I'm hoping peekabooty will be a *Great* tool. Freenet's in the ether, Gnutella seems to be regarded as "flawed".
But no matter who gets it done right, the very concept of the tool is outstanding, because it gets right at the heart of the issue; do people have a right to privacy, or not? For the French and others, REAL P2P erodes their ability to say "We respect freedom of speech and thought... Except for X, which obviously has to be stopped."
But I bet the only way this thing resembles a "web browser" is in tunnelling everything through port 80 (and maybe 443). Now *that's* the way to hide in a crowd. I'm very interested in the technical details. They will actually have a lot to do with who uses it and how...
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Isn't part of the point of this approach that frequency allocation would be unnecessary if everyone used this type of signal? And that the "dirtying" of "other people's" spectrum is not noticable? IOW, the only people who should give a shit are those whose "property" will be devalued by abundance? I'll shed a tear for Time Warner, honest.
Of course, if I read the article correctly, the transmitter and receiver have to be coded to the same random "seed" - the same one that keeps the signal from producing harmful interference - which means that this technology is immediately useful for things like local wireless nets, walkie-talkies, etc. That's a long way from the Ultimate Wireless Solution.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Really? You are making two assumptions that are demonstrably false:
A better product is not an advantage if others are also permitted to make a better product.To which i reply; bullshit. Keep a few things as trade secrets, and it's likely you've got a five year lead on anyone trying to copy you. Any invention worth promoting with a monopoly tends to be a hot market in the end, which means that your product is beginning to slide into obsolescence in 5 years.
Corporations go head to head and win market share with competetive excellence. This is also bullshit and there's a PhD in economics to the first person to demonstrate this well. Sprint builds a good wireless network in NYC, AT&T sucks there and builds well in LA. They are AVOIDING competition, by dividing markets qualitatively. Companies find specialties and niches, and reign in those niches. Look in most economic markets, and you'll see one dominant player, one minor player, and a host of smaller players who get assimilated or crushed.
Companies in strong competition use substantive technological advances to compete with each other Not usually. A really nasty fight involves distribution channels, price wars, threats, advertising, and underhanded tactics that will work QUICKLY enough to matter. On the other end of the scale, look at how much research and how many patents came out of Bell Labs. They weren't competing with anyone. Somewhere in the middle, you have IBM, which isn't really competing with anyone in particular on some of their wilder research stuff. They are just ensuring their seat at the table next hand, not playing a patent trump card.
There are exceptions to these observations; I would say biotech is the only sphere that really shows why we have patents. They invest in ideas and compete for big payoffs that patents make possible. On the other hand, they haven't produced all that much compared to research divisions in old-line companies. So it's early to say that patents are really useful here. Don't even bring up (medical) drugs in general, because it's pretty clear that the biggest cost is advertising, second is the FDA, and research is last. Patents don't prevent - and may even contribute to - the orphan drug phenomenon.
In a world without patents, corporate research would be on a shorter leash, but the longer leash typically benefits basic research, much of which is done at universities anyway. You might argue that corporations would be more profitable, since the distance to a manufacturable product would be less.
From a different angle, if it takes your competitors five minutes to copy what you did, it's clever, but not enough of an invention to be worth a patent. Like those little cardboard things Starbuck uses to insulate your hand against the heat. They have a patent pending mark on them. 100,000 years of humans using tools, and no one ever thought of angling the cut against the grain to make a strong, cone-like shape? Bullshit. If that impresses you, you are feeble minded indeed.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Here here. The layer of bullshit is so thick that it's more and more rare to find people who can cut through it... Kinda reminds me of an old George Carlin routine that traces the path of military language from "Shell shock" through "battle fatigue" to "post-traumatic stress disorder". The cloaking is not accidental; it's there to hide very nasty realities.
The truth is that you can't fight it with language on the same level; blunt words are needed.
You can't say "Lasting innovation in computing has more often been acheived by solidifying the gains of public research institutions into a lingua franca via the appropriate standards bodies than it has via proprietary extensions enshrined in the standard forms of intellectual property; patents, copyright, and trade secrets protected by non-disclosure agreements." The PHBs at whom Mundie directs his fear-mongering have fallen asleep. You can say "Mundie is a lunatic. Open Source created the Internet and E-mail, which I hear even Bill Gates uses. Microsoft didn't even invent windows. Mundie doesn't wear a funny hat and stick his hand between his jacket buttons, does he?"
Allchin sounds like a genius next to Mundie. I guess with Ballmer kicked upstairs, Microsoft is still looking to fill the position of Loudmouth Attack Dog.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:better off understanding ancient Mandarin
on
Apocalypse 2
·
· Score: 2
In a weird way, it's syntactic promiscuity (it's all good, baby) does resemble learning ancient Mandarin. Chinese is an ideographic writing system that doesn't care how you pronounce it, as long as you agree that character A means Alpha. Even if you speak Cantonese, you have a reasonable chance of understanding ancient Mandarin as well as a modern Taiwanese. In the same manner, I've seen Perl code where I'm not sure what their original coding language is, but thanks to Perl, it's reasonably easy to understand someone whose internal coding language is completely different from mine.
Perl. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
All I know is, doing decent OO and well modularized code is hateful in Perl. I pray this will be better in Perl 6. Right now, I use plenty of server side java for web stuff, even though CPAN kicks ass over any services you'll find built into Java and I'd rather cast my lot with Larry than with Scott any day. If Perl were a bit straightforward for compartmentalizing large projects, and if mod_perl made any damn sense, I'd use it, because in my experience, mod_perl is much faster than Java, PHP, ASP, more open, better integrated with OS level functions (try setting permissions on files from Java), etc, etc, etc.
I love it, even though I hate it and it enables the ugliest code in history. I still prefer it to Python's shaven tonsure and vow of celibacy. Perl is the whore of Babylon and you love her.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Funny you mention crashing your car. Because studies do show - consistently - that a major cause of car accidents is driver inattention due to overtiredness. And while a certain lucky few hardly sleep at all, sleep deprivation can be fatal. Sleep deprivation is a softcore form of torture.
So you are right in that there is much we don't know - we don't really even know what sleep is for - but we *do* know that too little of it is usually a Very Bad Thing.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
That's what I'm waiting for! Virtual menus via a ring - hell, I'd settle for a finger glove - would be nice, too.
But in the meantime, my Visor beats paper. For one thing, I can read what I've written in. For another, I've got a backup. That's enough justification for me to view it as more than a toy right now.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Makes me wonder how many people have gotten themselves into fights by cursing at someone on the other end of one of those cellphone earpiece thingies. You know: "No,fuck you!" "What did you say to me?" "I wasn't talking to you! I was just talking on my"(Whap!).
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Name 10 CDs in your collection that are not from RIAA companies. Can't do it without looking? Didn't think so.
More proof that proof by analogy is fraud? Sure, I'll bite. The RIAA has a monopoly on their artists. That's what copyright is, a monopoly. Now try to buy Britanny Spears from a non RIAA company (legally, of course). There are laws to restrain the effect of that monopoly, such as the anti-payola laws. Boycott is not a valid response. For an effective response, change the laws.
Now find one person who can say that music is not essential and I'll show you a total jackass.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
They're doing well because many buy this argument. I don't. Anyone who has been around computers in a serious way for 5 years or more shouldn't, either. If the company itself doesn't go out of business, they cancel product lines and leave you high and dry unless there are enough others like you to make it worthwhile. So, basically, you run with the pack where possible. Not too much different from running free software, except that you can't point a finger and say "That's the bad man! There he is!".
Software support as a service is the reason why IBM has not gone the way of many others. It is where Microsoft has figured they need to go, and where all software goes in the end. Think about it; what's a bigger economy: servicing, repairing, and upgrading homes, or building prefab homes?
It's also rather arrogant to characterize the folks from, e.g. Apache as "college student hackers." There are a lot of very professional, very accomplished programmers out there doing shit for reasons you will need years to understand (and guess what; IBM pays them to do it, too). Run with the big dogs a while, you'll not be so impressed with IBM's interest in people from your school. Or maybe you'll turn into another marketroid whose only asset is more facility with jargon than your victi^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers.
You are right about the importance of service. Just don't forget that there is nothing to service if the real heavies don't write the code.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
But I also found the timing of the Microsoft announcement and the eEye announcement on Bugtraq interesting. They came out basically at the same time, and there is nothing about eEye's self-aggrandizing announcement that makes me think they would be particularly sensitive to protocl.
One of two things happened; either those eEye guys are more polite and rational than they sound, or else bugtraq held the announcements to coincide. Acutally I'm guessing both.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
True in a certain way... There are many niche software products - binary only, natch, that people keep running for years until something else comes along. But at least if the provider goes out of business, they have the chance to keep things running until they find a replacement (unless overzealous copy protection is in place).
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
The weirdest thing about spam is that the most persistent spam I get is to aliases I nuked and from domains I've blocked. I guess certain lists get sold again and again, and it doesn't matter that 90% of the addresses are crap.
For some weird reason (my guess is the warranty on a ceramic knife) I've been getting craploads of spam from Hong Kong - I can't even read Chinese, but they expect me to buy toner cartriges from a "local" address - in Hong Kong. I haven't answered a single one, and have been giving them "550 Rejected as spam. Go away." for 18 months and they still mail daily. I've blocked Class B nets from China. They won't stop.
Good enough reason to sell nukes to Taiwan;-)
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Someone - who knows me, I expect - "ordained" me. I found this out via an e-mail. I've never gotten a followup. Beats the hell out of me, but the list of titles they were willing to confer was truly impressive; Grand Magus, Universal Buddah and the like.
I had no idea there was a history behind them.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Gee, I'd give you some credit, except that we are talking about implementing censorware, which REALLY assumes that people "need to be guided by others." That, and the fact that Pat Robertson's crew HAVE been bounced out of many "let's not teach evolution" school system takeovers by people who did recognize the outside influence. After this, they learned to be stealthy about their presence in shaping "local" standards to their own.
Finally, in the case of censorware, where it has been made essentially ILLEGAL to learn what decisions are being made for you, you are not only being guided by others, but you are being forbidden by law from learning HOW or WHY. So, in other words, people do not even know if they like what is being proposed. The guy who makes the censorware list could be receiving transmissions from Pat through the fillings in his teeth.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Yup, they sure do. Not that it's a good thing, but...
Makes me wonder what happened to the trolls who usually appear whenever any kind of censorship or monitoring is discussed. I can almost hear them saying "They own the pipes, it's theirs, no one has ANY right to complain." You'd think if they had any real integrity as trolls they'd say it now.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
This also brings up the converse; since the "anti-circumvention" technology in in contrast with the rights of the public, consumers, the first amendment, and copyright law, it has been suggested that such content can be protected by the LAW or TECHNOLOGY, but not both. So content locked up with copy prevention schemes - which do not permit fair use or other conditions of copyright - cannot benefit from the legal protection afforded copyrighted material.
This is also in the spirit of copyright law's traditions and purpose; a trade-off between the public's rights, and the special rights granted to copyright holders to protect their creations (note I did not say "property" - this is a FICTION) from the ease of copying. If they copyright holders are safe from copying, there is no right to copyright.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Delivering the error message back to the author rarely does much good. I wish I had a nickel for every time someone I had this conversation:
"My e-mail got returned, why?" "I don't know, did you look at the message to see why it was returned?"
"No"
"Do that now and tell me what it says."
"It says.... blah blah blah... No such user."
"The e-mail address you sent it to does not exist."
"Oh, OK." (calls friend) "Hey, my e-mail to you got sent back for some weird reason. There must be something wrong with our server because we can't send e-mail. Can I send you a fax?"
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
I can't tell you how many times I've told people how to put their stupid printer back "online", even though the answer was taped to the printer. We've got at least 50 more years of suffering through people who view it as their god-given right to be computer illiterate. I haven't found many secretaries who could handle a simple install. In fact, I got canned from a temp job once because I changed the screensaver, which meant I was doing Very Very Dangerous Things. Too bad she married into citizenship; she'd really be much better off cuttin sod. Make computers foolproof, and the fools will keep breaking them.
I've seen the other side, too. To my mind, "IT" stands for "barely brighter than the idiots they're helping" or else "too lazy to learn real administration and programming."
I've suffered under plenty of petty motherfucking dictator assholes from hell who don't know shit about anything, but know enough to tell me how to "fix" the installation I made, then fuck everything up completely, then tell me that I'm not allowed to install IDEs, alternate web browsers, PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, Homesite, or Image Ready, even though I was hired to do web sites, and had everything up and running without their help. Trust me if I could remember that dumb cast mem^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H fuck's name I'd be publishing anon right now.
But, hey, keep trolling. When you make a coherent point I'll reply.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Thank god someone pointed this out. You are 150% correct that the problem was misstating the value of the product. I can't tell you how many Real Powerful Execs and hardass Ad Sales types I've heard complain about the fact that everything from web log analysis to banner ads was sold to them as the omniscient magic laser that would dispel the clouds of ignorance that lay over advertising for millenia.
Those clouds are mighty thick.
The clickthrough rate for billboards is 0.000000000000000000%. Neilsen statistics are barely better than educated guesswork, and often worse. I doubt anyone has non-voodoo statistics on the number of cars sold by a superbowl ad. I bet you'd have a hard time finding a magazine who got more dollars from advertisers if sales rose following the publication of the ad. More apropos, response rates on direct mail make banner ads look very effective, and even more so when you consider the cost, and companies still love them. The truly abysmal value of Spam hasn't kept it out of my inbox. But when was the last time you heard someone completely dismiss an entire arena of advertising?
Banner ads are a great tool, but they were sold incorrectly by people who didn't understand them at all to people who understood them even less. They are a great tool the same way as many forms of advertising; they are an important part of making household names out of companies and controlling, creating, and promoting an image that helps the company sell its product. Banner ads should be viewed in this context, not as a robot army of magical sales fairies who work for $0.10 a day.
The author of that article rightly criticizes the industry dweebs and ignoramuses who caused this mess, but he's not any better at understanding what the ads are for.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
I live in NYC, and local calls on a payphone are still a quarter. Then again, half of them rip you off, and I've never successfully gotten reimbursed from a broken payphone. I've always been told never to use a phone in the middle of a block; they are privately operated and very "unreliable." Phone company phones tend to be on the corner and are somewhat more reliable.
Then there's all the phones with screws underneath, so unless you have a screwdriver, you lose the "returned" quarter if you hang up before completing a call. Then some guy steps out of the alley and takes the screw and your quarter.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
But no matter who gets it done right, the very concept of the tool is outstanding, because it gets right at the heart of the issue; do people have a right to privacy, or not? For the French and others, REAL P2P erodes their ability to say "We respect freedom of speech and thought... Except for X, which obviously has to be stopped."
But I bet the only way this thing resembles a "web browser" is in tunnelling everything through port 80 (and maybe 443). Now *that's* the way to hide in a crowd. I'm very interested in the technical details. They will actually have a lot to do with who uses it and how...
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Isn't part of the point of this approach that frequency allocation would be unnecessary if everyone used this type of signal? And that the "dirtying" of "other people's" spectrum is not noticable? IOW, the only people who should give a shit are those whose "property" will be devalued by abundance? I'll shed a tear for Time Warner, honest.
Of course, if I read the article correctly, the transmitter and receiver have to be coded to the same random "seed" - the same one that keeps the signal from producing harmful interference - which means that this technology is immediately useful for things like local wireless nets, walkie-talkies, etc. That's a long way from the Ultimate Wireless Solution.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
- A better product is not an advantage if others are also permitted to make a better product.To which i reply; bullshit. Keep a few things as trade secrets, and it's likely you've got a five year lead on anyone trying to copy you. Any invention worth promoting with a monopoly tends to be a hot market in the end, which means that your product is beginning to slide into obsolescence in 5 years.
- Corporations go head to head and win market share with competetive excellence. This is also bullshit and there's a PhD in economics to the first person to demonstrate this well. Sprint builds a good wireless network in NYC, AT&T sucks there and builds well in LA. They are AVOIDING competition, by dividing markets qualitatively. Companies find specialties and niches, and reign in those niches. Look in most economic markets, and you'll see one dominant player, one minor player, and a host of smaller players who get assimilated or crushed.
- Companies in strong competition use substantive technological advances to compete with each other Not usually. A really nasty fight involves distribution channels, price wars, threats, advertising, and underhanded tactics that will work QUICKLY enough to matter. On the other end of the scale, look at how much research and how many patents came out of Bell Labs. They weren't competing with anyone. Somewhere in the middle, you have IBM, which isn't really competing with anyone in particular on some of their wilder research stuff. They are just ensuring their seat at the table next hand, not playing a patent trump card.
There are exceptions to these observations; I would say biotech is the only sphere that really shows why we have patents. They invest in ideas and compete for big payoffs that patents make possible. On the other hand, they haven't produced all that much compared to research divisions in old-line companies. So it's early to say that patents are really useful here. Don't even bring up (medical) drugs in general, because it's pretty clear that the biggest cost is advertising, second is the FDA, and research is last. Patents don't prevent - and may even contribute to - the orphan drug phenomenon.In a world without patents, corporate research would be on a shorter leash, but the longer leash typically benefits basic research, much of which is done at universities anyway. You might argue that corporations would be more profitable, since the distance to a manufacturable product would be less.
From a different angle, if it takes your competitors five minutes to copy what you did, it's clever, but not enough of an invention to be worth a patent. Like those little cardboard things Starbuck uses to insulate your hand against the heat. They have a patent pending mark on them. 100,000 years of humans using tools, and no one ever thought of angling the cut against the grain to make a strong, cone-like shape? Bullshit. If that impresses you, you are feeble minded indeed.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
The truth is that you can't fight it with language on the same level; blunt words are needed.
You can't say "Lasting innovation in computing has more often been acheived by solidifying the gains of public research institutions into a lingua franca via the appropriate standards bodies than it has via proprietary extensions enshrined in the standard forms of intellectual property; patents, copyright, and trade secrets protected by non-disclosure agreements." The PHBs at whom Mundie directs his fear-mongering have fallen asleep. You can say "Mundie is a lunatic. Open Source created the Internet and E-mail, which I hear even Bill Gates uses. Microsoft didn't even invent windows. Mundie doesn't wear a funny hat and stick his hand between his jacket buttons, does he?"
Allchin sounds like a genius next to Mundie. I guess with Ballmer kicked upstairs, Microsoft is still looking to fill the position of Loudmouth Attack Dog.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Perl. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
All I know is, doing decent OO and well modularized code is hateful in Perl. I pray this will be better in Perl 6. Right now, I use plenty of server side java for web stuff, even though CPAN kicks ass over any services you'll find built into Java and I'd rather cast my lot with Larry than with Scott any day. If Perl were a bit straightforward for compartmentalizing large projects, and if mod_perl made any damn sense, I'd use it, because in my experience, mod_perl is much faster than Java, PHP, ASP, more open, better integrated with OS level functions (try setting permissions on files from Java), etc, etc, etc.
I love it, even though I hate it and it enables the ugliest code in history. I still prefer it to Python's shaven tonsure and vow of celibacy. Perl is the whore of Babylon and you love her.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
So you are right in that there is much we don't know - we don't really even know what sleep is for - but we *do* know that too little of it is usually a Very Bad Thing.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
But in the meantime, my Visor beats paper. For one thing, I can read what I've written in. For another, I've got a backup. That's enough justification for me to view it as more than a toy right now.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Makes me wonder how many people have gotten themselves into fights by cursing at someone on the other end of one of those cellphone earpiece thingies. You know: "No,fuck you!" "What did you say to me?" "I wasn't talking to you! I was just talking on my"(Whap!).
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
More proof that proof by analogy is fraud? Sure, I'll bite. The RIAA has a monopoly on their artists. That's what copyright is, a monopoly. Now try to buy Britanny Spears from a non RIAA company (legally, of course). There are laws to restrain the effect of that monopoly, such as the anti-payola laws. Boycott is not a valid response. For an effective response, change the laws.
Now find one person who can say that music is not essential and I'll show you a total jackass.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Software support as a service is the reason why IBM has not gone the way of many others. It is where Microsoft has figured they need to go, and where all software goes in the end. Think about it; what's a bigger economy: servicing, repairing, and upgrading homes, or building prefab homes?
It's also rather arrogant to characterize the folks from, e.g. Apache as "college student hackers." There are a lot of very professional, very accomplished programmers out there doing shit for reasons you will need years to understand (and guess what; IBM pays them to do it, too). Run with the big dogs a while, you'll not be so impressed with IBM's interest in people from your school. Or maybe you'll turn into another marketroid whose only asset is more facility with jargon than your victi^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers.
You are right about the importance of service. Just don't forget that there is nothing to service if the real heavies don't write the code.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
But I also found the timing of the Microsoft announcement and the eEye announcement on Bugtraq interesting. They came out basically at the same time, and there is nothing about eEye's self-aggrandizing announcement that makes me think they would be particularly sensitive to protocl.
One of two things happened; either those eEye guys are more polite and rational than they sound, or else bugtraq held the announcements to coincide. Acutally I'm guessing both.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
True in a certain way... There are many niche software products - binary only, natch, that people keep running for years until something else comes along. But at least if the provider goes out of business, they have the chance to keep things running until they find a replacement (unless overzealous copy protection is in place).
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
For some weird reason (my guess is the warranty on a ceramic knife) I've been getting craploads of spam from Hong Kong - I can't even read Chinese, but they expect me to buy toner cartriges from a "local" address - in Hong Kong. I haven't answered a single one, and have been giving them "550 Rejected as spam. Go away." for 18 months and they still mail daily. I've blocked Class B nets from China. They won't stop.
Good enough reason to sell nukes to Taiwan ;-)
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Well, guess I better not try my Jonestown jokes.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
I had no idea there was a history behind them.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Finally, in the case of censorware, where it has been made essentially ILLEGAL to learn what decisions are being made for you, you are not only being guided by others, but you are being forbidden by law from learning HOW or WHY. So, in other words, people do not even know if they like what is being proposed. The guy who makes the censorware list could be receiving transmissions from Pat through the fillings in his teeth.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Makes me wonder what happened to the trolls who usually appear whenever any kind of censorship or monitoring is discussed. I can almost hear them saying "They own the pipes, it's theirs, no one has ANY right to complain." You'd think if they had any real integrity as trolls they'd say it now.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
This is also in the spirit of copyright law's traditions and purpose; a trade-off between the public's rights, and the special rights granted to copyright holders to protect their creations (note I did not say "property" - this is a FICTION) from the ease of copying. If they copyright holders are safe from copying, there is no right to copyright.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
I can't tell you how many times I've told people how to put their stupid printer back "online", even though the answer was taped to the printer. We've got at least 50 more years of suffering through people who view it as their god-given right to be computer illiterate. I haven't found many secretaries who could handle a simple install. In fact, I got canned from a temp job once because I changed the screensaver, which meant I was doing Very Very Dangerous Things. Too bad she married into citizenship; she'd really be much better off cuttin sod. Make computers foolproof, and the fools will keep breaking them.
I've seen the other side, too. To my mind, "IT" stands for "barely brighter than the idiots they're helping" or else "too lazy to learn real administration and programming." I've suffered under plenty of petty motherfucking dictator assholes from hell who don't know shit about anything, but know enough to tell me how to "fix" the installation I made, then fuck everything up completely, then tell me that I'm not allowed to install IDEs, alternate web browsers, PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, Homesite, or Image Ready, even though I was hired to do web sites, and had everything up and running without their help. Trust me if I could remember that dumb cast mem^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H fuck's name I'd be publishing anon right now.
But, hey, keep trolling. When you make a coherent point I'll reply.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Well, if they were smarter geeks, the bombs they made would have wasted the cafeteria and killed far more than their guns. But they were duds.
A sick and agile mind is more dangerous than any kind of brute force.
<joke>
Now if they'd been let loose with a dozen grams of
marijuana, who knows how many may have died.
</joke>
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Better not hire any boys named Sue, they've been known to go loco.
Now imagine the lawsuits from this one! How are you going to cope?
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Those clouds are mighty thick.
The clickthrough rate for billboards is 0.000000000000000000%. Neilsen statistics are barely better than educated guesswork, and often worse. I doubt anyone has non-voodoo statistics on the number of cars sold by a superbowl ad. I bet you'd have a hard time finding a magazine who got more dollars from advertisers if sales rose following the publication of the ad. More apropos, response rates on direct mail make banner ads look very effective, and even more so when you consider the cost, and companies still love them. The truly abysmal value of Spam hasn't kept it out of my inbox. But when was the last time you heard someone completely dismiss an entire arena of advertising?
Banner ads are a great tool, but they were sold incorrectly by people who didn't understand them at all to people who understood them even less. They are a great tool the same way as many forms of advertising; they are an important part of making household names out of companies and controlling, creating, and promoting an image that helps the company sell its product. Banner ads should be viewed in this context, not as a robot army of magical sales fairies who work for $0.10 a day.
The author of that article rightly criticizes the industry dweebs and ignoramuses who caused this mess, but he's not any better at understanding what the ads are for.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Then there's all the phones with screws underneath, so unless you have a screwdriver, you lose the "returned" quarter if you hang up before completing a call. Then some guy steps out of the alley and takes the screw and your quarter.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.