AOL is number 1 because it's the easiest to use (no, AOL is number 1 because it's the best at marketing),
AOL's commercials don't say they're number 1 because their service is the easiest to use. They say: "So easy to use, no wonder it's number 1!" They are number 1 in terms of number of customers, and they're suggesting that this relates to ease of use, but not stating it as fact. If they did state it as fact, you can bet they'd have fine print at the bottom citing a source that did some kind of study or survey or something.
those ginsu knives really *can* cut through a solid steel block (uh huh), and OxyClean really willl get out ANY stain (um, no.)
Be careful about exactly what they do and do not state, for example "this steel block" vs. "any steel block", "almost any stain" vs. "any stain", etc. If you're still sure the claims made in their advertisements are false, buy the product, try it, and if it fails as expected, talk to a lawyer. Be careful though, because most companies won't actually make false claims - because of the laws against doing so.
I hate spam but I'll fight for your right to send it. I don't want the government making laws about Internet content. Its just a bad idea. Tomorrow they might make a law against something you do.
Are you also against truth-in-advertising laws that make it illegal for companies to lie about their products in TV commercials? That's a restriction of speech too - of commercial speech - and laws like that are essential for a capitalistic economy to function properly.
Currently, California law requires spammers to include "ADV" in the subject line of their e-mail so people will know it is an advertisement.
How often do you actually see this? I get occasional spam with ADV in the subject line, but the vast majority of my spam does not, and I know the spammers aren't targetting me by my location (I don't live in California, but they wouldn't have a way to know that). How much difference will this new law make?
Raising the dollar amount and making it easier to sue makes it much more attractive to go to the trouble of actually suing. Successful lawsuits make spamming much less attractive, thus cutting down on actual spam sent. This is a good thing. However, does anyone know how spam will be defined by this law if it passes? It sounds like this proposed law is simply an extension to an existing spam law; does it include a reasonable definition?
Oh, and to the people who are about to start yammering about how 1) whitelists, 2) Bayesian filtering, or 3) a replacement for SMTP are the only solutions to the spam problem and this law is a waste of time: shut up. The war against spam needs to be fought on many fronts simultaneously, one of which is legal. If done correctly, anti-spam laws do NOT endanger free speech.
So I take it you won't be buying the newer ATi cards either, since their latest cards are only properly supported by binary-only drivers.
That's correct. As long as I have the option, I'll buy what has open-source drivers available. If that means not getting the top-of-the-line card, then so be it - I don't need it anyway.
Why would I pay for a (probably expensive too) IM device, when I can get a PDA with 802.11b? A PDA gives me much more features, including Instant Messaging. I currently have the Zaurus SL-5500, and I'm really happy to have it, I can do just anything with it, including Instant Messaging.
The article (you did read it, didn't you?) says this IM device will be $99.99. How much did your PDA cost? If you don't already have a PDA and don't want the PDA's other features, this makes more sense. Obviously their target market is somewhat narrow.
Why buy an extraneous hardware device to do what my computer can do in a few pixels of screen space?
Because you can sit on the couch, or in your favorite chair, or in the backyard enjoying the sun, while someone else uses the computer in the living room. Remember this is targeted to kids who don't own their own computers, and especially not laptops.
You can already use AIM from a cell phone, but sometimes reception isn't good inside your house. This is cheaper than a cell phone, and should be much easier to use (bigger screen/keyboard) while you're at home.
Hmm. Write an AIM bot that waits for an IM from you, executes the command you send, captures the result, and IMs it back to you - splitting into multiple IMs if it's too big. You'd have to deal with the pseudo-HTML encoding, of course.
I've had a chance to borrow an iBook with an AirPort card for awhile, and I really like being able to go anywhere in the house and be online without wires getting in the way. I see this device being very successful for the same reason. There are trade-offs: you can't browse Slashdot with it and the screen and keyboard are small and awkward, but it's vastly cheaper than a laptop.
I wouldn't want one of these for myself. I do a lot with the computer, and usually just have AIM running in the background; when I'm not at the computer I probably am busy doing something and don't have time for IM. I'm not in their target market though. A lot of less tech-savvy people use the computer exclusively for communicating with people (via IM or e-mail) and surfing the web, and don't necessarily do both at the same time; for them, this would free them from having to sit in front of the computer, which they only do now because it's the only way to use IM/e-mail/the web.
totally forgotten about the lord of the rings movies, they should have released them closer together. hopefully they have a "previously in the lord of the rings..." at the beginning of return of the king.
So, they should have waited until now before releasing Fellowship, and followed it with Two Towers in a few months? Return of the King won't be ready until the end of the year, because it's taken that long to do post-production on all three movies.
(And MrDog, 6-digit UIDs aren't as cool as you think they are.)
Why is the clip horrible in quality? Because it's a video tape of the screen at E3.
Thank you for that insightful comment. Perhaps this explains why the title of the Slashdot article says "Footage from E3." And the way the camera moves around and people are talking in the background, I would never have guesses that this was actually a video tape.
Hello, and welcome to the 1990s. Most teenagers have credit cards on their parents' accounts. Oftentimes, the cards are even in the child's name (because you legally cannot use a card in someone else's name, regardless that most places let you do it anyway). Yes, they still have to answer to their parents for the charge, but as the saying goes, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission."
How do adult web sites use a credit card to verify age, then? I assumed this was the reason that worked.
It's a good thing that the movie industry has such a powerful lobby to protect themselves against retarted legislation like this. The video game companies need a similar legislative body.
Um, the powerful lobby you're referring to is the MPAA. You know, the MPAA that thinks printing the code to DeCSS on a t-shirt should be illegal.
And please be careful about throwing around phrases like "legislative body".
I attempted to rip a bad audio CD with cdparanoia using my Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive. When I say "bad" I mean, if you held it up to the light you could see a tiny hole in it. The system locked up.
The excuse for this, of course, is that it's a hardware problem. Why should the inability of the CD-ROM drive to properly read the disk cause the rest of the system to hang? The kernel should be able to handle this kind of error. What went wrong? Is a bug in the kernel responsible, or is it a hardware issue with the motherboard, or something else?
1977: email invented. most common message: "let me know when you are there so i can call you. (Family archives show as #1: "did you get this [email]?" and "are you there ?")
These are really pretty close.
1978: Spreadsheet, 10 years till anyone knows how to use them. (Show me one person who has a usefull use for spreadsheets... )
Spreadsheets allowed business people to enter accounting calculations into a computer, get a result that would take an hour to do by hand, and then tweak the input numbers to instantly see how that reflects on the result. Now, people use spreadsheets for a variety of things, from graphing a list of numbers to simply storing data in a chart to using it as an advanced calculator. Not necessarily their intended purpose, but fairly well suited to the job.
1995: AOL, Compuserve, etc take off (I canceled my CIS account in late 1995, after using it for quite a while. Erm - shute, I wanted to, but I didn't....)
This was the time when AOL announced that for the first time ever, they would offer unlimited monthly access. The idea was so popular that they oversold their service and everyone got busy signals.
1995: Release of Windows'95 (Erm... by that time I stopped using Windos, but didn't 95 came out somewhere in the middle of 96 ?)
August of 1995.
1997: Internet Porn introduced to businesses. Worker productivity down 97% ('97? I could swear Admiral K. sold his stuff for websites long before that [ESCdd])
There was online porn long before 1997, but the Web was becoming mainstream by then, and average people figured out where to find it.
2001: Blogging invented. (hey, my first lj-entry is Aug 29th, 2000 - and I joined the bandwaggon very late.)
I remember that listings for BBSes always included settings such as N-8-1 (no parity, 8 bits, 1 stop bit).
And 300 baud works pretty well until you try to get into a Teleconference on a multi-line BBS, since with more than 2 or 3 people talking you never have a chance to get a word in edgewise. Worked fine at faster speeds though.
FidoNet was an amazing concept. Send somebody on another BBS an e-mail message from your BBS, and they'd receive it within a day or two (when the BBSes would call each other and exchange mail). Due to the generosity of the people running the network, this even worked long-distance (mail exchanges would be queued for late at night when long distance rates were cheaper).
Many ISPs grew out of BBSes, and even those that didn't usually had a BBS-like way you could sign up for service, by dialing their modem number with a terminal program and using a guest login they provided. I've got an amusing story about that I probably shouldn't tell.;-)
PressPlay and Rhapsody were the two services Steve Jobs mentioned when he introduced Apple's iTunes Music Store, and he concluded that compared to iTMS, they both suck. They're both subscription services, and they place restrictions on what you can do with the songs you download. Apple also uses DRM, but Apple is MUCH more lenient about how you can use music you've purchased.
If Roxio is buying PressPlay, that can only mean increased competition among music providers, and competition is always a good thing.
By the way, although Apple hasn't had time to work out any deals with independant artists, many of them have been clamoring to get on board as quickly as possible, and Apple says they will definitely be working with them once they've had a chance to get more popular "Big 5" stuff added first. I haven't heard much interest in PressPlay distributing indy music. Probably doesn't hurt that so many musicians are Mac users.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL is number 1 because it's the easiest to use (no, AOL is number 1 because it's the best at marketing),
AOL's commercials don't say they're number 1 because their service is the easiest to use. They say: "So easy to use, no wonder it's number 1!" They are number 1 in terms of number of customers, and they're suggesting that this relates to ease of use, but not stating it as fact. If they did state it as fact, you can bet they'd have fine print at the bottom citing a source that did some kind of study or survey or something.
those ginsu knives really *can* cut through a solid steel block (uh huh), and OxyClean really willl get out ANY stain (um, no.)
Be careful about exactly what they do and do not state, for example "this steel block" vs. "any steel block", "almost any stain" vs. "any stain", etc. If you're still sure the claims made in their advertisements are false, buy the product, try it, and if it fails as expected, talk to a lawyer. Be careful though, because most companies won't actually make false claims - because of the laws against doing so.
Trollspam - gets you pissed by accusing you of sending email. So you open it and great! a web bug just confirmed your addy.
In OSX Mail: Uncheck "Display images and embedded objects in HTML messages" in Preferences/Viewing.
In Mozilla: Check "Do not load remote images in Mail & Newsgroup messages" in Preferences/Privacy & Security/Images.
I hate spam but I'll fight for your right to send it. I don't want the government making laws about
Internet content. Its just a bad idea. Tomorrow they might make a law against something you do.
Are you also against truth-in-advertising laws that make it illegal for companies to lie about their products in TV commercials? That's a restriction of speech too - of commercial speech - and laws like that are essential for a capitalistic economy to function properly.
The new get-rich-quick scheme:
1. Get a Hotmail/Yahoo account
2. Get rich.
No no no, it's:
1. Get a Hotmail/Yahoo account
2. Profit!
Currently, California law requires spammers to include "ADV" in the subject line of their e-mail so people will know it is an advertisement.
How often do you actually see this? I get occasional spam with ADV in the subject line, but the vast majority of my spam does not, and I know the spammers aren't targetting me by my location (I don't live in California, but they wouldn't have a way to know that). How much difference will this new law make?
Raising the dollar amount and making it easier to sue makes it much more attractive to go to the trouble of actually suing. Successful lawsuits make spamming much less attractive, thus cutting down on actual spam sent. This is a good thing. However, does anyone know how spam will be defined by this law if it passes? It sounds like this proposed law is simply an extension to an existing spam law; does it include a reasonable definition?
Oh, and to the people who are about to start yammering about how 1) whitelists, 2) Bayesian filtering, or 3) a replacement for SMTP are the only solutions to the spam problem and this law is a waste of time: shut up. The war against spam needs to be fought on many fronts simultaneously, one of which is legal. If done correctly, anti-spam laws do NOT endanger free speech.
So I take it you won't be buying the newer ATi cards either, since their latest cards are only properly supported by binary-only drivers.
That's correct. As long as I have the option, I'll buy what has open-source drivers available. If that means not getting the top-of-the-line card, then so be it - I don't need it anyway.
Why would I pay for a (probably expensive too) IM device, when I can get a PDA with 802.11b? A PDA gives me much more features, including Instant Messaging. I currently have the Zaurus SL-5500, and I'm really happy to have it, I can do just anything with it, including Instant Messaging.
The article (you did read it, didn't you?) says this IM device will be $99.99. How much did your PDA cost? If you don't already have a PDA and don't want the PDA's other features, this makes more sense. Obviously their target market is somewhat narrow.
Why buy an extraneous hardware device to do what my computer can do in a few pixels of screen space?
Because you can sit on the couch, or in your favorite chair, or in the backyard enjoying the sun, while someone else uses the computer in the living room. Remember this is targeted to kids who don't own their own computers, and especially not laptops.
You can already use AIM from a cell phone, but sometimes reception isn't good inside your house. This is cheaper than a cell phone, and should be much easier to use (bigger screen/keyboard) while you're at home.
Hmm. Write an AIM bot that waits for an IM from you, executes the command you send, captures the result, and IMs it back to you - splitting into multiple IMs if it's too big. You'd have to deal with the pseudo-HTML encoding, of course.
;-)
Yeah, it's late, I should go to bed.
I've had a chance to borrow an iBook with an AirPort card for awhile, and I really like being able to go anywhere in the house and be online without wires getting in the way. I see this device being very successful for the same reason. There are trade-offs: you can't browse Slashdot with it and the screen and keyboard are small and awkward, but it's vastly cheaper than a laptop.
I wouldn't want one of these for myself. I do a lot with the computer, and usually just have AIM running in the background; when I'm not at the computer I probably am busy doing something and don't have time for IM. I'm not in their target market though. A lot of less tech-savvy people use the computer exclusively for communicating with people (via IM or e-mail) and surfing the web, and don't necessarily do both at the same time; for them, this would free them from having to sit in front of the computer, which they only do now because it's the only way to use IM/e-mail/the web.
totally forgotten about the lord of the rings movies, they should have released them closer together. hopefully they have a "previously in the lord of the rings..." at the beginning of return of the king.
So, they should have waited until now before releasing Fellowship, and followed it with Two Towers in a few months? Return of the King won't be ready until the end of the year, because it's taken that long to do post-production on all three movies.
(And MrDog, 6-digit UIDs aren't as cool as you think they are.)
While walking out of the theater after seeing The Two Towers, someone said they overheard:
"Oh, MAN! We have to wait another whole YEAR to find out how it ends!"
Why is the clip horrible in quality? Because it's a video tape of the screen at E3.
Thank you for that insightful comment. Perhaps this explains why the title of the Slashdot article says "Footage from E3." And the way the camera moves around and people are talking in the background, I would never have guesses that this was actually a video tape.
It's really poor quality, and it looks as if the guy can't even hold the camera steady (obviously hasn't heard of a tripod).
I bet he has heard of a tripod, and probably wished he had one, but would have no convenient place to put it when he finished filming.
Now I don't have to manually download crappy rips of my favorite songs, I can have them forced upon me! :-)
No, crappy rips of somebody else's favorite songs will be forced upon you.
Hello, and welcome to the 1990s. Most teenagers have credit cards on their parents' accounts. Oftentimes, the cards are even in the child's name (because you legally cannot use a card in someone else's name, regardless that most places let you do it anyway). Yes, they still have to answer to their parents for the charge, but as the saying goes, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission."
How do adult web sites use a credit card to verify age, then? I assumed this was the reason that worked.
How will this law affect online buying of games though?
The law applies to minors, who don't have credit cards and therefore can't buy online anyway.
Not that that actually stops from from doing it, but that's the theory anyway.
It's a good thing that the movie industry has such a powerful lobby to protect themselves against retarted legislation like this. The video game companies need a similar legislative body.
Um, the powerful lobby you're referring to is the MPAA. You know, the MPAA that thinks printing the code to DeCSS on a t-shirt should be illegal.
And please be careful about throwing around phrases like "legislative body".
I attempted to rip a bad audio CD with cdparanoia using my Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive. When I say "bad" I mean, if you held it up to the light you could see a tiny hole in it. The system locked up.
The excuse for this, of course, is that it's a hardware problem. Why should the inability of the CD-ROM drive to properly read the disk cause the rest of the system to hang? The kernel should be able to handle this kind of error. What went wrong? Is a bug in the kernel responsible, or is it a hardware issue with the motherboard, or something else?
Jesus wasn't dead for 72 hours anyway - the crucifiction took place during the day on Friday, and by Sunday morning the tomb was already empty.
Funniest Matrix post ever. Thanks. :-)
1977: email invented. most common message: "let me know when you are there so i can call you.
... )
... by that time I stopped using Windos, but didn't 95 came out somewhere in the middle of 96 ?)
(Family archives show as #1: "did you get this [email]?" and "are you there ?")
These are really pretty close.
1978: Spreadsheet, 10 years till anyone knows how to use them.
(Show me one person who has a usefull use for spreadsheets
Spreadsheets allowed business people to enter accounting calculations into a computer, get a result that would take an hour to do by hand, and then tweak the input numbers to instantly see how that reflects on the result. Now, people use spreadsheets for a variety of things, from graphing a list of numbers to simply storing data in a chart to using it as an advanced calculator. Not necessarily their intended purpose, but fairly well suited to the job.
1995: AOL, Compuserve, etc take off
(I canceled my CIS account in late 1995, after using it for quite a while.
Erm - shute, I wanted to, but I didn't....)
This was the time when AOL announced that for the first time ever, they would offer unlimited monthly access. The idea was so popular that they oversold their service and everyone got busy signals.
1995: Release of Windows'95
(Erm
August of 1995.
1997: Internet Porn introduced to businesses. Worker productivity down 97%
('97? I could swear Admiral K. sold his stuff for websites long before that [ESCdd])
There was online porn long before 1997, but the Web was becoming mainstream by then, and average people figured out where to find it.
2001: Blogging invented.
(hey, my first lj-entry is Aug 29th, 2000 - and I joined the bandwaggon very late.)
It wasn't called blogging.
I remember that listings for BBSes always included settings such as N-8-1 (no parity, 8 bits, 1 stop bit).
;-)
And 300 baud works pretty well until you try to get into a Teleconference on a multi-line BBS, since with more than 2 or 3 people talking you never have a chance to get a word in edgewise. Worked fine at faster speeds though.
FidoNet was an amazing concept. Send somebody on another BBS an e-mail message from your BBS, and they'd receive it within a day or two (when the BBSes would call each other and exchange mail). Due to the generosity of the people running the network, this even worked long-distance (mail exchanges would be queued for late at night when long distance rates were cheaper).
Many ISPs grew out of BBSes, and even those that didn't usually had a BBS-like way you could sign up for service, by dialing their modem number with a terminal program and using a guest login they provided. I've got an amusing story about that I probably shouldn't tell.
PressPlay and Rhapsody were the two services Steve Jobs mentioned when he introduced Apple's iTunes Music Store, and he concluded that compared to iTMS, they both suck. They're both subscription services, and they place restrictions on what you can do with the songs you download. Apple also uses DRM, but Apple is MUCH more lenient about how you can use music you've purchased.
If Roxio is buying PressPlay, that can only mean increased competition among music providers, and competition is always a good thing.
By the way, although Apple hasn't had time to work out any deals with independant artists, many of them have been clamoring to get on board as quickly as possible, and Apple says they will definitely be working with them once they've had a chance to get more popular "Big 5" stuff added first. I haven't heard much interest in PressPlay distributing indy music. Probably doesn't hurt that so many musicians are Mac users.
If that's not the right IP, talk to Register.com.