That's why they all had those weird flaps that stuck out over the windows? I always thought it was to cut sun glare... but yeah, they would just about cover the windows, if lowered...
When I was a kid in the midwest, Air Raid sirens were still tested at noon every Sunday. No one slept past noon, lemme tellya.:)
I know someone who washed his grubby keyboard with the garden hose. Let it dry for a week, and it was good as new.
I was once given a boxful of SCSI cards and cables that had evidently been owned by a smoker -- they reeked so bad I couldn't stand to have 'em in the house. They all got the soap-water-and-scrubbrush treatment, then sat outdoors to air for a month, and all work fine. (And stink far less than they did.)
Someone just gave me a lovely 19" monitor (CRT; no I can't use an LCD for my work) that REEKS of pot smoke... it's sitting out in the yard while I debate how best to clean the thing up so I can use it. It's stinky enough that using the garden hose seems altogether too reasonable.:(
Not me... I ain't letting someone steal my identity-related data just by shaking my hand!!
Seriously, that could be an issue -- but I can see benefits, such as being able to carry and transmit data without a dedicated interface device; or how about using it for devices to aid the disabled?
Yeah, same thing I see in California, with all manner of charlatans. Weird diets are a big one around here. In Montana, 99% of these weird beliefs would get you laughed out of the state, and the other 1% would get you committed.;)
Trouble is, some of the charlatans have PhDs** so that gives them credibility, especially among the educated, who don't realise it's perfectly possible to be both educated on one subject, and woefully ignorant of everything else. My favourite to date from one of these PhDs: "Corn ferments in the digestive tract! So you should only eat rice!" (Er, what do you think they make sake from, bamboo??)
But nowadays, "knowing how to lead" means "knowing how to make the next quarter's bottom line look most attractive to the stock market", whether that's actually good for the company in the long haul or not. And whether it's good for their customers has become totally irrelevant, especially when those customers have nowhere else to go.
I blame this on the new generation of college-graduate managers, who know all about business management in the short term, but have never actually BUILT a business from the ground up. (*cough* Carly *cough*)
I suggest that top-level managers' salaries be tied to how well the company does after they've destroyed it and left for greener pastures, rather than to the short-term gains they achieve while they're in charge. And better yet, make all managers start at the bottom each time they join a new company. Then maybe we'd see more concern for a company's long-term future (which ultimately is determined by customer satisfaction, not by cost-cutting) rather than only for next quarter's stock performance.
Or do away with the stock market, which would accomplish much the same thing. (And I say that as a shareholder with significant investments.)
Well, it needs to be broken up again, so your generation can enjoy the spectacle too.
A big chunk of Verizon started life as poor little GTE, which as an independent had protected monopoly status way back when -- and still enjoys that status today. Other telephone providers are not allowed to compete in Verizon-owned areas.
GTE had such horrible service that people would often pay extra to escape to another company, if they were lucky enough to live in a border area. Verizon continues this tradition today.
You are correct -- this desire to "believe in magic" is becoming more and more widespread, across all facets of life. "Educated" people are often the worst culprits.
But I don't think it has anything to do with religion (many of the more "educated" magic-believers are not religious at all). I think it has to do with that nowadays very few people actually have any realworld experience outside of their little niche, and can't imagine how anyone else could, either. This is probably why "belief in magic" is far more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas, where people are still raised with SOME contact with the Real World.
I first noticed the accelerating proliferation of this "belief in magic" at the point where city populations became dominated by a 3rd generation raised away from the farm, who didn't have even a grandparent's tales to connect them to How The World Really Works.
In short, it's a byproduct of a relatively insulated lifestyle. Of course this is very much the same effect that religion has, when it is used to isolate its adherents from other lines of thought. So religion =can= be a subset of the problem.
"Magic" for this discussion is defined as "*I* don't understand it, therefore no one else can understand it either; hence the more farfetched the Wizard's Incantation, the more I believe it Must Be True."
And does it apply only to direct sales (to individuals who get their access from AT&T) or does it also apply to resellers?
Frex, my wireless ISP is thru a local company, but their connectivity is direct from AT&T. Does AT&T therefore get to dictate what my ISP can offer me??
Actually, the USPS has already implemented their version of Goodmail. It's called the bulk mailing rate, where for a smaller fee than for normal mail, junkmailers can ensure that their mailings reach your mailbox.
"It doesn't matter how healthy the population is - the drug companies will find something wrong to treat."
We are seeing the same thing in veterinary medicine -- revenue streams being generated by needless tests and the resulting unnecessary treatments for "conditions" that are in fact *normal*, but would go unnoticed *and cause no health problems* if the aforementioned needless tests were not done (but could become a major ongoing problem if "treated" -- thus a revenue stream.)
This has come about because of two factors:
1) Vet schools are now teaching business management and marketing first and foremost, and
2) The proliferation of pet insurance, which requires itemizing everything. (This is what, in less than 10 years, turned the formerly-$60 routine spay into a vet bill of up to $600 in some areas.)
Maybe what's needed is a different insurance model, thus:
======== You have genes for Known Condition X, but are presently asymptomatic. We don't KNOW if you'll ever develop symptoms, but there is a finite risk that you will do so.
Hence we will insure you against everything BUT Condition X. If you want insurance covering Condition X, we will sell it to you, but as a separate policy under rates that reflect the *odds and costs* associated with Condition X. =======
Obviously under this scheme, it would be in the insurance company's best interest if all their clients were gene-mapped.
But it might also be in their clients' best interests -- you could cherrypick your insurance needs according to your known genetic risk factors, and pay accordingly, rather than the current shotgun system where everyone pays according to everyone else's *presumed* and averaged risk factors.
[reads article] This concept of "intent to distribute" is more significant than the copyright fight. It could, by extension, become "you possess {x}, therefore you must have an intent to do {crime y normally committed using item x}.
It's rather like the argument that no one buys a handgun except to use it to kill people.
Maybe someone should pitch it as a TV movie of the week. Imagine the irony if a TV-production branch of some cartel wound up producing a docudrama about their own audio-branch's evildoings:)
Seriously, it might be a good project for some production-arts student, to ultimately be released into the public domain for maximum exposure.
"I think $750 per day is a reasonable amount tho. Surely a day of a person's life is worth as much as a copy of a song. So 547,500 for two years."
Seriously, that sounds like a good rule-of-thumb penalty for this sort of abuse. Enough to be painful for the abuser, not so much as to err on the side of reverse abuse.
Okay, the example *I* know about, from back in the OS late-6.x or early-7.x era (I forget exactly which model and OS it was, but close enough):
This particular Mac was touted as being THE new-age multimedia solution (then meaning primarily audio). But as shipped it could not do its prescribed multimedia tasks due to some sort of firmware error. Apple WOULD NOT ALLOW its programmers to create and release the very simple firmware fix. Apple's *official* solution for its customers was "Buy a whole new machine."
This isn't hearsay; it's straight from a friend who was one of Apple's core OS coders at the time.
That's a real problem with the whole issue -- as you say people don't realise that privacy and similar rights matter, until a violation of such rights comes up and bites them.
That's how we lose rights -- their lack doesn't affect most people most of the time. By the time it affects all people all the time (as is eventually the case with every erosion of rights), it's too late to go back and fix it, and the new generation that grew up without said rights thinks it's perfectly normal to do without, and kinda weird to want it.:(
And people forget that gov't doesn't just pull its ideas out of the air. Gov't policies are derived from the underlying society, and laws reflect what is acceptable *at some level* in that society.
If it becomes acceptable for private entities to snoop/datamine/etc. then it will soon be acceptable for the gov't to snoop/datamine/etc *at the same level*, and laws will be changed to reflect that. Eventually, there will be no right of privacy left, even within the most closed confines of your own home.
This is especially relevant in the current Congressional climate of "Government by, for, and of the Corporation" (witness what's being done with copyright laws and the like).
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That's why they all had those weird flaps that stuck out over the windows? I always thought it was to cut sun glare... but yeah, they would just about cover the windows, if lowered...
:)
When I was a kid in the midwest, Air Raid sirens were still tested at noon every Sunday. No one slept past noon, lemme tellya.
You've mistaken your Chevy for a Ford. It's the Chevy that woulda been a lump of rust. :)
[eyeing 1978 Ford truck in my driveway, which has never had a lick of polish or similar care, but is still completely rust-free]
I know someone who washed his grubby keyboard with the garden hose. Let it dry for a week, and it was good as new.
:(
I was once given a boxful of SCSI cards and cables that had evidently been owned by a smoker -- they reeked so bad I couldn't stand to have 'em in the house. They all got the soap-water-and-scrubbrush treatment, then sat outdoors to air for a month, and all work fine. (And stink far less than they did.)
Someone just gave me a lovely 19" monitor (CRT; no I can't use an LCD for my work) that REEKS of pot smoke... it's sitting out in the yard while I debate how best to clean the thing up so I can use it. It's stinky enough that using the garden hose seems altogether too reasonable.
Or wait til someone reporting an emergency gets jammed, and the subject of the emergency dies because no one was able to report it in a timely manner.
I smell lawsuits.
So what the heck is "Cell phone misuse" -- throwing it at your obstreperous children??!
Not me... I ain't letting someone steal my identity-related data just by shaking my hand!!
Seriously, that could be an issue -- but I can see benefits, such as being able to carry and transmit data without a dedicated interface device; or how about using it for devices to aid the disabled?
Yeah, same thing I see in California, with all manner of charlatans. Weird diets are a big one around here. In Montana, 99% of these weird beliefs would get you laughed out of the state, and the other 1% would get you committed. ;)
Trouble is, some of the charlatans have PhDs** so that gives them credibility, especially among the educated, who don't realise it's perfectly possible to be both educated on one subject, and woefully ignorant of everything else. My favourite to date from one of these PhDs: "Corn ferments in the digestive tract! So you should only eat rice!" (Er, what do you think they make sake from, bamboo??)
** "Piled Higher and Deeper"
But nowadays, "knowing how to lead" means "knowing how to make the next quarter's bottom line look most attractive to the stock market", whether that's actually good for the company in the long haul or not. And whether it's good for their customers has become totally irrelevant, especially when those customers have nowhere else to go.
I blame this on the new generation of college-graduate managers, who know all about business management in the short term, but have never actually BUILT a business from the ground up. (*cough* Carly *cough*)
I suggest that top-level managers' salaries be tied to how well the company does after they've destroyed it and left for greener pastures, rather than to the short-term gains they achieve while they're in charge. And better yet, make all managers start at the bottom each time they join a new company. Then maybe we'd see more concern for a company's long-term future (which ultimately is determined by customer satisfaction, not by cost-cutting) rather than only for next quarter's stock performance.
Or do away with the stock market, which would accomplish much the same thing. (And I say that as a shareholder with significant investments.)
Well, it needs to be broken up again, so your generation can enjoy the spectacle too.
A big chunk of Verizon started life as poor little GTE, which as an independent had protected monopoly status way back when -- and still enjoys that status today. Other telephone providers are not allowed to compete in Verizon-owned areas.
GTE had such horrible service that people would often pay extra to escape to another company, if they were lucky enough to live in a border area. Verizon continues this tradition today.
You are correct -- this desire to "believe in magic" is becoming more and more widespread, across all facets of life. "Educated" people are often the worst culprits.
But I don't think it has anything to do with religion (many of the more "educated" magic-believers are not religious at all). I think it has to do with that nowadays very few people actually have any realworld experience outside of their little niche, and can't imagine how anyone else could, either. This is probably why "belief in magic" is far more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas, where people are still raised with SOME contact with the Real World.
I first noticed the accelerating proliferation of this "belief in magic" at the point where city populations became dominated by a 3rd generation raised away from the farm, who didn't have even a grandparent's tales to connect them to How The World Really Works.
In short, it's a byproduct of a relatively insulated lifestyle. Of course this is very much the same effect that religion has, when it is used to isolate its adherents from other lines of thought. So religion =can= be a subset of the problem.
"Magic" for this discussion is defined as "*I* don't understand it, therefore no one else can understand it either; hence the more farfetched the Wizard's Incantation, the more I believe it Must Be True."
And does it apply only to direct sales (to individuals who get their access from AT&T) or does it also apply to resellers?
Frex, my wireless ISP is thru a local company, but their connectivity is direct from AT&T. Does AT&T therefore get to dictate what my ISP can offer me??
Actually, the USPS has already implemented their version of Goodmail. It's called the bulk mailing rate, where for a smaller fee than for normal mail, junkmailers can ensure that their mailings reach your mailbox.
From TFBlurb:
"if the recipient has an arrangement with you, as your doctor or lawyer would, then the ISP is interfering in their business relationship with you."
How is this not unlawful restraint of trade??
"It doesn't matter how healthy the population is - the drug companies will find something wrong to treat."
We are seeing the same thing in veterinary medicine -- revenue streams being generated by needless tests and the resulting unnecessary treatments for "conditions" that are in fact *normal*, but would go unnoticed *and cause no health problems* if the aforementioned needless tests were not done (but could become a major ongoing problem if "treated" -- thus a revenue stream.)
This has come about because of two factors:
1) Vet schools are now teaching business management and marketing first and foremost, and
2) The proliferation of pet insurance, which requires itemizing everything. (This is what, in less than 10 years, turned the formerly-$60 routine spay into a vet bill of up to $600 in some areas.)
Maybe what's needed is a different insurance model, thus:
========
You have genes for Known Condition X, but are presently asymptomatic. We don't KNOW if you'll ever develop symptoms, but there is a finite risk that you will do so.
Hence we will insure you against everything BUT Condition X. If you want insurance covering Condition X, we will sell it to you, but as a separate policy under rates that reflect the *odds and costs* associated with Condition X.
=======
Obviously under this scheme, it would be in the insurance company's best interest if all their clients were gene-mapped.
But it might also be in their clients' best interests -- you could cherrypick your insurance needs according to your known genetic risk factors, and pay accordingly, rather than the current shotgun system where everyone pays according to everyone else's *presumed* and averaged risk factors.
I initially misread your disclaimer as "I Am A Lawyer But I Am Not New York Country Lawyer" :)
Just curious, anything in particular in Wikipedia that hit your Beware nerve?
[reads article] This concept of "intent to distribute" is more significant than the copyright fight. It could, by extension, become "you possess {x}, therefore you must have an intent to do {crime y normally committed using item x}.
It's rather like the argument that no one buys a handgun except to use it to kill people.
Maybe someone should pitch it as a TV movie of the week. Imagine the irony if a TV-production branch of some cartel wound up producing a docudrama about their own audio-branch's evildoings :)
Seriously, it might be a good project for some production-arts student, to ultimately be released into the public domain for maximum exposure.
"I think $750 per day is a reasonable amount tho.
Surely a day of a person's life is worth as much as a copy of a song.
So 547,500 for two years."
Seriously, that sounds like a good rule-of-thumb penalty for this sort of abuse. Enough to be painful for the abuser, not so much as to err on the side of reverse abuse.
Nah, it's just that the RIAA are really slow learners. Have some pity for the disabled members of our society!! ;)
[laughing] I still find the DOS interface to be largely sufficient, as well as lightweight and fast :)
:)
(I finally retired my last Win3.1 setup in 2001. And all my machines but one (which I didn't set up) still run some form of DOS.
Best description ever :)
To add to that... you can't take your Apple-car to the neighbourhood all-around mechanic. You can only take it to the Apple-certified mechanic.
(My sister had a BMW for a while. It actually came with its own *preassigned* mechanic -- and needed it!)
Okay, the example *I* know about, from back in the OS late-6.x or early-7.x era (I forget exactly which model and OS it was, but close enough):
This particular Mac was touted as being THE new-age multimedia solution (then meaning primarily audio). But as shipped it could not do its prescribed multimedia tasks due to some sort of firmware error. Apple WOULD NOT ALLOW its programmers to create and release the very simple firmware fix. Apple's *official* solution for its customers was "Buy a whole new machine."
This isn't hearsay; it's straight from a friend who was one of Apple's core OS coders at the time.
That's a real problem with the whole issue -- as you say people don't realise that privacy and similar rights matter, until a violation of such rights comes up and bites them.
:(
That's how we lose rights -- their lack doesn't affect most people most of the time. By the time it affects all people all the time (as is eventually the case with every erosion of rights), it's too late to go back and fix it, and the new generation that grew up without said rights thinks it's perfectly normal to do without, and kinda weird to want it.
And people forget that gov't doesn't just pull its ideas out of the air. Gov't policies are derived from the underlying society, and laws reflect what is acceptable *at some level* in that society.
If it becomes acceptable for private entities to snoop/datamine/etc. then it will soon be acceptable for the gov't to snoop/datamine/etc *at the same level*, and laws will be changed to reflect that. Eventually, there will be no right of privacy left, even within the most closed confines of your own home.
This is especially relevant in the current Congressional climate of "Government by, for, and of the Corporation" (witness what's being done with copyright laws and the like).