It seems the "protect the people from themselves" mantra of big government and big business has finally started to complete its cycle of viciousnous.
I realize that sounds harsh, but I also realize that it is true. People have been programmed to believe that it is very, very important for the government (and the big businesses that are actually in charge of the government) to protect them from themselves and their neighbors. Personally that makes me sick. But there are so many people that actually believe in this sort of thinking that it is really difficult to get anyone to listen to you if you believe that freedom is more important than protection.
I realize that there is a fine line that must be balanced upon between freedom and protection in any well-run society, but lately it seems that the balance has swung completely over to the side of protection. No common sense is applied. No one cares about freedom. In fact, I've even seen arguments along the lines of, "What about my freedom to be sure that my child will never have to see a pornographic picture?" That isn't freedom you are asking for. You are asking for society to be in charge of raising your child.
I'm sorry if people see this as a fameish rant, but it is high time that people get interested in themselves again. You cannot expect to live a sheltered existence and still have freedom. You can have one or the other. And while the adults of this world were raised during the "enlightened child-rearing" age, when kids were taught that mommy and daddy would filter and sanitize all things for them, we must, at some point, convince those very adults that it is very important to make sure that you learn how to "filter" things for yourself.
As an example, I came from such a family. My parents believed (still believe, even at 27 years old with my own wife and family) that they could filter and sanitize the world as it came to me. I quickly learned that the world is not as safe a place as they wanted me to believe. And I managed, by fighting against the controlling instincts of my parents, to develop the ability to ignore things that were "bad" for me. I've never been drunk, I've never had the urge to smoke, I've never tried drugs, and the worst habit I have is playing guitar loudly. I managed to survive all the peer pressure, advertising campaigns and all the other garbage that goes on as a kid and not succumb to the "evils of the world". I developed my own mind, and learned to make my own decisions. But today that is considered bad. It is far more important to be told how to decide things by parents, teachers and eventually (once you outgrow those) the government and business where you work. It is a sad reality, and one that I hope reverses at some point.
This "tack a 'little' rule on a bill and hope it passes" garbage is something that isn't necissary. It was developed as a way to pass unsavory things by attaching them to more wanted things and has survived unchanged for a long time. Why we allow it is beyond me. I know the excuses that are given (it costs us less money and all that garbage), but shouldn't things be wieghed on their own merits? Why should we have to decided something purely on the basis of whether it is "attached" to something more important? This is what our government and the businesses that run our government want us to believe. Doesn't it seem ridiculous?
Imagine going to an interview and being told, "We can hire you, but only if you are willing to leave your wife, move out of your house, and live in a cardboard box". While this is an extreme example, you would have to decide between taking that job and losing everything else, or losing that job opportunity and keeping everything else. These are the sorts of ridiculous decisions that get made day in and day out by our congress. It just doesn't make sense. Line item veto you say? Line items shouldn't exists at all. It should be one item is one item, period. Otherwise it's just an excuse to pass more legislation that opresses the "idiot masses". The sad thing is, there are enough people that want to be oppressed now, in the name of protection, that we probably won't see it change. God, what a mess. I pray that someone finds a way to do something.
If the only real world advantage to "learning" something that you can come up with is "it won't help you the next time you are on Jeapordy or interviewed on MTV" then I guess I just wasted about fifteen minutes of my life.
You are the epitome of what is wrong with modern society. You want to make kids stupider so that you can claim that "they were smarter back in my day." It isn't the Internet that makes people stupider. It is cutting people off from other things that makes them stupider.
I enjoy the Internet. I also enjoy books (those things that you seem convinced I don't like just because I'm here). I also have been a farmer, a factory worker, a technician, a phone salesman, a train afficianado, an aquarium manager, and about half a million other things. Diversity is the key to learning. I don't claim to be super-intelligent, but I will claim that I go out of my way to continually learn new things.
Trying to say that anyone who understands and uses computers is an idiot just because of that is just as stupid as the people that claimed heavy metal caused brain damage. And if you do not understand that, then you definitely are not worth my time.
Your post combined with your signature brought to mind a favorite saying of mine.
The three new religions are psychology, government, and science. If you lack faith in any of these religions, you will be an outcast. However, you will also be able to think for yourself.
Like most public places, the people that are noisiest are usually the most illiterate, idiotic and moronic of the bunch. Slashdot is just an extension of that. If you read at -1 you would assume that nobody seems to be able to read beyond a comprehension level of the average kindegartener.
But, something that gets ignored way, way too often nowadays is that it isn't the Internet that makes people stupid. It isn't any one thing. It is the way they are raised, the way they are taught, and the type of family they are brought up in. These things, along with the type of person they are (their genetic make-up if you will) are the only things that determine whether or not someone is stupid, or a misfit.
Misfits are not made by the Internet. Much like Heavy Metal back when I was in school, it is the misfits that are attracted to the Internet (just like they were attracted to Heavy Metal back in the day). And just because a large number of very, very vocal people display some tendency to be one way or another, you cannot assume that the root cause of that is whatever their favorite pass-time is. The cause lies elsewhere. It is the fact that they display these traits that they are attracted to this place as a pass-time. The trolls seek the other trolls, and the place where they can get the biggest rise out of the most people. Slashdot is an example of that.
But to assume that closing people off from that is going to improve the mental prowess of our youth is a grave mistake. You cannot teach by removing negative stimuli. If the Internet is a negative stimuli at all (and that is very questionable) you must teach children to use the appropriate areas of the Internet and avoid the negatives.
I see a frightening trend in this day and age when it comes to child rearing. It is the "protect until raised" mentality that has already caused a number of problems for people of my generation (and younger). People that believe this are raising children that have no idea that there even are negative things out there. And they really think that this is a good thing to teach. They don't understand that you cannot just cut children off from any possible negative stimulous. You have to teach them how to deal with that stimulous and how to avoid getting sucked into "bad situations". If not, we end up with children that cannot cope with reality when they are adults. They get out in the real world on their own and they just aren't able to cope with the problems that they are faced with.
Sure, mothers and fathers wish that they could protect their children from everything they ever could have to face. But all you will do if you raise your child to believe that the world is a safe and happy place, with absolutely nothing to worry about, is create a situation where the child either never leaves home, or never develops the ability to cope with reality at all.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but we must not succumb to this "let the government protect us" any more than we must raise our children to believe that mommy and daddy will always make sure that anything that comes near you will be filtered, sanitized and made safe. Asking the government to make rules that "protect the children" is doubly stupid in that it assumes that the parents themselves (the ones that subscribe to this idiotic "protect at all costs" mentality) are not capable of raising their own children the way they see fit. And not all people want to be told how they will raise their children.
I say it's high time that people stop being so lazy about parenting and just accept that it isn't going to be easy. You teach your children and show them what life is about. You had better not expect the government to do it for you. If you do, you will eventually end up with a generation of people that absolutely are incapable of thinking for themselves. While the big-business and government driven parts of society would absolutely love this, there is a point in time when people (at least, the ones with a few brain cells left) will get tired of being told what to do. And if you think that revolution is out of the question, then it is time for you to go study some of your history lessons.
Too many rules, too little tought. It seems to be the motto of the day anymore. I wish that there was some way to collectively slap the face of humanity and make them see how ridiculous it is. But, all I can do is bitch on slashdot. More's the pity.
I find that happening more and more in large cities. I think it just makes the cops jobs easier because they don't have to risk "chasing" anybody as they will have to stop within the next city block anyway. I think it sucks, but what can you do?
There has got to be at least a couple of rouge moderators in this thread. Between the above post and the Pump Up The Volume post there's two that didn't deserve modding down and probably deserved modded WAY up. Man, moderators appear to really be incapable of reaching into the humor bag today.
The above post is most definitely not off topic. Good lord, moderators really need to lighten up. Just because you don't get a reference doesn't mean you have to moderate into oblivion.
For those that don't get it:
Pump Up The Volume was probably the coolest movie of our generation. It was this kid that had a pirate radio show he started running every night at 10pm and he ended up getting a huge following. It was really very, very cool. (Sorry, no spoilers on the ending).
Oh god yes I love that movie. Of course, I think that the government and the oil cartels are in on it together. After all, why wouldn't the oil companies want to get in on a conspiracy that pours more money into their pockets?
Not to be an ass, but how do you know? Maybe traffic jams are all set-up by the oil cartels. Yeah, that's it, they realize that they can make people burn more gas if they cause traffic jams and make you take four to five times as long to get home and to work every day. Thus they keep a steady supply of money flowing into their pockets.
Just because you don't see the conspiracy doesn't mean there isn't one.;-)
That's an entirely possible scenario. And, like you say, such a product would soon become the market leader (imagine the upgrade flash costing you, say $25 instead of having to pay $200 for a whole new player).
However, no company is interested in something which doesn't look really good in the short term. They don't think of long term effects. And it would take at least a few months, and more likely a few years for a flash upgradeable player to truly become the "standard" and start making a company large amounts of money. Current companies are interested in the bottom line tomorrow, not a year or two down the road.
So, while it would benefit consumers, and the company that came up with it, both tremendously in the long run, I don't look for it to happen anytime soon. It would require too much fore-thought.
People enjoy the web because it isn't completely ad infested (yeah, there are banners, but as was stated, they are easily ignored).
Now, I'm one of those people that find pop-ups to be the most blatantly annoying pieces of garbage in existence, especially those that pop-up after you close a window to "show you more". So, what they are basically going to do is piss me off to the point to where I will refuse to frequent sites that do this.
The first time I come to slashdot, get a pop-up, get pissed off, close slashdot and get another pop-up is the last time slashdot generates a page-hit from me. The web was cool in 95, less cool in 2000, are we looking to totally destroy any enjoyment at all by 2005? Great, another good idea gone bad due to "marketing potential".
When there is no business influence in the "standards" bodies, then we will have a FINAL standard.
It's awful hard for these businesses to make money if we have a finalized standard, people buy what they need, and there is no need to "upgrade" every few years. How would you suggest they stay in business in that situation.
And don't get to thinking that us consumers have the right to say we want a finalized standard. We aren't the important ones in this transaction. He with the most money is the most important. The corporation with the most money, well, their power is far beyond godhood in this day and age.
You won't see that happen for a long, long time, if ever. And you certainly won't find upgrade flashes that are free.
The only way these companies stay in business is making sure that every time there is a new standard you have to go out and buy a new player. If you only had to buy one player (and upgrading was free) that would be the end of them. They don't want that. And we all know that consumers exist for the express purpose of serving the needs of big business.
Oh, and just in case consumers get cocky enough to believe that they are important, there are courts, laws and government bodies. All of which are in place to make sure that we consumers don't get out of line and try to hold back corporations from making money. But, that's just my theory.
If you are willing to spend the money that's all available now (except you still have to be smart enough to turn on the TV if you have a DVD in the DVD/CD/CDR/CDRW player). Sony I know makes an amp/reciever that is video aware and will automatically "route" the video from the DVD/CD deck to the TV, but some of the lower buck models you have to hit a little switch between DVD or CD. But you still don't have to get up as it's all nicely put on the ultra-fancy, way too many buttons to keep track of remote control. And I'm sure other companies have the same sort of thing. Just get one of the new "multi-media" recievers. It's really not that hard to find one. Best Buy has them, and home-theater oriented stores have them. Just look around.
Yeah, I sort of remembered something about that, but that was a fairly large contraption. If they could do the same sort of thing much, much smaller, then it would be perfect for an in-house bug killer.
The Press Bias will end when BIG MONEY doesn't speak a much more "interesting" language than the common english speaking consumer.
You do know that courtrooms, laws and governments were put in place to protec the poor big businesses from us bad, nasty and spiteful consumers right? We should have no rights. If god wanted us to have rights, he would have had us born into money.
The reason people got fired up over the UNISYS/GIF fiasco is the fact that they waited until it had become popular and well-instituded before they "claimed" it. Then, once they realized how many people were using it they freaked out and said, "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!"
It's kind of like someone giving you a dinner for your birthday, and then coming back two days later and saying, "Are you gonna ever pay me back for that dinner?" Come to think of it, this whole case sounds a lot like that, except that BT are even bigger idiots if they think that hyperlinking is something they can claim they "own".
You underestimate the laziness and stupidity of businesses.
If they win this, they will pursue it further until we hit a point where everyone is charge a "using hyperlinks" tax which will be funnelled directly to BT just for having an ISP. And the ISPs won't complain much, they'll just raise rates for those dumbass consumers that bother them with all the stupid, silly questions and whine for cheaper, faster connections.
It may sound ridiculous today, but the way things are shaping up, we will probably soon have to pay to even leave our homes. It will be a "free-air" tax or some-such. If we are not on "our" property (which will all actually be owned by the banks), then we have to pay for the priviledge of breathing air and otherwise abusing resources in the "public domain". Sounds crazy, but big business, government and the conglomerate mega-corps would love to see this happen. The question is, how far can they push before the "common idiots" (us) finally snap and go kick some ass?
BTW, my toe fungus asked me to inform you that you will soon be sued with a race discrimination suit. They feel you have slandered their race forever by comparing it with the supidity that is found on the web. Have a nice day.
If someone found a way to actually accomplish this (maybe even having the robot "eat" the bugs and use the carcass for energy) I would be willing to pay big bucks for a few of them.
I live in an older home and paying for an exterminator seems stupid when I could just spray myself. But for the entertainment value, I would love to have a few little robots that "wandered" around the house and kicked the shit out of the real insects. I'm not sure what the wife would think of that though.
That is, bar none, the coolest thing I have ever seen written, linked to, quoted, or otherwise posted to slashdot. EVER!
It sums up what I have been saying for years, only taking about twice as much time to say it. I consider myself good with words most of the time (at least, good at getting my point across), but I think I may have to save that quote as a better explanation than I could have come up with on this subject.
I wonder how much influence the point and grunt interfaces have had on our school literacy rates. That would be an interesting topic.
If trying to cluster Corel Linux systems sucked as much as trying to get anything else done on them (other than clicking on the pretty, Windows look alike icons), then I would say there is no way in hell that you could cluster a Corel distro based group of computers.
Honestly, I've never seen such a terrible piece of software claiming to be "Linux". And hopefully I never will again.
That's basically what you will get if current trends continue.
Think about how long we were stuck with hard drives on the same speed bus. Now we've had some progress lately with FSB and hard drive bus speeds increasing (ever so slowly) up the the big, bad ATA100 spec (is it really that noticeably different?).
Do you really think we will get beyond ATA500 (or a little more) before we break the next barrier (1,000Ghz) in processor speed? Not unless we break away from the current fast processor/slow memory/slower storage systems. I just want to see that end before I die. Persistent, and consistent memory (as in, same speed as the processor itself) that can double as storage (hence the persistence) and is relatively inexpensive. God, I would kill for such a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems the "protect the people from themselves" mantra of big government and big business has finally started to complete its cycle of viciousnous.
I realize that sounds harsh, but I also realize that it is true. People have been programmed to believe that it is very, very important for the government (and the big businesses that are actually in charge of the government) to protect them from themselves and their neighbors. Personally that makes me sick. But there are so many people that actually believe in this sort of thinking that it is really difficult to get anyone to listen to you if you believe that freedom is more important than protection.
I realize that there is a fine line that must be balanced upon between freedom and protection in any well-run society, but lately it seems that the balance has swung completely over to the side of protection. No common sense is applied. No one cares about freedom. In fact, I've even seen arguments along the lines of, "What about my freedom to be sure that my child will never have to see a pornographic picture?" That isn't freedom you are asking for. You are asking for society to be in charge of raising your child.
I'm sorry if people see this as a fameish rant, but it is high time that people get interested in themselves again. You cannot expect to live a sheltered existence and still have freedom. You can have one or the other. And while the adults of this world were raised during the "enlightened child-rearing" age, when kids were taught that mommy and daddy would filter and sanitize all things for them, we must, at some point, convince those very adults that it is very important to make sure that you learn how to "filter" things for yourself.
As an example, I came from such a family. My parents believed (still believe, even at 27 years old with my own wife and family) that they could filter and sanitize the world as it came to me. I quickly learned that the world is not as safe a place as they wanted me to believe. And I managed, by fighting against the controlling instincts of my parents, to develop the ability to ignore things that were "bad" for me. I've never been drunk, I've never had the urge to smoke, I've never tried drugs, and the worst habit I have is playing guitar loudly. I managed to survive all the peer pressure, advertising campaigns and all the other garbage that goes on as a kid and not succumb to the "evils of the world". I developed my own mind, and learned to make my own decisions. But today that is considered bad. It is far more important to be told how to decide things by parents, teachers and eventually (once you outgrow those) the government and business where you work. It is a sad reality, and one that I hope reverses at some point.
This "tack a 'little' rule on a bill and hope it passes" garbage is something that isn't necissary. It was developed as a way to pass unsavory things by attaching them to more wanted things and has survived unchanged for a long time. Why we allow it is beyond me. I know the excuses that are given (it costs us less money and all that garbage), but shouldn't things be wieghed on their own merits? Why should we have to decided something purely on the basis of whether it is "attached" to something more important? This is what our government and the businesses that run our government want us to believe. Doesn't it seem ridiculous?
Imagine going to an interview and being told, "We can hire you, but only if you are willing to leave your wife, move out of your house, and live in a cardboard box". While this is an extreme example, you would have to decide between taking that job and losing everything else, or losing that job opportunity and keeping everything else. These are the sorts of ridiculous decisions that get made day in and day out by our congress. It just doesn't make sense. Line item veto you say? Line items shouldn't exists at all. It should be one item is one item, period. Otherwise it's just an excuse to pass more legislation that opresses the "idiot masses". The sad thing is, there are enough people that want to be oppressed now, in the name of protection, that we probably won't see it change. God, what a mess. I pray that someone finds a way to do something.
If the only real world advantage to "learning" something that you can come up with is "it won't help you the next time you are on Jeapordy or interviewed on MTV" then I guess I just wasted about fifteen minutes of my life.
You are the epitome of what is wrong with modern society. You want to make kids stupider so that you can claim that "they were smarter back in my day." It isn't the Internet that makes people stupider. It is cutting people off from other things that makes them stupider.
I enjoy the Internet. I also enjoy books (those things that you seem convinced I don't like just because I'm here). I also have been a farmer, a factory worker, a technician, a phone salesman, a train afficianado, an aquarium manager, and about half a million other things. Diversity is the key to learning. I don't claim to be super-intelligent, but I will claim that I go out of my way to continually learn new things.
Trying to say that anyone who understands and uses computers is an idiot just because of that is just as stupid as the people that claimed heavy metal caused brain damage. And if you do not understand that, then you definitely are not worth my time.
Your post combined with your signature brought to mind a favorite saying of mine.
The three new religions are psychology, government, and science. If you lack faith in any of these religions, you will be an outcast. However, you will also be able to think for yourself.
Are you having a bad day?
Like most public places, the people that are noisiest are usually the most illiterate, idiotic and moronic of the bunch. Slashdot is just an extension of that. If you read at -1 you would assume that nobody seems to be able to read beyond a comprehension level of the average kindegartener.
But, something that gets ignored way, way too often nowadays is that it isn't the Internet that makes people stupid. It isn't any one thing. It is the way they are raised, the way they are taught, and the type of family they are brought up in. These things, along with the type of person they are (their genetic make-up if you will) are the only things that determine whether or not someone is stupid, or a misfit.
Misfits are not made by the Internet. Much like Heavy Metal back when I was in school, it is the misfits that are attracted to the Internet (just like they were attracted to Heavy Metal back in the day). And just because a large number of very, very vocal people display some tendency to be one way or another, you cannot assume that the root cause of that is whatever their favorite pass-time is. The cause lies elsewhere. It is the fact that they display these traits that they are attracted to this place as a pass-time. The trolls seek the other trolls, and the place where they can get the biggest rise out of the most people. Slashdot is an example of that.
But to assume that closing people off from that is going to improve the mental prowess of our youth is a grave mistake. You cannot teach by removing negative stimuli. If the Internet is a negative stimuli at all (and that is very questionable) you must teach children to use the appropriate areas of the Internet and avoid the negatives.
I see a frightening trend in this day and age when it comes to child rearing. It is the "protect until raised" mentality that has already caused a number of problems for people of my generation (and younger). People that believe this are raising children that have no idea that there even are negative things out there. And they really think that this is a good thing to teach. They don't understand that you cannot just cut children off from any possible negative stimulous. You have to teach them how to deal with that stimulous and how to avoid getting sucked into "bad situations". If not, we end up with children that cannot cope with reality when they are adults. They get out in the real world on their own and they just aren't able to cope with the problems that they are faced with.
Sure, mothers and fathers wish that they could protect their children from everything they ever could have to face. But all you will do if you raise your child to believe that the world is a safe and happy place, with absolutely nothing to worry about, is create a situation where the child either never leaves home, or never develops the ability to cope with reality at all.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but we must not succumb to this "let the government protect us" any more than we must raise our children to believe that mommy and daddy will always make sure that anything that comes near you will be filtered, sanitized and made safe. Asking the government to make rules that "protect the children" is doubly stupid in that it assumes that the parents themselves (the ones that subscribe to this idiotic "protect at all costs" mentality) are not capable of raising their own children the way they see fit. And not all people want to be told how they will raise their children.
I say it's high time that people stop being so lazy about parenting and just accept that it isn't going to be easy. You teach your children and show them what life is about. You had better not expect the government to do it for you. If you do, you will eventually end up with a generation of people that absolutely are incapable of thinking for themselves. While the big-business and government driven parts of society would absolutely love this, there is a point in time when people (at least, the ones with a few brain cells left) will get tired of being told what to do. And if you think that revolution is out of the question, then it is time for you to go study some of your history lessons.
Too many rules, too little tought. It seems to be the motto of the day anymore. I wish that there was some way to collectively slap the face of humanity and make them see how ridiculous it is. But, all I can do is bitch on slashdot. More's the pity.
I find that happening more and more in large cities. I think it just makes the cops jobs easier because they don't have to risk "chasing" anybody as they will have to stop within the next city block anyway. I think it sucks, but what can you do?
There has got to be at least a couple of rouge moderators in this thread. Between the above post and the Pump Up The Volume post there's two that didn't deserve modding down and probably deserved modded WAY up. Man, moderators appear to really be incapable of reaching into the humor bag today.
The above post is most definitely not off topic. Good lord, moderators really need to lighten up. Just because you don't get a reference doesn't mean you have to moderate into oblivion.
For those that don't get it:
Pump Up The Volume was probably the coolest movie of our generation. It was this kid that had a pirate radio show he started running every night at 10pm and he ended up getting a huge following. It was really very, very cool. (Sorry, no spoilers on the ending).
Oh god yes I love that movie. Of course, I think that the government and the oil cartels are in on it together. After all, why wouldn't the oil companies want to get in on a conspiracy that pours more money into their pockets?
Not to be an ass, but how do you know? Maybe traffic jams are all set-up by the oil cartels. Yeah, that's it, they realize that they can make people burn more gas if they cause traffic jams and make you take four to five times as long to get home and to work every day. Thus they keep a steady supply of money flowing into their pockets.
Just because you don't see the conspiracy doesn't mean there isn't one.;-)
That's an entirely possible scenario. And, like you say, such a product would soon become the market leader (imagine the upgrade flash costing you, say $25 instead of having to pay $200 for a whole new player).
However, no company is interested in something which doesn't look really good in the short term. They don't think of long term effects. And it would take at least a few months, and more likely a few years for a flash upgradeable player to truly become the "standard" and start making a company large amounts of money. Current companies are interested in the bottom line tomorrow, not a year or two down the road.
So, while it would benefit consumers, and the company that came up with it, both tremendously in the long run, I don't look for it to happen anytime soon. It would require too much fore-thought.
People enjoy the web because it isn't completely ad infested (yeah, there are banners, but as was stated, they are easily ignored).
Now, I'm one of those people that find pop-ups to be the most blatantly annoying pieces of garbage in existence, especially those that pop-up after you close a window to "show you more". So, what they are basically going to do is piss me off to the point to where I will refuse to frequent sites that do this.
The first time I come to slashdot, get a pop-up, get pissed off, close slashdot and get another pop-up is the last time slashdot generates a page-hit from me. The web was cool in 95, less cool in 2000, are we looking to totally destroy any enjoyment at all by 2005? Great, another good idea gone bad due to "marketing potential".
When there is no business influence in the "standards" bodies, then we will have a FINAL standard.
It's awful hard for these businesses to make money if we have a finalized standard, people buy what they need, and there is no need to "upgrade" every few years. How would you suggest they stay in business in that situation.
And don't get to thinking that us consumers have the right to say we want a finalized standard. We aren't the important ones in this transaction. He with the most money is the most important. The corporation with the most money, well, their power is far beyond godhood in this day and age.
You won't see that happen for a long, long time, if ever. And you certainly won't find upgrade flashes that are free.
The only way these companies stay in business is making sure that every time there is a new standard you have to go out and buy a new player. If you only had to buy one player (and upgrading was free) that would be the end of them. They don't want that. And we all know that consumers exist for the express purpose of serving the needs of big business.
Oh, and just in case consumers get cocky enough to believe that they are important, there are courts, laws and government bodies. All of which are in place to make sure that we consumers don't get out of line and try to hold back corporations from making money. But, that's just my theory.
If you are willing to spend the money that's all available now (except you still have to be smart enough to turn on the TV if you have a DVD in the DVD/CD/CDR/CDRW player). Sony I know makes an amp/reciever that is video aware and will automatically "route" the video from the DVD/CD deck to the TV, but some of the lower buck models you have to hit a little switch between DVD or CD. But you still don't have to get up as it's all nicely put on the ultra-fancy, way too many buttons to keep track of remote control. And I'm sure other companies have the same sort of thing. Just get one of the new "multi-media" recievers. It's really not that hard to find one. Best Buy has them, and home-theater oriented stores have them. Just look around.
Yeah, I sort of remembered something about that, but that was a fairly large contraption. If they could do the same sort of thing much, much smaller, then it would be perfect for an in-house bug killer.
The Press Bias will end when BIG MONEY doesn't speak a much more "interesting" language than the common english speaking consumer.
You do know that courtrooms, laws and governments were put in place to protec the poor big businesses from us bad, nasty and spiteful consumers right? We should have no rights. If god wanted us to have rights, he would have had us born into money.
The reason people got fired up over the UNISYS/GIF fiasco is the fact that they waited until it had become popular and well-instituded before they "claimed" it. Then, once they realized how many people were using it they freaked out and said, "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!"
It's kind of like someone giving you a dinner for your birthday, and then coming back two days later and saying, "Are you gonna ever pay me back for that dinner?" Come to think of it, this whole case sounds a lot like that, except that BT are even bigger idiots if they think that hyperlinking is something they can claim they "own".
You underestimate the laziness and stupidity of businesses.
If they win this, they will pursue it further until we hit a point where everyone is charge a "using hyperlinks" tax which will be funnelled directly to BT just for having an ISP. And the ISPs won't complain much, they'll just raise rates for those dumbass consumers that bother them with all the stupid, silly questions and whine for cheaper, faster connections.
It may sound ridiculous today, but the way things are shaping up, we will probably soon have to pay to even leave our homes. It will be a "free-air" tax or some-such. If we are not on "our" property (which will all actually be owned by the banks), then we have to pay for the priviledge of breathing air and otherwise abusing resources in the "public domain". Sounds crazy, but big business, government and the conglomerate mega-corps would love to see this happen. The question is, how far can they push before the "common idiots" (us) finally snap and go kick some ass?
That's not exactly fair.
BTW, my toe fungus asked me to inform you that you will soon be sued with a race discrimination suit. They feel you have slandered their race forever by comparing it with the supidity that is found on the web. Have a nice day.
If someone found a way to actually accomplish this (maybe even having the robot "eat" the bugs and use the carcass for energy) I would be willing to pay big bucks for a few of them.
I live in an older home and paying for an exterminator seems stupid when I could just spray myself. But for the entertainment value, I would love to have a few little robots that "wandered" around the house and kicked the shit out of the real insects. I'm not sure what the wife would think of that though.
That is, bar none, the coolest thing I have ever seen written, linked to, quoted, or otherwise posted to slashdot. EVER!
It sums up what I have been saying for years, only taking about twice as much time to say it. I consider myself good with words most of the time (at least, good at getting my point across), but I think I may have to save that quote as a better explanation than I could have come up with on this subject.
I wonder how much influence the point and grunt interfaces have had on our school literacy rates. That would be an interesting topic.
Software RAID doesn't add much overhead on a SCSI based system. But I would prefer to just have a faster storage medium.
I tried it, but it fried my memory, and the IDE controllers.
God, if we still have conventional RAM and IDE at that point in time, I don't think it's worth waiting for.
In all honesty, no, no I can't!
If trying to cluster Corel Linux systems sucked as much as trying to get anything else done on them (other than clicking on the pretty, Windows look alike icons), then I would say there is no way in hell that you could cluster a Corel distro based group of computers.
Honestly, I've never seen such a terrible piece of software claiming to be "Linux". And hopefully I never will again.
That's basically what you will get if current trends continue.
Think about how long we were stuck with hard drives on the same speed bus. Now we've had some progress lately with FSB and hard drive bus speeds increasing (ever so slowly) up the the big, bad ATA100 spec (is it really that noticeably different?).
Do you really think we will get beyond ATA500 (or a little more) before we break the next barrier (1,000Ghz) in processor speed? Not unless we break away from the current fast processor/slow memory/slower storage systems. I just want to see that end before I die. Persistent, and consistent memory (as in, same speed as the processor itself) that can double as storage (hence the persistence) and is relatively inexpensive. God, I would kill for such a thing.