Why did the above post get modded troll? It may be partially flamebait, but it's right on the money. I happen to totally agree with it... my mod points ran out or MankyD would've gotten modded down several times and teamhasnoi would've gotten modded up. Unfortunatly the clock hit midnight and my mod points turned back into a pumpkin. It's too bad that MankyD is too obtuse to understand that there's a huge difference between 'public' and 'publicly announced'. One is like passing a note to your friend in class, and the other is having that note read live on the evening news.
Actually, I disagree. Voting lends itself perfectly to electronic means, provided that it is done securely.
After all, you have millions of pieces of data (votes) that must be analyzed, classified, and reported, which is exactly what computers were designed to do.
The U.S. Census used to be a hand count as well, and one of the first computers designed was to help with the census count. The Census of 1950 was the first to use computer assistance, which was completed in record time and was probably the most accurate count up until that time (human counters aren't infallible as we all know).
For instance, millions of bank transactions are completed daily in a highly secure manner, so if computers are trusted with highly sensitive bank transaction information, why not votes?
To me it's all how secure the system is. If the electronic voting system is secure (beyond what Diebold deems 'secure'), I see no problem with conducting electronic elections.
After about a year we find that US imports have nearly tripled, while Australian exports to the US have dropped.
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics can tell you that this has more to do with the weakening of the US Dollar versus some sort of sinister plan to infiltrate your market with American goods. Even if you don't understand economics, common sense tells you that if something becomes cheaper, more of it will probably be sold, which is exactly what is happening in this instance. And since the AU $ is now stronger vs. the US $, Americans can afford to buy fewer goods exported from Australia.
Doesn't that sound like a logical explanation?
Usually at this point is when trade protection measures pop up to protect domestic production, so that the cheaper prices of imported goods are offset with either a tariff on the imported good, or a subsidy to the domestic good manufacturers to once again level the playing field... if you keep your eyes open I'm sure you'll see that happening shortly.
What a coherent and well thought-out post... you definitely aren't the typical Slashdot poster.
I feel the same way... if both the Sheriff's department and a Psychologist don't feel that this kid is a threat, then why did the school suspend him for an entire semester?
Since it was an English teacher, maybe they should've just had him write an essay as to why death threats are not proper behavior, even in jest.
I still think it's a bunch of crap though... this teacher is obviously so out of touch with his pupils that he doesn't know whether or not one of them might be a direct threat to his welfare. Maybe he should've had a meeting with the student and his parents to at least get a bearing on the situation, rather than his knee-jerk reaction to the whole thing.
I'm so sick and tired of everybody thinking that every student is one step away from being in the 'trenchcoat army' and shooting up their school... when in fact that incident is so statistically insignificant as to be worthless as an example of what 'could' happen when students become disgruntled with the school's authority figures.
I really hope this kid finds a different school to go to, and puts this incident behind him, because it would suck if this were to actually turn him into a sociopath if he already wasn't.
One thing to ponder... if a 'non-photographer' thinks the output of Apple's RAW converter sucks, then I bet a real 'pro' would be even more critical of the product. I haven't seen a single pro say "Well, it's alright that Aperture's RAW converter is horrid, because that's what RAW is supposed to look like."
Face it, Photoshop is the benchmark in this category, and it's RAW converter completely rocks. This is also the RAW converter that 99% of the photographers out there are using, so comparisons between the two are completely justified. If Apple wants to carve out a niche in this area, then their converter will have to be at least as good as Adobe's... not some 'purist' form of RAW that you seem to think is what people want.
They're photographers... they want 'pretty', not 'pixel accurate' like a geek would.
Corporations are obligated to make money, though not through any means possible. They also have a moral and ethical standard to which they are obliged, yet a lot choose to ignore them whenever the mighty dollar is on the line.
I can guarantee that if this ever hits the mainstream press, it will definitely chill Yahoo!'s business in the US, and that could be far more damaging than their 'potential' lucrative Chinese market... after all, they're probably making a name for themself in mainland China as the 'evil' corporation that's spying on it's users for the government.
They're technically shooting themselves in both feet with their current actions... all for a fast buck.
The one thing you forgot was that people are stupid.
They buy huge gas guzzlers for $50,000, and spend $6,000 a year to keep them gassed up.
There's far more profit in it for oil companies to bury technology that would increase fuel efficiency than there is for them to bring it to market. If you haven't noticed, oil is a variable market, whose prices are almost always on the increase, with very little downward pressure.
Yet oil companies still manage to sell every bit of oil on the market.
Name one other market in which this is the case? Oh, that's right, there is none. That's because oil is an inelastic product. Automobiles, on the other hand, are a very elastic market, where small price increases can severely curtail the demand for the product, especially in a weak economy.
Your myth is far from refuted... playing games with math that only a Ph.D. would understand doesn't factor in the average consumer's stupidity when it comes to making long-term decisions, especially with 'status' purchases such as a vehicle.
I'm not saying that we should try for a Utopian society, I just think we should look elsewhere for sources of energy.
I have a degree in environmental economics, which deals primarily with energy and natural resource use. Now if we take the billions and billions of dollars that would be invested in nuclear facilities and waste containment, and instead invested that into real green solutions, we could solve our energy problems within the next 20 years.
Instead, people would rather look to the past and try to ressurrect failed attempts at 'green' energy production than look to the future.
I'll admit that nuclear energy is a safe way to 'produce' energy, but containing the waste from production is the big hurdle, and we have no idea what consequences we could face in the next 4.5 billion years. To me, that's too large of a risk to take, when we can develop better sources of energy within an eyeblink (in geologic time).
How many of your friends/family were killed and/or permanently injured at the Chernobyl incident (or insert any other disaster here).
Oh, none? Well, that means that it must not have been dangerous then, correct?
People's inability to think beyond the next ten years never ceases to amaze me.
The point I was trying to make is this... what happens if there's an earthquake that collapses whole sections of the facility, then this waste leaches down into the water table, and traverses it's way down to Las Vegas?
Would you like to have a nuclear contaminated water supply? I wouldn't.
The most radioactive elements will have decayed in less than a thousand years.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The half-life or Uranium 238 (the most common variety) is 4.5 billion years... so I don't think I'd want to smell the number you presented, because I think I know where you pulled it from... even lesser isotopes of Uranium (234) have a half-life of 245,000 years. Of course you could be correct with some of the lesser isotopes created during the fission process, but the vast majority (like 90%) will still be Uranium 238.
Nothing is perfectly safe--crossing the street is a greater hazard to you than Yucca mountain will be to anyone.
LOL. So, are you speaking facetiously, or do you take yourself seriously? Take into account the numbers I just corrected you with, and then say, once again, with a straight face, that the nuclear waste present at Yucca Mountain will not ever be a serious danger to anyone.
While saying this, keep in mind that Yucca Mountain is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in the United States. The nuclear waste facility will also be located in a salt mine... which is evidence that water has been present in this area at one time or another, and the seismic conditions at this site are still unknown.
More on topic, spewing radioactive material into the air is probably a tad less safe than depositing it underground, too.
So, pulling the trigger of a shotgun while it's aimed at your head is probably more dangerous than pulling the trigger of a.38 aimed at your head, yet I'd prefer to do neither.
And where do you think we get more stable forms of uranium in the first place? It's been in the ground all over the world for a lot longer than 100,000 years.
I found this line hilariously funny... with this one sentence, you completely contradict your "1,000 year half-life" claim in your first. If Uranium only had a half-life of 1,000 years, we wouldn't find any of it, we'd have to make it all, because it would have decayed into other isotopes.
Uranium ore is also not found naturally in the concentrations in which it is used in nuclear power plants, otherwise why the hell would they need to 'enrich' it? It is certainly radioactive, but not at the lethal levels after it has been refined.
I think somebody really needs to hit the books again before they go making outlandish claims... and same for the mods that gave you an 'Insightful' rating...
At certain times, I've tried to be a Mac gamer, and let me tell you, it ain't pretty...
Most ports are half-assed, and they usually show up about a year or so after they've been released for Windows. The only decent port I've played (that had comparable performance to the PC version) was Quake 3, and that's because John Carmack did the majority of the coding himself. The only other games that were of very good quality on the Mac were by Bungie (the Myth series), and we all know what happened to them.
As an example, I recently purchased Sim City 4, and the thing has so many bugs it's unreal... yet Aspyr won't do anything about it (they claim their resources are stretched too thin). This is a game that was just released as a box set right before Christmas, and it has crashing/slowness problems on every Apple OS after 10.2.8. Aspyr has also known about these bugs since the end of 2004!
Personally, I'm stoked that Windows will be around simply to game on, because it fills in the gap that is the "Mac Games" market... otherwise, OSX does everything else I need it to.
Of course, I'm still on a PPC Mac, but that will probably change once the new towers are released.
I can't believe that you think that this scam is how business works... any time you can 'game' a system, chances are that proper precautions should have been taken to prevent it, and it should've been illegal.
The point he's trying to make is that there were several unimplemented methods that would've prevented these bogus registrars from gaming the system, and in fact people running the EURid land rush were notified in advance by several 'legitimate' registrars about the loopholes in the system, and refused to do anything about it (in fact going so far as to completely ignore them).
Enron also 'gamed' the system, and look how much damage that caused. It's fair to say that this could also have some dire financial consequences against those who were meant to benefit from this process.
I think his suggestions at the end of TFA have merit, and it would be nice to see something done about this scam... I have a hunch, though, that those in the EURid who allowed the system to be 'gamed' have a financial stake in the gaming process... otherwise these loopholes would've been closed long before the land rush began.
I wonder if throttling is part of that business method that is patented.
That would actually make it 'novel' and potentially patentable... I mean, who actually would think of a system of Unlimited rentals that was in fact Limited depending on whether or not the customer actually tried to use the service as if it were unlimited.
Who here can show prior art where the word Unlimitedactually means Limited.
This reminds me of the time several years ago that I had bought an old tube amplifier at a thrift store that, other than needing new tubes, was in great condition.
So, being that Radio Shack was about the only game in town for electronic parts (this is before I had an internet connection), I called them up on the phone and asked if they could order me some vacuum tubes.
The guy on the phone sounded bewildered for a couple seconds, then tried to recommend a 'sewing and vacuum store', where I could find all the vacuum tubes I wanted.
Taken aback, I asked him if he was sure I could find vacuum tubes at a vacuum store... and when he affirmed his recommendation, I then proceeded to explain to him exactly what type of 'vacuum tubes' I was looking for.
After sheepishly swallowing his pride, he took the part numbers from me and placed the order... since this was in the mid-90's, I'm really surprised Radio Shack hasn't slid downhill faster... they've long hired people that have no idea what they're selling, which can only spell disaster in the long-run.
The only thing Reagan had going for him was his public persona... otherwise he was a quack.
I recently graduated college with a degree in Economics, and Reagan came up quite frequently during class discussions... as a way to destroy a perfectly good economy.
"Reaganomics: Help the poor by giving to the rich!" rather than helping the poor directly.
You can also credit Reagan with the "War on Drugs", which is about as futile as the current war in Iraq. Keep in mind that Jimmy Carter campaigned in the 1976 election on the premise that he would decriminalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana... and WON. Even presidents like Nixon focused more on rehabilitation rather than criminalization of drug users, and he was a staunch Republican as well.
So yeah, I guess it's safe to say that you are part of the problem because you voted for him... had Carter gotten another four years in office things could very well have been different... but most people like to think that Carter was somehow responsible for the oil crisis in the late 70's, which severely damaged him politically. One only needs to look at what he's done after being out of office just to see his character.
But, you keep your rose colored glasses on... wouldn't want you to see just how bad Reagan really was... talk about revisionist history. Sheesh!
My only complaint about the new system is that the subtopics in the gray boxes seem to be randomly placed, instead of placed under their relevant front-page story.
For example, under the Microsoft IE7 link, I get a ton of 'Games' section topics, but under the one front-page 'Games' topic, there's nothing there at all.
I think it would be a bit more intuitive if the sectional topics were grouped by relevance under the front-page story, rather than randomly spread over the page... but that's just me... otherwise I like it.
Interestingly enough, I've seen all four of these movies several times (I have two kids, so it goes with the territory), and I think that all of them have been great movies.
I don't understand why Treasure Planet gets such bad press, other than the fact that it seems to be 'cool' to bag on that movie because it's first iteration was so bad that they had to completely redo the movie before releasing it to the public... what they ended up with, however, turned out great in my opinion.
Tarzan is one of the few Disney movies of late that I actually found myself emotionally moved by, and completely engrossed in, while watching it. The story and animation were both great, if you can overlook the quasi-gay gorilla 'Turk', voiced by the oh-so venerable Rosie O'Donnell.
In my opinion, Lilo and Stitch had the weakest story of all those movies, though it in fact has lent itself quite well to a TV series (contrary to what others seem to think).
I guess I'm in the minority, though, but I've seen every animated Disney movie released (several times over), and IMO, the worst Disney movie of all has to be 'The Black Cauldron', and that was produced during Disney's heyday as a 2D animation studio. Personally, I think their best movies were produced in the early 90's to the present day... anybody that longs for the old days of stuff like 'Fantasia', 'Snow White', 'Bambi', 'Sleeping Beauty', etc. definitely has not watched those movies in a long time, because as far as storyline's go, they were all abysmal. I think the best 'old Disney' movie was The Jungle Book, or The Sword in the Stone... none of the Disney 'classics' hold a candle to stuff released within the past 15 years.
Actually, they could probably make a remote-controlled robotic Luxo, Jr. that would work great.
My family went to Disneyland just after I graduated from college this past May, and in one area they had a remote controlled, robotic trashcan that would roam around and talk to people... the best part was when a woman came strolling down a path into the crowd that had gathered to watch the trashcan's antics, with a cigarette dangling from her lips. The trashcan made a beeline over to her and sternly informed her: "This is a no smoking area!"
The sheepish look on her face, from being told off by a garbage can, was classic... and she quickly extinguished her cigarette and wandered off into the crowd.
Ah... I could be getting my wires crossed between Satellite TV and TiVO...
/me looks around sheepishly
Well... uh... I should've added in a tiny print legal disclaimer that any and/or all parts of my gripe list are severable, so if any part is found to be incorrect, it can be removed and the other parts still stand.
I just 'knew' that my business law class would come in handy for ass-covering someday...
Sure. But this would hardly make any waves in the DVR market.
Funny... I remember people saying the same thing right after the iPod was announced (except switch "DVR" with "MP3 Player").
There are several things I currently don't like about TiVO, which is what keeps me from buying one:
1. The 'requirement' to subscribe to the TiVO network.
2. The godawful ugly hardware.
3. The requirement for a phone line hookup (our house is completely cellular).
4. Lackluster (or nonexistent) Mac support.
Now if Apple can address all of these concerns in a PVR (or DVR), then they'll have my money... and I tend to think that there's a lot of other people out there that feel this same way.
Looks like this could be more than making waves (if it comes to fruition), it could be a tsunami, just like the iPod.
Just as an addendum to your post, "Kai Krause" actually has made quite a name for himself (at least on the Mac from what I know) in software.
You ever heard of "Kai's Power Tools" (a Photoshop plug-in set), or "Kai's Super Goo", or even "Kai's Photo Soap"?
You can thank Kai Krause for those neat little software bits... judging by what those programs do, it's pretty evident that he's an "outside the box" thinker... either that or he has some serious mental problems.
My kids just love playing around with Super Goo. I set it up with pictures of all of our family members, and they have a great time distorting and animating all of our faces (heck, I even have fun with it too).
Okay, then I must have been going on old information (doesn't surprise me). I just remember the hundreds of pleas for help I fielded in years past because people would rip their CD's into WMA format, only to find out that they couldn't play them on a different computer.
Of course, the only answer I had was to delete all the WMA files they had previously encoded, turn off the Windows DRM, then re-encode them. That could be why the option is now disabled by default... it was causing too many end-user problems when their really was no need for it.
Thanks for the heads-up though... I'm primarily a Mac guy now, so it's been a while since I've done anything like that on a PC.
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Why did the above post get modded troll? It may be partially flamebait, but it's right on the money.
I happen to totally agree with it... my mod points ran out or MankyD would've gotten modded down several times and teamhasnoi would've gotten modded up.
Unfortunatly the clock hit midnight and my mod points turned back into a pumpkin. It's too bad that MankyD is too obtuse to understand that there's a huge difference between 'public' and 'publicly announced'.
One is like passing a note to your friend in class, and the other is having that note read live on the evening news.
Actually, I disagree. Voting lends itself perfectly to electronic means, provided that it is done securely.
After all, you have millions of pieces of data (votes) that must be analyzed, classified, and reported, which is exactly what computers were designed to do.
The U.S. Census used to be a hand count as well, and one of the first computers designed was to help with the census count. The Census of 1950 was the first to use computer assistance, which was completed in record time and was probably the most accurate count up until that time (human counters aren't infallible as we all know).
For instance, millions of bank transactions are completed daily in a highly secure manner, so if computers are trusted with highly sensitive bank transaction information, why not votes?
To me it's all how secure the system is. If the electronic voting system is secure (beyond what Diebold deems 'secure'), I see no problem with conducting electronic elections.
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics can tell you that this has more to do with the weakening of the US Dollar versus some sort of sinister plan to infiltrate your market with American goods. Even if you don't understand economics, common sense tells you that if something becomes cheaper, more of it will probably be sold, which is exactly what is happening in this instance. And since the AU $ is now stronger vs. the US $, Americans can afford to buy fewer goods exported from Australia.
Doesn't that sound like a logical explanation?
Usually at this point is when trade protection measures pop up to protect domestic production, so that the cheaper prices of imported goods are offset with either a tariff on the imported good, or a subsidy to the domestic good manufacturers to once again level the playing field... if you keep your eyes open I'm sure you'll see that happening shortly.
What a coherent and well thought-out post... you definitely aren't the typical Slashdot poster.
I feel the same way... if both the Sheriff's department and a Psychologist don't feel that this kid is a threat, then why did the school suspend him for an entire semester?
Since it was an English teacher, maybe they should've just had him write an essay as to why death threats are not proper behavior, even in jest.
I still think it's a bunch of crap though... this teacher is obviously so out of touch with his pupils that he doesn't know whether or not one of them might be a direct threat to his welfare. Maybe he should've had a meeting with the student and his parents to at least get a bearing on the situation, rather than his knee-jerk reaction to the whole thing.
I'm so sick and tired of everybody thinking that every student is one step away from being in the 'trenchcoat army' and shooting up their school... when in fact that incident is so statistically insignificant as to be worthless as an example of what 'could' happen when students become disgruntled with the school's authority figures.
I really hope this kid finds a different school to go to, and puts this incident behind him, because it would suck if this were to actually turn him into a sociopath if he already wasn't.
You left out one part of the plot though... where he finds his other red shoe... I think he lost it while banging the mermaid.
That's from Billy Crystal's character in 'City Slickers' when he's talking to his son's class on career day. .. quite the optimist, isn't he. ;)
One thing to ponder... if a 'non-photographer' thinks the output of Apple's RAW converter sucks, then I bet a real 'pro' would be even more critical of the product. I haven't seen a single pro say "Well, it's alright that Aperture's RAW converter is horrid, because that's what RAW is supposed to look like."
Face it, Photoshop is the benchmark in this category, and it's RAW converter completely rocks. This is also the RAW converter that 99% of the photographers out there are using, so comparisons between the two are completely justified. If Apple wants to carve out a niche in this area, then their converter will have to be at least as good as Adobe's... not some 'purist' form of RAW that you seem to think is what people want.
They're photographers... they want 'pretty', not 'pixel accurate' like a geek would.
I was just going to say the same thing.
Corporations are obligated to make money, though not through any means possible. They also have a moral and ethical standard to which they are obliged, yet a lot choose to ignore them whenever the mighty dollar is on the line.
I can guarantee that if this ever hits the mainstream press, it will definitely chill Yahoo!'s business in the US, and that could be far more damaging than their 'potential' lucrative Chinese market... after all, they're probably making a name for themself in mainland China as the 'evil' corporation that's spying on it's users for the government.
They're technically shooting themselves in both feet with their current actions... all for a fast buck.
Boy, and all this time I thought Catfish Hunter was just a pitcher for the A's... *rimshot*
The one thing you forgot was that people are stupid.
They buy huge gas guzzlers for $50,000, and spend $6,000 a year to keep them gassed up.
There's far more profit in it for oil companies to bury technology that would increase fuel efficiency than there is for them to bring it to market. If you haven't noticed, oil is a variable market, whose prices are almost always on the increase, with very little downward pressure.
Yet oil companies still manage to sell every bit of oil on the market.
Name one other market in which this is the case? Oh, that's right, there is none. That's because oil is an inelastic product. Automobiles, on the other hand, are a very elastic market, where small price increases can severely curtail the demand for the product, especially in a weak economy.
Your myth is far from refuted... playing games with math that only a Ph.D. would understand doesn't factor in the average consumer's stupidity when it comes to making long-term decisions, especially with 'status' purchases such as a vehicle.
I'm not saying that we should try for a Utopian society, I just think we should look elsewhere for sources of energy.
I have a degree in environmental economics, which deals primarily with energy and natural resource use. Now if we take the billions and billions of dollars that would be invested in nuclear facilities and waste containment, and instead invested that into real green solutions, we could solve our energy problems within the next 20 years.
Instead, people would rather look to the past and try to ressurrect failed attempts at 'green' energy production than look to the future.
I'll admit that nuclear energy is a safe way to 'produce' energy, but containing the waste from production is the big hurdle, and we have no idea what consequences we could face in the next 4.5 billion years. To me, that's too large of a risk to take, when we can develop better sources of energy within an eyeblink (in geologic time).
Okay, I'll bite back...
How many of your friends/family were killed and/or permanently injured at the Chernobyl incident (or insert any other disaster here).
Oh, none? Well, that means that it must not have been dangerous then, correct?
People's inability to think beyond the next ten years never ceases to amaze me.
The point I was trying to make is this... what happens if there's an earthquake that collapses whole sections of the facility, then this waste leaches down into the water table, and traverses it's way down to Las Vegas?
Would you like to have a nuclear contaminated water supply? I wouldn't.
The most radioactive elements will have decayed in less than a thousand years.
.38 aimed at your head, yet I'd prefer to do neither.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The half-life or Uranium 238 (the most common variety) is 4.5 billion years... so I don't think I'd want to smell the number you presented, because I think I know where you pulled it from... even lesser isotopes of Uranium (234) have a half-life of 245,000 years. Of course you could be correct with some of the lesser isotopes created during the fission process, but the vast majority (like 90%) will still be Uranium 238.
Nothing is perfectly safe--crossing the street is a greater hazard to you than Yucca mountain will be to anyone.
LOL. So, are you speaking facetiously, or do you take yourself seriously? Take into account the numbers I just corrected you with, and then say, once again, with a straight face, that the nuclear waste present at Yucca Mountain will not ever be a serious danger to anyone.
While saying this, keep in mind that Yucca Mountain is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in the United States. The nuclear waste facility will also be located in a salt mine... which is evidence that water has been present in this area at one time or another, and the seismic conditions at this site are still unknown.
More on topic, spewing radioactive material into the air is probably a tad less safe than depositing it underground, too.
So, pulling the trigger of a shotgun while it's aimed at your head is probably more dangerous than pulling the trigger of a
And where do you think we get more stable forms of uranium in the first place? It's been in the ground all over the world for a lot longer than 100,000 years.
I found this line hilariously funny... with this one sentence, you completely contradict your "1,000 year half-life" claim in your first. If Uranium only had a half-life of 1,000 years, we wouldn't find any of it, we'd have to make it all, because it would have decayed into other isotopes.
Uranium ore is also not found naturally in the concentrations in which it is used in nuclear power plants, otherwise why the hell would they need to 'enrich' it? It is certainly radioactive, but not at the lethal levels after it has been refined.
I think somebody really needs to hit the books again before they go making outlandish claims... and same for the mods that gave you an 'Insightful' rating...
And this is a bad thing because?
At certain times, I've tried to be a Mac gamer, and let me tell you, it ain't pretty...
Most ports are half-assed, and they usually show up about a year or so after they've been released for Windows. The only decent port I've played (that had comparable performance to the PC version) was Quake 3, and that's because John Carmack did the majority of the coding himself. The only other games that were of very good quality on the Mac were by Bungie (the Myth series), and we all know what happened to them.
As an example, I recently purchased Sim City 4, and the thing has so many bugs it's unreal... yet Aspyr won't do anything about it (they claim their resources are stretched too thin). This is a game that was just released as a box set right before Christmas, and it has crashing/slowness problems on every Apple OS after 10.2.8. Aspyr has also known about these bugs since the end of 2004!
Personally, I'm stoked that Windows will be around simply to game on, because it fills in the gap that is the "Mac Games" market... otherwise, OSX does everything else I need it to.
Of course, I'm still on a PPC Mac, but that will probably change once the new towers are released.
I can't believe that you think that this scam is how business works... any time you can 'game' a system, chances are that proper precautions should have been taken to prevent it, and it should've been illegal.
The point he's trying to make is that there were several unimplemented methods that would've prevented these bogus registrars from gaming the system, and in fact people running the EURid land rush were notified in advance by several 'legitimate' registrars about the loopholes in the system, and refused to do anything about it (in fact going so far as to completely ignore them).
Enron also 'gamed' the system, and look how much damage that caused. It's fair to say that this could also have some dire financial consequences against those who were meant to benefit from this process.
I think his suggestions at the end of TFA have merit, and it would be nice to see something done about this scam... I have a hunch, though, that those in the EURid who allowed the system to be 'gamed' have a financial stake in the gaming process... otherwise these loopholes would've been closed long before the land rush began.
I wonder if throttling is part of that business method that is patented.
/me wipes the sarcasm off his lips...
That would actually make it 'novel' and potentially patentable... I mean, who actually would think of a system of Unlimited rentals that was in fact Limited depending on whether or not the customer actually tried to use the service as if it were unlimited.
Who here can show prior art where the word Unlimited actually means Limited.
That actually sounds pretty novel to me.
This reminds me of the time several years ago that I had bought an old tube amplifier at a thrift store that, other than needing new tubes, was in great condition.
So, being that Radio Shack was about the only game in town for electronic parts (this is before I had an internet connection), I called them up on the phone and asked if they could order me some vacuum tubes.
The guy on the phone sounded bewildered for a couple seconds, then tried to recommend a 'sewing and vacuum store', where I could find all the vacuum tubes I wanted.
Taken aback, I asked him if he was sure I could find vacuum tubes at a vacuum store... and when he affirmed his recommendation, I then proceeded to explain to him exactly what type of 'vacuum tubes' I was looking for.
After sheepishly swallowing his pride, he took the part numbers from me and placed the order... since this was in the mid-90's, I'm really surprised Radio Shack hasn't slid downhill faster... they've long hired people that have no idea what they're selling, which can only spell disaster in the long-run.
The only thing Reagan had going for him was his public persona... otherwise he was a quack.
I recently graduated college with a degree in Economics, and Reagan came up quite frequently during class discussions... as a way to destroy a perfectly good economy.
"Reaganomics: Help the poor by giving to the rich!" rather than helping the poor directly.
You can also credit Reagan with the "War on Drugs", which is about as futile as the current war in Iraq. Keep in mind that Jimmy Carter campaigned in the 1976 election on the premise that he would decriminalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana... and WON. Even presidents like Nixon focused more on rehabilitation rather than criminalization of drug users, and he was a staunch Republican as well.
So yeah, I guess it's safe to say that you are part of the problem because you voted for him... had Carter gotten another four years in office things could very well have been different... but most people like to think that Carter was somehow responsible for the oil crisis in the late 70's, which severely damaged him politically. One only needs to look at what he's done after being out of office just to see his character.
But, you keep your rose colored glasses on... wouldn't want you to see just how bad Reagan really was... talk about revisionist history. Sheesh!
My only complaint about the new system is that the subtopics in the gray boxes seem to be randomly placed, instead of placed under their relevant front-page story.
For example, under the Microsoft IE7 link, I get a ton of 'Games' section topics, but under the one front-page 'Games' topic, there's nothing there at all.
I think it would be a bit more intuitive if the sectional topics were grouped by relevance under the front-page story, rather than randomly spread over the page... but that's just me... otherwise I like it.
Interestingly enough, I've seen all four of these movies several times (I have two kids, so it goes with the territory), and I think that all of them have been great movies.
I don't understand why Treasure Planet gets such bad press, other than the fact that it seems to be 'cool' to bag on that movie because it's first iteration was so bad that they had to completely redo the movie before releasing it to the public... what they ended up with, however, turned out great in my opinion.
Tarzan is one of the few Disney movies of late that I actually found myself emotionally moved by, and completely engrossed in, while watching it. The story and animation were both great, if you can overlook the quasi-gay gorilla 'Turk', voiced by the oh-so venerable Rosie O'Donnell.
In my opinion, Lilo and Stitch had the weakest story of all those movies, though it in fact has lent itself quite well to a TV series (contrary to what others seem to think).
I guess I'm in the minority, though, but I've seen every animated Disney movie released (several times over), and IMO, the worst Disney movie of all has to be 'The Black Cauldron', and that was produced during Disney's heyday as a 2D animation studio. Personally, I think their best movies were produced in the early 90's to the present day... anybody that longs for the old days of stuff like 'Fantasia', 'Snow White', 'Bambi', 'Sleeping Beauty', etc. definitely has not watched those movies in a long time, because as far as storyline's go, they were all abysmal. I think the best 'old Disney' movie was The Jungle Book, or The Sword in the Stone... none of the Disney 'classics' hold a candle to stuff released within the past 15 years.
Actually, they could probably make a remote-controlled robotic Luxo, Jr. that would work great.
My family went to Disneyland just after I graduated from college this past May, and in one area they had a remote controlled, robotic trashcan that would roam around and talk to people... the best part was when a woman came strolling down a path into the crowd that had gathered to watch the trashcan's antics, with a cigarette dangling from her lips. The trashcan made a beeline over to her and sternly informed her: "This is a no smoking area!"
The sheepish look on her face, from being told off by a garbage can, was classic... and she quickly extinguished her cigarette and wandered off into the crowd.
Ah... I could be getting my wires crossed between Satellite TV and TiVO...
/me looks around sheepishly
Well... uh... I should've added in a tiny print legal disclaimer that any and/or all parts of my gripe list are severable, so if any part is found to be incorrect, it can be removed and the other parts still stand.
I just 'knew' that my business law class would come in handy for ass-covering someday...
Sure. But this would hardly make any waves in the DVR market.
Funny... I remember people saying the same thing right after the iPod was announced (except switch "DVR" with "MP3 Player").
There are several things I currently don't like about TiVO, which is what keeps me from buying one:
1. The 'requirement' to subscribe to the TiVO network.
2. The godawful ugly hardware.
3. The requirement for a phone line hookup (our house is completely cellular).
4. Lackluster (or nonexistent) Mac support.
Now if Apple can address all of these concerns in a PVR (or DVR), then they'll have my money... and I tend to think that there's a lot of other people out there that feel this same way.
Looks like this could be more than making waves (if it comes to fruition), it could be a tsunami, just like the iPod.
Just as an addendum to your post, "Kai Krause" actually has made quite a name for himself (at least on the Mac from what I know) in software.
You ever heard of "Kai's Power Tools" (a Photoshop plug-in set), or "Kai's Super Goo", or even "Kai's Photo Soap"?
You can thank Kai Krause for those neat little software bits... judging by what those programs do, it's pretty evident that he's an "outside the box" thinker... either that or he has some serious mental problems.
My kids just love playing around with Super Goo. I set it up with pictures of all of our family members, and they have a great time distorting and animating all of our faces (heck, I even have fun with it too).
Okay, then I must have been going on old information (doesn't surprise me). I just remember the hundreds of pleas for help I fielded in years past because people would rip their CD's into WMA format, only to find out that they couldn't play them on a different computer.
Of course, the only answer I had was to delete all the WMA files they had previously encoded, turn off the Windows DRM, then re-encode them. That could be why the option is now disabled by default... it was causing too many end-user problems when their really was no need for it.
Thanks for the heads-up though... I'm primarily a Mac guy now, so it's been a while since I've done anything like that on a PC.