I believe the title is "Method and Apparatus for Increasing Customer Value by Redefining Value As Something No-one Hithertofore Would Consider Valuable," and Microsoft paid a kingly sum to license it under the name "Genuine Advantage."
You know how I know it's an April Fools post? Because if it were real, cell phone companies would charge you $10 a month to opt out of it. They'd call it something like "TotalRingControl(TM)" and initially they'd let people send these messages for free to annoy the shit out of every right-thinking businessperson who 1) depends on their phone, and 2) has the $10 to burn. Then, 3 months later, they'd switch it to $2 a telepunch without telling you, and charge another $.50 just to receive one.
This city is a completely unrealistic setting for a story about petty crime, gang violence and ethnicity-oriented organized crime. This is an affront to the citizens, and an insult to its elected officials who work hard to keep it clean. Liberty City is a finest city you will ever find, and for Rockstar to continue smearing it is abhorrent. Why can't they pick a genuine crime-infested hell hole, like New York?
It's a good thing Dvorak is an intelligent, experienced businessman who has himself run a highly successful, multi-billion dollar company similar to Apple, and not just some blabbering wash-up with a column.
From the sound of it, I don't think there's even a judge present. I think Gabriel is basically saying "this question is bogus" for the record, sort of flagging that section of the testimony as contested ground. That's my guess.
The rats never had autism -- they had Rett syndrome, which was cured. Why does the poster seem to feel that the results here can be generalized to a similar disorder, when it's not even well understood why it even worked for the first?
I agree 100%. It's absolutely reprehensible that people are spending money on having a good time. IF IT'S NOT MONOTONOUS AND BLAND, IT'S NOT WORTH YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY, PEOPLE.
Sex offenders -- just like everyone else -- are not allowed to use MySpace to pick up underage children for sex. But since there's no "match only pedophiles" search feature on MySpace, the script just uses the sex offender database to narrow down the list of candidates to a more manageable size. Of course, it ignores all the non-registered sex offenders out there -- but he still caught an active child molestor.
That said, raking MySpace over the coals on this is ridiculous, as is claiming that the predator was caught by code. The guy still had to manually discount a bunch of false positives, and THEN read through the spaces of the entire 700+ name list to find a guy who was actually molesting kids.
What the fuck? You're talking about crippling consumer choice to force your ideas on them and make money for yourself? Are you sure you don't WORK at Microsoft?
I have always been very annoyed not having destructors in PHP. PHP5 includes destructors, along with public/private class members. I can't wait for this to be released as a stable version.
Where I come from, an innocent question is usually answered with something useful and constructive, as opposed to vague statements that I am "a part of the problem."
I already said I'm a novice. This is a genuine question. Why don't I see SMTP AUTH getting more love?
I'm a novice system administrator, and I've been learning to set up e-mail servers lately...Wouldn't wide-spread SMTP AUTH nip all this in the bud? The only way you could send mail would be through your own registered account. If you send too much, they know with utmost certainty what account was responsible.
Now spammers would have to either abandon their "hit-and-run" tactics, or start stealing log-ins.
Mandating open source software in government is horrible. We'd be up in arms screaming bloody murder if someone tried passing a law requiring proprietary software. You'd be one of the first in line to write a lengthy article about how it was a thinly veiled attempt by a large company to squash their competition.
So how is it fair the other way? What makes us so high and mighty? The fact that we're "free," in both senses of the word? I think we start to lose "free as in speech" when we begin passing laws on par with the worst proposals from the RIAA. And without that, we really are just software providers, except with unbeatable prices.
Yes, it would dramatically reduce costs in government computing if we mandate OSS. But that's a choice for them to make at budget time! "Free" doesn't mean "you have to use us!"
I've gained some disrespect for you from this article, Michael. Not only because this policy is flat out wrong, just as wrong as the DMCA, but moreso because of the way you respond to O'Reilly. What has the man done to deserve such a disrespectful response? If you're going to rebut him, do it with some dignity!
Sure sounds are related to culture. We can't build a language without communication. Granted, there's writing -- But look at what we're writing now. We find it advantageous to make our written language parallel our spoken language. Every character reflects a different sound.
The reason the parrots -- and the mice, if the experiment works, -- won't develop culture is because of a lack of intelligence. It's like saying, "My friend has an oven, and so do I, but I'm a master chef. Since he's so unskilled, clearly ovens have nothing to do with cooking."
I disagree. It very much does take away our rights. You cite the restrictions on minors in movie theaters and in public as examples of how this is already in effect; but these are not laws.
The MPAA's rating system is not required by law. The movie theaters enforce it to prevent law -- Sort of how two kids might place some restrictions on their roughplay before Mom says "okay, no more."
I'm not even sure what you're talking about when you mention speaking in public. Last I checked, I was very free to discuss violence in public. Am I free to go up to some stranger, and say in a dead serious voice, "I'm going to cap you with a Beretta?" No. I am free to brag about my Quake exploits, however, and people are free to swap war stories in a restaurant.
This goes beyond "guilty until proven innocent." This presumes that I am going to start shooting people if I play these games. It's just the same as if the government passed a law saying that you can't sell guns to poor people, because you just know they're going to mug someone to buy cheap liquor.
Doesn't this mean that I won't be able to make out the actual voice of my caller? I mean, it's cool and all, but I don't want to feel like I'm in a cheap horror movie. Or talking to Stephen Hawking.
Hardly the case these days. I don't know about the rest of you, but here's the path my "real money" takes, from the time I get it, to the time I pay for a CD:
I do my share of work for the pay period, and at the end, I get an e-mail from my bank stating that my employer has transferred funds from their account to mine.
Translation: Bits have been shifted on a disk somewhere, and a few notes might have been scribbled.
I head down to CD World, and hunt for a few CDs that will carry me through the next pay period. I plop down my credit card, which the clerk swipes across the machine, and gives me my CDs, along with a few stamps on my bonus card.
Translation: Bits have been changed on a disk somewhere, in exchange for my receiving the intangible rights to hear this music, along with a bit of plastic, paper, and possibly metal.
Some weeks later, I receive a statement telling me that I need to pay them for these things. At this point, I will either write them a check, or march down to the bank and transfer the funds directly.
Translation: A piece of paper is printed, and carried to me by a postal official. I reply by either writing a check which tells them to withdraw the funds from the account, or by driving down and talking to a teller, who writes a few things, types a few other things, and that's that.
At no point in this entire transaction have I touched a single dollar bill. My employer did not touch a single dollar bill. My bank has the dollar bills, but for purposes of this transaction did not actually touch them.
This same process applies for buying books, gas, meals, groceries, and practically anything else. These merchants seem to be happy to trade their goods for bits on a hard disk somewhere -- Why should we damn people trading bits for bits?
If we do that, you may as well fire me. I work as a programmer -- My job is making bits move the way my employer wants them to move. I get paid hundreds upon hundreds of real dollars to write programs, which are stored as bits on a machine somewhere!
I have reason to believe that a surprising number of the human population -- including members of our congress -- has engaged or plans to engage in sexual activities.
Yes, I know this comes as a shock to you, too. But studies have shown, shockingly, that approximately 100% of polled parents who did not adopt have engaged in sexual activities. How can we trust the children to these sex-craved heathens?
Additionally, almost the entire responding sample over the age of 20 replied that they had engaged in sex at one time or another.
Statistics do not lie..*snickers*..*straightens face* Furthermore, studies have indicated that many houses with multiple children are headed by couples who continued to engage in such profane sexual behavior even after the birth of their first child -- sometimes even while their children were presently in the home!
Unsurprisingly, this has had a horrifying effect on the innocence of our children. More than two thirds of those over the age of 10 correctly identified sex as the means by which one starts a pregnancy. Many of the parents of children over the age of 13 said that they had seen signs that their children had been committing masturbation. Only a handful (less than ten) of the 100,000 parents stated that they would consider chastity belts to help keep their children from performing such horrific sexually deviant behavior, and to assist the development of a well-adjusted mind.
It has also been revealed that children are not shielded from the sight of blood -- Many polled stated that they would allow their children to remove band-aids and view cuts and bloodied bandages, as well as attend barbeques. Some particularly sinful couples would allow their older children to hunt -- exposing them to guns, violence, and blood in one big sinfest!
How can we as a society continue if we continue to engage in this horrific behavior? We must be ever-vigilant to protect our children from the facts of life!
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I believe the title is "Method and Apparatus for Increasing Customer Value by Redefining Value As Something No-one Hithertofore Would Consider Valuable," and Microsoft paid a kingly sum to license it under the name "Genuine Advantage."
You know how I know it's an April Fools post? Because if it were real, cell phone companies would charge you $10 a month to opt out of it. They'd call it something like "TotalRingControl(TM)" and initially they'd let people send these messages for free to annoy the shit out of every right-thinking businessperson who 1) depends on their phone, and 2) has the $10 to burn. Then, 3 months later, they'd switch it to $2 a telepunch without telling you, and charge another $.50 just to receive one.
This city is a completely unrealistic setting for a story about petty crime, gang violence and ethnicity-oriented organized crime. This is an affront to the citizens, and an insult to its elected officials who work hard to keep it clean. Liberty City is a finest city you will ever find, and for Rockstar to continue smearing it is abhorrent. Why can't they pick a genuine crime-infested hell hole, like New York?
It's a good thing Dvorak is an intelligent, experienced businessman who has himself run a highly successful, multi-billion dollar company similar to Apple, and not just some blabbering wash-up with a column.
From the sound of it, I don't think there's even a judge present. I think Gabriel is basically saying "this question is bogus" for the record, sort of flagging that section of the testimony as contested ground. That's my guess.
The rats never had autism -- they had Rett syndrome, which was cured. Why does the poster seem to feel that the results here can be generalized to a similar disorder, when it's not even well understood why it even worked for the first?
I agree 100%. It's absolutely reprehensible that people are spending money on having a good time. IF IT'S NOT MONOTONOUS AND BLAND, IT'S NOT WORTH YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY, PEOPLE.
If the WTO strikes down the anti-gambling law, it will become more powerful than they can possibly imagine.
Sex offenders -- just like everyone else -- are not allowed to use MySpace to pick up underage children for sex. But since there's no "match only pedophiles" search feature on MySpace, the script just uses the sex offender database to narrow down the list of candidates to a more manageable size. Of course, it ignores all the non-registered sex offenders out there -- but he still caught an active child molestor.
That said, raking MySpace over the coals on this is ridiculous, as is claiming that the predator was caught by code. The guy still had to manually discount a bunch of false positives, and THEN read through the spaces of the entire 700+ name list to find a guy who was actually molesting kids.
I could have done it in assembly language with 1,000,000 lines of code.
What the fuck? You're talking about crippling consumer choice to force your ideas on them and make money for yourself? Are you sure you don't WORK at Microsoft?
"Ilqusion?" "IDBYROWS?" That's some real qwality work.
I have always been very annoyed not having destructors in PHP. PHP5 includes destructors, along with public/private class members. I can't wait for this to be released as a stable version.
Where I come from, an innocent question is usually answered with something useful and constructive, as opposed to vague statements that I am "a part of the problem."
I already said I'm a novice. This is a genuine question. Why don't I see SMTP AUTH getting more love?
I'm a novice system administrator, and I've been learning to set up e-mail servers lately...Wouldn't wide-spread SMTP AUTH nip all this in the bud? The only way you could send mail would be through your own registered account. If you send too much, they know with utmost certainty what account was responsible.
Now spammers would have to either abandon their "hit-and-run" tactics, or start stealing log-ins.
Or should I lay off the crack?
Mandating open source software in government is horrible. We'd be up in arms screaming bloody murder if someone tried passing a law requiring proprietary software. You'd be one of the first in line to write a lengthy article about how it was a thinly veiled attempt by a large company to squash their competition.
So how is it fair the other way? What makes us so high and mighty? The fact that we're "free," in both senses of the word? I think we start to lose "free as in speech" when we begin passing laws on par with the worst proposals from the RIAA. And without that, we really are just software providers, except with unbeatable prices.
Yes, it would dramatically reduce costs in government computing if we mandate OSS. But that's a choice for them to make at budget time! "Free" doesn't mean "you have to use us!"
I've gained some disrespect for you from this article, Michael. Not only because this policy is flat out wrong, just as wrong as the DMCA, but moreso because of the way you respond to O'Reilly. What has the man done to deserve such a disrespectful response? If you're going to rebut him, do it with some dignity!
Sure sounds are related to culture. We can't build a language without communication. Granted, there's writing -- But look at what we're writing now. We find it advantageous to make our written language parallel our spoken language. Every character reflects a different sound.
The reason the parrots -- and the mice, if the experiment works, -- won't develop culture is because of a lack of intelligence. It's like saying, "My friend has an oven, and so do I, but I'm a master chef. Since he's so unskilled, clearly ovens have nothing to do with cooking."
I disagree. It very much does take away our rights. You cite the restrictions on minors in movie theaters and in public as examples of how this is already in effect; but these are not laws.
The MPAA's rating system is not required by law. The movie theaters enforce it to prevent law -- Sort of how two kids might place some restrictions on their roughplay before Mom says "okay, no more."
I'm not even sure what you're talking about when you mention speaking in public. Last I checked, I was very free to discuss violence in public. Am I free to go up to some stranger, and say in a dead serious voice, "I'm going to cap you with a Beretta?" No. I am free to brag about my Quake exploits, however, and people are free to swap war stories in a restaurant.
This goes beyond "guilty until proven innocent." This presumes that I am going to start shooting people if I play these games. It's just the same as if the government passed a law saying that you can't sell guns to poor people, because you just know they're going to mug someone to buy cheap liquor.
Doesn't this mean that I won't be able to make out the actual voice of my caller? I mean, it's cool and all, but I don't want to feel like I'm in a cheap horror movie. Or talking to Stephen Hawking.
Then I'll come home everynight, and say "Open the pod bay door Hal!". Then I'll giggle insanely! It'll never ever stop being funny! :)
Probably because it never started. *bites tongue*I've heard that you're rabidly opposed to fan-fiction, going so far to call it uncreative theft.
Is this true, and if so, is there such a thing as "good fan-fiction?" What constitutes it, or if it's all bad, why is it so horrible?
Hardly the case these days. I don't know about the rest of you, but here's the path my "real money" takes, from the time I get it, to the time I pay for a CD:
I do my share of work for the pay period, and at the end, I get an e-mail from my bank stating that my employer has transferred funds from their account to mine.
Translation: Bits have been shifted on a disk somewhere, and a few notes might have been scribbled.
I head down to CD World, and hunt for a few CDs that will carry me through the next pay period. I plop down my credit card, which the clerk swipes across the machine, and gives me my CDs, along with a few stamps on my bonus card.
Translation: Bits have been changed on a disk somewhere, in exchange for my receiving the intangible rights to hear this music, along with a bit of plastic, paper, and possibly metal.
Some weeks later, I receive a statement telling me that I need to pay them for these things. At this point, I will either write them a check, or march down to the bank and transfer the funds directly.
Translation: A piece of paper is printed, and carried to me by a postal official. I reply by either writing a check which tells them to withdraw the funds from the account, or by driving down and talking to a teller, who writes a few things, types a few other things, and that's that.
At no point in this entire transaction have I touched a single dollar bill. My employer did not touch a single dollar bill. My bank has the dollar bills, but for purposes of this transaction did not actually touch them.
This same process applies for buying books, gas, meals, groceries, and practically anything else. These merchants seem to be happy to trade their goods for bits on a hard disk somewhere -- Why should we damn people trading bits for bits?
If we do that, you may as well fire me. I work as a programmer -- My job is making bits move the way my employer wants them to move. I get paid hundreds upon hundreds of real dollars to write programs, which are stored as bits on a machine somewhere!
"Morality is kind of irrelevant here..." Isn't that a Bill Gates quote?
I have reason to believe that a surprising number of the human population -- including members of our congress -- has engaged or plans to engage in sexual activities.
Yes, I know this comes as a shock to you, too. But studies have shown, shockingly, that approximately 100% of polled parents who did not adopt have engaged in sexual activities. How can we trust the children to these sex-craved heathens?
Additionally, almost the entire responding sample over the age of 20 replied that they had engaged in sex at one time or another.
Statistics do not lie..*snickers*..*straightens face* Furthermore, studies have indicated that many houses with multiple children are headed by couples who continued to engage in such profane sexual behavior even after the birth of their first child -- sometimes even while their children were presently in the home!
Unsurprisingly, this has had a horrifying effect on the innocence of our children. More than two thirds of those over the age of 10 correctly identified sex as the means by which one starts a pregnancy. Many of the parents of children over the age of 13 said that they had seen signs that their children had been committing masturbation. Only a handful (less than ten) of the 100,000 parents stated that they would consider chastity belts to help keep their children from performing such horrific sexually deviant behavior, and to assist the development of a well-adjusted mind.
It has also been revealed that children are not shielded from the sight of blood -- Many polled stated that they would allow their children to remove band-aids and view cuts and bloodied bandages, as well as attend barbeques. Some particularly sinful couples would allow their older children to hunt -- exposing them to guns, violence, and blood in one big sinfest!
How can we as a society continue if we continue to engage in this horrific behavior? We must be ever-vigilant to protect our children from the facts of life!