We got to chatting about bad jobs at work a few years ago. There were some doozies (orderly at an asylum, cleaning out cement trucks), but the most memorable was beheading rats.
One of my coworkers, when he was in college, worker for a research project in the biology department (I believe that was the department). They were doing research on rats. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall that it involved cutting part of some organ out, exposing them to potential carcinogens, waiting a while for the organ to regrow, then examining the organ for cancer.
The highlight was killing the rats for the final examination. Apparently there was a little rat guillotine. My coworkers said that the first few rats were easy, but after that the rats started smelling the blood and would panic.
Sony and Nintendo have consistently sold console systems as loss-leaders with the plan to recoup costs primarily from game licenses.
There is more urban legend here than actual history. While a few companies have sold console systems at a loss (notably Sega), most have not. Sony certainly doesn't and Nintendo historically didn't (but may have on the GameCube).
The bottom line is that in the EULA there is a clause that states Microsoft may alter the software at any point.
Just by purchasing an Xbox, even without buying Live, you are forced to agree to...
Ah that explains everything.
It was in the EULA I signed when I purchased it.
Oh, no EULA to sign when I purchase it? Well, it must be clearly printed on the side of the box where I can see it when I purchase it.
Oh, no EULA there either? Well, how about when I open the box the XBox itself has a big EULA taped over the power button that I have to read.
Nope, not one there either. Well, when I first turn it on, I have to agree, right?
Nope, guess not.
So where exactly is this magical EULA I've agreed to "even without buying Live?"
As long as the lowliest, poor, academically challenged kid can train to become a plumber and make six figures, people in the US will continue to (with notable exceptions) rightly blame themselves when they're unhappy with their incomes/overall wealth.
I could have skipped the expensive college and gotten vocational training as a plumber. Instead of worrying for my job and seeing skilled and motivated friends in the tech field scrounging for whatever work they can find, I could be earning twice my current salary as a plumber?
Blaming the MS monopoly or other monopolies for that matter (in Sweden there is a sugar monopoly) on the state, is so dumb my eyes hurt.
Actually, I can see a valid point to the argument.
I've never seen a modern monopoly that didn't arise from government intervention.
Take Microsoft. Without the government granted monopoly to exclusively distribute copies of works they've created, their monopoly would evaporate overnight. Of course, removing that monpoly would be eliminating copyright, which people might object to.
Both extreme ends of the spectrum (pure capitalism, and pure government run ecomonies) "work" for suitable definitions of work. But for real people neither extreme is really a good idea.
I've got kind of an odd view on privacy. If you don't want someone
to know you did something, don't do it. If you don't want someone to know you
smoke pot, don't smoke it.
Indeed you do have an odd view on privacy. This sort of view
on privacy puts free speech, freedom of religion, and even
democracy at great risk.
A key element of freedom is some level of privacy. Like all things this is
a continuum, but the privacy needs to be there.
Take the extreme case. Your vote is private. It's absolutely
essential that it be private. If it wasn't private, some local
"Honest Businessman" might want by each household in a distict
saying, "You've got yourselves a nice house here. It would be
shame if something happened to it. If you don't vote for
Sentator Gimmebribes, something might happen. That would be very
unfortunate." Thanks to the privacy of your vote, you can go
vote out the creep, then return home and say, "I have no idea how
he lost the election, I sure voted for him!"
On a more historic level, support for the United States
revolution was built up by anonymous pamphleteering. If the
publishers had put their names on it the British would have
strung them up. By working anonymously they could continue to
spread their message and do more good than if they were quietly
executed early in their campaign.
To take a still fairly extreme case, say you're in a strongly
racist community, one in which violence occasionally erupts
against one race and people defending that race. This might be
South Africa of the past or parts of the United States in the
past. I'm sure it still goes on in other countries right now.
You feel that the racism is wrong, but you've got a family. If
you speak out against it publically there is a real risk you'll
be lynched, or your children attacked. But you can secretly
spread pamphlets or other media exposing the evil.
This applies in many other areas. Is your preferred religion
unpopular, perhaps even dangerous? If you're not in the mood to
be a martyr (or perhaps make your children martyrs), quietly,
privately practice your religion. Hopefully this isn't something
that happens anywhere, but in some parts of the world it's a
risk.
Want to speak out against a group that you feel is criminal
and willing to harm you? (Perhaps a large cult?) The police
don't agree it's a threat and won't protect you, but you want to
warn the world? Well, privacy in the form of anonymous speech
may be your tool.
Getting a domain (typically to run a web site) can be a great
way to get your message our inexpensively. To declare that you
can't be private while doing so is to limit potentially
important speech.
Yeah and just hope there are no identity thieves working for your mailbox "vendor".
Or at your postoffice if you're getting anything important sent home.
A friend ran into problems with NetFlix. They claimed they kept sending him movies, he claimed he never saw them. After a few failures he gave up and cancelled his account. They demanded he pay for all of the missing movies. Only a few months later was it revealed this his regular postman was found to be stealing mail, including NetFlix DVDs.
God, there may only be a small number of scum on this earth, but that handful makes life so unpleasant for so very many. Feh.
One step most of these proxies is doing is compressing HTML files. HTML is highly redundant, so compression can save alot of space. However, it's silly for the proxy to do the compressing. Instead web site owners can do the compressing! Transferring pages gzip compressed is part of the standard. No special software is needed by end users.
A 3:1 reduction in bytes transferred for your web pages (the HTML itself) is a reasonable minimum. The result is that you use less bandwidth and end users get a faster web site! Every mainstream browser supports this, and those browsers that don't support it will automatically get the uncompressed version. If you're using Apache, you'll want
mod_gzip to automatically compress transfers. (You can fake the effect with MultiViews, but it's a hassle to maintain two copies of every HTML file.)
(Yes, I know I don't practice what I preach. I'm working on it.)
This world never learns that vandalism is not art.
Art and vandalism can certainly coexist.
I've certainly seem some carefully crafted, beautiful graffiti that the artist regrettably chose to place on someone else's property without permission. That it's illegal and messes with someone else's property doesn't invalidate that it is also art.
Similarly you can engage in political speech and do something illegal at the same time. Burning draft cards was both illegal and a political statement.
Hitting someone with a cream pie can be both assault and speech.
Destruction of property
(Say, dumping a bunch of tea in a harbor) can be intended as a political message.
Mind you, that someone is making art or engaging in political speech doesn't justify the crime! I can both appreciate the quality of some skilled graffiti while simultaneously wishing that the artist would get caught for damaging someone else's property. I'd rather the artist had not chosen to do so. But to deny that it could be art is just silly.
This threw me, until digging through the results I found
this,
and the variations
this,
this,
this,
this.
It's just a bunch of sample text and imagry for a web design company. I'm
guessing the many, many sites using the text are purchased that web design
company's services. There are other similarities. Many of the derived sites are using the same bulleted list of people with links using javascript to replace the URL with "Details...". I'm definately thinking this is all contracted work from a really lazy web design company.
Interestingly,
somearestillusingthesamestock.
photograph.
God, there are so many of them. I only hope the web design service was cheap.
The general public and opponents of electronic voting will use this as "proof" that e-voting can never be stable and reliable. I fear that any blunders we have now may severely cripple public perception to the point that the masses won't WANT to e-vote, despite the ease and efficiancy such a system could provide.
Please, please let this be the case. I want to turn people off to
electronic voting forever. It's a fundamentally bad idea. It's no
easier than the modern scanned paper ballots available in many places. It's no
easier to total than the scanned paper ballots. And it certainly increases the
complexity and thus the number of possible points of failure.
If you're not familiar modern scanned ballots, here's one example, the one
used in elections in my area. You get a big ballot with lists of candidates.
Next to each candidate's name is a large arrow with an inch gap in it. You
just use the provided pencil to complete the broken arrow pointing to the
candidate you want. You then take you ballot to the tabulating machine and
insert it. If the machine detects a problem (say, two votes in one race) it
spit the ballot back out and the nearby poll worker (not close enough to see
your ballot) explains the sitatuation and ways to correct it (basically, force
it in, but risk losing a vote, or destroy the ballot, get a fresh one, and try
again, with a poll workers assistance if you request it).
It's positively trivial to use, easy to read, and easy to understand. People who fear computers aren't put off by it.
The machine makes
keeping the tally easy. Each polling location only needs a handful of these
machines, mostly you need cheap "privacy booths" to do you voting. The machines are certainly simplier (and presumably cheaper) than the electronic voting stations. If there is
any concern about a problem, you can trivially hand count the paper ballots and
know that you're looking at the exact mark that the voter made, not some
computer generated receipt.
Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.
The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the
article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to
sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote
record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during
an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.
You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?
Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote
information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as
mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls
have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)
Code generation has its place, but one needs to be ever watchful of the dangers presented by anything that claims to make programming easier. In summary, it risks creating a bunch of code you don't really understand and can't debug. Ellen Ullman's 1998 article
"The dumbing-down of programming" is still good reading.
VIDEONOW discs feature a special proprietary format and will not fit into or play on other media players.
This is an amazing summary of how the corporate world doesn't speak with
customers, they speak at customers. Only someone stuck in a corporate mindset
would think that missing functionality and vendor lock in was an amazing
feature that customers want.
I understand that the product might not be financially viable without these
limitations. My problem is that they brazens claim it's a feature. The only
people to whom it is a feature is the company itself, certainly not end users.
The VIDEONOW player [has] a black and white LCD screen that
features sixteen levels of grayscale, contains 80 by 80 pixels... resulting
in quality picture.
Apparently Hasbro's idea of a "quality picture" doesn't quite match mine.
Limited quality kids versions of audio-visual devices aren't a new idea.
Back in the 90s (I believe), there was a kids video camera that recorded black
and white onto an ordinary audio cassette. There were also proprietary
mini-media that held a single song. None of them did too well since the Real
Thing kept dropping in price. They may be fun toys, but they seem too limited.
This seems particularlly silly given its limitations, but whatever.
I wish the reverse engineering project the best of luck, it looks like a fun
hack! And if you got a Videonow box for your kids, wouldn't it be neat to
be able to make home-movie Videonow discs in addition to the ones for sale?
I never felt that buying music was an "investment". I don't go about saying "My CD collection is worth X dollars".
I go about saying "I really enjoy listening to my CD collection."
It's not about an investment. The immediate sale is about recouping an expense. While I've never sold a CD, I have sold many books. Sometimes I'll grow tired of a book, decide I'll never read it again, and sell it. (Well, these days I just donate them to a library... but the principle stands. And I certainly did so when I was a student and needed cash.) I own books because I love the books. Their monetary value is irrelevant. But I believe strongly that I should be able to transfer them; perhaps to loan it to a friend, give it away to a library, or just sell it.
Another case is inheritance. When some of my extended family members passed away, their collections were inherited. My parents ended up with an interesting (although not terribly valuable) collection of vinyl records and comic books. Some of these are no longer available. As someone else pointed out, as we move more and more digital many people will have spend thousands of dollars on strictly online music. (I know people who own tens of thousands of dollars of CDs, so getting a tenth of that electronically seems reasonable.) When the person dies, is it as though the collection never existed? If the collection held tracks no longer sold, is that copy simply gone forever? Private collections are some of the best places to find old media that is no longer available (perhaps because it's not profitable, or perhaps because it's considered "inappropriate" by one or more factions.).
The comic book store is another story. While for the average comic
book reader, the comic book store is part of the experience, I think a lot of
people are afraid of comic book stores.
True enough. That's because some comic book stores suck. There
are also excellent comic book stores where the staff are professional and
friendly, the "heroically proportioned" comics aren't shoved in your face, and
the "weird" comics that will creep many people out are a bit out of the way.
If you're in Madison, Wisconsin Capital City
Comics is great. It's comfortable enough that my mom shops there (she's
not a comic book geek, or really much of a geek at all, but she discovered that
she enjoys the Star Wars comics).
If your local comic book store sucks, see what you can do to improve it. At
the very least let the owner know that you think his antics are harming his
reputation. If that doesn't work, look for another store within your shopping
radius. In the worst case, move to strictly mail order (if you need unusual
stuff, many local stores like Capital City
Comics will ship just about anywhere). As long as you keep going you're
saying that the behavior you're seeing is acceptable.
I think the web (as I posted below) is most suited to strip comics.
Not graphic novels or comic books. But collecting, I agree, is a huge deal to
many comic book collectors. There is no value in an "issue 1" of a website
comic, if it's been blasted all over the web.
Comic book collectors? I think you mean "speculators," the idiots
responsible for the comic industry bubble and crash in the 90s. The majority
of the "value" that they created existed only from the price inflation, the
original publisher saw little to nothing of it.
The core of the industry's customers remain people who just want to read
good stuff. We buy it so we can re-read it later and share it with others. We
re-purchase collections of comics we already have so we have an easier to store
and share copy. I eagerly collect print versions of web comics I love. (This
isn't a new idea, print collections of newspaper comics also sell very well, in
many cases better than traditional comic books.) The lack of rareness will do
minimal damage to the value.
As for not being suitable for comic books, that perception is changing. One
of the most popular comics, Megatokyo
is pushing the edges of a strip comic. At his current rate (about 10 pages a
month), he's publishing the equivalent of a 20 page black and white comic every
two months, a respectible rate for an independent comic. He's just chosen to
release it page by page every few days instead of in comic sized chunks every
two months.
The article also claims we need to fix perceptions the games are only for guys.
Perhaps things could be improved, but
we're doing pretty well, thanks. (The linked article scatters the good numbers all over, so here you go:)
12% Female Under 18 26% Female 18 and up 21% Male.. Under 18 38% Male.. 18 and up
Given the that the majority of game players are adults, claims like "She urged game makers to come up with titles that would appeal to a hardcore 15-year-old gamer as well as someone older who just wants to have fun," are just silly.
The quoted developer says "People don't focus on gameplay. Instead they make a beautiful game that is no fun." True to an extent, but the die-hard players are usually the most ruthless in demanding fun. A bad but beautiful game will get blacklisted by the dedicated gamers while truly innovative games can build up a cult following even without marketting.
The industry has problems, but it's improving all by itself. This is a silly article worrying over nothing.
I've dealt with a number of email lists and have seen the occasional "WHY
ARE YOU SPAMMING ME?" from someone who subscribed. I've also occasionally run
into a reputable company that claims that I signed up for their spam when I
know I didn't.
I've built a few simple rules for one-way (announcement) email lists that
will prevent the vast majority of complaints:
Make your email list confirmed opt in. Remember those idiots who sign
people they dont't like up for magazines with the "bill me later box" checked?
It's even easier with the internet. I've seen this sort of attack myself.
Fortunately most of the lists the idiot signed me up for with confirmed opt it,
so I just ignored them and had no problem.
Let users know what frequency of email to expect. After
the user has confirmed their subscription, you should be sending a "Welcome to
our list" message. This message should include the estimated mail volume.
This is most important for any list that sends email less frequently than
weekly. Users can forget that they subscribed if two weeks goes by between
subscription and first message. Given them a heads up.
Email at least monthly. If you don't have something to
say at least monthly, you probably don't have a real use for an email list. After four weeks it's pretty easy to forget that you signed up for a list and it starts looking like spam.
After a few months of inactivity, your list is worthless.
After a few months I guarantee many people will have forgotten about you.
Others will assume you've given up and thus consider themselves unsubscribed.
Maybe, just maybe, they'll remember who you are, but for at least a moment
they'll think you're spam.
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Unsubscription information
should be in every message. A web unsubscription interface is nice, but a
"reply with unsubscribe" is mandatory. There is close to zero chance of a user being willing to enter a password to unsubscribe, especially if they don't remember signing up in the first place. Relatedly, direct replies to your
message must go somewhere. Automatically pulling out and handling unsubscribes
are a good idea, but anything the system can't process should be investigated
by a human being. A customer that has problems unsubscribing is much more
likely to track down every email address of yours they can find and email all
of them with their complaint.
Be polite. The end user might be confused. Worse, the
automated system you're so certain about might actually be misbehaving. Bug
happen. Calling the user an idiot is unproductive. (Shoots dirty look to Dust
Traxx in Chicago (some sort of club or record company, I guess) which
repeatedly spammed me without my permission, whose unsubscription system failed
repeatedly, then called me an idiot when I complained. After they promised to
remove my address a few months later I'm getting spam from them again.)
In order to be bound to a contract, the parties must be competent to enter into such a legal arrangement....intoxicated persons are usually not held to the contracts they enter.
I am totally installing all of my software drunk from now on.
Well the courts MAY take that argument... although legally, they shouldn't.
Rights are rights, and rights and limitations granted by accepting agreements should stick. If the user can't be bothered to read the agreement before accepting it, the company shouldn't be bothered trying to enforce what contract law states that the cops and courts should enforce automatically.
The argument is not ignorance of the contract, nor that widespread ignoring the EULA makes it invalid because it's unpopular.
The argument is that it never was a legal contract. That people ignore it
is just supporting evidence that people don't treat it as one. If a publisher
knows that people ignore it (in this article the Dell head of customer
relations admitted to ignoring it and encouraged a customer to ignore it!),
they're basically agreeing that it's meaningless.
Contracts are traditionally on paper with signatures for a reason. It
provides evidence (however imperfect) that both sides of the contract read it
and agreed to it. There really isn't any evidence that I clicked an "I agree"
button.
Click-wrap contracts also attempt the magic trick of converting a sale into
a license. It's an impressive trick, and so far there isn't clear legal
precident supporting it.
I head over to Best Buy. While there I purchase a copy of Windows XP, the
latest KMFDM album, and a walkthrough book for a video game. For all three
products I pick it up off a shelf, take it to the counter, pay for them
without signing anything or reading any agreements, and receive a receipt that
is labelled "SALE". At this point I own that particular copy of Windows XP,
the album, and the book. Thanks to copyright law I have no right to distribute
copies of any of them, but I have every right to, say, make copies for a
variety of fair use purposes, reverse engineer them, resell then, loan them out
to friends, and give them away. I get home, read the book, play the CD, and
run the software. Nothing has changed, but suddenly Windows XP is magically
different from the other two. Suddenly my purchase of product is actually a
purchase of license. If I don't agree to this license, I can spend my time and
money to take it back and return it (of course, in practice Best Buy will
refuse (they refuse open software returns) and I'll get to fight the system to
get a refund). Neat trick!
If ignorance of law is no defense of violation of law.. how can
ignorance of contract be any defense at all?
Ignorance of a contract is certainly a defense. If you can't reasonably be
expected to have read the contract, and the publisher know that, there is no
reasonable expectation that a contract exists. Contracts are agreements between two people, if one person doesn't realize they entered a contract, you have a valid argument that it never existed.
(And for what it's worth, ignorance of the law is often a valid mitigating
circumstance used to reduce penalties.)
If you've ever attended college and skipped a class, you should know there is absolutely no comparison between being in class and reading the notes on the web later.
Absolutely! In many of my classes my time was more efficiently spend skipping class and reading the online notes.
That said, what this person is asking for is already done. In practice most Linux installs are using a packaged distribution. An increasely large number of users just stick with whichever window manager and desktop environment the distribution provides. The big who desktop environments and toolkits, KDE and Gnome, are working together increasingly well. The big distributions are all working to minimize the differences between KDE, Gnome, and other applications for end users. For interoperability most distributions just ship Gnome, Motif, and KDE; they coexist happily. My Red Hat 9 box works great, I run a mix of Gnome, KDE, and other applications without thinking about it, they all look and behave similarly.
The author simply got distracted by the choices. You don't need to look at them and your distribution provider is likely happy to pick some reasonable defaults for you.
Most web forums are full of twelve year olds perfectly willing to take someone elses content and claim it on their own, or to leech bandwidth by posting a img link to a different site.
It's pretty clear that the page you link to is just such a site. He just took a bunch of screenshots of another web page and produced them (clearly infringing copyright).
Your bride wants you to spend a lot of money committing to her so
she can trust you...
Well if that's the case, spend the money on the down payment for a mortgage on a house. If you ditch out on her with just the diamond, you're out a few grand. If you ditch out with a mortgage you could lose everything you own and destroy your credit rating for years.
"Mortgages are Forever.":-)
Quoth this article, "In fact, women would prefer their partners to pay the deposit on a first home rather than buy a sparkling engagement ring, a survey from the Woolwich indicates. Nearly a third of those interviewed said that buying a house together was the clearest sign of long-term commitment.... Only 13% of women questioned said an engagement ring was the surest sign of commitment. "
Slashdot Mirror
We got to chatting about bad jobs at work a few years ago. There were some doozies (orderly at an asylum, cleaning out cement trucks), but the most memorable was beheading rats.
One of my coworkers, when he was in college, worker for a research project in the biology department (I believe that was the department). They were doing research on rats. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall that it involved cutting part of some organ out, exposing them to potential carcinogens, waiting a while for the organ to regrow, then examining the organ for cancer.
The highlight was killing the rats for the final examination. Apparently there was a little rat guillotine. My coworkers said that the first few rats were easy, but after that the rats started smelling the blood and would panic.
There is more urban legend here than actual history. While a few companies have sold console systems at a loss (notably Sega), most have not. Sony certainly doesn't and Nintendo historically didn't (but may have on the GameCube).
Here's one source on the matter.
Ah that explains everything.
It was in the EULA I signed when I purchased it.
Oh, no EULA to sign when I purchase it? Well, it must be clearly printed on the side of the box where I can see it when I purchase it.
Oh, no EULA there either? Well, how about when I open the box the XBox itself has a big EULA taped over the power button that I have to read.
Nope, not one there either. Well, when I first turn it on, I have to agree, right?
Nope, guess not.
So where exactly is this magical EULA I've agreed to "even without buying Live?"
I could have skipped the expensive college and gotten vocational training as a plumber. Instead of worrying for my job and seeing skilled and motivated friends in the tech field scrounging for whatever work they can find, I could be earning twice my current salary as a plumber?
Geeez, I picked the wrong career.
Actually, I can see a valid point to the argument.
I've never seen a modern monopoly that didn't arise from government intervention.
Take Microsoft. Without the government granted monopoly to exclusively distribute copies of works they've created, their monopoly would evaporate overnight. Of course, removing that monpoly would be eliminating copyright, which people might object to.
Both extreme ends of the spectrum (pure capitalism, and pure government run ecomonies) "work" for suitable definitions of work. But for real people neither extreme is really a good idea.
Indeed you do have an odd view on privacy. This sort of view on privacy puts free speech, freedom of religion, and even democracy at great risk.
A key element of freedom is some level of privacy. Like all things this is a continuum, but the privacy needs to be there.
Take the extreme case. Your vote is private. It's absolutely essential that it be private. If it wasn't private, some local "Honest Businessman" might want by each household in a distict saying, "You've got yourselves a nice house here. It would be shame if something happened to it. If you don't vote for Sentator Gimmebribes, something might happen. That would be very unfortunate." Thanks to the privacy of your vote, you can go vote out the creep, then return home and say, "I have no idea how he lost the election, I sure voted for him!"
On a more historic level, support for the United States revolution was built up by anonymous pamphleteering. If the publishers had put their names on it the British would have strung them up. By working anonymously they could continue to spread their message and do more good than if they were quietly executed early in their campaign.
To take a still fairly extreme case, say you're in a strongly racist community, one in which violence occasionally erupts against one race and people defending that race. This might be South Africa of the past or parts of the United States in the past. I'm sure it still goes on in other countries right now. You feel that the racism is wrong, but you've got a family. If you speak out against it publically there is a real risk you'll be lynched, or your children attacked. But you can secretly spread pamphlets or other media exposing the evil.
This applies in many other areas. Is your preferred religion unpopular, perhaps even dangerous? If you're not in the mood to be a martyr (or perhaps make your children martyrs), quietly, privately practice your religion. Hopefully this isn't something that happens anywhere, but in some parts of the world it's a risk.
Want to speak out against a group that you feel is criminal and willing to harm you? (Perhaps a large cult?) The police don't agree it's a threat and won't protect you, but you want to warn the world? Well, privacy in the form of anonymous speech may be your tool.
Getting a domain (typically to run a web site) can be a great way to get your message our inexpensively. To declare that you can't be private while doing so is to limit potentially important speech.
Or at your postoffice if you're getting anything important sent home.
A friend ran into problems with NetFlix. They claimed they kept sending him movies, he claimed he never saw them. After a few failures he gave up and cancelled his account. They demanded he pay for all of the missing movies. Only a few months later was it revealed this his regular postman was found to be stealing mail, including NetFlix DVDs.
God, there may only be a small number of scum on this earth, but that handful makes life so unpleasant for so very many. Feh.
One step most of these proxies is doing is compressing HTML files. HTML is highly redundant, so compression can save alot of space. However, it's silly for the proxy to do the compressing. Instead web site owners can do the compressing! Transferring pages gzip compressed is part of the standard. No special software is needed by end users. A 3:1 reduction in bytes transferred for your web pages (the HTML itself) is a reasonable minimum. The result is that you use less bandwidth and end users get a faster web site! Every mainstream browser supports this, and those browsers that don't support it will automatically get the uncompressed version. If you're using Apache, you'll want mod_gzip to automatically compress transfers. (You can fake the effect with MultiViews, but it's a hassle to maintain two copies of every HTML file.)
(Yes, I know I don't practice what I preach. I'm working on it.)
Art and vandalism can certainly coexist.
I've certainly seem some carefully crafted, beautiful graffiti that the artist regrettably chose to place on someone else's property without permission. That it's illegal and messes with someone else's property doesn't invalidate that it is also art.
Similarly you can engage in political speech and do something illegal at the same time. Burning draft cards was both illegal and a political statement. Hitting someone with a cream pie can be both assault and speech. Destruction of property (Say, dumping a bunch of tea in a harbor) can be intended as a political message.
Mind you, that someone is making art or engaging in political speech doesn't justify the crime! I can both appreciate the quality of some skilled graffiti while simultaneously wishing that the artist would get caught for damaging someone else's property. I'd rather the artist had not chosen to do so. But to deny that it could be art is just silly.
This threw me, until digging through the results I found this, and the variations this, this, this, this. It's just a bunch of sample text and imagry for a web design company. I'm guessing the many, many sites using the text are purchased that web design company's services. There are other similarities. Many of the derived sites are using the same bulleted list of people with links using javascript to replace the URL with "Details...". I'm definately thinking this is all contracted work from a really lazy web design company. Interestingly, some are still using the same stock. photograph.
God, there are so many of them. I only hope the web design service was cheap.
Please, please let this be the case. I want to turn people off to electronic voting forever. It's a fundamentally bad idea. It's no easier than the modern scanned paper ballots available in many places. It's no easier to total than the scanned paper ballots. And it certainly increases the complexity and thus the number of possible points of failure.
If you're not familiar modern scanned ballots, here's one example, the one used in elections in my area. You get a big ballot with lists of candidates. Next to each candidate's name is a large arrow with an inch gap in it. You just use the provided pencil to complete the broken arrow pointing to the candidate you want. You then take you ballot to the tabulating machine and insert it. If the machine detects a problem (say, two votes in one race) it spit the ballot back out and the nearby poll worker (not close enough to see your ballot) explains the sitatuation and ways to correct it (basically, force it in, but risk losing a vote, or destroy the ballot, get a fresh one, and try again, with a poll workers assistance if you request it). It's positively trivial to use, easy to read, and easy to understand. People who fear computers aren't put off by it. The machine makes keeping the tally easy. Each polling location only needs a handful of these machines, mostly you need cheap "privacy booths" to do you voting. The machines are certainly simplier (and presumably cheaper) than the electronic voting stations. If there is any concern about a problem, you can trivially hand count the paper ballots and know that you're looking at the exact mark that the voter made, not some computer generated receipt.
The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.
Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)
Code generation has its place, but one needs to be ever watchful of the dangers presented by anything that claims to make programming easier. In summary, it risks creating a bunch of code you don't really understand and can't debug. Ellen Ullman's 1998 article "The dumbing-down of programming" is still good reading.
Everything in moderation.
This is an amazing summary of how the corporate world doesn't speak with customers, they speak at customers. Only someone stuck in a corporate mindset would think that missing functionality and vendor lock in was an amazing feature that customers want.
I understand that the product might not be financially viable without these limitations. My problem is that they brazens claim it's a feature. The only people to whom it is a feature is the company itself, certainly not end users.
Apparently Hasbro's idea of a "quality picture" doesn't quite match mine.
Limited quality kids versions of audio-visual devices aren't a new idea. Back in the 90s (I believe), there was a kids video camera that recorded black and white onto an ordinary audio cassette. There were also proprietary mini-media that held a single song. None of them did too well since the Real Thing kept dropping in price. They may be fun toys, but they seem too limited. This seems particularlly silly given its limitations, but whatever.
I wish the reverse engineering project the best of luck, it looks like a fun hack! And if you got a Videonow box for your kids, wouldn't it be neat to be able to make home-movie Videonow discs in addition to the ones for sale?
It's not about an investment. The immediate sale is about recouping an expense. While I've never sold a CD, I have sold many books. Sometimes I'll grow tired of a book, decide I'll never read it again, and sell it. (Well, these days I just donate them to a library... but the principle stands. And I certainly did so when I was a student and needed cash.) I own books because I love the books. Their monetary value is irrelevant. But I believe strongly that I should be able to transfer them; perhaps to loan it to a friend, give it away to a library, or just sell it.
Another case is inheritance. When some of my extended family members passed away, their collections were inherited. My parents ended up with an interesting (although not terribly valuable) collection of vinyl records and comic books. Some of these are no longer available. As someone else pointed out, as we move more and more digital many people will have spend thousands of dollars on strictly online music. (I know people who own tens of thousands of dollars of CDs, so getting a tenth of that electronically seems reasonable.) When the person dies, is it as though the collection never existed? If the collection held tracks no longer sold, is that copy simply gone forever? Private collections are some of the best places to find old media that is no longer available (perhaps because it's not profitable, or perhaps because it's considered "inappropriate" by one or more factions.).
True enough. That's because some comic book stores suck. There are also excellent comic book stores where the staff are professional and friendly, the "heroically proportioned" comics aren't shoved in your face, and the "weird" comics that will creep many people out are a bit out of the way. If you're in Madison, Wisconsin Capital City Comics is great. It's comfortable enough that my mom shops there (she's not a comic book geek, or really much of a geek at all, but she discovered that she enjoys the Star Wars comics).
If your local comic book store sucks, see what you can do to improve it. At the very least let the owner know that you think his antics are harming his reputation. If that doesn't work, look for another store within your shopping radius. In the worst case, move to strictly mail order (if you need unusual stuff, many local stores like Capital City Comics will ship just about anywhere). As long as you keep going you're saying that the behavior you're seeing is acceptable.
Comic book collectors? I think you mean "speculators," the idiots responsible for the comic industry bubble and crash in the 90s. The majority of the "value" that they created existed only from the price inflation, the original publisher saw little to nothing of it.
The core of the industry's customers remain people who just want to read good stuff. We buy it so we can re-read it later and share it with others. We re-purchase collections of comics we already have so we have an easier to store and share copy. I eagerly collect print versions of web comics I love. (This isn't a new idea, print collections of newspaper comics also sell very well, in many cases better than traditional comic books.) The lack of rareness will do minimal damage to the value.
As for not being suitable for comic books, that perception is changing. One of the most popular comics, Megatokyo is pushing the edges of a strip comic. At his current rate (about 10 pages a month), he's publishing the equivalent of a 20 page black and white comic every two months, a respectible rate for an independent comic. He's just chosen to release it page by page every few days instead of in comic sized chunks every two months.
Unless it's already happened?
The article also claims we need to fix perceptions the games are only for guys. Perhaps things could be improved, but we're doing pretty well, thanks. (The linked article scatters the good numbers all over, so here you go:)
Given the that the majority of game players are adults, claims like "She urged game makers to come up with titles that would appeal to a hardcore 15-year-old gamer as well as someone older who just wants to have fun," are just silly.
The quoted developer says "People don't focus on gameplay. Instead they make a beautiful game that is no fun." True to an extent, but the die-hard players are usually the most ruthless in demanding fun. A bad but beautiful game will get blacklisted by the dedicated gamers while truly innovative games can build up a cult following even without marketting.
The industry has problems, but it's improving all by itself. This is a silly article worrying over nothing.
I've dealt with a number of email lists and have seen the occasional "WHY ARE YOU SPAMMING ME?" from someone who subscribed. I've also occasionally run into a reputable company that claims that I signed up for their spam when I know I didn't.
I've built a few simple rules for one-way (announcement) email lists that will prevent the vast majority of complaints:
Make your email list confirmed opt in. Remember those idiots who sign people they dont't like up for magazines with the "bill me later box" checked? It's even easier with the internet. I've seen this sort of attack myself. Fortunately most of the lists the idiot signed me up for with confirmed opt it, so I just ignored them and had no problem.
Let users know what frequency of email to expect. After the user has confirmed their subscription, you should be sending a "Welcome to our list" message. This message should include the estimated mail volume. This is most important for any list that sends email less frequently than weekly. Users can forget that they subscribed if two weeks goes by between subscription and first message. Given them a heads up.
Email at least monthly. If you don't have something to say at least monthly, you probably don't have a real use for an email list. After four weeks it's pretty easy to forget that you signed up for a list and it starts looking like spam.
After a few months of inactivity, your list is worthless. After a few months I guarantee many people will have forgotten about you. Others will assume you've given up and thus consider themselves unsubscribed. Maybe, just maybe, they'll remember who you are, but for at least a moment they'll think you're spam.
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Unsubscription information should be in every message. A web unsubscription interface is nice, but a "reply with unsubscribe" is mandatory. There is close to zero chance of a user being willing to enter a password to unsubscribe, especially if they don't remember signing up in the first place. Relatedly, direct replies to your message must go somewhere. Automatically pulling out and handling unsubscribes are a good idea, but anything the system can't process should be investigated by a human being. A customer that has problems unsubscribing is much more likely to track down every email address of yours they can find and email all of them with their complaint.
Be polite. The end user might be confused. Worse, the automated system you're so certain about might actually be misbehaving. Bug happen. Calling the user an idiot is unproductive. (Shoots dirty look to Dust Traxx in Chicago (some sort of club or record company, I guess) which repeatedly spammed me without my permission, whose unsubscription system failed repeatedly, then called me an idiot when I complained. After they promised to remove my address a few months later I'm getting spam from them again.)
Preach it brother. Web forums are a giant step backward.
I am totally installing all of my software drunk from now on.
Hmmm, not much of a change, actually.
The argument is not ignorance of the contract, nor that widespread ignoring the EULA makes it invalid because it's unpopular.
The argument is that it never was a legal contract. That people ignore it is just supporting evidence that people don't treat it as one. If a publisher knows that people ignore it (in this article the Dell head of customer relations admitted to ignoring it and encouraged a customer to ignore it!), they're basically agreeing that it's meaningless.
Contracts are traditionally on paper with signatures for a reason. It provides evidence (however imperfect) that both sides of the contract read it and agreed to it. There really isn't any evidence that I clicked an "I agree" button.
Click-wrap contracts also attempt the magic trick of converting a sale into a license. It's an impressive trick, and so far there isn't clear legal precident supporting it.
I head over to Best Buy. While there I purchase a copy of Windows XP, the latest KMFDM album, and a walkthrough book for a video game. For all three products I pick it up off a shelf, take it to the counter, pay for them without signing anything or reading any agreements, and receive a receipt that is labelled "SALE". At this point I own that particular copy of Windows XP, the album, and the book. Thanks to copyright law I have no right to distribute copies of any of them, but I have every right to, say, make copies for a variety of fair use purposes, reverse engineer them, resell then, loan them out to friends, and give them away. I get home, read the book, play the CD, and run the software. Nothing has changed, but suddenly Windows XP is magically different from the other two. Suddenly my purchase of product is actually a purchase of license. If I don't agree to this license, I can spend my time and money to take it back and return it (of course, in practice Best Buy will refuse (they refuse open software returns) and I'll get to fight the system to get a refund). Neat trick!
Ignorance of a contract is certainly a defense. If you can't reasonably be expected to have read the contract, and the publisher know that, there is no reasonable expectation that a contract exists. Contracts are agreements between two people, if one person doesn't realize they entered a contract, you have a valid argument that it never existed.
(And for what it's worth, ignorance of the law is often a valid mitigating circumstance used to reduce penalties.)
Absolutely! In many of my classes my time was more efficiently spend skipping class and reading the online notes.
No site that breaks online articles into arbitrary pages should be allowed to run articles on "usability."
Feh.
Single page link to the article.
That said, what this person is asking for is already done. In practice most Linux installs are using a packaged distribution. An increasely large number of users just stick with whichever window manager and desktop environment the distribution provides. The big who desktop environments and toolkits, KDE and Gnome, are working together increasingly well. The big distributions are all working to minimize the differences between KDE, Gnome, and other applications for end users. For interoperability most distributions just ship Gnome, Motif, and KDE; they coexist happily. My Red Hat 9 box works great, I run a mix of Gnome, KDE, and other applications without thinking about it, they all look and behave similarly.
The author simply got distracted by the choices. You don't need to look at them and your distribution provider is likely happy to pick some reasonable defaults for you.
Most web forums are full of twelve year olds perfectly willing to take someone elses content and claim it on their own, or to leech bandwidth by posting a img link to a different site.
I hate (most) web forums.
It's pretty clear that the page you link to is just such a site. He just took a bunch of screenshots of another web page and produced them (clearly infringing copyright).
This appears to be the original SWAT team hand gestures page.
Well if that's the case, spend the money on the down payment for a mortgage on a house. If you ditch out on her with just the diamond, you're out a few grand. If you ditch out with a mortgage you could lose everything you own and destroy your credit rating for years.
"Mortgages are Forever." :-)
Quoth this article, "In fact, women would prefer their partners to pay the deposit on a first home rather than buy a sparkling engagement ring, a survey from the Woolwich indicates. Nearly a third of those interviewed said that buying a house together was the clearest sign of long-term commitment. ... Only 13% of women questioned said an engagement ring was the surest sign of commitment. "