Just by getting their complaints published, emailing to the fake Ballmer was probably far more effective than emailing to the real one would have been.
That could have ended badly for the other John McAffe. If the Belize authorities aren't any better than cops in, say rural Texas, they aren't likely to care all that much that they have got the wrong guy.
Dude could easily have found himself sitting in prison the night before his execution, writing "Its a far far better thing I do today than I have ever done before; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Would a Dem writing this be universally welcomed in Washington? Probably not. But would the author find himself summarily fired? Probably not.
This is a basic difference between the parties. You may not agree with the typical Dem party line on everything, but as a Dem you generally don't get run out of Washington on a rail for doing so. They just argue with you.
To be fair, the US congress is one of the most unpopular entites in the United States, at one time at about 9% approval. Porn, Poligamy, and the BP Oil Spill were all more popular. I would imagine it isn't any more popular outside the USA.
Saying something nice about Congress under such circumstances is not only difficult, but personally hazardous.
If this had been 'successful' you would be seeing a/lot/ more companies charging for online content
If this had been successful, you would have seen leprecauns riding unicorns over the rainbow, because some serious perversion of normal reality would have had to transpire.
Perhaps Mr. Murdoch thinks he has some grand business theory that nobody on the web has ever thought of before to make pay content work. But unless porn is involved, he's wrong.
Actually, no. Both of those men will be out of office next month. "We" chose others to represent us. Both are being replaced by women, as a matter of fact.
So essentially this is a couple of stupid people on the street, minus about 3 weeks.
Burton actually is retiring at the end of this session (this month). Kusinich lost his election, so he's leaving too.
Basically this is just a bunch of tinfoil hat screeching from a couple of loonies who no longer have to tone down the crazy because they know they won't have to face the voters again.
There's nothing particularly new about this either though. I'm old enough to remember the days (back when Real Gamers had Atari 800's), where pretty much every game that came out started using nasty off-sector disk-based "copy protection". There were are few rational voices out there pointing out the social evil of this, not to mention the hardware damange, and saying people should boycott such games. But the vast majority of us either bought the games, or borrowed a friend's Happy Drive and copied them, and went on our merry way.
The only difference now is that you've decided to be one of the poor folks playing Cassandra. More power to you. Go fight to make the world a better place. Really. Just don't pretend like this is anything really all that new.
Well, when I was in school in the 80's, we had a guy from the Oil Industry come in and tell us how all that stuff about the world being out of oil by 1990 was a load of BS. One of the things he mentioned was our (USA's) huge oil reserves in shale, and of course the role of supply and demand. We didn't have the tech to extract it in a cost effective manner yet, but if supplies dropped enough and/or technology advanced enough, it would start being worth it.
It wasn't a popular veiwpoint at the time, but dude was pretty much right on all fronts. But that's not even really my point. People should get the chance to voice their views, and we should get the chance to fully evaluate them. Some will be crap of course, but sometimes the weirdo is right. I'm damn glad I stayed quiet and listened.
Oh yeah, how could I forget this one? About 9 months ago, I broke my ankle. My "primary care physician" verified with X-Rays it was broken, so he sent me to a bone surgeon. I had to wait a week before they could squeeze me in for an appointment. That guy told me how he was gonna fix it, then set me up another appointment for surgery in two weeks. Yup, that's two weeks living with a broken ankle before I could get the proper surgery. I actually have very good coverage by USA standards, so if anything this is probably speedy service over here.
Yeah, it must really suck in those countries where they have to wait weeks for treatment. That must be horrible.:-(
First, we do not have waiting lines in hospitals or any other part of the healthcare system in Germany. Especially not for urgent things.
That's funny, because here in the USA, I've gotten pretty used to having to wait for several hours in hospital "emergency" rooms. I've also regularly had my insurance company deny treatments or medicines prescribed by my doctor. Once my doctor had to try three times before he found one my insurance company would let my pharmacy give me. And God Forbid somebody gets sick on vacation. That's "out of network". If you aren't careful, it would be far cheaper to buy a plane ticket home to go to a covered doctor. I actually went through the farce of calling my insurance company to get permission to send my son to a hospital when we were visiting Virginia.
Whenever I hear supposed scare stories about long lines, bueracracies denying coverage or getting between people and their doctors, I really have to wonder what world these folks live in. It certianly isn't the USA, because we frigging have that right now!.
...and when a thunderstorm is coming through (or for a portable, you are taking it outside when the tempature is out of its safe operating conditions)?
A clean shutdown may not be an everyday event, but its the kind of thing that needs to be accessible in a hurry.
As a consumer of software support (both at work and at home), I absolutely hate vendors who refuse to give out a phone number.
It isn't that you are wrong about email being a much better way to do support. You are absoultely right. But that needs to be step 2, not step 1. Front-line support is always fronted by dumb filters (to filter out the inevitable 80% dumb issues). However, if that step is email, there's no way to escape out to an actual human being if you need to, and I'm continually finding myself on the wrong end of a stupid email filter. I honestly can't count the number of support tickets I've had auto-closed with an unhelpful robo-answer.
If you don't have a way for me to reliably get hold of a human being who can make sure I'm actually being helped, you aren't really providing support.
Heh. Well, if by "examination" you mean putting it in a car CD player and listening to it over and over, the answer is "yes", I have certianly done that, and "no", they did not do that.
...Which points to another sillyness about this supposed qualm of theirs.
Lead-off album tracks are sort of your intro into the work. They set a tone. Now with vinly LP's you have two such tracks, because you have to stop and flip the LP to listen to the other side. So putting your title track as the lead-off to side two still makes a statement. It mostly works fine on cassette too. Even if your player auto-switches, there's a delay there (sometimes sizeable if side 2 is longer than side 1).
But CD's don't have sides. So what was previously your opening tone-setting statement for side two is now just another song in the middle of the album somewhere.
So where was AC/DC's outrage about CD's? Why didn't they hold out for years against this horrible perversion of the artistic statement of their song ordering? It couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that CD's ended up being more lucrative than vinyl, could it?
Seriously guys. I luv' ya, but STFU and take your money.
Really? You'd reorder the tracks on "Wish You Were" Here willy nilly? The album that is bookended with a continuation of the same song, and several of the tracks actually smothly transition into each other? You're cut up and reorder that?
That's it AC! I've had it. I've put up with your sillyness for over a decade with no complaint, but you are now officially dead to me.
— submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end.
I could easily see that argument for a Pink Floyd album, but AC/DC? Really?
I mean, seriously. This is from a fan. I've probably listened to the Back in Black album straight through cover to cover more than all but two or three people walking this earth, band members included. I'd agree that the song ordering on there is probably better than a random one would be (note: the "Title track" leads off side 2 rather than 1, which is interesting, but it works).
But would I ever sit down and argue with someone that its a travesty to listen to "Shake a Leg" without following it up immediately with "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"? Hell no! Just listen to it and enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
Just by getting their complaints published, emailing to the fake Ballmer was probably far more effective than emailing to the real one would have been.
That could have ended badly for the other John McAffe. If the Belize authorities aren't any better than cops in, say rural Texas, they aren't likely to care all that much that they have got the wrong guy.
Dude could easily have found himself sitting in prison the night before his execution, writing "Its a far far better thing I do today than I have ever done before; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Would a Dem writing this be universally welcomed in Washington? Probably not. But would the author find himself summarily fired? Probably not.
This is a basic difference between the parties. You may not agree with the typical Dem party line on everything, but as a Dem you generally don't get run out of Washington on a rail for doing so. They just argue with you.
To be fair, the US congress is one of the most unpopular entites in the United States, at one time at about 9% approval. Porn, Poligamy, and the BP Oil Spill were all more popular. I would imagine it isn't any more popular outside the USA.
Saying something nice about Congress under such circumstances is not only difficult, but personally hazardous.
If this had been 'successful' you would be seeing a /lot/ more companies charging for online content
If this had been successful, you would have seen leprecauns riding unicorns over the rainbow, because some serious perversion of normal reality would have had to transpire.
I said this back on the first Slashdot story about Murdoch doing this was posted in 2009:
Perhaps Mr. Murdoch thinks he has some grand business theory that nobody on the web has ever thought of before to make pay content work. But unless porn is involved, he's wrong.
Actually, no. Both of those men will be out of office next month. "We" chose others to represent us. Both are being replaced by women, as a matter of fact.
So essentially this is a couple of stupid people on the street, minus about 3 weeks.
Burton actually is retiring at the end of this session (this month). Kusinich lost his election, so he's leaving too.
Basically this is just a bunch of tinfoil hat screeching from a couple of loonies who no longer have to tone down the crazy because they know they won't have to face the voters again.
There's nothing particularly new about this either though. I'm old enough to remember the days (back when Real Gamers had Atari 800's), where pretty much every game that came out started using nasty off-sector disk-based "copy protection". There were are few rational voices out there pointing out the social evil of this, not to mention the hardware damange, and saying people should boycott such games. But the vast majority of us either bought the games, or borrowed a friend's Happy Drive and copied them, and went on our merry way.
The only difference now is that you've decided to be one of the poor folks playing Cassandra. More power to you. Go fight to make the world a better place. Really. Just don't pretend like this is anything really all that new.
Well, when I was in school in the 80's, we had a guy from the Oil Industry come in and tell us how all that stuff about the world being out of oil by 1990 was a load of BS. One of the things he mentioned was our (USA's) huge oil reserves in shale, and of course the role of supply and demand. We didn't have the tech to extract it in a cost effective manner yet, but if supplies dropped enough and/or technology advanced enough, it would start being worth it.
It wasn't a popular veiwpoint at the time, but dude was pretty much right on all fronts. But that's not even really my point. People should get the chance to voice their views, and we should get the chance to fully evaluate them. Some will be crap of course, but sometimes the weirdo is right. I'm damn glad I stayed quiet and listened.
Oh yeah, how could I forget this one? About 9 months ago, I broke my ankle. My "primary care physician" verified with X-Rays it was broken, so he sent me to a bone surgeon. I had to wait a week before they could squeeze me in for an appointment. That guy told me how he was gonna fix it, then set me up another appointment for surgery in two weeks. Yup, that's two weeks living with a broken ankle before I could get the proper surgery. I actually have very good coverage by USA standards, so if anything this is probably speedy service over here.
Yeah, it must really suck in those countries where they have to wait weeks for treatment. That must be horrible. :-(
First, we do not have waiting lines in hospitals or any other part of the healthcare system in Germany. Especially not for urgent things.
That's funny, because here in the USA, I've gotten pretty used to having to wait for several hours in hospital "emergency" rooms. I've also regularly had my insurance company deny treatments or medicines prescribed by my doctor. Once my doctor had to try three times before he found one my insurance company would let my pharmacy give me. And God Forbid somebody gets sick on vacation. That's "out of network". If you aren't careful, it would be far cheaper to buy a plane ticket home to go to a covered doctor. I actually went through the farce of calling my insurance company to get permission to send my son to a hospital when we were visiting Virginia.
Whenever I hear supposed scare stories about long lines, bueracracies denying coverage or getting between people and their doctors, I really have to wonder what world these folks live in. It certianly isn't the USA, because we frigging have that right now!.
Yes, for my money, that's the bit in there that is news (although the language used indicates they still expect to find life there one day).
...and when a thunderstorm is coming through (or for a portable, you are taking it outside when the tempature is out of its safe operating conditions)?
A clean shutdown may not be an everyday event, but its the kind of thing that needs to be accessible in a hurry.
So for you "news" is anything that would have been surprising 30 years ago?
Slashdot is a great place for you then.
Everywhere we've looked on this planet, including sulfuric volcanic fissures miles under the surface, where there's water we've found life. Clearly this planet is infested with it.
At some point finding life in a weird new liquid water-based environment on Earth has to cease being news.
As a consumer of software support (both at work and at home), I absolutely hate vendors who refuse to give out a phone number.
It isn't that you are wrong about email being a much better way to do support. You are absoultely right. But that needs to be step 2, not step 1. Front-line support is always fronted by dumb filters (to filter out the inevitable 80% dumb issues). However, if that step is email, there's no way to escape out to an actual human being if you need to, and I'm continually finding myself on the wrong end of a stupid email filter. I honestly can't count the number of support tickets I've had auto-closed with an unhelpful robo-answer.
If you don't have a way for me to reliably get hold of a human being who can make sure I'm actually being helped, you aren't really providing support.
Usurping the great Vogon poets? No wonder the destructor fleet is on the way...
Heh. Well, if by "examination" you mean putting it in a car CD player and listening to it over and over, the answer is "yes", I have certianly done that, and "no", they did not do that.
Apple is a communist outfit,
It is patently rediculous statements like this that make me wonder if the word "communist" has any real meaning anymore.
It's like there's its traditional meanings in the dictionary, then right underneath is:
4. (Modern) syn - poopy-head.
...Which points to another sillyness about this supposed qualm of theirs.
Lead-off album tracks are sort of your intro into the work. They set a tone. Now with vinly LP's you have two such tracks, because you have to stop and flip the LP to listen to the other side. So putting your title track as the lead-off to side two still makes a statement. It mostly works fine on cassette too. Even if your player auto-switches, there's a delay there (sometimes sizeable if side 2 is longer than side 1).
But CD's don't have sides. So what was previously your opening tone-setting statement for side two is now just another song in the middle of the album somewhere.
So where was AC/DC's outrage about CD's? Why didn't they hold out for years against this horrible perversion of the artistic statement of their song ordering? It couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that CD's ended up being more lucrative than vinyl, could it?
Seriously guys. I luv' ya, but STFU and take your money.
The one I've been using is Cuba.
If Cuba started launching rockets into US territory. I'd like everyone here to picture how "proportional" a response they could expect from the USA.
Having been Z80 guy, a 6502 guy and a 68k guy
Really? You'd reorder the tracks on "Wish You Were" Here willy nilly? The album that is bookended with a continuation of the same song, and several of the tracks actually smothly transition into each other? You're cut up and reorder that?
That's it AC! I've had it. I've put up with your sillyness for over a decade with no complaint, but you are now officially dead to me.
— submitting that the group's albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end.
I could easily see that argument for a Pink Floyd album, but AC/DC? Really?
I mean, seriously. This is from a fan. I've probably listened to the Back in Black album straight through cover to cover more than all but two or three people walking this earth, band members included. I'd agree that the song ordering on there is probably better than a random one would be (note: the "Title track" leads off side 2 rather than 1, which is interesting, but it works).
But would I ever sit down and argue with someone that its a travesty to listen to "Shake a Leg" without following it up immediately with "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"? Hell no! Just listen to it and enjoy.
Freedom of speech isn't free anymore when you stop crybaby Republicans from whining
Well then, I guess its fortunate for Freedom that no force has yet been discovered by science that can stop that.