What's the desired end result here? Lower CD costs? Free music? Drive the music companies out of business?
These are BIG companies with huge payrolls and tons of overhead for manufacturing and distribution, marketing, A&R, etc. Those machines eat millions of US dollars every day chewing up artists and spitting out CDs - many of which no one buys enough of to make a profit on.
I bet if you got your favorite record executive drunk and he'd even admit that they really don't care if you back up your CD or make a copy of it for the car or even if your kid makes one for his friend. Heck, at least you bought it for $18.99 and there's some extra built into that for your kid passing out copies. These people have always understood that this is going to happen.
But what happened? We, the people, got greedy. We decided we wanted everything for free. EVERYTHING. No, not you Mr. Slashdot reader who actually buys more CDs after finding new and exciting artists on you favorite Napster clone. No, not the person with the professional ethics who pays the artist directly with PayPal at their website. No, not the select few individuals who used to pay for all their Shareware in the "old" days. It's the seventh grade cheerleader who uploads her favorite boy band somewhere or shares all the songs with the entire planet of people downloading free music. Now that we can share with 500,000 people at one time those machines are taking notice.
Do you know why? They found out at the end of last year that the market for music had gotten smaller. Less people who were available to purchase music did so. These are people who could afford to buy CDs and had in the past who are no longer purchasing music that way. Big problem because these same people are finding music through "alternative" means.
This is seen as a threat by the music business, because the majority of these people are finding illegal ways to obtain the same music that sells for big bucks.
What should we expect them to do? They're going to fight tooth and nail to get that business back and grow it even more.
Sure you can rip the copy protected CDs and will probably always be able to in the future. This is just a shot across the bow - to let us know they're serious.
Wait until you see Congress (quietly) pass a bill that makes ISPs responsible for the traffic across their lines and servers. No more common carrier status. I bet lots of businesses would like that.
How about when the serial number in your next processor is turned on by default and you can't turn it off?
When everyone's favorite OS (no, not *your* favorite OS) won't play non-secure media anymore and any player for LINUX will have to break the DMCA just to play whatever the new form of CD is called. What about when that "favorite" OS wont even load a program that isn't digitally signed? Or a driver that isn't approved? Or a piece of hardware that isn't "authenticated".
What about when CDs vanish in a few years and only DVDs exist? Audio DVDs will completely replace CDs for the mass market by 2008, if not before.
How about when the first 100 college students go to federal prison for breaking the DMCA by using "evil hacker tools that could destroy humanity as we know it"? Or whatever the prosecutor has to say to get a conviction. Don't think it won't happen. Mitnick didn't even get his trial for five years!
They will not stop. They will try whatever they have to do to make it work for them and the Clipper chip will look like ROT13 next to what they can envision.
So feel free to complain and talk about lawsuits and what Phillips can/cannot do, but the bottom line is that the big guns are mad and no one is going to stop them.
Remember the U.S. is all about commerce and money. Nothing else. No one understands this better than the present government and if you think they mind trashing your supposed "rights" then you're in for a shock.
My eleven year old wants to play video games all day and I don't let him because it's bad for him. The entire U.S. population may want to download music for free, but it's bad for commerce and the U.S. government wont let them.
If you throw your hammer through someones window (a use it wasn't designed for) you might be caught and punished. If everyone in your neighborhood puts in Lexan (polycarbonate) windows because they're tired of your childish displays, you do NOT have a right for redress because you can no longer do "whatever you want" with the hammer. You're trying to do something that isn't legal anyway.
Whether you like it or not "using" a DVD anyway you want is not legal either. Lobby your American congress to change the laws if you don't like it. You can't legally show your DVD to a paying audience either. Does that bother you?
Price fixing requires the *different* manufacturers or distributors in a region to conspire to set the price for their products. If one manufacturer on their own sells the same product for different prices in different regions that is not price fixing. It's called marketing. As an aside price fixing is NOT illegal in most countries. Given that the government is usually the benneficiary of the price fixing (tobacco and telephone monoplies are examples) this doesn't really hurt your basic argument, but the fact is you are incorrect that price fixing is illegal.
The conclusion is that in the U.S. you don't have the right to break the law to use a product anyway you want. If that means breaking the DMCA (by reverse engineering crypto or outright breaking it) so you can play DVDs on you Linux system, BeBox, OS2, VAX/VMS, etc. then it's an illegal use of the product. Period.
There are numerous laws that restrict the use of hammers and books (banning) in the U.S.A. so I'm not sure what the problem is with restricting how DVDs can be used, watched, etc.
It's exactly the "I can do anything I want" mentality that makes these big companies uncomfortable and eventually act with draconian laws.
Remember the entire U.S. economy, culture, and history is built upon Commerce and if you think the government is going to side with something that inhibits business making more money you are saddly mistaken. Check out how many of the first ten admendments to the Constitution have yet to be shreaded by the courts.
Do what you want, but at least face the fact that the business now has more *RIGHTS* to do what they want than you do.
I have shipped a lot of equipment for work in the past at different companies and UPS is a disaster. If I remember correctly the rep (now this was a few years ago, so you better check again) told me that a package had to be packed to survive a certain drop to the ground (I remember something like 20 feet). When I asked why they told me it was because they *might* just push the big boxes out the side door of a jumbo jet onto the tarmac and then corrected himself to say that if it fell off of the ramp while being carefully offloaded from the airplane it might get the kind of damage we were seeing.
(Someone who works at a hub for UPS please tell us if this is true anymore or not.)
Just for reference, we were seeing BENT backplanes on servers, even though the boxes didn't look that beat up.
With FedEx they appeared to be more careful and damage was few and far between. One funny story is we shipped a box with ten copies of MS Office in it and I insured it for $4,000 because it was cheap for us to do. The only thing that arrived was the top of the carton with the shipping label. After about six weeks we settled for $3,200 (the actual cost of replacement at the time.) Good on you FedEx!
The U.S. Postal Service, while happy to take your money to insure anything, has a very difficult procedure for filing a claim where both parties have to fill out a complicated form and the damaged goods and packaging have to be taken to a Post Office and turned over to be shipped further to a special type of Post Office where they will determine if they are going to honor your claim or laugh at you for packing that Grecian urn in crumbled up newspaper.
The catch is that after three months of nothing and I checked back at the post office the clerk actually smiled as he told me that it was "routine" for an insurance claim to take 18 to 24 months for processing! True to form it was 11 months later that they denied my claim and in the letter let me know that the period for appealing their denial had already passed! I could pick up my junk at a Post Office miles away from the one I had dropped it off at within 30 days (of which 22 had already passed) or they would throw it away for me for free.
What works?
UPS ground is pretty good for big packages if you don't mind the wait. Don't use the 3-day Select as they fly those too.
FedEx is still the best for flown items as far as I'm concerned.
Thanks for being so cool and restoring my faith humans. I also appologize for being really, really snotty to you, but I was pretty frustrated at the time, as you probably were.
Well I suppose I should clarify, that neither myself or my father is a moron or would stay on hold for 15 hours straight. I didn't think I'd have to explain that to people who read this forum.
The 15 hours was over a period of six weeks. The longest at any one time was 100 minutes. Yes, he has a speaker phone and wasn't just sitting there drooling while waiting on hold.
As Dell will not provide an address to send e-mail to (that responds with anything other than canned "we care" scripts) and the phone support didn't seem to be working, it seemed appropriate to write to Michael Dell. I have done this before with other companies. The CEO of Daytimer called me directly to appologize for one of their products. I immediately got satisfaction from Lands' End on a poorly constructed jacket. It doesn't seem that far out of the realm of good judgement that writing to the CEO would produce results - from a company that cares about its customers.
Of course I'm supporting my father's new computer. I just didn't want to and thought that Dell's reputation as a good company would help lift some of the burden off of me. That's what he was paying them for according to their sales pitch.
I'm curious. Why would you instantly jump to the worst conclusion possible after reading anyone's post on/. and not ask a few simple questions? While certainly there are people you are smarter than, there are also those who know what they are doing. I hope that isn't a shock to you.
Maybe you could have offered something constructive to help my father with his problem to show your superior intellect.
No you couldn't be bothered to help, only to whine and bitch (which I did not do in my original article.)
Thanks for nothing.
Windows XP Launch in Los Angeles - Poorly attended
on
Windows XP Has Arrived
·
· Score: 1
I just returned from the WXP "launch" function at the Universal Amphitheatre. About half the seats were blocked off and unavailable (a small section of those was opened later); of the remaining seats in the lower half of the theatre about 70% were occupied. The lower half of the theatre is approximately one-third of the total amphitheater seating (because of the balcony). The entire theater holds 6.125. One-third of that is 2.042, and 70% of that is 1.430. We left at the intermission along with about 20% of the "crowd".
That Microsoft can barely attract 1.500 people in a market the size of Los Angeles to the launch of a major OS product may be a very real sign of how well XP is going to sell.
Yes, I have been to many of these launch parties of MS products over the years in order to show support for our MS representatives, but this one was aimed so low that it was barely tolerable.
Dell support was rated the highest among the "computer mills" (gateway, dell, etc.) in Consumer Reports. Given that, I recommended to my father to buy his first desktop computer from them last Christmas.
How was I to know that they'd stop answering the phone? Literally.
My dad has 15 hours of hold time documented and never spoke to a real person. THREE certified letters to Michael Dell with no response, and is obviously not very happy.
Neither am I because I didn't really want to be his support hotline for this new PC.
I would have a lot of trouble recommending Dell to anyone again.
Premier Support is a contract with Microsoft with a specific SLA and a person assigned (part or full time) to your account (Technical Account Manager).
Our Premier Support is great (at nearly US $500k per 18/months it should be!)
Premier Tickets are routinely escalated in the first five minutes of the phone call once the Microsofty realizes they're not talking to an idiot. Engineer direct support within an hour is possible, if needed.
I agree that first level is going to search TechNet and the knowledge base and make sure you've covered your bases - all things you should be doing before you call anyway.
Our previous TAM was "moved on to another account" after we complained ONCE that he was not keeping an eye on our support tickets the way we desired.
I don't know what kind of support you're getting, but it's not Premier.
As I remember it the biggest problem with the "Black Plague" of the middle ages was that Bubonic plague can become Pneumonic (of the lungs) plague and then humans can infect other humans by coughing/sneezing and *that* is the reason for the wide spread of the disease. It was not necessarily because everyone had a house full of flea infested rats.
Hygine does play an obvious and important factor in all of this as bathing was seen as something to avoid in order to stay healthy.
What I really want MS broken up for is out of hope that the applications division will then offer their products for other Operating Systems.
Working for a major corporation makes it difficult to get anything approved on the desktop that wont run the industry "business standard" software packages - Office, FrontPage, etc.
Office for Linux would make our lives in business and IT so much nicer, since we must use MS products anyway.
Actually up until 1992 the message from the commissioner inside the front cover of your 1040 form thanked you for voluntarily paying income taxes!
It sounds too weird to believe, but after reading Title 26 and Title 27 of the United States Code and with a little help from the below I believe that no citizen is obligated to pay Federal or State income taxes.
Unless you've spent at least 20 hours pouring over this stuff please don't feel that you can comment on the legitimacy of what I say.
I had to be dragged into this kicking and screaming by someone I really trusted before I believed it.
Did you know that your W-4 form is the form where you ask your employer to withhold from your pay? You ask. There is no regulation forcing you to fill out that form, it is a contract between employer and employee only.
The OMB (Office of Management and Budgeting) number on your 1040 form (upper right corner) says that the 1040 is only for foreign earned income. If you really do the research you'll discover the truth and the truth is that it's all a big lie.
Is 20 hours of serious research and maybe a couple of hundred dollars for books worth you saving $30,000 a year on your taxes?
I am not affiliated with these people in anyway other than being a satisfied customer.
If this doesn't blow your mind try to find out what the gold fringe on the American flag means. Those flags are in every court in our land, but not outside them, or in schools or hardly anywhere else. What does that gold fringe mean that makes it so important inside of a courtroom?
Well, you're certainly correct in a perfectly technical way.
You probably understood my real point was that the intention of the First Amendment was pretty obvious. Congress shouldn't be trying to get around the First Amendment by offering carrots on a stick to the States if they allow the rights of the people to be suppressed.
So by passing a bill that helps to abridge the rights of the people, blah, blah, blah.
You get the picture.
By the way, income tax is voluntary - don't volunteer.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In reading the articles that you have written I have noticed that your "style" causes you to take a very long time to come to a conclusion (point) which is somewhat frustrating for your readers. Once you do get your point across I'm disappointed, as generally it seemed that you should have reached that conclusion pages ago.
The question:
Is this your journalistic "style" at work or is this the God's-honest truth of how you deal with all of your day-to-day problems and questions?
Is it really a rip if you buy the company that developed it in the beginning and then poured millions of dollars into R&D to make it do more than ever?
"Looks like a huge kludge" could apply to EVERY operating system we work on today, don't you agree?
I will admit that reading about the "Dock" in the new OSX made me wonder if there weren't a few NeXT people out there who might see the similarities, but what do you expect Apple to do? Jobs built Apple and NeXT and runs what remains of both. It's all his vision and he's usually right.
The problem is not the technology - even Jon knows that - it's how the evil humans use the technology. Kind of like blaming the guns for violence (no, please - let's not start on gun control.) It all comes down to how humans apply the technology. To anthropomorphize technology into "evil technology" just doesn't cut it.
I left the aerospace industry to work in themed entertainment in 1989 and have since then worked on numerous theme park projects for Orlando, California, and overseas. I can say without fail that the technology involved in 95% of what you seen in a theme park is truly unremarkable and uninteresting compared to an average satellite or jet air craft. Others will certainly disagree, but I am bored to tears with the lack of innovation people even consider when designing new theme parks and attractions. Disney, much more than the others, makes the attempt, but certainly never comes up with anything spectacular.
Motion picture special effects aside (Terminator 2- 3D) everything else still appears to be new applications of tried and true, existing, technology.
In the case of a theme park that's a good thing. Let's remember that these things have to run for at least 12 hours a day - every day. New technology doesn't like to work on a consistent basis or be cheap to repair. Just ask anybody who worked on SARCOS figures for the first five years.
I think you're working on the wrong assumptions for where you're going, but have fun and don't look at the ceiling!
Slashdot Mirror
What's the desired end result here? Lower CD costs? Free music? Drive the music companies out of business?
These are BIG companies with huge payrolls and tons of overhead for manufacturing and distribution, marketing, A&R, etc. Those machines eat millions of US dollars every day chewing up artists and spitting out CDs - many of which no one buys enough of to make a profit on.
I bet if you got your favorite record executive drunk and he'd even admit that they really don't care if you back up your CD or make a copy of it for the car or even if your kid makes one for his friend. Heck, at least you bought it for $18.99 and there's some extra built into that for your kid passing out copies. These people have always understood that this is going to happen.
But what happened? We, the people, got greedy. We decided we wanted everything for free. EVERYTHING. No, not you Mr. Slashdot reader who actually buys more CDs after finding new and exciting artists on you favorite Napster clone. No, not the person with the professional ethics who pays the artist directly with PayPal at their website. No, not the select few individuals who used to pay for all their Shareware in the "old" days. It's the seventh grade cheerleader who uploads her favorite boy band somewhere or shares all the songs with the entire planet of people downloading free music. Now that we can share with 500,000 people at one time those machines are taking notice.
Do you know why? They found out at the end of last year that the market for music had gotten smaller. Less people who were available to purchase music did so. These are people who could afford to buy CDs and had in the past who are no longer purchasing music that way. Big problem because these same people are finding music through "alternative" means.
This is seen as a threat by the music business, because the majority of these people are finding illegal ways to obtain the same music that sells for big bucks.
What should we expect them to do? They're going to fight tooth and nail to get that business back and grow it even more.
Sure you can rip the copy protected CDs and will probably always be able to in the future. This is just a shot across the bow - to let us know they're serious.
Wait until you see Congress (quietly) pass a bill that makes ISPs responsible for the traffic across their lines and servers. No more common carrier status. I bet lots of businesses would like that.
How about when the serial number in your next processor is turned on by default and you can't turn it off?
When everyone's favorite OS (no, not *your* favorite OS) won't play non-secure media anymore and any player for LINUX will have to break the DMCA just to play whatever the new form of CD is called. What about when that "favorite" OS wont even load a program that isn't digitally signed? Or a driver that isn't approved? Or a piece of hardware that isn't "authenticated".
What about when CDs vanish in a few years and only DVDs exist? Audio DVDs will completely replace CDs for the mass market by 2008, if not before.
How about when the first 100 college students go to federal prison for breaking the DMCA by using "evil hacker tools that could destroy humanity as we know it"? Or whatever the prosecutor has to say to get a conviction. Don't think it won't happen. Mitnick didn't even get his trial for five years!
They will not stop. They will try whatever they have to do to make it work for them and the Clipper chip will look like ROT13 next to what they can envision.
So feel free to complain and talk about lawsuits and what Phillips can/cannot do, but the bottom line is that the big guns are mad and no one is going to stop them.
Remember the U.S. is all about commerce and money. Nothing else. No one understands this better than the present government and if you think they mind trashing your supposed "rights" then you're in for a shock.
My eleven year old wants to play video games all day and I don't let him because it's bad for him. The entire U.S. population may want to download music for free, but it's bad for commerce and the U.S. government wont let them.
Tamum shud
If you throw your hammer through someones window (a use it wasn't designed for) you might be caught and punished. If everyone in your neighborhood puts in Lexan (polycarbonate) windows because they're tired of your childish displays, you do NOT have a right for redress because you can no longer do "whatever you want" with the hammer. You're trying to do something that isn't legal anyway.
Whether you like it or not "using" a DVD anyway you want is not legal either. Lobby your American congress to change the laws if you don't like it. You can't legally show your DVD to a paying audience either. Does that bother you?
Price fixing requires the *different* manufacturers or distributors in a region to conspire to set the price for their products. If one manufacturer on their own sells the same product for different prices in different regions that is not price fixing. It's called marketing. As an aside price fixing is NOT illegal in most countries. Given that the government is usually the benneficiary of the price fixing (tobacco and telephone monoplies are examples) this doesn't really hurt your basic argument, but the fact is you are incorrect that price fixing is illegal.
The conclusion is that in the U.S. you don't have the right to break the law to use a product anyway you want. If that means breaking the DMCA (by reverse engineering crypto or outright breaking it) so you can play DVDs on you Linux system, BeBox, OS2, VAX/VMS, etc. then it's an illegal use of the product. Period.
There are numerous laws that restrict the use of hammers and books (banning) in the U.S.A. so I'm not sure what the problem is with restricting how DVDs can be used, watched, etc.
It's exactly the "I can do anything I want" mentality that makes these big companies uncomfortable and eventually act with draconian laws.
Remember the entire U.S. economy, culture, and history is built upon Commerce and if you think the government is going to side with something that inhibits business making more money you are saddly mistaken. Check out how many of the first ten admendments to the Constitution have yet to be shreaded by the courts.
Do what you want, but at least face the fact that the business now has more *RIGHTS* to do what they want than you do.
...if it's for the kids and the schools..
Not my message, silly! His!
I have shipped a lot of equipment for work in the past at different companies and UPS is a disaster. If I remember correctly the rep (now this was a few years ago, so you better check again) told me that a package had to be packed to survive a certain drop to the ground (I remember something like 20 feet). When I asked why they told me it was because they *might* just push the big boxes out the side door of a jumbo jet onto the tarmac and then corrected himself to say that if it fell off of the ramp while being carefully offloaded from the airplane it might get the kind of damage we were seeing.
(Someone who works at a hub for UPS please tell us if this is true anymore or not.)
Just for reference, we were seeing BENT backplanes on servers, even though the boxes didn't look that beat up.
With FedEx they appeared to be more careful and damage was few and far between. One funny story is we shipped a box with ten copies of MS Office in it and I insured it for $4,000 because it was cheap for us to do. The only thing that arrived was the top of the carton with the shipping label. After about six weeks we settled for $3,200 (the actual cost of replacement at the time.) Good on you FedEx!
The U.S. Postal Service, while happy to take your money to insure anything, has a very difficult procedure for filing a claim where both parties have to fill out a complicated form and the damaged goods and packaging have to be taken to a Post Office and turned over to be shipped further to a special type of Post Office where they will determine if they are going to honor your claim or laugh at you for packing that Grecian urn in crumbled up newspaper.
The catch is that after three months of nothing and I checked back at the post office the clerk actually smiled as he told me that it was "routine" for an insurance claim to take 18 to 24 months for processing! True to form it was 11 months later that they denied my claim and in the letter let me know that the period for appealing their denial had already passed! I could pick up my junk at a Post Office miles away from the one I had dropped it off at within 30 days (of which 22 had already passed) or they would throw it away for me for free.
What works?
UPS ground is pretty good for big packages if you don't mind the wait. Don't use the 3-day Select as they fly those too.
FedEx is still the best for flown items as far as I'm concerned.
Good luck!
I just could never worry about this a lot. It was so obvious that it was unconstitutional that it became just a matter of time before it went away.
No, I'm not a lawyer, yes, you can flame me about not caring enough.
I'm just a practical guy who saw the right people going balistic over this.
Let me know when the smoke finally clears.
Thanks for being so cool and restoring my faith humans. I also appologize for being really, really snotty to you, but I was pretty frustrated at the time, as you probably were.
Thanks also for caring enough to answer back.
aloha,
jack
... It is a muscle car! And I was all fired up to fart in your general direction, but being a prudent /.'er I looked it up first and it is listed.
/ mu sclecars-definition.html
Good on you!
http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclecars/general
Well I suppose I should clarify, that neither myself or my father is a moron or would stay on hold for 15 hours straight. I didn't think I'd have to explain that to people who read this forum.
/. and not ask a few simple questions? While certainly there are people you are smarter than, there are also those who know what they are doing. I hope that isn't a shock to you.
The 15 hours was over a period of six weeks. The longest at any one time was 100 minutes. Yes, he has a speaker phone and wasn't just sitting there drooling while waiting on hold.
As Dell will not provide an address to send e-mail to (that responds with anything other than canned "we care" scripts) and the phone support didn't seem to be working, it seemed appropriate to write to Michael Dell. I have done this before with other companies. The CEO of Daytimer called me directly to appologize for one of their products. I immediately got satisfaction from Lands' End on a poorly constructed jacket. It doesn't seem that far out of the realm of good judgement that writing to the CEO would produce results - from a company that cares about its customers.
Of course I'm supporting my father's new computer. I just didn't want to and thought that Dell's reputation as a good company would help lift some of the burden off of me. That's what he was paying them for according to their sales pitch.
I'm curious. Why would you instantly jump to the worst conclusion possible after reading anyone's post on
Maybe you could have offered something constructive to help my father with his problem to show your superior intellect.
No you couldn't be bothered to help, only to whine and bitch (which I did not do in my original article.)
Thanks for nothing.
I just returned from the WXP "launch" function at the Universal Amphitheatre. About half the seats were blocked off and unavailable (a small section of those was opened later); of the remaining seats in the lower half of the theatre about 70% were occupied. The lower half of the theatre is approximately one-third of the total amphitheater seating (because of the balcony). The entire theater holds 6.125. One-third of that is 2.042, and 70% of that is 1.430. We left at the intermission along with about 20% of the "crowd".
That Microsoft can barely attract 1.500 people in a market the size of Los Angeles to the launch of a major OS product may be a very real sign of how well XP is going to sell.
Yes, I have been to many of these launch parties of MS products over the years in order to show support for our MS representatives, but this one was aimed so low that it was barely tolerable.
Dell support was rated the highest among the "computer mills" (gateway, dell, etc.) in Consumer Reports. Given that, I recommended to my father to buy his first desktop computer from them last Christmas.
How was I to know that they'd stop answering the phone? Literally.
My dad has 15 hours of hold time documented and never spoke to a real person. THREE certified letters to Michael Dell with no response, and is obviously not very happy.
Neither am I because I didn't really want to be his support hotline for this new PC.
I would have a lot of trouble recommending Dell to anyone again.
Premier Support is a contract with Microsoft with a specific SLA and a person assigned (part or full time) to your account (Technical Account Manager).
Our Premier Support is great (at nearly US $500k per 18/months it should be!)
Premier Tickets are routinely escalated in the first five minutes of the phone call once the Microsofty realizes they're not talking to an idiot. Engineer direct support within an hour is possible, if needed.
I agree that first level is going to search TechNet and the knowledge base and make sure you've covered your bases - all things you should be doing before you call anyway.
Our previous TAM was "moved on to another account" after we complained ONCE that he was not keeping an eye on our support tickets the way we desired.
I don't know what kind of support you're getting, but it's not Premier.
Great information on what reality is.
http://www.compaq.com/products/handhelds/pocketpc/ index.html
Bluetooth on the highend and a SD (Secure Digital) memory slot.
Still doesn't look like there's a removable battery.
As I remember it the biggest problem with the "Black Plague" of the middle ages was that Bubonic plague can become Pneumonic (of the lungs) plague and then humans can infect other humans by coughing/sneezing and *that* is the reason for the wide spread of the disease. It was not necessarily because everyone had a house full of flea infested rats.
Hygine does play an obvious and important factor in all of this as bathing was seen as something to avoid in order to stay healthy.
Feel free to correct me as needed.
What I really want MS broken up for is out of hope that the applications division will then offer their products for other Operating Systems.
Working for a major corporation makes it difficult to get anything approved on the desktop that wont run the industry "business standard" software packages - Office, FrontPage, etc.
Office for Linux would make our lives in business and IT so much nicer, since we must use MS products anyway.
Just a wish...
And I'll happily point out that the Hindenburg was NOT a blimp.
Since I *do* remember the chapter on airship nomenclature I will help you out:
Airship Nomenclature
Types:
A = Rigid
B = Limp
Gee, I wonder where they got the nickname "blimp" from?
Rigid has a "rigid" structure over which the skin is placed. "limp" is a big bag of gas, which is what you are probably more familiar with anyway.
Jack
The last part of what you said is correct:
"...I don't even think..."
What I mean is that's your opinion. I don't mean to imply that you're stupid - I don't call people that.
My opinion and that of TENS of MILLIONS of other Americans (per the IRS' own numbers) is that it really is voluntary, or optional to use your words.
The IRS certainly wants you to think it's mandatory. I was surprised too.
See my other posts to learn the truth.
Exactly. Stop paying taxes. It is voluntary anyway.
See my other post.
Actually up until 1992 the message from the commissioner inside the front cover of your 1040 form thanked you for voluntarily paying income taxes!
It sounds too weird to believe, but after reading Title 26 and Title 27 of the United States Code and with a little help from the below I believe that no citizen is obligated to pay Federal or State income taxes.
Unless you've spent at least 20 hours pouring over this stuff please don't feel that you can comment on the legitimacy of what I say.
I had to be dragged into this kicking and screaming by someone I really trusted before I believed it.
Did you know that your W-4 form is the form where you ask your employer to withhold from your pay? You ask. There is no regulation forcing you to fill out that form, it is a contract between employer and employee only.
The OMB (Office of Management and Budgeting) number on your 1040 form (upper right corner) says that the 1040 is only for foreign earned income. If you really do the research you'll discover the truth and the truth is that it's all a big lie.
Is 20 hours of serious research and maybe a couple of hundred dollars for books worth you saving $30,000 a year on your taxes?
I am not affiliated with these people in anyway other than being a satisfied customer.
http://www.taxgate.com
http://www.freedommall.com
http://www.eddiekahn.com
If this doesn't blow your mind try to find out what the gold fringe on the American flag means. Those flags are in every court in our land, but not outside them, or in schools or hardly anywhere else. What does that gold fringe mean that makes it so important inside of a courtroom?
Well, you're certainly correct in a perfectly technical way.
You probably understood my real point was that the intention of the First Amendment was pretty obvious. Congress shouldn't be trying to get around the First Amendment by offering carrots on a stick to the States if they allow the rights of the people to be suppressed.
So by passing a bill that helps to abridge the rights of the people, blah, blah, blah.
You get the picture.
By the way, income tax is voluntary - don't volunteer.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Well, it was a nice thought...
Jon,
In reading the articles that you have written I have noticed that your "style" causes you to take a very long time to come to a conclusion (point) which is somewhat frustrating for your readers. Once you do get your point across I'm disappointed, as generally it seemed that you should have reached that conclusion pages ago.
The question:
Is this your journalistic "style" at work or is this the God's-honest truth of how you deal with all of your day-to-day problems and questions?
Thanks,
Jack
Is it really a rip if you buy the company that developed it in the beginning and then poured millions of dollars into R&D to make it do more than ever?
"Looks like a huge kludge" could apply to EVERY operating system we work on today, don't you agree?
I will admit that reading about the "Dock" in the new OSX made me wonder if there weren't a few NeXT people out there who might see the similarities, but what do you expect Apple to do? Jobs built Apple and NeXT and runs what remains of both. It's all his vision and he's usually right.
Jack
The problem is not the technology - even Jon knows that - it's how the evil humans use the technology. Kind of like blaming the guns for violence (no, please - let's not start on gun control.) It all comes down to how humans apply the technology. To anthropomorphize technology into "evil technology" just doesn't cut it.
I left the aerospace industry to work in themed entertainment in 1989 and have since then worked on numerous theme park projects for Orlando, California, and overseas. I can say without fail that the technology involved in 95% of what you seen in a theme park is truly unremarkable and uninteresting compared to an average satellite or jet air craft. Others will certainly disagree, but I am bored to tears with the lack of innovation people even consider when designing new theme parks and attractions. Disney, much more than the others, makes the attempt, but certainly never comes up with anything spectacular.
Motion picture special effects aside (Terminator 2- 3D) everything else still appears to be new applications of tried and true, existing, technology.
In the case of a theme park that's a good thing. Let's remember that these things have to run for at least 12 hours a day - every day. New technology doesn't like to work on a consistent basis or be cheap to repair. Just ask anybody who worked on SARCOS figures for the first five years.
I think you're working on the wrong assumptions for where you're going, but have fun and don't look at the ceiling!
Jack