Does anyone else see the whole Oscar thing as Hollywood Jerking Off All Over its Narcissistic and Beautiful Self? This whole "Lets see what outfit Star X is wearing! OOOH! That cost more than you poor fuckers watching at home take home in a month! Not only that, but the designer gave this outfit to this incredibly wealthy person for nothing." Yay! Another reminder that I'm dirt-ass broke!
I mean, really. They're movies, for fuck's sake. It's not like we're watching an awards ceremony to reward people for curing diseases or something.
I won't even go into the topic of the incredible pile of shit the average movie viewer has to wade their poor asses through to see one of these films that warrants oscar recognition, ASSUMING their local suburban 52-plex deems one of these films worthy of removing a screen from the bank of theatres showing the latest "our marketing budget is actually twice the cost of production" film starting every half hour in order to let average America possibly see it.
fuck you hollywood. right in your asses.
and fuck those that watch this shit like it's something important. You people need to go run a few laps and get a goddamn hobby.
A note to Peter Jackson: Jesus Christ, man, fix your collar and tighten up your fucking tie.
But get this, who cares if someone is on the phone in a restaurant? If they weren't talking on the phone they would be talking to someone else at the table.
I think the thing here is not that many people tend to yell into their cell phones while talking, but that on the whole, we're used to hearing the whole conversation in the background.
It's not that were even listening to the conversation, but when two people are talking face to face they usually speak at a level just loud enough to be heard by each other over the background noise (unless you're on a city bus, in that case there's awlays that one annoying group of people talking way to fucking loud) and their conversation has a flow to it of constant conversation. This gives you a fairly regular stream of noise that you can filter out.
Cell phone conversations don't have that. Assuming the person isnt trying to shout over the background noise goign into their microphone or worse yet, shout loud enough to be heard over the background noise on the other end, there are long pauses in the noise coming from them.
Your brain thinks "Okay, thats gone and I dont have to filter it out anymore," and then suddenly it starts up again, making your brain have to address the new noise that needs filtering out. Every time that happend, its another little jarring of outside stimulus you need to deal with.
Obviously, at work in "open environments" (read, cubeland) you get used to hearing that stuff all the time, but once you leave and try to relax it's a whole different ball game.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I've been working in a construction zone for the past month. Loud instantaneous noises don't even phase me anymore - unless they're right above me.
"It's interesting, the sociology of these numbers," said NeuStar's Bill Stern. "To many people, the numbers say something about you - they carry a certain status."
Kind of like the millions of numbers people got tattooed on their forearms 60 years ago. Those said something about you and carried a certain status, too.
Really, this whole "cool phone number" thing is about as inane as American Idol.
The only way I even have the slightest chance is if I cheat.
Before I get into this, let me just say that I am one of those guys thats in the bottom 10% of FPS shooter players, but I LOVE playing these games. I play FPS team games whenever I have the chance and for the most part, that's unfortunately not very often. I constantly get my ass kicked by people who are good, people who cheat, and people who are just plain friggin lucky. There are times when I get so frustrated I belt out the occational "Jesus Christ! your older brother load the latest hack on your machine or something?" but who doesn't?
If I have the time to totally zone out and play for a few hours straight I can see that I do get a little better over time, and thats fun, but the real enjoyment I get is when I'm playing on a really good team that plays as one.
Guys who think like the poster above are true examples of the "American Hero Syndrome." They can't comprehend having fun unless they're the top of the heap, king of the kill, fragmaniacical; in other words "special." Everyone wants to be Special these days, and very few are content being part of the action and doing whatever small part they're pathetic skills are capable of adding.
I, and other craptastic players like me, are just tickled pink to get the shit blown out of them for 30 minutes just to find themselves in the right place at the right time to win the round for their team. (sounding a little self-righteous? maybe so. whatever.)
Wanna be the top of the heap? Winning a game that friggin' important to your screwed up self-esteem? Then install some bots on your machine, make them stupid, and spank their asses. Leave the general public the hell alone. We paid just as much as you did to have fun playing a game, you assholes.
Users tend to ignore EVERYTHING that isn't directly related to "what I want this stupid machine to do" and is more than about 7 words long.
Throw a number in that warning and their eyes instantly glaze over. 50% Chance that this also causes confusion and/or fear.
95% chance that no matter how long they sit there and stare at whatever pops up, they take no actiona to figure out what it actually is trying to tell them and they ignore it or click whatever button their mouse is closest to.
Use the same icon in the warning more than 3 times and they get used to seeing it and it no longer does it's job as a visual metaphor.
Basically, what it all comes down to is: We're all friggin idiots at heart.
A friend of mine worked for a company that is a major subcontractor for NASA. Before he was laid off he had worked on the landers that just hit Mars.
One of his biggest complaints was that for every hour of actual engineering and fabrication he did, there was about TWO hours of procedure documentation he was forced to write before anythig he built was used. Yes, this makes sense for major components, but he had to document EVERYTHING he did, including the most minor one-shot test rig.
They're not going to be killing a four headed monster that shoots fireballs.
But it would be frikking cool as hell if bigass monsters just suddenty showed up. Talk about a test of nerve and adaptability.
"AAAAAGH!!! GIANT DEMON SCORPION-BITCHES!!! WHO THE FUCK IS LOLTH?!?!?!"
"Standard issue Railguns?!?! ROCK!"
"That's no MIG, Its a Balrog!"
"What the fuck are you talking about? No, no, Mr President, we have no idea what the hell a +4 Vorpal Sword of Morlgatha is, but I suggest you get the skunkworks on it immediately."
If Alberta Hot Rods had taken jrrtolkien.com for one of their gearheads who was also a big Tolkien-Head, and he then used it to build a big ol' fansite about his undying geek love for the guy, most of you would be pissed off about the Tolkien Estate pushing around the little guy who just happened to get there first.
I realise this isnt the case and Alberta Hot Rods are a bunch of sleazebags for what they did, but i'm just making a point.
I tell you, those companies that just buy up domain names and then park them on a "this domain is for sale" page... theyre only one step above spammers, but still a few evolutionary steps below cockroaches.
I also fail to see why the WIPO needs to get involved and a bunch of lawyers need to get paid for what boils down to plain old common sense.
Fucking Lawyers. They, too, are typically a few steps behind cockroaches.
Anyone remember This little domain debacle/hysterical joke? That was funny, and the guys didny try to make a profit off it, they were just snubbing their noses at yet-another-titanic-corporation.
(My apologies to any cockroaches I may have insulted in this post.)
I keep praying for that silver bullet that will end spam forever.
A silver bullet IS the silver bullet.
We just gotta find enough guys authoirized to fire them into spammers brainpans and BOOM! after a while, very little spam. Hell, I'd even be willing to go through a training program if they wanted me to.
Yes, spam should be classified as a capital crime.
I used the previous edition of this book when i was learning php. I enjoyed using it, as It was laid out sort of like the Camel book was for Perl.
I, also was heavily developing sites in the IIS/ASP world and had very little trouble wrapping my head around PHP. In fact, I actually found myself wishing ASP had all the goodies in it PHP does for ttaking care of "everyday" tasks.
I first saw those yesterday during the playoff games.
"The boy belonged to no one... The boy was adopted by everyone"
I tell you, I think this is probably one of the best advertising campaigns i've seen in a while. Of course, they could have found a kid that didn't look like a 9 year old Eminem.
The thought of going out anf finding people violating copyright laws for profit is a swell idea in practice.
However, pretending to be cops is, lats I checked, illegal. Just because you say "We're not police" doesnt mean a whole helluva lot when you're dressed like a narcotics team and the average IQ of your everyday joe hovers just slightly above that of a rock.
The google Premium ads - the two that used to be at the top of the list, typically in bad pastels - are now publically up for grabs as an extension of the textads on the right side.
Those "premuim" ads used to be highly expensive and oft battled over, now theyre just the top two "bid per click" ads.
I just thought you kids would find that interesting.
You'd think there was at least an admin for a whole district (my old school district was fairly small), or something.
Yet another thing our already underfunded schools need.
Lovely.
Too bad schools just dont spew oil out of all the faucets or something, the government would be tripping all over itself to see those places are well taken care of.
Yes, it's Old, Yes, it sucked ass, Yes, M$ sucks..
on
Windows 98 Phased Out
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But the/. community seems to be once again forgetting... we're a very small slize of the whole of people that actually use a computer.
a very small slice.
For most people, rebooting Win9x is just fine for them, becuase they use their machines for fucking around for an hour a day. It works, they know how to use it, its got solitare.
These people are not only afraid of fucking something up by installing a new Windows OS on their machine, but they're simply afraid of doing it, period. People fear their machines; and if the elves in the magic box are still willing to work, well, we just dont want to fuck that up.
Then consider the fact that for many people, paying $300 or $200 or $100 or even only $40 to upgrade their operating system is simply more money than they [ can afford | are willing ] to spend on their computer.
On top of that, they probably werent even aware there was support for Win98 in the first place.
Other than the cost of migrating, I dont understand how this can be bad for schools in the slightest. Just because a system requires a login doesnt make it bad.
Whats the harm in making all the little kids use the SAME login of "firstgrader:password"? Not only do you now instantly have a user on all the machines thats the same, but youre teaching them abuot logging in to an account, which they'll probably have to do anyway sometime in the future, and probably already do anyway if theres a netware system in the school.
Actually knowing what this means will make them more advanced users that 90% of their parents, if they weren't already. Those that use the argument "but they dont NEED to learn that for the future" should be slapped. Kids in k12 are supposed to be there to learn and learn and learn some more. Noone ever filed a lawsuit claiming "my kid learned too much"
Older kids can get their own user/passwd combos as needed. Kids that just need to get on a machine and do whatever can just login as "student."
Also, cant you just make an NT/W2K/XP machine login as a specified user (like generic_student) on boot, anyway? My roommates XP machine doesnt make him login at all.
Speaking of the older kids, why not make it an advanced class/lab to have them help admins do the migration. I know sysadmins ARE NOT teachers and have other things to do, but they're not teaching a class of little fuckers forced to be there, They're MENTORING kids that want to do this and learn something, and who doesn't like mentoring someone who's motiveted and wants to learn somehting from the ground-up by doing the shitwork?
To toss my two cents into yet another argument about Unpaid Muic Sharing and so on and so forth...
I am not one of those people who "are really into" music. I don't keep track of bands and what they're doing, i don't peruse the local weeklies for who's playing where, I don't even know what bands play a good third of the old songs I hear someone else playing and I think "oh yeah, I remember that song, it's good."
I gave up listening to the radio not only because most of the new stuff on there is either terrible or a rip off of something else, but because I quite frankly could do without the pure smarm of the commercials and having to hear yet another caller yell "WOOOOOOOOO!" into their phone brcause that's what they think the international symbol is for "PARTY!"
I gave up on watching Music Television long ago, even before MTV stopped playing entire videos and moved to their own programming.
I do not "have my finger on the pules of new music."
Because of that, I konw I miss out on a lot of good stuff out there, most of which doesn't get out there for casual listeners to hear anyway.
Bottome line: left on my own, i don't purchase music. I buy MAYBE one CD every couple months, and 4 out of the 6-7 i buy in any given year are crap I buy as little gifts for my wife who's tastes in entertainment are pretty much the antithesis of mine.
I've never been a regular purchaser of music for my own, and I doubt thats going to change.
HOWEVER, the last 8-10 CDs i HAVE bought over the years have ALL been a direct result of listening to something that was either burned for me by a friend (we all have those friends that are total musicheads, no matter what the genre. You know the type... if they don't buy SOMETHING new for their collection they start to get real jittery after a couple weeks.) or downloaded for free because of something I read about or was told about or whatever made a strong enough imprint on me that I actually cared enough to remember to follow up on it.
I realize it isnt a huge amount of money, but those couple hundred dollars that went to the music industry would have never gotten into their hands if it werent for "illegal" copies of their music flying around. A couple of the bands have even made money by being so good I actually bought tickets to see them play somewhere live. Again, wouldnt have happened without those terribly awful copies of illegal music.
Illegal? yes. Morally wrong? No more morally wrong than going 40mph in a 35 zone (or, 70kph in a 60 zone, for those of you in the rest of the world), which is also illegal [and, more importantly, physically unsafe for yourself and others]. Do I feel a pang of guilt when I speed? Nope. Do you? Probably not. To you feel guilt when you get a speeding ticket? I doubt it. Last speeding ticket I got all I felt was annoyed and a little stupid.
Remember folks, your moral sense comes from your upbringing, which ranges widely depending on where in the world you're from. Laws USED TO come from moral sense (as opposed to now, where in teh US laws come mainly from pressure from large corporations and vocal minorities with money)
Breaking an old law typically involves breaking a moral taboo of some sort and causes you that pang of guilt, breaking a "business-protection" law (like those dealing with trademarks and copyrights) pretty much HAS NO MORAL BASIS and thus most of us break them at will without caring.
FOR THE NIT-PICKERS OUT THERE: I said MOST OF US. I realize the difference between some kid using stolen images in his photocopied zine is a lot different from, say, a journalist stealing stuff verbatim from another work and saying it is his.]
I don't know if i'd go as far as calling it a new forum, but sharing of unlicensed music is here to stay, and after this whole wailing and gnashing of teeth by those involved (that actually give a fuck), those that actually make music and those that car
from the MSNBC article Operation Red Dawn Forces from the Army's 4th Infantry Division along with Special Forces captured Saddam, the U.S. military said. There were no shots fired or injuries in the raid, which was called Operation Red Dawn, Sanchez said.
I'd like to personally thank Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Darren Dalton, Jennifer Grey, Brad Savage, Doug Toby, and Powers Boothe for their fine work in bringing this despot to Justice.
Those plucky guerillas from the Rocky Mountains never cease to amaze me!
WOLVERINES!!!
[...for the children who DON'T know what the hell I'm talking about: Red Dawn was one of the greatest bad action movies of Gen X's adolescent period. Back when we lived with that little possibility of the Russkies nuking the shit out of us any day now.
If you've never seen it, get a six pack, some munchies, and a rental of this fine, craptastic, highly entertaining peice of patriotic propaganda that could have never existed without Regan being in office.
Ah, the heady days of the Cold War. It was so nice to know who the bad guys were (commies) and exactly where we could find them all (USSR, Cuba, and China).
At one point, Swayze gives what many consider to be his finest moment of powerful, emotional acting.]
...just becasue you HAVE the technology, and COULD use it......doesn't mean you necessarialy SHOULD.
another creepy-ass thought Retinal scanners: Remember that Tom Cruise sci-fi flick where everyone was constantly getting retinally scanned wherever they went? You guys think DoubleClick are a bunch of scumbags now, just wait 'till they link up with RetinAll Marketing.
Coming out of a big speaker in the near future: "Welcome to Blockbuster, Mr Slappyjack. You may be interested in the Jenna Jameson collection we have in the back room. We did notice you were looking at internet porn about her all day while your wife was out. We do not, however, have any Ass-Reaming-Mature-Tranny-Bukkake videos, which we know you enjoy. If you like we'd be glad to order one for you. Have a nice day."
yeah. nice.
Remember when we all thought RadioShack asking for our addresses just becasue we needed a couple of AA batteries was high annoyance? NOTHING compared to what the future holds.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, really. Someone breaks into your house and hears this:
....
"FREEZE INTRUDER! Do not move while this autonomous robotic guard unit apprehends you."
whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"This guard unit has commanded you to FREEZE!"
whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"Hey, damnit, stop, I'm trying to... who the fuck left this stick in the middle of the room?"
thunk. thunk. thunk. thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"Wait! aww, c'mon... "
whirr... whirr...
"Shit."
---
Quite a long ways off from that bitchin' mecha-thing from Robocop, neh?
I wonder if Harlan Ellison has ever downloaded any music and not paid for it.
Does anyone else see the whole Oscar thing as Hollywood Jerking Off All Over its Narcissistic and Beautiful Self? This whole "Lets see what outfit Star X is wearing! OOOH! That cost more than you poor fuckers watching at home take home in a month! Not only that, but the designer gave this outfit to this incredibly wealthy person for nothing." Yay! Another reminder that I'm dirt-ass broke!
I mean, really. They're movies, for fuck's sake. It's not like we're watching an awards ceremony to reward people for curing diseases or something.
I won't even go into the topic of the incredible pile of shit the average movie viewer has to wade their poor asses through to see one of these films that warrants oscar recognition, ASSUMING their local suburban 52-plex deems one of these films worthy of removing a screen from the bank of theatres showing the latest "our marketing budget is actually twice the cost of production" film starting every half hour in order to let average America possibly see it.
fuck you hollywood. right in your asses.
and fuck those that watch this shit like it's something important. You people need to go run a few laps and get a goddamn hobby.
A note to Peter Jackson: Jesus Christ, man, fix your collar and tighten up your fucking tie.
But get this, who cares if someone is on the phone in a restaurant? If they weren't talking on the phone they would be talking to someone else at the table.
I think the thing here is not that many people tend to yell into their cell phones while talking, but that on the whole, we're used to hearing the whole conversation in the background.
It's not that were even listening to the conversation, but when two people are talking face to face they usually speak at a level just loud enough to be heard by each other over the background noise (unless you're on a city bus, in that case there's awlays that one annoying group of people talking way to fucking loud) and their conversation has a flow to it of constant conversation. This gives you a fairly regular stream of noise that you can filter out.
Cell phone conversations don't have that. Assuming the person isnt trying to shout over the background noise goign into their microphone or worse yet, shout loud enough to be heard over the background noise on the other end, there are long pauses in the noise coming from them.
Your brain thinks "Okay, thats gone and I dont have to filter it out anymore," and then suddenly it starts up again, making your brain have to address the new noise that needs filtering out. Every time that happend, its another little jarring of outside stimulus you need to deal with.
Obviously, at work in "open environments" (read, cubeland) you get used to hearing that stuff all the time, but once you leave and try to relax it's a whole different ball game.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I've been working in a construction zone for the past month. Loud instantaneous noises don't even phase me anymore - unless they're right above me.
"It's interesting, the sociology of these numbers," said NeuStar's Bill Stern. "To many people, the numbers say something about you - they carry a certain status."
Kind of like the millions of numbers people got tattooed on their forearms 60 years ago. Those said something about you and carried a certain status, too.
Really, this whole "cool phone number" thing is about as inane as American Idol.
Assholes.
The only way I even have the slightest chance is if I cheat.
Before I get into this, let me just say that I am one of those guys thats in the bottom 10% of FPS shooter players, but I LOVE playing these games. I play FPS team games whenever I have the chance and for the most part, that's unfortunately not very often. I constantly get my ass kicked by people who are good, people who cheat, and people who are just plain friggin lucky. There are times when I get so frustrated I belt out the occational "Jesus Christ! your older brother load the latest hack on your machine or something?" but who doesn't?
If I have the time to totally zone out and play for a few hours straight I can see that I do get a little better over time, and thats fun, but the real enjoyment I get is when I'm playing on a really good team that plays as one.
Guys who think like the poster above are true examples of the "American Hero Syndrome." They can't comprehend having fun unless they're the top of the heap, king of the kill, fragmaniacical; in other words "special." Everyone wants to be Special these days, and very few are content being part of the action and doing whatever small part they're pathetic skills are capable of adding.
I, and other craptastic players like me, are just tickled pink to get the shit blown out of them for 30 minutes just to find themselves in the right place at the right time to win the round for their team . (sounding a little self-righteous? maybe so. whatever.)
Wanna be the top of the heap? Winning a game that friggin' important to your screwed up self-esteem? Then install some bots on your machine, make them stupid, and spank their asses. Leave the general public the hell alone. We paid just as much as you did to have fun playing a game, you assholes.
"People who cheat make Baby Jesus cry."
I wonder how long until Tower records starts petitionling the government for a bailout in order to "save important jobs"
Users tend to ignore EVERYTHING that isn't directly related to "what I want this stupid machine to do" and is more than about 7 words long.
Throw a number in that warning and their eyes instantly glaze over. 50% Chance that this also causes confusion and/or fear.
95% chance that no matter how long they sit there and stare at whatever pops up, they take no actiona to figure out what it actually is trying to tell them and they ignore it or click whatever button their mouse is closest to.
Use the same icon in the warning more than 3 times and they get used to seeing it and it no longer does it's job as a visual metaphor.
Basically, what it all comes down to is: We're all friggin idiots at heart.
A friend of mine worked for a company that is a major subcontractor for NASA. Before he was laid off he had worked on the landers that just hit Mars.
One of his biggest complaints was that for every hour of actual engineering and fabrication he did, there was about TWO hours of procedure documentation he was forced to write before anythig he built was used. Yes, this makes sense for major components, but he had to document EVERYTHING he did, including the most minor one-shot test rig.
Just suporting the point.
There truly are no bounds to your gayness.
Thank god.
H&K
Progress, baby!
They're not going to be killing a four headed monster that shoots fireballs.
But it would be frikking cool as hell if bigass monsters just suddenty showed up. Talk about a test of nerve and adaptability.
"AAAAAGH!!! GIANT DEMON SCORPION-BITCHES!!! WHO THE FUCK IS LOLTH?!?!?!"
"Standard issue Railguns?!?! ROCK!"
"That's no MIG, Its a Balrog!"
"What the fuck are you talking about? No, no, Mr President, we have no idea what the hell a +4 Vorpal Sword of Morlgatha is, but I suggest you get the skunkworks on it immediately."
(nerds, rejoice!)
Look, the bottom line is this:
If Alberta Hot Rods had taken jrrtolkien.com for one of their gearheads who was also a big Tolkien-Head, and he then used it to build a big ol' fansite about his undying geek love for the guy, most of you would be pissed off about the Tolkien Estate pushing around the little guy who just happened to get there first.
I realise this isnt the case and Alberta Hot Rods are a bunch of sleazebags for what they did, but i'm just making a point.
I tell you, those companies that just buy up domain names and then park them on a "this domain is for sale" page... theyre only one step above spammers, but still a few evolutionary steps below cockroaches.
I also fail to see why the WIPO needs to get involved and a bunch of lawyers need to get paid for what boils down to plain old common sense.
Fucking Lawyers. They, too, are typically a few steps behind cockroaches.
Anyone remember This little domain debacle/hysterical joke? That was funny, and the guys didny try to make a profit off it, they were just snubbing their noses at yet-another-titanic-corporation.
(My apologies to any cockroaches I may have insulted in this post.)
I keep praying for that silver bullet that will end spam forever.
A silver bullet IS the silver bullet.
We just gotta find enough guys authoirized to fire them into spammers brainpans and BOOM! after a while, very little spam. Hell, I'd even be willing to go through a training program if they wanted me to.
Yes, spam should be classified as a capital crime.
i'm just sayin'.
I used the previous edition of this book when i was learning php. I enjoyed using it, as It was laid out sort of like the Camel book was for Perl.
I, also was heavily developing sites in the IIS/ASP world and had very little trouble wrapping my head around PHP. In fact, I actually found myself wishing ASP had all the goodies in it PHP does for ttaking care of "everyday" tasks.
I first saw those yesterday during the playoff games.
... The boy was adopted by everyone"
"The boy belonged to no one
I tell you, I think this is probably one of the best advertising campaigns i've seen in a while. Of course, they could have found a kid that didn't look like a 9 year old Eminem.
The thought of going out anf finding people violating copyright laws for profit is a swell idea in practice.
However, pretending to be cops is, lats I checked, illegal. Just because you say "We're not police" doesnt mean a whole helluva lot when you're dressed like a narcotics team and the average IQ of your everyday joe hovers just slightly above that of a rock.
i'm just sayin'.
heard on the grapevine...
The google Premium ads - the two that used to be at the top of the list, typically in bad pastels - are now publically up for grabs as an extension of the textads on the right side.
Those "premuim" ads used to be highly expensive and oft battled over, now theyre just the top two "bid per click" ads.
I just thought you kids would find that interesting.
I stand corrected.
You'd think there was at least an admin for a whole district (my old school district was fairly small), or something.
Yet another thing our already underfunded schools need.
Lovely.
Too bad schools just dont spew oil out of all the faucets or something, the government would be tripping all over itself to see those places are well taken care of.
But the /. community seems to be once again forgetting... we're a very small slize of the whole of people that actually use a computer.
a very small slice.
For most people, rebooting Win9x is just fine for them, becuase they use their machines for fucking around for an hour a day. It works, they know how to use it, its got solitare.
These people are not only afraid of fucking something up by installing a new Windows OS on their machine, but they're simply afraid of doing it, period. People fear their machines; and if the elves in the magic box are still willing to work, well, we just dont want to fuck that up.
Then consider the fact that for many people, paying $300 or $200 or $100 or even only $40 to upgrade their operating system is simply more money than they [ can afford | are willing ] to spend on their computer.
On top of that, they probably werent even aware there was support for Win98 in the first place.
i'm just sayin.
Other than the cost of migrating, I dont understand how this can be bad for schools in the slightest. Just because a system requires a login doesnt make it bad.
Whats the harm in making all the little kids use the SAME login of "firstgrader:password"? Not only do you now instantly have a user on all the machines thats the same, but youre teaching them abuot logging in to an account, which they'll probably have to do anyway sometime in the future, and probably already do anyway if theres a netware system in the school.
Actually knowing what this means will make them more advanced users that 90% of their parents, if they weren't already. Those that use the argument "but they dont NEED to learn that for the future" should be slapped. Kids in k12 are supposed to be there to learn and learn and learn some more. Noone ever filed a lawsuit claiming "my kid learned too much"
Older kids can get their own user/passwd combos as needed. Kids that just need to get on a machine and do whatever can just login as "student."
Also, cant you just make an NT/W2K/XP machine login as a specified user (like generic_student) on boot, anyway? My roommates XP machine doesnt make him login at all.
Speaking of the older kids, why not make it an advanced class/lab to have them help admins do the migration. I know sysadmins ARE NOT teachers and have other things to do, but they're not teaching a class of little fuckers forced to be there, They're MENTORING kids that want to do this and learn something, and who doesn't like mentoring someone who's motiveted and wants to learn somehting from the ground-up by doing the shitwork?
I am not one of those people who "are really into" music. I don't keep track of bands and what they're doing, i don't peruse the local weeklies for who's playing where, I don't even know what bands play a good third of the old songs I hear someone else playing and I think "oh yeah, I remember that song, it's good."
I gave up listening to the radio not only because most of the new stuff on there is either terrible or a rip off of something else, but because I quite frankly could do without the pure smarm of the commercials and having to hear yet another caller yell "WOOOOOOOOO!" into their phone brcause that's what they think the international symbol is for "PARTY!"
I gave up on watching Music Television long ago, even before MTV stopped playing entire videos and moved to their own programming.
I do not "have my finger on the pules of new music."
Because of that, I konw I miss out on a lot of good stuff out there, most of which doesn't get out there for casual listeners to hear anyway.
Bottome line: left on my own, i don't purchase music. I buy MAYBE one CD every couple months, and 4 out of the 6-7 i buy in any given year are crap I buy as little gifts for my wife who's tastes in entertainment are pretty much the antithesis of mine.
I've never been a regular purchaser of music for my own, and I doubt thats going to change.
HOWEVER, the last 8-10 CDs i HAVE bought over the years have ALL been a direct result of listening to something that was either burned for me by a friend (we all have those friends that are total musicheads, no matter what the genre. You know the type... if they don't buy SOMETHING new for their collection they start to get real jittery after a couple weeks.) or downloaded for free because of something I read about or was told about or whatever made a strong enough imprint on me that I actually cared enough to remember to follow up on it.
I realize it isnt a huge amount of money, but those couple hundred dollars that went to the music industry would have never gotten into their hands if it werent for "illegal" copies of their music flying around. A couple of the bands have even made money by being so good I actually bought tickets to see them play somewhere live. Again, wouldnt have happened without those terribly awful copies of illegal music.
Illegal? yes. Morally wrong? No more morally wrong than going 40mph in a 35 zone (or, 70kph in a 60 zone, for those of you in the rest of the world), which is also illegal [and, more importantly, physically unsafe for yourself and others]. Do I feel a pang of guilt when I speed? Nope. Do you? Probably not. To you feel guilt when you get a speeding ticket? I doubt it. Last speeding ticket I got all I felt was annoyed and a little stupid.
Remember folks, your moral sense comes from your upbringing, which ranges widely depending on where in the world you're from. Laws USED TO come from moral sense (as opposed to now, where in teh US laws come mainly from pressure from large corporations and vocal minorities with money)
Breaking an old law typically involves breaking a moral taboo of some sort and causes you that pang of guilt, breaking a "business-protection" law (like those dealing with trademarks and copyrights) pretty much HAS NO MORAL BASIS and thus most of us break them at will without caring.
I don't know if i'd go as far as calling it a new forum, but sharing of unlicensed music is here to stay, and after this whole wailing and gnashing of teeth by those involved (that actually give a fuck), those that actually make music and those that car
"You get what you pay for."
Thank God there are experts out there getting paid to provide this previously unknown and important information to us.
...the name of the operation?
...for the children who DON'T know what the hell I'm talking about: Red Dawn was one of the greatest bad action movies of Gen X's adolescent period. Back when we lived with that little possibility of the Russkies nuking the shit out of us any day now.
from the MSNBC article
Operation Red Dawn
Forces from the Army's 4th Infantry Division along with Special Forces captured Saddam, the U.S. military said. There were no shots fired or injuries in the raid, which was called Operation Red Dawn, Sanchez said.
I'd like to personally thank Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Darren Dalton, Jennifer Grey, Brad Savage, Doug Toby, and Powers Boothe for their fine work in bringing this despot to Justice.
Those plucky guerillas from the Rocky Mountains never cease to amaze me!
WOLVERINES!!!
[
If you've never seen it, get a six pack, some munchies, and a rental of this fine, craptastic, highly entertaining peice of patriotic propaganda that could have never existed without Regan being in office.
Ah, the heady days of the Cold War. It was so nice to know who the bad guys were (commies) and exactly where we could find them all (USSR, Cuba, and China).
At one point, Swayze gives what many consider to be his finest moment of powerful, emotional acting.]
...just becasue you HAVE the technology, and COULD use it... ...doesn't mean you necessarialy SHOULD.
another creepy-ass thought
Retinal scanners: Remember that Tom Cruise sci-fi flick where everyone was constantly getting retinally scanned wherever they went? You guys think DoubleClick are a bunch of scumbags now, just wait 'till they link up with RetinAll Marketing.
Coming out of a big speaker in the near future:
"Welcome to Blockbuster, Mr Slappyjack. You may be interested in the Jenna Jameson collection we have in the back room. We did notice you were looking at internet porn about her all day while your wife was out. We do not, however, have any Ass-Reaming-Mature-Tranny-Bukkake videos, which we know you enjoy. If you like we'd be glad to order one for you. Have a nice day."
yeah. nice.
Remember when we all thought RadioShack asking for our addresses just becasue we needed a couple of AA batteries was high annoyance? NOTHING compared to what the future holds.