I'm not necessarily taking issue with what you've written. What I'd like to do is explore the ethical landscape that surrounds this assertion.
You wrote:
[...] it is impossible to *harm* an artist or label by downloading and listening to a song you would never consider buying in the first place. however, you are most definitely harming the artist/label by downloading the new album put out by your favorite band that you would buy if it were not for your ability to download said album.
I wonder if I am also harming the artist/label by investigating their opinions on filesharing (and their business practices) and then NOT buying their album that I would buy if it were not for my ability to gain new insights about said artist/label.
The assertion of harm here looks like it hinges on my *changing my mind* about purchasing. That seems like an awfully arbitrary test to apply. How many other things might cause me to not buy a CD I otherwise would have bought? Wouldn't they be harming, too?
That's all well and good. One google-eyed religious crank is connected to another google-eyed religious crank. No surprises there.
But wait, look again and scroll down a bit. Thompson and Reno have the same goofy grin! It's not quite a separated-at-birth, but it's still kinda spooky!
Ah, forget it. These guys are bad enough on their own. Making fun of them just seems redundant.
you mean you don't order the books by the color of their binding? How unstylish of you.
Organizing by color works better with CDs than books. Their uniform size makes for a crisp aesthetic, as well as a more efficient use of space. It was very striking and never failed to impress friends.
With books, the wide variations in sizes contributed to a cluttered look that almost completely countered the chromatic harmony. It also wastes a lot of space in accomodating the few large books on each shelf.
We kept our CDs that way for almost 4 years, but my wife eventually nixed it for being too difficult.
I wonder if the cheapest and most expedient solution is to just sign up for ChannelOne and then cancel it after a year. TV's for every classroom and free CCTV wiring to boot! No messing with open RF broadcasting. No pissing off the neighbors with interference.
Actually, it's not. At least, not yet. Pixelvision was so great because it was liberating. It was the video version of the portable 4-track tape recorder. It brought the DIY/Garage ethos to movie making.
This thing is all about consuming licensed content ("Collect Them All") from the major media players, as if that's any big surprise.
Sure, Zoc_All_Alone is reverse-engineering the file format, but until someone can hack a Mavica to record in that format, I don't think it will be as compelling to fiddle with.
Where the hell did you work?
My experience was that when a slab of meat hit the floor, the call went out on the line to hold it for the next shmoe who asked for his steak to be well done.
[...] cannot induce amnesia or hallucinations. In fact, no form of video/audio stimulation can without exceptional chemical circumstances.
I seem to recall learning in school about Ptolemy doing experiments with a spinning spoked wheel and sunlight. He demonstrated the effect where at certain speeds the spokes appear to stop or rotate backwards and also the hallucination of color when the wheels were only black and white.
Somewhere I have a flexi-single that came with an audiophile magazine that demonstrated a psycho-acoustic hallucination. You needed headphones to get the full effect. It would alternate high and low tones between your ears in various patterns, but your brain would perceive it as a different pattern. I believe it was based on thisresearch.
Auditory and visual hallucinations are known to occur to people in situations of acute sensory deprivation (like dark neutral bouyancy tanks).
In each of these cases, no "exceptional chemical circumstances" were involved.
I found a small homeless youth advocate non-profit that needed a lot of computer help. Since they were small I spoke directly to the Executive Director and convinced her to let me solicit donations for old computers and fix em up. She even gave me a budget [...]
This is exactly the sort of approach you should take, KReilly. Thinking "This year I have been considering creating my own non-profit organization, but I still lack a clear picture of what I hope to accomplish." is putting the cart before the horse. You wouldn't say "This year I have been considering applying for a patent, but I still lack a clear picture of what I hope to invent." Creating a non-profit *might* be a way to amp up an idea that you've already fleshed out, but you really do want to figure out that idea part first.
Pillohead here has an idea that he has initiated (and one that you might consider emulating), and perhaps forming a non-profit to help it scale is the next level. Perhaps not.
I've been employed by, contracted for, AND been on the board of directors of several non-profits. The ones who have consistently been the most successful are the ones that have a strong vision of what they want to accomplish.
Take the time to figure out what kind of services you want to provide, and to whom. Sure, you have lots of skills, but which ones to you really want to use all the time? Would you rather build and maintain computers and networks for charities (like Pillohead's example)? Maybe you'd enjoy teaching elderly nursing home residents about accessing the internet? You mentioned "repairing computers donated by businesses for schools". If that's what you want to do, why not contact some existing non-profits who do similar work in other parts of the country, like CompuMentor or the Philadelphia Reuse Collaborative and ask them about what it takes to do what they do? You should also think about whether you want to be the one getting your hands dirty (string cable, swap boards, install software, teach users, etc.), or whether you want to be the visionary who is in charge of everything like an Executive Director or Board Member (write by-laws and policies, do grantwriting and other fundraising, maintain press contacts, etc.).
As to your last question " how do you, as a tech, give back to society and aid in social programs?", what *I personally* do is work as a consultant for non-profits and give them whatever kind of computer help they need that I have the skills for. I charge slightly less than the going rate because I know their budgets are not large. Often I do some small amount of work first in a volunteer capacity. This allows me to create good will and familiarity between us, and lets me understand more about their needs and how my skills might or might not fit. I tend to lean toward social justice issuses, so my local Community Shares federation has been a terrific starting point for finding organizations that could use my help.
Because the lack of initial funding started in the Clinton administration.
In any event, it had nothing to do with Bush, no matter what the initial poster said. It's just another lie.
The court case being reported on was filed during the Clinton administration, but the malfeasance it addresses goes back much further.
There was a great deal of theft, embezzlement, and fraud that occurred in the BIA during the Reagan administration. The accounting system was a mess, and Reagan gutted the Special Council office that was created to investigate the situation. Several books on US intelligence report that BIA trust fund money was used to fund the Contras and other covert efforts.
But it still goes back further than that. The trust fund exists because of a 19th century law that says that companies who want to prospect resources from Indian lands don't have to pay the Indians directly. Instead, they have to pay the BIA, who is then supposed to pay the Indians. It has hardly ever worked that way. Going back to at least 1927 the BIA has been undercollecting, mismanaging, and "losing" the funds.
The BIA is steeped in a culture where the worst aspects of bureaucracy, from apathy to outright thievery, thrive.
Is there any way to take a reading of the power drawn by an electric device? For example, plug the device between the power outlet and the electric appliance you want to rate and then take the reading?
If devices like this are being marketed to (albeit a niche of) homeowners, I wouldn't think it'd be too difficult to find something similar that has a more informative readout.
The article says Marc Singer may be back. Given his resume, I doubt that his own willingness would be any kind of holdup. Will they hire him? Probably.
He's going to have to chose a different type of weapon this time. I doubt a contemporary Nokia cam-phone is as good for wuppin some alien butt as the old-school vidicon-tubed Ikegami he swung around in the original.
The article also mentions Robert Englund might sign up, too. I always found it hard to take any of his scary stuff seriously after seeing him as the (I think the polite word is) *challenged* alien Willie in the original V miniseries.
I recall using Superglue once in just such a situation. I had an old XT box and I wanted to shoehorn a 286 into it. The old mobo had a mounting screw that I'd managed to strip and couldn't get out to save my life. I thought about drilling it, but a friend suggested the Superglue route. I went to the hardware store and found a cheap-but-sturdy-enough nutdriver. I glued it into place, waited extra long for it to set and just removed it all together. If I'd been feeling extra thrifty (or pessimistic about possible repeat circumstances), I might have used some nail polish remover and salvaged the nut driver.
I had considered the Vise-Grip method, but even the needle-nosed models were still a bit bulky for that particular tight spot.
You aren't alone. This one is in CODE 39, inked circa 1991.
Re:low tech?? Hydroponics is the way to go!!
on
Gardening for Geeks?
·
· Score: 1
Get regular seed, and reuse the most succesful ones for next year. That way yore more likely to wind up with plants that are more adopted for your particular climate conditons.
This is especially true for things like apple tress.
Um, no.
That may be partly true in the Steppes, and perhaps to a very slender degree in rural Appalachia, but no.
Apples, as we know them, are almost more a human-managed product than the milk we get from the knocked-up, cloned, hormone-pumped-up, antibiotic-guzzling, hooked-to-the-milking-machine-24/7 heifers in the "dairy" factories.
Any apple sapling you buy from a nursery is the result of grafting from clones. Cloned rootstock, bred for disease resistance and cloned branchstock for fruit size/shape/color/taste/texture/keep/etc.. The fruits that come from it are just about guaranteed to be the same as its nursery littermates that came from the same "parents".
When the fruit grows, it gets 100% of its genetic destiny from the tree (really just the branchstock) it's on. The seeds are a completely different story. Half of their pedigree came blowing in on the wind. And any apple can cross with any other apple, from the biggest, blandest "golden delicious" to the tiniest, tartest crabapple. And there's enough genetic variability that even hand cross-pollinating two know varietals can still get you something that doesn't bear much resemblance to either of its parentstock.
Growing apple trees from saved seeds is a crapshoot.
I was out with a friend at a Chinese restaurant and witnessed the following interaction between her and the waiter:
Friend: Could you please make sure not to use MSG in my food? Waiter: Oh no! We don't use MSG *at all* in this restaurant. Friend: Good, because I have a horrible reaction to it! If I have even a little, I'll get blinding migraine headaches and usually end up laying on the floor in convulsions. So, if you use it at all, I'd like to request that you give the pans and utensils and extra washing before you use them on my order. Waiter: Hold on just a moment. (As he scurries off to the kitchen, then comes back several moments later.) Okay, I made sure that there won't be any MSG in your order.
While the waiter was gone, she told me that she'd lost count of the number of Chinese restaurants who assured her that they never use MSG, who later told her that she'd probably have to eat somewhere else when she got to the part about the convulsions and the extra washing.
I dunno, perhaps it's already in some of the packaged ingredients. Either that or "No MSG" has the same fluidity of meaning as "10 minutes" does in those cases.
Considering that the caller ID information is transmitted by the TELEPHONE company, that would mean that these guys would need to have an alliance with the TELCOS to access/change the databases. Interesting.
Sort of. The CID info comes from the originating exchange, which for average homeowners is the building full of TELCO equipment somewhere nearby, where the local analog signal is sampled and routed digitally on it's way (along with the CID info).
But for businesses with a need for a larger number of phone lines, it makes sense to operate their own exchange. They call it a Private Branch Exchange, or PBX. Get a high capacity digital line (you thought T1s were only for internet connections?) and route digitally yourself.
And that's just the basics, before you get into fancy stuff. My father-in-law makes all his long-distance calls on calling cards. Though we're both in Ohio, the CID on all of his calls these days says "Colorado Call". The card that he just used up seemed to give something different each time.
Its less about "changing the database" (as if there is one big one somewhere, and the verious TELCOs were all united in their use of it), than it is telemarketers being their own mini-TELCO, and originating whatever info they wanted (beyond the basic BLOCKED CALL, or OUT-OF-AREA codes).
...or you state on your answering machine that
"users of this phone line are entering a contract to speak w/ me (name/addy/etc) for non-commercial purposes. Hang up now if you do not accept these conditions -- failure to do so results in a $1200.00 (whatever) fee to be paid net 5 days." and let the phone ring through...
if you end up with a telemarketer, you can get THEM to tell you where/who/whatever and then send the bastards a bill. record the call and other details and send the whole thing to a collections agency if they dont pay.
That would be all well and good if telemarketers actually stuck around long enough to listen to answering machine messages, instead of hanging up and putting you on the list of folks to try again later.
As it is, it often takes a few seconds for a human to take over from the automatic dialer. Half the time if I answer it, intending to light into a put-me-on-your-do-not-call-list rant, I end up hearing something like a busy signal because whichever tele-schmoe the "predictive dialer" selected is still otherwise occupied. So it hangs up on me, and I'm back on the list of folks to bother at dinnertime.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not necessarily taking issue with what you've written. What I'd like to do is explore the ethical landscape that surrounds this assertion.
You wrote: I wonder if I am also harming the artist/label by investigating their opinions on filesharing (and their business practices) and then NOT buying their album that I would buy if it were not for my ability to gain new insights about said artist/label.
The assertion of harm here looks like it hinges on my *changing my mind* about purchasing. That seems like an awfully arbitrary test to apply. How many other things might cause me to not buy a CD I otherwise would have bought? Wouldn't they be harming, too?
Okay, there HAS to be something much more sinister going on here.
The aforementioned "[...] genuinely intriguing claims about Janet Reno's time in Miami" turn out to be documented on the bizarre site Lesbian Studies, which seems to be one lone man's effort to expose how the government financed Lesbian Mafia controls America.
That's all well and good. One google-eyed religious crank is connected to another google-eyed religious crank. No surprises there.
But wait, look again and scroll down a bit. Thompson and Reno have the same goofy grin! It's not quite a separated-at-birth, but it's still kinda spooky!
Ah, forget it. These guys are bad enough on their own. Making fun of them just seems redundant.
I wonder if Donna Kossy know about them...
Organizing by color works better with CDs than books. Their uniform size makes for a crisp aesthetic, as well as a more efficient use of space. It was very striking and never failed to impress friends.
With books, the wide variations in sizes contributed to a cluttered look that almost completely countered the chromatic harmony. It also wastes a lot of space in accomodating the few large books on each shelf.
We kept our CDs that way for almost 4 years, but my wife eventually nixed it for being too difficult.
-Sporktoast
I wonder if the cheapest and most expedient solution is to just sign up for Channel One and then cancel it after a year. TV's for every classroom and free CCTV wiring to boot! No messing with open RF broadcasting. No pissing off the neighbors with interference.
Oh my God! It's the new Pixelvision!
Actually, it's not. At least, not yet. Pixelvision was so great because it was liberating. It was the video version of the portable 4-track tape recorder. It brought the DIY/Garage ethos to movie making.
This thing is all about consuming licensed content ("Collect Them All") from the major media players, as if that's any big surprise. Sure, Zoc_All_Alone is reverse-engineering the file format, but until someone can hack a Mavica to record in that format, I don't think it will be as compelling to fiddle with.
My experience was that when a slab of meat hit the floor, the call went out on the line to hold it for the next shmoe who asked for his steak to be well done.
I am a vegetarian these days.
Nixon tapes gap = 18.5 minutes
MS Emails gap = 35 weeks
That's a factor of almore 20,000.
Looks like Moore's Law might apply here, too.
Ahem.
Perhaps you might want to check those SAT-preparation flash cards a little more closely.
Eeeewwww!
What an awful place for your ass to be.
I seem to recall learning in school about Ptolemy doing experiments with a spinning spoked wheel and sunlight. He demonstrated the effect where at certain speeds the spokes appear to stop or rotate backwards and also the hallucination of color when the wheels were only black and white.
Somewhere I have a flexi-single that came with an audiophile magazine that demonstrated a psycho-acoustic hallucination. You needed headphones to get the full effect. It would alternate high and low tones between your ears in various patterns, but your brain would perceive it as a different pattern. I believe it was based on this research.
Auditory and visual hallucinations are known to occur to people in situations of acute sensory deprivation (like dark neutral bouyancy tanks).
In each of these cases, no "exceptional chemical circumstances" were involved.
This is exactly the sort of approach you should take, KReilly. Thinking "This year I have been considering creating my own non-profit organization, but I still lack a clear picture of what I hope to accomplish." is putting the cart before the horse. You wouldn't say "This year I have been considering applying for a patent, but I still lack a clear picture of what I hope to invent." Creating a non-profit *might* be a way to amp up an idea that you've already fleshed out, but you really do want to figure out that idea part first.
Pillohead here has an idea that he has initiated (and one that you might consider emulating), and perhaps forming a non-profit to help it scale is the next level. Perhaps not.
I've been employed by, contracted for, AND been on the board of directors of several non-profits. The ones who have consistently been the most successful are the ones that have a strong vision of what they want to accomplish.
Take the time to figure out what kind of services you want to provide, and to whom. Sure, you have lots of skills, but which ones to you really want to use all the time? Would you rather build and maintain computers and networks for charities (like Pillohead's example)? Maybe you'd enjoy teaching elderly nursing home residents about accessing the internet? You mentioned "repairing computers donated by businesses for schools". If that's what you want to do, why not contact some existing non-profits who do similar work in other parts of the country, like CompuMentor or the Philadelphia Reuse Collaborative and ask them about what it takes to do what they do? You should also think about whether you want to be the one getting your hands dirty (string cable, swap boards, install software, teach users, etc.), or whether you want to be the visionary who is in charge of everything like an Executive Director or Board Member (write by-laws and policies, do grantwriting and other fundraising, maintain press contacts, etc.).
As to your last question " how do you, as a tech, give back to society and aid in social programs?", what *I personally* do is work as a consultant for non-profits and give them whatever kind of computer help they need that I have the skills for. I charge slightly less than the going rate because I know their budgets are not large. Often I do some small amount of work first in a volunteer capacity. This allows me to create good will and familiarity between us, and lets me understand more about their needs and how my skills might or might not fit. I tend to lean toward social justice issuses, so my local Community Shares federation has been a terrific starting point for finding organizations that could use my help.
The court case being reported on was filed during the Clinton administration, but the malfeasance it addresses goes back much further.
There was a great deal of theft, embezzlement, and fraud that occurred in the BIA during the Reagan administration. The accounting system was a mess, and Reagan gutted the Special Council office that was created to investigate the situation. Several books on US intelligence report that BIA trust fund money was used to fund the Contras and other covert efforts.
But it still goes back further than that. The trust fund exists because of a 19th century law that says that companies who want to prospect resources from Indian lands don't have to pay the Indians directly. Instead, they have to pay the BIA, who is then supposed to pay the Indians. It has hardly ever worked that way. Going back to at least 1927 the BIA has been undercollecting, mismanaging, and "losing" the funds.
The BIA is steeped in a culture where the worst aspects of bureaucracy, from apathy to outright thievery, thrive.
Hey Bill, nice comb-over.
If devices like this are being marketed to (albeit a niche of) homeowners, I wouldn't think it'd be too difficult to find something similar that has a more informative readout.
The article says Marc Singer may be back. Given his resume, I doubt that his own willingness would be any kind of holdup. Will they hire him? Probably.
He's going to have to chose a different type of weapon this time. I doubt a contemporary Nokia cam-phone is as good for wuppin some alien butt as the old-school vidicon-tubed Ikegami he swung around in the original.
The article also mentions Robert Englund might sign up, too. I always found it hard to take any of his scary stuff seriously after seeing him as the (I think the polite word is) *challenged* alien Willie in the original V miniseries.
I had considered the Vise-Grip method, but even the needle-nosed models were still a bit bulky for that particular tight spot.
You aren't alone.
This one is in CODE 39, inked circa 1991.
Um, no.
That may be partly true in the Steppes, and perhaps to a very slender degree in rural Appalachia, but no.
Apples, as we know them, are almost more a human-managed product than the milk we get from the knocked-up, cloned, hormone-pumped-up, antibiotic-guzzling, hooked-to-the-milking-machine-24/7 heifers in the "dairy" factories.
Any apple sapling you buy from a nursery is the result of grafting from clones. Cloned rootstock, bred for disease resistance and cloned branchstock for fruit size/shape/color/taste/texture/keep/etc.. The fruits that come from it are just about guaranteed to be the same as its nursery littermates that came from the same "parents".
When the fruit grows, it gets 100% of its genetic destiny from the tree (really just the branchstock) it's on. The seeds are a completely different story. Half of their pedigree came blowing in on the wind. And any apple can cross with any other apple, from the biggest, blandest "golden delicious" to the tiniest, tartest crabapple. And there's enough genetic variability that even hand cross-pollinating two know varietals can still get you something that doesn't bear much resemblance to either of its parentstock.
Growing apple trees from saved seeds is a crapshoot.
-Sporktoast
I was out with a friend at a Chinese restaurant and witnessed the following interaction between her and the waiter:
Friend: Could you please make sure not to use MSG in my food?
Waiter: Oh no! We don't use MSG *at all* in this restaurant.
Friend: Good, because I have a horrible reaction to it! If I have even a little, I'll get blinding migraine headaches and usually end up laying on the floor in convulsions. So, if you use it at all, I'd like to request that you give the pans and utensils and extra washing before you use them on my order.
Waiter: Hold on just a moment. (As he scurries off to the kitchen, then comes back several moments later.) Okay, I made sure that there won't be any MSG in your order.
While the waiter was gone, she told me that she'd lost count of the number of Chinese restaurants who assured her that they never use MSG, who later told her that she'd probably have to eat somewhere else when she got to the part about the convulsions and the extra washing.
I dunno, perhaps it's already in some of the packaged ingredients. Either that or "No MSG" has the same fluidity of meaning as "10 minutes" does in those cases.
Bismal makes me think of my cow orkers, but for a different reason.
Oops!
I bet you meant to post this as a reply to this article.
Sort of. The CID info comes from the originating exchange, which for average homeowners is the building full of TELCO equipment somewhere nearby, where the local analog signal is sampled and routed digitally on it's way (along with the CID info).
But for businesses with a need for a larger number of phone lines, it makes sense to operate their own exchange. They call it a Private Branch Exchange, or PBX. Get a high capacity digital line (you thought T1s were only for internet connections?) and route digitally yourself.
And that's just the basics, before you get into fancy stuff. My father-in-law makes all his long-distance calls on calling cards. Though we're both in Ohio, the CID on all of his calls these days says "Colorado Call". The card that he just used up seemed to give something different each time.
Its less about "changing the database" (as if there is one big one somewhere, and the verious TELCOs were all united in their use of it), than it is telemarketers being their own mini-TELCO, and originating whatever info they wanted (beyond the basic BLOCKED CALL, or OUT-OF-AREA codes).
That would be all well and good if telemarketers actually stuck around long enough to listen to answering machine messages, instead of hanging up and putting you on the list of folks to try again later.
As it is, it often takes a few seconds for a human to take over from the automatic dialer. Half the time if I answer it, intending to light into a put-me-on-your-do-not-call-list rant, I end up hearing something like a busy signal because whichever tele-schmoe the "predictive dialer" selected is still otherwise occupied. So it hangs up on me, and I'm back on the list of folks to bother at dinnertime.
I can think of one vector you forgot.
Having friends or relatives who forward glurge, petitions, or chain emails without using BCC or chopping the headers.
Eventually they can get forwarded into the hands of a spammer who harvests all the addressess in the header.