The town's mom and pop electric store upgrading grandma's fridge and light fixtures and tv, and their 13 year old whiz kid is setting up the interface. He's the kind of guy that just discovered blink, and uses links with spaces instead of %20.
It'll be a 2 month project before the fridge is up and running, and grandma retrieves the old oil lamp from the attic, sho she won't blow her household budget on candles.
Friendly neighburs will pop in and help out now and then, amongst others Al, the plumber, who is quite the whiz with computers. In just an afternoon he manages to get the lightning working.
Just too bad he broke the links to the fridge.
And the holiday season is getting closer, so the designated webmaster prodigy is now busy programming the christmas tree. Grandma never really cared for disco, but now she'll get a peek at what she missed.
She's a open-minded soul, so she doesn't mind all the cusswords being inprinted on her toast every morning by script kiddies. Also she keeps her cool when FBI busts in one evening to confiscate her washer and dryer, which allegedly had been used to break into pentagon, as well as hosting a web site poking fun at General Motors.
She only gets upset when her electric tea kettle gets the "blue screen thing", and she won't be able to serve those nice FBI agents some nice tea.
IANAL, but as far as I can recall, there is presedence already. A contract is not valid if it is not balanced, benefitting only one party.
A company can put all kinds of disclaimers in their little print, but if these disclaimers are not reasonable, a court will dismiss them in a heartbeat. The purpose of these disclaimers and one-sided contracts is to save money. Most consumers actually believe this bullshit and think they have no rights, thus saving a lot of money for the offending service provider.
All this walking around feels lame.
Harvest the energy from other people instead.
Steal a littel bit of electricity from your phone hookup. Tap intothe radiowaves, they carry some energy.
Mount a powerful spring on your door, so that all guests are forced to contribute a few newtonmeters. (This idea was introduced by the late Andre Franquin in his comic books on Gaston Lagaffe. Gaston pressed a glass of fresh orange use, and ground half a pond of coffee off each visitor. )
In order to make a player, the developer would have to get a licence, plus agree to pay some insane amount if the CSS "secret" keys end up in the public domain. Now that the cat is out of the bag, and their stupid scheme inevitably failed, they should abandon the whole idea, and admit that they goofed.
The way they made it impossible for customers to play legally purchased copies of films, I don't think they will ever have a legel leg to stand on, in any country except the US.
I'm not sure a Linux shop could afford to sign a licence for the CSS stuff. The biggest player is Red Hat, but they do all their work open source as far as I now, so they would not be able to get a license.
How many commercial DVD players for windows are out there now, except Microsofts, and that crappy player that's included on some of the DVD's? (can't remember the name)
In all seriousness, consumers do not prefer free software or open source, unless by consumers we mean the tiny
community of open source system administrators. The reason is that commercial software is superior to free software in
features, friendliness, attractiveness, performance, and reliability. Free software appeals to tinkerers and hobbyists, who
represent a very small portion of the market.
Ah, but you're wrong. If you look at the consumers really hard, they don't care what OS they get. If they have a preference at all, it is to have the same OS as last time, so they won't have to learn all the stuff all over again. They buy a PC, with standard features (such as CDROM, mouse, keyboard, and operating system).
What you're forgetting about, is another market, where the operating system is less visible. Linux is widely used for embedded devices. Your next VCR is more likely to run linux than windows.
The next generation car stereos might be linux devices. Your home climate control might be operated by a linux device. See how popular TIVO is. You can get java phones.
These things are built with free (as in beer) software, because it saves the manufacturer money, and they also get other benefits (as in sharing). They get to tweak the software to do exactly what they want it to, and if they're lucky, the next release might even include their patches, so they can be up and running out of the box.
Consumers love their new devices, and with a "Powered by Gnu/Linux" sticker on them, they might even consider it for their PC. Getting users to switch operating systems is not easy, but MS has made the job easy for Linux. Make buggy software, charge a lot of money, bully other companies and get a tainted public image. As a result MS customers are not as religious as for example Apple customers, and they'd be very happy to jump ship.
Fortunately we have truth, light, and the American Constitution on our side. They just have
greed and short-term profits on their side. We will win on this issue eventually.
Unfortunately eventually might take longer than you or I would like to see.
As far as I can tell, a recent slashdot feature on the history of copyright law showed the opposite.
For every revision of copyright laws, they slash away more and more of the fair use, and they take more and more away from public domain.
So if it's been moving the wrong way for 200 years, we should have a decent law by 2400 or so, assuming that things start swinging the right way from now on?
That''s a regional newsgroup. You'll also notice groups starting with fi,se,dk,de, etc. But to answer your question:
no.community.health.disabilities.misc
..don't you think you'd be a little perturbed as
well considering you pay for calls you receive?
If you don't mind a little effort, you can do something about telemarketers, and even make a buck or two.
Always ask the callers names, and keep a log of spam calls. Ask to be put on their no-call list.
Never ask to be "taken off their list".
(FTC requires all telemarketers to maintain a no-call list.)
If they call again, take their names down, and go to your nearest small claims court. Clerks will help you fill out a claim. I believe $500 is typical for these kinds of claims. If the telemarketer is a big company and out of town, they will not bother sending someone, and will lose by default.
If FTC would go for similar regulations on unsolicited mail, we'd have the spammers on their knees in no time. Come on spammers, fill my inbox and make me rich!
Okay, but seriously. EVERYONE please contact these two and tell them how STUPID this is.
OK, I followed your cue and left the following charming message at his site:
Re: your position on unsolicited email, also called spam, I just want to point out that you are a big dumb idiot.
I notice that you do not have an email address, only this stupid web form. Good
for you, so you will not have to suffer the consequences of the bribes you are
receiving from direct marketing lobbyists.
Hope you choke on your spam and go to hell in a flaming handbasket.
With all the product placements, plus the ads, and the bad quality of programming, how come me and countless other idiots are still paying some $50 a month for cable tv?
Of course, this is also the day that if you're standing on the north pole, the sun will rise, circle around you, and set in the
same place. Weird day all over the place.
What you describe is true if you're standing on th e polar circle, not the North Pole. And if you live north of the polar circle, you get to see this many times.
Yes it should be standard procedure especially for a resourceful company as Microsoft. There are a few ways to discover buffer overflows. HP has a compiler (I think the name is insure) that can discover many memory-related problems at compile time. Then there are tools that can discover memory leaks and buffer overflows at runtime (for example purify from Rational).
Then there's proper unit testing, which should include full coverage testing. Unit test should be written so that they provide all sorts of legal and illegal input. Most software shops do not have the resources to do this properly within their deadlines. They might fore up the tools if they see som insane memory leaks or if the program crashes.
But again, I'd think Microsoft has all the resources they need. Judging on the poor quality of their software they probably have figured that the (lack of) quality of their software has no detrimental effect on their sales, so they probably leave the testing to GUI monkeys, and hope for the best. Even a 0.5 trillion $ company can make a few bucks extra by spending a few pennies less.
Could it be that the project's real purpose is to give a helping hand to Nortel? They recently warned that they were losing 19 Billion dollars (sic) in one quarter.
I'm using a 233 Mhz P2, too, and I feel no pain at all.
This machine functions as router, firewall, java development environment, and slashdot client. I haven't tried running the latest and greatest realtime 3d games on it, but for everything else, it's just fine.
On my mobile phone, I can do just that. Here's the keystrokes for hello world:
4422555555666096667775553
There is no need for a special key, after a little time the cursor advances one step forward. If that time interval was adjustable, I suppose you could write rather fluently on such a keyboeard.
What do they need computers for anyways? Feed them enough food, and give them their prescription drugs, and they should be happy as clams. They can hardly remember their own names, and they wear diapers. Same with the inner city kids. Learn them about computers, and they've just wasted some time. Learn them how to steal a car, and they've learnt a trade.
End sarcasm, enter troll mode:
Seriously though, don't assume that the elderly are retarded, and don't assume that inner city kids are retarded.
There's lots of elderly people out there who are active computer users. They've got their own clubs and groups and classes. You might as well have asked about fly-fishing, knitting, antiqueing, or any other hobbies popular among retirees.
What surprises me is that some young pup so obviously fresh to the issue at hand has been asked to provide educational services to the elderly. I am sure they would have been better off digging up some old folks already on the internet, and let them teach their peers.
but this does not mean the music industry is going to die
The way I understood the article he didn't say that at all. My translation:
If Beatles were launched in 2001, they'd promote "Love me do" untill we puked, but "The White Album", Sgt. Pepper, and "Let it be" would never see the light of day.
if I ever saw one.
I guess tomorrow we can do emacs/vi, and round up the week with PC/Mac.
Wonder if the original poster is intending to read all the answers, or if he just wanted to see if he could set a new./ record?
Yep, they figured it weas cheaper that way, and outsourced it. Since the collective Washington D.C Apparatschnik are mere puppets of the corporations, they figured they didn't need physical control of the devices, since controlling the president is easier and cheaper.
Heh. I remember when Slashdot was unreachable if prefixed with www.
Yes, www is a nasty prefix. It's ok to type, but everytime some radio or tv person mentions a web site and they go dubya... dubya.. dubya..(enough already!), i want to slit my throat.
On a visit to France, I learned a refreshing and fast way to say it: waff waff waff. Saves you half a minute.
Only 8.6 percent of servers shipped in 3rd quarter 2000 were running Linux, claims a recent Gartner Dataquest report. A previous study
My server, which came with win95 in 1998, was not running anything when it shipped. I had to turn on the power. Then, after a few days, it ran Red Hat, and the last year it's been running debian.
Before you know it, Europe will be voting to restrict american's right to own cars, China will vote to restrict american environmental regulations, etc..., etc... The list is endless.
Were you being sarcastic, or did you just manage to shoot a big hole in your argument? If you build a law based on having 100% freedom, it will have only two paragraphs.
All citizens has a right to full freedom, and to do whatever they want.
A citizen who depraves another citizen the rights in 1) loses his freedom.
By this extension, the people of China is in their full right to demand that U.S reduce their pollution made by cars. If U.S is not a responsible party in environmetal matters, other countries are forced to make sacrifices. Such disputes could be settled by letting supra-national bodies have authority.
Of course, you could just claim your right to screw everybody else up, and wait for the other countries to attack when they're fed up.
But my point is that freedom is really very cheep. You have the right to receive freedom, as long as you extend that right to other people. If you do not extend those rights, you lose your own freedom. Freedom without responsibility is not freedom, it is tyranny.
I'd feel much more confident about using a service if they charged $3.95 a month rather than free.
Maybe so, but all it means is that you might get lucky and get your 3.95 back. But your data is gone. Or you might not be so lucky, and your N x 3.95 is gone, and your data, too.
And I can see little reason why anyone should use it for their business.
Having your HR, email, accounting run by complete strangers leaves your company wide open to all sorts of disasters. HR records may go astray,
email may get broken into (remember yahoo, hotmail anyone?), and what do you tell IRS when it's time to file the taxes, and the ASP's server has crashed, and they did not do proper backups, and you've signed contracts saying that any damages is limited to the ASP's fees.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll be a 2 month project before the fridge is up and running, and grandma retrieves the old oil lamp from the attic, sho she won't blow her household budget on candles.
Friendly neighburs will pop in and help out now and then, amongst others Al, the plumber, who is quite the whiz with computers. In just an afternoon he manages to get the lightning working. Just too bad he broke the links to the fridge.
And the holiday season is getting closer, so the designated webmaster prodigy is now busy programming the christmas tree. Grandma never really cared for disco, but now she'll get a peek at what she missed.
She's a open-minded soul, so she doesn't mind all the cusswords being inprinted on her toast every morning by script kiddies. Also she keeps her cool when FBI busts in one evening to confiscate her washer and dryer, which allegedly had been used to break into pentagon, as well as hosting a web site poking fun at General Motors.
She only gets upset when her electric tea kettle gets the "blue screen thing", and she won't be able to serve those nice FBI agents some nice tea.
A company can put all kinds of disclaimers in their little print, but if these disclaimers are not reasonable, a court will dismiss them in a heartbeat. The purpose of these disclaimers and one-sided contracts is to save money. Most consumers actually believe this bullshit and think they have no rights, thus saving a lot of money for the offending service provider.
Mount a powerful spring on your door, so that all guests are forced to contribute a few newtonmeters. (This idea was introduced by the late Andre Franquin in his comic books on Gaston Lagaffe. Gaston pressed a glass of fresh orange use, and ground half a pond of coffee off each visitor. )
The way they made it impossible for customers to play legally purchased copies of films, I don't think they will ever have a legel leg to stand on, in any country except the US.
I'm not sure a Linux shop could afford to sign a licence for the CSS stuff. The biggest player is Red Hat, but they do all their work open source as far as I now, so they would not be able to get a license.
How many commercial DVD players for windows are out there now, except Microsofts, and that crappy player that's included on some of the DVD's? (can't remember the name)
Ah, but you're wrong. If you look at the consumers really hard, they don't care what OS they get. If they have a preference at all, it is to have the same OS as last time, so they won't have to learn all the stuff all over again. They buy a PC, with standard features (such as CDROM, mouse, keyboard, and operating system).
What you're forgetting about, is another market, where the operating system is less visible. Linux is widely used for embedded devices. Your next VCR is more likely to run linux than windows. The next generation car stereos might be linux devices. Your home climate control might be operated by a linux device. See how popular TIVO is. You can get java phones.
These things are built with free (as in beer) software, because it saves the manufacturer money, and they also get other benefits (as in sharing). They get to tweak the software to do exactly what they want it to, and if they're lucky, the next release might even include their patches, so they can be up and running out of the box.
Consumers love their new devices, and with a "Powered by Gnu/Linux" sticker on them, they might even consider it for their PC. Getting users to switch operating systems is not easy, but MS has made the job easy for Linux. Make buggy software, charge a lot of money, bully other companies and get a tainted public image. As a result MS customers are not as religious as for example Apple customers, and they'd be very happy to jump ship.
As far as I can tell, a recent slashdot feature on the history of copyright law showed the opposite. For every revision of copyright laws, they slash away more and more of the fair use, and they take more and more away from public domain.
So if it's been moving the wrong way for 200 years, we should have a decent law by 2400 or so, assuming that things start swinging the right way from now on?
That''s a regional newsgroup. You'll also notice groups starting with fi,se,dk,de, etc. But to answer your question: no.community.health.disabilities.misc
If you don't mind a little effort, you can do something about telemarketers, and even make a buck or two.
Always ask the callers names, and keep a log of spam calls. Ask to be put on their no-call list. Never ask to be "taken off their list". (FTC requires all telemarketers to maintain a no-call list.)
If they call again, take their names down, and go to your nearest small claims court. Clerks will help you fill out a claim. I believe $500 is typical for these kinds of claims. If the telemarketer is a big company and out of town, they will not bother sending someone, and will lose by default.
If FTC would go for similar regulations on unsolicited mail, we'd have the spammers on their knees in no time. Come on spammers, fill my inbox and make me rich!
OK, I followed your cue and left the following charming message at his site:
Re: your position on unsolicited email, also called spam, I just want to point out that you are a big dumb idiot.
I notice that you do not have an email address, only this stupid web form. Good for you, so you will not have to suffer the consequences of the bribes you are receiving from direct marketing lobbyists.
Hope you choke on your spam and go to hell in a flaming handbasket.
Hey, I didn't say I was watching the stuff. I'm only paying. The spouse is the one watching, and I value my life too much to snip that cable.
With all the product placements, plus the ads, and the bad quality of programming, how come me and countless other idiots are still paying some $50 a month for cable tv?
What you describe is true if you're standing on th e polar circle, not the North Pole. And if you live north of the polar circle, you get to see this many times.
Then there's proper unit testing, which should include full coverage testing. Unit test should be written so that they provide all sorts of legal and illegal input. Most software shops do not have the resources to do this properly within their deadlines. They might fore up the tools if they see som insane memory leaks or if the program crashes.
But again, I'd think Microsoft has all the resources they need. Judging on the poor quality of their software they probably have figured that the (lack of) quality of their software has no detrimental effect on their sales, so they probably leave the testing to GUI monkeys, and hope for the best. Even a 0.5 trillion $ company can make a few bucks extra by spending a few pennies less.
Could it be that the project's real purpose is to give a helping hand to Nortel? They recently warned that they were losing 19 Billion dollars (sic) in one quarter.
I'm using a 233 Mhz P2, too, and I feel no pain at all. This machine functions as router, firewall, java development environment, and slashdot client. I haven't tried running the latest and greatest realtime 3d games on it, but for everything else, it's just fine.
4422555555666096667775553
There is no need for a special key, after a little time the cursor advances one step forward. If that time interval was adjustable, I suppose you could write rather fluently on such a keyboeard.
What do they need computers for anyways? Feed them enough food, and give them their prescription drugs, and they should be happy as clams. They can hardly remember their own names, and they wear diapers. Same with the inner city kids. Learn them about computers, and they've just wasted some time. Learn them how to steal a car, and they've learnt a trade.
End sarcasm, enter troll mode:
Seriously though, don't assume that the elderly are retarded, and don't assume that inner city kids are retarded.
There's lots of elderly people out there who are active computer users. They've got their own clubs and groups and classes. You might as well have asked about fly-fishing, knitting, antiqueing, or any other hobbies popular among retirees.
What surprises me is that some young pup so obviously fresh to the issue at hand has been asked to provide educational services to the elderly. I am sure they would have been better off digging up some old folks already on the internet, and let them teach their peers.
The way I understood the article he didn't say that at all. My translation:
If Beatles were launched in 2001, they'd promote "Love me do" untill we puked, but "The White Album", Sgt. Pepper, and "Let it be" would never see the light of day.
if I ever saw one. I guess tomorrow we can do emacs/vi, and round up the week with PC/Mac. Wonder if the original poster is intending to read all the answers, or if he just wanted to see if he could set a new ./ record?
Yep, they figured it weas cheaper that way, and outsourced it. Since the collective Washington D.C Apparatschnik are mere puppets of the corporations, they figured they didn't need physical control of the devices, since controlling the president is easier and cheaper.
Yes, www is a nasty prefix. It's ok to type, but everytime some radio or tv person mentions a web site and they go dubya ... dubya .. dubya..(enough already!), i want to slit my throat.
On a visit to France, I learned a refreshing and fast way to say it: waff waff waff. Saves you half a minute.
My server, which came with win95 in 1998, was not running anything when it shipped. I had to turn on the power. Then, after a few days, it ran Red Hat, and the last year it's been running debian.
Were you being sarcastic, or did you just manage to shoot a big hole in your argument? If you build a law based on having 100% freedom, it will have only two paragraphs.
- All citizens has a right to full freedom, and to do whatever they want.
- A citizen who depraves another citizen the rights in 1) loses his freedom.
By this extension, the people of China is in their full right to demand that U.S reduce their pollution made by cars. If U.S is not a responsible party in environmetal matters, other countries are forced to make sacrifices. Such disputes could be settled by letting supra-national bodies have authority.Of course, you could just claim your right to screw everybody else up, and wait for the other countries to attack when they're fed up.
But my point is that freedom is really very cheep. You have the right to receive freedom, as long as you extend that right to other people. If you do not extend those rights, you lose your own freedom. Freedom without responsibility is not freedom, it is tyranny.
Maybe so, but all it means is that you might get lucky and get your 3.95 back. But your data is gone. Or you might not be so lucky, and your N x 3.95 is gone, and your data, too.
And I can see little reason why anyone should use it for their business. Having your HR, email, accounting run by complete strangers leaves your company wide open to all sorts of disasters. HR records may go astray, email may get broken into (remember yahoo, hotmail anyone?), and what do you tell IRS when it's time to file the taxes, and the ASP's server has crashed, and they did not do proper backups, and you've signed contracts saying that any damages is limited to the ASP's fees.