It didn't take me long to find longer T&Cs. I just went to Google and searched for "Terms and Conditions", which of course is not going to find those agreements that are called by a different name.
Anyway, the very first one I found was longer than American Airlines', and the second was WAY longer.
With kudos to another poster who replies to this message about how absentee policies generally allow for people who work far from home, this is a very silly excuse for not voting. Show me the a single job in America that won't bend over backwards to allow time off to vote, and I'll show you a lawsuit that any lawyer in America would take. The polls are open, in most places, for 12 full hours. If you can't get there in 12 hours, and don't bother to inquire about the possibility of absentee voting, you don't deserve to have your voice heard.
There's always so much bitching voting in this country, obviously spoken by those who have never lived anywhere that they weren't allowed to choose their leaders. Once again, I will be ashamed by the dismal voter turnout this year.
Then at the end of your (limited) term, you get a lump sum to make up the difference between what the average Joe gets and what a congresscritter is paid.
Screw THAT. I think they ought to get paid what the average American gets paid, maybe even less. Over the years, I've also considered that perhaps you shouldn't get paid anything to be a member of congress. It is an honor, you know. And the original intent was that people would keep their jobs while they're in congress. Think of it like the military reservists. Our economy can afford to pay tens of thousands of reservists who do their regular drill, so why not send two Senators and a handful of Representatives to Washington to speak on our behalf, and let them keep their jobs while they do it.
And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that any members of congress are hurting financially anyway. Even if they DO need the money, why can't the campaigns pay their salaries. It takes millions of dollars to get elected, so why not toss the candidate a salary once he's in office?
I almost forgot about this. Tonight's episode of "The Screensavers" had RMS as a guest. But if you've ever watched TechTV, you know they repeat that show numerous times... specifically, 2:00am tonight, 8:00am tomorrow morning, and 12 noon tomorrow (all times eastern US).
Anyway, should be interesting to see RMS on TV. I've never had the pleasure. I forgot to watch it earlier, but I'm going to record it.
I keep considering getting the people who live in our subdivision to do the same thing. All these clowns who think it's effective marketing (it ain't) to put a flier and some little rocks (for weight) in a baggy and throw it in my lawn, just ANYWHERE in my lawn, have another thing coming.
I think it would be really cool to have everybody in my subdivision (96 houses) to contribute these offerings, and we can make weekend trips to the "advertisers" and throw them onto their property.
I don't see why we don't just use gasoline for all this stuff. Cell phones, laptops, PDAs... The generator that you would carry on your back wouldn't be much bigger than a weedeater motor, and you'd just have to take it off to pull it. If you have to go into an office, you can just leave the generator on the sidewalk and a flywheel will give you enough power to take a piss and come back. You could code all day long out on the beach... couple of 10 gallon gas cans in the car, a little ear and breathing protection and you're all set.
And besides, gas is cheap and will get cheaper with the calm in the middle east. I say "go gas". It's the American power source.
I completely disagree that anything will kill the box office. Here are some good things about it.
1) It's a night out. To single folks, that doesn't mean much, but when you get married and have kids you learn to appreciate "going to the movies" more than ever before.
2) The concessions are too expensive, but they're GOOD. Come on, admit it. Big ol' tub of popcorn ("Do you want butter on that?" "No thanks, just give me that same yellow swill you put on everybody else's")... a huge box of Raisinettes or a Crunch Bar. You're eating like there's no tomorrow and it doesn't matter. Popcorn all over your tummy by the end of the movie? Just stand up, brush it off, and walk out. Not your problem.
3) Let's not underestimate the value of being in a theater of other people who are excited about a movie. It makes the movie better. Two examples... the first is "Jurassic Park". I was at an overseas premier of "Jurassic Park" and it was so incredibly exciting because I was in a theater of people who were excited by it. The other example is "Meet the Parents", which not only was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen, but it seems like the absolute funniest movie I had ever seen because of the laughter around me.
4) Another thing that people complain about but secretly love are the trailers. First of all, they pad the beginning of the movie so you can be late and not miss the feature. Secondly, they're often entertaining. They're longer than what you see on TV and they really get you excited about the movie. If people hate trailers so much, why is it that you can boost your ticket sales if you tell people it will have a trailer of an eagerly-awaited movie?
5) Big screen and big sound. Yeah, I'm sure your home theater is really nice, and one of these days I'll finish my basement and mine will be really great, too. But it won't be the same as a movie theater. A screen two or three stories high, big-ass speakers all over the place, shaking a big room. Of course, once I finish the home theater, I'll probably feel guilty for going to the movies because of how much I spent on the home theater and that keep me home.
6) Finally, new release, new releases, new releases. Doesn't matter how good your home theater is when the next "Matrix" movie comes out. If you want to see it soon, you'll go to the theater. If you hate the theater that much and really want to watch it at home, you'll have to wait MANY months for that DVD to come out, maybe even a year or more.
So let's give the movie theater the credit it deserves. It's a fun night out. Way more expensive than it ought to be (and what's up with concession stands not taking credit cards?), but it's fun and I'll keep going.
I am TERRIBLY sorry. I'm a moderator and I intended ot moderate this up (Funny), but it appears that my mouse let me down and I actually selected the next option down, which is "Overrated", so I moderated the guy down.
I did NOT mean to. My apologies for not being more careful.
You so friggin' rock. That was the first thing I thought of, and I wanted to go swimming through stock photo sites until I found this one, but I have a life to live. You, on the other hand, were clearly more devoted to uncovering this very critical piece of evidence. My hat is off to you. Now I don't have to go through the trouble:)
Goddammit, this argument is getting old (sorry for the explicative... well, if I'm apologizing I guess I could go back and erase it. Nope, I meant it).
Making a copy of a song for yourself is alright. Making 10 copies of a song for yourself if alright. Giving those 10 copies (or that one person) to other people who did not buy the music is unlawful, or at the very least outside the spirit of the law (and yes, that matters, because loophole divers are lame).
Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 of your closest friends is flatout wrong, and definitely piracy.
The record industry is wrong. They're overpriced and, especially now, they're not interested in growing their business model to include large catalogs on the internet (which is unbelievably stupid). But the "offsite backup" argument is just as stupid. "I'm just letting people hold copies for me, millions of them". Give me a break. Have the guts to call it what it is. It's swapping music without paying for it.
Now, INTENT... there's the rub. Have I used Napster? Oh yeah. Do I miss Napster? Absolutely. The question is HOW did I use Napster. Mostly, I used it to hear songs that I had heard once or twice on the radio. You could call it evaluation. I bought several CDs based on that online evaluation. Some material was not desirable enough for purchase after that evaluation. Some downloads were of songs that I already own on CD. Admittedly, some were songs that I have never bought and yet still listen to. That is wrong, but at least I admit that it's wrong. The people who try to hide behind the law of "fair use" in the name of stealing are even more wrong. One good thing about Napster's demise was the temptation that it provided for me. It really was hard to prevent myself from downloading songs and then no buy the CDs. I can only imagine how easy it must have been for someone of lesser scruples to download thousands of dollars worth of music.
A little rough math just told me that you could fit over $11,000 worth of average-sized tracks on a 30 GB drive. Using the following logic:
Average CD costs maybe $15
Average of 10 songs on a CD
$1.50 per song, retail
I'm using 3.8 MB as an average track size. Your figure may vary
I estimated down to 7500 when I divided 30 GB into a number of 3.8 MB tracks.
7500 times 1.50 is the 11,000 dollar figure
Actually, the dollar value of all of that music together would probably be more, because downloading individual tracks instead of entire albums makes the collection worth more. One would pressume that the demand for the collective tracks would be greater. Something like that... I'm rambling.
There is a compromise somewhere that will allow internet customers to get the music conveniently and inexpensively and allow the artists and the record companies that they deserve. The record companies are appear to be disinterested, and the morons who insist that "music wants to be free" are nowhere close to that compromise.
I swear I've never before replied twice to myself. But while I'm on the subject of stupid linux things I've done, have you ever wondered what happens when you accidentally put one too many asterisks at the beginning of a crontab line?
* * * * * */do/stuff
instead of
* * * * */do/stuff
Yes, it runs every executable in whatever the pwd is at the time, usually the home directory of the user for whom the cron job is running, providing the command that you meant to run as an argument to each of them. I was never so relieved that there were no executables under/root.
I know in my heart that there's no need for this on Unix, because you shouldn't run as root AND use rm -rf and THE decide that you shouldn't have done that. There are safeguards in place and, after all, since you're a Linux superuser, you're either good enough that you don't make that kind of mistake or the system isn't important enough for it to really matter.
Having said that, even though I know how dumb it was, I once accidentally issued `rm -rf/bin`. Funny story, though:
For some reason or another, I happened into an additional hard disk that I put into my Linux box at work (not a production box). I don't remember how big it was, but it was big enough relative to my primary disk that, when I needed a mount point, I chose/big. That was the first mistake. I have no idea why I felt the need to mount it that close to the root. Although the similarity between "big" and "bin" is obvious in retrospect, it is, after all, retrospect.
Actually, that wasn't my first mistake. My first mistake was running as root.
I mounted the disk and played around with it. I suspect that it was my first time playing around with an additional hard disk, so I copied files over and examined "df -k" and so forth, and eventually I guess I decided to unmount it and do it all over again... I probably would have done endless, mindless file copies for the rest of the day, I was so thrilled with it. Hey, I was young.
This is where it gets embarassing. Perhaps everybody has some mysterious glitch which adds confusion where there should be none. Yes, I honestly do know the difference between a symlink and a mount... I swear it. But in the very brief period of time that it takes to type a command, I sometimes confuse the two in my mind and try to unmount using the "rm" command. More specifically, "rm -rf".
I also noticed on that day that we humans have kind of a built-in autocompletion. If you type the first few letters of your last name, you have a tendency to follow through with the rest of it. And that tendency increases dramatically the closer you get to the last letter. The way I noticed this was when I attempted to issue `rm -rf/big` and immediately pressed return (I found that return is also a mysterious part of that autocompletion).
Just so you know, there are a great many important things in/bin. Among them, all of the shells, chmod/chown, grep, kill, ls (try working without that), mv.... the list goes on and on.
This story also reminds me of the time I evaluated WS_FTP Server when it first came out. I needed an FTP server so I could go home and work on some files on an NT server. I wanted access to the whole box, so I set up my FTP account's home directory as c:\ -- I had no idea that when I deleted that account it would attempt to delete the user's home directory, even if it was c:\.
I've never heard a disk thrash like that before or since. And you've never seen anybody turn a box off as quickly as I did when I realized what was going on. Alas, it was too late. Reinstallation and backup restore (yes, I had a backup) commenced immediately. By the way, I've never fully accepted responsibility for that -- I still feel like it should have said "You're about to delete c:\ and all of it's subdirectories. Are you sure?" Because I really didn't think it would do that.
Anyway, my point is that "there, but for the grace of a godlike substance, go you". It's really easy to say we're too good for this, and there's a damn good case that a linux trashcan is not necessary, but for those who want it I think it's a cool piece of code.
There's something strange about making a bumping a major version number as an afterthought, don't you think?
Don't get me wrong... I have all the confidence in the world in Linus, and he knows way more about what he's doing than I do. I'm just surprised that a project that organized wouldn't have a "3.0 List" by now of all the new stuff they plan to do in 3.0 one of these days... and when they start putting all those pieces together in a source tree, they would call that the "3.0 code" from the beginning.
At least that's the way I would imagine it. But don't miscontrue anything I've said as a suggestion that I have any idea what I'm talking about.
Their site says Refunds will be given at the discretion of the Company Management at the bottom... what in the world is that about?
Seems to be a lot of focus on bringing in revenue for a company whose mission is to "act as the focal point for open source VNC". Suggesting that companies contact them about commercial support is one thing (and not a bad idea and I wish them all the best) but suggesting "commercial licensing" is downright silly. Even asking for donations is fine, but why the hell would anybody try to downgrade a license from free to non-free?
A company has been formed aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.'
Yeah, I hear there's good money in that:)
Seriously, best of luck to them. VNC completely and totally rocks. I am an alumnus of VNC on Windows, Linux and AIX and it's a lifesaver.
I see it's one of those "it's free but please contribute so we don't starve" business models, augmented by one of those "You're a corporation that hasn't banned VNC for unspoken and ill-understood 'security reasons' yet? How about this 'enterprise support offering'?" models.
OK, fine... moderate me down. I've got some Karma to spare today:) I really AM behind them, I swear. Just having a little fun.
So I suppose you use postcards for all of your mail. Love letters, hate mail, whatever... you have nothing to hide so why should you use an envelope?
Or when you do get mail that's in envelopes (hmmmm, why do they presume your need for all that secrecy?), I suppose you take all the bills and letters out, scan them, and post them on the internet? No?
Then just what is it that you're trying to hide? You're clearly either a terrorist or a pornographer (both are generally held in approximately the same regard in most places). Or could it be that you just want the smallest amount of privacy? Could it be that it's not the damn business of every postal worker who comes in contact with your letters to read them?
Yes, indeed it could. It's called privacy. And the public will continue to insist on more internet privacy once they begin to understand it. The problem right now is that they actually THINK that nobody can read their e-mail but the person they're sending it to. Boy are THEY in for a surprise.
Have you noticed that the file extension on the Netscape toolbar is "twhat"? How friggin' perfect is that? I can't believe the person who came up with that didn't read it the way I read it.
This story peaked my interest and I headed over to Ebay to see what kind of radio stations might be for sale... you never know.
What I found instead was a Ramsey FM Transmitter (model number FM-100) that was currently at $349. Turns out that's way overpriced, considering Ramsey sells it for $224.95, unless this is the high-power version that Ramsey isn't supposed to sell inside the US -- in which case that might be an excellent opportunity for somebody in the US to get this one from a "third party" -- I'm not saying you SHOULD, just that you COULD.
Anyway, I thought this was really neat. Is it going to give you miles and miles of coverage? Heck no. But it's an all-in-one FM transmitter, and replaces a bunch of hefty equipment that I remember from my days in FM radio as a kid. Especially if this is the "overseas version", you could get enough coverage for you and your friends.... then you can head over to the FCC's site about LPFM (Low Power FM) to see if, through your school or something, you could get a LPFM license. Apparently they're pretty straightfoward.
Slashdot Mirror
It didn't take me long to find longer T&Cs. I just went to Google and searched for "Terms and Conditions", which of course is not going to find those agreements that are called by a different name.
Anyway, the very first one I found was longer than American Airlines', and the second was WAY longer.
1) ICQ: 31,969 characters
2) Lycos 88,220 characters (dude!)
Anyway, here's a summary of about five minutes worth of work. I started to get sick to my stomach and quit after that:
This is `wc -c` output:
6991 tucows.txt
11292 dell.txt
11635 att.txt
13467 ge.txt
22585 american_airlines.txt
31969 icq.txt
88220 lycos.txt
With kudos to another poster who replies to this message about how absentee policies generally allow for people who work far from home, this is a very silly excuse for not voting. Show me the a single job in America that won't bend over backwards to allow time off to vote, and I'll show you a lawsuit that any lawyer in America would take. The polls are open, in most places, for 12 full hours. If you can't get there in 12 hours, and don't bother to inquire about the possibility of absentee voting, you don't deserve to have your voice heard.
There's always so much bitching voting in this country, obviously spoken by those who have never lived anywhere that they weren't allowed to choose their leaders. Once again, I will be ashamed by the dismal voter turnout this year.
Then at the end of your (limited) term, you get a lump sum to make up the difference between what the average Joe gets and what a congresscritter is paid.
Screw THAT. I think they ought to get paid what the average American gets paid, maybe even less. Over the years, I've also considered that perhaps you shouldn't get paid anything to be a member of congress. It is an honor, you know. And the original intent was that people would keep their jobs while they're in congress. Think of it like the military reservists. Our economy can afford to pay tens of thousands of reservists who do their regular drill, so why not send two Senators and a handful of Representatives to Washington to speak on our behalf, and let them keep their jobs while they do it.
And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that any members of congress are hurting financially anyway. Even if they DO need the money, why can't the campaigns pay their salaries. It takes millions of dollars to get elected, so why not toss the candidate a salary once he's in office?
End of brain dump.
I almost forgot about this. Tonight's episode of "The Screensavers" had RMS as a guest. But if you've ever watched TechTV, you know they repeat that show numerous times... specifically, 2:00am tonight, 8:00am tomorrow morning, and 12 noon tomorrow (all times eastern US).
Anyway, should be interesting to see RMS on TV. I've never had the pleasure. I forgot to watch it earlier, but I'm going to record it.
I think if you can get into the Teachers' Lounge, you should qualify for every teacher deal there is (there aren't enough of them anyway).
What, I need to elaborate?
I keep considering getting the people who live in our subdivision to do the same thing. All these clowns who think it's effective marketing (it ain't) to put a flier and some little rocks (for weight) in a baggy and throw it in my lawn, just ANYWHERE in my lawn, have another thing coming.
I think it would be really cool to have everybody in my subdivision (96 houses) to contribute these offerings, and we can make weekend trips to the "advertisers" and throw them onto their property.
RP
I don't see why we don't just use gasoline for all this stuff. Cell phones, laptops, PDAs... The generator that you would carry on your back wouldn't be much bigger than a weedeater motor, and you'd just have to take it off to pull it. If you have to go into an office, you can just leave the generator on the sidewalk and a flywheel will give you enough power to take a piss and come back. You could code all day long out on the beach... couple of 10 gallon gas cans in the car, a little ear and breathing protection and you're all set.
And besides, gas is cheap and will get cheaper with the calm in the middle east. I say "go gas". It's the American power source.
I completely disagree that anything will kill the box office. Here are some good things about it.
1) It's a night out. To single folks, that doesn't mean much, but when you get married and have kids you learn to appreciate "going to the movies" more than ever before.
2) The concessions are too expensive, but they're GOOD. Come on, admit it. Big ol' tub of popcorn ("Do you want butter on that?" "No thanks, just give me that same yellow swill you put on everybody else's")... a huge box of Raisinettes or a Crunch Bar. You're eating like there's no tomorrow and it doesn't matter. Popcorn all over your tummy by the end of the movie? Just stand up, brush it off, and walk out. Not your problem.
3) Let's not underestimate the value of being in a theater of other people who are excited about a movie. It makes the movie better. Two examples... the first is "Jurassic Park". I was at an overseas premier of "Jurassic Park" and it was so incredibly exciting because I was in a theater of people who were excited by it. The other example is "Meet the Parents", which not only was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen, but it seems like the absolute funniest movie I had ever seen because of the laughter around me.
4) Another thing that people complain about but secretly love are the trailers. First of all, they pad the beginning of the movie so you can be late and not miss the feature. Secondly, they're often entertaining. They're longer than what you see on TV and they really get you excited about the movie. If people hate trailers so much, why is it that you can boost your ticket sales if you tell people it will have a trailer of an eagerly-awaited movie?
5) Big screen and big sound. Yeah, I'm sure your home theater is really nice, and one of these days I'll finish my basement and mine will be really great, too. But it won't be the same as a movie theater. A screen two or three stories high, big-ass speakers all over the place, shaking a big room. Of course, once I finish the home theater, I'll probably feel guilty for going to the movies because of how much I spent on the home theater and that keep me home.
6) Finally, new release, new releases, new releases. Doesn't matter how good your home theater is when the next "Matrix" movie comes out. If you want to see it soon, you'll go to the theater. If you hate the theater that much and really want to watch it at home, you'll have to wait MANY months for that DVD to come out, maybe even a year or more.
So let's give the movie theater the credit it deserves. It's a fun night out. Way more expensive than it ought to be (and what's up with concession stands not taking credit cards?), but it's fun and I'll keep going.
RP
Good point. You're probably right. If not, it's a bug.
Thanks,
John
I am TERRIBLY sorry. I'm a moderator and I intended ot moderate this up (Funny), but it appears that my mouse let me down and I actually selected the next option down, which is "Overrated", so I moderated the guy down.
I did NOT mean to. My apologies for not being more careful.
RP
You so friggin' rock. That was the first thing I thought of, and I wanted to go swimming through stock photo sites until I found this one, but I have a life to live. You, on the other hand, were clearly more devoted to uncovering this very critical piece of evidence. My hat is off to you. Now I don't have to go through the trouble :)
RP
Mundie, speaking about MS Windows: "The operating system is designed to run on machines that are not designed yet."
There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding it. Discuss.
RP
try downloading / buying your favorite aural browser for a real eye opener.
:)
I swear I thought that said "anal browser". Nice visual, thanks
RP
Making a copy of a song for yourself is alright. Making 10 copies of a song for yourself if alright. Giving those 10 copies (or that one person) to other people who did not buy the music is unlawful, or at the very least outside the spirit of the law (and yes, that matters, because loophole divers are lame).
Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 of your closest friends is flatout wrong, and definitely piracy.
The record industry is wrong. They're overpriced and, especially now, they're not interested in growing their business model to include large catalogs on the internet (which is unbelievably stupid). But the "offsite backup" argument is just as stupid. "I'm just letting people hold copies for me, millions of them". Give me a break. Have the guts to call it what it is. It's swapping music without paying for it.
Now, INTENT... there's the rub. Have I used Napster? Oh yeah. Do I miss Napster? Absolutely. The question is HOW did I use Napster. Mostly, I used it to hear songs that I had heard once or twice on the radio. You could call it evaluation. I bought several CDs based on that online evaluation. Some material was not desirable enough for purchase after that evaluation. Some downloads were of songs that I already own on CD. Admittedly, some were songs that I have never bought and yet still listen to. That is wrong, but at least I admit that it's wrong. The people who try to hide behind the law of "fair use" in the name of stealing are even more wrong. One good thing about Napster's demise was the temptation that it provided for me. It really was hard to prevent myself from downloading songs and then no buy the CDs. I can only imagine how easy it must have been for someone of lesser scruples to download thousands of dollars worth of music.
A little rough math just told me that you could fit over $11,000 worth of average-sized tracks on a 30 GB drive. Using the following logic:
- Average CD costs maybe $15
- Average of 10 songs on a CD
- $1.50 per song, retail
- I'm using 3.8 MB as an average track size. Your figure may vary
- I estimated down to 7500 when I divided 30 GB into a number of 3.8 MB tracks.
- 7500 times 1.50 is the 11,000 dollar figure
Actually, the dollar value of all of that music together would probably be more, because downloading individual tracks instead of entire albums makes the collection worth more. One would pressume that the demand for the collective tracks would be greater. Something like that... I'm rambling.There is a compromise somewhere that will allow internet customers to get the music conveniently and inexpensively and allow the artists and the record companies that they deserve. The record companies are appear to be disinterested, and the morons who insist that "music wants to be free" are nowhere close to that compromise.
RP
Thanks, but 'echo' is also in /bin. For that matter, so it '*' :)
John
I swear I've never before replied twice to myself. But while I'm on the subject of stupid linux things I've done, have you ever wondered what happens when you accidentally put one too many asterisks at the beginning of a crontab line?
/do/stuff
/do/stuff
/root.
* * * * * *
instead of
* * * * *
Yes, it runs every executable in whatever the pwd is at the time, usually the home directory of the user for whom the cron job is running, providing the command that you meant to run as an argument to each of them. I was never so relieved that there were no executables under
RP
Hate it when a funny story is screwed up by a blatant typo:
"you shouldn't run as root AND use rm -rf and THEN decide that you shouldn't have done that."
Sorry.
I know in my heart that there's no need for this on Unix, because you shouldn't run as root AND use rm -rf and THE decide that you shouldn't have done that. There are safeguards in place and, after all, since you're a Linux superuser, you're either good enough that you don't make that kind of mistake or the system isn't important enough for it to really matter.
/bin`. Funny story, though:
/big. That was the first mistake. I have no idea why I felt the need to mount it that close to the root. Although the similarity between "big" and "bin" is obvious in retrospect, it is, after all, retrospect.
/big` and immediately pressed return (I found that return is also a mysterious part of that autocompletion).
/bin. Among them, all of the shells, chmod/chown, grep, kill, ls (try working without that), mv.... the list goes on and on.
Having said that, even though I know how dumb it was, I once accidentally issued `rm -rf
For some reason or another, I happened into an additional hard disk that I put into my Linux box at work (not a production box). I don't remember how big it was, but it was big enough relative to my primary disk that, when I needed a mount point, I chose
Actually, that wasn't my first mistake. My first mistake was running as root.
I mounted the disk and played around with it. I suspect that it was my first time playing around with an additional hard disk, so I copied files over and examined "df -k" and so forth, and eventually I guess I decided to unmount it and do it all over again... I probably would have done endless, mindless file copies for the rest of the day, I was so thrilled with it. Hey, I was young.
This is where it gets embarassing. Perhaps everybody has some mysterious glitch which adds confusion where there should be none. Yes, I honestly do know the difference between a symlink and a mount... I swear it. But in the very brief period of time that it takes to type a command, I sometimes confuse the two in my mind and try to unmount using the "rm" command. More specifically, "rm -rf".
I also noticed on that day that we humans have kind of a built-in autocompletion. If you type the first few letters of your last name, you have a tendency to follow through with the rest of it. And that tendency increases dramatically the closer you get to the last letter. The way I noticed this was when I attempted to issue `rm -rf
Just so you know, there are a great many important things in
This story also reminds me of the time I evaluated WS_FTP Server when it first came out. I needed an FTP server so I could go home and work on some files on an NT server. I wanted access to the whole box, so I set up my FTP account's home directory as c:\ -- I had no idea that when I deleted that account it would attempt to delete the user's home directory, even if it was c:\.
I've never heard a disk thrash like that before or since. And you've never seen anybody turn a box off as quickly as I did when I realized what was going on. Alas, it was too late. Reinstallation and backup restore (yes, I had a backup) commenced immediately. By the way, I've never fully accepted responsibility for that -- I still feel like it should have said "You're about to delete c:\ and all of it's subdirectories. Are you sure?" Because I really didn't think it would do that.
Anyway, my point is that "there, but for the grace of a godlike substance, go you". It's really easy to say we're too good for this, and there's a damn good case that a linux trashcan is not necessary, but for those who want it I think it's a cool piece of code.
That is all.
RP
There's something strange about making a bumping a major version number as an afterthought, don't you think?
.
Don't get me wrong... I have all the confidence in the world in Linus, and he knows way more about what he's doing than I do. I'm just surprised that a project that organized wouldn't have a "3.0 List" by now of all the new stuff they plan to do in 3.0 one of these days... and when they start putting all those pieces together in a source tree, they would call that the "3.0 code" from the beginning.
At least that's the way I would imagine it. But don't miscontrue anything I've said as a suggestion that I have any idea what I'm talking about
RP
Their site says Refunds will be given at the discretion of the Company Management at the bottom... what in the world is that about?
Seems to be a lot of focus on bringing in revenue for a company whose mission is to "act as the focal point for open source VNC". Suggesting that companies contact them about commercial support is one thing (and not a bad idea and I wish them all the best) but suggesting "commercial licensing" is downright silly. Even asking for donations is fine, but why the hell would anybody try to downgrade a license from free to non-free?
RP
A company has been formed aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.'
:)
:) I really AM behind them, I swear. Just having a little fun.
Yeah, I hear there's good money in that
Seriously, best of luck to them. VNC completely and totally rocks. I am an alumnus of VNC on Windows, Linux and AIX and it's a lifesaver.
I see it's one of those "it's free but please contribute so we don't starve" business models, augmented by one of those "You're a corporation that hasn't banned VNC for unspoken and ill-understood 'security reasons' yet? How about this 'enterprise support offering'?" models.
OK, fine... moderate me down. I've got some Karma to spare today
RP
So I suppose you use postcards for all of your mail. Love letters, hate mail, whatever... you have nothing to hide so why should you use an envelope?
Or when you do get mail that's in envelopes (hmmmm, why do they presume your need for all that secrecy?), I suppose you take all the bills and letters out, scan them, and post them on the internet? No?
Then just what is it that you're trying to hide? You're clearly either a terrorist or a pornographer (both are generally held in approximately the same regard in most places). Or could it be that you just want the smallest amount of privacy? Could it be that it's not the damn business of every postal worker who comes in contact with your letters to read them?
Yes, indeed it could. It's called privacy. And the public will continue to insist on more internet privacy once they begin to understand it. The problem right now is that they actually THINK that nobody can read their e-mail but the person they're sending it to. Boy are THEY in for a surprise.
RP
Have you noticed that the file extension on the Netscape toolbar is "twhat"? How friggin' perfect is that? I can't believe the person who came up with that didn't read it the way I read it.
RP
This story peaked my interest and I headed over to Ebay to see what kind of radio stations might be for sale... you never know.
What I found instead was a Ramsey FM Transmitter (model number FM-100) that was currently at $349. Turns out that's way overpriced, considering Ramsey sells it for $224.95, unless this is the high-power version that Ramsey isn't supposed to sell inside the US -- in which case that might be an excellent opportunity for somebody in the US to get this one from a "third party" -- I'm not saying you SHOULD, just that you COULD.
Anyway, I thought this was really neat. Is it going to give you miles and miles of coverage? Heck no. But it's an all-in-one FM transmitter, and replaces a bunch of hefty equipment that I remember from my days in FM radio as a kid. Especially if this is the "overseas version", you could get enough coverage for you and your friends.... then you can head over to the FCC's site about LPFM (Low Power FM) to see if, through your school or something, you could get a LPFM license. Apparently they're pretty straightfoward.