You might even consider raising the rate anyway, but then giving a discount: "I normally charge $40/hour to most people, but I'm only charging you $20." Let people know your time is valuable.
Yep - exactly how I handle it. My "rate" is $125/hr (Canadian - LOL), and my 'good-guy' rate (co-workers, acquaintances, etc.) is $60/hr. Friends and family usually only have to feed me alcohol and stimulating conversation.;-)
There is always going to be a war going on between spyware makers and browsers. The browser maker who can respond quickly will continue to grow marketshare.
Now that there is some actual competition in the marketplace, you're right.
Even if Firefox proves to be susceptible to certain attacks, the added diversity to the browser marketplace ensures a competition for marketshare and thus improvements in actual security by all vendors and stakeholders.
Sure, as a criminal genious you could fsck up the police pretty easily, but wouldn't you want to be known as the guy that took out Superman?
As a genius, you wouldn't want to be known as a criminal. Concentrate on bilking the masses and you get a decent paycheck without attracting the attention of your Superman...
Sorry to reply to my own comment, but it belatedly occurred to me that the government doesn't even have to be involved. Just an independant company and the content providers forming agreements to cooperate.
Hmmm. Maybe the RIAA and the MPAA could even take this idea and do somethinng with it to ensure that they do remain relevant.
But artists want to get paid. There are obviously no copy protection schemes that can not be circumvented, short of letting Palladium pwn the box, so what do we do to fix it?
The reality of the situation is simple - if the practice of creating and providing new art (software, music, whatever) is not profitable, there will be a great deal less content being made available to the masses.
Lots of people here are calling each other thieves and whining about infringement vs. theft and generally bickering, but I haven't seen anyone trying to fix the situation. How can we provide content that is freely shareable to the public, and yet ensure that content creators are appropriately (perhaps itself a matter for debate) remunerated?
I propose this - government sponsored artists who get paid based on the number of unique users of their product. Everytime I fire up my "free" version of Photoshop (or GTA, or Celine Dion's whatever) it shoots an informational 'bullet' at a government server where my IP, my unique machine ID and the content ID is recorded. The government tracks the number of unique users (but NOT! the identity of those users!!) of a given product and directly pays the content provider an agreed upon sum per use. The source of the funds could be an entertainment tax that is levied specifically for this purpose, and which you pay voluntarily. Those who pay get their unique ID issued, those who do not, don't. There may (and almost certainly would be) continued piracy, but I think the vast majority of people would willingly participate in such a scheme, because it simplifies the situation for them and it ensures that people who create content continue to get paid.
There would of course be losers in this scheme, and they would be those who currently occupy the position of 'middle man'. They would still be able to represent and promote artists, but artists would also be able to choose to forego that representation and promotion in favor of payments made directly to them.
LOL - well this has turned into a fairly interesting (if odd) thread.
Because people appear to be interested in details - here they are. I am a parent, though not of the children who presumably scratch the discs. While said children (who were sired by relatives and friends of mine) are being supervised, the games are invariably handled with care and respect. Yet *somehow* they still get scratched - usually the fault of the invisible "Not Me!" ghost often referred to in the Family Circus(c) comic strip.
IMHO - the damage being done to my property is unrelated to my parenting skills or possible lack thereof. It would not be reasonable to supervise children playing with a toy 100% of the time, especially when they are 'old enough' to be responsible for themselves and their own conduct. FWIW, I happen to think I'm a reasonable broad-minded yet firm parent, who is doing as good a job as possible, given my daughter's circumstances. If you are truly interested in those circumstances, go ahead and PM me but I suspect that you realize by now that this is not relevant to the topic.
On the topic of the modchip - I don't really care what other people do with it. It shouldn't affect how/I/ use it, or whether it's legal for/me/ to do so. I have no interest in gambling on the odds of other people being honest, either. IMHO, you're probably right and the vast majority of users are thieves and miscreants. Nevertheless, modchips don't pirate software, people do.
As for the suggestion of 'locking it up', well that's a real fine idea but makes the idea of having a distraction (a.k.a. 'TOY') available for visiting children a significant pain-in-the-a** where allowing them to play a backup is little or no trouble whatsoever. I have no incentive or interest in placing additional controls on the behaviour of visiting children while they're playing. BTW - the kids that play these games are actually only playing games/rated/ appropriate for their age! How often does that happen?
In closing, I would respectfully suggest that those who take issue with my parenting based on the comments prior and above should likely have a good close look in the mirror. You likely have avoidance issues that relate to some of your own problems. I would suggest you seek professional help, but me diagnosing your mental state in a Slashdot forum is only slightly more reasonable than your treatment of me. In fact, I would guess based on your comments that you're only slightly older than the children I refer to - probably in your late teens with no concept whatsoever of what a good parent is - perhaps you're the product of a single-parent situation. It would explain a lot of your anger.
Feels good to have other people making assumptions about you, doesn't it?
And owners of modded XBox's tend not to buy games.
You must work for the RIAA. Anyone who listens to MP3's they didn't buy from Apple and anyone who plays their XBox games on backup must be thieves, eh?
A decent XBox game goes for around $60 CAD when relatively new. Invariably, youngsters around my house scratch or otherwise damage the relatively easily damaged media. Should we be forced to pay another $60 to play the game further?
Buying a modchip is just a little protection for the games we buy, allowing us to play them without fscking our original discs. What's costing M$ money is preventing owners of modded boxes from participating on M$ Live!. Oh, you can work around their restrictions if you are of a mind to do so, but I'm not going to spend the extra time just so I can spend extra money...
But, won't introducing warm water back into the lake add new convection currents that will stir things up, affect the lake's organisms, and add certain cleaning chemicals/pollution?
Erm... RTFA. The water is pumped into the city's potable water supply after heat is transferred into it. Contrary to the project propaganda, the laws of thermodynamics indicate that you can't 'suck the cold' out of anything - you must pump excess heat into the colder material.
Anyway, at worst all it means is that the cold water in the tap won't be quite so cold anymore.
Part of the reason for the increased efficiency of these translucent panels is no doubt due to reduced heat levels. Not so surprisingly, black solar panels get HOT sitting out in the sun. Photovoltaic cells convert light to electricity - heat is a form of energy that PV solar cells cannot convert and which interferes with the PV process.
You know, if they can charge us for listening to their music - shouldn't we be able to charge them for polluting our silence?
Personally, the boom-boom-boomer crowd that likes to cruise around my neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning gets on my nerves. Seeing as how we live in the age of ever expanding areas of influence, what kind of due diligence is the music industry performing to ensure that their product does not pollute? If I don't want to hear the tripe they foist on the consumer public, why should I have to when I'm on hold, or in an elevator?
It isn't useless technology - an army marches on its belly. And RTFA - they don't actually piss IN their food, they piss ON the PACKAGE the food is in, and a membrane similar to that in a reverse osmosis unit extracts the water from the liquid used to re-hydrate.
What they ought to do NOW is put the technology in the public domain, and donate a couple of million pouches to the Red Cross. I wonder how reusable the membranes are, and whether they could be used to create clean water once the ration was consumed?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmumnd Burke
People can whine, bitch and complain as much as they like - that's democracy. It's the lack of anyone actually doing anything about it that will allow it to happen.
Shout out against this now -- shout to the roof tops -- or in ten years you'll have to decide between getting a chip of your own or losing your job
First - it isn't going to take ten years. Five at the outside. Second - this is not going to be just about jobs. This is going to be about whether you can buy groceries or not. Third - refuse at all costs, even unto (mortal) death. There's no disputing that RFID tags (at the very least - MIGHT!) represent the Mark of the Beast from the Book of Revelations. If so, the payoff for your faithfulness will be far greater than the immediate gains you make in this life, and they will last longer.
Speak out against this by all means, and do so LOUDLY but don't be surprised when all this comes to pass anyway. Be prepared.
...in essence, you paid for two chip and were only using one. Yes it was deceptive.
You know, I've been waffling back and forth from AMD to Intel for years. I had known that Intel sold 486SX's which were in fact DX's with damaged/disabled floating point math unit. I did
not
know until today that the 'upgrade' chip was a complete boondoggle. Why the fuck shouldn't a guy be able to recoup his costs for upgrades by selling the older parts into a second-hand market? Wow - Intel has so completely alienated the 'little guy'.
I'm AMD for life now, mofos!! I'll never recommend someone else buy anything else either!!
Unfortunately, the breed of company that will ask you to pay for your own equipment will probably also penalize your advancement opportunities because you don't put in a 60-hour work week like the rest of the "committed" employees.
... and you'd want to advance in such a company why? Let the feebs interbreed and die and move on to bigger and better things, working for people who appreciate your contribution during paid time.
...the average PC was inoperable due to a virus nine days a year
Apparently even the poster didn't RTFA - the article states:
The average UK PC is rendered unusable for the equivalent of around nine working days every year because the owner is cleaning up spam or fighting viruses.
Our corporate workstations were affected significantly enough by virii last year to be down a total of less than a single day each. Still more downtime than we'd like, but nothing like nine days. Now spam - that's another kettle of fish altogether...
The thing is, although you may not otherwise pay for DirecTV, without the illegitimate descrambling of their signal you'd likely pay for Dish TV or pay the local cable company for your frontal lobe numbing daily TV fix. It's these injured third parties that are often forcing the issue with the satellite tv providers. This is the reason that Canadian courts finally made the illicit reception of American satellite television illegal - it was costing Canadian companies in lost subscibers.
So many people continue to use computers without knowing the full risks associated with them.
You're mad. I know this is/. but the fact is that most people don't give a shit about how computers work - they just want them to work like an appliance. That's why we have jobs.
An educated user base? Hah. AIDS is still spreading and you're worried about a computer virus?!?!?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep - exactly how I handle it. My "rate" is $125/hr (Canadian - LOL), and my 'good-guy' rate (co-workers, acquaintances, etc.) is $60/hr. Friends and family usually only have to feed me alcohol and stimulating conversation.
Now that there is some actual competition in the marketplace, you're right.
Even if Firefox proves to be susceptible to certain attacks, the added diversity to the browser marketplace ensures a competition for marketshare and thus improvements in actual security by all vendors and stakeholders.
A free market is a Good Thing.
As a genius, you wouldn't want to be known as a criminal. Concentrate on bilking the masses and you get a decent paycheck without attracting the attention of your Superman...
Sorry to reply to my own comment, but it belatedly occurred to me that the government doesn't even have to be involved. Just an independant company and the content providers forming agreements to cooperate.
Hmmm. Maybe the RIAA and the MPAA could even take this idea and do somethinng with it to ensure that they do remain relevant.
But artists want to get paid. There are obviously no copy protection schemes that can not be circumvented, short of letting Palladium pwn the box, so what do we do to fix it?
The reality of the situation is simple - if the practice of creating and providing new art (software, music, whatever) is not profitable, there will be a great deal less content being made available to the masses.
Lots of people here are calling each other thieves and whining about infringement vs. theft and generally bickering, but I haven't seen anyone trying to fix the situation. How can we provide content that is freely shareable to the public, and yet ensure that content creators are appropriately (perhaps itself a matter for debate) remunerated?
I propose this - government sponsored artists who get paid based on the number of unique users of their product. Everytime I fire up my "free" version of Photoshop (or GTA, or Celine Dion's whatever) it shoots an informational 'bullet' at a government server where my IP, my unique machine ID and the content ID is recorded. The government tracks the number of unique users (but NOT! the identity of those users!!) of a given product and directly pays the content provider an agreed upon sum per use. The source of the funds could be an entertainment tax that is levied specifically for this purpose, and which you pay voluntarily. Those who pay get their unique ID issued, those who do not, don't. There may (and almost certainly would be) continued piracy, but I think the vast majority of people would willingly participate in such a scheme, because it simplifies the situation for them and it ensures that people who create content continue to get paid.
There would of course be losers in this scheme, and they would be those who currently occupy the position of 'middle man'. They would still be able to represent and promote artists, but artists would also be able to choose to forego that representation and promotion in favor of payments made directly to them.
Whaddya think?
no - really, I just sneezed!
LOL - well this has turned into a fairly interesting (if odd) thread.
/I/ use it, or whether it's legal for /me/ to do so. I have no interest in gambling on the odds of other people being honest, either. IMHO, you're probably right and the vast majority of users are thieves and miscreants. Nevertheless, modchips don't pirate software, people do.
/rated/ appropriate for their age! How often does that happen?
Because people appear to be interested in details - here they are. I am a parent, though not of the children who presumably scratch the discs. While said children (who were sired by relatives and friends of mine) are being supervised, the games are invariably handled with care and respect. Yet *somehow* they still get scratched - usually the fault of the invisible "Not Me!" ghost often referred to in the Family Circus(c) comic strip.
IMHO - the damage being done to my property is unrelated to my parenting skills or possible lack thereof. It would not be reasonable to supervise children playing with a toy 100% of the time, especially when they are 'old enough' to be responsible for themselves and their own conduct. FWIW, I happen to think I'm a reasonable broad-minded yet firm parent, who is doing as good a job as possible, given my daughter's circumstances. If you are truly interested in those circumstances, go ahead and PM me but I suspect that you realize by now that this is not relevant to the topic.
On the topic of the modchip - I don't really care what other people do with it. It shouldn't affect how
As for the suggestion of 'locking it up', well that's a real fine idea but makes the idea of having a distraction (a.k.a. 'TOY') available for visiting children a significant pain-in-the-a** where allowing them to play a backup is little or no trouble whatsoever. I have no incentive or interest in placing additional controls on the behaviour of visiting children while they're playing. BTW - the kids that play these games are actually only playing games
In closing, I would respectfully suggest that those who take issue with my parenting based on the comments prior and above should likely have a good close look in the mirror. You likely have avoidance issues that relate to some of your own problems. I would suggest you seek professional help, but me diagnosing your mental state in a Slashdot forum is only slightly more reasonable than your treatment of me. In fact, I would guess based on your comments that you're only slightly older than the children I refer to - probably in your late teens with no concept whatsoever of what a good parent is - perhaps you're the product of a single-parent situation. It would explain a lot of your anger.
Feels good to have other people making assumptions about you, doesn't it?
Regards,
JustDisGuy (*-yes, male!)
You must work for the RIAA. Anyone who listens to MP3's they didn't buy from Apple and anyone who plays their XBox games on backup must be thieves, eh?
A decent XBox game goes for around $60 CAD when relatively new. Invariably, youngsters around my house scratch or otherwise damage the relatively easily damaged media. Should we be forced to pay another $60 to play the game further?
Buying a modchip is just a little protection for the games we buy, allowing us to play them without fscking our original discs. What's costing M$ money is preventing owners of modded boxes from participating on M$ Live!. Oh, you can work around their restrictions if you are of a mind to do so, but I'm not going to spend the extra time just so I can spend extra money...
Erm... RTFA. The water is pumped into the city's potable water supply after heat is transferred into it. Contrary to the project propaganda, the laws of thermodynamics indicate that you can't 'suck the cold' out of anything - you must pump excess heat into the colder material.
Anyway, at worst all it means is that the cold water in the tap won't be quite so cold anymore.
Part of the reason for the increased efficiency of these translucent panels is no doubt due to reduced heat levels. Not so surprisingly, black solar panels get HOT sitting out in the sun. Photovoltaic cells convert light to electricity - heat is a form of energy that PV solar cells cannot convert and which interferes with the PV process.
You know, if they can charge us for listening to their music - shouldn't we be able to charge them for polluting our silence?
Personally, the boom-boom-boomer crowd that likes to cruise around my neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning gets on my nerves. Seeing as how we live in the age of ever expanding areas of influence, what kind of due diligence is the music industry performing to ensure that their product does not pollute? If I don't want to hear the tripe they foist on the consumer public, why should I have to when I'm on hold, or in an elevator?
It isn't useless technology - an army marches on its belly. And RTFA - they don't actually piss IN their food, they piss ON the PACKAGE the food is in, and a membrane similar to that in a reverse osmosis unit extracts the water from the liquid used to re-hydrate.
What they ought to do NOW is put the technology in the public domain, and donate a couple of million pouches to the Red Cross. I wonder how reusable the membranes are, and whether they could be used to create clean water once the ration was consumed?
It's as long as Slashdotters will argue over how long an actual eon is, when the reporter that used the term just thought it sounded good...
Not least because "Mach10" is a relativistic speed in relation to the speed of sound, which in the vaccuum of space is nearly zero, no?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmumnd Burke
People can whine, bitch and complain as much as they like - that's democracy. It's the lack of anyone actually doing anything about it that will allow it to happen.
First - it isn't going to take ten years. Five at the outside.
Second - this is not going to be just about jobs. This is going to be about whether you can buy groceries or not.
Third - refuse at all costs, even unto (mortal) death. There's no disputing that RFID tags (at the very least - MIGHT!) represent the Mark of the Beast from the Book of Revelations. If so, the payoff for your faithfulness will be far greater than the immediate gains you make in this life, and they will last longer.
Speak out against this by all means, and do so LOUDLY but don't be surprised when all this comes to pass anyway. Be prepared.
You know, I've been waffling back and forth from AMD to Intel for years. I had known that Intel sold 486SX's which were in fact DX's with damaged/disabled floating point math unit. I did
- not
know until today that the 'upgrade' chip was a complete boondoggle. Why the fuck shouldn't a guy be able to recoup his costs for upgrades by selling the older parts into a second-hand market? Wow - Intel has so completely alienated the 'little guy'.I'm AMD for life now, mofos!! I'll never recommend someone else buy anything else either!!
Apparently even the poster didn't RTFA - the article states:
Our corporate workstations were affected significantly enough by virii last year to be down a total of less than a single day each. Still more downtime than we'd like, but nothing like nine days. Now spam - that's another kettle of fish altogether...
The thing is, although you may not otherwise pay for DirecTV, without the illegitimate descrambling of their signal you'd likely pay for Dish TV or pay the local cable company for your frontal lobe numbing daily TV fix. It's these injured third parties that are often forcing the issue with the satellite tv providers. This is the reason that Canadian courts finally made the illicit reception of American satellite television illegal - it was costing Canadian companies in lost subscibers.
Hmmm... so much for "Innocent until proven guilty". Personally, I'd countersue for harassment.
...and speeding tickets in the mail. 'Nuff said.
Any other near-Earth asteroid as big as Toutatis would almost surely be spotted decades or centuries before any possible impact.
LOL - we've catalogued what... 10% of N.E.O's? At least it's anti-FUD...
So many people continue to use computers without knowing the full risks associated with them.
/. but the fact is that most people don't give a shit about how computers work - they just want them to work like an appliance. That's why we have jobs.
You're mad. I know this is
An educated user base? Hah. AIDS is still spreading and you're worried about a computer virus?!?!?