<SARCASM> An ambitious hacker (Tom Hanks) transports himself into his Windows XP Home Edition computer to pull off the ultimate hack: to free Internet Explorer from Windows. Along the way he becomes attached to a flighty email virus (Meg Ryan) and the two are chased by the Matrix's Agent Smith as they are shuttled from computer to computer around the world. Can he find his Passport home?
Supposedly the DVD will contain deleted scenes of Hanks gaping at all the porn on people's computers and a 30 minute documentary about how difficult it was for him to lose his tan for the part. </SARCASM>
Says Brad Templeton, a 41-year-old Internet entrepreneur and the EFF's chairman: "I sit in fear of the next attack not only because of who it might hurt but because of where it will take this debate."
The attacks themselves had limited effects on the economy and infrastructure of the U.S., but they empowered several monsters to wreak havoc.
The consumer confidence boogey man came and went. And after the smoke cleared, Americans felt safer from physical danger because they thought they knew the score.
"If I don't get on an airplane or work in a skyscraper, I'll be OK," they tell themselves. "If I don't open suspicious envelopes and if I don't question the Patriot act, I'll be OK."
But the opportunists still run amok.
opportunist
An opportunist is one who tailors his or her beliefs or actions to circumstances in order to advance his or her interests, without regard to principle. (The Washington Post Deskbook on Style)
It is unfortunate that there are opportunists in Congress who present a greater "threat to freedom" than Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden presented them with the opportunity to seize power, and they grabbed it.
The ACLU and EFF are the police and FBI that protect us from opportunists. Please familiarize yourself with their activities and support them.
Perhaps I missed something in both articles. I don't see any mention of how this system is supposed to work, but here's what I envision:
January 2002
My domain name expires in 6 months.
My neighbor wants my domain name, so he pays NetSol $50 to be waitlisted.
June 2002
I log on to netsol.com and renew my domain for another year.
NetSol takes my renewal money and keeps some or all of my neighbor's money.
My neighbor is SOL (but he'll get another chance next year!).
IIRC from the college entrance experience, "waitlisted" is not a guarantee. It's a "we'll see." It sounds like NetSol is forming an online gambling institution: people pay NetSol for the right to purchase a domain name in the event that the current doesn't renew.
That's like going to the only real estate agent in town and giving him money to guarantee you your neighbor's house in the event that your neighbor decides to sell. In fact, you have to do that this becomes the only way you can buy an existing house in town because if you don't someone else will.
:::GASP:::
Could the proverbial "abuse of absolute power" we've all heard about in fables but never seen with our own eyes?
I think there's a way around this. Contact the owner of the domain you want and ask if he's going to renew. If he's not going to, offer to buy it from him for half of what NetSol would charge for the waitlist fee. That way you save money, the person who was dropping the domain makes some money, and NetSol doesn't get anything it hasn't earned.
"What do you mean they've found a way to sell used stuff for six times its original value?! We've been trying to do that for nearly a century!"
You know, I've had my eye on my neighbor's car for some time now... maybe I should put myself on the DMV's waitlist so I can snatch it from him when he's late in renewing his registration. I'd better start saving now, though, because I saw the old lady across the street checking it out today.
Re:I was such a TNG addict back in the day
on
Star Trek TNG DVDs
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· Score: 1
Concepts of a 14 year old boy at the helm seem to go over perfectly with the rest of the crew, many who have spent years and years in training for just such a privalage. People that spend 7 years doing the exact same job and never getting promoted.
The media stopped calling this "brainwashing" some time ago when they realized they could make good use of it. It's very beneficial for employers. You teach a kid that it's good to be the prodigy at the helm and loyal workers spend 7 years doing the exact same job, and they'll be begging you not to send them home from work at the end of the day.
I avidly watched TNG for years. In my college years, I was so thrilled to be "the kid at the helm" at work as an intern I didn't care about the fact that I was only getting paid $10 an hour.
"Don't you have classes to go to or something?"
"I wanna stay here and realign the fusion induction coils. Please don't make me go back to that horrible place!"
"I'd like to have you forget about school and work here full-time, but your parents would kill me."
"They don't have to know."
It took a lot of reverse brainwashing to show me I could easily be earning four times as much money, but for a long time the organization was saving a fortune.
So don't be too harsh on the writers; they were only trying to mold good little workers for a strong economy.
It seems like all the new portable MP3 players achieve huge capacities by using hard drives for storage, but I'm not sure this is a great thing.
Battery life. A hard drive contains moving parts that need to be spun, and that sucks up battery life. Laptops spin down their hard drives often to lengthen battery life. Thse players may do that as well, storing the current song in memory, but "spinning up" the drive to copy it to memory is still going to take a lot more out of the battery than a flash memory card. One AA battery lasts 30 hours in my Rio PMP300.
Hard drives fail. I've seen plenty of desktop hard drives fail. I can't imagine the failure rate for drives that bounce around during your morning jog or your morning race to catch the train. My Rio has taken a lot of abuse over the last 3 years, and I've never had a problem.
If you want to carry 4,000 songs with you, it's great that you can do that, but are there companies still providing new options for people who aren't moonlighting DJs?:oP
It's true that most PCs don't have Firewire ports, but most people don't feel it's necessary to spend $400 to carry 4,000 songs around with them either. Most people can't even name 4,000 songs, but those who are obsessive enough to manage it might just think Firewire is a worthy investment.
...the author of this emulator, who has probably already taken a BIG chunk out of the sales for the X-Box.
I doubt that. SNES emulation is rampant because the the ROM files are only 250K-3,000K each. They can be stored in huge, free repositories and they don't take very long to download.
Anyone know how big an X-Box ROM file would have to be? Let's say they fill a DVD... that's about 6GB of data. Not many people have the bandwidth, time and hard drive space to download these files. The size also makes it much more expensive for someone to distribute the files... you can't just stick a 6GB file on an anonymous Geocities account.
Will X-Box emulation be rampant in 5 or 10 years when hard disks are bigger and bandwidth is fatter? Probably. But by then Microsoft will have introduced the HomeStation, and you'll be downloading your games from them via encrypted streams.
AOL Instant Messenger (without ads) so you can talk to your friends and family for free!
Unless of course you want the wireless AOL Anywhere Instant Messenger. That will cost an additional $50/month, plus $99 for the wireless unit, plus activation, plus...
Let's pull out marketing's trusty "Stupidity-Laziness Curve," shall we?
\
\P=People
P\W=Wealth
___\_
W
At one end of the curve you have people who have made enough money to afford this service, but they have become lazy enough to pay the extra $70/month for the "convenience."
At the other end of the curve are the people who can't afford the service but are stupid enough to believe it's of value, so they subscribe anyway.
The distribution of people on this curve is great enough that the service sells and becomes a model for other other companies to copy.
...through the magic of technology, the song vanishes and you hand over another $10. (For a rundown of online music services, see Page E12.)
Web users can't turn to Page E12 to find this related information, and there is no indication of how to get from the current section (C, for Style) to the "E" section (Business). It would be nice if the good folks at washingtonpost.com would make use of "the magic of technology" by linking see Page E12 to the promised content.
The online music services article appears here, in a section so different it's branded to look like a separate site through the magic of marketing.
Don't be too hard on the conference organizers. There's a giant boundary surrounding Washington that prevents people from seeing the outside world -- it's called the Beltway. Since the world seems so much smaller inside the Beltway, Washingtonians are accustomed to making sweeping statements as though dictating the policies of the universe.
I'm sure high school band students everywhere and people who sing in the shower will be watching this conference closely to see how it affects their leisure activities. Personally, I've installed a TV in the tree in my backyard so the songbirds that live there can stay abreast of whatever the conference attendees decide.
Within the Beltway, however, the only real concern about this arrogance is likely to be found at the Kennedy Center. The Center's directors are surely miffed about losing the right to host "The Future of Music" to neighboring Georgetown for the second year in a row.
Anyone out there have one of the magnesium-cased NeXT cubes? I hope the fan never quits on you...
BOOM!!!
Of course, NeXTWORLD Editor Simson Garfinkel's quasi-sick obsession proved that it's not easy to light one of these cases up, but he hadn't reckoned with the awesome power of an exploding processor.
On the other hand, they could simply be trying to make an extra buck "during these difficult times." You request the documents and before you receive them in the mail, you get several membership solicitations from the Sierra Club.
If you try to access some of the "sensitive information" (such as the location of the site -- go to "Tour the mountain," zoom in on Nevada, zoom in on Nye county) you get this message:
The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management promotes the open review of documents by the public during the Yucca Mountain site recommendation consideration process. However, following the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have removed certain content from our Internet site to minimize the risk of providing potentially sensitive information that could result in adverse impacts to National security. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management apologizes for any inconvenience that this action may cause. We appreciate your patience and understanding during these difficult times.
Interested persons may request copies of documents by calling the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Yucca Mountain Project toll-free information line at 1-800-225-6972. A name and street address will be required.
In other words, they're not saying "we won't tell you." They just want to know who has this information and who was interested in it. That way they know where to send the FBI if it ever blows up.
Re:Long-term versus Short-term incentives
on
Making It Personal
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· Score: 1
In a perfect world (from the company's perspective), the company convinces you that it's one of the good guys among a pack of bloodthirsty wolves and it makes as much money off your personal information as possible without your knowledge.
If the company can find that fine line it can retain you as a customer for years to come while making extra money off your information. Why should the company choose between "creating a loyal customer" and "making a one-time buck" when it can have both?
Welcome to the world of "privacy policies." A marketing team researches its customers' worst fears and creates a document that states it is the company's policy not to do any of those things. Web sites wear these like police badges, and customers feel reassured because they believe the company is bound to adhere to the policy by some government regulations. However, neither you nor the government (nor Trust-E or BBB Online for that matter) have any way of knowing whether the company is following that policy.
Microsoft's no longer invested in Apple
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Microsoft said it no longer holds any of the $150 million in Apple stock it bought four years ago, when Apple was struggling.
Re:Looks dorky, but makes a great hat!
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 1
This explains why it wasn't hooked up to a keyboard or mouse at the keynote: it's a supercomputer thinking cap! Complete with an LCD screen to let everyone around you know just what you're thinking.
I would like to think so, but was DIVX backed by Microsoft? According to Fahrenheit's Web site:
The company's newly designed corporate website at www.sunncomm.com will serve as a portal to consumers and permit authorized CD owners interactive access to digital rights management (DRM) files -- a technology made available as part of SunnComm's technology relationship with the Microsoft Corp.(R).
DIVX failed (fortunately) because it asked too much of consumers without providing any real benefit over DVD. If Microsoft has an interest in seeing this work, they'll bundle it with some "convenience feature" to make people think they're getting something and then use WindowsXX and the HomeStation to ensure people buy it. With Microsoft's assurance that people will buy it, what record company wouldn't jump on the bandwagon?
P.S. - I particularly like this quote from SunnComm's CEO:
"The SunnComm team sees themselves as the warriors in the fight against what has become socially acceptable larceny which takes place everyday around the world. At the same time, we create a CD that brings greater enjoyment and broadens the musical experience of the consumer."
I almost died laughing, until I realized your average K-Mart shopper would believe that BS...
The phenomenon known as "slashdotting" would become a crime punishable by death in Texas:
"The governor is calling for the arrest and prosecution of some 500 people around the world for the mortal slashdotting of a Houston software engineer."
I hope Apple and AMD pick up on this...
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 1
in their "Megahertz Myth" literature:
"So you're a speed demon, huh? You bought the most powerful microwave available so your popcorn would be ready 20 seconds before your neighbor's.
You could run out and buy a PC with Intel's new 2 Ghz Pentium 4 processor for around $1,800... or step up to their higher-performance1 Ghz Itanium processor (insert link to Intel's Itanium literature here) for between $8,000 and $15,000.
Then again, now that you know that megahertz (and gigahertz) don't equal speed, you could come to your senses and buy an 800Mhz Power Mac G4 for about $1,500.
Feels good to have the inside info, doesn't it? Welcome to Apple."
Slashdot Mirror
An ambitious hacker (Tom Hanks) transports himself into his Windows XP Home Edition computer to pull off the ultimate hack: to free Internet Explorer from Windows. Along the way he becomes attached to a flighty email virus (Meg Ryan) and the two are chased by the Matrix's Agent Smith as they are shuttled from computer to computer around the world. Can he find his Passport home?
Supposedly the DVD will contain deleted scenes of Hanks gaping at all the porn on people's computers and a 30 minute documentary about how difficult it was for him to lose his tan for the part.
</SARCASM>
The attacks themselves had limited effects on the economy and infrastructure of the U.S., but they empowered several monsters to wreak havoc. The consumer confidence boogey man came and went. And after the smoke cleared, Americans felt safer from physical danger because they thought they knew the score.
"If I don't get on an airplane or work in a skyscraper, I'll be OK," they tell themselves. "If I don't open suspicious envelopes and if I don't question the Patriot act, I'll be OK."
But the opportunists still run amok.
It is unfortunate that there are opportunists in Congress who present a greater "threat to freedom" than Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden presented them with the opportunity to seize power, and they grabbed it.
The ACLU and EFF are the police and FBI that protect us from opportunists. Please familiarize yourself with their activities and support them.
January 2002
- My domain name expires in 6 months.
- My neighbor wants my domain name, so he pays NetSol $50 to be waitlisted.
June 2002- I log on to netsol.com and renew my domain for another year.
- NetSol takes my renewal money and keeps some or all of my neighbor's money.
- My neighbor is SOL (but he'll get another chance next year!).
IIRC from the college entrance experience, "waitlisted" is not a guarantee. It's a "we'll see." It sounds like NetSol is forming an online gambling institution: people pay NetSol for the right to purchase a domain name in the event that the current doesn't renew.That's like going to the only real estate agent in town and giving him money to guarantee you your neighbor's house in the event that your neighbor decides to sell. In fact, you have to do that this becomes the only way you can buy an existing house in town because if you don't someone else will.
:::GASP:::
Could the proverbial "abuse of absolute power" we've all heard about in fables but never seen with our own eyes?
I think there's a way around this. Contact the owner of the domain you want and ask if he's going to renew. If he's not going to, offer to buy it from him for half of what NetSol would charge for the waitlist fee. That way you save money, the person who was dropping the domain makes some money, and NetSol doesn't get anything it hasn't earned.
You know, I've had my eye on my neighbor's car for some time now... maybe I should put myself on the DMV's waitlist so I can snatch it from him when he's late in renewing his registration. I'd better start saving now, though, because I saw the old lady across the street checking it out today.
The media stopped calling this "brainwashing" some time ago when they realized they could make good use of it. It's very beneficial for employers. You teach a kid that it's good to be the prodigy at the helm and loyal workers spend 7 years doing the exact same job, and they'll be begging you not to send them home from work at the end of the day.
I avidly watched TNG for years. In my college years, I was so thrilled to be "the kid at the helm" at work as an intern I didn't care about the fact that I was only getting paid $10 an hour.
It took a lot of reverse brainwashing to show me I could easily be earning four times as much money, but for a long time the organization was saving a fortune.
So don't be too harsh on the writers; they were only trying to mold good little workers for a strong economy.
That's really a fascinating bit of info... so if you play an XBox DVD forward do you hear angelic messages?
I... buried... Paul... becomes I... installed... Linux...?
- Battery life. A hard drive contains moving parts that need to be spun, and that sucks up battery life. Laptops spin down their hard drives often to lengthen battery life. Thse players may do that as well, storing the current song in memory, but "spinning up" the drive to copy it to memory is still going to take a lot more out of the battery than a flash memory card. One AA battery lasts 30 hours in my Rio PMP300.
- Hard drives fail. I've seen plenty of desktop hard drives fail. I can't imagine the failure rate for drives that bounce around during your morning jog or your morning race to catch the train. My Rio has taken a lot of abuse over the last 3 years, and I've never had a problem.
If you want to carry 4,000 songs with you, it's great that you can do that, but are there companies still providing new options for people who aren't moonlighting DJs?It's true that most PCs don't have Firewire ports, but most people don't feel it's necessary to spend $400 to carry 4,000 songs around with them either. Most people can't even name 4,000 songs, but those who are obsessive enough to manage it might just think Firewire is a worthy investment.
I doubt that. SNES emulation is rampant because the the ROM files are only 250K-3,000K each. They can be stored in huge, free repositories and they don't take very long to download.
Anyone know how big an X-Box ROM file would have to be? Let's say they fill a DVD... that's about 6GB of data. Not many people have the bandwidth, time and hard drive space to download these files. The size also makes it much more expensive for someone to distribute the files... you can't just stick a 6GB file on an anonymous Geocities account.
Will X-Box emulation be rampant in 5 or 10 years when hard disks are bigger and bandwidth is fatter? Probably. But by then Microsoft will have introduced the HomeStation, and you'll be downloading your games from them via encrypted streams.
Unless of course you want the wireless AOL Anywhere Instant Messenger. That will cost an additional $50/month, plus $99 for the wireless unit, plus activation, plus...
At one end of the curve you have people who have made enough money to afford this service, but they have become lazy enough to pay the extra $70/month for the "convenience."
At the other end of the curve are the people who can't afford the service but are stupid enough to believe it's of value, so they subscribe anyway.
The distribution of people on this curve is great enough that the service sells and becomes a model for other other companies to copy.
Web users can't turn to Page E12 to find this related information, and there is no indication of how to get from the current section (C, for Style) to the "E" section (Business). It would be nice if the good folks at washingtonpost.com would make use of "the magic of technology" by linking see Page E12 to the promised content.
The online music services article appears here, in a section so different it's branded to look like a separate site through the magic of marketing.
I'm sure high school band students everywhere and people who sing in the shower will be watching this conference closely to see how it affects their leisure activities. Personally, I've installed a TV in the tree in my backyard so the songbirds that live there can stay abreast of whatever the conference attendees decide.
Within the Beltway, however, the only real concern about this arrogance is likely to be found at the Kennedy Center. The Center's directors are surely miffed about losing the right to host "The Future of Music" to neighboring Georgetown for the second year in a row.
Of course, NeXTWORLD Editor Simson Garfinkel's quasi-sick obsession proved that it's not easy to light one of these cases up, but he hadn't reckoned with the awesome power of an exploding processor.
-----
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than a page whose tables look like this:
-----
-----
-----
-----
-----
-----
The reason is that the browser won't display any of the table until it sees the close table tag. If you could change the code to do this:
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>Coments 1-30</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>Coments 31-60</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>Coments 61-90</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Instead of this:
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>Coments 1-90</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
I wouldn't have to stare at a spinning cursor for 30 seconds every time I click a link. :oP
-HTML Performance Expert for hire
In turn, Philips attempts to dictate how the record labels may use their CD format: It's our standard, so you can only use it the way we want you to.
On the other hand, they could simply be trying to make an extra buck "during these difficult times." You request the documents and before you receive them in the mail, you get several membership solicitations from the Sierra Club.
If the company can find that fine line it can retain you as a customer for years to come while making extra money off your information. Why should the company choose between "creating a loyal customer" and "making a one-time buck" when it can have both?
Welcome to the world of "privacy policies." A marketing team researches its customers' worst fears and creates a document that states it is the company's policy not to do any of those things. Web sites wear these like police badges, and customers feel reassured because they believe the company is bound to adhere to the policy by some government regulations. However, neither you nor the government (nor Trust-E or BBB Online for that matter) have any way of knowing whether the company is following that policy.
This explains why it wasn't hooked up to a keyboard or mouse at the keynote: it's a supercomputer thinking cap! Complete with an LCD screen to let everyone around you know just what you're thinking.
DIVX failed (fortunately) because it asked too much of consumers without providing any real benefit over DVD. If Microsoft has an interest in seeing this work, they'll bundle it with some "convenience feature" to make people think they're getting something and then use WindowsXX and the HomeStation to ensure people buy it. With Microsoft's assurance that people will buy it, what record company wouldn't jump on the bandwagon?
P.S. - I particularly like this quote from SunnComm's CEO:
I almost died laughing, until I realized your average K-Mart shopper would believe that BS...
No, it just means our frustration with the absence of intelligent life on THIS planet doubles every two years. :o)