I have a VOIP system set up in my home in Australia. What gets to me is that while it is fairly cheap to use it to call Western Europe or North America, it still costs a substantial amount (about 70 cents per minute Australian) to call places I speak to a lot - Eritrea and Ethiopia. I know there are hefty connection fees to these countries, and they will probably never be as cheap to call as those in the West, but I can get phone cards that will call these areas for as little as 25 cents per minute. This indicates to me that VOIP providers are making quite a lot of money from people phoning the third world. Yet again, the people with the least ability to pay are the ones most likely to be paying more. Has anyone had good experiences with a VOIP provider who can provide cheap access to the Ethiopia and Eritrea?
It would really be a bit tough to have a built in levy to be paid for by people who can't listen to music anyway. On a slightly more serious note, the levy is only on new computers sold, not the components. Sounds as if you can get around the levy by making custom making your own PC. I think it would have been smarter to make the levy payable on new sound cards, whether they are in new computers or not.
You presumably wouldn't even have to just hold a mic near the speaker. You could surely get a line out jack and plug it from the speaker directly into your recording device, removing most static. Of course these DRM compatible speakers probably come without line-out jacks, making it impossible to use them with headphones, but no doubt the cheap Japanese knock-offs would.
Did anybody else notice this from the bottom of the article? Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. And just below that:
PRINT THIS ARTICLE -- EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
I mean, stupid unenforceable copyright notices are one thing (especially when it relates to an article that is about illegal distribution of copyrighted material) but then they actually include a link to email it on, encouraging people to break their own rules? What the hell was going through the minds of the designers of msnbc's website they built that sort of functionality?
How do they keep the neurons alive?
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I should preface this question with the information that I have abosolutely no medical training, nor have I any real understanding of how brain neurons operate. That being said, please be kind in your responses. How are the organic neurons being kept alive in this petrie dish? Surely they would have to have a blood supply or something similar to exist. If they can just live in saline solution or something like that, how it is that possible? Especially given that they are working neurons, not just sitting there doing nothing.
Can they reproduce? (I think I read somewhere that brain cells do actually reproduce, in contrast to the traditional thinking for many years). The actual article says they are: growing on top of a multi-electrode array.
Are there any implications for brain neuron transplants as a result of this type of research?
How are the neurons hooked together? Are they wired up, using impossibly thin wires, or just connected via the array?
What the hell is a multi-electrode array anyway? Anyway, I guess they are enough questions, although I could probably sit here all day typing away at the million queries this type of research presents me with.
You wrote "The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy. " What planet are you living on? The USA may be a fairly stable democracy, but you can't compare the country that has events like the Los Angeles riots, the twin tower terror attacks and regular civil unrest with places like New Zealand or Australia. Democractic the US may be, but stable? Give me a break.
You are completely wrong is saying Windows and Lindows are homonyms. If the program was called Whindoze, that would be a homonym. All you have demonstrated is that the two words rhyme. As an aside, this is not the first time a word has been knocked back because it is generic (which is different to a word found in a dictionary). I seem to recall that a while ago Nike tried without success to trademark the word "air" when competitors tried to release alternate versions of their famous Nike Air runners.
Actually, given the Howard government's sycophantic attitude towards the US, if America passed a law limiting the amount of rugby we in Australia could play, it would probably be rubber stamped here too. Maybe you should have chosen a less compliant nation, like New Zealand, for your example.
I happen to agree that Spyware can be useful, although to be sure this depends on how you define spyware. I ran Adaware on my computer once and deleted all the spyware found. I later realised that Music Match's access to the CDDB was gone, as it was considered spyware to give details of which CD was in my computer to a third party. This made it more difficult to rip CDs. I hate the idea of spyware, but sometimes it is not part of programs just to monitor your browsing habits and send you advertising.
With the incredible popularity of the iPods surely the time is ripe for someone to come up with a cheap, reliable way to replace these batteries. The same way some people now routinely get their printer ink cartridges refilled rather than pay through the nose for a new unit, there has gotta be someone with an ounce of knowledge and daring prepared to start up a service rehabilitating old iPods - doesn't there?
I currently have a Hotmail account. One of the things that annoys me is that emails from Microsoft can't be blocked by the internal filter. They always seems to be writing to me, to alert me to the fact that if I pay I can get more features. This to my way of thinking is spam. Will this be blocked? If it is, what does it mean for emails that alert me to the fact that my inbox is nearing its limit? Will they be forced to start deleting my emails if I go over limit without warning because they will be banned for alerting me. I know, I know, I shouldn't even bother with Hotmail, but sometimes it is useful to have web-based email addresses, and this type of issue will surely affect all mail providers.
Apple [1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.] This still could create problems though, because I think that in America, 1 billion means something different to most of the rest of the world. In USA 1 billion=1000 million, to the rest of the world, 1 billion-1,000,000 million (what I think the USA calls a trillion).
It's just market economics doing what they do best - balancing out supply and demand. Oh, that must be why the gap between the rich and the poor is shrinking across the capitalistic world. I think you have your wires crossed. Market economics ultimately makes a few people very wealthy and most people extremely poor. I am not an American, but I have been to New York, and I can tell you, in the heart of capitalism, I have never seen such poverty living alongside such obscene wealth. The irony is that despite your flawed assumptions, your basic tenet is correct. What is happening in the IT field is market economics doing what it does best.
From the article "To save money in mass production, the little red car includes many parts already made in bulk; Cadillac wheelbearings and axles, for instance, and Geo Tracker doors."
Seems to me they should have included air bags. Unless you can conceive of the idea of driving around in a sardine can at 130 mph, which is about 209 kilometres per hour, without ever having crash, some sort of safety gear is definitely needed in my opinion.
"So, investors should be cheesed off if their company has a contest that, (are you ready for the shock of this?) gives away prizes? If they give away $1,000 an hour, for a *month*, it'll cost them a bit more than half a million. Compared to conventional advertising, and the number of users this might bring in?" Actually, according to the article, they are only giving away $40,000. The contest is held for 10 hours on Friday's only, and only for four Fridays.
Keep in mind, this guy was not a professional finger print cracker.
Now I found this really surprising, the guy wasn't a professional finger print cracker? Come on, isn't everyone a professional finger print cracker these days? I hear there is good money in it.
Re:Working more pays off
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
It occurs to me in your post that not only to workers in the USA get less holidays than other countries, you don't get paid for your holidays normally. In Australia I am lucky enough to get nine weeks holiday per year - paid in full. I used to get something called leave loading, which was an extra 20 per cent pay during holidays, so that I could have a good time. This was ditched in my last enterprise agreement though. In Australia, the figures that appear in the article are the average holidays, and I can assure you they would all be paid time off. If I leave a job with time owing, I am paid in full for any time I have accrued but not yet taken.
Which union are you in?
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Writing from Australia, I am unsure how relevant my post is for you guys in the US and the rest of the world. The interesting thing I have found about the IT industry in Australia is the divide between people who joined a union and those who didn't join any union. In Australia, as far as I know, there is no union directly for IT staff, but I know a few people who joined the ETU. This is the Electrical Trades Union, which is about the most left-wing, hard core union in Australia. Those that did this are on easy street. They had the ETU negotiate their pay and conditions and those guys take no prisoners. If the ETU blackbans a workplace, you don't get electricians to fix things, you lose your unionised IT staff, you effectively stop functioning. Those who are not unionised have really fallen apart in terms of pay and conditions. As for me? Well, I am joined another union, for media workers, and now enjoy nine weeks per year guaranteed holidays. So am I complaining, yeah, from my kabana in Cuba! Is there a union just for IT staff in the US, and if so, what is the density of membership?
That isn't so impressive
on
Water Flows Uphill
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
When I was in Italy, not far from Rome, there is an entire mountain where not just water, but everything appears to be rolling uphill. Couldn't find any links in Google on it, but I think the Italians called in La strada contrario (the contrary street). All over the road cars are pulled over, as drivers take off the handbrake and laugh as their car rolls uphill. People tried to explain to me how it works, but my Italian wasn't good enough. That didn't use any bubbles to create the illusion either!
The Associated Press has now written about this attack: Internet traffic broadly affected by electronic attack World Internet Lead By Ted Bridis Traffic on the many parts of the Internet slowed dramatically early today, the apparent effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection interfering with Web browsing and delivery of email. Sites monitoring the health of the Internet reported significant slowdowns globally. Experts said the latest electronic attack bore remarkable similarities to ``Code Red'' virus during the summer of 2001 which also ground traffic to a halt on much of the Internet. ``It's not debilitating,'' said Howard Schmidt, one of President George W Bush's top cyber-security advisers. ``Everybody seems to be getting it under control.'' Schmidt said the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Centre and private experts at the CERT Coordination Centre were monitoring the attacks. The virus-like attack sought out vulnerable computers to infect on the Internet using a known flaw in popular database software from Microsoft Corp, called ``SQL Server''. But the attacking software code was scanning for victim computers so randomly and so aggressively - sending out thousands of probes each second - that it overwhelmed many Internet data pipelines. ``This is like Code Red all over again,'' said Marc Maiffret, an executive with eEye Digital Security, whose engineers were among the earliest to study samples of the attack software. ``The sheer number of attacks is eating up so much bandwidth that normal operations can't take place.'' The attack sought to take advantage of a software flaw discovered in July 2002 that permits hackers to infect corporate database servers. Microsoft deemed the problem ``critical'' and offered a free repairing patch, but it was impossible to know how many computer administrators applied the fix. ``People need to do a better job about fixing vulnerabilities,'' Schmidt said.
Maybe you want to take a look at the rest of the world. It is called GLOBAL warming after all. At the moment I am in Australia, 44 degrees here (Celcius) and one of the hottest days on record. It has been bloody hot for bloody ages in this part of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a VOIP system set up in my home in Australia.
What gets to me is that while it is fairly cheap to use it to call Western Europe or North America, it still costs a substantial amount (about 70 cents per minute Australian) to call places I speak to a lot - Eritrea and Ethiopia.
I know there are hefty connection fees to these countries, and they will probably never be as cheap to call as those in the West, but I can get phone cards that will call these areas for as little as 25 cents per minute. This indicates to me that VOIP providers are making quite a lot of money from people phoning the third world. Yet again, the people with the least ability to pay are the ones most likely to be paying more.
Has anyone had good experiences with a VOIP provider who can provide cheap access to the Ethiopia and Eritrea?
It would really be a bit tough to have a built in levy to be paid for by people who can't listen to music anyway.
On a slightly more serious note, the levy is only on new computers sold, not the components. Sounds as if you can get around the levy by making custom making your own PC. I think it would have been smarter to make the levy payable on new sound cards, whether they are in new computers or not.
You presumably wouldn't even have to just hold a mic near the speaker. You could surely get a line out jack and plug it from the speaker directly into your recording device, removing most static. Of course these DRM compatible speakers probably come without line-out jacks, making it impossible to use them with headphones, but no doubt the cheap Japanese knock-offs would.
Did anybody else notice this from the bottom of the article?
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
And just below that:
PRINT THIS ARTICLE -- EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
I mean, stupid unenforceable copyright notices are one thing (especially when it relates to an article that is about illegal distribution of copyrighted material) but then they actually include a link to email it on, encouraging people to break their own rules?
What the hell was going through the minds of the designers of msnbc's website they built that sort of functionality?
I should preface this question with the information that I have abosolutely no medical training, nor have I any real understanding of how brain neurons operate. That being said, please be kind in your responses.
.
How are the organic neurons being kept alive in this petrie dish? Surely they would have to have a blood supply or something similar to exist. If they can just live in saline solution or something like that, how it is that possible? Especially given that they are working neurons, not just sitting there doing nothing.
Can they reproduce? (I think I read somewhere that brain cells do actually reproduce, in contrast to the traditional thinking for many years). The actual article says they are:
growing on top of a multi-electrode array
Are there any implications for brain neuron transplants as a result of this type of research?
How are the neurons hooked together? Are they wired up, using impossibly thin wires, or just connected via the array?
What the hell is a multi-electrode array anyway?
Anyway, I guess they are enough questions, although I could probably sit here all day typing away at the million queries this type of research presents me with.
You wrote "The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy. "
What planet are you living on? The USA may be a fairly stable democracy, but you can't compare the country that has events like the Los Angeles riots, the twin tower terror attacks and regular civil unrest with places like New Zealand or Australia. Democractic the US may be, but stable? Give me a break.
Maybe that is why one of the versions was called Windows ME. I await the next version, Windowd CON
You are completely wrong is saying Windows and Lindows are homonyms. If the program was called Whindoze, that would be a homonym. All you have demonstrated is that the two words rhyme.
As an aside, this is not the first time a word has been knocked back because it is generic (which is different to a word found in a dictionary). I seem to recall that a while ago Nike tried without success to trademark the word "air" when competitors tried to release alternate versions of their famous Nike Air runners.
Actually, given the Howard government's sycophantic attitude towards the US, if America passed a law limiting the amount of rugby we in Australia could play, it would probably be rubber stamped here too. Maybe you should have chosen a less compliant nation, like New Zealand, for your example.
I happen to agree that Spyware can be useful, although to be sure this depends on how you define spyware.
I ran Adaware on my computer once and deleted all the spyware found. I later realised that Music Match's access to the CDDB was gone, as it was considered spyware to give details of which CD was in my computer to a third party. This made it more difficult to rip CDs.
I hate the idea of spyware, but sometimes it is not part of programs just to monitor your browsing habits and send you advertising.
I don't want to sound like a pedant, but how could I let the following comment pass?
Did you fucking fail basic grammar in school?
If you are going to criticise someone's grammar, you should do it without splitting the infinitive.
a bunch of arrogant, half-educated, self-important g**ks blowing off on topics they hardly know.
So you have explained Slashdot, but what about Wikipedia?
With the incredible popularity of the iPods surely the time is ripe for someone to come up with a cheap, reliable way to replace these batteries.
The same way some people now routinely get their printer ink cartridges refilled rather than pay through the nose for a new unit, there has gotta be someone with an ounce of knowledge and daring prepared to start up a service rehabilitating old iPods - doesn't there?
I currently have a Hotmail account. One of the things that annoys me is that emails from Microsoft can't be blocked by the internal filter. They always seems to be writing to me, to alert me to the fact that if I pay I can get more features. This to my way of thinking is spam. Will this be blocked? If it is, what does it mean for emails that alert me to the fact that my inbox is nearing its limit? Will they be forced to start deleting my emails if I go over limit without warning because they will be banned for alerting me. I know, I know, I shouldn't even bother with Hotmail, but sometimes it is useful to have web-based email addresses, and this type of issue will surely affect all mail providers.
Apple [1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.]
This still could create problems though, because I think that in America, 1 billion means something different to most of the rest of the world.
In USA 1 billion=1000 million, to the rest of the world, 1 billion-1,000,000 million (what I think the USA calls a trillion).
It's just market economics doing what they do best - balancing out supply and demand.
Oh, that must be why the gap between the rich and the poor is shrinking across the capitalistic world.
I think you have your wires crossed. Market economics ultimately makes a few people very wealthy and most people extremely poor.
I am not an American, but I have been to New York, and I can tell you, in the heart of capitalism, I have never seen such poverty living alongside such obscene wealth.
The irony is that despite your flawed assumptions, your basic tenet is correct. What is happening in the IT field is market economics doing what it does best.
In your example, would it be more accurate if the thieves got in repeatedly through the Windows?
From the article
"To save money in mass production, the little red car includes many parts already made in bulk; Cadillac wheelbearings and axles, for instance, and Geo Tracker doors."
Seems to me they should have included air bags. Unless you can conceive of the idea of driving around in a sardine can at 130 mph, which is about 209 kilometres per hour, without ever having crash, some sort of safety gear is definitely needed in my opinion.
"So, investors should be cheesed off if their company has a contest that, (are you ready for the shock of this?) gives away prizes? If they give away $1,000 an hour, for a *month*, it'll cost them a bit more than half a million. Compared to conventional advertising, and the number of users this might bring in?"
Actually, according to the article, they are only giving away $40,000. The contest is held for 10 hours on Friday's only, and only for four Fridays.
Now I found this really surprising, the guy wasn't a professional finger print cracker? Come on, isn't everyone a professional finger print cracker these days? I hear there is good money in it.
It occurs to me in your post that not only to workers in the USA get less holidays than other countries, you don't get paid for your holidays normally.
In Australia I am lucky enough to get nine weeks holiday per year - paid in full. I used to get something called leave loading, which was an extra 20 per cent pay during holidays, so that I could have a good time. This was ditched in my last enterprise agreement though.
In Australia, the figures that appear in the article are the average holidays, and I can assure you they would all be paid time off.
If I leave a job with time owing, I am paid in full for any time I have accrued but not yet taken.
Writing from Australia, I am unsure how relevant my post is for you guys in the US and the rest of the world.
The interesting thing I have found about the IT industry in Australia is the divide between people who joined a union and those who didn't join any union.
In Australia, as far as I know, there is no union directly for IT staff, but I know a few people who joined the ETU. This is the Electrical Trades Union, which is about the most left-wing, hard core union in Australia. Those that did this are on easy street. They had the ETU negotiate their pay and conditions and those guys take no prisoners. If the ETU blackbans a workplace, you don't get electricians to fix things, you lose your unionised IT staff, you effectively stop functioning.
Those who are not unionised have really fallen apart in terms of pay and conditions.
As for me? Well, I am joined another union, for media workers, and now enjoy nine weeks per year guaranteed holidays. So am I complaining, yeah, from my kabana in Cuba!
Is there a union just for IT staff in the US, and if so, what is the density of membership?
When I was in Italy, not far from Rome, there is an entire mountain where not just water, but everything appears to be rolling uphill.
Couldn't find any links in Google on it, but I think the Italians called in La strada contrario (the contrary street).
All over the road cars are pulled over, as drivers take off the handbrake and laugh as their car rolls uphill.
People tried to explain to me how it works, but my Italian wasn't good enough.
That didn't use any bubbles to create the illusion either!
The Associated Press has now written about this attack:
Internet traffic broadly affected by electronic attack World Internet Lead
By Ted Bridis
Traffic on the many parts of the Internet slowed dramatically early today, the apparent effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection interfering with Web browsing and delivery of email.
Sites monitoring the health of the Internet reported significant slowdowns globally. Experts said the latest electronic attack bore remarkable similarities to ``Code Red'' virus during the summer of
2001 which also ground traffic to a halt on much of the Internet.
``It's not debilitating,'' said Howard Schmidt, one of President George W Bush's top cyber-security advisers.
``Everybody seems to be getting it under control.'' Schmidt said the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Centre and private experts at the CERT Coordination Centre were monitoring the attacks.
The virus-like attack sought out vulnerable computers to infect on the Internet using a known flaw in popular database software from Microsoft Corp, called ``SQL Server''.
But the attacking software code was scanning for victim computers so randomly and so aggressively - sending out thousands of probes each second - that it overwhelmed many Internet data pipelines.
``This is like Code Red all over again,'' said Marc Maiffret, an executive with eEye Digital Security, whose engineers were among the earliest to study samples of the attack software. ``The sheer number of attacks is eating up so much bandwidth that normal operations can't take place.''
The attack sought to take advantage of a software flaw discovered in July 2002 that permits hackers to infect corporate database servers. Microsoft deemed the problem ``critical'' and offered a free repairing patch, but it was impossible to know how many computer administrators applied the fix.
``People need to do a better job about fixing vulnerabilities,'' Schmidt said.
Maybe you want to take a look at the rest of the world. It is called GLOBAL warming after all. At the moment I am in Australia, 44 degrees here (Celcius) and one of the hottest days on record. It has been bloody hot for bloody ages in this part of the world.