If I remove DRM from a file on my computer such as a MP3 I'm also breaching the DMCA, this isn't very different. Can we have less knee jerk reactions from slashdot over anything that remotely looks like we can complain about the DMCA? Articles like this just make us look bad and uninformed. Firstly, I hate coupons, almost as much as I hate rebates. The bother and effort required to get the coupons, clip them, and deal with people with them is insane. This being said, at one point in my history I hit the online supermarket website to print off milk coupons. As I use alot of milk, and milk was always on sale in one way or another, it was worth it. I was the only one who used the web coupon, and eventually added a better version of the bar code in Photoshop for a speedy checkout. No coupon limits, and it's not like the store actually needed the coupon it self. Eventually I couldn't be bothered and went to a market that offered a better deal on milk.
But me taking the time to create another bar code wasn't fraud in any way shape or form. Cashiers enjoy things that could scan, and their.jpg coupons were so low res they wouldn't scan. They wanted the thing to work.
Same with DRM on music. You want it to WORK. You want it on your portable device.
With coupons, in exchange for collecting some demographic detail they are willing to give you a discount. I can see why they are annoyed. I wouldn't call it a DMCA violation... and they would be better off solving the problem rather than sueing the guy who pointed out the flaw in their system.
Let's say I wanted to ask someone a question, a simple question with no real need for an immediate reply. I send an e-mail. If I were to use regular phone, I have to deal with polite conversation which I may or may not have time for. Not that I don't mind idle conversation, it's just something I don't always want to deal with.
Let's say someone was visiting me and there a traffic advisory, or something else they would need to index later. I would phone first, then text an instruction block to the phone. Same when grocery of component shopping.
And messaging when someone is not around, e-mail is so much better than voice. Mobile phones are not always reliable to relay all the important words, and some people on land lines use really crappy answering machines, but an e-mail will always get the message out.
E-mail is more important than phone these days. That's rather a fact of life. Welcome to the 21st century, where no one has to talk to anyone.
I know I don't. It really doesn't matter if Blu-Ray or HD-DVD wins out in the end, there can't be that many consumers out there who are planning to start upgrading their existing DVD collection to one of these formats. I have an HDTV and regular DVD's look just fine. I know these new formats offer better quality, but the difference and enhancements are not enough to warrant an upgrade. From VHS to DVD was worthwhile, this is just a stop gap measure. I personally don't plan to upgrade at all until something significantly better comes along. Maybe the next generation after this... I for one am holding of from investing in HDTV. Don't get me wrong, I like HDTV esp. the fact that I don't need cable to get the local stations without static. I more than like the fact that I can get into a large 720p TV for under a grand. There simply isn't enough in the way of programing to really enjoy HD at present, and this whole format war doesn't help.
And let's face it, early adopters pay the most and get the least benefit except being able to say I got it first.
I try to buy AMD exclusively and this article is a fine example why. I won't buy from a company who is holding back their best from me in order to milk every last hard earned dime they can from me. I'm sure AMD would do the same if they could, but they are not, so I buy from them. I leaned toward AMD for one main reason, their tendency to support a given socket for a long period of time. Socket 7 was a good example of this, I bought into a pentium I 200 but selected a motherboard that could handle 100mhz FSB and upgraded to a k6-3 400 when their price dropped. This was a good leap for minimal cost. I avoided them for their whole slot-A game, but got back with them for socket A from a 1700 cpu to 2800+. Again, Socket-A had a good run, 650mhz to 2200mhz (3200+).
I'm not so big a fan of AMD's choice to abandon socket 939 in favor of AM2 and 754. It was "nice" to have the option on 754 to buy into lower cost 4 layer boards, but the track record i've seen with 754 has been less than stellar, as in many DOAs. I would have been perfectly happy sticking with 939 for a while if they continued making chips equivalent to the am2 series. Regardless of DDR2 ram, one can buy into socket 939 for very cheaply. For example Newegg was offering 4000+ single core San Diego cpus for $35 with memory purchase.
But regardless of some annoying trends... I am happy with AMD and the ability to go with a high end board, and a base chip, permitting 1 or 2 cpu upgrades before going to the next socket. That's what sold me on them during the socket-7 era, and that's going to be what I pick for my next upgrade.
I remember needing just a putty knife and a foot-long Torx wrench (the screws that held it together were seated at the top of the machine, but only accessible through deep holes in the bottom).... I remember the mac cracker... it was actually a very useful tool for things other than macs. Mine was just a small blunt blade about 1.5 inches in length attached to a plate, attached to a right angle connector which connected to your universal screwdriver. Which I still had it as it would be handy for laptops without screwing up the plastic.
The torx screws in those old macs however were a royal pain... I can't remember exactly what I did but it did involve the use of an allen key with a segment of the short bit cut off and attached to a pole.
I'm calling Monday and canceling on the grounds that this constitutes a Service Change, and too bad about their stupid term agreement. I live in Tacoma WA so I get to choose between multiple cable ISP's, DSL, etc. I give a damn about any fine print in a TOS agreement, I pay for an internet connection and I want what I pay for. They cannot be allowed to dictate what class of packet I can or cannot upload through the connection I pay for. Bandwidth yes, but that's not what they're doing here. I'm rather pleased with click with netventure as an ISP. My only complaint is inbound ports are blocked, like 23/25/110. SSH isn't blocked oddly enough. But they at least offer a commercial plan. It's not such a stellar deal as it once was as comcast finally increased their caps from 1.5/128 to something more reasonable. Dollar for dollar comcast offered me a much better deal, $30/month so long as I was willing to attempt to cancel every 6 - 12 months.
I have been online with them for about 5 years, the only real issue I've had is combo bad cable box and modem which took a while to troubleshoot. Comcast in contrast had more intermittent problems.
Your logic is poor. Downloading movies and music isn't the problem (illegal copyright violations notwithstanding). The means being used (P2P) is the problem. So sorry but you fail the "false advertising" test. Now if the complainers want to get off their butts and develop a protocol that actually respect peoples resources instead of consuming them in an orgy of ME!, ME!, ME!, It's all about ME! The last advert for Comcast I remember was "share pictures and videos". This IS false advertising. Actually the BT protocol does an excellent job of conserving resources by distributed transmission. In theory priority is given to those on your own network.
You fail the logic test as the services I spoke of are commercial legit sites which permit high quality downloads of videos, such as rocky and bullwinkle. Also you fail the logic test because BT isn't about mememe, but rather sharing the burden of transmitting media. If 10% of your download goes to uploading, the host site benefits as they serve less data. The ISP *may* benefit as they may keep trans-net data at a minimum.
It's really a good deal, taking full advantage of the fact that service is sold unlimited. But to be fair, if they were recommend a limit, that would be perfectly fine. But so long as they directly affect commercial sites there's a huge issue.
Change your isp? If they start losing customers they may reconsider their business decision. That's exactly what they want you to do. Problem users go elsewhere, low bandwidth users stay.
Best to fight this tooth and nail. Comcast advertises you can use their service for music and movies, but when they throttle something used for something they advertise as acceptable use, this is false advertising. Find services such as in2tv.com (aol) and www.movielink.com and who use bittorrent express to them your grief in not being able to use their services due to comcast's choice.
Find another ISP. If you can. Even in major cities there are places adsl doesn't reach that cable does, and cable in most cities tends to be a monopoly. Wi-Max is becoming a legit option, though not stellar bandwidth, adquate.
Cable tends to offer the best bandwidth for the buck, and if you feel their actions are unjust, you do have a moral obligation to fight for what you feel your rights as a customer are.
My objection is the fact that comcast isn't upfront as to how much bandwidth is too much.
Re:All you players and posers never owned an 8 tra
on
The CD Turns 25 Today
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· Score: 1
I'm 40 and I owned a record player, an 8-track, and a tape player. I didn't even buy a CD player until around 1990. SO BFD to all the wannabees out there who think they're cool just because they've seen a record. I've walked through the 8-track jungle, baby. Technicaly I owned an 8-track, that's only because my first POS car came only with 8-track. I had a handy dandy cassette to 8-track adapter, but it didn't stop me from hitting yard sales, 2nd hand record stores, and such, just to get cheep tunes for my car. There were quite a few 60s and 70s bands worth the quarter. But when I got a different car, I simply had no real urge to keep with the 8-track program.
I was late getting into CD, simply because the cost of a deck for my car was too high for higher cost media, and the battery life of early cd walkman sucked. Vinyl I was late getting into as well simply because I liked cassettes being very very very portable.
But don't feel too special about owning an 8-track. Even if you are older than my self, the only reason to get into 8-track even in the 70s was the fact that the cars often came with a deck stock, and often stereos came with it stock.
Now, if you were a member of a record club, and got 10 for a penny, then you can be joe cool on slashdot.
Sorry but I have hundreds of CDs And maybe one or two have any problems. I am not neat freak or anything but you must abuse the daylights out of your CDs. AS to cassettes tapes all I can say is what???? I have had more of them wear out and or get eaten by a tape deck than any amount of CD failures. I can say in all honesty I've had more luck with cassette tapes than CDs when they fall of the seat and get crunched by passengers, fall out a window at street speeds, or fall in a couch. Not to speak of the fact that in a car or jogging tape is far more ideal.
Being eaten was something I didn't experience often. If you bought a cheaper deck, then yes it was very much an issue.
CDs however take the cake as far as playability with low maintenance. A good tape deck would have run you well over $100, a good car deck well over $200. Anything sub par would eat tapes if you looked at it funny.
But probably the best thing about the digital resolution is the ability to copy things faster than real time without loss of quality, making it possible to fill your car with copies rather than originals, at a price usually about 10c/pop. Better still is the solid state option which addresses issues with jogging and shaking the player.
I've seen many people just loose their OEM disk (or just never got one). How should those people be handled? Is Piracy still piracy if it's the same version as what was there before? I had to ask this my self. I'm presently using a Toshiba Satellite R10 which came with Windows tablet edition. When buying a new hard disc, I wanted to do a clean install and didn't have the OEM discs. Reasonable enough. No windows pen edition worked, at all, with my legit key. So I could either use someone else's key, or go with a backup of the old HD. I went with an old backup.
In my case, it's likely a form of piracy since i'm sure some of the bloatware which came with this blasted thing helped pay for the laptop it self, and it is an OEM license. I "could" buy another OEM edition with a side of memory if I could find it for sale and if I was willing to pay the fee.
I helped build one of those once in Larkspur CO. Stryrofoam forms, reinforced with rebar, shockcrete... Not sure if the architecture maximizes or minimizes available space. One thing is for sure, the damn thing is bomb proof. It depends really... the nice thing about a free standing structure is the freedom of floorplans. The domes I've seen have really nice wide open living areas, though the quarters tend to be somewhat cramped. The real pain with a free standing structure is where to put all the wiring conduit, pipes, the real guts of home.
Try to hang a picture on a concave surface. You don't, you hang from above and let dangle with chains/wire/rope, with an optional one to the wall. Problem solved. You can go for eye level or have it printed 30x20 and hung from above at a slight angle. Or display on a tripod. Not like you can't hang on a concave surface, just it's difficult without seeing the wire or using a very strong bolt/post.
Now, the real issue becomes how does one dust/clean such a home.
Honestly, for a crowd who is so vocal about free speech and copyright law I get the feeling that the same group of people, if given the power, would strip the rights of anyone to make movies based on anything that they feel close to. It's like, they just can't do right. No matter what. Even though Transformers was a huge success you just can't escape the bitching and whining and, in this case, total exagerated teenage drama queen hyperbole about evil corporation raping some childhood memory and forcing you to consume it "mwuhahahahahaha we're rolling in money and it's all at the expense of some Joe Blow's precious childhood interpretation of a corny and cheesy cartoon who's sole purpose was to sell a line of toy's and make massive amounts of money anyway..." Just because you are for free speech and copyright reform doesn't mean you have to patronize others who enjoy present freedoms. Like with the new transformers movie... you don't have to buy tickets or even enjoy someone else enjoying their freedoms.
I personally don't care. I'm neither upset nor excited about the transformers flick. It's been 20 years since it was new. If they want to do a Voltron flick, great. It can't be any worse than the series.
IIRC there were two Macross movies, the first one which was the series in overdrive, and another movie which wasn't all that great. Not to speak of OVA releases such as Macross Zero, which actually was worth watching, and Macross Plus which was only soso. This is assuming that you missed the fan subs of Macross 7. There was something else referenced on the 25th macross 25th anniversary that suggested a new movie or series.
Unless you really want a Harmony Gold based Robotech movie.
I,Robot, Transformers, all the comic book movies lately..... When is the movie industry going stop pissing all over my childhood? Cinderella, Snow White, all the classic Grimm tales... I'd say never. Pissing on your childhood is what pays the bills.
I believe I'm not alone to still own both Transformers and Voltron toys from the 80's, but somehow Voltron doesn't do me as much as Transformers does.
I don't know how to explain it, but does anyone feel the same? Or do you think Voltron has a stronger, more emotional and deeper storyline? It's hard to tell as Lion Voltron was a somewhat bastardized version of Hyakujuu Oo GoLion, a series that doesn't seem to exist in a dubbed DVD form. Even worse, the English version, they after a main character died (The prince), they rewrote another 10 or 16 episodes.
Reviewing "Transformers" I can't say there was really a deep emotional storyline in the English version, but rather it seemed to be a vehicle to sell toys. Voltron is however a better example as an obvious attempt to adapt a short lived cheap Japanese series to the American market, and an excellent example of how stupid marking things the average sub-teen is.
Now Macross is another animal. It was well well writen, and even the first part of the English version Robotech was very much watchable. It's not seen as being as popular as there was a dispute over the rights to the toys. It seemed in the early 80s the yen was somewhat weak and kids who were interested had a choice to buy either Robotech toys, or Macross toys, where Macross Toys were slightly cheaper.
Ah, so that's why online pharmacy ain't that big in Europe. ER trips are free here. I guess our governments think that you've suffered enough when you need to go there... An ER visit where I live is about $1000 or so, $850 for the room and another $250 for the doctor it self. There are various forms of insurance. Mine requires a co-pay of $100 but there is a cap on co-pays. Some people making sub $25,000/year have a form of insurance where they have to pay a grand or two before any benefits kick in. Those who have this joke that they would be better off without insurance. For example, a clinic visit for me without insurance would cost $45.00, where $90 is the cash price, and $120 is the insurance billing price.
But you can use this as an example of problems with the USA, and you'd be right.
It's easy for me to say "won't happen to me", because it won't. I'll go to my doc and have him examine me, then give me what I need. Funny enough, this usually works, why didn't it for you? Simply put, doctors can not see pain. It probally is as the parent describes, they are afraid of the DEA. I don't honestly know the reasons, only the result. It would seem 3 months is the magic number in the world of health care. If the problem isn't resolved, and can't be diagnosed easily, you are cut off.
Also the indications for some pain medications are the same as the indications for addiction, including pain. Pain can lead to sleep loss which tends to get marked up as "clinically strange behavior", and rather than addressing the symptom it becomes "someone else's problem" i.e. a psychologist. Psychologists seem to require three sessions before even prescribing medication, some of which doubles as pain medication.
The only resolution when you hit this zone is either go with an online pharmacy or hit an ER and hope someone has the common decency to address the symptom and follow up. Online pharmacies are a good deal cheaper than an ER visit depending on your insurance if it even accepts the visit, but an ER at least goes on the record. What's sad is this isn't an uncommon problem.
This guy was scum, no question about it. And yet the ironic thing about it is that he may have really helped many people in need. Many people are suffering from severe pain, and yet are unable to legally obtain the relief which should be readily available to them. One hand, you could say that he overcharged such people and took advantage of them - but then again, he also met their needs (regardless of his intentions.)
This is very true. Chronic pain is rather tricky in this regard. You have the issue of actually having to "see" a doctor, which to say the least is not practical, esp. without medication. Even if you have a med list from a pain clinic neither the pain clinic nor the referring physician actually want to prescribe medication. It's someone else's problem.
Online pharmacies do fill a much needed nitch in a broken medical system. The downside is there are those who use them as a vehicle for their substance abuse problem, others who are self prescribing who have no business self prescribing. Antibiotics can lead to disasterious results if taken poorly and lead to larger problems.
I can live with their existence, if it wasn't for the spam. They seems to be setup with one central company who lets other websites sell on commission. So you have hundreds of small timers who get a startup kit and spam away the popular recreational meds (Viagra and such), and a master company saying it's not their fault for the spam, but don't bother to discipline people who have a clear business relationship.
Firstly, if you are going to go with a wireless pointing device, my vote is for trackballs. Others may prefer a track-pad but really a wireless mouse is rather pointless IMHO as you still need a surface of some sort to operate it. Trackballs/pads operate in your lap, on a chair.
One of my favorites is the logitech trackman wheel. Their classic snail like design. It's not exactly great for games, fact actions are not registered on this series, but for everyday work it's fab.
Microsoft had a semi-decent snail design like logitech but not cordless and it tended to burn out.
The Logitech Cordless Trackman FX Optical is another which seems to hold it's value in used circles. no wheel but a large ball operated by the index/middle fingers and buttons by the thumb.
For games, I just switch back to an old intelimouse.
Others have already spoke about the kennington version, traditional center ball with extra buttons.
Its not always a bad thing to help, but check your local laws first (remember, ignorance of the law is not a defense).
Ummm, ignorance of the law is a great defense. When you establish accountability the first things taken into account are intent, knowledge, wrecklessness, and negligence.
see wiki for more details. According to wiki in Australia these are simply called fault elements.
In living in Victoria myself, and have in fact taken a "found wallet" to the police before with no id in it, they gave me a call a few months later(well, a friend who works there did at least) to advise me that since it hadn't been claimed I could submit a request for claiming the funds.
If you found a wallet, you should try to find the owner. The law might require you to go to the police, but if your intent was to find the owner, and were ignorant of the letter of the law, this would make a GREAT defense.
While most places there is the rule "ignorance is no defense", in practice it's the best one available. In reality, being stupid is not a crime, neither is having a faulty memory. Even in places that have strict liability in place, even then in practice ignorance is a great defense. Traffic violations are a good example of this, where you can almost always tell it to the judge and at the very least talk your way down in terms of fine. For example, I ran a red light at an intersection marked no right on red. I told the judge "I didn't see the sign, went back and there is a sign, just never noticed it". I was still accountable, but failure to yield and a fine of $20.00.
But in a civil matter, the rules are more vague than criminal.
Slashdot Mirror
But me taking the time to create another bar code wasn't fraud in any way shape or form. Cashiers enjoy things that could scan, and their
Same with DRM on music. You want it to WORK. You want it on your portable device.
With coupons, in exchange for collecting some demographic detail they are willing to give you a discount. I can see why they are annoyed. I wouldn't call it a DMCA violation... and they would be better off solving the problem rather than sueing the guy who pointed out the flaw in their system.
Let's say I wanted to ask someone a question, a simple question with no real need for an immediate reply. I send an e-mail. If I were to use regular phone, I have to deal with polite conversation which I may or may not have time for. Not that I don't mind idle conversation, it's just something I don't always want to deal with.
Let's say someone was visiting me and there a traffic advisory, or something else they would need to index later. I would phone first, then text an instruction block to the phone. Same when grocery of component shopping.
And messaging when someone is not around, e-mail is so much better than voice. Mobile phones are not always reliable to relay all the important words, and some people on land lines use really crappy answering machines, but an e-mail will always get the message out.
E-mail is more important than phone these days. That's rather a fact of life. Welcome to the 21st century, where no one has to talk to anyone.
And let's face it, early adopters pay the most and get the least benefit except being able to say I got it first.
I'm not so big a fan of AMD's choice to abandon socket 939 in favor of AM2 and 754. It was "nice" to have the option on 754 to buy into lower cost 4 layer boards, but the track record i've seen with 754 has been less than stellar, as in many DOAs. I would have been perfectly happy sticking with 939 for a while if they continued making chips equivalent to the am2 series. Regardless of DDR2 ram, one can buy into socket 939 for very cheaply. For example Newegg was offering 4000+ single core San Diego cpus for $35 with memory purchase.
But regardless of some annoying trends... I am happy with AMD and the ability to go with a high end board, and a base chip, permitting 1 or 2 cpu upgrades before going to the next socket. That's what sold me on them during the socket-7 era, and that's going to be what I pick for my next upgrade.
The torx screws in those old macs however were a royal pain... I can't remember exactly what I did but it did involve the use of an allen key with a segment of the short bit cut off and attached to a pole.
I have been online with them for about 5 years, the only real issue I've had is combo bad cable box and modem which took a while to troubleshoot. Comcast in contrast had more intermittent problems.
You fail the logic test as the services I spoke of are commercial legit sites which permit high quality downloads of videos, such as rocky and bullwinkle.
Also you fail the logic test because BT isn't about mememe, but rather sharing the burden of transmitting media. If 10% of your download goes to uploading, the host site benefits as they serve less data. The ISP *may* benefit as they may keep trans-net data at a minimum.
It's really a good deal, taking full advantage of the fact that service is sold unlimited. But to be fair, if they were recommend a limit, that would be perfectly fine. But so long as they directly affect commercial sites there's a huge issue.
Best to fight this tooth and nail. Comcast advertises you can use their service for music and movies, but when they throttle something used for something they advertise as acceptable use, this is false advertising. Find services such as in2tv.com (aol) and www.movielink.com and who use bittorrent express to them your grief in not being able to use their services due to comcast's choice.
Be proactive... and change the system.
Cable tends to offer the best bandwidth for the buck, and if you feel their actions are unjust, you do have a moral obligation to fight for what you feel your rights as a customer are.
My objection is the fact that comcast isn't upfront as to how much bandwidth is too much.
I was late getting into CD, simply because the cost of a deck for my car was too high for higher cost media, and the battery life of early cd walkman sucked. Vinyl I was late getting into as well simply because I liked cassettes being very very very portable.
But don't feel too special about owning an 8-track. Even if you are older than my self, the only reason to get into 8-track even in the 70s was the fact that the cars often came with a deck stock, and often stereos came with it stock.
Now, if you were a member of a record club, and got 10 for a penny, then you can be joe cool on slashdot.
AS to cassettes tapes all I can say is what???? I have had more of them wear out and or get eaten by a tape deck than any amount of CD failures. I can say in all honesty I've had more luck with cassette tapes than CDs when they fall of the seat and get crunched by passengers, fall out a window at street speeds, or fall in a couch. Not to speak of the fact that in a car or jogging tape is far more ideal.
Being eaten was something I didn't experience often. If you bought a cheaper deck, then yes it was very much an issue.
CDs however take the cake as far as playability with low maintenance. A good tape deck would have run you well over $100, a good car deck well over $200. Anything sub par would eat tapes if you looked at it funny.
But probably the best thing about the digital resolution is the ability to copy things faster than real time without loss of quality, making it possible to fill your car with copies rather than originals, at a price usually about 10c/pop. Better still is the solid state option which addresses issues with jogging and shaking the player.
In my case, it's likely a form of piracy since i'm sure some of the bloatware which came with this blasted thing helped pay for the laptop it self, and it is an OEM license. I "could" buy another OEM edition with a side of memory if I could find it for sale and if I was willing to pay the fee.
Does a lack of a suspension of disbelief hurt one's chances of getting a date?
Now, the real issue becomes how does one dust/clean such a home.
I personally don't care. I'm neither upset nor excited about the transformers flick. It's been 20 years since it was new. If they want to do a Voltron flick, great. It can't be any worse than the series.
...and still no Macross movie. No macross movie?IIRC there were two Macross movies, the first one which was the series in overdrive, and another movie which wasn't all that great. Not to speak of OVA releases such as Macross Zero, which actually was worth watching, and Macross Plus which was only soso. This is assuming that you missed the fan subs of Macross 7. There was something else referenced on the 25th macross 25th anniversary that suggested a new movie or series.
Unless you really want a Harmony Gold based Robotech movie.
Hollywood will take it upon them selves to create a feature length version of
Battling Seizure Robots
I don't know how to explain it, but does anyone feel the same? Or do you think Voltron has a stronger, more emotional and deeper storyline? It's hard to tell as Lion Voltron was a somewhat bastardized version of Hyakujuu Oo GoLion, a series that doesn't seem to exist in a dubbed DVD form. Even worse, the English version, they after a main character died (The prince), they rewrote another 10 or 16 episodes.
Reviewing "Transformers" I can't say there was really a deep emotional storyline in the English version, but rather it seemed to be a vehicle to sell toys. Voltron is however a better example as an obvious attempt to adapt a short lived cheap Japanese series to the American market, and an excellent example of how stupid marking things the average sub-teen is.
Now Macross is another animal. It was well well writen, and even the first part of the English version Robotech was very much watchable. It's not seen as being as popular as there was a dispute over the rights to the toys. It seemed in the early 80s the yen was somewhat weak and kids who were interested had a choice to buy either Robotech toys, or Macross toys, where Macross Toys were slightly cheaper.
But you can use this as an example of problems with the USA, and you'd be right.
Also the indications for some pain medications are the same as the indications for addiction, including pain. Pain can lead to sleep loss which tends to get marked up as "clinically strange behavior", and rather than addressing the symptom it becomes "someone else's problem" i.e. a psychologist. Psychologists seem to require three sessions before even prescribing medication, some of which doubles as pain medication.
The only resolution when you hit this zone is either go with an online pharmacy or hit an ER and hope someone has the common decency to address the symptom and follow up. Online pharmacies are a good deal cheaper than an ER visit depending on your insurance if it even accepts the visit, but an ER at least goes on the record. What's sad is this isn't an uncommon problem.
This guy was scum, no question about it. And yet the ironic thing about it is that he may have really helped many people in need. Many people are suffering from severe pain, and yet are unable to legally obtain the relief which should be readily available to them. One hand, you could say that he overcharged such people and took advantage of them - but then again, he also met their needs (regardless of his intentions.)
This is very true. Chronic pain is rather tricky in this regard. You have the issue of actually having to "see" a doctor, which to say the least is not practical, esp. without medication. Even if you have a med list from a pain clinic neither the pain clinic nor the referring physician actually want to prescribe medication. It's someone else's problem.
Online pharmacies do fill a much needed nitch in a broken medical system. The downside is there are those who use them as a vehicle for their substance abuse problem, others who are self prescribing who have no business self prescribing. Antibiotics can lead to disasterious results if taken poorly and lead to larger problems.
I can live with their existence, if it wasn't for the spam. They seems to be setup with one central company who lets other websites sell on commission. So you have hundreds of small timers who get a startup kit and spam away the popular recreational meds (Viagra and such), and a master company saying it's not their fault for the spam, but don't bother to discipline people who have a clear business relationship.
Firstly, if you are going to go with a wireless pointing device, my vote is for trackballs. Others may prefer a track-pad but really a wireless mouse is rather pointless IMHO as you still need a surface of some sort to operate it. Trackballs/pads operate in your lap, on a chair.
One of my favorites is the logitech trackman wheel. Their classic snail like design. It's not exactly great for games, fact actions are not registered on this series, but for everyday work it's fab.
Microsoft had a semi-decent snail design like logitech but not cordless and it tended to burn out.
The Logitech Cordless Trackman FX Optical is another which seems to hold it's value in used circles. no wheel but a large ball operated by the index/middle fingers and buttons by the thumb.
For games, I just switch back to an old intelimouse.
Others have already spoke about the kennington version, traditional center ball with extra buttons.
Its not always a bad thing to help, but check your local laws first (remember, ignorance of the law is not a defense).
Ummm, ignorance of the law is a great defense. When you establish accountability the first things taken into account are intent, knowledge, wrecklessness, and negligence.
see wiki for more details. According to wiki in Australia these are simply called fault elements.
In living in Victoria myself, and have in fact taken a "found wallet" to the police before with no id in it, they gave me a call a few months later(well, a friend who works there did at least) to advise me that since it hadn't been claimed I could submit a request for claiming the funds.
If you found a wallet, you should try to find the owner. The law might require you to go to the police, but if your intent was to find the owner, and were ignorant of the letter of the law, this would make a GREAT defense.
While most places there is the rule "ignorance is no defense", in practice it's the best one available. In reality, being stupid is not a crime, neither is having a faulty memory. Even in places that have strict liability in place, even then in practice ignorance is a great defense. Traffic violations are a good example of this, where you can almost always tell it to the judge and at the very least talk your way down in terms of fine. For example, I ran a red light at an intersection marked no right on red. I told the judge "I didn't see the sign, went back and there is a sign, just never noticed it". I was still accountable, but failure to yield and a fine of $20.00.
But in a civil matter, the rules are more vague than criminal.