Michael Moore and Thomas Paine have a lot in common. That can be construed as both a compliment and an insult. Please read some of his work (see the above link) and you'll understand. It's rather appropo analogy.
Las Vegas will survive (and survive quite well) but this has to hurt. They charged room rates during COMDEX like New Orleans charged for Mardi Gras, a lot of money per night and a minimum stay requirement of up to five days at some properties. Some places were completely booked by just one or two companies.
No COMDEX means a thousands of people will be getting a bit less pay and/or smaller year end bonuses.
I wonder if the 'net played some role in this. I mean some booths had nothing but one or two marketing drones and the rest were temps. I could get better information from a pdf on a web site.
... right now Iraq is 0wn3d. Yes, the "handover" will happen soon but please don't kid yourselves into thinking Iraqis will have any say in who gets their money from oil sales for many, many years. They will live under a "forced monopoly" imposed by the US where the US will say what software will be used in all government offices. I personally wouldn't be surprised if they figured out a way to at least temporarily outlaw the use of OS/GPL software in the government to give US software companies a chance to get a foothold. Once their data is locked into a proprietary format it will take much more work (and cost) to move to OSS. One of the big reasons Munich moved to OSS was so they wouldn't be locked into one vendor's product.
If you doubt this and think that Iraq's new constitution and laws won't favor the US remember that it's Hillary Rosen, former head of the RIAA, that's writing their Copyright Laws.
The move to OSS for Iraq is IMO the right and good thing for them and the OSS community, the move to an open data format for their information is just as important.
While Bush calls Iraqis "equal partners" he treats them like "sand ni--ers". I apologize for using that phrase but it's truly apropos. Like I said, they're 0wn3d. The widespread use of OSS in their goverment is, IMO, a DOA issue.
Ironically, some have argued that DS9 was so good because it had B5 around as a good competitor.
I agree with you that B5 might of "inspired" better writing and better plots for DS9. B5 was good for tv scifi in that it "raised the bar" in good writing.
IMO the submit button is too close to the preview one. =)
I think DS9 started off slow but improved and had some great episodes like "The Vistor" #75 (many fathers appreciated it). They introduced the "runabout" (cool ride, kinda like the winnebago of the 24th century) and the "Defiant" (one very bad ass, greatly overweaponed ship). The wormhole allowed for someone interesting plot additions. They showed us how a lot of different species lived, many more than any other ST series.
Not to be forgotten, the "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" gave interesting insite to greed.
34 - War is good for business.
35 - Peace is good for business.
239 - Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
261 - A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
Morals were well tested. A "former terrorist", Major Kira, became a respected leader while still having a few terrorist traits; interesting when one thinks of the use of the word "terrorist" today. Some "Black and White" morals were shown to have acceptable shades of grey. To many DS9 was as good as TNG. I think the exploration into the psychology of people make it a good show. Different for TNG, but still good science fiction. And yes, the long lesbian kiss.
Imagine what Straczynski and Zabel could done with it though. There's a lot of life left in the ST franchise.
Like a cattle rancher cares for his herd. He's lives a very comfortable life off the servitude of the US public. Whatever happened to the idea that our Elected Officials should protect our freedoms and not sell them out to the highest bidder? He's sold out to everyone that's offered him money. Unfortunately the vast majority of our elected officials, the Republicrats, are no better. Vote Green, vote Libertarian, vote Anarchist
, just don't vote Democrat or Republican.
There is life beyond two parties. Tell your friends, tell you neighbors, tell your family.
You know, the sad thing is is that Diebold makes the vast majority of bubble sheet ballot readers used in the US. I guess they're fine tuning their greed.
As the owner of a Tungsten E I know what it has and what it doesn't. A major complaint about it is the fact that it doesn't have an universal connecter. Why Palm calls it "universal" and doesn't supply it universally is beyond me. The price is also $200 but IMO should be ~$150. Even though it has a SD slot and Palm makes a bluetooth SD card, that card is only support on a couple of models. There is also no thumb board.
These are things that I think should be included on the E. I apologize for the grammer mistakes (in my quest to post and go) that I'm sure caused others to get confused.
For the few times I've used PocketPC I found the interface too much like MS windows, which IMO, isn't the right way to address the issue. A PDA is not a PC and shouldn't be treated the same.
I really left the whole PocketPC thing alone because of my limited exposer to them. I apologize but the majority of my feelings about it is tainted by great dislike for Microsoft.
Yes, it's a poor excuse but it's the only one I have. In all honestly I should judge MS products on their own merits and not on the mantra "M$ sucks".
Is there any reason I should like it over the Palm OS?
Yes, PDAs in their current form are on a dead end road but if they can adapt they have a bright future ahead. Part of the problem is there are only two types of serious PDAs: Palm and PocketPC and they are both completely mismanaged.
Palm is so fucked up right now they don't know the time of day. It kinda reminds me of Apple just when Jobs came back. They have seven models with overlapping features and limit flexability. They need to cut back to three models:
The Tungsten E, priced at $150 and has comes with a universal connecter and has the ability to add in a bluetooth SD card and thumb board. Think of it as the iBook of PDAs. Make it durable and market it to students and first time PDA buyers. Right now Palm's entry level PDA, the Zire 21, is the biggest piece of shit ever dreamed of. It doesn't even have a backlit screen, something they fail to mention anywhere on their website or packaging. Way to piss off the buyer. In contrast the Tungsten E is a very nice little machine (flawed but nice).
The Tungsten C but with the sliding screen of the T3, snap in bluetooth or 802.11x. Think of it as the PowerBook of PDAs
The Treo 600. One crossover phone/pda model.
Palm needs to develope something like Hypercard (the orignal where everyone could build stacks) or buy hypercard from Apple and give it away with every unit they sell. A lot of HC stacks sucked but it created a lot of buzz for the Mac.
I make a lot of references to Apple because Jobs (who is a miserable human being) took Apple off it's death bed and turned it into a cash cow. Do they control the PC world? No way. Do they need to? No way. Palm needs to think different.
As for the PocketPC, if they win the PDA wars it will be by default. Palm has the potential of being much better if they can "unfuck" themselves. Don't blame declining PDA sales on the concept of the PDA when the management of these companies are to blame.
Seriously, they've been in use for many years, reasonably easy for the voter to use, machine readable for quick tallying and give an absolute paper trail. The cost is much lower than placing a computer in each booth and IMO more durable. Somethings like paper books, the steering wheel in cars and the Colt 1911 ACP have been around for a long time because they work, and work well. The same goes for the paper based ballot.
People bitch about MS being so evil (which they are) but Diebold doesn't care if they fuck up an election so long as they make a buck, which IMO is worse.
It's not just the League of Women Voters / Diebold but there are many, many other "nonprofit" groups that do this. It's long been suspected that the "Partnership for a Drug-Free America" gets the vast majority of their money from three groups: the alcohol industry, pharmaceutical companies and to a lesser degree law enforcement unions. This makes sense since they benefit most from keeping certain drugs illegal. PDFA is nothing more than a group of lobbyist cheating the Govt out of taxes with their not-for-profit status.
The solution is to demand (and IMO require by law) these groups open their books and show where there money comes from and where it goes. IMO this isn't unreasonable since they enjoy nonprofit status unlike, say, a lobbyist group. The extra benefit would be honest nonprofit groups would grow. Honesty really is the best policy.
Any group (or church for that matter) that is not willing to show who gives them money and what they spend it on should get nothing and be treated with suspect.
SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation)
EULAs
Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement
What was done? Nothing. Does anyone here really believe that Congress will "do the right thing" on this "broadcast bit" issue? The magic eight ball says "no fucking way". I personally don't see what the solution is. Bread, circus and prison baby, that's all that will be left.
If I may quote Frank Zappa from "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing":
You say yer life's a bum deal
'N yer up against the wall...
Well, people, you ain't even got no kinda
Deal at all
'Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care of NUMBER ONE
An' NUMBER ONE ain't YOU
You ain't even NUMBER TWO
Think about this: in Iraq right now there are US Soldiers without bulletproof jackets and Humvees without any armour protection yet with have >$100M USD for a State Funeral of Former President Reagan?
That's a rather sweeping statement. Time will tell. So far Red Hat's doing pretty well at it.
Yes they are. They were doing better though when they had RH Linux (for free) and you could buy yearly subscriptions for $80. I personally bought one for myself and two for work. I know I could've bought one and juggled it around but RH is pretty cool and I didn't feel right about being that cheap with them.
Moreover, there's more to the Linux distro business than just selling shrinkwrap vs. support.
I'm curious, what else is there [to make money] than shrinkwrap and support (and I guess OEM sales)? I believe there will always be a market for shrinkwraped GNU/Linux and it should get much larger over the next few years but again, for how long? I should say there's nothing stopping Gentoo (except their social contract) or someone else from shrinkwrapping Gentoo, adding something like YAST on SUSE and selling it per disk.
Phone support for home users is a proven loser in nearly all cases. Enterprise support often requires more than phone work.
I wouldn't wish working a home support call on my worst enemy. The money is in the enterprise market, like RH is doing. I've seen people offer up blank checks just to get a server back online ASAP. And, yes, most of the time there's more work involved than just answering a question. That's where the cost goes up.
Plus Gentoo's core audience is a bunch of do-it-yourselfer fanatics, so I can't imagine much cash in selling support to them.
That, IMO, will change. Gentoo is very flexable and is stable enough to be used in a production enviroment. Once IT guys start using it at home it wont be long before it makes it into their company's server room. That seems to be the story will Red Hat.
What I'm saying is that while there's some money in shrinkwrap sales I believe the long term profits are in tech support. Gentoo doesn't have to go the way of Mandrake, SUSE, Red Hat or Linspire to be successful. Sometimes the lesser travelled road brings the greater rewards. Besides AFAIK Debian is still king of the hill for distros and they have shuned the pay per disk model. In the same vein RH lost a lot of supporters (and money from subscribers to RHN) when they killed off RHL. That's when I moved to Gentoo and, to my initial surprise, liked it better.
I'm not really disagreeing with what you're say, I just think the most common way might not be the best. You made some good points though. Thanks.
IMO I think the traditional "for profit" software business model just doesn't work for GNU/Linux distros. What I'd like to see is Gentoo move into the "pay for phone support" business. Got a question you need answered now? Pay us $75USD and we'll help. Questions and answers can be read on a website so everyone benefits. There's profit in it while bring cash in to support an excellent distro. It's possible that $75 could be written off as a donation (kinda like "underwriting" on public radio/tv).
I'm personally thankful that the "powers that be" at Gentoo have the
"Gentoo GNU/Linux Social Contract". If you're running another distro you really need to check Gentoo out. Gentoo's future is quite bright.
Excellent stuff. The Nikon 5200 (the closest thing to the 5000 I guess) is $500 retail, which IMO is very reasonable. I wonder how fast it is for the first shot? Does it feel like the response of a SLR? I guess they've make some improvements since the 3200.
Your friend has taken some great pics. And yes, the term the correct term is shutter lag. Thanks for the correction.
There are still many, many businesses using Win98se and by extending the life of XP it makes it a more attractive upgrade. Say you've got 200 seats running Win98se, everything works fine and the only reason to upgrade is because updates are no longer available [after 2007]. Now your "upgrade window" is 3 years to go to XP. But the upgrade to XP previously only bought you an additional three years before another costly upgrade. With tight budgets that might be too much money. With XP's added lifespan the yearly amortized cost is now much lower and it becomes more attractive.
IMO few business with "ditch" XP if it is working well for them and updates are still available. This change is for people/companies that haven't left Win98 yet.
... is the "click to clunk" time. A new film camera with an autowinder that shoots multiple frames per second can be found for under $300 while the same thing in the digital world is at least $1k. I've lost too many shots waiting for my digital Nikon to cycle.
For fast action I still use my old Olympus OM-2 but most everything else is digital.
IMO digital cameras are almost better than film for most things but not quite yet.
Will people actually be running copies of Windows 2000, XP, etc. in 10 years?
Sure, some people still run MS-DOS or Novell's NetWare 3.x. I suspect someone out there is still using a TRS-80 Model III on a daily basis for their business. Is it a good idea? Well, that's for another discusion.
I use to work for a state run ISP that serviced public schools. As expected we ran proxy servers but allowed each school district to set their own policies. One decided not to filter anything and have students agree not to surf "bad" sites. If caught they were banned from net access for the rest of the school year. Other districts had or wanted some heavy filtering. We had district IT managers that wanted sites like www.now.org, www.plannedparenthood.org, www.mtv.com, www.dnc.org, www.exmormon.org and www.xenu.net blocked. At the time our office set the policy for what sites should be blocked but the schools had the ability to block sites in different catagories (sex, porn, criminal skills, etc) and the ability create a list of sites to be blocked just for their district. Unless it was a porn site we told them to block it themselves.
While the vast majority of people think child porn should be illegal the parent post is right in saying getting additional sites blocked is easier than the first. If the blocking stopped at child porn most everyone would let it happen without complaint, but we know better. We know that blocking just one site is the "camel's nose under the tent" and other sites would quickly follow.
Censorship of any kind is the beginning of a dangerous path. As yourself this: What sites would the United States' top law enforcement officer Attorney General John Ashcroft want blocked? Remember this is a guy who doesn't drink, smoke, swear or dance. Do you want him telling you what sites you can see and what sites you can't?
If Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense" today it would most likely be banned and he would be a guest at Hotel Gitmo.
I guess I apply Franklin's rule on criminal convictions to this problem. He said something like "It is better to let ten guilty men go free than let one innocent man be punished". There must be a better way of stopping child porn than this.
Slashdot Mirror
Michael Moore and Thomas Paine have a lot in common. That can be construed as both a compliment and an insult. Please read some of his work (see the above link) and you'll understand. It's rather appropo analogy.
No COMDEX means a thousands of people will be getting a bit less pay and/or smaller year end bonuses.
I wonder if the 'net played some role in this. I mean some booths had nothing but one or two marketing drones and the rest were temps. I could get better information from a pdf on a web site.
If you doubt this and think that Iraq's new constitution and laws won't favor the US remember that it's Hillary Rosen, former head of the RIAA, that's writing their Copyright Laws.
The move to OSS for Iraq is IMO the right and good thing for them and the OSS community, the move to an open data format for their information is just as important.
While Bush calls Iraqis "equal partners" he treats them like "sand ni--ers". I apologize for using that phrase but it's truly apropos. Like I said, they're 0wn3d. The widespread use of OSS in their goverment is, IMO, a DOA issue.
I agree with you that B5 might of "inspired" better writing and better plots for DS9. B5 was good for tv scifi in that it "raised the bar" in good writing.
Your comment is indeed insightful.
I think DS9 started off slow but improved and had some great episodes like "The Vistor" #75 (many fathers appreciated it). They introduced the "runabout" (cool ride, kinda like the winnebago of the 24th century) and the "Defiant" (one very bad ass, greatly overweaponed ship). The wormhole allowed for someone interesting plot additions. They showed us how a lot of different species lived, many more than any other ST series.
Not to be forgotten, the "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" gave interesting insite to greed.
34 - War is good for business.
35 - Peace is good for business.
239 - Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
261 - A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
Morals were well tested. A "former terrorist", Major Kira, became a respected leader while still having a few terrorist traits; interesting when one thinks of the use of the word "terrorist" today. Some "Black and White" morals were shown to have acceptable shades of grey. To many DS9 was as good as TNG. I think the exploration into the psychology of people make it a good show. Different for TNG, but still good science fiction. And yes, the long lesbian kiss.
Imagine what Straczynski and Zabel could done with it though. There's a lot of life left in the ST franchise.
"To boldly stay where no man has stayed before."
There is life beyond two parties. Tell your friends, tell you neighbors, tell your family.
Simply put: Hatch and his kind are cunts.
You know, the sad thing is is that Diebold makes the vast majority of bubble sheet ballot readers used in the US. I guess they're fine tuning their greed.
These are things that I think should be included on the E. I apologize for the grammer mistakes (in my quest to post and go) that I'm sure caused others to get confused.
I really left the whole PocketPC thing alone because of my limited exposer to them. I apologize but the majority of my feelings about it is tainted by great dislike for Microsoft.
Yes, it's a poor excuse but it's the only one I have. In all honestly I should judge MS products on their own merits and not on the mantra "M$ sucks".
Is there any reason I should like it over the Palm OS?
Palm is so fucked up right now they don't know the time of day. It kinda reminds me of Apple just when Jobs came back. They have seven models with overlapping features and limit flexability. They need to cut back to three models:
The Tungsten E, priced at $150 and has comes with a universal connecter and has the ability to add in a bluetooth SD card and thumb board. Think of it as the iBook of PDAs. Make it durable and market it to students and first time PDA buyers. Right now Palm's entry level PDA, the Zire 21, is the biggest piece of shit ever dreamed of. It doesn't even have a backlit screen, something they fail to mention anywhere on their website or packaging. Way to piss off the buyer. In contrast the Tungsten E is a very nice little machine (flawed but nice).
The Tungsten C but with the sliding screen of the T3, snap in bluetooth or 802.11x. Think of it as the PowerBook of PDAs
The Treo 600. One crossover phone/pda model.
Palm needs to develope something like Hypercard (the orignal where everyone could build stacks) or buy hypercard from Apple and give it away with every unit they sell. A lot of HC stacks sucked but it created a lot of buzz for the Mac. I make a lot of references to Apple because Jobs (who is a miserable human being) took Apple off it's death bed and turned it into a cash cow. Do they control the PC world? No way. Do they need to? No way. Palm needs to think different.
As for the PocketPC, if they win the PDA wars it will be by default. Palm has the potential of being much better if they can "unfuck" themselves. Don't blame declining PDA sales on the concept of the PDA when the management of these companies are to blame.
People bitch about MS being so evil (which they are) but Diebold doesn't care if they fuck up an election so long as they make a buck, which IMO is worse.
The solution is to demand (and IMO require by law) these groups open their books and show where there money comes from and where it goes. IMO this isn't unreasonable since they enjoy nonprofit status unlike, say, a lobbyist group. The extra benefit would be honest nonprofit groups would grow. Honesty really is the best policy.
Any group (or church for that matter) that is not willing to show who gives them money and what they spend it on should get nothing and be treated with suspect.
Rep Coble, Howard [NC-6]
And these guys were corrupt enough to join in:
Rep Smith, Lamar [TX-21] - 10/8/2003
Rep Hobson, David [OH-7] - 10/8/2003
Rep Greenwood, James C. [PA-8] - 10/8/2003
Rep Tauzin, Billy [LA-3] - 10/8/2003
Rep Sensenbrenner, F. James [WI-5] - 10/8/2003
Rep Wexler, Robert [FL-19] - 11/20/2003
Rep Turner, Michael [OH-3] - 11/20/2003
Rep Portman, Rob [OH-2] - 11/20/2003
Rep Delahunt, William. [MA-10] - 11/20/2003
These people should be trusted as much as the Régime de Vichy.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
USA PATRIOT Act and the proposed PATRIOT II Act
CAPPS and CAPPS II
Copyright Extentions
Software Patents
Evoting without a paper trail
ECHELON
Privacy concerns with RFIDs
SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation)
EULAs
Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement
What was done? Nothing. Does anyone here really believe that Congress will "do the right thing" on this "broadcast bit" issue? The magic eight ball says "no fucking way". I personally don't see what the solution is. Bread, circus and prison baby, that's all that will be left.
If I may quote Frank Zappa from "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing":
Think about this: in Iraq right now there are US Soldiers without bulletproof jackets and Humvees without any armour protection yet with have >$100M USD for a State Funeral of Former President Reagan?Forget it kids, game over.
Yes they are. They were doing better though when they had RH Linux (for free) and you could buy yearly subscriptions for $80. I personally bought one for myself and two for work. I know I could've bought one and juggled it around but RH is pretty cool and I didn't feel right about being that cheap with them.
Moreover, there's more to the Linux distro business than just selling shrinkwrap vs. support.
I'm curious, what else is there [to make money] than shrinkwrap and support (and I guess OEM sales)? I believe there will always be a market for shrinkwraped GNU/Linux and it should get much larger over the next few years but again, for how long? I should say there's nothing stopping Gentoo (except their social contract) or someone else from shrinkwrapping Gentoo, adding something like YAST on SUSE and selling it per disk.
Phone support for home users is a proven loser in nearly all cases. Enterprise support often requires more than phone work.
I wouldn't wish working a home support call on my worst enemy. The money is in the enterprise market, like RH is doing. I've seen people offer up blank checks just to get a server back online ASAP. And, yes, most of the time there's more work involved than just answering a question. That's where the cost goes up.
Plus Gentoo's core audience is a bunch of do-it-yourselfer fanatics, so I can't imagine much cash in selling support to them. That, IMO, will change. Gentoo is very flexable and is stable enough to be used in a production enviroment. Once IT guys start using it at home it wont be long before it makes it into their company's server room. That seems to be the story will Red Hat.
What I'm saying is that while there's some money in shrinkwrap sales I believe the long term profits are in tech support. Gentoo doesn't have to go the way of Mandrake, SUSE, Red Hat or Linspire to be successful. Sometimes the lesser travelled road brings the greater rewards. Besides AFAIK Debian is still king of the hill for distros and they have shuned the pay per disk model. In the same vein RH lost a lot of supporters (and money from subscribers to RHN) when they killed off RHL. That's when I moved to Gentoo and, to my initial surprise, liked it better.
I'm not really disagreeing with what you're say, I just think the most common way might not be the best. You made some good points though. Thanks.
I'm personally thankful that the "powers that be" at Gentoo have the "Gentoo GNU/Linux Social Contract". If you're running another distro you really need to check Gentoo out. Gentoo's future is quite bright.
Would a "faster" memory card speed things up? I've wondered if it would or if the claim "the faster the card, the lower the shutter lag" was snakeoil?
Your friend has taken some great pics. And yes, the term the correct term is shutter lag. Thanks for the correction.
IMO few business with "ditch" XP if it is working well for them and updates are still available. This change is for people/companies that haven't left Win98 yet.
For fast action I still use my old Olympus OM-2 but most everything else is digital.
IMO digital cameras are almost better than film for most things but not quite yet.
Sure, some people still run MS-DOS or Novell's NetWare 3.x. I suspect someone out there is still using a TRS-80 Model III on a daily basis for their business. Is it a good idea? Well, that's for another discusion.
IMO this is a sign that other OSs are legitimate competition. I suspect this was the reason for also extending Win98's lifecycle.
While the vast majority of people think child porn should be illegal the parent post is right in saying getting additional sites blocked is easier than the first. If the blocking stopped at child porn most everyone would let it happen without complaint, but we know better. We know that blocking just one site is the "camel's nose under the tent" and other sites would quickly follow.
Censorship of any kind is the beginning of a dangerous path. As yourself this: What sites would the United States' top law enforcement officer Attorney General John Ashcroft want blocked? Remember this is a guy who doesn't drink, smoke, swear or dance. Do you want him telling you what sites you can see and what sites you can't?
If Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense" today it would most likely be banned and he would be a guest at Hotel Gitmo.
I guess I apply Franklin's rule on criminal convictions to this problem. He said something like "It is better to let ten guilty men go free than let one innocent man be punished". There must be a better way of stopping child porn than this.
I though this was the worst investment a person could make. =)