Audio-pimp cables: Yes, a good cable with decent materials and a well engineered, within spec connector will help with sound. Some of these audiophile connectors, however, provide no discernible or even measurable benefit. Certainly not for the cost required.
My favorite rebuttal of this is the experiment which ran a blind comparison between Monster cables and a wire coat-hanger.
Democracy has been dead for generations already-- the last true democracy was ancient Greece (though someone better versed in political history can correct me). Power structures have always been designed to enrich the privileged few at the expense of everyone else. No, the best definition of the G8 governments today is plutocracy.
We were never represented by those in power; they just don't say as such to our faces. They also know that if the entertainment industries stopped entertaining us en masse because their MBA marketers tell them "piracy" is threatening their business, then we'll rise up and topple their failed governments, and no pundit would be able to stop us. They looked at stars like Sinatra, The Beatles, and Elvis, and saw an opportunity: give the populace a super-star to latch their attention onto, and they'll never notice, let alone care, about the Constitution.
The money from the media lobby is just icing. The real purpose of increasing the media industry's power is to keep us in a constant state of hypnosis, so that they can declare a silent coup d'etat with our complete assent.
Now I'll be on the FBI watch list, or I've watched The Matrix once too many.
This is why, if you absolutely must have that glossy-surfaced display (and I hear it makes images look clearer), you need to position it so it doesn't reflect the lighting from nearby lamps or windows.
Seconded, but I don't think either of us are using terribly complex documents.
Base is an ugly beast of a program, however, and I'm not talking about visuals. Access is faster and more stable, and that's saying something. Then again, I probably should monkey with SQLite (as soon as I figure out how to install the damn thing) or similar alternative engines rather than Base's built-in engine.
It's utterly shameful that politicians have nothing better to do than pass legislation that placates a vocal but powerful|wealthy minority. Maybe back in the day some of the people in charge of writing laws had the cojones to tell them "go back to your mommy and cry us all a river."
Now they are lap-dogs of those who can either fund their campaigns/interests, or torpedo them altogether.
See, here's the rub, and a politician's rule: If you can't win by playing by the rules, bend them, break them, or cheat by other means (in that order). This is why sociopaths are really good at the political game: morals are an inconvenient distraction from getting ahead.
The Bush administration knows this rule very well. CIA won't produce WMD evidence? Get Wolfowitz's exiled Iraqi buddy and let him convince the Pentagon of stupid lies, and corrupt the CIA head as well so he believes the misinformation. Gitmo drawing too much scrutiny? We'll let the Egyptians handle it, their intel loves violent procedures. FISA courts too inconvenient? Ignore both them and Congress, and go to the telecoms directly.
And if he's caught red-handed or made a scapegoat by fellow politicians, if he's got enough friends in high places, the President may pardon him or commute his sentence.
If you imagine society as a tree structure... Some connections are horizontal ones between peers and equals.
Pedant: That's strictly a "graph" (mathematically speaking), not a tree (trees can't contain cyclical paths). You are, however, suggesting that the power structures today are trying to turn the graph into a top-down tree.
There's a reason why unwanted browser add-ons are treated as "malware"; the developers of such software are in an arms race with both browser developers and software security people.
The other problem is that Javascript and other DHTML techniques allowed for way too much control over the application and content when they were first released, so developers are stuck between having more secure software, or having users use competitors because a popular site is broken as a result of more secure Javascript.
Precise language, of course, being the bane of autocrats and plutocrats everywhere, because no one likes to hear "We're taking over your lives|bank accounts!" in plain language.
I find it hard to see how an oil change could break anything else...
Oh, the oil filter could be somehow stuck to the point that the filter wrench couldn't get it out, so you have to use the "puncture the filter to turn it" method, but you miss and hit a brake line instead.
One of those "Murphy's Law" scenarios off the top of my head.
We need a reason to bitch about something? I can guarantee you that for everything on this planet, anyone can and will find something to complain about. I can also guarantee you (at the risk of going OT) that there are far more important things to complain about than the high price of Apple-serviced upgrades-- the US government, for starters.
Besides, they have manuals on their website to upgrade your RAM, complete with pictures (I didn't check whether they had manuals for other components, but with everything practically baked onto the mainboard, I doubt we would have any use for them). If people can't handle a little reading and possibly some scrapes, they may well deserve to pay twice as much for the service.
Maybe he hasn't vetted his experience (resume) and interviewing skills with more experienced people (advisors, professors)? Others have already commented about the lack of information about this fellow, so I'll leave it at that.
That said, if he likes to mess with hardware and hops into Regedit once in a while, and he can get even a shoe into enterprise support, that's a really good, stable opportunity. You do have to work your tail off, but it's a great career path for those CS students who suck at programming, as systems in business fail or behave oddly all the time. It's doubly great if the company either specializes in enterprise support (meaning they establish support contracts with big companies who outsource) or is a big company that opted to stay out of the outsourcing bandwagon.
Actually.. clue #1 is that someone called YOU and asked for personal information.
In several jurisdictions, calling someone and requesting personal information like SSN or account information is illegal. Most banks will issue an automated message asking for the person to call back.
My personal favorite method of dealing with scammers and telemarketers is to just try to hold a conversation with them in Japanese. If they answer back in Japanese, I talk in English (people fluent in both are very rare) and use really big words or Star Trek-esque technobabble. In about fifteen seconds they know I'm deliberately wasting their time, and they can't shoot me like John Cleese in the Cheese Shop sketch.
"If there truly is a God, he must be one sarcastic dude, because, as far as I can tell, he despises stupid, weak people, and does everything possible to give them a shock to wake them up." Nah, he hates the smug ones, and he knows better than try to wake up stupid, smug, resourceful people.
"There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot."
If I were President, I would pardon every single person that was ever arrested for the supposed crime of copyright violation, and i would reply to every law that congress passed at the industry's behest, with a signing statement declaring such law to be unconstitutional and a refusal to enforce.
That's nice and all, but the cases brought against university students were all civil. I'm pretty sure a Presidential pardon would only be as effective as an amicus curiae brief, and the music industry lawyers would cry foul as always. The flip side of your suggestion is that all of the bootleggers who make a fortune downloading and pressing counterfeit media and are caught by the FBI (you know, actual criminal infringement) get a get out of jail/fines free card.
Finally, signing statements? You would continue Bush/Cheney's abuse of the Constitution? Veto the damn bill and tell Congress to cut out the industry-requested items.
The **AA is happy to keep pounding away at #2, suing en masse, requesting ridiculous measures like those suggested in TFA... but there must be somebody at the headquarters whose pondering #3.
In a culture that's stuck in 1982 and still fears anything online, I suspect anyone like that is ignored, intimidated, fired, or otherwise marginalized.
For those in power (politically or financially), a representative government or free market is highly inconvenient, because you actually have to work to succeed, let alone dominate. These clowns want a return to feudalism, where they get to call all of the shots and make more money than you will ever make in three lifetimes. The serfs, of course, are already in place: they're the contracted artists.
He could've defined his vision as a mathematical equation, and comments across the Web and news media would still blast him for not doing what they want.
However, if word got out that the telecoms are probably going to get away scot-free after helping the government illegally snoop on US citizens, I doubt anyone would look kindly on even marginally supporting the proposed FISA amendments. The Democrats are attempting a power-grab because they know that the White House is theirs to lose.
If the article actually had this bias you speak of, you would have a point. As it stands, it seems like you're asking the comments to be unbiased, which is about as feasible as herding a thousand cats into a dog kennel. Also, just because there's an anti-Microsoft bias among the readers doesn't mean that they're denying the first-hand accounts of people moving to Microsoft.
If you're looking for a Rush Limbaugh of the tech world, try Maureen O'Gara or John Dvorak. You're not going to find them here.
Eleven Democrats is enough to stop a filibuster. You can bet Joe Lieberman is one of them.
Also, don't assume that the Republicans are the only ones courting the cash of business. The entertainment industry regularly lines the pockets of Democrats.
I'm no expert on constitutional or criminal law, but I'm pretty sure you can't apply pardons to convictions that don't yet exist. I'm sure Bush will try and preemptively pardon Cheney and Rumsfeld, but unless they've been convicted of a crime, there's absolutely nothing to pardon.
What makes you think Bush reads mail unfiltered? I suspect that his email address is actually filtered through Cheney's chief of staff, and, when he found out about the EPA's new rules, he went to the IT department and bullied them into deleting every last trace of the email.
Slashdot Mirror
My favorite rebuttal of this is the experiment which ran a blind comparison between Monster cables and a wire coat-hanger.
Democracy has been dead for generations already-- the last true democracy was ancient Greece (though someone better versed in political history can correct me). Power structures have always been designed to enrich the privileged few at the expense of everyone else. No, the best definition of the G8 governments today is plutocracy.
We were never represented by those in power; they just don't say as such to our faces. They also know that if the entertainment industries stopped entertaining us en masse because their MBA marketers tell them "piracy" is threatening their business, then we'll rise up and topple their failed governments, and no pundit would be able to stop us. They looked at stars like Sinatra, The Beatles, and Elvis, and saw an opportunity: give the populace a super-star to latch their attention onto, and they'll never notice, let alone care, about the Constitution.
The money from the media lobby is just icing. The real purpose of increasing the media industry's power is to keep us in a constant state of hypnosis, so that they can declare a silent coup d'etat with our complete assent.
Now I'll be on the FBI watch list, or I've watched The Matrix once too many.
This is why, if you absolutely must have that glossy-surfaced display (and I hear it makes images look clearer), you need to position it so it doesn't reflect the lighting from nearby lamps or windows.
As rude as it was, you're in no position to tell him who to associate with. You don't know if she realized her folly and apologized afterwards.
If everyone associated based on your criteria, friendship would be a lost art indeed.
Seconded, but I don't think either of us are using terribly complex documents.
Base is an ugly beast of a program, however, and I'm not talking about visuals. Access is faster and more stable, and that's saying something. Then again, I probably should monkey with SQLite (as soon as I figure out how to install the damn thing) or similar alternative engines rather than Base's built-in engine.
It's utterly shameful that politicians have nothing better to do than pass legislation that placates a vocal but powerful|wealthy minority. Maybe back in the day some of the people in charge of writing laws had the cojones to tell them "go back to your mommy and cry us all a river."
Now they are lap-dogs of those who can either fund their campaigns/interests, or torpedo them altogether.
See, here's the rub, and a politician's rule: If you can't win by playing by the rules, bend them, break them, or cheat by other means (in that order). This is why sociopaths are really good at the political game: morals are an inconvenient distraction from getting ahead.
The Bush administration knows this rule very well. CIA won't produce WMD evidence? Get Wolfowitz's exiled Iraqi buddy and let him convince the Pentagon of stupid lies, and corrupt the CIA head as well so he believes the misinformation. Gitmo drawing too much scrutiny? We'll let the Egyptians handle it, their intel loves violent procedures. FISA courts too inconvenient? Ignore both them and Congress, and go to the telecoms directly.
And if he's caught red-handed or made a scapegoat by fellow politicians, if he's got enough friends in high places, the President may pardon him or commute his sentence.
Pedant: That's strictly a "graph" (mathematically speaking), not a tree (trees can't contain cyclical paths). You are, however, suggesting that the power structures today are trying to turn the graph into a top-down tree.
There's a reason why unwanted browser add-ons are treated as "malware"; the developers of such software are in an arms race with both browser developers and software security people.
The other problem is that Javascript and other DHTML techniques allowed for way too much control over the application and content when they were first released, so developers are stuck between having more secure software, or having users use competitors because a popular site is broken as a result of more secure Javascript.
It's reasonable, if you think about the mystique a new hire has for about 5 minutes (engineer) to a week (salesperson) concerning the levels.
"Wow... Level 65? He's gotta have some epic armor or skills."
Precise language, of course, being the bane of autocrats and plutocrats everywhere, because no one likes to hear "We're taking over your lives|bank accounts!" in plain language.
Oh, the oil filter could be somehow stuck to the point that the filter wrench couldn't get it out, so you have to use the "puncture the filter to turn it" method, but you miss and hit a brake line instead.
One of those "Murphy's Law" scenarios off the top of my head.
We need a reason to bitch about something? I can guarantee you that for everything on this planet, anyone can and will find something to complain about. I can also guarantee you (at the risk of going OT) that there are far more important things to complain about than the high price of Apple-serviced upgrades-- the US government, for starters.
Besides, they have manuals on their website to upgrade your RAM, complete with pictures (I didn't check whether they had manuals for other components, but with everything practically baked onto the mainboard, I doubt we would have any use for them). If people can't handle a little reading and possibly some scrapes, they may well deserve to pay twice as much for the service.
Maybe he hasn't vetted his experience (resume) and interviewing skills with more experienced people (advisors, professors)? Others have already commented about the lack of information about this fellow, so I'll leave it at that.
That said, if he likes to mess with hardware and hops into Regedit once in a while, and he can get even a shoe into enterprise support, that's a really good, stable opportunity. You do have to work your tail off, but it's a great career path for those CS students who suck at programming, as systems in business fail or behave oddly all the time. It's doubly great if the company either specializes in enterprise support (meaning they establish support contracts with big companies who outsource) or is a big company that opted to stay out of the outsourcing bandwagon.
In several jurisdictions, calling someone and requesting personal information like SSN or account information is illegal. Most banks will issue an automated message asking for the person to call back.
My personal favorite method of dealing with scammers and telemarketers is to just try to hold a conversation with them in Japanese. If they answer back in Japanese, I talk in English (people fluent in both are very rare) and use really big words or Star Trek-esque technobabble. In about fifteen seconds they know I'm deliberately wasting their time, and they can't shoot me like John Cleese in the Cheese Shop sketch.
"If there truly is a God, he must be one sarcastic dude, because, as far as I can tell, he despises stupid, weak people, and does everything possible to give them a shock to wake them up."
Nah, he hates the smug ones, and he knows better than try to wake up stupid, smug, resourceful people.
"There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot."
That's nice and all, but the cases brought against university students were all civil. I'm pretty sure a Presidential pardon would only be as effective as an amicus curiae brief, and the music industry lawyers would cry foul as always. The flip side of your suggestion is that all of the bootleggers who make a fortune downloading and pressing counterfeit media and are caught by the FBI (you know, actual criminal infringement) get a get out of jail/fines free card.
Finally, signing statements? You would continue Bush/Cheney's abuse of the Constitution? Veto the damn bill and tell Congress to cut out the industry-requested items.
In a culture that's stuck in 1982 and still fears anything online, I suspect anyone like that is ignored, intimidated, fired, or otherwise marginalized.
For those in power (politically or financially), a representative government or free market is highly inconvenient, because you actually have to work to succeed, let alone dominate. These clowns want a return to feudalism, where they get to call all of the shots and make more money than you will ever make in three lifetimes. The serfs, of course, are already in place: they're the contracted artists.
He could've defined his vision as a mathematical equation, and comments across the Web and news media would still blast him for not doing what they want.
However, if word got out that the telecoms are probably going to get away scot-free after helping the government illegally snoop on US citizens, I doubt anyone would look kindly on even marginally supporting the proposed FISA amendments. The Democrats are attempting a power-grab because they know that the White House is theirs to lose.
If the article actually had this bias you speak of, you would have a point. As it stands, it seems like you're asking the comments to be unbiased, which is about as feasible as herding a thousand cats into a dog kennel. Also, just because there's an anti-Microsoft bias among the readers doesn't mean that they're denying the first-hand accounts of people moving to Microsoft.
If you're looking for a Rush Limbaugh of the tech world, try Maureen O'Gara or John Dvorak. You're not going to find them here.
Eleven Democrats is enough to stop a filibuster. You can bet Joe Lieberman is one of them.
Also, don't assume that the Republicans are the only ones courting the cash of business. The entertainment industry regularly lines the pockets of Democrats.
Nah, they'll try the bill on the Senate floor in lieu of impeaching Executive branch criminals.
That, or try it on as a toga.
I'm no expert on constitutional or criminal law, but I'm pretty sure you can't apply pardons to convictions that don't yet exist. I'm sure Bush will try and preemptively pardon Cheney and Rumsfeld, but unless they've been convicted of a crime, there's absolutely nothing to pardon.
What makes you think Bush reads mail unfiltered? I suspect that his email address is actually filtered through Cheney's chief of staff, and, when he found out about the EPA's new rules, he went to the IT department and bullied them into deleting every last trace of the email.