Eek! You are right. I am wrong. The post that I replied to is correct. I am wrong. I should know better than to post to slashdot after a night of heavy drinking.
Thanks for pointing our my error without saying "Hey, you fucking dumbass" -- even though it might be implied. While I don't like being wrong more than anyone else, I do appreciate being corrected.
I don't believe it would do you any harm to block protocol 11. I would recommend that you block all protocols except for udp, icmp, and tcp, while you are at it
There is one problem with your statement. That problem is that, unfortunately, while it might sound vaguely accurate, it is actually dangerous, silly and presents a lack of understanding about networking.
What you are referring to as "protocol 11" should more properly be referred to as "port 11". Ports are numbered from 0 to 65535. All TCP and UDP connections take place over a port. For instance, web servers, which provide HTTP (a TCP protocol) provide their connections on port 80. So a web browser that wants to request information from a web server contacts it on TCP port 80. Now, if that same web server was an email server, it would handle SMTP on TCP port 25. If it was a DNS server, it would respond to queries on UDP port 53. (It might also respond to queries via TCP on port 53). As far as is practicable, TCP and UDP ports are kept in sync.
It might help to think of TCP as FM Radio, and UDP as AM Radio. The port designation is analagous to selecting a station (99.5 or 105.3) on the radio.
So, in fact, the firewall rules that you provide are absolutely worthless as they allow all traffic in no matter what port it comes in on.
In the interest of being complete, I should mention that ICMP doesn't use ports. It has a roughly analagous feature called types.
You might want to search for, read, and understand some basic networking information before you post any more "security advice".
Investors do not like to see large variations over a short period of time. Large fluctuations -- either up or down -- skew the statistics they use to make future projections.
Investors want to be able to make accurate projections. Analysts want to be able to make accurate projections so they can get paid by investors. Companies want to be able to provide the information to make accurate projections so they can get paid by investors. Accountants want their numbers to be conducive to making accurate projections so they have a company to work for. Auditors want their reports to say that accurate projections are possible so they can get paid by companies.
It's an incestuous system whose sole purpose is making people think that investing is more like monopoly than blackjack.
Francis Ford Coppola *might* be able to turn Ender's Game into a good movie. I have strong doubts that any other popular Hollywood director could.
The thing that makes Ender's Game such a great book is that the small unwashed masses of alienated, hyper-intelligent geeks could truly empathize with Ender on an emotional level. We can understand his trials and feel his pains. We can also understand his pyrrhic victories. The rest of the books are good (for the most part) but that visceral sense of identification gets left behind. And, in Ender's Shadow, Card tries to shift that sense of identification from Ender to Bean. He fails miserably. He comes closer, yet also fails with Qing-Jao.
In the first book, Ender's Game, Card forges an emotional envolvement with Ender. (Well, if you're an alienated, hyper-intelligent geek anyway). The rest of the books in the initial series -- Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind -- are good. He comes closest to reforging that emotional link in the Xenocide/Children of the Mind sub-duology with the character of Qing-Jao. He doesn't quite make it though...I can truly empathize with a braniac with no friends, an obsessive-compulsive super-braniac is a bit beyond my league.
He repeats himself in the sub-duology of Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon. Yes, Bean is super-smart. But he's a genetically engineered human. Card has once again taken what worked with Ender and altered the character so much that readers can't truly relate.
Damn, I've been rambling. The point that I'm trying to emphasize (out of the many points that I've made) is that the appeal of Ender's Game is that readers could honestly and wholely identify with the main character. I don'think that the same sense of identification will come across on the screen.
While I have to admit that I'm a bit tired of seeing What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com] I am impressed that you relentlessly let us know about it.
I'm also impressed that you're big enough to share this email with the slashdot community.
Re:The series finale was pretty good.
on
The Truth Revealed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
A lot of things in the last two seasons have been reversals. Mulder -- male who believes; Scully -- female who does not beleive. Dogget -- male who does not believe; Reyes -- female who does believe. Skinner -- boss who helps them out most of the time while being obstructive once in a while; Kerst -- boss who is obstuctive most of the time but helps them out once in a while. (This even goes back to the beginning two seasons ago -- Scully (the female) is the proponent of the X-files, Dogget (the male) is the doubting one...just a bit of a reversal from the first year).
This finale is just all of the different characters focusing on one point. The male and female characters (Mulder/Dogget - Scully/Reyes) and the bosses (Skinner/Kerst) all coming together at the same point -- breaking Mulder out of prison.
There is no "explanation" for it. It's just an directorial attempt to bring all of the opposites from pre-Duchovny/post-Duchovny onto the same track so they can make some movies that start with all of the main characters on the same track.
(And, actually, I'm not an X-files fanboy. My wife is obsessed though, so I've had them shoved down my throat for years).
Re:The series finale was pretty good.
on
The Truth Revealed
·
· Score: 1
Umm. I wouldn't call those "attack helicopters". I'd call them "Bell helicopters painted black with some tubes stuck on them". I mean if the "missile-launching attack helicopter" is going to launch a dozen missiles, there would probably need to be some place to keep the missiles that wasn't the magical tube of missile-spewing death, right?
I think that you're failing to make a distinction between intelligence and education.
I will hire for "intelligence" over "skills" every time. I do admit that there are a lot of people that seem to think that because they have an MCSE or a CCNA that it means they are "intelligent". Well, that's not true. It just means that they can regurgitate facts and take tests. Yes, I agree that having a college degree *generally* categorizes a person as having some degree of ability at critical thought. (Though this is not guaranteed). True intelligence is much more difficult to find than skills or a degree. And, in my experience, there's not a noticable correlation between "intelligence" and "degree" in the computer field.
While I also agree that people skills are hugely important, I have yet to encounter a 22-year old (college degree or not) that has a good set of business-related soft skills. Those skills are something that comes with business experience. You can get an arrogant 23-year old with a college degree as easily as you can get an arrogant 23-year old without a college degree. Being arrogant and "knowing better than the old folk" is part of being young. It really doesn't have much to do with a college degree.
And, please, "mentoring environment like school"? I'm sure there are some universities (small ones or really expensive ones) that have an overall "mentoring environment". I would bet money that most college students did not feel that their college environment was "mentoring". Maybe you get a good teacher this semester. Maybe you've got a good department head. However, college in general is not "mentoring". It's "here is your task; here is your deadline; where are your results?"
The "people skills" that you learn in college are more along the lines of "how do I not piss the proff/boss off?","yes, I *can* make myself get up and go to school/work with a vicious hangover", "I have a deadline, my parents/boss will shoot me if I fail; I must finish this task if I have to stay awake for 39 hours", "hey, baby, you're lookin' good", "you got any beer?". While all (or most) of these skills will map over to the business world, there's not a lot of teamwork or leadership involved. You can only learn people skills by doing, and you learn through having a job and working.
I also think that your use of the word "nerds" is probably a sign that you're a bit lacking in the people skills that you claim to desire so much. People skills (charisma, leadership, teamwork, tact) are not the same as business skills (can hold a meeting, knows when to run for cover, understands the subtle art of finger-pointing). ("Geek" by the way being the most acceptable term these days, not "nerd").
So maybe you need to sit back and ponder this for a bit. It's possible that you are reflexively turning down employees that might be great for your company. I'm not trying to say that it's every other one of the "self-educated nerds", but maybe one in every 20. Maybe it's one in every 100. I know it's a pain in the ass to slog through all the other resumes and interviews, but if you can get that one great employee, it's worth it. And, as a hiring manger, you're doing less than your job if you file-13 an entire category of candidates because you've had bad experiences with other people in that category. Think about it. If your bias was skin color it would be called "racism". I guess with you we'll call it "uneducatedism" or "nerdism".
I'm not saying "run out and hire all of the 17-year olds that have Linux on a PC at home". I am saying "don't trash their resumes on the spot". I am saying, "don't go into the interview with a reason to say 'no'". Go in with the intent to discover their intelligence. And, hey, if it doesn't work out, fire their ass. I mean, if there was an obviously better candidate, you would have hired them instead, right?
And (finally), specific technical skills are easy to teach. Being able to keep up with multiple skills without any company funded training is a lot more difficult. Which would you rather have: an employee that says "I have to go to that Java training" or an employee that says "Hey, I've been playing aroung with Java..."
I'm a sysadmin. I'm 30. I never went to college. It is the biggest regret of my life.
I've been lucky and managed to get into a high-paying niche area (SAP administration).
As you might have noticed, the market is tight right now. There are a *lot* of jobs that I could do, but I am not being looked at because I lack a college degree. Not having a degree doesn't change the amount of money that I make. Not having a degree does close doors, though.
Screw the work experience, you can get that later. A college degree is a lot harder to go back and make up. Especially if you start talking about being married and having kids. I make (when I'm working) at least 3X what my wife (the teacher) does. I can't just throw that away and go to school full-time.
Do it now while you have no serious obligations. Do it now while you have the time. Screw the debt. If it's not your college education, it will be a house. Or medical bills for your kids. Or something. Going into debt for your education is one of the few debts that's "good"...or at least not "bad". You don't have to go to MIT or Harvard either. Just get a degree in a semi-related field from a reputable, accredited university.
You can teach yourself, or work nights, or do something to get that experience. Don't pass up on the college, man. This is the *best* opportunity that you'll ever have to take four or five years off and get that piece of paper.
Sure, people kvetch about "the college grad who doesn't know shit". Some of it's true. Some of it's jealousy. But it's easy to make up the experience -- you get a job. It's a helluva lot harder to go back and make up the degree. If you spend some of your time learning *outside* of the classroom, you'll be set.
(If I hadn't breezed through two sets of mod points in the last 10 days, I'd be modding you up instead of responding to you).
You are so right. Someone needed to jump all over this guy. I mean, "JAPANESE displays in JAPAN!?" Good lord. And if the prices are comparable to US prices, that sounds pretty good to me considering that most things in Japan cost a *lot* more than they do in the States.
Observations like the ones in this article make me cringe.
I deeply appreciate the fact that the Judiciary Committee is soliciting comments about this subject via email. Thank you.
I think that the core question before us is: "should there be federally mandated controls for the protection of content creators' intellectual property rights?" There are dozens, if not hundreds, of tangenital issues surrounding this one question, and I think that we, proponents, opponents, lawmakers and citizens, need to focus our comments and rhetoric on this one point.
I do not believe that the Unites States Congress should require any form of digital rights management (DRM) that applies to every manufacturer of computers or other electronic devices -- and, through them, to every consumer and legitimate user of digital media.
One of the main reasons I believe this is that, according to the testimony of Mr. Richard Parsons of AOL Time Warner, at any given time less than 0.31% of the United States population is engaged in the illegal distribution of copyrighted works. Requiring every manufacturer of computers and electronic devices to incorporate some form of DRM will cost money. And that cost will be unjustly passed on the 99.69% of us who are not making illegal use of copyrighted material. (I would like to point out that 0.31% is the maximal value given by a proponent of federally mandated DRM. This figure also fails to consider what percentage of these people have enough bandwidth to engage in significant abuse. I realize that, in theory, "significant abuse" should not be a consideration but we need to be pragmatic).
Requiring the 99%+ legitimate users of digital media to pay so that major content creators can attempt to protect their intellectual property from the miniscule fraction of the population that uses it illegally is ridiculous.
Finally, I would like to point out that correlation is not causation. For the proponents of mandated DRM to claim that the rise of peer-to-peer networking is the cause of the content creation industry's reduction in revenue over the past year is absurd. Considering the economy since the dot-com bust, I would be surprised if the industry had increased revenues.
The era of the super-fastest home PC might be over.
I'm more than happy with three 600 MHz PIIIs at the house. I've got a good deal of RAM (1Gb and 512Mb of PC133 SDRAM), some good video cards (Geforce 3s) and some ATA-100 cards with more than 100Gb of drive-space. There is NO WAY that anyone would describe these boxes as cutting edge. Sure they're better than the average bear, but I don't see replacing anything on these machines for a looooong time.
Please remember I'm pretty damn geeky...these machines are more than capable of doing anything that I want them to do (uh, other than working through 8 million blocks from dnetc every second). They game incredibly well. The big one can easily handle 10 users as an Unreal Tournament server (while it still firewalls my network and acts as a mailserver for 6 domains and runs fetchmail for 5 accounts).
Sure, I'd love to do (WARNING: FreeBSDism ahead) a "make buildworld" in 2.76 minutes. I'd love to talk shit about the magnificent magnitude of my PCs at home. But I don't need to. I'm (depending on what component you look at) about four to eighteen months out-of-date on hardware. I still don't need to do any significant upgrades. The only upgrade that I might need to do in the next year is my video card, and that's not certain.
I'd love to upgrade the hardware...faster is always better...but I don't need to. I've had these boxes in their current incarnation for about a year. I still have absolutely no need to upgrade anything. Sure, I'd like to -- but I don't need to.
Hell, my wife has one of the very first G4s made (one of the "crappy" ones -- back when 128Mb of RAM was "a bunch")...the only time she'll need to upgrade is if the computer bursts into flames. My brother-in-law asked me about buying a computer -- I pointed him to the slowest P4 that Dell sold (he didn't need any more, and unless companies start making DNA anlysis a requirement for registering software, he'll never need anything more).
As long as Joe-Schmoe-Home-User doesn't upgrade his software (and let's be honest...that rarely ever happens unless J-Random-Hacker forces the issue) he doesn't need to upgrade his hardware. I don't know about you, but I've only seen two pieces of software (not counting games) in the last year or three that was worth upgrading hardware for: Mac OS X and Windows 2000.
Intel could swoop down tomorrow with a 39.4 Ghz MegaMonsterKickAssium tomorrow. I wouldn't buy one. I'd think to myself, "Man, I wish I could afford one of those MegaMonsterKickAssiums. But, oh well, I don't really need on. Time to go home to the Pentium IIIs."
(Disclaimer: I'm talking about home PCs...I'm not talking about 3D rendering, real-time computing, massive scientific computing -- just 'average' home PCs).
Population 5,221,801. I think the fact that you left out Tarrant county might have skewed your numbers.
DFW is at #9 for metro areas sizes. (See, I can even admit when I'm wrong). But it has a growth of over 29% -- more than twice as high as any area in the top eight.
If you consider the Metroplex (DFW) as one unit (for those of you who haven't been here, we're talking abot an area that is at least 1,200 square miles of connected cities), you're looking at more than 5 million people. DFW considered as a whole (and not individual cities) is probably #2 or #3 in population size.
. . . and the people were a heck of a lot more pleasant.
Yeah, I went to Minneapolis/San Jose/New York and said to a gas station clerk, "Can I please have a pack of [brand of cigarettes]?". They all laughed becuase I said "please".
Pollution!? Shee-yit! You must be one o'those damn Yankee furriners I hear tell about!
That there pollution is just ev-oh-loo-shun in action! It only kills off the weak alveoli (I watch the Discovery channel -- I know lots o'them big words)! Down here in God's Country we don't hold to pampering the cells in our bodies! Only the strong survive! The weak die in the summer! Remember the Alamo! Go and buy some more guns! Yee-hah!
(To hopefully deterr some flames: I am a native Dallasite who owns lots of guns. This post is sarcastic).
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Thanks for pointing our my error without saying "Hey, you fucking dumbass" -- even though it might be implied. While I don't like being wrong more than anyone else, I do appreciate being corrected.
Thanks.
There is one problem with your statement. That problem is that, unfortunately, while it might sound vaguely accurate, it is actually dangerous, silly and presents a lack of understanding about networking.
What you are referring to as "protocol 11" should more properly be referred to as "port 11". Ports are numbered from 0 to 65535. All TCP and UDP connections take place over a port. For instance, web servers, which provide HTTP (a TCP protocol) provide their connections on port 80. So a web browser that wants to request information from a web server contacts it on TCP port 80. Now, if that same web server was an email server, it would handle SMTP on TCP port 25. If it was a DNS server, it would respond to queries on UDP port 53. (It might also respond to queries via TCP on port 53). As far as is practicable, TCP and UDP ports are kept in sync.
It might help to think of TCP as FM Radio, and UDP as AM Radio. The port designation is analagous to selecting a station (99.5 or 105.3) on the radio.
So, in fact, the firewall rules that you provide are absolutely worthless as they allow all traffic in no matter what port it comes in on.
In the interest of being complete, I should mention that ICMP doesn't use ports. It has a roughly analagous feature called types.
You might want to search for, read, and understand some basic networking information before you post any more "security advice".
One word. Dvorak.
Investors do not like to see large variations over a short period of time. Large fluctuations -- either up or down -- skew the statistics they use to make future projections.
Investors want to be able to make accurate projections. Analysts want to be able to make accurate projections so they can get paid by investors. Companies want to be able to provide the information to make accurate projections so they can get paid by investors. Accountants want their numbers to be conducive to making accurate projections so they have a company to work for. Auditors want their reports to say that accurate projections are possible so they can get paid by companies.
It's an incestuous system whose sole purpose is making people think that investing is more like monopoly than blackjack.
The thing that makes Ender's Game such a great book is that the small unwashed masses of alienated, hyper-intelligent geeks could truly empathize with Ender on an emotional level. We can understand his trials and feel his pains. We can also understand his pyrrhic victories. The rest of the books are good (for the most part) but that visceral sense of identification gets left behind. And, in Ender's Shadow, Card tries to shift that sense of identification from Ender to Bean. He fails miserably. He comes closer, yet also fails with Qing-Jao.
In the first book, Ender's Game, Card forges an emotional envolvement with Ender. (Well, if you're an alienated, hyper-intelligent geek anyway). The rest of the books in the initial series -- Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind -- are good. He comes closest to reforging that emotional link in the Xenocide/Children of the Mind sub-duology with the character of Qing-Jao. He doesn't quite make it though...I can truly empathize with a braniac with no friends, an obsessive-compulsive super-braniac is a bit beyond my league.
He repeats himself in the sub-duology of Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon. Yes, Bean is super-smart. But he's a genetically engineered human. Card has once again taken what worked with Ender and altered the character so much that readers can't truly relate.
Damn, I've been rambling. The point that I'm trying to emphasize (out of the many points that I've made) is that the appeal of Ender's Game is that readers could honestly and wholely identify with the main character. I don'think that the same sense of identification will come across on the screen.
I don't know about you, but I kept expecting him to move the cigarette up to his tracheotomy/neck valve, inhale and wheeze, "I'm your father, Fox".
While I have to admit that I'm a bit tired of seeing What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com] I am impressed that you relentlessly let us know about it.
I'm also impressed that you're big enough to share this email with the slashdot community.
A lot of things in the last two seasons have been reversals. Mulder -- male who believes; Scully -- female who does not beleive. Dogget -- male who does not believe; Reyes -- female who does believe. Skinner -- boss who helps them out most of the time while being obstructive once in a while; Kerst -- boss who is obstuctive most of the time but helps them out once in a while. (This even goes back to the beginning two seasons ago -- Scully (the female) is the proponent of the X-files, Dogget (the male) is the doubting one...just a bit of a reversal from the first year).
This finale is just all of the different characters focusing on one point. The male and female characters (Mulder/Dogget - Scully/Reyes) and the bosses (Skinner/Kerst) all coming together at the same point -- breaking Mulder out of prison.
There is no "explanation" for it. It's just an directorial attempt to bring all of the opposites from pre-Duchovny/post-Duchovny onto the same track so they can make some movies that start with all of the main characters on the same track.
(And, actually, I'm not an X-files fanboy. My wife is obsessed though, so I've had them shoved down my throat for years).
Umm. I wouldn't call those "attack helicopters". I'd call them "Bell helicopters painted black with some tubes stuck on them". I mean if the "missile-launching attack helicopter" is going to launch a dozen missiles, there would probably need to be some place to keep the missiles that wasn't the magical tube of missile-spewing death, right?
Another techie running out of $$! It's great to know that I'm not alone, bud. My advice is to lie on your resume.
When you put in that application to WalMart, *don't* tell them that you made $68 an hour. Tell them you made $7.15 an hour.
That way they'll think that you might stay if they pay you $8.00 an hour.
Good luck!
You know what I want? I want the ability to "patch" and not have to reboot. That's the #1 feature that I want from MS.
I think that you're failing to make a distinction between intelligence and education.
I will hire for "intelligence" over "skills" every time. I do admit that there are a lot of people that seem to think that because they have an MCSE or a CCNA that it means they are "intelligent". Well, that's not true. It just means that they can regurgitate facts and take tests. Yes, I agree that having a college degree *generally* categorizes a person as having some degree of ability at critical thought. (Though this is not guaranteed). True intelligence is much more difficult to find than skills or a degree. And, in my experience, there's not a noticable correlation between "intelligence" and "degree" in the computer field.
While I also agree that people skills are hugely important, I have yet to encounter a 22-year old (college degree or not) that has a good set of business-related soft skills. Those skills are something that comes with business experience. You can get an arrogant 23-year old with a college degree as easily as you can get an arrogant 23-year old without a college degree. Being arrogant and "knowing better than the old folk" is part of being young. It really doesn't have much to do with a college degree.
And, please, "mentoring environment like school"? I'm sure there are some universities (small ones or really expensive ones) that have an overall "mentoring environment". I would bet money that most college students did not feel that their college environment was "mentoring". Maybe you get a good teacher this semester. Maybe you've got a good department head. However, college in general is not "mentoring". It's "here is your task; here is your deadline; where are your results?"
The "people skills" that you learn in college are more along the lines of "how do I not piss the proff/boss off?","yes, I *can* make myself get up and go to school/work with a vicious hangover", "I have a deadline, my parents/boss will shoot me if I fail; I must finish this task if I have to stay awake for 39 hours", "hey, baby, you're lookin' good", "you got any beer?". While all (or most) of these skills will map over to the business world, there's not a lot of teamwork or leadership involved. You can only learn people skills by doing, and you learn through having a job and working.
I also think that your use of the word "nerds" is probably a sign that you're a bit lacking in the people skills that you claim to desire so much. People skills (charisma, leadership, teamwork, tact) are not the same as business skills (can hold a meeting, knows when to run for cover, understands the subtle art of finger-pointing). ("Geek" by the way being the most acceptable term these days, not "nerd").
So maybe you need to sit back and ponder this for a bit. It's possible that you are reflexively turning down employees that might be great for your company. I'm not trying to say that it's every other one of the "self-educated nerds", but maybe one in every 20. Maybe it's one in every 100. I know it's a pain in the ass to slog through all the other resumes and interviews, but if you can get that one great employee, it's worth it. And, as a hiring manger, you're doing less than your job if you file-13 an entire category of candidates because you've had bad experiences with other people in that category. Think about it. If your bias was skin color it would be called "racism". I guess with you we'll call it "uneducatedism" or "nerdism".
I'm not saying "run out and hire all of the 17-year olds that have Linux on a PC at home". I am saying "don't trash their resumes on the spot". I am saying, "don't go into the interview with a reason to say 'no'". Go in with the intent to discover their intelligence. And, hey, if it doesn't work out, fire their ass. I mean, if there was an obviously better candidate, you would have hired them instead, right?
And (finally), specific technical skills are easy to teach. Being able to keep up with multiple skills without any company funded training is a lot more difficult. Which would you rather have: an employee that says "I have to go to that Java training" or an employee that says "Hey, I've been playing aroung with Java..."
I'm a sysadmin. I'm 30. I never went to college. It is the biggest regret of my life.
I've been lucky and managed to get into a high-paying niche area (SAP administration).
As you might have noticed, the market is tight right now. There are a *lot* of jobs that I could do, but I am not being looked at because I lack a college degree. Not having a degree doesn't change the amount of money that I make. Not having a degree does close doors, though.
Screw the work experience, you can get that later. A college degree is a lot harder to go back and make up. Especially if you start talking about being married and having kids. I make (when I'm working) at least 3X what my wife (the teacher) does. I can't just throw that away and go to school full-time.
Do it now while you have no serious obligations. Do it now while you have the time. Screw the debt. If it's not your college education, it will be a house. Or medical bills for your kids. Or something. Going into debt for your education is one of the few debts that's "good"...or at least not "bad". You don't have to go to MIT or Harvard either. Just get a degree in a semi-related field from a reputable, accredited university.
You can teach yourself, or work nights, or do something to get that experience. Don't pass up on the college, man. This is the *best* opportunity that you'll ever have to take four or five years off and get that piece of paper.
Sure, people kvetch about "the college grad who doesn't know shit". Some of it's true. Some of it's jealousy. But it's easy to make up the experience -- you get a job. It's a helluva lot harder to go back and make up the degree. If you spend some of your time learning *outside* of the classroom, you'll be set.
The most hideous growth that we got was from brushing a dollar bill over the culture material.
I did manage to get it compiled and installed on FreeBSD without much of a problem. I just couldn't get it to load any modules.
(If I hadn't breezed through two sets of mod points in the last 10 days, I'd be modding you up instead of responding to you).
You are so right. Someone needed to jump all over this guy. I mean, "JAPANESE displays in JAPAN!?" Good lord. And if the prices are comparable to US prices, that sounds pretty good to me considering that most things in Japan cost a *lot* more than they do in the States.
Observations like the ones in this article make me cringe.
SHIT! Fat-fingers!
Damn. I looked at it after I sent the letter and said, "Hmmm. I don't remember that word having 'genital' in it."
Thanks for pointing it out. Hopefully it will be edited if they post it.
I believe that he is interpreting:
It takes around 66% of the download space of a recent MSIE...
as "it takes less disk space than MSIE".
I deeply appreciate the fact that the Judiciary Committee is soliciting comments about this subject via email. Thank you.
I think that the core question before us is: "should there be federally mandated controls for the protection of content creators' intellectual property rights?" There are dozens, if not hundreds, of tangenital issues surrounding this one question, and I think that we, proponents, opponents, lawmakers and citizens, need to focus our comments and rhetoric on this one point.
I do not believe that the Unites States Congress should require any form of digital rights management (DRM) that applies to every manufacturer of computers or other electronic devices -- and, through them, to every consumer and legitimate user of digital media.
One of the main reasons I believe this is that, according to the testimony of Mr. Richard Parsons of AOL Time Warner, at any given time less than 0.31% of the United States population is engaged in the illegal distribution of copyrighted works. Requiring every manufacturer of computers and electronic devices to incorporate some form of DRM will cost money. And that cost will be unjustly passed on the 99.69% of us who are not making illegal use of copyrighted material. (I would like to point out that 0.31% is the maximal value given by a proponent of federally mandated DRM. This figure also fails to consider what percentage of these people have enough bandwidth to engage in significant abuse. I realize that, in theory, "significant abuse" should not be a consideration but we need to be pragmatic).
Requiring the 99%+ legitimate users of digital media to pay so that major content creators can attempt to protect their intellectual property from the miniscule fraction of the population that uses it illegally is ridiculous.
Finally, I would like to point out that correlation is not causation. For the proponents of mandated DRM to claim that the rise of peer-to-peer networking is the cause of the content creation industry's reduction in revenue over the past year is absurd. Considering the economy since the dot-com bust, I would be surprised if the industry had increased revenues.
Thank you for your time.
The era of the super-fastest home PC might be over.
I'm more than happy with three 600 MHz PIIIs at the house. I've got a good deal of RAM (1Gb and 512Mb of PC133 SDRAM), some good video cards (Geforce 3s) and some ATA-100 cards with more than 100Gb of drive-space. There is NO WAY that anyone would describe these boxes as cutting edge. Sure they're better than the average bear, but I don't see replacing anything on these machines for a looooong time.
Please remember I'm pretty damn geeky...these machines are more than capable of doing anything that I want them to do (uh, other than working through 8 million blocks from dnetc every second). They game incredibly well. The big one can easily handle 10 users as an Unreal Tournament server (while it still firewalls my network and acts as a mailserver for 6 domains and runs fetchmail for 5 accounts).
Sure, I'd love to do (WARNING: FreeBSDism ahead) a "make buildworld" in 2.76 minutes. I'd love to talk shit about the magnificent magnitude of my PCs at home. But I don't need to. I'm (depending on what component you look at) about four to eighteen months out-of-date on hardware. I still don't need to do any significant upgrades. The only upgrade that I might need to do in the next year is my video card, and that's not certain.
I'd love to upgrade the hardware...faster is always better...but I don't need to. I've had these boxes in their current incarnation for about a year. I still have absolutely no need to upgrade anything. Sure, I'd like to -- but I don't need to.
Hell, my wife has one of the very first G4s made (one of the "crappy" ones -- back when 128Mb of RAM was "a bunch")...the only time she'll need to upgrade is if the computer bursts into flames. My brother-in-law asked me about buying a computer -- I pointed him to the slowest P4 that Dell sold (he didn't need any more, and unless companies start making DNA anlysis a requirement for registering software, he'll never need anything more).
As long as Joe-Schmoe-Home-User doesn't upgrade his software (and let's be honest...that rarely ever happens unless J-Random-Hacker forces the issue) he doesn't need to upgrade his hardware. I don't know about you, but I've only seen two pieces of software (not counting games) in the last year or three that was worth upgrading hardware for: Mac OS X and Windows 2000.
Intel could swoop down tomorrow with a 39.4 Ghz MegaMonsterKickAssium tomorrow. I wouldn't buy one. I'd think to myself, "Man, I wish I could afford one of those MegaMonsterKickAssiums. But, oh well, I don't really need on. Time to go home to the Pentium IIIs."
(Disclaimer: I'm talking about home PCs...I'm not talking about 3D rendering, real-time computing, massive scientific computing -- just 'average' home PCs).
Here it is.
Population 5,221,801. I think the fact that you left out Tarrant county might have skewed your numbers.
DFW is at #9 for metro areas sizes. (See, I can even admit when I'm wrong). But it has a growth of over 29% -- more than twice as high as any area in the top eight.
Now go and troll someone else.
If you consider the Metroplex (DFW) as one unit (for those of you who haven't been here, we're talking abot an area that is at least 1,200 square miles of connected cities), you're looking at more than 5 million people. DFW considered as a whole (and not individual cities) is probably #2 or #3 in population size.
I acutally liked any compiled componant better.
. . . and the people were a heck of a lot more pleasant.
Yeah, I went to Minneapolis/San Jose/New York and said to a gas station clerk, "Can I please have a pack of [brand of cigarettes]?". They all laughed becuase I said "please".
Pollution!? Shee-yit! You must be one o'those damn Yankee furriners I hear tell about!
That there pollution is just ev-oh-loo-shun in action! It only kills off the weak alveoli (I watch the Discovery channel -- I know lots o'them big words)! Down here in God's Country we don't hold to pampering the cells in our bodies! Only the strong survive! The weak die in the summer! Remember the Alamo! Go and buy some more guns! Yee-hah!
(To hopefully deterr some flames: I am a native Dallasite who owns lots of guns. This post is sarcastic).