as much as I love star wars - I cant stand lucas... basically I see him as someone who's whole career is riding on the one good success he had - A new Hope, ep IV....
He is *not* the genius visionary that all his buddies and hollywood ass kissers like to tell him he is - he just had one really good idea - but now he is just a greedy flipping bastard without imagination and vision. The star wars universe has been built up and expanded upon by the great fans that have loved the original seed that lucas planted and nurtured it into a mature and full concept - the only thing lucas does for the sar wars universe these days is capitalize on it.
he is not a good director, he is just someone who stumbled onto something that became great - regardless of him. but he keeps his imperial grip on the concept and makes himself more and more into the palpatine we despise....
I just want to know if any of you have come across this scam:
(I have seen this happen 3 times in my career in IT)
You get a call from some one, they find out that you are in charge of purchasing for you IT dept in your co. They tell you that they are going to send you your free gift! a small tv or some such thing. If you accept this gift - they send you a pallat (sp?) of laser printer toner cartridges and try to charge you like $200.00 each.
They bill you and try to send you an invoice at some regular interval.
When I first got into IT I mistakenly accepted the seemingly innocent free gift from a vendor and had this happen. They had told me that they were an authorized HP cartridge re-manufacturer, and that the toner cartridges containg high quality super fine toner which yeilded over a thousand more pages per cartridge (no - I did not fall for this BS as i will explain) - they continued on the superiority of their re-furbished crap... I was very wise/lucky to basically record the conversation in transcript form in notepad....
I told them I did not want to buy any of their cartridges - but sure I would accept the free gift that they wanted to send me regardles... big mistake. They sent the free gift all right - right along with half a pallet of the toner cartridges i didnt want.
So I accepted the gift, but refused delivery of the pallet. but the delivery guy was apparently giving instructions not to take no for an answer and would not accept the refusal of delivery. and left me with the pallet - and the invoice for a few thousand dollars.
I was pissed off... luckily I had the entire ordeal meticulously documented... for some reason I felt the whole thing was fishy and kept very good notes.
being that the company said that they were one of the few nationally certified and autorized HP cartridge manufacturers - and that the delivery of the toner carts was total BS - and that they were charging over 200 per toner I was pissed off.
I called up HP and asked about their authorizing such shady companies - I was informed by HP that there was nbo such thing as an auth'd cartridge remanufacturer... and they forwarded me to their legal dept. I talked with them about the whole thing... emailed the transcripts of the whole ordeal - and they sent someone next day to pick up the pallet of illegal cartridges (but said I could keep two or three for my troubles)\
Then since we never paid the invoice to the con company - they called up demanding their money. I told them that I would be happy to pay them - if they could prove that they were authorized HP remanufacturers (I dont remember exactly why - but HP said that I should not tell them that I had reported them until they gave me the go ahead... they said to give them the run around on the invoice for a few weeks - and they would contact me and tell me when they had completed their investigation)
they called every single day trying to get payment out of us. Then they sent us another pallet of toner carts - that HP galdly picked up again the next day.
Finally I had the pleasure of telling the guys on the other end of the line that I ahd documented every last detail - including them verifying their mailing address 3 times for payment of the invoice and had reported them to HP and the BBB and the state attorney general for fraud. You should have heard the guy on the other end - he went stark raving mad into a panic - especially after I was able to document exact conversations and every single time they called me.
They claimed that what I did was illegal and that I should be prepared to be sued "big time" by them. They never called me again....
But ! some others tried to get in on the game a few years later. I received calls where they said "Hi, sam - we would like to send you your free gift!" I would ask them what company they were from, get them to repeat and verify their company name a few times - then laugh and tell them I knew their scam and that I was calling the Ca state attorney general - they would promptly hang up.
I just think its funny that we have the official Intel (r) company logo for stories relating to Intel.... but we use the Borg Gates logo for anything relating to M$. Funny.
and here is the equation to determine if its time to upgrade based on new prices from vendors:
(Orig. price of machine - New price of machine)= (total savings in purchasing new machine as compared to old machines original price)*(wife nagging about "why do you need a new processor, whats wrong with this machine")*(days having to go without sex for buying new machine regardless of wifes bitching)/((fun value of getting to play on new machine)*(time with wife not talking to you and you sleeping on couch anyway)) - ((kiss ass gift for wife to make up for new machine)/(one week))
I hope this clears things up for you.. YMMV if wife = 1, see above else New machine Whoop!
ya but - to be out 500 or 1k will give you one kick ass machine these days. how much was your cel 366? when i worked for intel doing the celeron pushes et al - they were supposed to be the sub 1k (999.99) machines for home users. now anything over 1k is considered rather overpriced - and the machine you get is expected to be quite powerful. but for a few hundred you have the perfect gameing/workstation and in some cases server boxen you could want.
its interesting that we now see the most expensive single components of the machine are the video card (if youre getting a nice new spiffy military grade Gf4) and the monitor (if youre getting some nice new spiffy large scale flat screen.
I love it - I just wish the economy was good enought to give me a job so i could upgrade my slow POS 800 with a weak ass Gf2 64mb.
cmon guys - myst's days are long gone... give up. why not try to make something NEW - rather than ride the one game that was good 8 years ago forever.
It reminds me of those guys who would go to highschool parties after they had already graduated - but still wore their letterman football jackets with "county champs, '92" patches. Thinking that all the chicks will think they are cool and hot cuz they graduated, and dont have a 1am curfew... losers.
From OfficeDepot, I figure I will get all the felt tip pens i can now - and i will corner the illicit felt tip pen market in no time. Screw coke and pot sales... illegal felt tip pens are gunna bring in a fortune! Its like prohibition all over again. Just call me Al!!
Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs? Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.
If Life were like OfficeMAX:
Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs? Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.Right next to the felt tip pens which can be used to circumvent the copy protection of the CDs taht you may be copying. Here I'll print out the instructions for you. And here is my username and password to ftp.phat-warez.com
I was at 50 karma for the past several weeks... posted many o' comment in that time... and recently posted several (recently=today) in which I was modded up... but being at the cap 50 - I remained there. then this overrated mod comes in - and deducts me -1 to 49....
but on a previous post (within the same hour) I get +2 or something.... but since I was already at 50 - it doesnt count?!
I dont give a rats ass about/. karma - only real karma applies to me and what i do - but this is obviously a broken system, and if its to remain broken like this fine - but stop calling it karma - as karma is universal law, and by no means broken (or capped).....
c'mon pater - you think you're so smart. make a better alternative to karma!! and OS it!!!
"Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value"
Thats precisely the reason why we bash them. They have made the laws and the system so convoluted and BS - that we MUST have them in court to defend against what in common speak would be a BS frivolous suit. Lawyers suck ass period - regardless of how much you need them when you get to court. Courts should be for real people to put up a real case - and win if they are correct. Not a place to have each side see who has the most money to hire the better weasel. (O.J. Simpson - Ramsey ad infintum)
In response to to this - and a response to your post:
The rebels are the old guard royal families that are trying to get the empire back to the old republic yes... however it can also be thought of like this:
China comes in and conqueres the US and the rest of the world. and unites it under one dictator and a heavy handed henchmen. Holds it in place with a shitload of human clones and kills lots of people.
but the cheney-bush-blair families are pissed off and want their power back. so they lead a rebel force of kung fu fighters with laser pointers to get the world back to the way they like it.
They are really no better than the evil chinese dictator - they kill lots of people in the interests of the oil^H^H^H republic. and want to ensure that their "royal-with-cheese" families keep all the money and power, with the guise of peace (at least on home soil).
Are we talking star wars - or what. The article is attached to the wrong thread of comments. The Title of this should be "Benign Dictators or not - Slashdot readers want to know"
sorry but i really wouldlike an explanation of this. I have bee reading/. for about 5 and ahalf years now... and I see "free as in beer" a lot on here - but i dont know where the reference comes from. please humor me and lfill me in...
uh... no more like uber-sopranos. there have been many stories about this in the past - basically the mob has their people in the phone co - and they hijack calls to businesses (mostly call girls) from the hotels. then re-route the calls to their own call girls and take the business.
sometimes they dont even hijack the call they just tap it - then when the call girl shows up its too late and the "john" is already being serviced....
when the people who were losing out in this deal bitched to the fcc? the investigation showed that not a single call was lost. (basically the staff in the phone co were alerted to the investigation and stopped their hijacking while it was going on)
the thing was that the FCC gave the telco a WEEKS notice that they were going to investigate this... so the word got out and the mob held back.
this is BS and pisses me off. I would like to take a base-ball bat to the kneecaps of the idiots that gave the telco "notice of impending investigation"
"His more interesting experiment involves latent fingerprints. He takes a fingerprint left on a piece of glass, enhances it with a cyanoacrylate adhesive, and then photographs it with a digital camera. Using PhotoShop, he improves the contrast and prints the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet. Then, he takes a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (PCB) and uses the fingerprint transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper, making it three-dimensional"
Bah! Too much work - I just wanna shape shift ala Mystique!
Slashdot Mirror
as much as I love star wars - I cant stand lucas... basically I see him as someone who's whole career is riding on the one good success he had - A new Hope, ep IV....
He is *not* the genius visionary that all his buddies and hollywood ass kissers like to tell him he is - he just had one really good idea - but now he is just a greedy flipping bastard without imagination and vision. The star wars universe has been built up and expanded upon by the great fans that have loved the original seed that lucas planted and nurtured it into a mature and full concept - the only thing lucas does for the sar wars universe these days is capitalize on it.
he is not a good director, he is just someone who stumbled onto something that became great - regardless of him. but he keeps his imperial grip on the concept and makes himself more and more into the palpatine we despise....
/rant
I just want to know if any of you have come across this scam:
(I have seen this happen 3 times in my career in IT)
You get a call from some one, they find out that you are in charge of purchasing for you IT dept in your co. They tell you that they are going to send you your free gift! a small tv or some such thing. If you accept this gift - they send you a pallat (sp?) of laser printer toner cartridges and try to charge you like $200.00 each.
They bill you and try to send you an invoice at some regular interval.
When I first got into IT I mistakenly accepted the seemingly innocent free gift from a vendor and had this happen. They had told me that they were an authorized HP cartridge re-manufacturer, and that the toner cartridges containg high quality super fine toner which yeilded over a thousand more pages per cartridge (no - I did not fall for this BS as i will explain) - they continued on the superiority of their re-furbished crap... I was very wise/lucky to basically record the conversation in transcript form in notepad....
I told them I did not want to buy any of their cartridges - but sure I would accept the free gift that they wanted to send me regardles... big mistake. They sent the free gift all right - right along with half a pallet of the toner cartridges i didnt want.
So I accepted the gift, but refused delivery of the pallet. but the delivery guy was apparently giving instructions not to take no for an answer and would not accept the refusal of delivery. and left me with the pallet - and the invoice for a few thousand dollars.
I was pissed off... luckily I had the entire ordeal meticulously documented... for some reason I felt the whole thing was fishy and kept very good notes.
being that the company said that they were one of the few nationally certified and autorized HP cartridge manufacturers - and that the delivery of the toner carts was total BS - and that they were charging over 200 per toner I was pissed off.
I called up HP and asked about their authorizing such shady companies - I was informed by HP that there was nbo such thing as an auth'd cartridge remanufacturer... and they forwarded me to their legal dept. I talked with them about the whole thing... emailed the transcripts of the whole ordeal - and they sent someone next day to pick up the pallet of illegal cartridges (but said I could keep two or three for my troubles)\
Then since we never paid the invoice to the con company - they called up demanding their money. I told them that I would be happy to pay them - if they could prove that they were authorized HP remanufacturers (I dont remember exactly why - but HP said that I should not tell them that I had reported them until they gave me the go ahead... they said to give them the run around on the invoice for a few weeks - and they would contact me and tell me when they had completed their investigation)
they called every single day trying to get payment out of us. Then they sent us another pallet of toner carts - that HP galdly picked up again the next day.
Finally I had the pleasure of telling the guys on the other end of the line that I ahd documented every last detail - including them verifying their mailing address 3 times for payment of the invoice and had reported them to HP and the BBB and the state attorney general for fraud. You should have heard the guy on the other end - he went stark raving mad into a panic - especially after I was able to document exact conversations and every single time they called me.
They claimed that what I did was illegal and that I should be prepared to be sued "big time" by them. They never called me again....
But ! some others tried to get in on the game a few years later. I received calls where they said "Hi, sam - we would like to send you your free gift!" I would ask them what company they were from, get them to repeat and verify their company name a few times - then laugh and tell them I knew their scam and that I was calling the Ca state attorney general - they would promptly hang up.
Anyone else seen this scam before?
I just think its funny that we have the official Intel (r) company logo for stories relating to Intel.... but we use the Borg Gates logo for anything relating to M$. Funny.
and here is the equation to determine if its time to upgrade based on new prices from vendors:
(Orig. price of machine - New price of machine)= (total savings in purchasing new machine as compared to old machines original price)*(wife nagging about "why do you need a new processor, whats wrong with this machine")*(days having to go without sex for buying new machine regardless of wifes bitching)/((fun value of getting to play on new machine)*(time with wife not talking to you and you sleeping on couch anyway)) - ((kiss ass gift for wife to make up for new machine)/(one week))
I hope this clears things up for you.. YMMV if wife = 1, see above else New machine Whoop!
ya but - to be out 500 or 1k will give you one kick ass machine these days. how much was your cel 366? when i worked for intel doing the celeron pushes et al - they were supposed to be the sub 1k (999.99) machines for home users. now anything over 1k is considered rather overpriced - and the machine you get is expected to be quite powerful. but for a few hundred you have the perfect gameing/workstation and in some cases server boxen you could want.
its interesting that we now see the most expensive single components of the machine are the video card (if youre getting a nice new spiffy military grade Gf4) and the monitor (if youre getting some nice new spiffy large scale flat screen.
I love it - I just wish the economy was good enought to give me a job so i could upgrade my slow POS 800 with a weak ass Gf2 64mb.
.... we sure are sending the wrong signal by slashdotting her site. shes gunna think shes the missing beattle or something.
You're KILLING INDEPENDANT GEORGE!!!!
stupid lameness filter.... cmon, I need to yell sometimes. I Relationship George NEEDS TO EXPRESS HIMSELF JUST AS MUCH AS INDEPENDANT GEORGE!
...milking a dead cow.
cmon guys - myst's days are long gone... give up. why not try to make something NEW - rather than ride the one game that was good 8 years ago forever.
It reminds me of those guys who would go to highschool parties after they had already graduated - but still wore their letterman football jackets with "county champs, '92" patches. Thinking that all the chicks will think they are cool and hot cuz they graduated, and dont have a 1am curfew... losers.
someone got it!
"UKUSA agreement"
Since when has the japanese mob been involved in this?
From OfficeDepot, I figure I will get all the felt tip pens i can now - and i will corner the illicit felt tip pen market in no time. Screw coke and pot sales... illegal felt tip pens are gunna bring in a fortune! Its like prohibition all over again. Just call me Al!!
Life:
Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs?
Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.
If Life were like OfficeMAX:
Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs?
Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.Right next to the felt tip pens which can be used to circumvent the copy protection of the CDs taht you may be copying. Here I'll print out the instructions for you. And here is my username and password to ftp.phat-warez.com
Overratted?!
/. karma - only real karma applies to me and what i do - but this is obviously a broken system, and if its to remain broken like this fine - but stop calling it karma - as karma is universal law, and by no means broken (or capped).....
anyway the point I wanted to make with this post:
I was at 50 karma for the past several weeks... posted many o' comment in that time... and recently posted several (recently=today) in which I was modded up... but being at the cap 50 - I remained there. then this overrated mod comes in - and deducts me -1 to 49....
but on a previous post (within the same hour) I get +2 or something.... but since I was already at 50 - it doesnt count?!
I dont give a rats ass about
c'mon pater - you think you're so smart. make a better alternative to karma!! and OS it!!!
"Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value"
Thats precisely the reason why we bash them. They have made the laws and the system so convoluted and BS - that we MUST have them in court to defend against what in common speak would be a BS frivolous suit. Lawyers suck ass period - regardless of how much you need them when you get to court. Courts should be for real people to put up a real case - and win if they are correct. Not a place to have each side see who has the most money to hire the better weasel. (O.J. Simpson - Ramsey ad infintum)
"Some wery scawy weseawch has been aimed at discobewing just how fast a worm could infect the entiwe Intewnet"
Pay to the order of : Hilary Rosen.
In response to to this - and a response to your post:
The rebels are the old guard royal families that are trying to get the empire back to the old republic yes... however it can also be thought of like this:
China comes in and conqueres the US and the rest of the world. and unites it under one dictator and a heavy handed henchmen. Holds it in place with a shitload of human clones and kills lots of people.
but the cheney-bush-blair families are pissed off and want their power back. so they lead a rebel force of kung fu fighters with laser pointers to get the world back to the way they like it.
They are really no better than the evil chinese dictator - they kill lots of people in the interests of the oil^H^H^H republic. and want to ensure that their "royal-with-cheese" families keep all the money and power, with the guise of peace (at least on home soil).
course the parallels to be made are endless...
"The dark side clouds all"
Are we talking star wars - or what. The article is attached to the wrong thread of comments. The Title of this should be "Benign Dictators or not - Slashdot readers want to know"
From the He's-really-a-tyrant dept.
Editors - please fix.
free as in beer?
/. for about 5 and ahalf years now... and I see "free as in beer" a lot on here - but i dont know where the reference comes from. please humor me and lfill me in...
sorry but i really wouldlike an explanation of this. I have bee reading
thanks
Lemme guess...
No cum intended....
uh... no more like uber-sopranos. there have been many stories about this in the past - basically the mob has their people in the phone co - and they hijack calls to businesses (mostly call girls) from the hotels. then re-route the calls to their own call girls and take the business.
sometimes they dont even hijack the call they just tap it - then when the call girl shows up its too late and the "john" is already being serviced....
when the people who were losing out in this deal bitched to the fcc? the investigation showed that not a single call was lost. (basically the staff in the phone co were alerted to the investigation and stopped their hijacking while it was going on)
the thing was that the FCC gave the telco a WEEKS notice that they were going to investigate this... so the word got out and the mob held back.
this is BS and pisses me off. I would like to take a base-ball bat to the kneecaps of the idiots that gave the telco "notice of impending investigation"
He Dies.
Off topic? who the hell rated this as offtopic? you moron - read the article before you mod...
dork.
"His more interesting experiment involves latent fingerprints. He takes a fingerprint left on a piece of glass, enhances it with a cyanoacrylate adhesive, and then photographs it with a digital camera. Using PhotoShop, he improves the contrast and prints the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet. Then, he takes a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (PCB) and uses the fingerprint transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper, making it three-dimensional"
Bah! Too much work - I just wanna shape shift ala Mystique!
Now rather than just putting it on vibrate and sticking it in your pocket and calling yourself (not that there's anything wrong with that)
You can now have naked pictures on the phone AND have it in your pants when you call yourself.
Us geeks are one step closer to not even needing bio versions of the ellusive other gender.