Internet-based grocery delivery can work ..
on
Webvan Out Of Gas
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· Score: 2
.. if you cut out the middleman.
For this business model to be truly effective, it's going to have to be the stores themselves that take the orders, assemble them, and then deliver them to the customers. A big part of the problem is that these places either have to have their own stock in warehouses (which is problematic for several reasons) or go out to somebody else's brick-and-mortar store and do "custom shopping" (which is not terribly practical.)
On the other hand, if you're the owner of an actual supermarket, a lot of these problems are solved for you. You've got all the items on hand already, and you presumably have a small army of skinny earringed teenage punks (making slightly over minimum wage) at your disposal. So have a couple of them spend their time doing nothing but filling orders placed online. Charge the customer the normal price that they would pay if they were to actually visit the store, and then tack on a surcharge to cover labor, fuel, vehicle maintenance, etc.
A company like Webvan that does nothing but delivery of Internet orders might work in the future, but in the here and now you've got to have some existing infrastructure to make the whole venture viable (and profitable.) As home delivery of groceries becomes more popular (and given people's preoccupation with things that make their lives easier, there is no reason to believe that it won't), it will be easier for these companies to turn a profit.
You're correct when you say that the Bible does not state that there are life on other planets. However, the Bible also says nothing about televisions or microwave ovens, but we have those today, don't we? I think the point is that just because the Bible doesn't explicitly say that there are extraterrestrial civilizations doesn't mean that they don't exist, only that the Bible is silent on that point.
Friends, I think the facts point to the existence of at least 59 extraterrestrial civilizations. I submit that all life.. whether it is Earth-based or not.. is cursed by sin. Because of this, all life is in need of salvation from that sin. We know from historical record (the Bible) that the Lord Jesus Christ spent 33 years cleansing this planet of sin. Because the Bible is inerrant, we must assume that 33 years is the exact amount of time required to purge the sin of a planet. (After all, if it were more or less, that would imply an imperfect Christ.. something that is not allowed by Scripture.)
We also know that Jesus pledged to return one day. So far, He hasn't. This means that he is most likely purging other civilizations of sin. Christ died 1,970 years ago; assuming that He is not bound by the speed of light, that gives Him enough time to purge 59 planets of sin. (If he is limited by lightspeed, things get complicated, but there is no reason to assume that such an arbitrary natural law applies to God.)
The point is that with each passing year that Jesus does not return, the odds for extraterrestrial life go up. This is a good thing. I for one am excited about the prospect of life among the stars, and I am convinced that it exists. Don't let an overly-narrow interpretation of Scripture dictate a purely ethnocentric worldview to you; it will only hold you back.
No, the GPL is bad because developers who wish to make money from their efforts can't use it.
Then if you are developer who wishes to make money from your efforts, I would offer you the following piece of advice: Don't release your code under the GPL. This would seem to be particularly obvious, but apparently you haven't grasped it. If you want to develop under a different license, then knock yourself out.. but neither you nor Bill Gates nor Bozo the Fucking Clown has any right to dictate the terms of somebody else's development.
It is even more infantile to complain that the GPL does not allow commercial software companies to come in and incorporate somebody else's work against their wishes and desires. Well, piss up a flagpole, Bill; I don't work for you. If you don't like the license, or if you think it's too restrictive.. well, nobody forced you to download the software, did they? Gates wants proprietary software to be closed up tight so that he controls it all and he wants open-source software to be purely public domain so that he can steal it at will.
In short, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. The GPL allows authors to prevent him from doing this.
I've got an old Dell laptop (a 133MHz Latitude XPi) that has seen heavy use over its years, and it still runs as good today as it did when it came rolling off the assembly line. I basically use it for Internet browsing from the porch, the backyard, etc. (it's running Linux and equipped with a Lucent 802.11b PC card.) It works flawlessly; I have never had a problem with this machine.. nor have I had problems with any other Dell laptop I've used. To suggest that there is some sustained defect in these machines is sheer lunacy.
As a result, I now order Dell exclusively when I need new machines. I recently placed on order for a Dimension 4100 on a late Saturday afternoon, and it arrived on my doorstep the following Friday morning. Four business days for processing, building, testing, and shipping a new desktop. Pretty damned impressive, if you ask me.
Sure, there are plenty of companies in this business that deserve to be harassed and poked fun at, but Dell is not one of them.
Anybody who is interested in freedoms, rights or just the ability to make thier own decisions has fled from the left long ago.
This is nothing but sheer, unadulterated poppycock. Your much-lauded "right" would not even allow women to make basic decisions about their own bodies, and yet you claim that the "right" is the philosophy for those who want the freedom to "make thier [sic] own decisions?" My bellowing peals of laughter are negatively impacting productivity in a five city-block radius. Your credibility is completely shot.
It's the so-called 'democratic' left that takes OVER HALF of what I make to support their little social experiments.
What you need to realize is that the majority of decent, moral people do not support the "final solution" that Harry Browne and his libertarian ilk have in mind for the poor and the sick. Yes, in the ideal Libertarian world, poor people do not exist. We do not live in that world. In the ideal Libertarian world, the financially challenged would either murder themselves in street fights or starve to death in a Darwinian fashion. We do not live in that world. In the ideal Libertarian world, people of color would be forced into jobs of pure servitude, and would be treated horribly by their employers. We do not live in that world.
The reason we don't live in this world is because of the "social experiments" that you so despise. Were it not for these programs and the progressives that instituted them, our nation would likely look like the world of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." That would be an ugly world indeed, wouldn't it? A world that is consumed by hatred of people less fortunate than us is not a world that I would want to live in. Luckily, because of the progressive movement, it's not a world we have to live in.
'Compassionate message of the democratic left'?? BULLSHIT.
Is that so? Let's compare the messages of the left and the right:
Left: You lost your job today, eh? Here's a helping hand for you and your family.
Right: You lost your job today, eh? Take your family, curl up in a gutter, and croak.
Only a mouth-frothing, beslubbering Dittohead could even claim (with a straight face) that the latter is more compassionate than the former. But since they live in a world where the poor and downtrodden are considered to be subhuman creatures anyway, perhaps this attitude can at least be understood, if not condoned.
If the LP wants to get recruits, the first thing it needs to do is find a more able spokesman. Every time I see Harry Browne in a television appearance, his eyes are so severely glazed over and he is so obviously stoned that I cannot in good faith support such a man, or the party to which he belongs. I cannot fathom how such a mindset would be at all beneficial to our country.
The "Drug War" is a creature of the Democratic Party, and always was, so let's skip the propaganda for once.
Oh.. my.. God. This is so completely off-base that it's almost funny. Let's talk facts:
The "Drug War" is (and always has been) a conservative movement. It is being brought to you by the same fuddy-duddies that outlawed alcohol in the 1920s, that outlawed dancing in small Southern towns in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and that, and that seek to outlaw birth control today.
Fully seventy percent of convicted hard drug abusers (by "hard", I mean "harder than cannabis") are admitted Republicans or Libertarians. Therefore, conservatives have in essence declared war on themselves.
There is no greater threat to liberty and civil rights than conservatism. Look at the movements that are present in today's society. It is the conservatives that want to ban certain books they don't like (i.e., Harry Potter). It is the conservatives that want to make attendance at Christian churches compulsory for all United States citizens. It is the conservatives that are calling for the criminalization of abortion, feminism, Catholicism, etc.
It is therefore perfectly clear that the only way to ensure the liberty that so many of our descendents have given their lives to protect is to support those with strong, progressive social agendas. Beware of the so-called "moderate Democrats"; the "Democratic Leadership Council" is nothing of the kind. These people are nothing more than conservatives in sheep's clothing, and their hateful message is to be eschewed in favor of the more compassionate message of the Democratic Left.
Your arguments have been completely decimated. Have a nice day.
Christians are probably the largest group of homeschool kids because they are the #1 targeted group. Try and do a report or make a graduation speech mentioning Christ and see how far you get.
Oh, that's rich. Christians are "targeted" because they are not allowed to preach to students in public schools. I've got some news for you, Chuckles: you're not going to get very far if you try to mention Allah, Shiva, Odin, Kali, L. Ron Hubbard, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, or Jim Jones, either. If the fundies spent as much time boning up on the First Amendment as they did the Second, they would understand that the Establishment Clause applies to everybody.. not just them.
I've got some experience with setting up a wireless home network, and here are some of the things that I discovered. First of all, my general setup: I've got a ZyXEL Prestige 642 DSL router that I wanted to share between several machines, most notably a Dell laptop that I wanted to network wirelessly. The first thing that I did was buy a 5-port Linksys 10/100-BaseT autosensing Ethernet hub; I had been running the DSL router straight into my main desktop PC's NIC with a crossover cable. Now there's a hub, so the ground work is done.
The first thing you'll need is (obviously) a wireless access point. For this, I would recommend the Linksys WAP 11 wireless NAP. This is an inexpensive (~$240) piece of equipment that has worked flawlessly for me thus far. There are more expensive and more capable access points, but IMHO you can't go wrong with this one, at least for a home setup. Note that this access point is a straight pass-through; it does not do DHCP or anything like that. For me, this isn't an issue because my DSL router acts as a DHCP server.
Some more notes about the WAP11: it comes "out of the box" configured with an IP address of 192.168.1.250. Again, this was fine for me since my home network is 192.168.*.* based. Obviously, this can be changed, but the provided configuration software is Windows-only. You can configure the unit either by plugging in the provided USB cable and running the USB-based configuration program, or you can do it via a SNMP-based configuration client. Oh, and before I forget.. the access point needs to be plugged into either a 10BaseT or an autosensing 10/100BaseT hub! It will not work with a 100BaseT-only hub!
Okay, so now you've got an access point plugged into your network hub. The next thing you need is a wireless card. If you're networking a laptop, grab a Lucent ORiNOCO 802.11 Silver PC card. Linksys makes its own wireless PC card, and if you're buying the Linksys access point, you may be tempted to buy the same brand for the PC card. Don't. Linksys's card works fine, but its range is limited; it is far less than what they advertise. The radio that the Lucent cards use is far, far better. Many people have reported tripling their ranges when switching from the Linksys to the Lucent card.
I've had no problems with the Lucent card. Hell, they even include the source code for Linux drivers on the installation CD! The Linux driver you're looking for is "wavelan2_cs", and it supports 64-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) (40-bit, actually) encryption. For the sake of full disclosure, however, it should be pointed out that WEP's security is under fire (expanded PDF version)
In general, if you're looking for raw speed, you're not going to get it with 802.11b (or, at least, you aren't going to get wired speeds.) For me, I mainly use my network to surf the Internet, and my DSL downstream bandwidth maxes out at 1 Mbps or so.. anything above that is frosting on the cake. 802.11b offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 11Mbps, but in practice you'll probably get half that, even if you're in the immediate vicinity of the access point. If all you're looking to do is be able to sit out in your backyard and read Slashdot, that's probably more than sufficient. If you need 100Mbps+ speeds to your local machines, you need to drill some holes and run some cable. Personally, I think the wireless cards are just plain fun. I can read Slashdot from the neighbor's yard, for Christ's sake.:-)
We have not earned our Rights. These are god-given; inherited by being.
I'll not dispute this, but for the purposes of discussion, it's interesting to discuss which god or gods our individual rights come from. For example, the right to keep and bear arms is almost certainly bestowed by the Hebrew wind god Yahweh, which currently holds the position of Christian God. This view is shared by virtually all sane historians and theologians. There are those that believe that the god Kali, worshipped by the Thugee, is the source of the right to bear arms, but most of those people are (quite frankly) batty.
The right to free speech most likely originated with Zeus. Most of the other gods that have existed in the past have been very restrictive when it comes to speech, placing arbitrary and draconian limitations on what can and cannot be said. Zeus was/is more (pardon the term) liberal in this sense. Ditto for freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, etc. The bulk of the evidence suggests that all freedoms related to expression originated from the Greek pantheon. This was refreshing to people after having to endure thousands of years of warlike gods that did not look kindly on free expression.
At any rate, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but it's a topic that interests me.
The RESET key, located at the top-left corner of the keyboard, triggered a software reset. This had the effect of (depending on the software you were using) terminating the program and dumping you back to a BASIC prompt or erasing whatever unsaved data you had or doing a hard reboot of the machine. Users quickly found out (the hard way) that this button was way too easy to press by accident. In fact, this problem was so pervasive that magazines such as Creative Computing began advertising for "RESET key protectors".. typically these were pieces of firm foam rubber that you would place underneath the RESET key (you had to pry up the keycap).. resulting in a key that was still "pressable", albeit with a bit more effort.
In later versions of the Apple II/II+ (and in subsequent machines such as the IIe,//c, and IIgs), Apple listened to their users' complaints, learned from their mistake, and required a Ctrl-RESET combination in order to actually trigger the reset. That hard-learned lesson carried over to other hardware and software manufacturers, including the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
Uh, it's not Napster that's "using pig latin," it's cohort of Napster's users.
Right, but that distinction is insignificant to the RIAA and to the courts (who, quite frankly, have not demonstrated a particularly vast amount of technical knowledge.) The bottom line is that Hillary Rosen and her legal army can go to the courts and say "Napster promised to filter out copyrighted material, and they're still trading copyrighted material. The only thing remaining that you can do to fix this situation is shut them down."
This would be a Bad Thing (TM) simply because of the size of the Napster community. As you point out, there are always other options such as OpenNap, but you are not going to get the depth and breadth of choice on an OpenNap server as you get on the "real" Napster, simply because there are fewer users. Now, if you're looking for the latest Eminem track, chances are you can connect to any random OpenNap server and be in luck. But if you're looking for a specific song from a specific live performance of a certain band, get ready to spend some time browsing OpenNap servers.
Napster is great because there is a ton of "alternative" material available on it. It would be a shame to see this resource die simply because a few of us had to "push our luck" with the RIAA. Again, I do believe if that there was ever a corporate entity that needed to be a taught a lesson, the RIAA is it. But we need to face reality here, and the reality is that the RIAA has got (bought) the ear of the courts and is currently in the position to shut Napster down with a single flick of Hillary Rosen's gnarled, twisted little finger.
Keeping Napster running does not mean that the protocol cannot be worked on, improved, and deployed in other capacities. I agree with you about the DCMA, though.. let's take this legislative joke to its logical extremes and demonstrate to the public just how ridiculous it is.
This is just going to be more ammo for the RIAA. When Napster says to the court, "We're filtering out all copyrighted songs," the RIAA can just come back and say "No they're not; they're using Pig Latin now." This will likely result in Napster being shut down entirely, regardless of the promises that David Boies and the rest of the team make. The RIAA has always taken the position that Napster users will do whatever is necessary to trade music "illegally." They will claim that this just demonstrates their point.
This would be shameful since there really is a lot of music legally traded on Napster. And not just the indie stuff, either.. remember that bands like Phish and the Dead encourage their fans to tape their live performances and swap them with other fans. This is exactly the type of application that Napster was built for.
Now, I'm not siding with the RIAA here. They're a bunch of greedy bastards with little to no interest in the artists they claim to represent. But they're also a bunch of greedy bastards with a vast legal team and a bunch of sympathetic courts. The way things are right now, Napster can at least be salvaged for those of us who use it to trade "legal" material. So let's not goad the RIAA any more than we need to.
It's also the music recording industry's right to produce a physical piece of plastic, which they sell to you. It's the music industry's right to say what can and can't be done with the object that they've sold to you if you consider a sale of this type to be contractual...
If you sign contracts when you buy CDs that prevent you from copying them to tape, making MP3s out of them, or listening to them in your car, that's your business. Speaking for myself, I can attest that I have never signed such a contract. The use of the CDs is governed by the same laws that establish the use of any other copyrighted material, be it a CD, a magazine article, a movie, or a book. If you don't know what "fair use" is (and it sounds like you don't), a Google search should promptly rectify that.
Realize that fair use will not go away simply because the RIAA despises it. It is the law of the land. The RIAA has a vision of an authoritarian police state where people are required to register their CD purchases with the government, where armed RIAA agents can come into your house at any time to personally verify your CD collection against what you have registered, and where technologies such as CD-R media and recording devices are banned outright.
You can espouse this police state if you wish, but I must inform you that those of us who value our freedoms will not allow it to come to fruition.
Why do people demand that they be able to make multiple copies of music CDs to store in different places?
Fundamentally? Because it is their right to do so.
Oh, there are plenty of good practical reasons why you would want to do this (you've already been given plenty to think about.) But when it all comes down to it, the simple fact of the matter is that making personal copies for your own personal use is covered by fair use of the material. End of story.
I agree that people who cause accidents because they were yakking on their cell phone should be held accountable. But they should be held accountable because they're irresponsible morons, not because they were talking on a cell phone per se. A cell phone is just one of countless possible distractions that a driver could involve themselves with. Others could be:
putting on makeup at 65 MPH on the freeway
trying to stop your kids from fighting in the backseat
spreading a packet of ketchup all over a Big Mac
reading a book or a newspaper
putting in a CD or changing the radio station
etc., etc., etc.
So if some moron causes an accident because (s)he was distracted by a cell phone, then by all means, throw the book at them. But outright banning cell phone usage is a bit precipitous and draconian; after all, if you're going to do that, you should logically ban stereos, passengers, food, reading material, in-car navigation systems, and anything that could potentially distract a driver from the road. And we don't want to go down that route.
NASA is inefficient and tends to do things poorly.
I wouldn't say this. NASA has had some well-publicized failures, but how quickly we forget July 4, 1997. The Pathfinder Mars mission was an incredible success, far exceeding the mission parameters and expectations, and it came at a price tag that was a minute fraction of the tremendous cost of the 1970s Viking missions. Humans fuck up from time to time, and because NASA is run by humans, NASA fucks up from time to time. But please.. let's not attempt to marginalize NASA's successes by shining the spotlight on their failures.
Let's post a one-billion dollar prize for the first group to recieve good data back from a probe at Pluto containing XYZ instruments. (One billion dollars may be too high or too low, adjust as needed.) Why wouldn't that work?
Who pays the one billion dollars?
Or, more succinctly: how is this (conceptually) any different than a government contract?:-)
There are certain endeavors that will necessarily have to be government programs. The military is an obvious example. I would submit that space exploration is another. The reason for this is that there is little about space exploration that is profitable. Now, there are some space-related tasks that are always going to be in demand for example, such as launching satellites. But let's face it -- there's not much innovation involved there. You strap your spacecraft on top of a Delta 2 (which is a Boeing vehicle, BTW) and launch the sucker. It's been done so many times that it's become routine and (relatively) inexpensive.
For other fields related to space exploration, such as the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Next Generation Space Telescope or the exploration of the outer Solar System, things are a bit different. I find it hard to believe that if NASA were dissolved tomorrow, aerospace companies would be falling all over each other to spend considerable amounts of money to do research. It's not profitable, and that is the paramount concern when a company weighs the merits (and demerits) of a particular venture. Lockheed-Martin is not going to spend millions of dollars to send a vehicle to study the atmosphere of Pluto. Raytheon is not going to spend millions of dollars to develop space-based instruments to study the effect of gamma-ray bursts.
Now, I would submit that these are important areas of study. Many people would disagree. But the end result is that if we want to do these things, we have to fund them publically. There is simply no profitable way that private companies can do these things on their own. The result of this is people that are unhappy about the way that their tax dollars are being spent, and that's fine. I cannot fathom a government that could spend its tax revenues in a manner that is acceptable to every last one of its citizens. The question is whether or not the expenditure is justified.
In the grand scheme of things, NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the entire federal budget, and it is for this reason that I am continually puzzled by those who make NASA their favorite whipping boy when it comes to government waste. If people want to complain about NASA, fine.. but why aren't these same people complaining about Congress spending billions of dollars on aircraft carriers the Pentagon doesn't even want simply because the contractor building the carrier happens to reside in a key Senator's congressional district?
Now, I am not claiming that NASA can't do things better. There's a lot of red tape that can be cut. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Irrelevant. Government work done by private corporations is still government work. If Lockheed-Martin had been working on the X-33 with an aim towards using it for profit, rather than using it for getting money from the government, they'd have a much bigger reason to make the thing work right.
Well, speaking as a private contractor that works very closely with NASA, I can assure you that there is plenty of incentive to "make the thing work right." Beyond the ordinary professional pride, there's also this whole issue about bungling contractors having little chance to get future contracts.:-)
At any rate, it just irks me when people (not you) try to portray NASA as some sort of Cash Black Hole where the taxpayers' money is sucked in, never to be seen again. The majority of that money is pumped right back out into the private sector.
Slashdot Mirror
.. if you cut out the middleman.
For this business model to be truly effective, it's going to have to be the stores themselves that take the orders, assemble them, and then deliver them to the customers. A big part of the problem is that these places either have to have their own stock in warehouses (which is problematic for several reasons) or go out to somebody else's brick-and-mortar store and do "custom shopping" (which is not terribly practical.)
On the other hand, if you're the owner of an actual supermarket, a lot of these problems are solved for you. You've got all the items on hand already, and you presumably have a small army of skinny earringed teenage punks (making slightly over minimum wage) at your disposal. So have a couple of them spend their time doing nothing but filling orders placed online. Charge the customer the normal price that they would pay if they were to actually visit the store, and then tack on a surcharge to cover labor, fuel, vehicle maintenance, etc.
A company like Webvan that does nothing but delivery of Internet orders might work in the future, but in the here and now you've got to have some existing infrastructure to make the whole venture viable (and profitable.) As home delivery of groceries becomes more popular (and given people's preoccupation with things that make their lives easier, there is no reason to believe that it won't), it will be easier for these companies to turn a profit.
Of course I remember.. however, Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II also had the guards at the desks with the alarms. "Halt! Haus pass!"
You're referring to Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.
It was a great game, though.
You're correct when you say that the Bible does not state that there are life on other planets. However, the Bible also says nothing about televisions or microwave ovens, but we have those today, don't we? I think the point is that just because the Bible doesn't explicitly say that there are extraterrestrial civilizations doesn't mean that they don't exist, only that the Bible is silent on that point.
.. whether it is Earth-based or not .. is cursed by sin. Because of this, all life is in need of salvation from that sin. We know from historical record (the Bible) that the Lord Jesus Christ spent 33 years cleansing this planet of sin. Because the Bible is inerrant, we must assume that 33 years is the exact amount of time required to purge the sin of a planet. (After all, if it were more or less, that would imply an imperfect Christ .. something that is not allowed by Scripture.)
Friends, I think the facts point to the existence of at least 59 extraterrestrial civilizations. I submit that all life
We also know that Jesus pledged to return one day. So far, He hasn't. This means that he is most likely purging other civilizations of sin. Christ died 1,970 years ago; assuming that He is not bound by the speed of light, that gives Him enough time to purge 59 planets of sin. (If he is limited by lightspeed, things get complicated, but there is no reason to assume that such an arbitrary natural law applies to God.)
The point is that with each passing year that Jesus does not return, the odds for extraterrestrial life go up. This is a good thing. I for one am excited about the prospect of life among the stars, and I am convinced that it exists. Don't let an overly-narrow interpretation of Scripture dictate a purely ethnocentric worldview to you; it will only hold you back.
No, the GPL is bad because developers who wish to make money from their efforts can't use it.
.. but neither you nor Bill Gates nor Bozo the Fucking Clown has any right to dictate the terms of somebody else's development.
.. well, nobody forced you to download the software, did they? Gates wants proprietary software to be closed up tight so that he controls it all and he wants open-source software to be purely public domain so that he can steal it at will.
Then if you are developer who wishes to make money from your efforts, I would offer you the following piece of advice: Don't release your code under the GPL. This would seem to be particularly obvious, but apparently you haven't grasped it. If you want to develop under a different license, then knock yourself out
It is even more infantile to complain that the GPL does not allow commercial software companies to come in and incorporate somebody else's work against their wishes and desires. Well, piss up a flagpole, Bill; I don't work for you. If you don't like the license, or if you think it's too restrictive
In short, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. The GPL allows authors to prevent him from doing this.
What the hell is a jigawatt?
I've got an old Dell laptop (a 133MHz Latitude XPi) that has seen heavy use over its years, and it still runs as good today as it did when it came rolling off the assembly line. I basically use it for Internet browsing from the porch, the backyard, etc. (it's running Linux and equipped with a Lucent 802.11b PC card.) It works flawlessly; I have never had a problem with this machine .. nor have I had problems with any other Dell laptop I've used. To suggest that there is some sustained defect in these machines is sheer lunacy.
As a result, I now order Dell exclusively when I need new machines. I recently placed on order for a Dimension 4100 on a late Saturday afternoon, and it arrived on my doorstep the following Friday morning. Four business days for processing, building, testing, and shipping a new desktop. Pretty damned impressive, if you ask me.
Sure, there are plenty of companies in this business that deserve to be harassed and poked fun at, but Dell is not one of them.
Anybody who is interested in freedoms, rights or just the ability to make thier own decisions has fled from the left long ago.
This is nothing but sheer, unadulterated poppycock. Your much-lauded "right" would not even allow women to make basic decisions about their own bodies, and yet you claim that the "right" is the philosophy for those who want the freedom to "make thier [sic] own decisions?" My bellowing peals of laughter are negatively impacting productivity in a five city-block radius. Your credibility is completely shot.
It's the so-called 'democratic' left that takes OVER HALF of what I make to support their little social experiments.
What you need to realize is that the majority of decent, moral people do not support the "final solution" that Harry Browne and his libertarian ilk have in mind for the poor and the sick. Yes, in the ideal Libertarian world, poor people do not exist. We do not live in that world. In the ideal Libertarian world, the financially challenged would either murder themselves in street fights or starve to death in a Darwinian fashion. We do not live in that world. In the ideal Libertarian world, people of color would be forced into jobs of pure servitude, and would be treated horribly by their employers. We do not live in that world.
The reason we don't live in this world is because of the "social experiments" that you so despise. Were it not for these programs and the progressives that instituted them, our nation would likely look like the world of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." That would be an ugly world indeed, wouldn't it? A world that is consumed by hatred of people less fortunate than us is not a world that I would want to live in. Luckily, because of the progressive movement, it's not a world we have to live in.
'Compassionate message of the democratic left'?? BULLSHIT.
Is that so? Let's compare the messages of the left and the right:
Left: You lost your job today, eh? Here's a helping hand for you and your family.
Right: You lost your job today, eh? Take your family, curl up in a gutter, and croak.
Only a mouth-frothing, beslubbering Dittohead could even claim (with a straight face) that the latter is more compassionate than the former. But since they live in a world where the poor and downtrodden are considered to be subhuman creatures anyway, perhaps this attitude can at least be understood, if not condoned.
If the LP wants to get recruits, the first thing it needs to do is find a more able spokesman. Every time I see Harry Browne in a television appearance, his eyes are so severely glazed over and he is so obviously stoned that I cannot in good faith support such a man, or the party to which he belongs. I cannot fathom how such a mindset would be at all beneficial to our country.
Oh
- The "Drug War" is (and always has been) a conservative movement. It is being brought to you by the same fuddy-duddies that outlawed alcohol in the 1920s, that outlawed dancing in small Southern towns in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and that, and that seek to outlaw birth control today.
- Fully seventy percent of convicted hard drug abusers (by "hard", I mean "harder than cannabis") are admitted Republicans or Libertarians. Therefore, conservatives have in essence declared war on themselves.
- There is no greater threat to liberty and civil rights than conservatism. Look at the movements that are present in today's society. It is the conservatives that want to ban certain books they don't like (i.e., Harry Potter). It is the conservatives that want to make attendance at Christian churches compulsory for all United States citizens. It is the conservatives that are calling for the criminalization of abortion, feminism, Catholicism, etc.
- It is therefore perfectly clear that the only way to ensure the liberty that so many of our descendents have given their lives to protect is to support those with strong, progressive social agendas. Beware of the so-called "moderate Democrats"; the "Democratic Leadership Council" is nothing of the kind. These people are nothing more than conservatives in sheep's clothing, and their hateful message is to be eschewed in favor of the more compassionate message of the Democratic Left.
Your arguments have been completely decimated. Have a nice day.Christians are probably the largest group of homeschool kids because they are the #1 targeted group. Try and do a report or make a graduation speech mentioning Christ and see how far you get.
.. not just them.
Oh, that's rich. Christians are "targeted" because they are not allowed to preach to students in public schools. I've got some news for you, Chuckles: you're not going to get very far if you try to mention Allah, Shiva, Odin, Kali, L. Ron Hubbard, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, or Jim Jones, either. If the fundies spent as much time boning up on the First Amendment as they did the Second, they would understand that the Establishment Clause applies to everybody
I've got some experience with setting up a wireless home network, and here are some of the things that I discovered. First of all, my general setup: I've got a ZyXEL Prestige 642 DSL router that I wanted to share between several machines, most notably a Dell laptop that I wanted to network wirelessly. The first thing that I did was buy a 5-port Linksys 10/100-BaseT autosensing Ethernet hub; I had been running the DSL router straight into my main desktop PC's NIC with a crossover cable. Now there's a hub, so the ground work is done.
.. the access point needs to be plugged into either a 10BaseT or an autosensing 10/100BaseT hub! It will not work with a 100BaseT-only hub!
.. anything above that is frosting on the cake. 802.11b offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 11Mbps, but in practice you'll probably get half that, even if you're in the immediate vicinity of the access point. If all you're looking to do is be able to sit out in your backyard and read Slashdot, that's probably more than sufficient. If you need 100Mbps+ speeds to your local machines, you need to drill some holes and run some cable. Personally, I think the wireless cards are just plain fun. I can read Slashdot from the neighbor's yard, for Christ's sake. :-)
The first thing you'll need is (obviously) a wireless access point. For this, I would recommend the Linksys WAP 11 wireless NAP. This is an inexpensive (~$240) piece of equipment that has worked flawlessly for me thus far. There are more expensive and more capable access points, but IMHO you can't go wrong with this one, at least for a home setup. Note that this access point is a straight pass-through; it does not do DHCP or anything like that. For me, this isn't an issue because my DSL router acts as a DHCP server.
Some more notes about the WAP11: it comes "out of the box" configured with an IP address of 192.168.1.250. Again, this was fine for me since my home network is 192.168.*.* based. Obviously, this can be changed, but the provided configuration software is Windows-only. You can configure the unit either by plugging in the provided USB cable and running the USB-based configuration program, or you can do it via a SNMP-based configuration client. Oh, and before I forget
Okay, so now you've got an access point plugged into your network hub. The next thing you need is a wireless card. If you're networking a laptop, grab a Lucent ORiNOCO 802.11 Silver PC card. Linksys makes its own wireless PC card, and if you're buying the Linksys access point, you may be tempted to buy the same brand for the PC card. Don't. Linksys's card works fine, but its range is limited; it is far less than what they advertise. The radio that the Lucent cards use is far, far better. Many people have reported tripling their ranges when switching from the Linksys to the Lucent card.
I've had no problems with the Lucent card. Hell, they even include the source code for Linux drivers on the installation CD! The Linux driver you're looking for is "wavelan2_cs", and it supports 64-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) (40-bit, actually) encryption. For the sake of full disclosure, however, it should be pointed out that WEP's security is under fire (expanded PDF version)
In general, if you're looking for raw speed, you're not going to get it with 802.11b (or, at least, you aren't going to get wired speeds.) For me, I mainly use my network to surf the Internet, and my DSL downstream bandwidth maxes out at 1 Mbps or so
We have not earned our Rights. These are god-given; inherited by being.
I'll not dispute this, but for the purposes of discussion, it's interesting to discuss which god or gods our individual rights come from. For example, the right to keep and bear arms is almost certainly bestowed by the Hebrew wind god Yahweh, which currently holds the position of Christian God. This view is shared by virtually all sane historians and theologians. There are those that believe that the god Kali, worshipped by the Thugee, is the source of the right to bear arms, but most of those people are (quite frankly) batty.
The right to free speech most likely originated with Zeus. Most of the other gods that have existed in the past have been very restrictive when it comes to speech, placing arbitrary and draconian limitations on what can and cannot be said. Zeus was/is more (pardon the term) liberal in this sense. Ditto for freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, etc. The bulk of the evidence suggests that all freedoms related to expression originated from the Greek pantheon. This was refreshing to people after having to endure thousands of years of warlike gods that did not look kindly on free expression.
At any rate, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but it's a topic that interests me.
Maybe that's more your speed.
Personally I do not "believe" in evolution and articles like these do not help.
.. evolution believes in you!
That's okay
There was a young lady from Wight
Who could travel much faster than light
She departed one day
In a relative way
And arrived on the previous night.
Anybody remember the original Apple II?
.. typically these were pieces of firm foam rubber that you would place underneath the RESET key (you had to pry up the keycap) .. resulting in a key that was still "pressable", albeit with a bit more effort.
//c, and IIgs), Apple listened to their users' complaints, learned from their mistake, and required a Ctrl-RESET combination in order to actually trigger the reset. That hard-learned lesson carried over to other hardware and software manufacturers, including the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
The RESET key, located at the top-left corner of the keyboard, triggered a software reset. This had the effect of (depending on the software you were using) terminating the program and dumping you back to a BASIC prompt or erasing whatever unsaved data you had or doing a hard reboot of the machine. Users quickly found out (the hard way) that this button was way too easy to press by accident. In fact, this problem was so pervasive that magazines such as Creative Computing began advertising for "RESET key protectors"
In later versions of the Apple II/II+ (and in subsequent machines such as the IIe,
Uh, it's not Napster that's "using pig latin," it's cohort of Napster's users.
.. let's take this legislative joke to its logical extremes and demonstrate to the public just how ridiculous it is.
Right, but that distinction is insignificant to the RIAA and to the courts (who, quite frankly, have not demonstrated a particularly vast amount of technical knowledge.) The bottom line is that Hillary Rosen and her legal army can go to the courts and say "Napster promised to filter out copyrighted material, and they're still trading copyrighted material. The only thing remaining that you can do to fix this situation is shut them down."
This would be a Bad Thing (TM) simply because of the size of the Napster community. As you point out, there are always other options such as OpenNap, but you are not going to get the depth and breadth of choice on an OpenNap server as you get on the "real" Napster, simply because there are fewer users. Now, if you're looking for the latest Eminem track, chances are you can connect to any random OpenNap server and be in luck. But if you're looking for a specific song from a specific live performance of a certain band, get ready to spend some time browsing OpenNap servers.
Napster is great because there is a ton of "alternative" material available on it. It would be a shame to see this resource die simply because a few of us had to "push our luck" with the RIAA. Again, I do believe if that there was ever a corporate entity that needed to be a taught a lesson, the RIAA is it. But we need to face reality here, and the reality is that the RIAA has got (bought) the ear of the courts and is currently in the position to shut Napster down with a single flick of Hillary Rosen's gnarled, twisted little finger.
Keeping Napster running does not mean that the protocol cannot be worked on, improved, and deployed in other capacities. I agree with you about the DCMA, though
Seriously.
.. remember that bands like Phish and the Dead encourage their fans to tape their live performances and swap them with other fans. This is exactly the type of application that Napster was built for.
This is just going to be more ammo for the RIAA. When Napster says to the court, "We're filtering out all copyrighted songs," the RIAA can just come back and say "No they're not; they're using Pig Latin now." This will likely result in Napster being shut down entirely, regardless of the promises that David Boies and the rest of the team make. The RIAA has always taken the position that Napster users will do whatever is necessary to trade music "illegally." They will claim that this just demonstrates their point.
This would be shameful since there really is a lot of music legally traded on Napster. And not just the indie stuff, either
Now, I'm not siding with the RIAA here. They're a bunch of greedy bastards with little to no interest in the artists they claim to represent. But they're also a bunch of greedy bastards with a vast legal team and a bunch of sympathetic courts. The way things are right now, Napster can at least be salvaged for those of us who use it to trade "legal" material. So let's not goad the RIAA any more than we need to.
It's also the music recording industry's right to produce a physical piece of plastic, which they sell to you. It's the music industry's right to say what can and can't be done with the object that they've sold to you if you consider a sale of this type to be contractual...
If you sign contracts when you buy CDs that prevent you from copying them to tape, making MP3s out of them, or listening to them in your car, that's your business. Speaking for myself, I can attest that I have never signed such a contract. The use of the CDs is governed by the same laws that establish the use of any other copyrighted material, be it a CD, a magazine article, a movie, or a book. If you don't know what "fair use" is (and it sounds like you don't), a Google search should promptly rectify that.
Realize that fair use will not go away simply because the RIAA despises it. It is the law of the land. The RIAA has a vision of an authoritarian police state where people are required to register their CD purchases with the government, where armed RIAA agents can come into your house at any time to personally verify your CD collection against what you have registered, and where technologies such as CD-R media and recording devices are banned outright.
You can espouse this police state if you wish, but I must inform you that those of us who value our freedoms will not allow it to come to fruition.
Why do people demand that they be able to make multiple copies of music CDs to store in different places?
Fundamentally? Because it is their right to do so.
Oh, there are plenty of good practical reasons why you would want to do this (you've already been given plenty to think about.) But when it all comes down to it, the simple fact of the matter is that making personal copies for your own personal use is covered by fair use of the material. End of story.
- putting on makeup at 65 MPH on the freeway
- trying to stop your kids from fighting in the backseat
- spreading a packet of ketchup all over a Big Mac
- reading a book or a newspaper
- putting in a CD or changing the radio station
- etc., etc., etc.
So if some moron causes an accident because (s)he was distracted by a cell phone, then by all means, throw the book at them. But outright banning cell phone usage is a bit precipitous and draconian; after all, if you're going to do that, you should logically ban stereos, passengers, food, reading material, in-car navigation systems, and anything that could potentially distract a driver from the road. And we don't want to go down that route.NASA is inefficient and tends to do things poorly.
.. let's not attempt to marginalize NASA's successes by shining the spotlight on their failures.
I wouldn't say this. NASA has had some well-publicized failures, but how quickly we forget July 4, 1997. The Pathfinder Mars mission was an incredible success, far exceeding the mission parameters and expectations, and it came at a price tag that was a minute fraction of the tremendous cost of the 1970s Viking missions. Humans fuck up from time to time, and because NASA is run by humans, NASA fucks up from time to time. But please
Let's post a one-billion dollar prize for the first group to recieve good data back from a probe at Pluto containing XYZ instruments. (One billion dollars may be too high or too low, adjust as needed.) Why wouldn't that work?
:-)
Who pays the one billion dollars?
Or, more succinctly: how is this (conceptually) any different than a government contract?
There are certain endeavors that will necessarily have to be government programs. The military is an obvious example. I would submit that space exploration is another. The reason for this is that there is little about space exploration that is profitable. Now, there are some space-related tasks that are always going to be in demand for example, such as launching satellites. But let's face it -- there's not much innovation involved there. You strap your spacecraft on top of a Delta 2 (which is a Boeing vehicle, BTW) and launch the sucker. It's been done so many times that it's become routine and (relatively) inexpensive.
.. but why aren't these same people complaining about Congress spending billions of dollars on aircraft carriers the Pentagon doesn't even want simply because the contractor building the carrier happens to reside in a key Senator's congressional district?
For other fields related to space exploration, such as the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Next Generation Space Telescope or the exploration of the outer Solar System, things are a bit different. I find it hard to believe that if NASA were dissolved tomorrow, aerospace companies would be falling all over each other to spend considerable amounts of money to do research. It's not profitable, and that is the paramount concern when a company weighs the merits (and demerits) of a particular venture. Lockheed-Martin is not going to spend millions of dollars to send a vehicle to study the atmosphere of Pluto. Raytheon is not going to spend millions of dollars to develop space-based instruments to study the effect of gamma-ray bursts.
Now, I would submit that these are important areas of study. Many people would disagree. But the end result is that if we want to do these things, we have to fund them publically. There is simply no profitable way that private companies can do these things on their own. The result of this is people that are unhappy about the way that their tax dollars are being spent, and that's fine. I cannot fathom a government that could spend its tax revenues in a manner that is acceptable to every last one of its citizens. The question is whether or not the expenditure is justified.
In the grand scheme of things, NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the entire federal budget, and it is for this reason that I am continually puzzled by those who make NASA their favorite whipping boy when it comes to government waste. If people want to complain about NASA, fine
Now, I am not claiming that NASA can't do things better. There's a lot of red tape that can be cut. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Irrelevant. Government work done by private corporations is still government work. If Lockheed-Martin had been working on the X-33 with an aim towards using it for profit, rather than using it for getting money from the government, they'd have a much bigger reason to make the thing work right.
:-)
Well, speaking as a private contractor that works very closely with NASA, I can assure you that there is plenty of incentive to "make the thing work right." Beyond the ordinary professional pride, there's also this whole issue about bungling contractors having little chance to get future contracts.
At any rate, it just irks me when people (not you) try to portray NASA as some sort of Cash Black Hole where the taxpayers' money is sucked in, never to be seen again. The majority of that money is pumped right back out into the private sector.