I think you'll find that this topic was covered in an episode of Josie & the Pussycats (In Outer Space) several years before the inception of the Simpsons. The gang travelled to a planet with some aliens that wanted to extinguish the sun because it was hurting their eyes. You see, they had these gigantic eyes. The "bubbly blond" character recommended that they wear sunglasses instead. Everyone lived happily ever after and I'm sure a song was sung at some point.
"If you inadventently (or intentionally) dial to 101.1 and continue to listen even AFTER youv'e heard the legal disclaimer stating that you should not keep listening, does that constitute theft ?"
There's your first mistake. You're assuming that the disclaimer has any weight under the law. You can say whatever you want and sound/look official, but if it isn't backable by contract law or the Uniform Commercial Code, it's meaningless. This is what people have been saying about EULAs for years.
That's overkill. Here's how I personally produce redacted documents: Print the document out. Black-out sensitive information with a black marker on the front and back of the sensitive text. Photocopy the blacked-out printout. Drop the photocopy into the sheet-fed scanner and save as a PDF. You're left with a PDF comprised of images of letters and black blocks, no text whatsoever to be lifted.
I think you might be the right guy for me to ask then...Right now I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 8200.....1.6GHz Pentium 4-m, 768 megs of RAM, 32 meg NVIDIA card. I basically run Excel all day and a little Word. I want to install Parallels on my Macbook Pro, which has a 2GHz Core Duo and a gig of RAM. In your opinion, will Windows XP under Parallels on the MB Pro be at least as "snappy" as my current setup?
Did anyone follow the link over there to Google SketchUp? I am amazed that this program hasn't gotten any publicity. Some details from the site:
"SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas. * Click on a shape and push or pull it to create your desired 3D geometry. * Experiment with color and texture directly on your model. * Real-time shadow casting lets you see exactly where the sun falls as you model. * Select from thousands of pre-drawn components to save time drawing.
And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp is free for personal use. No registration is required."
I picked up the last one in stock at a Game Crazy (Hollywood Video's game store-in-a-store) at 6pm yesterday after trying maybe three places. I picked up copies of Brain Age, Sprung (dating sim) and Worms. I haven't owned a Nintendo handheld since the Gameboy Color and I was very impressed with the build quality and the brightness of the screen. It reminds me of a miniaturized version of my 12-inch iBook G4, which I just sold, so there's already some nostalgic attachment right there. Once Opera is released for the DS, the DS lite will fill an important niche in my computing spectrum (MB Pro for work/home, XBox 360 for games, Linux fileserver & DS Lite for quick 'n easy games in bed or on the go).
"Punishing fraud is one of the most basic things the government is supposed to do."
At most, this is a civil dispute over a breach of contract between Rockstar and the ESRB regarding the disclosure requirements for the ratings system. That is a job for the court system. The FTC's role in this is wholly illegitimate.
Jeez, wait until they discover Haley's ping pong ball trick in "Rockstar Table Tennis":)
I can see a couple great uses for this. I probably wouldn't put any personal data on the system, but I can see this being used to create specialized web-based calculators that could be shared among industry participants.
I attended a telephone-based seminar last week and one of the speakers had mentioned a "webulator" he put on his company's site...a web-based calculator. Imagine if anyone in the world could quickly and easily create such a thing and let everyone have access to it. There are a couple popular studies in my industry where shared access to an online spreadsheet system could help with discussion and advancement of the field.
"How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"
I don't know about you, but I actually check my work and co-workers cross-check each other's work. Any spreadsheet whose numbers can't easily be checked out on a calculator should be designed such that the information generally flows in one direction and each step of a calcuation is broken out into separate rows whenever possible to make "debugging" easier.
There is often discussion here about how the Chinese people are oppressed by their government and that we need to take steps to give them technology to route around censorship and to eventually topple their totalitarian government. Now, I'm getting the impression that they're a bunch of busy bodies and snitches that have exactly the government that they want.
"Big business, whose motto has always been time is money, is looking forward to the day when multiple sources of financial information can be cross-referenced to show market patterns almost instantly"
That's the Bloomberg service in a nutshell. Yes, same company founded by current NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg. As an example, I was able to simultaneously examine various financial ratios of about 1,200 companies along with their current market values. Depending upon where certain ratios went, I flagged them as candidates for a mailing of my company's financial consulting services. I was even able to use the Bloomberg system to download the names and addresses (office, not home of course) of the CEO and CFO of each company I flagged as a mailing list candidate.
I actually had a lot of respect for that kid for putting himself out there and making that video. Only when I discovered that he was a whiny pussy that likes to sue people did I think less of him.
"I know you will eventually get a 'Funny' rating for that, but it is true. It seems the more higher evolved an animal is, the more they bond with others -- even those outside of their species or even inanimate objects. It says something about you."
To get a wee bit philosophical, I'd say it's because the lesser evolved creatures are more at one with nature...in other words they don't recognize themselves as something separate. We, on the other hand, have this concept of "I am" and therefore have a desire to feel at one with other creatures & things.
Truth be told, I am really, really hoping that they try to do this. The consumer backlash and probably subsequent lawsuits over everything from eBay sales to EB Games/Gamestop sales will provide lots of ripe discussion material on/. for months.
There's a lot of people on/. getting off and feeling high and mighty by recommending the use of databases for damn near anything involving numbers. I have the (mis)fortune of working with large datasets sometimes for financial analysis. Hundreds of Excel tabs...hundreds of small companies under one umbrella. The fact of the matter is that despite the great quantity of data, I don't always need the complexities of a database app. The data is going to be swirled around and looked at from many different angles. If anything needs to be aggregated or searched, there are incredibly simple formulas that can be used.
"As well, reading is much too passive an activity. It encourages mental passiveness, instead of being aware and engaged in our surroundings."
You have books that read themselves to you? A good book forces you to use your imagination and create in your mind the world that is being described. As for being engaged in one's surroundings, that is a completely irrelevant statement. If you're engaged in any form of entertainment, books, video games, TV, movies, you are going to be disengaged from your surroundings.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you'll find that this topic was covered in an episode of Josie & the Pussycats (In Outer Space) several years before the inception of the Simpsons. The gang travelled to a planet with some aliens that wanted to extinguish the sun because it was hurting their eyes. You see, they had these gigantic eyes. The "bubbly blond" character recommended that they wear sunglasses instead. Everyone lived happily ever after and I'm sure a song was sung at some point.
"If you inadventently (or intentionally) dial to 101.1 and continue to listen even AFTER youv'e heard the legal disclaimer stating that you should not keep listening, does that constitute theft ?"
There's your first mistake. You're assuming that the disclaimer has any weight under the law. You can say whatever you want and sound/look official, but if it isn't backable by contract law or the Uniform Commercial Code, it's meaningless. This is what people have been saying about EULAs for years.
That's overkill. Here's how I personally produce redacted documents: Print the document out. Black-out sensitive information with a black marker on the front and back of the sensitive text. Photocopy the blacked-out printout. Drop the photocopy into the sheet-fed scanner and save as a PDF. You're left with a PDF comprised of images of letters and black blocks, no text whatsoever to be lifted.
It's a shiny thing.
I think you might be the right guy for me to ask then...Right now I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 8200.....1.6GHz Pentium 4-m, 768 megs of RAM, 32 meg NVIDIA card. I basically run Excel all day and a little Word. I want to install Parallels on my Macbook Pro, which has a 2GHz Core Duo and a gig of RAM. In your opinion, will Windows XP under Parallels on the MB Pro be at least as "snappy" as my current setup?
They're abstracts of every other living entity's desire to reproduce and willingness to kill to do so and survive? Just my $0.02.
Did anyone follow the link over there to Google SketchUp? I am amazed that this program hasn't gotten any publicity. Some details from the site:
"SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas.
* Click on a shape and push or pull it to create your desired 3D geometry.
* Experiment with color and texture directly on your model.
* Real-time shadow casting lets you see exactly where the sun falls as you model.
* Select from thousands of pre-drawn components to save time drawing.
And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp is free for personal use. No registration is required."
I picked up the last one in stock at a Game Crazy (Hollywood Video's game store-in-a-store) at 6pm yesterday after trying maybe three places. I picked up copies of Brain Age, Sprung (dating sim) and Worms. I haven't owned a Nintendo handheld since the Gameboy Color and I was very impressed with the build quality and the brightness of the screen. It reminds me of a miniaturized version of my 12-inch iBook G4, which I just sold, so there's already some nostalgic attachment right there. Once Opera is released for the DS, the DS lite will fill an important niche in my computing spectrum (MB Pro for work/home, XBox 360 for games, Linux fileserver & DS Lite for quick 'n easy games in bed or on the go).
I saw a little old lady *in a wheelchair* get searched at Chicago Midway airport. I felt much safer afterwards.
"Punishing fraud is one of the most basic things the government is supposed to do."
:)
At most, this is a civil dispute over a breach of contract between Rockstar and the ESRB regarding the disclosure requirements for the ratings system. That is a job for the court system. The FTC's role in this is wholly illegitimate.
Jeez, wait until they discover Haley's ping pong ball trick in "Rockstar Table Tennis"
I can see a couple great uses for this. I probably wouldn't put any personal data on the system, but I can see this being used to create specialized web-based calculators that could be shared among industry participants.
I attended a telephone-based seminar last week and one of the speakers had mentioned a "webulator" he put on his company's site...a web-based calculator. Imagine if anyone in the world could quickly and easily create such a thing and let everyone have access to it. There are a couple popular studies in my industry where shared access to an online spreadsheet system could help with discussion and advancement of the field.
"How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"
I don't know about you, but I actually check my work and co-workers cross-check each other's work. Any spreadsheet whose numbers can't easily be checked out on a calculator should be designed such that the information generally flows in one direction and each step of a calcuation is broken out into separate rows whenever possible to make "debugging" easier.
The actual quote is: "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. -Adlai Stevenson"
Your response was misguided.
There is often discussion here about how the Chinese people are oppressed by their government and that we need to take steps to give them technology to route around censorship and to eventually topple their totalitarian government. Now, I'm getting the impression that they're a bunch of busy bodies and snitches that have exactly the government that they want.
That's OK...it looks like you still have Digg.com left.
"Big business, whose motto has always been time is money, is looking forward to the day when multiple sources of financial information can be cross-referenced to show market patterns almost instantly"
That's the Bloomberg service in a nutshell. Yes, same company founded by current NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg. As an example, I was able to simultaneously examine various financial ratios of about 1,200 companies along with their current market values. Depending upon where certain ratios went, I flagged them as candidates for a mailing of my company's financial consulting services. I was even able to use the Bloomberg system to download the names and addresses (office, not home of course) of the CEO and CFO of each company I flagged as a mailing list candidate.
"Perhaps they're not even "corporeal" or light necessitating."
Unless it's a hyperintelligent shade of blue, that is.
I actually had a lot of respect for that kid for putting himself out there and making that video. Only when I discovered that he was a whiny pussy that likes to sue people did I think less of him.
"I know you will eventually get a 'Funny' rating for that, but it is true. It seems the more higher evolved an animal is, the more they bond with others -- even those outside of their species or even inanimate objects. It says something about you."
To get a wee bit philosophical, I'd say it's because the lesser evolved creatures are more at one with nature...in other words they don't recognize themselves as something separate. We, on the other hand, have this concept of "I am" and therefore have a desire to feel at one with other creatures & things.
Sony:
/. for months.
Do you really hate your customers *that* much?
Truth be told, I am really, really hoping that they try to do this. The consumer backlash and probably subsequent lawsuits over everything from eBay sales to EB Games/Gamestop sales will provide lots of ripe discussion material on
There's a lot of people on /. getting off and feeling high and mighty by recommending the use of databases for damn near anything involving numbers. I have the (mis)fortune of working with large datasets sometimes for financial analysis. Hundreds of Excel tabs...hundreds of small companies under one umbrella. The fact of the matter is that despite the great quantity of data, I don't always need the complexities of a database app. The data is going to be swirled around and looked at from many different angles. If anything needs to be aggregated or searched, there are incredibly simple formulas that can be used.
FWIW: =sum(A:A) is a little more "future proof."
"As well, reading is much too passive an activity. It encourages mental passiveness, instead of being aware and engaged in our surroundings."
You have books that read themselves to you? A good book forces you to use your imagination and create in your mind the world that is being described. As for being engaged in one's surroundings, that is a completely irrelevant statement. If you're engaged in any form of entertainment, books, video games, TV, movies, you are going to be disengaged from your surroundings.
Well, she sure has changed since her college days.
"For example, even though it's been 2000 years, and I'm not a Christian, I would find a "Crucify Jesus" game tasteless."
That would work out pretty well on either the DS or Wii. Pencils down.