Google News already pays the Associated Press for the right to post AP news stories on their (Google's) site. (Example picked at random: Climate debate heats up Caribbean summit http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMngtnyb69v5U96jDSem6I5cT0vwD9C7TQPO0 ) Of course, those articles appear *ON* Google.com instead of simply being a title/blurb pointing to another website. It really sounds whiny for Murdoch (and other newspaper execs) to say "Google is sending us millions of people but we don't know how to make money off those people so we want Google to stop sending us those people!"
There's already a panic button on every desktop, laptop and netbook. It's called the Power Button. It will automatically disconnect you from whatever you were doing and turn off your computer. Combine this with a talk with whatever parental figure(s) the child has (both before and after online access is granted) and kids should be covered. Not every "think of the children" problem needs a government mandated solution.
If the company openly supports ACTA, or is known to have had a hand in writing it, then don't buy their product at all.
One of the (many) truly bad things about the ACTA is that it includes punishments for repeated accusations of piracy. So let's say you decide to not buy MPAA/RIAA products and say so publicly. The MPAA/RIAA could accuse you of pirating (even without any evidence whatsoever) a few times and you'd be kicked offline. So even if you aren't pirating, but are just a nuisance, they can say you are pirating, get you kicked offline and force you to spend time and money on a lawsuit to not only clear your name, but to get yourself back online. In other words, under ACTA, big media companies hold all the cards and you'd better submit to their will or else.
I actually did read the article (and I have plenty of Karma so I don't need to resort to karma whoring). The point was that Mark himself isn't voluntarily taking himself out of the Google index so why should any company take a one time payment from him to remove themselves? Mark has expressed contempt for Google in the past, so his "plan" to kill Google really didn't surprise me. However, if he's so confident that Microsoft/Yahoo could make up for lost Google traffic, why doesn't he take the first step.
Looking at Mark Cuban's robots.txt file ( http://blogmaverick.com/robots.txt ), I see that he's not blocking Googlebot. Therefore, he is listed in Google's index. So why should someone take $1 million from him to leave the Google index when he clearly does not want to leave Google's index himself?
And when you don't buy what they are offering they'll run to their government lackeys crying "Our sales are dropping! It must be those awful Internet Pirates! Please pass this new law which will give us massively increased powers of control over regular users' lives or we might just stop producing such fine works as Pointless Sequel 7 or Brainless Action Movie 12.
One of the reasons I stopped going to theaters to watch movies was that after I paid to get in, I was sitting through commercials (not just trailers, but commercials).
I'm not going to excuse the ads, I hate them too, but you do realize that most (if not all) of the money that you paid to get into the movie went right back to the movie studios? Why do you think that popcorn and a soda cost to much at the movies? They need to pay their employees and run the entire facility on popcorn sales. When those didn't cut it (probably due to them costing so much), they turned to ads in front of the movies to bring in money.
Of course, the bigger issue is the home video market slowly killing movie theaters. Sure, movie theaters provide a bigger screen and possibly a better sound system (depending on your home system and the movie theater's sound system), but your home theater comes with cheaper snacks, more tailored to your tastes. (Sushi during the movie? Sure, why not?) It lets you pause to go to the bathroom or rewind to watch a favorite scene again and again. It comes without idiots talking to each other or on cell phones, revealing plot twists before they happen. And it comes without sticky floors. (Well, if the floors are sticky, at least it is your own fault for not cleaning them.)
Plus, it is cheaper. Last I checked, it costs about $8 per ticket. Renting a movie costs about $5 and unlimited people can watch. Plus, you can get them cheaper from your library (free) or Netflix. A couple seeing a movie will save at least $11 by renting versus going to the movie theater. A family of four will save $27 at minimum. That's hard to ignore.
At least you can hit Next Chapter and skip the ads. When I load a Sesame Street DVD in for my kids to watch, I'm forced to see the same "supporting Sesame Street supports kids around the world" commercial read by Whoppi Goldberg. Next Chapter is locked so you can't skip it (though I think some of the newer DVDs might have fixed this). So my kids (unaccustomed to ads thanks to DVRs) want to know why they can't just get right to the movie.
Walking up and petting a strange dog is just a bad idea. For all she knew, you were one of those irresponsible dog owners who trains their dogs to be fighting machines. Or perhaps the dog is just very protective of its family and will defend any perceived threat (like a lady coming too close). That's why my son knows the proper protocol for petting a dog. First, ask the owner (and us) if it is ok. If the answer is yes, ask where the dog likes to be petted. Next, put out your hand for the dog to sniff. Then slowly pet the dog in the spot indicated. Of course, if the owner isn't around and the dog is roaming free, they know that the answer automatically is "don't pet it and stay away!"
As others have pointed out, she should sue first and *then* get the name of the poster. Then, if she decides that the person isn't worth suing (perhaps they're mentally ill or willing to settle amicably out of court), she can drop the civil lawsuit and it all goes away. It is only if criminal charges were filed that she wouldn't be able to back out of it.
Freedom of speech using your name is important, but freedom of speech using a pseudonym or being completely anonymous is important also. The First Amendment doesn't read "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech when the person uses their real name." It reads (in part): "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech". Anonymous speech is included in this.
Finally, this wasn't graffiti. Graffiti implies writing done somewhere where writing wasn't wanted. (On a store's wall, for example.) This was posted to a newspaper's comments section. In fact, the comments took place in an online conversation between "hipcheck16" and this woman's son. Hipcheck16 did seem to make some bad insinuations, but if the woman took that much offense to them, she should file a lawsuit first and *then* get his identity.
I went from 255 to 170 (where people actually told me I was too skinny - never been called that before *EVER*) on an "unofficial Weight Watchers" plan. (Unofficial because I obtained all the formulas myself and kept track of it without joining Weight Watchers.) I now hover around 195.
I've found a few simple rules to weight loss/diet modification:
1) Drink lots of water. A lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're really thirsty. And no, drinking soda instead isn't acceptable. If you can't stand water, get some of those flavor mix-ins, but I actually prefer the taste of plain water.
2) Put your food on small plates. Don't underestimate the power of tricking the mind. There have been studies where people are served stale popcorn while watching a movie. Some had big cups and some had little cups. The people with the big cups ate more even though they thought it tasted awful. So give yourself an overflowing small plate and your mind will think you're eating a lot. Even if the same amount of food would leave plenty of room on your normal big plates.
3) Learn proper portion sizes. The average American portion size is about 3 or 4 times the size of a proper portion. Also read nutrition labels. Many times a bag of chips will say it is 2.5 servings even though pretty much anyone will eat the entire bag in one sitting. So make sure you're aware that the calories you ingest by eating that entire bag is more than the figure printed next to the word "calories."
4) Don't deprive yourself. If you feel like you're being deprived of your favorite food, you will fall off the wagon. And when you do, you'll likely binge, wrecking weeks of hard work. Instead, find ways of working in reasonable portions of your favorite food into your diet. For example, if you like cake, treat yourself to a cupcake once a week. Better still, find healthier alternatives that taste similar. For example, I've found some brands of low fat frozen yogurt (e.g. Blue Bunny) taste just as good as ice cream.
5) Increase your fiber intake. As the Anonymous poster said, fiber makes you feel fuller and helps fat from being absorbed. I'll mix FiberOne cereal into salads (gives it a good crunch), eat fresh fruits, eat lentils/beans/brown rice, etc.
6) Set sub-goals. If your goal is to lose 50 pounds, you'll be disappointed when you lose a pound a week - even though that's good progress. So set sub goals, say every five pounds, and reward yourself for achieving them. If the reward is food, though, don't go overboard. Don't pig out at the all-you-can-eat buffet in celebration of five pounds gone or you'll wipe out your progress. Also, you will plateau from time to time. Don't get discouraged as this is a natural part of weight loss. Just keep at it and you'll break through the plateau eventually.
Bah. You people with your ROT-13's and your ROT-26's. I use ROT-676. Yes, that's ROT 26 SQUARED. And I'm finishing up plans to upgrade to ROT-26-To-The-26th-Power. Let's see you crack that!
I think you missed the memo. The new fundamental law of free markets is: If the bulk of customers want X and you offer Y, then you lobby the government to make X illegal and raise the price of Y. Then you complain to your bought and paid for government officials that Y is still not selling and you need more power to force consumers to buy Y and raise the penalties on purchasing, owning, or even thinking about X. After all, customers' refusal to buy Y clearly indicates that they are all buying X illegally and the only reason for a customer's existence is to funnel money into your pockets.
(The sad thing is, this could be modded as Funny or Insightful and either would be true.)
As another poster mentioned, life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality. If a lot of infants die in the first year, then the life expectancy number plummets. Discounting infant mortality, the age a person could hope to live to was younger than today's but not by such a huge amount.
"Genealogical data yield an expectation of life at age ten of almost fiftyseven years for white males in 1790-1794"
So if 1790 had an average age of 57 years and 1990 (which was the most recent data on that page) is 76, we're looking at a 33% increase in life span. Meanwhile, copyright went from 28 years to 95 years *AFTER* the death of the creator. Even in the "best case" (work published as author dies), this is a 240% increase in copyright terms. A 33% increase in copyright terms would give us a copyright length of 38 years. This would mean that works created before 1971 would be Public Domain. Coincidentally, the Beatles broke up in 1970 so all of their works would be Public Domain.
As a side note, I've long said that I could have been rich had I not had any morals and had become a spammer. Now, I guess I can add selling dousing equipment to the list. Curse my parents for raising me the right way! I could have been a millionaire were it not for these pesky morals!
And, just to build on your argument, Saddam didn't stay out of religious disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. He offered a $25,000 reward to the families of suicide bombers. (See: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129914&page=1&page=1 ) So if your family was really poor and had no other opportunities, you could ensure some financial income to your family by blowing yourself up and taking a group of Israeli civilians along with you. This, I'm sure, helped convince many people to become suicide bombers who might have otherwise never gone down that path.
Funny this should come up. A few days ago, I was pulling out the plug for my laptop from my surge strip, taking care not to pull out some other plugs nearby, when my fingers slipped under the plug and touched the metal. I felt a small surge before I instinctively pulled my fingers away. (Felt like a low vibration almost.) I'm guessing (since I've never experienced this before) that there was still some electrical connection and it went coursing through me. Luckily, I was fine. I do think what happened wasn't something that would commonly happen though.
Actually, users are forbidden from installing Chrome because users installing their own software is a bad idea, not because of any website compatibility issue. If users can install any software they want, then our help desk will be swamped with calls to support those applications (and some of that software might not have proper licensing or might contain spyware/viruses).
Looking at our external website's traffic (where we obviously don't control what browser user's use), we get 27% from IE8, 33% from IE7, 23% from IE6 and 16% from Firefox. Google Chrome doesn't even make up 1% of our external traffic. I have many projects to complete and my time is limited. Why should I work towards compatibility with a browser with less than 1% market share? Instead, I work with web standards as best I can and iron out any wrinkles in IE and Firefox. If Google Chrome has a few wrinkles when dealing with my site, so be it. I honestly don't have the time to remove all issues that every single browser in existence has with my websites.
I do use web standards. The problem I've found is that not every browser implements web standards 100%. Not Firefox, not Opera, not Chrome (and certainly not IE though that should surprise nobody). So my page might look fine in Firefox (which happens to be my browser of choice) but might look awful in Chrome.
Slashdot Mirror
Google News already pays the Associated Press for the right to post AP news stories on their (Google's) site. (Example picked at random: Climate debate heats up Caribbean summit http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMngtnyb69v5U96jDSem6I5cT0vwD9C7TQPO0 ) Of course, those articles appear *ON* Google.com instead of simply being a title/blurb pointing to another website. It really sounds whiny for Murdoch (and other newspaper execs) to say "Google is sending us millions of people but we don't know how to make money off those people so we want Google to stop sending us those people!"
There's already a panic button on every desktop, laptop and netbook. It's called the Power Button. It will automatically disconnect you from whatever you were doing and turn off your computer. Combine this with a talk with whatever parental figure(s) the child has (both before and after online access is granted) and kids should be covered. Not every "think of the children" problem needs a government mandated solution.
One of the (many) truly bad things about the ACTA is that it includes punishments for repeated accusations of piracy. So let's say you decide to not buy MPAA/RIAA products and say so publicly. The MPAA/RIAA could accuse you of pirating (even without any evidence whatsoever) a few times and you'd be kicked offline. So even if you aren't pirating, but are just a nuisance, they can say you are pirating, get you kicked offline and force you to spend time and money on a lawsuit to not only clear your name, but to get yourself back online. In other words, under ACTA, big media companies hold all the cards and you'd better submit to their will or else.
Set my TV to "SCAM" mode? I'm not going to fall for that one!
From my work's website (health care site):
Google: 13,481 (68%)
Bing: 3,148 (16%)
Yahoo: 2,119 (11%)
So even Bing, Yahoo and everyone else combined don't come close to Google.
I actually did read the article (and I have plenty of Karma so I don't need to resort to karma whoring). The point was that Mark himself isn't voluntarily taking himself out of the Google index so why should any company take a one time payment from him to remove themselves? Mark has expressed contempt for Google in the past, so his "plan" to kill Google really didn't surprise me. However, if he's so confident that Microsoft/Yahoo could make up for lost Google traffic, why doesn't he take the first step.
Why would people believe the world is ending in 2012 when there's clear evidence that the Earth/mankind survive until the 23rd century?
(Hey, if people will believe that 2012 is a documentary showing the end of the world, maybe they'll buy this!)
Looking at Mark Cuban's robots.txt file ( http://blogmaverick.com/robots.txt ), I see that he's not blocking Googlebot. Therefore, he is listed in Google's index. So why should someone take $1 million from him to leave the Google index when he clearly does not want to leave Google's index himself?
Sing to the tune of "We're Whalers on the Moon":
There's water on the Moon
We found it with big boom
For the probe crashed down
Impacted the ground
There's water in the plume!
And when you don't buy what they are offering they'll run to their government lackeys crying "Our sales are dropping! It must be those awful Internet Pirates! Please pass this new law which will give us massively increased powers of control over regular users' lives or we might just stop producing such fine works as Pointless Sequel 7 or Brainless Action Movie 12.
I've tried that button on my DVD player but I can't fast forward or next chapter past the Sesame Street ad.
I'm not going to excuse the ads, I hate them too, but you do realize that most (if not all) of the money that you paid to get into the movie went right back to the movie studios? Why do you think that popcorn and a soda cost to much at the movies? They need to pay their employees and run the entire facility on popcorn sales. When those didn't cut it (probably due to them costing so much), they turned to ads in front of the movies to bring in money.
Of course, the bigger issue is the home video market slowly killing movie theaters. Sure, movie theaters provide a bigger screen and possibly a better sound system (depending on your home system and the movie theater's sound system), but your home theater comes with cheaper snacks, more tailored to your tastes. (Sushi during the movie? Sure, why not?) It lets you pause to go to the bathroom or rewind to watch a favorite scene again and again. It comes without idiots talking to each other or on cell phones, revealing plot twists before they happen. And it comes without sticky floors. (Well, if the floors are sticky, at least it is your own fault for not cleaning them.)
Plus, it is cheaper. Last I checked, it costs about $8 per ticket. Renting a movie costs about $5 and unlimited people can watch. Plus, you can get them cheaper from your library (free) or Netflix. A couple seeing a movie will save at least $11 by renting versus going to the movie theater. A family of four will save $27 at minimum. That's hard to ignore.
At least you can hit Next Chapter and skip the ads. When I load a Sesame Street DVD in for my kids to watch, I'm forced to see the same "supporting Sesame Street supports kids around the world" commercial read by Whoppi Goldberg. Next Chapter is locked so you can't skip it (though I think some of the newer DVDs might have fixed this). So my kids (unaccustomed to ads thanks to DVRs) want to know why they can't just get right to the movie.
Walking up and petting a strange dog is just a bad idea. For all she knew, you were one of those irresponsible dog owners who trains their dogs to be fighting machines. Or perhaps the dog is just very protective of its family and will defend any perceived threat (like a lady coming too close). That's why my son knows the proper protocol for petting a dog. First, ask the owner (and us) if it is ok. If the answer is yes, ask where the dog likes to be petted. Next, put out your hand for the dog to sniff. Then slowly pet the dog in the spot indicated. Of course, if the owner isn't around and the dog is roaming free, they know that the answer automatically is "don't pet it and stay away!"
As others have pointed out, she should sue first and *then* get the name of the poster. Then, if she decides that the person isn't worth suing (perhaps they're mentally ill or willing to settle amicably out of court), she can drop the civil lawsuit and it all goes away. It is only if criminal charges were filed that she wouldn't be able to back out of it.
Freedom of speech using your name is important, but freedom of speech using a pseudonym or being completely anonymous is important also. The First Amendment doesn't read "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech when the person uses their real name." It reads (in part): "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech". Anonymous speech is included in this.
Finally, this wasn't graffiti. Graffiti implies writing done somewhere where writing wasn't wanted. (On a store's wall, for example.) This was posted to a newspaper's comments section. In fact, the comments took place in an online conversation between "hipcheck16" and this woman's son. Hipcheck16 did seem to make some bad insinuations, but if the woman took that much offense to them, she should file a lawsuit first and *then* get his identity.
Because (to quote Calvin): Verbing weirds language.
I went from 255 to 170 (where people actually told me I was too skinny - never been called that before *EVER*) on an "unofficial Weight Watchers" plan. (Unofficial because I obtained all the formulas myself and kept track of it without joining Weight Watchers.) I now hover around 195.
I've found a few simple rules to weight loss/diet modification:
1) Drink lots of water. A lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're really thirsty. And no, drinking soda instead isn't acceptable. If you can't stand water, get some of those flavor mix-ins, but I actually prefer the taste of plain water.
2) Put your food on small plates. Don't underestimate the power of tricking the mind. There have been studies where people are served stale popcorn while watching a movie. Some had big cups and some had little cups. The people with the big cups ate more even though they thought it tasted awful. So give yourself an overflowing small plate and your mind will think you're eating a lot. Even if the same amount of food would leave plenty of room on your normal big plates.
3) Learn proper portion sizes. The average American portion size is about 3 or 4 times the size of a proper portion. Also read nutrition labels. Many times a bag of chips will say it is 2.5 servings even though pretty much anyone will eat the entire bag in one sitting. So make sure you're aware that the calories you ingest by eating that entire bag is more than the figure printed next to the word "calories."
4) Don't deprive yourself. If you feel like you're being deprived of your favorite food, you will fall off the wagon. And when you do, you'll likely binge, wrecking weeks of hard work. Instead, find ways of working in reasonable portions of your favorite food into your diet. For example, if you like cake, treat yourself to a cupcake once a week. Better still, find healthier alternatives that taste similar. For example, I've found some brands of low fat frozen yogurt (e.g. Blue Bunny) taste just as good as ice cream.
5) Increase your fiber intake. As the Anonymous poster said, fiber makes you feel fuller and helps fat from being absorbed. I'll mix FiberOne cereal into salads (gives it a good crunch), eat fresh fruits, eat lentils/beans/brown rice, etc.
6) Set sub-goals. If your goal is to lose 50 pounds, you'll be disappointed when you lose a pound a week - even though that's good progress. So set sub goals, say every five pounds, and reward yourself for achieving them. If the reward is food, though, don't go overboard. Don't pig out at the all-you-can-eat buffet in celebration of five pounds gone or you'll wipe out your progress. Also, you will plateau from time to time. Don't get discouraged as this is a natural part of weight loss. Just keep at it and you'll break through the plateau eventually.
Bah. You people with your ROT-13's and your ROT-26's. I use ROT-676. Yes, that's ROT 26 SQUARED. And I'm finishing up plans to upgrade to ROT-26-To-The-26th-Power. Let's see you crack that!
I think you missed the memo. The new fundamental law of free markets is: If the bulk of customers want X and you offer Y, then you lobby the government to make X illegal and raise the price of Y. Then you complain to your bought and paid for government officials that Y is still not selling and you need more power to force consumers to buy Y and raise the penalties on purchasing, owning, or even thinking about X. After all, customers' refusal to buy Y clearly indicates that they are all buying X illegally and the only reason for a customer's existence is to funnel money into your pockets.
(The sad thing is, this could be modded as Funny or Insightful and either would be true.)
As another poster mentioned, life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality. If a lot of infants die in the first year, then the life expectancy number plummets. Discounting infant mortality, the age a person could hope to live to was younger than today's but not by such a huge amount.
From http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-LifeExpectancy.html :
"Genealogical data yield an expectation of life at age ten of almost fiftyseven years for white males in 1790-1794"
So if 1790 had an average age of 57 years and 1990 (which was the most recent data on that page) is 76, we're looking at a 33% increase in life span. Meanwhile, copyright went from 28 years to 95 years *AFTER* the death of the creator. Even in the "best case" (work published as author dies), this is a 240% increase in copyright terms. A 33% increase in copyright terms would give us a copyright length of 38 years. This would mean that works created before 1971 would be Public Domain. Coincidentally, the Beatles broke up in 1970 so all of their works would be Public Domain.
There was only one time that Dousing worked: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-05-14/
As a side note, I've long said that I could have been rich had I not had any morals and had become a spammer. Now, I guess I can add selling dousing equipment to the list. Curse my parents for raising me the right way! I could have been a millionaire were it not for these pesky morals!
And, just to build on your argument, Saddam didn't stay out of religious disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. He offered a $25,000 reward to the families of suicide bombers. (See: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129914&page=1&page=1 ) So if your family was really poor and had no other opportunities, you could ensure some financial income to your family by blowing yourself up and taking a group of Israeli civilians along with you. This, I'm sure, helped convince many people to become suicide bombers who might have otherwise never gone down that path.
Funny this should come up. A few days ago, I was pulling out the plug for my laptop from my surge strip, taking care not to pull out some other plugs nearby, when my fingers slipped under the plug and touched the metal. I felt a small surge before I instinctively pulled my fingers away. (Felt like a low vibration almost.) I'm guessing (since I've never experienced this before) that there was still some electrical connection and it went coursing through me. Luckily, I was fine. I do think what happened wasn't something that would commonly happen though.
Actually, users are forbidden from installing Chrome because users installing their own software is a bad idea, not because of any website compatibility issue. If users can install any software they want, then our help desk will be swamped with calls to support those applications (and some of that software might not have proper licensing or might contain spyware/viruses).
Looking at our external website's traffic (where we obviously don't control what browser user's use), we get 27% from IE8, 33% from IE7, 23% from IE6 and 16% from Firefox. Google Chrome doesn't even make up 1% of our external traffic. I have many projects to complete and my time is limited. Why should I work towards compatibility with a browser with less than 1% market share? Instead, I work with web standards as best I can and iron out any wrinkles in IE and Firefox. If Google Chrome has a few wrinkles when dealing with my site, so be it. I honestly don't have the time to remove all issues that every single browser in existence has with my websites.
I do use web standards. The problem I've found is that not every browser implements web standards 100%. Not Firefox, not Opera, not Chrome (and certainly not IE though that should surprise nobody). So my page might look fine in Firefox (which happens to be my browser of choice) but might look awful in Chrome.