The shipping department at HP probably get monitored on how many cubic ft of parcels they handle, with a bonus for the supervisors if they ship more than 300cuft of parcels per day.
Presumably they'd get promoted to management if they can find a way to charter UR-82060:)
Dell appear to like "screwing" with their customers. Some of their laptops have a screw to secure the CDrom drive. Use to come as standard, but now an option. This is all of about 5mm long, but comes in a resealable plastic bag with a folded instruction leaflet and a barcode sticker on the bag. The price is more than it could possible be worth even if it was made of Platinum, plus packaging. There was no possible way they could send a box (of whatever size their supplier used), even at 10 times what it should actually cost... However for some strange reason all new Dell laptops appear to come with a modem lead.
The final irony is that that none of the screws Dell use are actually that exotic. On the other hand, with a different supplier, when I enquired about the part number to order some lost security screws their response was to put some in a "jiffy bag" and pop it in the post without charge.
When working for a spin-off of HP, we did a licence audit and decided we needed 500 or so C++ compiler licences for compliance. Order them. Expect a single A4 sheet back saying we're covered.
There can be situations where you actually want one sheet per licence. It's annoying that these companies don't tend to ask the customer.
Instead, we get a pair of huge 2m x 2m x 2m boxes, on shipping palets, containing 500 smaller A4-sized cardboard boxes, each containing an A4 paper licence
It would probably have been cheaper for them to loan you a printer and send a ream of paper and a PDF:)
It is very likely that HP pre-packages its licenses in these boxes, and the economics of it probably works out that most of them are sent individually. It is thus simpler for them to send out many individually-packaged boxes to customers who purchase multiple licenses, than to have someone remove the papers from the boxes in the warehouse, find an appropriate envelope to put them in, and then do something with the box.
The question is thus why are HP "pre-packing" them in boxes, rather than envelopes, in the first place?
The embargo exists because if the embargo was lifted, there are a lot of Cuban ex pats in Florida and elsewhere that would vote the other way as a result. And because the system in the US is so screwed, those votes are enough to change the outcome of elections.
Kind of a bit like US policy towards Israel. Not that there is that much real diversity in the the US Political system in the first place. So even if the "other lizard" got in it probably wouldn't make much difference to the average American anyway.
In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, sofas kept getting bigger and bigger because furniture factories had their productivity measured by how much wood they used...
IIRC there were transistor radios made which had transistors which were not electrically connected. Because the number of components was seen as a metric of how good the radio was. This seems an even better analogy with the USPO.
At $0.25 / movie, no one would bother to pirate it --- or practically no one, anyway.
So long as that price was available to everyone who might want to watch it. One of the things driving "piracy" of both movies and TV is availability. We have the strange situation of multinational movie distributors and broadcasters taking literally years to show their products around the planet (if they ever do). If your 0.25 USD movie is only available in the USA then you have just excluded most of your potential audience. You'd also need to be able to accept 0.16 EUR, 0.13 GBP, 0.25 CAD, 0.26 AUD, 26.57 JPY, 10.70 INR, 0.33 NZD, 0.25 CHF, 1.92 ZAR, etc, etc. Which is likely to be a lot easier if you are a multinational company. Though 4,670,381,878.09 ZWD might be a struggle.
Now the consumers have two choises: one that they deem too expensive, inconvenient or what have you, and the other at $0, with a slim possibility of getting sued.
The latter isn't free, time being money.
If a media company created a third choise, easy, quick, drm-free downloads at a reasonable price, don't you think that would be a hit?
Any "window of opportunity" is likely to be closing rapidly. In order to be sucessful such a system would have to be better than "pirate".
The problem is that we,the people,and the *.*.A.A had a contract,which they have broken through bribery and manipulation of our laws. The whole point of copyrights was the granting of a LIMITED monopoly,for a LIMITED amount of time,in return for sharing it with the world at the end of this time through a richer Public Domain. We should have all the great music of the '50s and '60s for free right now.
Actually that should be all of the music from the '50s and '60s. Including the great, the not so great and the utter trash. All neatly archived in the Library of Congress. The point of a rich Public Domain isn't to just preserve the "hits". Even the "misses" can be valuable, even if only along the lines of "it isn't worth writing music like this."
That's a common view from a non-musician. If musicians made money solely from performances, it wouldn't be long before there were no more professional musicians left.
This would be bad because?
Touring and putting on shows and concerts costs money. It's that simple. Whether the costs are for gas, plane tickets, food, music equipment, or roadies, not to mention the cuts of ticket sales that go to the venues.
It's not unknown for venues to pay bands (and PA companies) to play there.
Every band/artist has to start out at the bottom, and many bands that haven't yet "made it big" often come back from a tour with not that much more than they left with. Expecting people to live on just that income would mean the eventual death of your PERFORMING artist.
You are missing that plenty of people want to see live music and they are prepared to pay to do so. They might not always be prepared to pay what "artists" think they are worth and be fickle when it comes to tastes, but that's just human nature.
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
No we don't. If people want to earn a living from being a "media creator" then that's their problem, so long as they obey the law, only then does it become a problem for everyone else.
I'm a network admin for an ISP, and we've been recommending UPSs for the frequent-reboot routers that our customers have. We've found that routers (especially Linksys) have a real problem with power fluctuations that most other systems and devices don't notice. A decent line-conditioning UPS might solve your problems, but a cheap one will suffice.
Do these have "wall wart" PSUs? These things appear to be built as cheaply as possible, subject only to the conditions of not being likely to catch fire and being capable of powering the device some of the time.
Once I take a received postcard and store it in my files, I have a strong expectation that no one can look at it.
It would not be reasonable if random post offices were photocopying postcards and filing the copies. At least not in the so called "free world", where you don't expect postal workers to also work for "State Security".
This "law" (really, nothing in contradiction to the Constitution ought to be called a law) refers to "electronic communication that has been in electronic storage in an electronic communications system for more than one hundred and eighty days". It's rifling through filing cabinets without a warrant,
Probably including "filing cabinets" which should not exist in the first place.
only a court order based on "specific and articulable facts" - in practice, basically a hunch, and blatantly contradictory to the Constitutional requirement of a warrant based on probable cause.
If the only reason they were looking was to track down spammers and charge ISPs with copyright violations maybe people would be less unhappy.
I am concerned about warrantless searches. I think there has to be a position on that, and an absolute one. The government absolutely cannot conduct any search in meat-space or cyberspace without a warrant from a Judge, who is a member of the Judicial branch of government.
It's even more fundermental than that. Without proper oversight law enforcement simply will not do the job of going after people who are dangerous to society as a whole. Because these people are dangerous to "cops" too. Be they well armed gangsters or high criminals.
The fact that the government did not feel it had to comply with its own 90 day rule just shows how arrogant and "above the law" they feel that they are.
If they can't even comply with that fairly simple condition what else didn't they comply with?
Even if the guy is truly guilty, the government must follow the law at ALL times. Letting the guy go and sanctioning those involved is the only way to stop those in government from getting out of control.
If those involved didn't follow the law then they have no evidence against the accused. Unless there is also legally gathered evidence then the only correct behaviour for a trial judge is to tell the accused "Sorry for wasting your time, you are free to go. (Any public record from your arrest onwards in relation to this case will be destroyed)." Then turn his/her attention on the lawbreakers. It might also be a very good idea for high criminals to automatically have their sentence trippled.
Actually no you can't. You assume that 1) people have vices and 2) people have vices that they are embarrassed about enough about that you can use it against them. But what if the person in question couldn't give a rat's ass if you expose the fact that he gambles, or boozes, or whatever? Then your "power" sir falls apart! You see I don't care if you know I booze or gamble (I do both). Trick is live your life so that you are not ashamed and nobody can shame you!
One way in which the blackmailer can regain their power is by having certain activities considered either taboo or illegal. The choice of which may simply depend on if priests or "lawmakers" are easier/cheaper to lobby.
But if I tell people the truth about my multifaceted personality, they wouldn't vote for me (because I would tell them things they don't want to hear).
Assuming you could actually stand in the first place...
So you get "politicians" instead. They get to decide what the rules are, and they are all pandering to "the people". Almost by definition you get liars to "represent" you.
An effective "con artist" is always likely to have an advantage in a popular vote.
The actions of liars and idiots are almost indistinguishable, so I guess there is some justice there. (e.g. "The people get the government they deserve")
Especially in the US where there appears to be an obsession with elections. Even electing minor public officials, thus turning just about every part of government into a Democrat/Republican circus.
Too many idiots get to vote. If we had BOTH compulsory voting, AND a minimum qualification-to-vote test, we might be better off.
Compulsory voting might be of some good with an option of "none of the above and they can't stand for public office again for at least 10 years"... The problem with minimum qualifications is that they can easily be used politically. In the US a way to ensure that the people running the election are independent of the candidates would probably need to come first.
It is not ignorant or dishonest, the whole Bush is a tyrant argument is a strawman argument in itself. It is part of those 911 conspiracy theories that keep coming up.
Not even all of the theories which point the finger of suspicion at named members of the US Government identify Bush as a conspirator. Nor is the US Government the only government "in the frame".
It is just another variation of the same conspiracy theory and I and many others are getting sick of it.
But are apparently perfectly ok with the incredible conspiracy theories used to justify invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As well as threatening to invade Iran.
The whole theory in itself is that New World Order theory, and the only NWO that ever existed or will exist was a Wrestling Stable in the WCW before Vince McMahon bought them out. Everything else is bullshit.
Strange how the PNAC kooks appear to be comming up with similar "ideas".
Yeah you and all of the other 911 conspiracy theorists. The only thing you forgot to mention was that the government did 911,
"Al Quada did it" is just as much a conspiracy theory as "the (unspecified) government did it". (With the complication that these may turn out to be the same entity by different names. As was the case with the "Gaza branch" of Al Quada.) It's just not really credible to have a multiple hijack without a conspiracy. It's more interesting if someone tries to fit the facts around a theory as opposed to creating a theory which best fits the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Oooh I love those balloon thingies. Sneak up behind a coworker and pop them. Hilarity ensues!
Some of them even now come with a "tear strip" to let all the air out quickly. Which really needs to be a standard feature.
I feel like being forced to download HP's 600MB installer just to get one printer driver is the software equivalent of this packaging phenomenon.
You also still have to manually pick the driver. If that "CD" covered every printer HP had ever made things would make a lot more sense.
The shipping department at HP probably get monitored on how many cubic ft of parcels they handle, with a bonus for the supervisors if they ship more than 300cuft of parcels per day.
:)
Presumably they'd get promoted to management if they can find a way to charter UR-82060
Look at the packaging for a few screws!
Dell appear to like "screwing" with their customers. Some of their laptops have a screw to secure the CDrom drive. Use to come as standard, but now an option. This is all of about 5mm long, but comes in a resealable plastic bag with a folded instruction leaflet and a barcode sticker on the bag. The price is more than it could possible be worth even if it was made of Platinum, plus packaging. There was no possible way they could send a box (of whatever size their supplier used), even at 10 times what it should actually cost... However for some strange reason all new Dell laptops appear to come with a modem lead.
The final irony is that that none of the screws Dell use are actually that exotic. On the other hand, with a different supplier, when I enquired about the part number to order some lost security screws their response was to put some in a "jiffy bag" and pop it in the post without charge.
When working for a spin-off of HP, we did a licence audit and decided we needed 500 or so C++ compiler licences for compliance. Order them. Expect a single A4 sheet back saying we're covered.
:)
There can be situations where you actually want one sheet per licence. It's annoying that these companies don't tend to ask the customer.
Instead, we get a pair of huge 2m x 2m x 2m boxes, on shipping palets, containing 500 smaller A4-sized cardboard boxes, each containing an A4 paper licence
It would probably have been cheaper for them to loan you a printer and send a ream of paper and a PDF
It is very likely that HP pre-packages its licenses in these boxes, and the economics of it probably works out that most of them are sent individually. It is thus simpler for them to send out many individually-packaged boxes to customers who purchase multiple licenses, than to have someone remove the papers from the boxes in the warehouse, find an appropriate envelope to put them in, and then do something with the box.
The question is thus why are HP "pre-packing" them in boxes, rather than envelopes, in the first place?
Ubisoft stole a program released by a group who help others to steal theirs?
The monsters!
Since Ubisoft claimed that the patch was theirs what they are doing is worst (according to the letter of the law).
You are of course ignoring the fact that Cuba wanted to launch missiles tipped with nuclear warheads at the U.S. during Kennedy's presidency.
Actually the USSR wanted to base missiles in Cuba. For some reason this was worst than US nuclear weapons in Europe...
I'm an American posting anonymously who wants to travel to Cuba sometime in my lifetime, and I'm going embargo or no embargo.
Maybe you can go via Canada. Since you don't need to show your passport when crossing back from Canada into the US how is anyone going to know?
The embargo exists because if the embargo was lifted, there are a lot of Cuban ex pats in Florida and elsewhere that would vote the other way as a result. And because the system in the US is so screwed, those votes are enough to change the outcome of elections.
Kind of a bit like US policy towards Israel. Not that there is that much real diversity in the the US Political system in the first place. So even if the "other lizard" got in it probably wouldn't make much difference to the average American anyway.
In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, sofas kept getting bigger and bigger because furniture factories had their productivity measured by how much wood they used...
IIRC there were transistor radios made which had transistors which were not electrically connected. Because the number of components was seen as a metric of how good the radio was. This seems an even better analogy with the USPO.
There goes the legality of most current Virus Scanners in the US then.
Indeed any anti-malware software. Especially if the malware in question comes with an EULA...
At $0.25 / movie, no one would bother to pirate it --- or practically no one, anyway.
So long as that price was available to everyone who might want to watch it. One of the things driving "piracy" of both movies and TV is availability. We have the strange situation of multinational movie distributors and broadcasters taking literally years to show their products around the planet (if they ever do). If your 0.25 USD movie is only available in the USA then you have just excluded most of your potential audience. You'd also need to be able to accept 0.16 EUR, 0.13 GBP, 0.25 CAD, 0.26 AUD, 26.57 JPY, 10.70 INR, 0.33 NZD, 0.25 CHF, 1.92 ZAR, etc, etc. Which is likely to be a lot easier if you are a multinational company. Though 4,670,381,878.09 ZWD might be a struggle.
Now the consumers have two choises: one that they deem too expensive, inconvenient or what have you, and the other at $0, with a slim possibility of getting sued.
The latter isn't free, time being money.
If a media company created a third choise, easy, quick, drm-free downloads at a reasonable price, don't you think that would be a hit?
Any "window of opportunity" is likely to be closing rapidly. In order to be sucessful such a system would have to be better than "pirate".
The problem is that we,the people,and the *.*.A.A had a contract,which they have broken through bribery and manipulation of our laws. The whole point of copyrights was the granting of a LIMITED monopoly,for a LIMITED amount of time,in return for sharing it with the world at the end of this time through a richer Public Domain. We should have all the great music of the '50s and '60s for free right now.
Actually that should be all of the music from the '50s and '60s. Including the great, the not so great and the utter trash. All neatly archived in the Library of Congress. The point of a rich Public Domain isn't to just preserve the "hits". Even the "misses" can be valuable, even if only along the lines of "it isn't worth writing music like this."
That's a common view from a non-musician. If musicians made money solely from performances, it wouldn't be long before there were no more professional musicians left.
This would be bad because?
Touring and putting on shows and concerts costs money. It's that simple. Whether the costs are for gas, plane tickets, food, music equipment, or roadies, not to mention the cuts of ticket sales that go to the venues.
It's not unknown for venues to pay bands (and PA companies) to play there.
Every band/artist has to start out at the bottom, and many bands that haven't yet "made it big" often come back from a tour with not that much more than they left with. Expecting people to live on just that income would mean the eventual death of your PERFORMING artist.
You are missing that plenty of people want to see live music and they are prepared to pay to do so. They might not always be prepared to pay what "artists" think they are worth and be fickle when it comes to tastes, but that's just human nature.
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
No we don't. If people want to earn a living from being a "media creator" then that's their problem, so long as they obey the law, only then does it become a problem for everyone else.
I'm a network admin for an ISP, and we've been recommending UPSs for the frequent-reboot routers that our customers have. We've found that routers (especially Linksys) have a real problem with power fluctuations that most other systems and devices don't notice. A decent line-conditioning UPS might solve your problems, but a cheap one will suffice.
Do these have "wall wart" PSUs? These things appear to be built as cheaply as possible, subject only to the conditions of not being likely to catch fire and being capable of powering the device some of the time.
Once I take a received postcard and store it in my files, I have a strong expectation that no one can look at it.
It would not be reasonable if random post offices were photocopying postcards and filing the copies. At least not in the so called "free world", where you don't expect postal workers to also work for "State Security".
This "law" (really, nothing in contradiction to the Constitution ought to be called a law) refers to "electronic communication that has been in electronic storage in an electronic communications system for more than one hundred and eighty days". It's rifling through filing cabinets without a warrant,
Probably including "filing cabinets" which should not exist in the first place.
only a court order based on "specific and articulable facts" - in practice, basically a hunch, and blatantly contradictory to the Constitutional requirement of a warrant based on probable cause.
If the only reason they were looking was to track down spammers and charge ISPs with copyright violations maybe people would be less unhappy.
I am concerned about warrantless searches. I think there has to be a position on that, and an absolute one. The government absolutely cannot conduct any search in meat-space or cyberspace without a warrant from a Judge, who is a member of the Judicial branch of government.
It's even more fundermental than that. Without proper oversight law enforcement simply will not do the job of going after people who are dangerous to society as a whole. Because these people are dangerous to "cops" too. Be they well armed gangsters or high criminals.
The fact that the government did not feel it had to comply with its own 90 day rule just shows how arrogant and "above the law" they feel that they are.
If they can't even comply with that fairly simple condition what else didn't they comply with?
Even if the guy is truly guilty, the government must follow the law at ALL times. Letting the guy go and sanctioning those involved is the only way to stop those in government from getting out of control.
If those involved didn't follow the law then they have no evidence against the accused. Unless there is also legally gathered evidence then the only correct behaviour for a trial judge is to tell the accused "Sorry for wasting your time, you are free to go. (Any public record from your arrest onwards in relation to this case will be destroyed)." Then turn his/her attention on the lawbreakers.
It might also be a very good idea for high criminals to automatically have their sentence trippled.
Actually no you can't. You assume that 1) people have vices and 2) people have vices that they are embarrassed about enough about that you can use it against them. But what if the person in question couldn't give a rat's ass if you expose the fact that he gambles, or boozes, or whatever? Then your "power" sir falls apart! You see I don't care if you know I booze or gamble (I do both). Trick is live your life so that you are not ashamed and nobody can shame you!
One way in which the blackmailer can regain their power is by having certain activities considered either taboo or illegal. The choice of which may simply depend on if priests or "lawmakers" are easier/cheaper to lobby.
But if I tell people the truth about my multifaceted personality, they wouldn't vote for me (because I would tell them things they don't want to hear).
Assuming you could actually stand in the first place...
So you get "politicians" instead. They get to decide what the rules are, and they are all pandering to "the people". Almost by definition you get liars to "represent" you.
An effective "con artist" is always likely to have an advantage in a popular vote.
The actions of liars and idiots are almost indistinguishable, so I guess there is some justice there. (e.g. "The people get the government they deserve")
Especially in the US where there appears to be an obsession with elections. Even electing minor public officials, thus turning just about every part of government into a Democrat/Republican circus.
Too many idiots get to vote. If we had BOTH compulsory voting, AND a minimum qualification-to-vote test, we might be better off.
Compulsory voting might be of some good with an option of "none of the above and they can't stand for public office again for at least 10 years"... The problem with minimum qualifications is that they can easily be used politically. In the US a way to ensure that the people running the election are independent of the candidates would probably need to come first.
It is not ignorant or dishonest, the whole Bush is a tyrant argument is a strawman argument in itself. It is part of those 911 conspiracy theories that keep coming up.
Not even all of the theories which point the finger of suspicion at named members of the US Government identify Bush as a conspirator. Nor is the US Government the only government "in the frame".
It is just another variation of the same conspiracy theory and I and many others are getting sick of it.
But are apparently perfectly ok with the incredible conspiracy theories used to justify invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As well as threatening to invade Iran.
The whole theory in itself is that New World Order theory, and the only NWO that ever existed or will exist was a Wrestling Stable in the WCW before Vince McMahon bought them out. Everything else is bullshit.
Strange how the PNAC kooks appear to be comming up with similar "ideas".
Yeah you and all of the other 911 conspiracy theorists. The only thing you forgot to mention was that the government did 911,
"Al Quada did it" is just as much a conspiracy theory as "the (unspecified) government did it". (With the complication that these may turn out to be the same entity by different names. As was the case with the "Gaza branch" of Al Quada.)
It's just not really credible to have a multiple hijack without a conspiracy. It's more interesting if someone tries to fit the facts around a theory as opposed to creating a theory which best fits the facts.
Maybe we should put the RIAA in a box and launch it at the sun.
Why do you want to pollute a perfectly good star? It's not as if we are in a binary system and thus have a "backup".