Why don't the publishers jump on kazaa and grab a batch of IP addresses of people hosting mp3s and use the DMCA?
It's simple to answer that one. It's too much work. Haven't you been following the Verison case? Add to the mix dialup, realocation of dynamic IP addresses, Lack of detailed logs by some ISP's, Lack of cooperation by ISP's, Proxies, Gateways, country / political / corporate boundries, etc. It would be like tracking down and suing every spammer that sent you spam. Not an easy task. They are simply looking for an easy to use effective tool to kill filesharing. So what if you loose some drops of blood in the battle, they are trying to keep from bleeding to death. A Band Aid (TM) and and Asprin (TM) isn't going to fix the problem and they know it.
Well spoken from a programmer perspective. It gives the content creator lots of control.
However from the user end...
Flashy zoomy blinky things on a page that can't be turned off are worse than pop-under advertisements.
They forgot the end user interface. It is the reason Macromedia is uninstalled from my system. A play AND Stop button should be the minimum end user controls. Right clicking on something and getting the only option of "About Macromedia 6" is not a valid end user control.
The need to be in control of my system outweighs your need to push and control content on MY machine.
I may pay to be out of control and ride the roller coaster at a theme park, but for my everyday commute to work, my vehicle needs working brakes. I expect no less from my computer.
20 Gallons per minute is only 1200 gallons per hour. A 5,000 gallon trailer will keep the crew busy for a few hours. Two trailers of water is enough to run a full 8 hour shift. I've seen that much water used in an afternoon to keep the dust down on the roads of a construction site. Even in the desert, a truckload of water isn't that much water.
I know the parant is funny, but on a reality check, it makes the choice by how fast it cuts. Bad concrete has lots of tiny cracks. Water gets into this quickly and pops it apart in big ping pong ball size chunks. Solid cement lacks these fissures. The water penetration is slight and slowly wears the binder. Fast cutting with large chunks is bad concrete, slow cutting producing sand and gravel out of the cement is good cement.
I'm suprised they only had pictures of the little golf cart sized robots. Too bad they didn't also show the semi trailer with the deisel powered water pump. It's many times the size of the robot. I watched them replace the Santiam bridge on interstate 5 in Oregon using this. Due to the clearances in the pumps and nozzle, they use a lot of water filters in the pump trailer. They go through filters by the case.
Since they were replacing the bridge and didn't want to drop it into the river, they cut squares of the old bridge with only the re-bar holding them in place. (They cut clear through the bridge) They then put a hole in the center of the squares for lifting, then cut the re-bar holding the square with a torch. Then they loaded the squares of concrete onto a truck by crane. It was neat to watch. The biggest noise was the pump trailer which sounded like an electric generator truck they use for carnivals.
I'm familiar with that problem. I think they get a good subsidy from AOL. I don't know how often I've had to boot the signup icon off my desktop. I wish there was a software do not call (install) that I could set somewhere that would stop the hitchhikers. X-10 pop ups on the web and AOL hitchhiking OS'es and applications to the desktop. Egads, enough already.
The more I learn IP chains for the web problems and open source for killing hitchhikers, the more I prefer open source software. The cruft is better filtered.
Ummm even easier.. A single user shouldn't saturate the company OC3. Hovever a set of servers and a bunch of compromised users machines will. This is the multimple minute saturation level that trips the fuse.
Take a look at the typical university bandwidth usage or small ISP. Saturation in absense of P-P is rare. Short spikes do occur. This of course will not work on your typical home user on a less than 1 meg connection on DSL or a Cable Modem. The single user BW cap creates saturations at the cap. Now if a virus nailed your ISP servers and a good portion of users each at their BW cap, this would saturate the main connections for a sustained period. To limit contributition to the problem the fuse should disconnect the shool/small ISP giving the IT staff time to examine the fault offline.
I think a fuse function should be included. Anything that saturates your uplink for 5 minutes should drop you off the net. This could be from anything such as a rogue robot, cracked or exploited mail server serving mass SPAM, a fast SQL type virus, or a break-in copying your fileserver. P-P serving lots of copyrighted material would also trip it. This could have a few anoyance false trips, but if fuses are widely used, it could greatly slow the kind of stuff we want off the net anyway. Maybe it could even save your webserver from melting when it's posted on/.
Re:No more car tinkering...
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
I measured my body's resistance using a multimeter
Go to the tropics where it's hot and humid. Work below deck in an aluminum boat. Use a wrench to take a wire loose. Have your buddy call 911 for you. Moist skin with an electrolyte (salt) and open pores seriously drops galvanic skin response. Your skin resistance drops way down. 12 volts can kill. I got badly shocked that way changing out a 12 volt boat battery.
I forgot to mention, but the magnetic field on these wires is directly proportional to the current in them irregardless of the voltage. Anyone with a pacemaker should be careful near the 12 volt version.
A pair of wires near each other with 4,000 amps tend to relocate themselves unless solidly held in place.
Re:Hybred Voltage
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For electronics that a consumer can contact, the voltage still needs to be limited. With lots of grounded metal nearby, doing auto wireing is kinda like wireing your house circuit breaker panel while standing in a puddle in bare feet. It's not a great idea at high voltage.
This means that for a given efficiensy, the wieght of the wiring is proportional to the square of the current. I.e. Twice the current needs 4 times the copper.
Anybody want to take a stab at figuring wire sizes for a 1 volt drop in two examples below? If you do, figure a wireing length from battery to comverter (AC Variable frequency, variable voltage) to engine alternator/startermotor to drive motor, regenerative braking loop of about 15 feet. (7 feet each conductor + & -)
Anyway, the Toyota Prius uses a 300 volt battery for the electric drivetrain end of things. That keeps the wire sizes reasonable. For compatibility, it uses a converter to keep up a 12 volt battery (motorbike sized) for the lights, computer, instermentation, etc. The battery is small because it is not used to crank the engine. The 300 volt does it. If they dropped the voltage by 10, the current required to do the same job would go up by a factor of 10. Therefore a motor instead of running 200A at 300 volts would run 2,000A at 30 volts, or (ready for the 12 volt system) 4,000 Amps at 15 volts.
Here is where the big losses in low voltage systems come from. Drop 1 volt in the 15 volt system due to 4000 amps in a very large wire and your loss is 4,000 Watts. Can you say hot wires! Drop 1 volt on the 300 volt line at 200A on a much smaller wire and the loss is only 200 Watts. You can use a much smaller wire to get a better job done. At 746 watts per horsepower, the loss in the 300 volt example is about.25 hoursepower and in the 12 volt example it's about 5.3 horsepower gone to heat.
Driving a Toyota Prius is an experiance. It has the get up and go of a V6 even though it's a 1 Liter 4 cylinder engine. It gets it's merge to the freeway with a combination of gas and battery power. The engine auto shuts off for stoplights (restarts as you take off again) Other than the silence at a stop sign or light, you would never know the engine shut off. Because of this, it gets better milage in stop and go city traffic than freeway driving with it's high wind resistance. These would be fantastic for a fleet of taxies.
Don't subscribe to text messaging services. Use the phone as just a phone. No valid caller ID, No answer, No problem. Clean out the voice mail from a landline to save airtime.
My company requires me to carry a pager. Those who know the pager number can page me. Pagers generaly don't get spam. The service prividers do follow up on complaints. In 4 years, I received one text spam on the pager.
This is to inform you that I have not clicked to accept your ridiculous EULA
I know this sounds crazy, but what software di you get to install after you declined? I hit decline on some, and it refused to continue the install. The worst part is the store refused to refund the purchase price.. Grrr. I'm going to start taking my computer to the store. I'll only pay for the software if I click agree on the EULA.
The biggest EULA rejection I now do is the one that opens you to an audit at any time and any reason. Sorry, can't give permission for that.. Too much BSA horror stories to agree to that one. You will need a court order first. It's one of the biggest reasons to move to open source software. Less legal trouble.
11. If I uninstall a piece of software, the uninstall program must NOT require the original install disk.
I know what you mean by that point first hand.
Two examples; Installed Office 97 on a machine. The 52X drive ate the disk on install. Finished the install with another disk. Later moving the machine to another department, I was unable to uninstall Office 97. The uninstall program asks for the original disk by serial number. Sorry MS and BSA, we made a good faith effort to uninstall it. Reformatting was not an option.
Second expample, received 12 used computers for a Non Profit. They came with WIN 98 with disks and Certificates. They also have Office 97 on them. No disks, No Certificates, no working uninstall program.. Grrr. Don't wish to trigger an audit by asking MS for help removing Office 97. Already installed Star Office. Nice program.
GHz-based transmissions were pretty much unheard of at 30,000 feet
Um correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there a lot of high powered radar sets scanning that airspace? Don't they work in the multiple GHX range? Am I missing something? How come a cell phone screws up a magnetic compass from the passanger cabin on a plane, but doesn't phase a boat compass at the cockpit? OK you might see a defelection if you set the phone down within 1 foot of a compass. That's due to the magnet in it's earphone. It makes no diffrence to a magnetic compass if the phone is on or off. Get real here folks. I don't buy the compass FUD.
I fully understand the problem with the cell service on the ground taking a hit from a cell phone hitting every tower within 100 miles, but what does that have to do with aircraft navigation.
I just take it back and exchange it for another copy of the same CD, since this one's defective. What? This one is defective, too? Well, let's try one more...just one more...this time for sure. What do mean you're out of the CD?
Actualy we did once. We asked the store about the missing logo when the second one also didn't work. They worked in the store CD player. They tried to convince me I had a bad player. I got to educate them on defective CD's. (it's the one with the visable ring near the edge a-la sharpie fix) I told them I couldn't use any DRM stuff bucause using it (ripping it for the jukebox) was a DMCA violation. I wasn't going to risk jail time to use the CD. Either refund the money or sell me something that wouldn't send me to jail by using it. We got another title with the logo in spite of the no return policy.
I am a parant. I'll tell you how a responsible parant copes.
1. No unspervised internet. The computer with a net connection is in the living room, not in a secluded place. The kids can not login. An adult must log in. It even helps keeping the adults from strayin into the wrong places. You wouldn't want the kids asking about your cookies or history.
2. No E-mail of any kind for the kids. I have to treat E-mail the same as adult magazines. It's not for the kids.
It's a shame such a great research tool has to be so limited for kids. If there were no spam (unsolicited email of commercial nature) I wouldn't worry about the kids using e-mail instead of the post office to write Grandma. Unfortunately, the trash in the inbox means only accounts for the adults. Mail for the kids is screened by the adults before printing and giving to the kids. Other than treating internet like the playboy channel on TV and not having it if you have kids, this is the only solution I came up with.
I think the library's should provide an internet kiosk on every block so when I can no longer afford a phone or Internet, I can walk down the street and use it for free. Man it's 6 miles to the local Library! Maybe instead of spending to build the extra buildings, maybe they could just put up a WI/FI point on each street to save me from having to walk to the library.
Just kidding.
However, a nominal usage fee (TAX) should apply to library users for Internet just as they apply to me.
Idealy they should both be 0.00. I do pay property tax.
On a side note. I live in Vancouver WA. It's a fair size town. I can not get DSL. My wife's sister who lives in Canby Oregon on a dairy farm gets DSL. I think the rural program works too well. I may have to move to the country to get DSL. Cable is just too expensive as stated in other posts. I don't subscribe to Cable TV so they want and extra $10+ to subsidize the TV viewers. Tack on an extra cable modem tax and it will be a long time before I switch from dial up. Wi-Fi may become my only option. My dial up line hasn't been under $20/month in decades. I may have to drop it for a cell phone. Dial up is almost more expensive than a cell phone with all the extra charges now on it.
Unfortunately changing the policy is reducing the amount of software I'm willing to try. I don't like buying a pig in a poke.
Examples I've run into. Hasbro Battleship (I know old game) It won't run unless you set your colors to 8. I don't reconfigure my machine each time I want to change games.. Grrr.
Nerf Arena Blast. Unable to find out pre purchase if it will spawn players or if seprate copies are needed for LAN play. The Demo worked great, The retal copy bought for a lan party required a CD in the drive unlike the demo. Grrr.. Other games I have will Spawn players for a LAN game without requiring multiple lisences & disks... Of course after opening the poke to see the pig.. It's not returnable. So the dilema is Do I pirate extra copies, Write nasty letters, or turn to P-P to get the scoup pre-purchase.
Epilog... I used the free demo version for the LAN party. It workde great. I can now enjoy the retail version after I found a hack to run it without the CD in the drive. Now it runs like the demo. I love Google!
I've learned how to vote on the subject. I look for the Compact Disk logo. No Logo, No Sale. So far I've managed to escape the cripled CD. Only the kids managed to pick up one. When it couldn't properly be ripped for the MP3 player, they learned to look for the label also. Remember you do have a vote that they will hear. It's called dollars. If no logo stuff doesn't sell at all, the artists will push for their stuff to be on a format the consumers will buy.
Have you run into any indie recording with DRM junk? I've not seen it yet. So far it's been mostly EMI and SONY that most often has the Compact Disk logo missing.
Any business when too risky, reduces entry into the field. 10 years ago the concern was who is delivering babies in small towns? This was due to excessive malpratice lawsuits for less than perfect babies. It had to be the doctor's fault, make him pay, he has insurance, yada... Doh, the insurance rates went out of sight to cover the increased risk. Small physisians simply could not afford it and left the small town practice, or simply stopped delivering babies to drop the high insurance premium.
The problem has not improved. With managed healthcare, not only is the risk high, but the potential earnings are down with extreme workloads.
This is one of the great reasons I went into electronics instead of the medical field. A failure is limited to replacement cost, not pain, suffering, potential income over lifetime etc. The pay is better for a surgeon, but the risk kept me out of the field.
So tell me, where is the next generation of doctors comming from?
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't the publishers jump on kazaa and grab a batch of IP addresses of people hosting mp3s and use the DMCA?
It's simple to answer that one. It's too much work. Haven't you been following the Verison case? Add to the mix dialup, realocation of dynamic IP addresses, Lack of detailed logs by some ISP's, Lack of cooperation by ISP's, Proxies, Gateways, country / political / corporate boundries, etc. It would be like tracking down and suing every spammer that sent you spam. Not an easy task. They are simply looking for an easy to use effective tool to kill filesharing. So what if you loose some drops of blood in the battle, they are trying to keep from bleeding to death. A Band Aid (TM) and and Asprin (TM) isn't going to fix the problem and they know it.
And Flash is perfectly capable
Well spoken from a programmer perspective. It gives the content creator lots of control.
However from the user end...
Flashy zoomy blinky things on a page that can't be turned off are worse than pop-under advertisements.
They forgot the end user interface. It is the reason Macromedia is uninstalled from my system. A play AND Stop button should be the minimum end user controls. Right clicking on something and getting the only option of "About Macromedia 6" is not a valid end user control.
The need to be in control of my system outweighs your need to push and control content on MY machine.
I may pay to be out of control and ride the roller coaster at a theme park, but for my everyday commute to work, my vehicle needs working brakes. I expect no less from my computer.
If it runs out of my control, it gets eliminated.
(Ah, sweet memories...Anyone here who did NOT hack the high-school computer network? ;)
;-)
I graduated in 1975. IBM came out the the PC in 1981.
There was no network to hack you insensitive clod.
20 Gallons per minute is only 1200 gallons per hour. A 5,000 gallon trailer will keep the crew busy for a few hours. Two trailers of water is enough to run a full 8 hour shift. I've seen that much water used in an afternoon to keep the dust down on the roads of a construction site. Even in the desert, a truckload of water isn't that much water.
I know the parant is funny, but on a reality check, it makes the choice by how fast it cuts. Bad concrete has lots of tiny cracks. Water gets into this quickly and pops it apart in big ping pong ball size chunks. Solid cement lacks these fissures. The water penetration is slight and slowly wears the binder. Fast cutting with large chunks is bad concrete, slow cutting producing sand and gravel out of the cement is good cement.
I'm suprised they only had pictures of the little golf cart sized robots. Too bad they didn't also show the semi trailer with the deisel powered water pump. It's many times the size of the robot. I watched them replace the Santiam bridge on interstate 5 in Oregon using this. Due to the clearances in the pumps and nozzle, they use a lot of water filters in the pump trailer. They go through filters by the case.
Since they were replacing the bridge and didn't want to drop it into the river, they cut squares of the old bridge with only the re-bar holding them in place. (They cut clear through the bridge) They then put a hole in the center of the squares for lifting, then cut the re-bar holding the square with a torch. Then they loaded the squares of concrete onto a truck by crane. It was neat to watch. The biggest noise was the pump trailer which sounded like an electric generator truck they use for carnivals.
I'm familiar with that problem. I think they get a good subsidy from AOL. I don't know how often I've had to boot the signup icon off my desktop. I wish there was a software do not call (install) that I could set somewhere that would stop the hitchhikers. X-10 pop ups on the web and AOL hitchhiking OS'es and applications to the desktop. Egads, enough already.
The more I learn IP chains for the web problems and open source for killing hitchhikers, the more I prefer open source software. The cruft is better filtered.
Am I the only one who is worried about shrinkage?
I would think shrinkage would be the least of your worries.
Ummm even easier.. A single user shouldn't saturate the company OC3. Hovever a set of servers and a bunch of compromised users machines will. This is the multimple minute saturation level that trips the fuse.
Take a look at the typical university bandwidth usage or small ISP. Saturation in absense of P-P is rare. Short spikes do occur. This of course will not work on your typical home user on a less than 1 meg connection on DSL or a Cable Modem. The single user BW cap creates saturations at the cap. Now if a virus nailed your ISP servers and a good portion of users each at their BW cap, this would saturate the main connections for a sustained period. To limit contributition to the problem the fuse should disconnect the shool/small ISP giving the IT staff time to examine the fault offline.
I think a fuse function should be included. Anything that saturates your uplink for 5 minutes should drop you off the net. This could be from anything such as a rogue robot, cracked or exploited mail server serving mass SPAM, a fast SQL type virus, or a break-in copying your fileserver. P-P serving lots of copyrighted material would also trip it. This could have a few anoyance false trips, but if fuses are widely used, it could greatly slow the kind of stuff we want off the net anyway. Maybe it could even save your webserver from melting when it's posted on /.
I measured my body's resistance using a multimeter
Go to the tropics where it's hot and humid. Work below deck in an aluminum boat. Use a wrench to take a wire loose. Have your buddy call 911 for you. Moist skin with an electrolyte (salt) and open pores seriously drops galvanic skin response. Your skin resistance drops way down. 12 volts can kill. I got badly shocked that way changing out a 12 volt boat battery.
I forgot to mention, but the magnetic field on these wires is directly proportional to the current in them irregardless of the voltage. Anyone with a pacemaker should be careful near the 12 volt version.
A pair of wires near each other with 4,000 amps tend to relocate themselves unless solidly held in place.
For electronics that a consumer can contact, the voltage still needs to be limited. With lots of grounded metal nearby, doing auto wireing is kinda like wireing your house circuit breaker panel while standing in a puddle in bare feet. It's not a great idea at high voltage.
.25 hoursepower and in the 12 volt example it's about 5.3 horsepower gone to heat.
This means that for a given efficiensy, the wieght of the wiring is proportional to the square of the current. I.e. Twice the current needs 4 times the copper.
Anybody want to take a stab at figuring wire sizes for a 1 volt drop in two examples below? If you do, figure a wireing length from battery to comverter (AC Variable frequency, variable voltage) to engine alternator/startermotor to drive motor, regenerative braking loop of about 15 feet. (7 feet each conductor + & -)
Anyway, the Toyota Prius uses a 300 volt battery for the electric drivetrain end of things. That keeps the wire sizes reasonable. For compatibility, it uses a converter to keep up a 12 volt battery (motorbike sized) for the lights, computer, instermentation, etc. The battery is small because it is not used to crank the engine. The 300 volt does it. If they dropped the voltage by 10, the current required to do the same job would go up by a factor of 10. Therefore a motor instead of running 200A at 300 volts would run 2,000A at 30 volts, or (ready for the 12 volt system) 4,000 Amps at 15 volts.
Here is where the big losses in low voltage systems come from. Drop 1 volt in the 15 volt system due to 4000 amps in a very large wire and your loss is 4,000 Watts. Can you say hot wires! Drop 1 volt on the 300 volt line at 200A on a much smaller wire and the loss is only 200 Watts. You can use a much smaller wire to get a better job done.
At 746 watts per horsepower, the loss in the 300 volt example is about
Driving a Toyota Prius is an experiance. It has the get up and go of a V6 even though it's a 1 Liter 4 cylinder engine. It gets it's merge to the freeway with a combination of gas and battery power. The engine auto shuts off for stoplights (restarts as you take off again) Other than the silence at a stop sign or light, you would never know the engine shut off. Because of this, it gets better milage in stop and go city traffic than freeway driving with it's high wind resistance. These would be fantastic for a fleet of taxies.
Don't subscribe to text messaging services. Use the phone as just a phone. No valid caller ID, No answer, No problem. Clean out the voice mail from a landline to save airtime.
My company requires me to carry a pager. Those who know the pager number can page me. Pagers generaly don't get spam. The service prividers do follow up on complaints. In 4 years, I received one text spam on the pager.
This is to inform you that I have not clicked to accept your ridiculous EULA
I know this sounds crazy, but what software di you get to install after you declined? I hit decline on some, and it refused to continue the install. The worst part is the store refused to refund the purchase price.. Grrr. I'm going to start taking my computer to the store. I'll only pay for the software if I click agree on the EULA.
The biggest EULA rejection I now do is the one that opens you to an audit at any time and any reason. Sorry, can't give permission for that.. Too much BSA horror stories to agree to that one. You will need a court order first.
It's one of the biggest reasons to move to open source software. Less legal trouble.
11. If I uninstall a piece of software, the uninstall program must NOT require the original install disk.
I know what you mean by that point first hand.
Two examples; Installed Office 97 on a machine. The 52X drive ate the disk on install. Finished the install with another disk. Later moving the machine to another department, I was unable to uninstall Office 97. The uninstall program asks for the original disk by serial number. Sorry MS and BSA, we made a good faith effort to uninstall it. Reformatting was not an option.
Second expample, received 12 used computers for a Non Profit. They came with WIN 98 with disks and Certificates. They also have Office 97 on them. No disks, No Certificates, no working uninstall program.. Grrr. Don't wish to trigger an audit by asking MS for help removing Office 97. Already installed Star Office. Nice program.
GHz-based transmissions were pretty much unheard of at 30,000 feet
Um correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there a lot of high powered radar sets scanning that airspace? Don't they work in the multiple GHX range? Am I missing something? How come a cell phone screws up a magnetic compass from the passanger cabin on a plane, but doesn't phase a boat compass at the cockpit? OK you might see a defelection if you set the phone down within 1 foot of a compass. That's due to the magnet in it's earphone. It makes no diffrence to a magnetic compass if the phone is on or off. Get real here folks. I don't buy the compass FUD.
I fully understand the problem with the cell service on the ground taking a hit from a cell phone hitting every tower within 100 miles, but what does that have to do with aircraft navigation.
I just take it back and exchange it for another copy of the same CD, since this one's defective. What? This one is defective, too? Well, let's try one more...just one more...this time for sure. What do mean you're out of the CD?
Actualy we did once. We asked the store about the missing logo when the second one also didn't work. They worked in the store CD player. They tried to convince me I had a bad player. I got to educate them on defective CD's. (it's the one with the visable ring near the edge a-la sharpie fix) I told them I couldn't use any DRM stuff bucause using it (ripping it for the jukebox) was a DMCA violation. I wasn't going to risk jail time to use the CD. Either refund the money or sell me something that wouldn't send me to jail by using it. We got another title with the logo in spite of the no return policy.
I am a parant. I'll tell you how a responsible parant copes.
1. No unspervised internet. The computer with a net connection is in the living room, not in a secluded place. The kids can not login. An adult must log in. It even helps keeping the adults from strayin into the wrong places. You wouldn't want the kids asking about your cookies or history.
2. No E-mail of any kind for the kids. I have to treat E-mail the same as adult magazines. It's not for the kids.
It's a shame such a great research tool has to be so limited for kids. If there were no spam (unsolicited email of commercial nature) I wouldn't worry about the kids using e-mail instead of the post office to write Grandma. Unfortunately, the trash in the inbox means only accounts for the adults. Mail for the kids is screened by the adults before printing and giving to the kids. Other than treating internet like the playboy channel on TV and not having it if you have kids, this is the only solution I came up with.
I think the library's should provide an internet kiosk on every block so when I can no longer afford a phone or Internet, I can walk down the street and use it for free. Man it's 6 miles to the local Library! Maybe instead of spending to build the extra buildings, maybe they could just put up a WI/FI point on each street to save me from having to walk to the library.
Just kidding.
However, a nominal usage fee (TAX) should apply to library users for Internet just as they apply to me.
Idealy they should both be 0.00. I do pay property tax.
On a side note. I live in Vancouver WA. It's a fair size town. I can not get DSL. My wife's sister who lives in Canby Oregon on a dairy farm gets DSL. I think the rural program works too well. I may have to move to the country to get DSL. Cable is just too expensive as stated in other posts. I don't subscribe to Cable TV so they want and extra $10+ to subsidize the TV viewers. Tack on an extra cable modem tax and it will be a long time before I switch from dial up. Wi-Fi may become my only option. My dial up line hasn't been under $20/month in decades. I may have to drop it for a cell phone. Dial up is almost more expensive than a cell phone with all the extra charges now on it.
They are not 100% effective. ;-) My parrents did use them.
Unfortunately changing the policy is reducing the amount of software I'm willing to try. I don't like buying a pig in a poke.
Examples I've run into. Hasbro Battleship (I know old game) It won't run unless you set your colors to 8. I don't reconfigure my machine each time I want to change games.. Grrr.
Nerf Arena Blast. Unable to find out pre purchase if it will spawn players or if seprate copies are needed for LAN play. The Demo worked great, The retal copy bought for a lan party required a CD in the drive unlike the demo. Grrr.. Other games I have will Spawn players for a LAN game without requiring multiple lisences & disks... Of course after opening the poke to see the pig.. It's not returnable. So the dilema is Do I pirate extra copies, Write nasty letters, or turn to P-P to get the scoup pre-purchase.
Epilog... I used the free demo version for the LAN party. It workde great. I can now enjoy the retail version after I found a hack to run it without the CD in the drive. Now it runs like the demo. I love Google!
I've learned how to vote on the subject. I look for the Compact Disk logo. No Logo, No Sale. So far I've managed to escape the cripled CD. Only the kids managed to pick up one. When it couldn't properly be ripped for the MP3 player, they learned to look for the label also. Remember you do have a vote that they will hear. It's called dollars. If no logo stuff doesn't sell at all, the artists will push for their stuff to be on a format the consumers will buy.
Have you run into any indie recording with DRM junk? I've not seen it yet. So far it's been mostly EMI and SONY that most often has the Compact Disk logo missing.
Any business when too risky, reduces entry into the field. 10 years ago the concern was who is delivering babies in small towns? This was due to excessive malpratice lawsuits for less than perfect babies. It had to be the doctor's fault, make him pay, he has insurance, yada... Doh, the insurance rates went out of sight to cover the increased risk. Small physisians simply could not afford it and left the small town practice, or simply stopped delivering babies to drop the high insurance premium.
The problem has not improved. With managed healthcare, not only is the risk high, but the potential earnings are down with extreme workloads.
This is one of the great reasons I went into electronics instead of the medical field. A failure is limited to replacement cost, not pain, suffering, potential income over lifetime etc. The pay is better for a surgeon, but the risk kept me out of the field.
So tell me, where is the next generation of doctors comming from?