoo definitely looks like a cool distro, but it needs a bit more polish on Sparc before it will see widespread use. I'm definitely looking forward to it's next revision. However, I was really hoping to do some testing of the latest open source goodness on UltraSparc... kernel 2.5, XFree 4.2 and Gnome 2/KDE 3.
One problem I can see is that the hardware in these systems might(and probably is) of sub-par level. Instability issues caused by poor hardware quality may undermine the "frugal" consumer's viewpoint of the *nix OS enviroment.
You may be right. However, I would argue that people buying this PC are either first timers (and thus don't know the difference) or they're ex-Windows users who want to replace their aging PC. In either case, a Linux-based solution will knock the socks off of em.
If they're new to computers, someone they know probably has one and that's why they bought one for themselves. But their pals probably don't have the latest MS OS, and even if they did, it's probably running on the same hardware as these Walmart PCs. I have to give the advantage to the Lindows-based PC (with regards to dealing with cheapo hardware).
If they're replacing an old computer, they probably have a very old PC, perhaps early Pentium, and thus they probably run Windows 95 and crash 3 times an hour. Again, I have to give the advantage to the Lindows-based PC.
What no one's seemed to mention yet is that AMD has gotten a good deal out of this too, especially if this takes off. I also wonder who makes the various chipsets on the board (if it was SIS that'd be great).
Alternately, you could use NTFS permissions to limit write access to the majority of the workstation's drive(s). Obviously some portions will require write access, such as the user's profile, etc, but this will avoid a lot of user stupidity:
1. Files need to be saved to specific locations (My Documents can be remapped to a server too) -- files won't end up scattered all over C:
2. No user-installs of Kazaa, Gator, etc. Yes, some users will realize that they can run some software directly from their home directory, but this will stop the majority of offenders. Of course, most users should not have rights to install software anyways.
Actually, Salon quotes Eric Garland, CEO of peer-to-peer measuring service BigChampagne:
"What you want to do is excite the consumer and titillate and create demand." He notes, however, that the "danger of try-before-you-buy" is that if a user doesn't like a previewed track, "then the industry and that record would have benefited from [that user's] ignorance."
Hmm. Now isn't that interesting.
So...
RIAA doesn't want Joe Consumer listening to the crap (Top 40 I guess) they release before he buys the album, because then he might realize it's crap and the RIAA is just liberating money from a fool.
OK, so let's go with that for just a moment here...
That means that what the RIAA releases as "today's hottest bands" are really just a bunch of second-rate hacks (not even first rate!) who've been blitz-marketed into every teenager's record collection. So, as Bono (right?) said on that VH1 special (paraphrased), "It's not casette copying that's killing the music industry, it's crap music killing the music industry."
Frankly, I think that has always been true.
What I want to know is... if the band is so unbelievably fantastic, why do they need all the heavy marketing? Sure, some marketing to appeal to the fence-sitters, but you don't preach to the choir.
So, the RIAA is spending billions to market Britney Spears to make us believe she's the best thing since sliced bread (or better yet, to make us think it more than we already do it seems), when Britney fans will buy the CDs anyways. And somehow they claim they're losing money here. Hmm.
All the word games, legal lunges, and slight of hand gets old after a while. Is anyone else getting a vision of the RIAA as another Ross Perot jumping in an out of the "race" all the while annoying us with lots of charts and a funny voice?
In theory: 1. Offer a better product at a lower price. 2. Gain market share. 3. Spend the money on creating better and cheaper products. 4. GOTO 1.
Try again!
Sorry, but companies only make better products and reduce (end user) prices when competition forces them to do so.
1. Attempt to monopolize market. 2. Realize you need to compete in order to make profit (accounting, not economic). 3. Improve your own product and/or lower price (but not below marginal cost, unless you're trying to get rid of your competitors). 4. Sell products. 4a. Make profits. 5. Go to Step 1.
Cable modem installations tripled in the past 2 weeks as customers clamored for broadband internet access. Al Gore was reported as having claimed credit for the upsurge in demand.
Cable companies, however, have seen an inverse reaction regarding their cable TV lines, as most customers have called up and cancelled their service, often in the same phone call where they are ordering broadband.
Movie studios, as well as television networks, have claimed the online availability of filtered news, predictable sitcoms, and poorly-written movies have made it difficult for them to cover their initial costs. CEOs cried as customers rejoiced, after which the customers were promptly sued.
However, if I don't actually do anything but make it look like I'm perpetually increasing the profits of my company, I'm duping society. You end up with one person getting rich by selling high valued stock, while another person (who buys that stock) gets poor. Nothing is produced. Money is simply changed from one hand to another: the zero sum gain.
You mean a stock bubble... that never ends. Wow... just think about that for a moment. What if the dot com bubble never ended. How many dot com companies were just get rich quick schemes or other scams?
I would suggest that your example actually is a negative sum gain... someone is gaining money through slight of hand; it's a con, theft, robbery, whatever.
On a slightly different note, I hear tulip bulbs are all the rage.
A friend of mine works at Sun and gave me a tour a little while back. The building itself was an interesting structure, and of course the computer systems were an experience in themselves.
The server rooms, conference rooms, and most offices had 24" monitors connected to Sun Ray 1 machines. My friend showed me how he could put his smart card in, and then it would ask him for his password, and he was logged into the exact same desktop that he had in his office. So whatever he was working on "followed" him around. Granted, it was just a remote X terminal, but I thought it was cool.
And I'm sure there's those of you who say, "it's been done before" or "that's old tech" but as servers get more powerful, and workstations become smaller, quieter, and dumber, it was cool to see this "old tech" being put to (damn) good use.
While my friend did have his own office, as did everyone else at that particular campus, it could be an interesting management experiment (if you want to call it that) to rotate people's desks around... maybe every month. That way, if people have a problem with coworkers, you can separate them, and that way everyone can get to know everyone else... and the new people don't feel so alienated. Of course, when you have roaming profiles, or dumb terminals, that makes things that much easier.
...but does this mean the new Transmeta chip could effectively emulate a 4-way 64-bit processor system? Or is my Sega-like addition of bits incorrect? I guess, though, that by starting with a 256-bit processor, Transmeta can emulate processors for years to come...
Check out some of the books the T3 Group is selling...
$ales $cript Book a collection of the most powerful and useful phrases (scripts) a sales professional can use to counter any objection and close the sale
Web Marketing - beyond the basics covering everything from Search Engine Optimisation, Permission Marketing Techniques, Viral Marketing, Multi Domain Registration, Opt-In Mail Lists, Competition Sites and much more
Yes, just what my business was looking for... forcing your customers to say yes, and such time honored promotional practices such as viral marketing! How did I manage to run a website without this vital knowledge?!?
Well, at any rate, there's another domain for my blocklist...
t3direct.com.au ERROR:"553 Delivery blocked; cannot accept mail from pro-spam domains."
It is somewhat akin to having someone send you a magazine in the mail, and then bill you for it.
Actually, I think a better analogy would be Time Magazine calling you up after you order Time for your parents, and asking if you'd like to hear their offers for Time books. You say no, and they hang up. Then they send you the latest collection of Time books and automatically withdraw their payment from your checking account even as the books are being delivered. Not only that, but unless you run your own postal service, Time books pays the postman to leave the product at your house, or otherwise force you to take delivery.
If you read the documentation for your UPS, I'll bet dollars to donuts that the documentation specifically recommends against putting your laser printer on your UPS. As I recall, it also recommends against putting some other "common" computer equipment on it. When it doubt, ask the manufacturer.
Of course, I guess you've progressed beyond such needless conveniences... so feel free to disregard both this comment, and your products' recommended operating procedures.
He may have excluded these parts in the original filming becuase it would have created a cliff hanger in the movie that would not be resolved for 30 to 40 years. Now he can add it and start the work, striving for a completed nine movies over three sets of three.
My understanding was that the trilogies were supposed to be separate. Yes, there is a background story which flows between the nine, but each trilogy is (I guess) about a different generation. But hasn't Lucas said he wasn't going to make the third trilogy.
Which brings me to my argument. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that there ever was a trilogy of trilogies. It seems to me that Lucas is just winging it, knowing Star Wars fanatics will blindly follow where their messiah takes them (call it fundamentalism if you want). He may have had the original trilogy in mind when he made the Ep IV (debatable) but I find it extremely hard to believe he had the entire series of nine in mind. Now, however, he's in a position to claim he had the whole thing in mind the whole time, and who is really going to question him? SW zealots take his word as Truth, and nobody else really cares.
I'm actually planning on seeing AOTC tonight, so we'll see if Lucas manages to impress. I have the advantage of having no hopes that it will... so perhaps this movie will be rated on its own merit and not the merit of the supposed "universe" which "Lucas created." Newsflash: Lucas didn't do a hell of a lot... writers like Timothy Zahn did the great work extending the SW universe. Lucas just gets the credit.
I'm a former SW fan (fanatic, perhaps, but only a bit beyond the "fan" level). Maybe that makes me a bit disgruntled and angry of how Lucas has fleshed out the plot to "his" movies -- that's fine if they're his movies, but you'd think he'd have the self-interest to make sure the new ones didn't suck. Episode I was just another example of Lucas's complete lack of talent.
As Han says, "I call it luck." To which Obi-Wan answers, "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."
I'm no biologist or astrophysicist, but frankly that doesn't make any sense. If you have organisms living in the hot vents on the sea floor, fine, but now compare that environment to the Sun. The Sun has no water, no "usable" oxygen, no carbon dioxide, and a hell of a lot of heat (there is oxygen, but it's in the core and even hotter than the outer layers -- it's waste from previous fusion reactions).
So, as I recall, the surface of the Sun is thousands of degrees Celcius, and I think it was actually above 10,000 degrees. That's enough to obliterate protein structures, among other things, and break "organic chemicals" which we believe are necessary for life. In fact, most materials will be gaseous at that temp... go deeper into the core, and if you manage to sidestep the fusion taking place, you might get a bit crispy from the million degree heat. And did I mention the intense gravitation field, and constant barrage of high intensity energy/particles?
Life on the Sun is highly unlikely, unless you want to consider the Sun itself a living organism... but of course that's another argument entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this must be happening for most Slashdot readers because the topics I don't see have maybe a dozen posts after a day. So is it happening to you too?
Yes. I don't understand this completely, but I think some stories are posted only to their specific sections, such as "Apple" or "Apache" and don't automatically make the first page. Thus the Slashdot editors can choose which specific stories show up on the home page.
Thank god
I would wager that an omniscient diety had exactly nothing to do with it.
Otherwise you're suggesting that the Gnome programmers received divine inspiration, and as such the Gnome source code should become a religious text. While one might argue that one can find religion in the Linux kernel source code, extending that analogy to Gnome will merely aggravate the KDE zealots (who believe their desktop environment is the true word of God!)
We have enough religious wars for one planet already...
The problem is when the State and Corporations collaborate to create monopolies and then force you to purchase their products and services. Auto insurance would be a good example.
How so? I don't have insurance.
.
.
.
Granted, I don't have a car or even a driver's license (I'm old enough to get one if that's what you were thinking).
You could argue the same thing about gasoline. "Oh, horror, the oil industry is trying to gouge me and kill my family! Look at the prices they charge for gas!" Who exactly forced you to buy a car?
There are quite a few alternatives, such as public transit and riding a bicycle (or even a Segway). You got yourself into this "conspiracy" and if you don't like it, vote with your wallet.
It's not really an open source issue, it's an issue of open protocols, which is far more important than open source.
So you're saying this is more akin to the SMB/CIFS issue... in which case I'd have to agree with you. Actually it seems very similar, especially if what some of the previous posters' comments are accurate; Honda only sells the manuals to their dealers/mechanics... but I'll bet you don't have to sign an NDA (yet) or some other restrictive contract limiting your ability to disseminate their proprietary information.
Wow, our story submitter really tortured that data. Fortunately, it confessed before things really got ugly:
In comparison, only 2,000 UFOs are spotted every year in the United States represent, making just 0.0002 sightings per square kilometer
And exactly how much bigger is the USA compared to Scotland?
I recommend visiting the Circle Makers website. It's very interesting, and humorous, especially when one considers how worked up people get about aliens coming down (in the middle of the night of course) and carving intricate patters into our fields.
The best part is how it all started out as a joke while intoxicated, but soon they purposely propagated the myth of alien artists, and then would "stage" alien lights, etc using props to please the believers who had come to observe the "aliens." Great stuff to be found on the site.
"2002MN"
Does that stand for "Near Miss 2002" (in reverse, of course, so as to not sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt)?
At home I've been using a system of somewhat complex Sendmail filters and header checks which validate a message's headers before the message is officially accepted (according to the client). I use this to stop spam by effectively bouncing the message even after the entire body has been sent -- but the message bounces before the (evil) SMTP session is closed.
However, Sendmail's options for this are rather limited and at the moment I'm evaluating a Postfix/SpamAssassin/Razor setup to flag and filter spam. It seems to me that SpamAssassin can only filter messages which have been accepted by the MTA (same with Razor). To me, this is unacceptable.
What I'd like is the following:
Line by line checking of the SMTP session, specifically the DATA phase. If any line matches my ruleset (and thus is spam), immediately return an error code (553 you're an evil spammer) and then disconnect the client. I think Postfix allows for this but I'm not sure (Postfix says it will for a long pause prior to the error as well, which is nice).
SpamAssassin/Razor filtering after the DATA phase (after a "." on a line by itself) but prior to the return of the message accepted code. This would enable me to still "bounce" messages directly to the sending server, while not actually accepting the message.
Different rulesets (perhaps some global, some site specific) for different domains/addresses. Eg, I want firstsite.com to use a very restrictive check of the headers (both for proper format and against SpamAssassin), while secondsite.com only uses SpamAssassin and doesn't check for silly header mistakes.
Right now, Sendmail does a pretty good job for me, but I have a problem with valid messages getting rejected because the sender's MTA does stupid things, like use improperly formed Message-IDs or leaves them out entirely.
So, aside from swapping your entire music collection with a buddy -- why in the world would you care if you can take the drive out and replace it?
Well, if you have a laptop:
Not everyone has USB 2 yet. In fact, I can't think of one laptop that has USB 2 built in. Sure, they might exist. But no one has them anyways.
However, with this sort of removable hard drive, you can copy your music collection over a PCMCIA (PCI) interface rather than agonizing as your files copy over USB 1.x.
That alone is worth something. Granted, most users will be people who only own a desktop machine, and thus have no PCMCIA slot. But if you have a laptop this is fantastic.
However, I won't buy one because I simply don't need it.
The thymus is a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years.
Human trials of what? An immune system? So the un-authorized trials of billions of people over the last hundred thousand years are invalid (pun intended)?
In any case, I definitely agree; this "immune system" scientists have been proposing definitely needs more clinical research before we can allow one to be used on real people.
By the way, exactly who owns the patent on it?
I decided to do an install of Gentoo 1.1 on my Ultra 30 in order to replace my Debian install (which I was testing and hadn't actually got around to using just yet).
Compiling stage 2 took hours. Granted, the UltraSparc was only at 300 Mhz. But you better have a lot of time to do your compiles. Anyways, I built GCC 2.95 but I'm guessing it was built as a 32-bit binary. I didn't want to spend the time compiling everything else as 32-bit considering how long stage 2 took, especially when I got some sort of OpenSSL error.
So I decided to re-install, this time choosing to compile GCC 3.1 first. Again, this took hours but did succeed. So I fired off the bootstrap script and GCC 3.1 tried to compile again. Unfortunately, this failed, and I was again left with a non-working Gentoo install.
I thought I'd give Gentoo another try and decided to cheat using the Stage 3 tarball. I was able to compile the kernel with egcs64 and was able to boot. However, I ended up having some sort of problem with my keyboard map. At that point, I'd had enough and decided to wipe it clean and reinstall Debian unstable.
Just a few days ago I wiped the system clean once again and did a bit of the install of SuSE 7.3 and I was definitely impressed by the installer. It was the first time I'd used SuSE, so it made a good impression.
Next I think I'll try Splack.
Gentoo definitely looks like a cool distro, but it needs a bit more polish on Sparc before it will see widespread use. I'm definitely looking forward to it's next revision. However, I was really hoping to do some testing of the latest open source goodness on UltraSparc... kernel 2.5, XFree 4.2 and Gnome 2/KDE 3.
I guess I'll have to wait a few months...
One problem I can see is that the hardware in these systems might(and probably is) of sub-par level. Instability issues caused by poor hardware quality may undermine the "frugal" consumer's viewpoint of the *nix OS enviroment.
You may be right. However, I would argue that people buying this PC are either first timers (and thus don't know the difference) or they're ex-Windows users who want to replace their aging PC. In either case, a Linux-based solution will knock the socks off of em.
If they're new to computers, someone they know probably has one and that's why they bought one for themselves. But their pals probably don't have the latest MS OS, and even if they did, it's probably running on the same hardware as these Walmart PCs. I have to give the advantage to the Lindows-based PC (with regards to dealing with cheapo hardware).
If they're replacing an old computer, they probably have a very old PC, perhaps early Pentium, and thus they probably run Windows 95 and crash 3 times an hour. Again, I have to give the advantage to the Lindows-based PC.
What no one's seemed to mention yet is that AMD has gotten a good deal out of this too, especially if this takes off. I also wonder who makes the various chipsets on the board (if it was SIS that'd be great).
Alternately, you could use NTFS permissions to limit write access to the majority of the workstation's drive(s). Obviously some portions will require write access, such as the user's profile, etc, but this will avoid a lot of user stupidity:
1. Files need to be saved to specific locations (My Documents can be remapped to a server too) -- files won't end up scattered all over C:
2. No user-installs of Kazaa, Gator, etc. Yes, some users will realize that they can run some software directly from their home directory, but this will stop the majority of offenders. Of course, most users should not have rights to install software anyways.
Actually, Salon quotes Eric Garland, CEO of peer-to-peer measuring service BigChampagne:
"What you want to do is excite the consumer and titillate and create demand." He notes, however, that the "danger of try-before-you-buy" is that if a user doesn't like a previewed track, "then the industry and that record would have benefited from [that user's] ignorance."
Hmm. Now isn't that interesting.
So...
RIAA doesn't want Joe Consumer listening to the crap (Top 40 I guess) they release before he buys the album, because then he might realize it's crap and the RIAA is just liberating money from a fool.
OK, so let's go with that for just a moment here...
That means that what the RIAA releases as "today's hottest bands" are really just a bunch of second-rate hacks (not even first rate!) who've been blitz-marketed into every teenager's record collection. So, as Bono (right?) said on that VH1 special (paraphrased), "It's not casette copying that's killing the music industry, it's crap music killing the music industry."
Frankly, I think that has always been true.
What I want to know is... if the band is so unbelievably fantastic, why do they need all the heavy marketing? Sure, some marketing to appeal to the fence-sitters, but you don't preach to the choir.
So, the RIAA is spending billions to market Britney Spears to make us believe she's the best thing since sliced bread (or better yet, to make us think it more than we already do it seems), when Britney fans will buy the CDs anyways. And somehow they claim they're losing money here. Hmm.
All the word games, legal lunges, and slight of hand gets old after a while. Is anyone else getting a vision of the RIAA as another Ross Perot jumping in an out of the "race" all the while annoying us with lots of charts and a funny voice?
In theory:
1. Offer a better product at a lower price.
2. Gain market share.
3. Spend the money on creating better and cheaper products.
4. GOTO 1.
Try again!
Sorry, but companies only make better products and reduce (end user) prices when competition forces them to do so.
1. Attempt to monopolize market.
2. Realize you need to compete in order to make profit (accounting, not economic).
3. Improve your own product and/or lower price (but not below marginal cost, unless you're trying to get rid of your competitors).
4. Sell products.
4a. Make profits.
5. Go to Step 1.
If you have a lot of money to throw around on products such as this, at least use some common sense...
Designed exclusively for individuals with the most discerning taste
This is the first line of the description of the product. This can be generally translated as follows:
"Created for, and sold to, people who think 'If it's expensive, it's good and therefore I need it.'"
Anything that suggests you have "discerning taste" when you buy it is just trying to lighten your wallet.
Everyone knows that when you're filthy rich you have everything custom built (and engineered).
;)
Cable modem installations tripled in the past 2 weeks as customers clamored for broadband internet access. Al Gore was reported as having claimed credit for the upsurge in demand.
Cable companies, however, have seen an inverse reaction regarding their cable TV lines, as most customers have called up and cancelled their service, often in the same phone call where they are ordering broadband.
Movie studios, as well as television networks, have claimed the online availability of filtered news, predictable sitcoms, and poorly-written movies have made it difficult for them to cover their initial costs. CEOs cried as customers rejoiced, after which the customers were promptly sued.
However, if I don't actually do anything but make it look like I'm perpetually increasing the profits of my company, I'm duping society. You end up with one person getting rich by selling high valued stock, while another person (who buys that stock) gets poor. Nothing is produced. Money is simply changed from one hand to another: the zero sum gain.
You mean a stock bubble... that never ends. Wow... just think about that for a moment. What if the dot com bubble never ended. How many dot com companies were just get rich quick schemes or other scams?
I would suggest that your example actually is a negative sum gain... someone is gaining money through slight of hand; it's a con, theft, robbery, whatever.
On a slightly different note, I hear tulip bulbs are all the rage.
A friend of mine works at Sun and gave me a tour a little while back. The building itself was an interesting structure, and of course the computer systems were an experience in themselves.
The server rooms, conference rooms, and most offices had 24" monitors connected to Sun Ray 1 machines. My friend showed me how he could put his smart card in, and then it would ask him for his password, and he was logged into the exact same desktop that he had in his office. So whatever he was working on "followed" him around. Granted, it was just a remote X terminal, but I thought it was cool.
And I'm sure there's those of you who say, "it's been done before" or "that's old tech" but as servers get more powerful, and workstations become smaller, quieter, and dumber, it was cool to see this "old tech" being put to (damn) good use.
While my friend did have his own office, as did everyone else at that particular campus, it could be an interesting management experiment (if you want to call it that) to rotate people's desks around... maybe every month. That way, if people have a problem with coworkers, you can separate them, and that way everyone can get to know everyone else... and the new people don't feel so alienated. Of course, when you have roaming profiles, or dumb terminals, that makes things that much easier.
And poor muslim bastards losing their hands over a pirated copy of Word.
Yeah, that's normal and acceptable because it's part of Islamic law.
But the BSA trying to buy a law in Egypt?!? Break out the trolls, boys, we're going to Cairo!
...but does this mean the new Transmeta chip could effectively emulate a 4-way 64-bit processor system? Or is my Sega-like addition of bits incorrect? I guess, though, that by starting with a 256-bit processor, Transmeta can emulate processors for years to come...
Check out some of the books the T3 Group is selling...
$ales $cript Book
a collection of the most powerful and useful phrases (scripts) a sales professional can use to counter any objection and close the sale
Web Marketing - beyond the basics
covering everything from Search Engine Optimisation, Permission Marketing Techniques, Viral Marketing, Multi Domain Registration, Opt-In Mail Lists, Competition Sites and much more
Yes, just what my business was looking for... forcing your customers to say yes, and such time honored promotional practices such as viral marketing! How did I manage to run a website without this vital knowledge?!?
Well, at any rate, there's another domain for my blocklist...
t3direct.com.au ERROR:"553 Delivery blocked; cannot accept mail from pro-spam domains."
It is somewhat akin to having someone send you a magazine in the mail, and then bill you for it.
Actually, I think a better analogy would be Time Magazine calling you up after you order Time for your parents, and asking if you'd like to hear their offers for Time books. You say no, and they hang up. Then they send you the latest collection of Time books and automatically withdraw their payment from your checking account even as the books are being delivered. Not only that, but unless you run your own postal service, Time books pays the postman to leave the product at your house, or otherwise force you to take delivery.
If you read the documentation for your UPS, I'll bet dollars to donuts that the documentation specifically recommends against putting your laser printer on your UPS. As I recall, it also recommends against putting some other "common" computer equipment on it. When it doubt, ask the manufacturer.
Of course, I guess you've progressed beyond such needless conveniences... so feel free to disregard both this comment, and your products' recommended operating procedures.
He may have excluded these parts in the original filming becuase it would have created a cliff hanger in the movie that would not be resolved for 30 to 40 years. Now he can add it and start the work, striving for a completed nine movies over three sets of three.
My understanding was that the trilogies were supposed to be separate. Yes, there is a background story which flows between the nine, but each trilogy is (I guess) about a different generation. But hasn't Lucas said he wasn't going to make the third trilogy.
Which brings me to my argument. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that there ever was a trilogy of trilogies. It seems to me that Lucas is just winging it, knowing Star Wars fanatics will blindly follow where their messiah takes them (call it fundamentalism if you want). He may have had the original trilogy in mind when he made the Ep IV (debatable) but I find it extremely hard to believe he had the entire series of nine in mind. Now, however, he's in a position to claim he had the whole thing in mind the whole time, and who is really going to question him? SW zealots take his word as Truth, and nobody else really cares.
I'm actually planning on seeing AOTC tonight, so we'll see if Lucas manages to impress. I have the advantage of having no hopes that it will... so perhaps this movie will be rated on its own merit and not the merit of the supposed "universe" which "Lucas created." Newsflash: Lucas didn't do a hell of a lot... writers like Timothy Zahn did the great work extending the SW universe. Lucas just gets the credit.
I'm a former SW fan (fanatic, perhaps, but only a bit beyond the "fan" level). Maybe that makes me a bit disgruntled and angry of how Lucas has fleshed out the plot to "his" movies -- that's fine if they're his movies, but you'd think he'd have the self-interest to make sure the new ones didn't suck. Episode I was just another example of Lucas's complete lack of talent.
As Han says, "I call it luck."
To which Obi-Wan answers, "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."
Well... who do you like more? I always liked Han.
What if there were life forms on the sun?
I'm no biologist or astrophysicist, but frankly that doesn't make any sense. If you have organisms living in the hot vents on the sea floor, fine, but now compare that environment to the Sun. The Sun has no water, no "usable" oxygen, no carbon dioxide, and a hell of a lot of heat (there is oxygen, but it's in the core and even hotter than the outer layers -- it's waste from previous fusion reactions).
So, as I recall, the surface of the Sun is thousands of degrees Celcius, and I think it was actually above 10,000 degrees. That's enough to obliterate protein structures, among other things, and break "organic chemicals" which we believe are necessary for life. In fact, most materials will be gaseous at that temp... go deeper into the core, and if you manage to sidestep the fusion taking place, you might get a bit crispy from the million degree heat. And did I mention the intense gravitation field, and constant barrage of high intensity energy/particles?
Life on the Sun is highly unlikely, unless you want to consider the Sun itself a living organism... but of course that's another argument entirely.