Most often the GPS is much closer than the speedometer. It may jump up and down a couple MPH due to position errors going past overpasses, tall buildings, heavy forest etc, but the average is dead on.
Too bad they aren't fining you based on your average speed.
So that means that we must condemn a company that tries to do a socially responsible thing? If its benificial to other people and gives them a profit thats like win-win isn't it?
Because they aren't doing it to be socially responsible. If they wanted to be socially responsible, they would work out a deal with law enforcement agencies and transmit the evidence of speeding to them and then let the people who are charged with enforcing the law handle it. But they wouldn't do that because it wouldn't make them money. So instead they decide to charge $150 per violation and conveniently neglect to mention it to law enforcement. Then when they get called out on it they try to hide behnd some thin veneer of "we did it for the public good." Well...the Nazi's used that same excuse, as did Stalin, and just about every other abusive regime in the history of man. Coming from a business though, it holds even less water.
And it's not a win-win, it's a lose-huh?-win (driver, society, and company).
Funny thing I drive a motorbike without a front license plate.
That's a nice out. Here in the US license plates are issued by the individual states. Some require front and rear plates while others only require front plates. So even in a state that requires both you can get off the hook quite a bit by just not putting one on the front.
Remember what "speed limit" actually means. It means less than or equal to.
So drive at 25MPH all the way through the various speed zones.
In the US this is not the case. Most freeways have a minimum speed limit, even if it is not posted. There's also a "safe conditions" clause in most US traffic laws that stipulate that you should drive at a speed that is appropriate for the situation. For example, you shouldn't drive 55 MPH in a posted 55 MPH speed zone in a blinding rainstorm or if the roadway is covered in ice. To do so would be unsafe. In the same fashion, it would be considered unsafe to drive at 25 MPH on the freeway in a 55 or 65 MPH zone. It's basically a commonsense law, I can't imagine that most countries wouldn't have something similar.
The method by which they find you speeding does not matter - you were BREAKING THE LAW, and being otherwise dangerous.
I don't know how it is in Australia, but here in the US if you are BREAKING THE LAW, only the LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY WHO HAS JURISDICTION can cite you or arrest you for it. We do not support vigilante law enforcement.
So, why are we protecting the crims?
Criminals? You make it sound like we're trying to protect serial killers from prosecution here. This is just a simple speeding violation, it's not even a criminal act in the US. In most jurisdictions there is even a court or judicial system that exists entirely separately from the Criminal and Civil courts to handle these issues (called traffic court or mayor's court in smaller towns).
I would have aplauded this company - trying to save their cars from getting stolen, and possibly saving lives at the same time!
You also would have totally neglected to look into the technical issues involved as well.
For starters, not all speedometers are properly calibrated. Many are off by 5 MPH or more. In the days before radar guns, police cars would have to regularly have their speedometers calibrated and there would need to be records kept (since the main evidence was a cop claiming that he was driving the speed limit and the defendant was driving faster than the cop). If the speedometer reads 55 MPH and you're actually driving 60 MPH then what is your recourse to a company that has already fined you before you even return the car (as happened in the original case)?
On top of that, consider that a GPS speed monitoring system isn't 100% accurate. GPS relies on line-of-site to a satellite. If the signal is obstructed (like when passing through a tunnel) then the GPS system will register ridiculously high speeds (1000+ MPH in some cases). While these cases are obvious to spot, what happens if the GPS loses it's signal for 2 or 3 seconds at freeway speeds? Suddenly your 55 MPH might look more like 80 MPH. Once again, you would be fined before you even knew about the alleged speeding and would have no way to dispute it.
So keep in mind that the pros in this case aren't nearly as clear-cut as you would like to believe. Acme rent-a-car wasn't doing this for the public good either...it was all about the money.
Who cares if Rental car places know where you're going? It's not like that hurts you in any way whatsoever, while it gives the company extra security, so you don't go driving your car down to Tijuana to sell it for vicadin.
Amazon did it, why not Acme?
So let's say that Acme's normal rates are $40/day, including a $5/day insurance fee that they require you to purchase. Now with the GPS they can see where you're going. If you drive through a bad neighborhood, they know it. If youpark it in a seedy part of town for 5 hours, they know it. If they see that you spend more time on the freeway than on city streets, they know it. If they see that you speed more often than not, they know it.
You drop the car off at Acme and pay your normal bill. The next time that you stop in to pick up a car the daily rate is $50/day. So you ask the clerk about it and he says that the daily insurance rates have increased. OK, so you take the car. But what you didn't know is that the insurance rates only went up on *you* renting the car because you tend to put the car in situations that are higher-risk than their average renter. Even though you are an excellent driver and take good care of the car and have never had a claim, they charge you more money because they can track you and your behavior. How do you like that idea?
Well, why do you object to people knowing where you are? I don't care at all. I know a lot of other people don't care at all.
But some of us do care, and we have a right to not have our position broadcast to every business or government agency that wants to track me. Maybe one day I feel like getting away from work and life for awhile and head off to a state park for the weekend. I don't want someone to be able to track me down.
Maybe I enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are perfectly legal, yet some people find of questionable taste. I might not want my employer to be able to tell that I'm at the strip club because his narrow-minded religious beliefs would have me labelled as a pervert. I might not want anybody to know that I stopped by an adult bookstore on the way home and picked up some sex toys for my wife and I to enjoy because if this information were freely available, who's to say that I won't be getting spammed with emails, snail mail mailings, and phone solicitation from other businesses in the sex-related industry?
Maybe I don't want my insurance company to know that I work in a shady part of town where my car is more likely to be stolen or where I am more likely to be mugged or killed (and therefore increase my rates).
The possibilities for exploitation of a tracking system are limited only by your imagination. And I assure you that if a business can find a way to use tracking technology to make more money off of you than they otherwise would be able to, then they will do it.
It seems to be mainly Americans who bring this subject up, which is quite funny, as Americans are probably the most traced people in the world. The irony.
From all indications it would seem that the Brits actually get top honors as the "most monitored people in the world." I'm not sure how you could honestly make the claim that Americans are the most monitored. What evidence have you to back that up?
Keiretsu and Zaibatsu? Isn't Zaibatsu another form of japanese megacorporation?,br>
I always thought that a Zaibatsu was a single large mega-corp while a Keiretsu was a group of large corporations who have allied together against other Keiretsu.
BTW, fuck privacy - you don't need it if you ain't guilty.
True, but sometimes the only crime these users are guilty of is voicing an opinion.
(First off, I know that only the seoncd line is your comment, but they both seemed enough out of whack to quote them together.)
Are you crazy!?!??! We are all entitled to privacy. Do you really want people prying into every minute detail of your life? Trying to find out who you associate with? Trying to videotape you having sexual relations with your spouse/significant other? Trying to find out your credit history and the names of the banks and other businesses that you deal with? Privacy is an important way of protecting yourself. Just because someone isn't a criminal doesn't mean that they want to expose themselves to people who are.
Death threats never really are and I didn't see anyone else (so far) call your posting funny.
I thought that it was hi-freaking-larious. I actually laughed out loud. Of course, my entire family has a hard time keeping a straight face at funerals too...
But regardless of whether or not it was funny, it was certainly protected speech and perfectly legal. Isn't that ironic (for anyone who read the article)? It's not like he was making death threats, he was simply making a joke (or comment for the morbid-humor impaired) about how he thought that it was appropriate for the goatse.cx man to get death threats.
Dunno where you could normally find it, but being an employee at a failing company would help. My company was just gutted and sold, and employees can pick up 1 year old PCs for $25 (incluing 17" monitor). Laptops are a little more costly at $125, but worth it. I can't wait till they give a price on the Aeron chairs.:-)
I've heard good things about Global Knowledge. I've never been to any of their classes, but I did snag some of their course amterials (my best friend runs a training center that GK rents on occasion). I stopped by one night to pick up my friend for dinner and poked my head into a Cisco class (can't recall which one). I was amazed to see that they pack up an entire lab with dozens of routers and switches and other equipment and ship it to wherever they hold the class. I thought that most of it would be book learning/lecture with some play on a "simulator" program. Pretty cool stuff.
If "you don't know what you don't know", you might just end up wasting your time re-inventing the wheel, especially if a product has a huge documentation set and you just need to do a few specific things. Or if the product is very new and the documentation is patchy. Anyway, sitting down with a book is no substitute for hearing lessons learned in practice, or hearing the developers explain their design decisions. If you say that it is, I can only assume you've only worked with simple systems.
I agree. There are some complex systems out there that simply do not lend themselves well to book learning at all. Sure, if you want to learn Java or C++ or Perl you can get a book and tinker around on your Linux box. But if you're a developer or implementer for a proprietary system (like Peoplesoft, SAP, etc) then you need to take the classes to learn it. Most people don't have 3 or 4 servers lying around plus access to the software plus a set of sample databases to teach themselves on. Additionally, books are plainly not available for many of these topics.
I think that too often people on Slashdot make the mistake of thinking that all Slashdot users are developers who have jobs that can be learned from an O'Reily book or some derivative. That's not the case. Some of us have much more esoteric jobs, and others have much more mundane jobs.
As ADSL is becoming available for ordinary users the need for quite web servers may increase. I have an ADSL from home but I really haven't made a web-site at the IP address because I wouldn't like the noise in my home... especially when I'm going to sleep. When I turn off the computer late at night (morning?) and go to bed, I really like the quietness.
Call me crazy, but I just keep my PCs in a room other than the bedroom. I have 2 servers and 2 workstations runnnig 24/7 at my house (one of them is a web server) and I never hear a peep out of them when I sleep (unless I leave the speakers on and someone IMs me in the middle of the night). Problem solved.
Also, if an overseas casino just labels its transactions as from Bob's Fishmarket then how does the bank know, and are they liable under the legislation if they didn't know it was a casino?
Because since it is not illegal to gamble in an off-shore casino (only for them to collect on losses), any Australian with an ounce of sense would dispute the charges on his credit card with the bank.
because gambling and loteries are (as someones sig puts it) it "a tax on stupidity".
In California this week there was a store attendant who won the largest state lottery jackpot in US history. $140 million. I doubt that he would call it a "tax on stupidity".
Quite frankly, I don't see how playing lotteries and casino games is much more reckless than investing in stocks. You make or lose money on either one, and there's essentially nothing that you can do to affect the outcome of either of them. Sure, you can minimize your chances of losing on stocks by doing market research and analysis and becoming a professional investor. But even professional investors got burned in the IPOs of the dot-com bubble. And you can do the same thing with gambling as well. There are quite a few professional gamblers in the world who have studied the games of chance and calculated their mathematical odds of winning for various circumstances and make a quite successful life of it. They still lose sometimes, but that's just the nature of the beast...just like investing.
Overall, the law certainly doesn't seem to prevent Australians from online, off-shore gambling (although the article implied it did), but (unless I've misinterpreted the credit card/legal interation) it does put a damper on the casinos' profitability.
From my reading, this is correct. The intended effect of this law is to discourage off-shore gambling sites from accepting credit cards from Australians. Once that part has kicked in, it will be much much harder for Australians to gamble online, which suits the backwards ways of the government hack who proposed this legislation. Don't forget that this was brought to you by the same man who proposed legislation making it illegal to forward an email (something like a $10,000 fine I believe) and legislation making it illegal for you to make freely available online anything that your local police department might find harmful or offensive to minors. How's that for someone who doesn't get it?
I thought only the ruling was thrown out the door, all the findings and the like have been passed down to a trial court, which could give the same ruling as jackson or even worse.... spose it doesn't matter either way because until microsoft win they will just keep appealing.
Which ruling? The remedy was thrown out. But now that it's back in the courts again I'm sure that you will see negotiations begin again for an out of court settlement. And since the new DoJ are just as much puppets as the president who put them in charge, I wouldn't be suprised to see the DoJ back down altogether and settle on an irrelevant settlement. Gates has already gone on TV talking about how he thinks that litigation is not the "correct" way to solve this problem and that he expects negotiations to begin anew.
While the case was under appeal it had already been settled and a judgement entered. The DoJ couldn't (at least politically...maybe even legally) decide to throw out the case altogether and settle because they got exactly what they asked for. Now that they no longer have what they asked for, there's a chance that a new, MS-friendly judge could rule in a way that is very soft on MS. The DoJ now has a convenient excuse to work on an out of court settlement "for the good of the consumers."
Calling one that does not speak your protocol 'stupid' is ignorant, self-centered, and racist.
Pray tell, just where did my "ignorant, self-centered, and racist (racist???)" self call anybody stupid for not having correct grammar and punctuation?
Not all judges are appointed for life. Supreme Court Justices are, Federal Appeals Court Judges are, and (I'm not 100% on this one) Federal Circuit Court Judges may be. Most other judges are not (though many states probably have lifetime appointments for State Supreme Court Justices and the like).
I don't like Microsoft but I want them to get their just desserts fairly and for the right reasons. So back to the lower court it goes and if we are lucky it will get worked out while it's still vaguely relevant to our lives.
That's what you would think. But that's not likely to happen now. The prosecution had rested and won the case. The case was (in part) overturned on appeal. Now that it is back in limbo the new Dubya DOJ has an opportunity to settle with MS before the lower court rules again. If they do (which is likely) MS will get off with a slap on the wrist.
Hopefully by keeping the findings of fact intact this will be a little harder for them to do, but it won't be impossible.
If you want to compare them to the TV world, Smart Tags are closer in nature to the brightness, contrast, and tint controls - they allow a user to alter the presentation of a signal (page) they've received to suit their own needs.
I'm not quite sure how you can see that as the case. Smart tags allow third-parties (not end-users or content producers) to intercept (parse before presentation) my content and then tag portions of it with links to information that they (or their advertisers) provide. This information may or may not be relevant to my content. It may even be contrary to the message that I am trying to get across. Either way, smart tags sit between the user and the content and repackage content to suit a 3rd parties needs. That is exactly the example that I provided.
The key difference is that it's a third party who is modifying my information to suit their (the third party's) needs, not the end-user.
Yes yes yes, let's all root for that OTHER big corporation. Go AMD! I hope you have better sales on your Athlons, because even though I don't hold stock in your company, I irrationally support you anyway! I hope that consumers fail to see how you have an inferior product and all!
I'm not sure at how this statement relates to the article at all. The only thing that I can figure is that you for some reason equate RDRAM with Intel processors and DDR/SDRAM with AMD processors. Obviously that isn't the case as SDRAM is supported by Intel-based chipsets, and Intel is planning to release DDR boards for their Pentium IV processors around the end of the year (they would have done so sooner had there not been a stipulation in their contract that Rambus preventing them from doing it).
Now please allow me to translate for all of the technical types who feel that correct grammar and punctuation is not important:
The English language is a standard. Our ability to comprehend is an API (which comes from being taught how to read). Your written words are code. Now code to the freaking standard already so that your writing will be compatible with our API! Most of the writing on Slashdot is just spaghetti code.
Re:Has anyone been to www.rambusite.com?
on
Fortune on Rambus
·
· Score: 2
Take a look at their response. You'll come to the conclusion that they've been brainwashed by the company's cult-like PR department.
The thing that I just don't understand about Rambus is this:
The tech industry said all along that it was too expensive. Most memory manufacturers who were far larger than Rambus ever dreamed to be were working on a competing standard that had higher performance at a lower cost. Nobody in the tech biz wanted to even mess with Rambus, even after Intel decided to go with RDRAM and basically bribed memory manufacturers to license the technology. Rambus's heavy-handed tactics were well-known in the industry and they were spurned for it.
How in the hell could any analyst or market researcher even pretend that Rambus was ever a smart buy (at any price)? It was obvious from the beginning that it was doomed to failure. And yet it became one of the hottest IPOs ever. And had an astronomical P/E ratio. It just goes to show you that when it comes to the stock market, even the "experts" are clueless.
Slashdot Mirror
Most often the GPS is much closer than the speedometer. It may jump up and down a couple MPH due to position errors going past overpasses, tall buildings, heavy forest etc, but the average is dead on.
Too bad they aren't fining you based on your average speed.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
So that means that we must condemn a company that tries to do a socially responsible thing? If its benificial to other people and gives them a profit thats like win-win isn't it?
Because they aren't doing it to be socially responsible. If they wanted to be socially responsible, they would work out a deal with law enforcement agencies and transmit the evidence of speeding to them and then let the people who are charged with enforcing the law handle it. But they wouldn't do that because it wouldn't make them money. So instead they decide to charge $150 per violation and conveniently neglect to mention it to law enforcement. Then when they get called out on it they try to hide behnd some thin veneer of "we did it for the public good." Well...the Nazi's used that same excuse, as did Stalin, and just about every other abusive regime in the history of man. Coming from a business though, it holds even less water.
And it's not a win-win, it's a lose-huh?-win (driver, society, and company).
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Funny thing I drive a motorbike without a front license plate.
That's a nice out. Here in the US license plates are issued by the individual states. Some require front and rear plates while others only require front plates. So even in a state that requires both you can get off the hook quite a bit by just not putting one on the front.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Remember what "speed limit" actually means. It means less than or equal to. So drive at 25MPH all the way through the various speed zones.
In the US this is not the case. Most freeways have a minimum speed limit, even if it is not posted. There's also a "safe conditions" clause in most US traffic laws that stipulate that you should drive at a speed that is appropriate for the situation. For example, you shouldn't drive 55 MPH in a posted 55 MPH speed zone in a blinding rainstorm or if the roadway is covered in ice. To do so would be unsafe. In the same fashion, it would be considered unsafe to drive at 25 MPH on the freeway in a 55 or 65 MPH zone. It's basically a commonsense law, I can't imagine that most countries wouldn't have something similar.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
The method by which they find you speeding does not matter - you were BREAKING THE LAW, and being otherwise dangerous.
I don't know how it is in Australia, but here in the US if you are BREAKING THE LAW, only the LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY WHO HAS JURISDICTION can cite you or arrest you for it. We do not support vigilante law enforcement.
So, why are we protecting the crims?
Criminals? You make it sound like we're trying to protect serial killers from prosecution here. This is just a simple speeding violation, it's not even a criminal act in the US. In most jurisdictions there is even a court or judicial system that exists entirely separately from the Criminal and Civil courts to handle these issues (called traffic court or mayor's court in smaller towns).
I would have aplauded this company - trying to save their cars from getting stolen, and possibly saving lives at the same time!
You also would have totally neglected to look into the technical issues involved as well.
For starters, not all speedometers are properly calibrated. Many are off by 5 MPH or more. In the days before radar guns, police cars would have to regularly have their speedometers calibrated and there would need to be records kept (since the main evidence was a cop claiming that he was driving the speed limit and the defendant was driving faster than the cop). If the speedometer reads 55 MPH and you're actually driving 60 MPH then what is your recourse to a company that has already fined you before you even return the car (as happened in the original case)?
On top of that, consider that a GPS speed monitoring system isn't 100% accurate. GPS relies on line-of-site to a satellite. If the signal is obstructed (like when passing through a tunnel) then the GPS system will register ridiculously high speeds (1000+ MPH in some cases). While these cases are obvious to spot, what happens if the GPS loses it's signal for 2 or 3 seconds at freeway speeds? Suddenly your 55 MPH might look more like 80 MPH. Once again, you would be fined before you even knew about the alleged speeding and would have no way to dispute it.
So keep in mind that the pros in this case aren't nearly as clear-cut as you would like to believe. Acme rent-a-car wasn't doing this for the public good either...it was all about the money.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Who cares if Rental car places know where you're going? It's not like that hurts you in any way whatsoever, while it gives the company extra security, so you don't go driving your car down to Tijuana to sell it for vicadin.
Amazon did it, why not Acme?
So let's say that Acme's normal rates are $40/day, including a $5/day insurance fee that they require you to purchase. Now with the GPS they can see where you're going. If you drive through a bad neighborhood, they know it. If youpark it in a seedy part of town for 5 hours, they know it. If they see that you spend more time on the freeway than on city streets, they know it. If they see that you speed more often than not, they know it.
You drop the car off at Acme and pay your normal bill. The next time that you stop in to pick up a car the daily rate is $50/day. So you ask the clerk about it and he says that the daily insurance rates have increased. OK, so you take the car. But what you didn't know is that the insurance rates only went up on *you* renting the car because you tend to put the car in situations that are higher-risk than their average renter. Even though you are an excellent driver and take good care of the car and have never had a claim, they charge you more money because they can track you and your behavior. How do you like that idea?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Well, why do you object to people knowing where you are? I don't care at all. I know a lot of other people don't care at all.
But some of us do care, and we have a right to not have our position broadcast to every business or government agency that wants to track me. Maybe one day I feel like getting away from work and life for awhile and head off to a state park for the weekend. I don't want someone to be able to track me down.
Maybe I enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are perfectly legal, yet some people find of questionable taste. I might not want my employer to be able to tell that I'm at the strip club because his narrow-minded religious beliefs would have me labelled as a pervert. I might not want anybody to know that I stopped by an adult bookstore on the way home and picked up some sex toys for my wife and I to enjoy because if this information were freely available, who's to say that I won't be getting spammed with emails, snail mail mailings, and phone solicitation from other businesses in the sex-related industry?
Maybe I don't want my insurance company to know that I work in a shady part of town where my car is more likely to be stolen or where I am more likely to be mugged or killed (and therefore increase my rates).
The possibilities for exploitation of a tracking system are limited only by your imagination. And I assure you that if a business can find a way to use tracking technology to make more money off of you than they otherwise would be able to, then they will do it.
It seems to be mainly Americans who bring this subject up, which is quite funny, as Americans are probably the most traced people in the world. The irony.
From all indications it would seem that the Brits actually get top honors as the "most monitored people in the world." I'm not sure how you could honestly make the claim that Americans are the most monitored. What evidence have you to back that up?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Keiretsu and Zaibatsu? Isn't Zaibatsu another form of japanese megacorporation?,br>
I always thought that a Zaibatsu was a single large mega-corp while a Keiretsu was a group of large corporations who have allied together against other Keiretsu.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
BTW, fuck privacy - you don't need it if you ain't guilty.
True, but sometimes the only crime these users are guilty of is voicing an opinion.
(First off, I know that only the seoncd line is your comment, but they both seemed enough out of whack to quote them together.)
Are you crazy!?!??! We are all entitled to privacy. Do you really want people prying into every minute detail of your life? Trying to find out who you associate with? Trying to videotape you having sexual relations with your spouse/significant other? Trying to find out your credit history and the names of the banks and other businesses that you deal with? Privacy is an important way of protecting yourself. Just because someone isn't a criminal doesn't mean that they want to expose themselves to people who are.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Death threats never really are and I didn't see anyone else (so far) call your posting funny.
I thought that it was hi-freaking-larious. I actually laughed out loud. Of course, my entire family has a hard time keeping a straight face at funerals too...
But regardless of whether or not it was funny, it was certainly protected speech and perfectly legal. Isn't that ironic (for anyone who read the article)? It's not like he was making death threats, he was simply making a joke (or comment for the morbid-humor impaired) about how he thought that it was appropriate for the goatse.cx man to get death threats.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Dunno where you could normally find it, but being an employee at a failing company would help. My company was just gutted and sold, and employees can pick up 1 year old PCs for $25 (incluing 17" monitor). Laptops are a little more costly at $125, but worth it. I can't wait till they give a price on the Aeron chairs. :-)
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
I've heard good things about Global Knowledge. I've never been to any of their classes, but I did snag some of their course amterials (my best friend runs a training center that GK rents on occasion). I stopped by one night to pick up my friend for dinner and poked my head into a Cisco class (can't recall which one). I was amazed to see that they pack up an entire lab with dozens of routers and switches and other equipment and ship it to wherever they hold the class. I thought that most of it would be book learning/lecture with some play on a "simulator" program. Pretty cool stuff.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
If "you don't know what you don't know", you might just end up wasting your time re-inventing the wheel, especially if a product has a huge documentation set and you just need to do a few specific things. Or if the product is very new and the documentation is patchy. Anyway, sitting down with a book is no substitute for hearing lessons learned in practice, or hearing the developers explain their design decisions. If you say that it is, I can only assume you've only worked with simple systems.
I agree. There are some complex systems out there that simply do not lend themselves well to book learning at all. Sure, if you want to learn Java or C++ or Perl you can get a book and tinker around on your Linux box. But if you're a developer or implementer for a proprietary system (like Peoplesoft, SAP, etc) then you need to take the classes to learn it. Most people don't have 3 or 4 servers lying around plus access to the software plus a set of sample databases to teach themselves on. Additionally, books are plainly not available for many of these topics.
I think that too often people on Slashdot make the mistake of thinking that all Slashdot users are developers who have jobs that can be learned from an O'Reily book or some derivative. That's not the case. Some of us have much more esoteric jobs, and others have much more mundane jobs.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
As ADSL is becoming available for ordinary users the need for quite web servers may increase. I have an ADSL from home but I really haven't made a web-site at the IP address because I wouldn't like the noise in my home... especially when I'm going to sleep. When I turn off the computer late at night (morning?) and go to bed, I really like the quietness.
Call me crazy, but I just keep my PCs in a room other than the bedroom. I have 2 servers and 2 workstations runnnig 24/7 at my house (one of them is a web server) and I never hear a peep out of them when I sleep (unless I leave the speakers on and someone IMs me in the middle of the night). Problem solved.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Also, if an overseas casino just labels its transactions as from Bob's Fishmarket then how does the bank know, and are they liable under the legislation if they didn't know it was a casino?
Because since it is not illegal to gamble in an off-shore casino (only for them to collect on losses), any Australian with an ounce of sense would dispute the charges on his credit card with the bank.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
because gambling and loteries are (as someones sig puts it) it "a tax on stupidity".
In California this week there was a store attendant who won the largest state lottery jackpot in US history. $140 million. I doubt that he would call it a "tax on stupidity".
Quite frankly, I don't see how playing lotteries and casino games is much more reckless than investing in stocks. You make or lose money on either one, and there's essentially nothing that you can do to affect the outcome of either of them. Sure, you can minimize your chances of losing on stocks by doing market research and analysis and becoming a professional investor. But even professional investors got burned in the IPOs of the dot-com bubble. And you can do the same thing with gambling as well. There are quite a few professional gamblers in the world who have studied the games of chance and calculated their mathematical odds of winning for various circumstances and make a quite successful life of it. They still lose sometimes, but that's just the nature of the beast...just like investing.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Overall, the law certainly doesn't seem to prevent Australians from online, off-shore gambling (although the article implied it did), but (unless I've misinterpreted the credit card/legal interation) it does put a damper on the casinos' profitability.
From my reading, this is correct. The intended effect of this law is to discourage off-shore gambling sites from accepting credit cards from Australians. Once that part has kicked in, it will be much much harder for Australians to gamble online, which suits the backwards ways of the government hack who proposed this legislation. Don't forget that this was brought to you by the same man who proposed legislation making it illegal to forward an email (something like a $10,000 fine I believe) and legislation making it illegal for you to make freely available online anything that your local police department might find harmful or offensive to minors. How's that for someone who doesn't get it?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
I thought only the ruling was thrown out the door, all the findings and the like have been passed down to a trial court, which could give the same ruling as jackson or even worse.... spose it doesn't matter either way because until microsoft win they will just keep appealing.
Which ruling? The remedy was thrown out. But now that it's back in the courts again I'm sure that you will see negotiations begin again for an out of court settlement. And since the new DoJ are just as much puppets as the president who put them in charge, I wouldn't be suprised to see the DoJ back down altogether and settle on an irrelevant settlement. Gates has already gone on TV talking about how he thinks that litigation is not the "correct" way to solve this problem and that he expects negotiations to begin anew.
While the case was under appeal it had already been settled and a judgement entered. The DoJ couldn't (at least politically...maybe even legally) decide to throw out the case altogether and settle because they got exactly what they asked for. Now that they no longer have what they asked for, there's a chance that a new, MS-friendly judge could rule in a way that is very soft on MS. The DoJ now has a convenient excuse to work on an out of court settlement "for the good of the consumers."
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Calling one that does not speak your protocol 'stupid' is ignorant, self-centered, and racist.
Pray tell, just where did my "ignorant, self-centered, and racist (racist???)" self call anybody stupid for not having correct grammar and punctuation?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Judges are nominated for life for a reason.
Not all judges are appointed for life. Supreme Court Justices are, Federal Appeals Court Judges are, and (I'm not 100% on this one) Federal Circuit Court Judges may be. Most other judges are not (though many states probably have lifetime appointments for State Supreme Court Justices and the like).
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
I don't like Microsoft but I want them to get their just desserts fairly and for the right reasons. So back to the lower court it goes and if we are lucky it will get worked out while it's still vaguely relevant to our lives.
That's what you would think. But that's not likely to happen now. The prosecution had rested and won the case. The case was (in part) overturned on appeal. Now that it is back in limbo the new Dubya DOJ has an opportunity to settle with MS before the lower court rules again. If they do (which is likely) MS will get off with a slap on the wrist.
Hopefully by keeping the findings of fact intact this will be a little harder for them to do, but it won't be impossible.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
If you want to compare them to the TV world, Smart Tags are closer in nature to the brightness, contrast, and tint controls - they allow a user to alter the presentation of a signal (page) they've received to suit their own needs.
I'm not quite sure how you can see that as the case. Smart tags allow third-parties (not end-users or content producers) to intercept (parse before presentation) my content and then tag portions of it with links to information that they (or their advertisers) provide. This information may or may not be relevant to my content. It may even be contrary to the message that I am trying to get across. Either way, smart tags sit between the user and the content and repackage content to suit a 3rd parties needs. That is exactly the example that I provided.
The key difference is that it's a third party who is modifying my information to suit their (the third party's) needs, not the end-user.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Yes yes yes, let's all root for that OTHER big corporation. Go AMD! I hope you have better sales on your Athlons, because even though I don't hold stock in your company, I irrationally support you anyway! I hope that consumers fail to see how you have an inferior product and all!
I'm not sure at how this statement relates to the article at all. The only thing that I can figure is that you for some reason equate RDRAM with Intel processors and DDR/SDRAM with AMD processors. Obviously that isn't the case as SDRAM is supported by Intel-based chipsets, and Intel is planning to release DDR boards for their Pentium IV processors around the end of the year (they would have done so sooner had there not been a stipulation in their contract that Rambus preventing them from doing it).
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Now please allow me to translate for all of the technical types who feel that correct grammar and punctuation is not important: The English language is a standard. Our ability to comprehend is an API (which comes from being taught how to read). Your written words are code. Now code to the freaking standard already so that your writing will be compatible with our API! Most of the writing on Slashdot is just spaghetti code.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Take a look at their response. You'll come to the conclusion that they've been brainwashed by the company's cult-like PR department.
The thing that I just don't understand about Rambus is this:
The tech industry said all along that it was too expensive. Most memory manufacturers who were far larger than Rambus ever dreamed to be were working on a competing standard that had higher performance at a lower cost. Nobody in the tech biz wanted to even mess with Rambus, even after Intel decided to go with RDRAM and basically bribed memory manufacturers to license the technology. Rambus's heavy-handed tactics were well-known in the industry and they were spurned for it.
How in the hell could any analyst or market researcher even pretend that Rambus was ever a smart buy (at any price)? It was obvious from the beginning that it was doomed to failure. And yet it became one of the hottest IPOs ever. And had an astronomical P/E ratio. It just goes to show you that when it comes to the stock market, even the "experts" are clueless.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.