Why pay to reinstall the same OS that came originally on the system?
Simply put, because they're not.
As TFA says, recipients of these computers will pay "a nominal charge that covers materials and program operations."
What is happening here is good. These computers were largely destained for landfills, and their hardware contains many toxic chemicals, such as high concentrations of lead, that seep into our environment. No one likes lead in the watertable. Furthermore, these computers will be upgraded to Windows 2000, the most stable Windows OS.
Large and small corporations alike were finding it hard to give away they're hardware with the software because of the restrictive licences. The alternative would be to install Linux on these computers and THEN give them away. To hedge its bets, Microsoft decided not to ease up on the license, but rather implement a program to make it easier to give computers away. Ok so its not all good..
So the program allows people to become authorized redistributers of this hardware, and in the process they will *relicense* the software on the hardware so it can be legally used. They're not paying for a new license, they're paying for the paperwork involved with keeping track of said license, and thats a big difference.
I agree, its not the most ethical way of going about this : it ensures a stranglehold on the obsolete hardware market, however it is not to increase profits, but merely to maintain marketshare and domination over a segment of the digital population that would otherwise likely migrate to Linux. They need to keep all those terminals around schools and libraries on Windows, otherwise people might realize that Linux isnt the bogeyman its made out to be.
Yeah, ok, I admit, its bad... but at least now I understand why its bad, and I'm not merely reaching for my pitchfork.
Maybe they don't get it because they don't see Linux software on store shelves at Best Buy. Maybe they feel that using Linux would be a huge headache since they have NFI where the software actually comes from.
Maybe you should stop writing stupid bonehead comments that indicate that you still need to RTFA.
To terraform mars would be invested a trilion dolars and take 100 years, and nobody can or want pay to do it now.
Regardless of the cost, we have an obligation to do it if we can do it. Who cares about the so-called "life" that exists there, hidden in the crevasses of Mars. Do you think the underground alien gnome people will even notice that we've turned the upstairs into a beautiful, productive environment?
We have a fully functioning biological system here, and if we have the ability to export it to theoretically and visibly dead worlds, we must. This especially considering the rate at which we are destorying our very much alive one.
But then again, the pessimist in me wants to say that if we start terraforming Mars, we wont have so many qualms about further raping and destroying our own planet. Ahhh the paradoxes of intelligence...
He kinda does have a point. News on slashdot should require that you RTFA. If you dont have to RTFA to get a complete understanding of what the newspost is talking about, its not deserving of slashdot. This isnt Newsbites for Nerds.
Now compare this to fark, which gets a bazillion submissions a day and posts just about all of them (if they arent dupes). They sum up the articles in one sentence, and after visiting fark for a few weeks/months, one finds that you should NEVER click through the link because it contains no useful information. Its almost ALWAYS a waste of time to click through on Fark. The news posts there are just little notes about things that happened, and following through the links gets u no extra info.
That is not slashdot.
An article like this is, admittedly, important, but its also something on the front page of EVERY NEWSPAPER WORLDWIDE.
I dont need slashdot to remind me that this happened, UNLESS : the link contains some information that I, as a nerd, will find of greater value than the general public. Simply posting a link concerning the standard newspaper fair, linking to a standard newspaper article is NOT news for nerds and should not be posted.
News for Nerds means News for Smart people, so if the headline of the article tells me all I need to know, then what the hell is it doing on slashdot.
Mod me down just like the parent, but I dont care. I dont want slashdot turning in to fark. Slashdot articles should contain useful information and not just quick notes.
Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots. Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology
Umm, I dont know much about astrology, but clearly you dont know anything at all.
Besides the fact that the influence of the planets is considered largely independant of one another, astrology was completely fucked up long before this event, when the president of the World Astrologers Association (or whatever its called) wrote a paper saying its all just a load of hocus-pocus crap.
Re:Prediction about "social network software"
on
ICQ Universe
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A person can only intake so much information. Desensitization will play a factor in people caring less about other's raw data. Maybe it will help us look at each other in a different light: what has this person accomplished with their life and who has this person helped or hurt?
I am going to have to go ahead and agreed with you on this.
In psychology we call this "habitutation". There are a lot of things that enter our mind, especially due to the senses alone. Think about all the stuff you could actually be hearing and seeing right now. Instead you've turned off your hearing and are focusing on the computer screen. Focus out for a second and you might suddenly pick up the whine of your computer fan or the drone of some far away television.
The social atmosphere changes with the forces that influence it, and filters out parts that are inconvenient or too powerful to notice. World War One brought on a sweeping change in the way the people think about themselves. People started talking about themselves in terms of form instead of content. Concepts of honor and chilvary made way for personality and style. But great changes in mass psychology are not merely stories in history books. Its not hard to notice that the internet makes information the paramount variable - thats why they call it the information economy. Without content, you have nothing. Thats a lesson the dot-bomb bubble taught us. and this focus on information permeates the way we interact with each other: look at Douglas Rushkoff's idea of information as social currency - he says that information is presupposed in our interactions and those that can offer it have power (not in those words). Information is power. Information dominates our thinking, our interactions, our business, our media, our newspapers, our politics. Its a good thing, because the more we come to realize how important it is, the more we will value it, and the more we will reject those that make false promises and empty threats.
The sad part is people SHOULD care. Everyone from Joe Average to Bob Businessman should take notice of this.
Are you kidding me? I mean, I know we're all techies here, but lets break out of our shells for a second. This matters to people who make over 40k a year. Joe Average works in a factory and lets his kids use the internet for schooling. Do you think Joe Average, who was raised on libraries and encyclopedias, cares even for a second about whether his ISP goes down for 6 hours? Joe Average has to deal with bills, healthcare, school, drugs, gangs, crime, etc. etc. Joe Average needs tax dollars spent ensuring the welfare of our society, not the welfare of Bob Businessman's T3 lines so profit margins remain high.
Putting feds on the case of script kiddies is taking away from money and manpower that our society desperately needs. We need more concern over corporate accountability and less for corporate profits.
They were empowered by the ALCOHOL trade, not the DRUG trade. Of course, now you're going to give me "alcohol is a drug!" crap, so I'm just not listening to you anymore.
Yeah... ok... the only problem with that statement is that ALCOHOL IS A DRUG.
To say that Alcohol is not a drug is to fall into a classical fallacy. Let me explain it to you so that you dont do it again.
Just because a = b does not mean that only a = b. Get this : c can = b, and even d!
So, the government has told you that marijuana, cocaine and heroin are drugs. What did they tell you about alcohol? Drink Responsibly? lol. Lets get a definition. I'll go with wikipedia.
"A drug is any substance that can be used to treat an illness, relieve a symptom or modify a chemical process in the body for a specific purpose. The term is necessarily a vague one, being defined by intent: for example, foods consumed for normal metabolism are not generally considered "drugs", but the same foods consumed for a more specific purpose (such as the use of alcohol as a depressant or caffeine as a stimulant) may be."
Well, what do we have here? Someone who looks really stupid who uses the handle Grishnakh.
Now, if you need more proof, go talk to the thousands of people who have relatives dying from alcohol addiction, or who have died from alcohol poisening, or whose minds are destroyed because drinking more than a few days in a row causes irrepairable brain damage.
I'm not sure what you are trying to prove. There are plenty of independant studies of drug effects online.
My point is, who are you to question the wisdom of your doctor based on the advice of some probably tainted studies. "Independant"? Where do you think they get funding from? Lengthy clinical trials and molecular testing doesnt come cheap, nor is it done in your backyard. But even if you reject the notion of bias in these studies, what you read on the Internet is rarely, if ever, the study itself, but rather an interpretation of it.
Heres a new point I'd like to inject though: It doesnt take a website to put two and two together. You arent getting better? You've been on the medication for a while? Well if you really think that the meds are going to fix you, tell your doctor its not working. He's not a magician, and its your job to tell him whether the medication is doing its job.
People rely on experts so much these days they cant even tell themselves if they're ok. They think by going to a doctor or reading online they'll get some deep insight. How about a little deep thought or quiet meditation. Listen to yourself. You'd be surprised how the body heals when the mind is relaxed.
Re:See a doctor
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
He gave me a presciption, I looked it up online, found the dosage he gave me was far smaller than anything I had seen written. Upon asking him about it, he advised not reading websites when it comes to drugs. What about the drug company's website? What if you are curious how the drug works or how it was tested before coming to the market?
I'll go ahead and answer those questions for you. (It doesnt matter what the drug is)
According to the drug company's website, the drug is the best thing ever. According to the company's pre-market testing, it went better than ever.
The reason he told you not to listen to the Internet when trying to get informed about drugs is because the drug companies are in SERIOUS competition with each other and will do just about anything to get you to take their's. You go online and become concerned your doctor didnt prescribe you enough of the drug? Well then you are exactly the kind of person that this article is talking about.
Corporate forces taking aim at the RIAA shows that the RIAA's business model is failing
Theres two problems here:
First of all, the slashdot blurb doent make it clear, as the article does, that Pepsi is paying to give away 100 million free song downloads on the iTunes website (presumably with the purchase of a Pepsi product). Thats the nature of the "we will still download for free comment", which has nothing to do with subverting copyright law. Its a really great marketing scheme which doesnt really do anything at all except play on your wants and fears, having you make assumptions about the current state of the music industry and Pepsi's stance on it. Scroll up a bit and you'll find a guy professing to buy Pepsi from now on, even though he doesnt really like it.
Secondly, even if there was a mega-corporation taking aim at the RIAA, it wouldnt prove that the business model is failing. This was proven long ago when the RIAA sued a 12 year old for downloading the theme song to Full House (among other songs). It has been proved repeatedly over and over again since then, most notably with the introduction of iTunes - a new business model. If cant be sure yourself, and you need Pepsi to validate this for you... well I dont know what to tell you.
There is no place for your bias as to what "good" and "bad" things are going on behind the scenes in assessing why it would be a problem for one force to know its opposition's strategy before it is executed. It is a matter of damn obvious logic. Use your head.
Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System;
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them] [audience gasps in terror] Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us. [murmurs] Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system. Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate. Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away! [Kang and Kodos laugh out loud] [Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]
Nobody tries to fix their radio anymore because it is too complicated with all of the integrated circuits and solid state, specialized, components. I don't think there is any place for cutting teeth on the latest technology in this age.
That is so true. I was just daydreaming about the old days where you flicked on the computer and all you had was a flashing cursor. It really couldn't do much at first glance, but a little exploration could make it do some nifty things.
I feel like computers are always trying to make me do stuff now. Download this, install that, configure this, register that. As a Windows user I am so far removed from the actual programming that the programmers and hardware manufacturers are completely out of touch with my needs. A perfect example is that Keyboard and Mouse article on CNet that was just posted. Read the forums and you'll see that only ONE keyboard manufacturer (Kinesis) actual lives up to even a few of the REAL needs people have.
What I need is barely anything. I could use the internet with text-characters only for interface purposes. Hell, I could use my entire computer in text only, and I would if I wasnt so locked in to the decadent lifestyle that I live. I cant help but to depend on corporations for my computing needs, let alone my basic ones.
Justin Frankel is dead on in his assessment. Every aspect of the internet is now controlled by corporations that are gobbling up more and more internet landscape. If you cant connect to the internet without a corporate mediator, that is a problem. On these forums I would give the great majority of the people the respect to assume that they are aware of the problem of freedom of information. You guys all have good brains: so use them for something more valuable than money. Programs like WASTE are revolutionary in their ability to connect people securely. There is currently an effort to port it to linux, and there are many more things like this that need smart people like you guys.
You dont have to be a progammer either. I am finishing my degree this year and plan to go to Law School next year. I plan to dedicate my life to making information free and secure.
Privacy policies in the US aren't worth the bandwidth they waste. And they will continue to be worthless unless they're backed by strong national (not just state) privacy legislation similar to the Norwegian Personal Data Act or the EU Personal Data Directive.
Interesting comment, but its very unlikely to be implemented on a wide scale in America. The use of Privacy policies and playing off of the customer's good faith, trust or lack of having read the policy is common between government and corporations alike. This Northwest airline case is a perfect example. America requires poor privacy protection.
1) The Economy. Its an information economy and people make lots of money just by buying and selling data on you. A lot of big businesses trade data back and forth, especially between subsidiareies. CEOs have a significant investment in their lax policies, and they enourage their friends in politics not to disturb it.
2) War on terrorism. Bush can shoot down any protection of privacy with those three words.
3) War on drugs. While its not as prominent anymore since there is a new war to funnel money into, the war on drugs requires the passing and sharing of your private data. So if people start going against the war on terrorism, government can just revert back to the old stance.
Dollar for dollar, video games represent probably the cheapest form of entertainment ever developed.
This guy is totally on point.
Not only that, but if you think of a good idea and know how to program well, its one of the best ways to make millions of dollars.
Video games are the modern board games. Once people made millions off of homemade board games that became outrageously popular, and many people tried to emulate the success. Now a hundred years of free market evolution has filtered out only the best board games, but guess what : people are still making millions off of them, and people are still loving games made even before the depression. Even still, if you have a bright idea you can easily enter the market (Think about the very popular new-comer "Cranium")
Video games are the same way. I still play Nethack religiously on my 17" wide laptop (full key keyboard with numpad. oh yes.) with a 128 meg graphics card and half a gig of ram. Why? Because its good and its FREE. But I also BUY the latest stuff if its really top-notch. I play Warcraft III, and I'll tell ya Blizzard is raking it in without all that bullshit the article talks about (unlike the creators of nethack who do it for the love of the game).
Would I pay a small, not-for-profit server maitance fee? I might. But we live in the age of free market competition, and its damn easy for cheap knock offs to cash in. And brand loyalty is certainly not a pressing concern, for me at least.
Not again. You are number 183 to ask this same question. I will just copy and paste what someone else wrote, but I will reference it since this article is about Plagerism.;)
PrionPryon wrote this, and you can find it by scrolling up a little bit. He got modded +5 so I think its on point.
Students have a decent arguement in saying that they own the material within a paper they write (an original one) and the fact that the system indexes their content if it is deemed legitimate (assuming there is no option to opt out) means the company is bolstering its product without due compensation. The papers i write are my property. They are given to a professor for a grade but even the professor does not have a right to show it as an example without my permission. Reproduction without prior consent, and due compensation, is listed in the cover of most (scientific) journals.article is about Plagerism. PriorPyron.
This is the argument that won over the Mcgill senate, and the argument that will win you over as well. =)
Someone is going to lose a finger within the first week it is out on the market.
I dont know about that.. Remember it only cuts through soft cheese and probably has a very short range. It might cut u but u'd probably flinch and move before it hit the bone, which I doubt it could penetrate.
Still, this is a really amazing story. We're all going to look back on this 20 years from now when the military/street gangs are using laser weapons and gauss guns.
The first consumer laser.. it can only cut 10 millimeters into a block of cheese, but its the first, and its a clear sign of things to come.
"But for home use? Not going to happen in the us at least. The legal ramifications and potential misuse will make it unlikely (as cool as it would be)"
I can easily acquire a tec-9 semi automatic machine gun and bullets for it can be bought from Wal-mart, but somehow you think a laser that cuts through cheese will be banned from consumers?
And isnt that "someone-might-do-something-bad-with-it" argument the same one we frown upon which the RIAA/MPAA uses to outlaw threatening hardware?
AOL grew out of the BBS era when everyone phoned very small boards that had created their own interface to access the internet. Many people on here will remember calling 10 node boards to check their email, use gopher or post on Usenet.
AOL is a remnant of that era, still offering its own interface to access the web even though its entirely unnecessary. But people like that, people like the boundaries AOL places because the internet can be a scary, confusing place and they simply arent interested and dont have the time to stick their heads out into the abyss. That BBS feel is something people liked in the 80s and still like today.
But remember, the AOL bbs also has an access number at just about every major city in North America. If you own more than one home or travel a lot, you recognize this as being advantageous.
But AOL simply did it better than the rest of the hybrid BBS-Internet companies. They printed up millions of CDs and found a way to get at least one to every person with a computer. Now they have a customer base of 90 million people and its very hard to compete with their brand leverage. Hell, through all the years of Microsoft Hegemoney they went with Netscape on an Internet Explorer dominated operating system (because Netscape also adds to the feel of offering AOL's own user interface).
And now, do you even get any AOL CDs anymore? When is the last time you heard an AOL CD joke? AOL is standard on all computers and comes bundled with tons of software. To a new computer user AOL is often more obvious than MSN simply because of the brand power.
I am not sure what you're angry about. Its just the way it is.
Probably the same argument for IP telephony vs telephones may be applied. When IP or Internet voice calls become standard and analogue lines become antiquainted we'll see the emergence of some applicance (document scanner with an Ethernet interface).
The thing about analogue lines is their authenticity. It is very difficult to hijack someone's phone number and pretend you are that person. We all know how easy it is to spoof an IP.
Faxes are considered legal documents in many cases, and they are used to transmit official documents, signitures and alike. This is based solely on the fact that they are transmitted over analogue lines an thus offer significant proof of authenticity.
Then again, IP telephony would see the end of a lot of telemarketing because you could never trust anyone to be who they say they are and the chances of someone intercepting the call and garnering your private data would be far, far, FAR higher.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you should stop writing stupid bonehead comments that indicate that you don't have a good rebuttal to what I said.
Maybe you should reevaluate my rebuttal, as it implies that the article itself would refute stupid bonehead comments such as yours.
Why pay to reinstall the same OS that came originally on the system?
Simply put, because they're not.
As TFA says, recipients of these computers will pay "a nominal charge that covers materials and program operations."
What is happening here is good. These computers were largely destained for landfills, and their hardware contains many toxic chemicals, such as high concentrations of lead, that seep into our environment. No one likes lead in the watertable. Furthermore, these computers will be upgraded to Windows 2000, the most stable Windows OS.
Large and small corporations alike were finding it hard to give away they're hardware with the software because of the restrictive licences. The alternative would be to install Linux on these computers and THEN give them away. To hedge its bets, Microsoft decided not to ease up on the license, but rather implement a program to make it easier to give computers away. Ok so its not all good..
So the program allows people to become authorized redistributers of this hardware, and in the process they will *relicense* the software on the hardware so it can be legally used. They're not paying for a new license, they're paying for the paperwork involved with keeping track of said license, and thats a big difference.
I agree, its not the most ethical way of going about this : it ensures a stranglehold on the obsolete hardware market, however it is not to increase profits, but merely to maintain marketshare and domination over a segment of the digital population that would otherwise likely migrate to Linux. They need to keep all those terminals around schools and libraries on Windows, otherwise people might realize that Linux isnt the bogeyman its made out to be.
Yeah, ok, I admit, its bad... but at least now I understand why its bad, and I'm not merely reaching for my pitchfork.
Maybe they don't get it because they don't see Linux software on store shelves at Best Buy. Maybe they feel that using Linux would be a huge headache since they have NFI where the software actually comes from.
Maybe you should stop writing stupid bonehead comments that indicate that you still need to RTFA.
To terraform mars would be invested a trilion dolars and take 100 years, and nobody can or want pay to do it now.
Regardless of the cost, we have an obligation to do it if we can do it. Who cares about the so-called "life" that exists there, hidden in the crevasses of Mars. Do you think the underground alien gnome people will even notice that we've turned the upstairs into a beautiful, productive environment?
We have a fully functioning biological system here, and if we have the ability to export it to theoretically and visibly dead worlds, we must. This especially considering the rate at which we are destorying our very much alive one.
But then again, the pessimist in me wants to say that if we start terraforming Mars, we wont have so many qualms about further raping and destroying our own planet. Ahhh the paradoxes of intelligence...
He kinda does have a point. News on slashdot should require that you RTFA. If you dont have to RTFA to get a complete understanding of what the newspost is talking about, its not deserving of slashdot. This isnt Newsbites for Nerds.
Now compare this to fark, which gets a bazillion submissions a day and posts just about all of them (if they arent dupes). They sum up the articles in one sentence, and after visiting fark for a few weeks/months, one finds that you should NEVER click through the link because it contains no useful information. Its almost ALWAYS a waste of time to click through on Fark. The news posts there are just little notes about things that happened, and following through the links gets u no extra info.
That is not slashdot.
An article like this is, admittedly, important, but its also something on the front page of EVERY NEWSPAPER WORLDWIDE.
I dont need slashdot to remind me that this happened, UNLESS : the link contains some information that I, as a nerd, will find of greater value than the general public. Simply posting a link concerning the standard newspaper fair, linking to a standard newspaper article is NOT news for nerds and should not be posted.
News for Nerds means News for Smart people, so if the headline of the article tells me all I need to know, then what the hell is it doing on slashdot.
Mod me down just like the parent, but I dont care. I dont want slashdot turning in to fark. Slashdot articles should contain useful information and not just quick notes.
Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots. Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology
Umm, I dont know much about astrology, but clearly you dont know anything at all.
Besides the fact that the influence of the planets is considered largely independant of one another, astrology was completely fucked up long before this event, when the president of the World Astrologers Association (or whatever its called) wrote a paper saying its all just a load of hocus-pocus crap.
A person can only intake so much information. Desensitization will play a factor in people caring less about other's raw data. Maybe it will help us look at each other in a different light: what has this person accomplished with their life and who has this person helped or hurt?
I am going to have to go ahead and agreed with you on this.
In psychology we call this "habitutation". There are a lot of things that enter our mind, especially due to the senses alone. Think about all the stuff you could actually be hearing and seeing right now. Instead you've turned off your hearing and are focusing on the computer screen. Focus out for a second and you might suddenly pick up the whine of your computer fan or the drone of some far away television.
The social atmosphere changes with the forces that influence it, and filters out parts that are inconvenient or too powerful to notice. World War One brought on a sweeping change in the way the people think about themselves. People started talking about themselves in terms of form instead of content. Concepts of honor and chilvary made way for personality and style. But great changes in mass psychology are not merely stories in history books. Its not hard to notice that the internet makes information the paramount variable - thats why they call it the information economy. Without content, you have nothing. Thats a lesson the dot-bomb bubble taught us. and this focus on information permeates the way we interact with each other: look at Douglas Rushkoff's idea of information as social currency - he says that information is presupposed in our interactions and those that can offer it have power (not in those words). Information is power. Information dominates our thinking, our interactions, our business, our media, our newspapers, our politics. Its a good thing, because the more we come to realize how important it is, the more we will value it, and the more we will reject those that make false promises and empty threats.
The sad part is people SHOULD care. Everyone from Joe Average to Bob Businessman should take notice of this.
Are you kidding me?
I mean, I know we're all techies here, but lets break out of our shells for a second. This matters to people who make over 40k a year. Joe Average works in a factory and lets his kids use the internet for schooling. Do you think Joe Average, who was raised on libraries and encyclopedias, cares even for a second about whether his ISP goes down for 6 hours? Joe Average has to deal with bills, healthcare, school, drugs, gangs, crime, etc. etc. Joe Average needs tax dollars spent ensuring the welfare of our society, not the welfare of Bob Businessman's T3 lines so profit margins remain high.
Putting feds on the case of script kiddies is taking away from money and manpower that our society desperately needs. We need more concern over corporate accountability and less for corporate profits.
To everyone that responded to this : Its called a troll.
When will you people learn?
They were empowered by the ALCOHOL trade, not the DRUG trade. Of course, now you're going to give me "alcohol is a drug!" crap, so I'm just not listening to you anymore.
Yeah... ok... the only problem with that statement is that ALCOHOL IS A DRUG.
To say that Alcohol is not a drug is to fall into a classical fallacy. Let me explain it to you so that you dont do it again.
Just because a = b does not mean that only a = b. Get this : c can = b, and even d!
So, the government has told you that marijuana, cocaine and heroin are drugs. What did they tell you about alcohol? Drink Responsibly? lol. Lets get a definition. I'll go with wikipedia.
"A drug is any substance that can be used to treat an illness, relieve a symptom or modify a chemical process in the body for a specific purpose. The term is necessarily a vague one, being defined by intent: for example, foods consumed for normal metabolism are not generally considered "drugs", but the same foods consumed for a more specific purpose (such as the use of alcohol as a depressant or caffeine as a stimulant) may be."
Well, what do we have here? Someone who looks really stupid who uses the handle Grishnakh.
Now, if you need more proof, go talk to the thousands of people who have relatives dying from alcohol addiction, or who have died from alcohol poisening, or whose minds are destroyed because drinking more than a few days in a row causes irrepairable brain damage.
Personally, I would feel unconfortable using only wireless telephone and interner delivery systems. Its not very secure.
I'm not sure what you are trying to prove. There are plenty of independant studies of drug effects online.
My point is, who are you to question the wisdom of
your doctor based on the advice of some probably tainted studies. "Independant"? Where do you think they get funding from? Lengthy clinical trials and molecular testing doesnt come cheap, nor is it done in your backyard. But even if you reject the notion of bias in these studies, what you read on the Internet is rarely, if ever, the study itself, but rather an interpretation of it.
Heres a new point I'd like to inject though: It doesnt take a website to put two and two together. You arent getting better? You've been on the medication for a while? Well if you really think that the meds are going to fix you, tell your doctor its not working. He's not a magician, and its your job to tell him whether the medication is doing its job.
People rely on experts so much these days they cant even tell themselves if they're ok. They think by going to a doctor or reading online they'll get some deep insight. How about a little deep thought or quiet meditation. Listen to yourself. You'd be surprised how the body heals when the mind is relaxed.
He gave me a presciption, I looked it up online, found the dosage he gave me was far smaller than anything I had seen written. Upon asking him about it, he advised not reading websites when it comes to drugs. What about the drug company's website? What if you are curious how the drug works or how it was tested before coming to the market?
I'll go ahead and answer those questions for you. (It doesnt matter what the drug is)
According to the drug company's website, the drug is the best thing ever. According to the company's pre-market testing, it went better than ever.
The reason he told you not to listen to the Internet when trying to get informed about drugs is because the drug companies are in SERIOUS competition with each other and will do just about anything to get you to take their's. You go online and become concerned your doctor didnt prescribe you enough of the drug? Well then you are exactly the kind of person that this article is talking about.
Corporate forces taking aim at the RIAA shows that the RIAA's business model is failing
:
Theres two problems here
First of all, the slashdot blurb doent make it clear, as the article does, that Pepsi is paying to give away 100 million free song downloads on the iTunes website (presumably with the purchase of a Pepsi product). Thats the nature of the "we will still download for free comment", which has nothing to do with subverting copyright law. Its a really great marketing scheme which doesnt really do anything at all except play on your wants and fears, having you make assumptions about the current state of the music industry and Pepsi's stance on it. Scroll up a bit and you'll find a guy professing to buy Pepsi from now on, even though he doesnt really like it.
Secondly, even if there was a mega-corporation taking aim at the RIAA, it wouldnt prove that the business model is failing. This was proven long ago when the RIAA sued a 12 year old for downloading the theme song to Full House (among other songs). It has been proved repeatedly over and over again since then, most notably with the introduction of iTunes - a new business model. If cant be sure yourself, and you need Pepsi to validate this for you... well I dont know what to tell you.
"Sinister motives"?
There is no place for your bias as to what "good" and "bad" things are going on behind the scenes in assessing why it would be a problem for one force to know its opposition's strategy before it is executed. It is a matter of damn obvious logic. Use your head.
Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System;
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.
[unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs] Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away!
[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]
[Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]
what are members of the senate doing in secret that need to be kept out of public view?
:S
ummm, planning their campaign and debating strategies... like TFA says.
If you're going to make a make an RTFA comment, at least make sure you've RTFA....
Nobody tries to fix their radio anymore because it is too complicated with all of the integrated circuits and solid state, specialized, components. I don't think there is any place for cutting teeth on the latest technology in this age.
That is so true. I was just daydreaming about the old days where you flicked on the computer and all you had was a flashing cursor. It really couldn't do much at first glance, but a little exploration could make it do some nifty things.
I feel like computers are always trying to make me do stuff now. Download this, install that, configure this, register that. As a Windows user I am so far removed from the actual programming that the programmers and hardware manufacturers are completely out of touch with my needs. A perfect example is that Keyboard and Mouse article on CNet that was just posted. Read the forums and you'll see that only ONE keyboard manufacturer (Kinesis) actual lives up to even a few of the REAL needs people have.
What I need is barely anything. I could use the internet with text-characters only for interface purposes. Hell, I could use my entire computer in text only, and I would if I wasnt so locked in to the decadent lifestyle that I live. I cant help but to depend on corporations for my computing needs, let alone my basic ones.
Justin Frankel is dead on in his assessment. Every aspect of the internet is now controlled by corporations that are gobbling up more and more internet landscape. If you cant connect to the internet without a corporate mediator, that is a problem. On these forums I would give the great majority of the people the respect to assume that they are aware of the problem of freedom of information. You guys all have good brains: so use them for something more valuable than money. Programs like WASTE are revolutionary in their ability to connect people securely. There is currently an effort to port it to linux, and there are many more things like this that need smart people like you guys.
You dont have to be a progammer either. I am finishing my degree this year and plan to go to Law School next year. I plan to dedicate my life to making information free and secure.
Privacy policies in the US aren't worth the bandwidth they waste. And they will continue to be worthless unless they're backed by strong national (not just state) privacy legislation similar to the Norwegian Personal Data Act or the EU Personal Data Directive.
Interesting comment, but its very unlikely to be implemented on a wide scale in America. The use of Privacy policies and playing off of the customer's good faith, trust or lack of having read the policy is common between government and corporations alike. This Northwest airline case is a perfect example. America requires poor privacy protection.
1) The Economy. Its an information economy and people make lots of money just by buying and selling data on you. A lot of big businesses trade data back and forth, especially between subsidiareies. CEOs have a significant investment in their lax policies, and they enourage their friends in politics not to disturb it.
2) War on terrorism. Bush can shoot down any protection of privacy with those three words.
3) War on drugs. While its not as prominent anymore since there is a new war to funnel money into, the war on drugs requires the passing and sharing of your private data. So if people start going against the war on terrorism, government can just revert back to the old stance.
Dollar for dollar, video games represent probably the cheapest form of entertainment ever developed.
This guy is totally on point.
Not only that, but if you think of a good idea and know how to program well, its one of the best ways to make millions of dollars.
Video games are the modern board games. Once people made millions off of homemade board games that became outrageously popular, and many people tried to emulate the success. Now a hundred years of free market evolution has filtered out only the best board games, but guess what : people are still making millions off of them, and people are still loving games made even before the depression. Even still, if you have a bright idea you can easily enter the market (Think about the very popular new-comer "Cranium")
Video games are the same way. I still play Nethack religiously on my 17" wide laptop (full key keyboard with numpad. oh yes.) with a 128 meg graphics card and half a gig of ram. Why? Because its good and its FREE. But I also BUY the latest stuff if its really top-notch. I play Warcraft III, and I'll tell ya Blizzard is raking it in without all that bullshit the article talks about (unlike the creators of nethack who do it for the love of the game).
Would I pay a small, not-for-profit server maitance fee? I might. But we live in the age of free market competition, and its damn easy for cheap knock offs to cash in. And brand loyalty is certainly not a pressing concern, for me at least.
Not again. You are number 183 to ask this same question. I will just copy and paste what someone else wrote, but I will reference it since this article is about Plagerism. ;)
PrionPryon wrote this, and you can find it by scrolling up a little bit. He got modded +5 so I think its on point.
Students have a decent arguement in saying that they own the material within a paper they write (an original one) and the fact that the system indexes their content if it is deemed legitimate (assuming there is no option to opt out) means the company is bolstering its product without due compensation. The papers i write are my property. They are given to a professor for a grade but even the professor does not have a right to show it as an example without my permission. Reproduction without prior consent, and due compensation, is listed in the cover of most (scientific) journals.article is about Plagerism. PriorPyron.
This is the argument that won over the Mcgill senate, and the argument that will win you over as well. =)
Someone is going to lose a finger within the first week it is out on the market.
I dont know about that.. Remember it only cuts through soft cheese and probably has a very short range. It might cut u but u'd probably flinch and move before it hit the bone, which I doubt it could penetrate.
Still, this is a really amazing story. We're all going to look back on this 20 years from now when the military/street gangs are using laser weapons and gauss guns.
The first consumer laser.. it can only cut 10 millimeters into a block of cheese, but its the first, and its a clear sign of things to come.
"But for home use?
Not going to happen in the us at least.
The legal ramifications and potential misuse will make it unlikely (as cool as it would be)"
I can easily acquire a tec-9 semi automatic machine gun and bullets for it can be bought from Wal-mart, but somehow you think a laser that cuts through cheese will be banned from consumers?
And isnt that "someone-might-do-something-bad-with-it" argument the same one we frown upon which the RIAA/MPAA uses to outlaw threatening hardware?
Get real.
AOL grew out of the BBS era when everyone phoned very small boards that had created their own interface to access the internet. Many people on here will remember calling 10 node boards to check their email, use gopher or post on Usenet.
AOL is a remnant of that era, still offering its own interface to access the web even though its entirely unnecessary. But people like that, people like the boundaries AOL places because the internet can be a scary, confusing place and they simply arent interested and dont have the time to stick their heads out into the abyss. That BBS feel is something people liked in the 80s and still like today.
But remember, the AOL bbs also has an access number at just about every major city in North America. If you own more than one home or travel a lot, you recognize this as being advantageous.
But AOL simply did it better than the rest of the hybrid BBS-Internet companies. They printed up millions of CDs and found a way to get at least one to every person with a computer. Now they have a customer base of 90 million people and its very hard to compete with their brand leverage. Hell, through all the years of Microsoft Hegemoney they went with Netscape on an Internet Explorer dominated operating system (because Netscape also adds to the feel of offering AOL's own user interface).
And now, do you even get any AOL CDs anymore? When is the last time you heard an AOL CD joke? AOL is standard on all computers and comes bundled with tons of software. To a new computer user AOL is often more obvious than MSN simply because of the brand power.
I am not sure what you're angry about.
Its just the way it is.
Probably the same argument for IP telephony vs telephones may be applied. When IP or Internet voice calls become standard and analogue lines become antiquainted we'll see the emergence of some applicance (document scanner with an Ethernet interface).
The thing about analogue lines is their authenticity. It is very difficult to hijack someone's phone number and pretend you are that person. We all know how easy it is to spoof an IP.
Faxes are considered legal documents in many cases, and they are used to transmit official documents, signitures and alike. This is based solely on the fact that they are transmitted over analogue lines an thus offer significant proof of authenticity.
Then again, IP telephony would see the end of a lot of telemarketing because you could never trust anyone to be who they say they are and the chances of someone intercepting the call and garnering your private data would be far, far, FAR higher.