I used to buy stuff from musicboulevard.com. I carefully checked the "do not spam me" option was selected as appropriate. They never spammed me. Then they got purchased by cdnow.com, who copied their customer database, but somehow could not copy the spam preference bit (how convenient). I started to get spammed by cdnow.com.
I ended up setting up procmail to return EXITCODE=67 to them and never shopped there again.
Interesting that NYT was offering free subscription in exchange for personal information that early on... Hmmm.
Yeah, I mean, 1982 was a helluva long time ago. I was like 22 at the time and can't remember details. If it wasn't for that old mail message, I would have swore that that couldn't be true.
Speaking of that message, I've been waiting for someone to tell me I spelled "telnet" wrong!:)(telenet was a dialup comm network at the time)
The RCA terminal mentioned was some weird dumb terminal that you hooked to your TV and got 40x20 display. Had a built-in 300 baud modem, a good deal for the day considering external 300 baud modems were selling for around 250-300 by themselves. Keyboard was similar to the Atari 400.
We've come a long way. Current AOL users bitching about paying $2.50/hour for 56K access should all be shot!:)
Get a load of this. The oldest e-mail message I still have around, from 1982, talking about my first experience on Compuserve at $5.00+$2.00/hour and how it took me an hour just to do one thing cause of all of the "waiting..."
Yes, this is on topic. AOL users have nothing to bitch about. I should sue for all of the wasted time spent on CIS, 300 baud, at $7.00/hour!:)
(B6900 refers to a Burroughs 6900...)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1982 22:04 From: Ken Weaverling >>>---> Ken <47869 @ UCSC-Site> To: Bob Rahe <BOB @ UCSC-Site> Subject: Re: Monitor In-Reply-To: Your message of 24 Jun 1982 09:19 Message-ID: <0322.06.24.1982.22.04.44 @ UCSC-Site>
This terminal is quite nice for $399. It's an RCA. It has a modem built in, color graphics, and sound from 14 Hz to 230 KHz. (Why the heck do you need 230 KHz. I probably can't hear past 15KHz.) It even has a white noise generator. (Don't ask why).
The graphics are pretty HI-RES, 240x192, but it takes forever to draw at 300 baud. One could make impressive graphs but one won't ever see Pac-Man here! You can also hook up a cassette recorder to store a heck of a lot of data for off-line viewing.
I got a free hour on CompuServe with it. Ever been on that? They say it's simple, but it took me the whole hour just to look for one thing. The say it's menu driven. GEEEEEEZZ, they must have their menu's nested 50 levels deep!
I was looking for the multi-user Star-Trek game that I read about. Also the CB simulation (Randall probably wrote it).
The story of my quest:
After drifting thru 10 pages of menus, I found the newspapers that were on-line, so I choose New York Times. They wouldn't print the %&$#& thing out unless I subscribed! The subscription was free but they wanted name, add.... I said "SCREW IT". I could imagine how many menu's were on the other side of that subscription.
Now I had to "back up" thru the menus before I could move on. After another 10 mins. I found the home entertainment menu! I was getting closer. I didn't see Star-Trek but I did see "ELIZA - Artificial Intelligence". I decided to try it out, real quick.
This program CompuServe has (called DISPLA) is polite. Instead of saying #SCHED 1234 it says "Please wait. I am processing your request." Sure, I think that the computer down there realizes that it's getting paid by the hour. After 2-3 mins., it starts "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your being short with me.". I was getting desperate, I started punching all the control codes I could. I stoped the program but I hung the terminal. Oh, well. Call back. Back to the first menu page. But I was getting better, I typed "GO HOM" and I went straight to the home entertainment section. After about 200 more menus (estimate) I found "CB simulation"! Quick, read doc. Got it, run CB. "Please wait......". After 5 mins it comes back "Your free hour is up. Would you like to subsribe?".
All that and I never saw the program. For $5.00/hr plus $2 for Telenet, they can forget it.
"Mailbank" two years ago registered 12,000 surnames and they are starting to expire now. The one I have my eye on expired a few days ago. I've been watching for it to pop up as available since they haven't paid the renewal fee.
Well perfect, now I guess it'll be auctioned off "to recover collection fees?" That's ridiculous. It sounds like you enter a lifelong committment to continually renew your domain or else face foreclosure or something.
As far as the one I've been watching, I guess it'll just go on the auction block. Cripes...
Next thing they'll probably do is modify the CGI script on their home page that let's you "check domain availability" and then roll it right into a new auction so all new domains are instantly an auctionable item too...:(
Hate to burst your bubble, but that doesn't really follow. The problem is that the "cassette sales" may well not be a viable business proposition in a vacuum. However, given the existence of a CD sales operation, where you have already paid the marketting $$, the marginal cost of adding cassettes could be below the marginal revenue obtained from cassette sales.
So you're saying CD costs are subsidising cassette costs? That's nuts. It could just as well be the other way around or better yet, prorate the sunk costs amongst both formats.
If cassette pricing is based on marginal costs, then CDs *are* subsidising them by absorbing all of the fixed costs.
As for your final comment, what makes you think I expect music for free? The issue is that there is an identical product which varies by packaging only, yet one format costs twice as much as the other. All I am asking is "why?"
This is what the record company produces, this is what they're charging $16 per CD for
I hate to sound like I am nitpicking about one little phrase in an otherwise excellent response, but I can't let this one go.
Yes, there is overhead in producing and marketing, but that doesn't explain why CDs cost $16 or more while cassettes of the same material only cost around $10.
That extra $6 or so is simple price gouging. In the mid eighties when CDs first hit the scene, they were more expensive than cassettes because plants producing CD blanks were horribly rare. This was expected (at the time) to be a temporary situation since many new plants were being built. The record companies said that CD prices would eventually fall greatly.
That never happened. People got used to paying far more for a CD versus cassette and the record companies knew it and decided to "let it ride" because the market was clearly bearing the cost.
A CD in the quantities that record companies produce probably costs WELL less than a buck in packaging. The artist I've heard gets around a buck. The rest of $14 goes to distributors, retailers, and marketing folk? If an artist can get rich off of selling millions of CDs, imagine how much money is going to the rest of these people.
Sure, a CD is "worth more" to us than a cassette, and the record companies know that. But there's really no other real reason for CDs to cost more than cassettes, which cost MORE to manufacture now.
Without that, I consider LVM to be littler more than a toy (in serious environments, growing something like/var requires taking the machine down to single user mode, at which point dumping and restoring to a new bigger partition isn't a much bigger inconvenience).
Sorry, but this isn't true. I've been growing live file systems on DG/UX (data general) since 1994. A friend of mine working at a large Tru64 shop says that his file systems grow automatically as needed.
The IBM LVM news is great news.
Why the arcade industry should PUSH pinball
on
Is Pinball Dying?
·
· Score: 2
What I don't understand is how arcade video games remain popular. Some of the best stuff in the arcade runs at home perfectly on my Dreamcast. Kids are hanging out at home instead of going to the arcade.
The pinball experience, however, can never be duplicated in the home cheaply. If arcade operators want to stay in business, they need to push pinball via contests, classes to teach you how to play, and techs who keep the machines clean and working well.
Our local arcade first pushed out pinballs and replaced them with video games. Now THEY are being pushed out and replaced by kiddie "games of chance" where you bop groundhogs or play skeeball, get tickets, and buy stupid prizes.
This is the most disturbing trend. Nothing like teaching little kids how to grow about and be a gambling addict...
OK, so basically, if I'm being attacked and this system is protecting my boxen, they assume a defensive posture, start shutting down, hiding, etc.
No thanks. I'd prefer a more offensive response, like have a library of known exploits, port scan the attacking host, determine its host type, and launch an exploit right back as an attempt to shut the bitches down or DOS them.
Yeah, there are some ethical issues, but if someone enters my house and I kill them in response, I've still killed someone. The difference that this is in self-defense.
I'm just thinking of automating what is a normal human response. Often, the only time people learn their box has been r00ted is when the intruders launch other attacks from it to other boxes, the foreign admin notifies the cracked box WHOIS contact, and they go find it and shut it down.
I'm also thinking of this from the other side too. If someone r00ts a box I have control of, I want it shut down asap to contain the damage. The sooner the better, no matter what that particular box's function is or how important it is. The sooner it is shut down, either by myself or a similar self-defense response, the better for ME. A compromised box sitting around undetected is fertal ground to sniff packets, and attack other inside boxes.
In almost all cases of compromises I've seen is that the box attacking is a compromised box itself. Therefore, by definition, it has an available remote exploit on it, can be compromised, and then "init 0" sent to it (if a *nix box) and shut down.
I know, loads of dangers and I can think of a lot of them. Stuff like this can get out of hand, but so can the "agents" in the article mentioned here. Once someone discovers how an agent works, it can be turned against itself.
But when it comes to automated attack responses, I like fantacizing about my scenario better than a "pussy" defensive response!:-)
"What, you looking at me muthafucker? Prepare to die bitch!"
It's been ages since I bought a new car, but I tell you, one thing I hate is blowing several grand on a new car and having the dealer pop-rivet a hole in your trunk to affix their logo on it with some inane saying like "If you didn't buy from ___ you paid too much."
Before I sign a new-car contract I specifically ensure that the following clause is added: "This contract will be considered null and void with no monetary loss to purchaser if dealer defaces car by affixing their dealer logo to vehicle in any form."
They grumble a lot about it being their company policy, but no salesman will risk losing a commission over something so petty if you stick to your guns.
RedHat may have a large market valuation, but you can't draw a check on that amount without selling off more of the company, and if they start giving away all of their liquid capital, you'll see investors dump RHAT like mad and then "it won't be worth dick."
Look at how many copies of RedHat Deluxe they have to sell to get $70,000 (not accounting for packaging expenses) to get a better handle on their generosity.
Besides, no one said it was the last gift and no one should expect RedHat to fund it all. Other companies whose business revolves around"free software" should be chipping in as well.
If you read the bill, there are troubling points in it including:
RETURN ADDRESSES REQUIRED (No forging)
TRANSMISSIONS AFTER OBJECTION (Must remove from list if asked)
There's a business opportunity here. Open a spamhausen ISP, make it OK in your TOS to spam, just require your clients to use a valid return address and honor a remove list.
Most spam I get always says "No need to be removed, this is a one-time mailing, your name is already deleted." So joy, each time I want to send out a new SPAM I just create a new account with that ISP, spam away.
An Opt-Out law is worse than no law at all
Opt-in (or "permission-based marketing") is the way to do it. Opt-out will always just be spam and this bill makes that legal.
I can see my spam now. "This message can not be considered SPAM under HR 3113 as long as we provide a valid return address and a way for you to be removed from our lists.
That argument fails when you consider that cassettes of the same material have a lower retail cost and a higher production cost. The same marketing costs applies to both products.
The question should therefore not be "why do CDs cost so much?" but "Why do CDs cost more than cassettes?" Same music, same production and marketing costs.
The price they set is what the market will bear. People are used to paying more for CDs because in the beginning (mid 80s) there was a serious shortage of plants cranking out blanks. That is no longer the case. The cost to manufacture a CD is far less than cassettes.
But the market is not "bearing" the cost obviously. The illegal trading via napster is an example.
There is a deep irony in this, proven through people of my (baby boomer) generation. When I was a teenager in the 70s, I couldn't afford to buy records. I copied stuff off the radio, taped friends' records onto cassette, and listen to the stuff over and over. If I didn't have access to that illegal copying, I'd have never had grown so fond of groups like Led Zepplin, The Who, Rolling Stones, etc, etc...
Now look at the market. Baby Boomers are damn loyal to the groups they grew up with and spend a ton of money buying their CDs, going to their concerts, etc. I blew $150x2 just to see the Rolling Stones at Vet Stadium in Philly in the cold pouring rain in April a few years back. (It was pathetic too, a bunch of old fucks trying to relive their happier younger years... and no, I'm not talking about the band!:)
The point is, did I rip off these bands when I was a teen by copying their stuff? Yeah, technically, but not literally. I could barely afford gas to fill my car at the time. Trust me, I had no money to buy anything like that. If I didn't bootleg it, I would have went without.
But now look, the "Classic Rock" market is a HUGE and very profitable market. Now days, I often buy CDs on impulse and very often never even get around to listening to them. I'm too damn busy to bother hunting down mp3s on the net to copy.
Kind of ironic, no?
If Metallica turns off their young fans now, when their young fans are older and making money like mad, they won't be spending their money going to a Metallica reunion concert in 2010.
The world is changing. Musical artists should almost give away their work to get exposure, then make their money on public performances, marketing of products, endorsements, etc, etc... the kind of stuff you can't digitally copy.
When will someone sue RIAA? All of its member companies coincidently all agree to charge more for pre-recorded CDs than cassettes of the same material, even though the cost of manufacturing a CD is far lower than a cassette.
Now they are trying their best to stifle any attempts to connect artists with the buying public via any methods other than the old traditional method of going through a traditional label (which are members of RIAA).
(And don't give me the tired old excuse that CDs are "worth more" that cassettes due to their higher quality. If that logic held, then that new P3 that you bought to play online 3D first-person shooters should have cost you several million dollars (compared to an original Tandy TRS-80 4K computer with cassette tape drive, circa 1978...))
Interesting reading. Unlike other heavy-handed companies, IDG's first attempts to solve the matter were polite and reasonable. Even when they were asked for more questions and asked for additional time until their mid-December meeting, they were given it. Not until two months after that did a lawyer get involved and start threatening them.
"For Dummies" is a stupid series of books with a stupid title, IMO, but obviously successful for IDG. You can't tell me that people that made up a site or whatever entired "blah blah for Dummies" weren't inspired to do so by IDG's books.
English is a rich language. Certainly they could come up with something similar that wasn't infringing, like "Screenprinting for braindead titheaded fuckwits" and not have to worry about infringing on some trademark...
Uh *duh* Goth != Metallica Read up on your music styles old person
Er, duh, I said "Goths tend to follow." I didn't say they were Goth. If you have a hard time believing that, do a web search on goth and metallica and see the thousands of hits that come pouring out.
Besides, it's not the point. "Reverand Manson" workships the dollar as much as the rest of them. It's all a show and goth's all take it far too seriously. It's just good music, he ain't a god.
The Goth movement is full of the biggest bunch of mindless followers ever. If Marilyn Manson told them to slit their own throats, they probably would. Just read some of them on the Manson BBS site for yourself.
And then here we have Metallica. Another big group that Goths tend to follow. This should prove once for all to all the Goth sheep and religious nuts that these "satanic" groups are in the entertainment business and it's all a show, just like WWF. The only God that Metallica worship is the almighty dollar.
Hey, I get into a lot of their music, and sometimes identify with their lyrics, but I'm not going to create my own personal religious beliefs around it.
From their web site, Metallica says ""We recognize that this is a very complicated issue with larger implications that our fans may not completely understand." Yeah, they are right. There is no way I can comprehend the amount of money they make each year!:)
Don't get me wrong. I am not for stealing music you don't pay for. I just find it highly ironic that a band like Metallica is leading the charge. It should be someone like Britney Spears or Garth Brooks.
Yeah, I'm going to lose karma like hell for this one, but what good is having high karma if you can't speak your mind, get some 15-year-old/. reader pissed off, and lose some of it once in a while!:-)
I installed Windows 2000 Professional 5 weeks ago, and haven't had to reboot due to error or installation of software yet (read: 35 days uptime). That counts as stable for me, no matter how much I want to toe the "Microsoft Sucks" line.
Buy a Microsoft-blessed P/PC running Windows CE, Install ActiveSync under Windows 2000, and then see how "stable" Windows 2000 is.:(
The original story I replied to was about Replay, not TiVo. The post with the above misinformation got moderated up to a 5. Hopefully it gets moderated back down to equal this post so the correction can be seen by others scanning at a higher score level
Dudes, you HAVE to watch Max Headroom. A geek show from the mid 80s. Yeah, I know most of you nerds were like chasing 6 year olds around the playground back then, but this show was my favorite at the time.
Anyway, it's set "20 minutes into the future" in a world where TV ratings are updated instantly on charts in the TV exec board rooms and they make quick decisions on the fly about what to do, yank, and manipulate to try to get those instant ratings up. The show's lead character is Edison Carter, a investigative news reporter who juggles reporting the truth over pressures from his bosses at "Network XXIII" to skew the stories to get the ratings up. Reminds me of the TiVo story!
In this world, it's against the law to turn off your TV. Really great stuff. Once in a while, a network like A&E will run a marathon of the shows. I have most of them on tape from the 80s (and still fairly viewable).
The show rocked, but got cancelled because it was playing against Miami Vice and Dallas and in the end, ironically, the poor ratings killed it in its first season.
Many many years ago, like 1990ish, I read that you had carpal tunnel syndrome so badly from typing all the time, that you were unable to type at all, needed a student to type for you, and it was considered "un-fixable."
Are you still unable to type? Do you use any alternative input devices and if so, what are they and are they as efficient as you used to be at hacking out code in the 80s and before? Do you still have an assistant type for you?
Finally, on a personal level, how did you cope with the news when you first realized you couldn't type anymore? I can just imagine it must have been difficult for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I ended up setting up procmail to return EXITCODE=67 to them and never shopped there again.
Yeah, I mean, 1982 was a helluva long time ago. I was like 22 at the time and can't remember details. If it wasn't for that old mail message, I would have swore that that couldn't be true.
Speaking of that message, I've been waiting for someone to tell me I spelled "telnet" wrong! :)(telenet was a dialup comm network at the time)
The RCA terminal mentioned was some weird dumb terminal that you hooked to your TV and got 40x20 display. Had a built-in 300 baud modem, a good deal for the day considering external 300 baud modems were selling for around 250-300 by themselves. Keyboard was similar to the Atari 400.
We've come a long way. Current AOL users bitching about paying $2.50/hour for 56K access should all be shot! :)
Yes, this is on topic. AOL users have nothing to bitch about. I should sue for all of the wasted time spent on CIS, 300 baud, at $7.00/hour! :)
(B6900 refers to a Burroughs 6900...)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1982 22:04
From: Ken Weaverling >>>---> Ken <47869 @ UCSC-Site>
To: Bob Rahe <BOB @ UCSC-Site>
Subject: Re: Monitor
In-Reply-To: Your message of 24 Jun 1982 09:19
Message-ID: <0322.06.24.1982.22.04.44 @ UCSC-Site>
This terminal is quite nice for $399. It's an RCA. It has a modem built in, color graphics, and sound from 14 Hz to 230 KHz. (Why the heck do you need 230 KHz. I probably can't hear past 15KHz.) It even has a white noise generator. (Don't ask why).
The graphics are pretty HI-RES, 240x192, but it takes forever to draw at 300 baud. One could make impressive graphs but one won't ever see Pac-Man here! You can also hook up a cassette recorder to store a heck of a lot of data for off-line viewing.
I got a free hour on CompuServe with it. Ever been on that? They say it's simple, but it took me the whole hour just to look for one thing. The say it's menu driven. GEEEEEEZZ, they must have their menu's nested 50 levels deep!
I was looking for the multi-user Star-Trek game that I read about. Also the CB simulation (Randall probably wrote it).
The story of my quest:
After drifting thru 10 pages of menus, I found the newspapers that were on-line, so I choose New York Times. They wouldn't print the %&$#& thing out unless I subscribed! The subscription was free but they wanted name, add.... I said "SCREW IT". I could imagine how many menu's were on the other side of that subscription.
Now I had to "back up" thru the menus before I could move on. After another 10 mins. I found the home entertainment menu! I was getting closer. I didn't see Star-Trek but I did see "ELIZA - Artificial Intelligence". I decided to try it out, real quick.
This program CompuServe has (called DISPLA) is polite. Instead of saying #SCHED 1234 it says "Please wait. I am processing your request." Sure, I think that the computer down there realizes that it's getting paid by the hour. After 2-3 mins., it starts "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your being short with me.". I was getting desperate, I started punching all the control codes I could. I stoped the program but I hung the terminal. Oh, well. Call back. Back to the first menu page. But I was getting better, I typed "GO HOM" and I went straight to the home entertainment section. After about 200 more menus (estimate) I found "CB simulation"! Quick, read doc. Got it, run CB. "Please wait......". After 5 mins it comes back "Your free hour is up. Would you like to subsribe?".
All that and I never saw the program. For $5.00/hr plus $2 for Telenet, they can forget it.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME ON THE B6900 !!!!!!!!!
>>>----> Ken
Well perfect, now I guess it'll be auctioned off "to recover collection fees?" That's ridiculous. It sounds like you enter a lifelong committment to continually renew your domain or else face foreclosure or something.
As far as the one I've been watching, I guess it'll just go on the auction block. Cripes...
Next thing they'll probably do is modify the CGI script on their home page that let's you "check domain availability" and then roll it right into a new auction so all new domains are instantly an auctionable item too... :(
So you're saying CD costs are subsidising cassette costs? That's nuts. It could just as well be the other way around or better yet, prorate the sunk costs amongst both formats.
If cassette pricing is based on marginal costs, then CDs *are* subsidising them by absorbing all of the fixed costs.
As for your final comment, what makes you think I expect music for free? The issue is that there is an identical product which varies by packaging only, yet one format costs twice as much as the other. All I am asking is "why?"
I hate to sound like I am nitpicking about one little phrase in an otherwise excellent response, but I can't let this one go.
Yes, there is overhead in producing and marketing, but that doesn't explain why CDs cost $16 or more while cassettes of the same material only cost around $10.
That extra $6 or so is simple price gouging. In the mid eighties when CDs first hit the scene, they were more expensive than cassettes because plants producing CD blanks were horribly rare. This was expected (at the time) to be a temporary situation since many new plants were being built. The record companies said that CD prices would eventually fall greatly.
That never happened. People got used to paying far more for a CD versus cassette and the record companies knew it and decided to "let it ride" because the market was clearly bearing the cost.
A CD in the quantities that record companies produce probably costs WELL less than a buck in packaging. The artist I've heard gets around a buck. The rest of $14 goes to distributors, retailers, and marketing folk? If an artist can get rich off of selling millions of CDs, imagine how much money is going to the rest of these people.
Sure, a CD is "worth more" to us than a cassette, and the record companies know that. But there's really no other real reason for CDs to cost more than cassettes, which cost MORE to manufacture now.
Sorry, but this isn't true. I've been growing live file systems on DG/UX (data general) since 1994. A friend of mine working at a large Tru64 shop says that his file systems grow automatically as needed.
The IBM LVM news is great news.
The pinball experience, however, can never be duplicated in the home cheaply. If arcade operators want to stay in business, they need to push pinball via contests, classes to teach you how to play, and techs who keep the machines clean and working well.
Our local arcade first pushed out pinballs and replaced them with video games. Now THEY are being pushed out and replaced by kiddie "games of chance" where you bop groundhogs or play skeeball, get tickets, and buy stupid prizes.
This is the most disturbing trend. Nothing like teaching little kids how to grow about and be a gambling addict...
No thanks. I'd prefer a more offensive response, like have a library of known exploits, port scan the attacking host, determine its host type, and launch an exploit right back as an attempt to shut the bitches down or DOS them.
Yeah, there are some ethical issues, but if someone enters my house and I kill them in response, I've still killed someone. The difference that this is in self-defense.
I'm just thinking of automating what is a normal human response. Often, the only time people learn their box has been r00ted is when the intruders launch other attacks from it to other boxes, the foreign admin notifies the cracked box WHOIS contact, and they go find it and shut it down.
I'm also thinking of this from the other side too. If someone r00ts a box I have control of, I want it shut down asap to contain the damage. The sooner the better, no matter what that particular box's function is or how important it is. The sooner it is shut down, either by myself or a similar self-defense response, the better for ME. A compromised box sitting around undetected is fertal ground to sniff packets, and attack other inside boxes.
In almost all cases of compromises I've seen is that the box attacking is a compromised box itself. Therefore, by definition, it has an available remote exploit on it, can be compromised, and then "init 0" sent to it (if a *nix box) and shut down.
I know, loads of dangers and I can think of a lot of them. Stuff like this can get out of hand, but so can the "agents" in the article mentioned here. Once someone discovers how an agent works, it can be turned against itself.
But when it comes to automated attack responses, I like fantacizing about my scenario better than a "pussy" defensive response! :-)
"What, you looking at me muthafucker? Prepare to die bitch!"
Before I sign a new-car contract I specifically ensure that the following clause is added: "This contract will be considered null and void with no monetary loss to purchaser if dealer defaces car by affixing their dealer logo to vehicle in any form."
They grumble a lot about it being their company policy, but no salesman will risk losing a commission over something so petty if you stick to your guns.
I had my hopes up for a while there. Imagine negative ping times on multi-user shootemups! :)
A few simple packets to some unfortunate foreign open mail relay and then bango, that relay is initiating mail back to mainly U.S. addresses.
The spammers cry: "I paid for my ISP account, I can do whatever I want. Save the trees, unsolicited e-mail is free."
OK, maybe this isn't the joke it was meant to be. All of my U.S originated spam lately seems to be bounced through open foreign relays... :(
He posts binaries to a non-binaries group?
He should go to jail for violating the rule about posting binaries to non-binaries groups!
So, this does finally reveal who is behind the famed "Usenet Cabal" -- Penthouse Magazine!
Go Penthouse! :-)
Look at how many copies of RedHat Deluxe they have to sell to get $70,000 (not accounting for packaging expenses) to get a better handle on their generosity.
Besides, no one said it was the last gift and no one should expect RedHat to fund it all. Other companies whose business revolves around"free software" should be chipping in as well.
I say, "Bravo Redhat."
There's a business opportunity here. Open a spamhausen ISP, make it OK in your TOS to spam, just require your clients to use a valid return address and honor a remove list.
Most spam I get always says "No need to be removed, this is a one-time mailing, your name is already deleted." So joy, each time I want to send out a new SPAM I just create a new account with that ISP, spam away.
An Opt-Out law is worse than no law at all
Opt-in (or "permission-based marketing") is the way to do it. Opt-out will always just be spam and this bill makes that legal.
I can see my spam now. "This message can not be considered SPAM under HR 3113 as long as we provide a valid return address and a way for you to be removed from our lists.
That argument fails when you consider that cassettes of the same material have a lower retail cost and a higher production cost. The same marketing costs applies to both products.
The question should therefore not be "why do CDs cost so much?" but "Why do CDs cost more than cassettes?" Same music, same production and marketing costs.
The price they set is what the market will bear. People are used to paying more for CDs because in the beginning (mid 80s) there was a serious shortage of plants cranking out blanks. That is no longer the case. The cost to manufacture a CD is far less than cassettes.
But the market is not "bearing" the cost obviously. The illegal trading via napster is an example.
There is a deep irony in this, proven through people of my (baby boomer) generation. When I was a teenager in the 70s, I couldn't afford to buy records. I copied stuff off the radio, taped friends' records onto cassette, and listen to the stuff over and over. If I didn't have access to that illegal copying, I'd have never had grown so fond of groups like Led Zepplin, The Who, Rolling Stones, etc, etc...
Now look at the market. Baby Boomers are damn loyal to the groups they grew up with and spend a ton of money buying their CDs, going to their concerts, etc. I blew $150x2 just to see the Rolling Stones at Vet Stadium in Philly in the cold pouring rain in April a few years back. (It was pathetic too, a bunch of old fucks trying to relive their happier younger years... and no, I'm not talking about the band! :)
The point is, did I rip off these bands when I was a teen by copying their stuff? Yeah, technically, but not literally. I could barely afford gas to fill my car at the time. Trust me, I had no money to buy anything like that. If I didn't bootleg it, I would have went without.
But now look, the "Classic Rock" market is a HUGE and very profitable market. Now days, I often buy CDs on impulse and very often never even get around to listening to them. I'm too damn busy to bother hunting down mp3s on the net to copy.
Kind of ironic, no?
If Metallica turns off their young fans now, when their young fans are older and making money like mad, they won't be spending their money going to a Metallica reunion concert in 2010.
The world is changing. Musical artists should almost give away their work to get exposure, then make their money on public performances, marketing of products, endorsements, etc, etc... the kind of stuff you can't digitally copy.
Open Rock baby! :)
Now they are trying their best to stifle any attempts to connect artists with the buying public via any methods other than the old traditional method of going through a traditional label (which are members of RIAA).
(And don't give me the tired old excuse that CDs are "worth more" that cassettes due to their higher quality. If that logic held, then that new P3 that you bought to play online 3D first-person shooters should have cost you several million dollars (compared to an original Tandy TRS-80 4K computer with cassette tape drive, circa 1978...))
"For Dummies" is a stupid series of books with a stupid title, IMO, but obviously successful for IDG. You can't tell me that people that made up a site or whatever entired "blah blah for Dummies" weren't inspired to do so by IDG's books.
English is a rich language. Certainly they could come up with something similar that wasn't infringing, like "Screenprinting for braindead titheaded fuckwits" and not have to worry about infringing on some trademark...
Er, duh, I said "Goths tend to follow." I didn't say they were Goth. If you have a hard time believing that, do a web search on goth and metallica and see the thousands of hits that come pouring out.
Besides, it's not the point. "Reverand Manson" workships the dollar as much as the rest of them. It's all a show and goth's all take it far too seriously. It's just good music, he ain't a god.
And then here we have Metallica. Another big group that Goths tend to follow. This should prove once for all to all the Goth sheep and religious nuts that these "satanic" groups are in the entertainment business and it's all a show, just like WWF. The only God that Metallica worship is the almighty dollar.
Hey, I get into a lot of their music, and sometimes identify with their lyrics, but I'm not going to create my own personal religious beliefs around it.
From their web site, Metallica says ""We recognize that this is a very complicated issue with larger implications that our fans may not completely understand." Yeah, they are right. There is no way I can comprehend the amount of money they make each year! :)
Don't get me wrong. I am not for stealing music you don't pay for. I just find it highly ironic that a band like Metallica is leading the charge. It should be someone like Britney Spears or Garth Brooks.
Yeah, I'm going to lose karma like hell for this one, but what good is having high karma if you can't speak your mind, get some 15-year-old /. reader pissed off, and lose some of it once in a while! :-)
Buy a Microsoft-blessed P/PC running Windows CE, Install ActiveSync under Windows 2000, and then see how "stable" Windows 2000 is. :(
The original story I replied to was about Replay, not TiVo. The post with the above misinformation got moderated up to a 5. Hopefully it gets moderated back down to equal this post so the correction can be seen by others scanning at a higher score level
Sorry for being such a tithead... :-(
Anyway, it's set "20 minutes into the future" in a world where TV ratings are updated instantly on charts in the TV exec board rooms and they make quick decisions on the fly about what to do, yank, and manipulate to try to get those instant ratings up. The show's lead character is Edison Carter, a investigative news reporter who juggles reporting the truth over pressures from his bosses at "Network XXIII" to skew the stories to get the ratings up. Reminds me of the TiVo story!
In this world, it's against the law to turn off your TV. Really great stuff. Once in a while, a network like A&E will run a marathon of the shows. I have most of them on tape from the 80s (and still fairly viewable).
The show rocked, but got cancelled because it was playing against Miami Vice and Dallas and in the end, ironically, the poor ratings killed it in its first season.
Are you still unable to type? Do you use any alternative input devices and if so, what are they and are they as efficient as you used to be at hacking out code in the 80s and before? Do you still have an assistant type for you?
Finally, on a personal level, how did you cope with the news when you first realized you couldn't type anymore? I can just imagine it must have been difficult for you.
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