"... and I'd love to be able to carry a portable jammer in my car so I could *terminate* their unsafe conversations and help them to concentrate on the multi-ton metal object they're supposedly "in control" of..."
That's great until some other guy with a jammer parks in front of your house.
I don't care if cell phone use in cars is outlawed, but jamming is not the solution. It's a social problem, not a techniacl problem.
"Basically I want to find the breaker for the room, and after the breaker, run the power through the UPS and back out to the room. Is the UPS that I have sufficient to run a whole small office?"
Considering that you're married, are you really sure that you want to embark on a project that has the potential to make you a permenant laughing stock at the beauty salon?
"That's perfectly fits with yesterday's news about Mozilla foundation being more reactive to security fixes than M$."
Um, yeah, but it still majorly sucks that these vulnerabilities are still happening quite routiunely. Which, btw, fits perfectly with yesterday's news about Opera being released for free.
"The thing I find most worrying about this story is the implication that high-school students were expected to "take a dump" in a bathroom without private stalls."
I went to 3 different schools (i.e elementary, middle, and high...) in my life (all in the same district) and none of them had doors on the stalls. Are you saying (at least in the US) that this is uncommon?
"Personally, when words like "Freak" and "Darn" are used in place of their vulgar counterparts, I tend to laugh at the person using them. It just sounds wrong."
Heh. I read a Dilbert book (err I can't remember the title, but it had to do with things you should and shouldn't do... it had to do with etiquette, I think.) One strip had to do with swearing and how some people (typically older people) would go haywire if you used the wrong words.
I've seen this happen. I remember one day in high school, there was some stupid play scheduled. The play was going on during the 3rd period. For me, that meant I could stay in the computer class for 3 hours. Neat! So I didn't get the permission slip filled out. Well, I was wrong. They shuffled everybody who wasn't attending the play into study halls. Doh. I was a senior during the peek of my rebellious phase. I was going to do something daring, I was going to skip the study hall. So while everybody was herded to another room, I slipped away. I wandered into a different study hall where one of my friends was. We bs'd for about 20 minutes before I noticed the teacher was taking attendance. Oh... crap. Like a secret agent, I snuck out of the class and started making tracks to where I was supposed to go. I was one floor up from the study hall. If I were caught coming down the stairs, instant bust. So I cooked up a story to the tune of "I had to go to the bathroom. I went up a floor because that level had a bathroom with a door on the stall." Perfect excuse! By the time I came down the stairs, I was anxious. Very anxious. The teacher that saw me spotted me and said "where have you been?!" My anxiety caught up with me and all that came out was "I was taking a dump!"
The teacher's eyes lit up with anger. In retrospect, I should have expected this. But I honestly didn't see 'taking a dump' as being in the same league as 'shitted in a fucking private stall', but the way he reacted I might as well have said that. He was so mad, he actually ran across the hall and stopped a teacher that was passing by. "I asked this young man why he was late to class, and you know what he said?" The poor teacher disinterestedly shook his head. "He said he was..." he actually held up his hands to signify quotes... "taking a dump." The teacher who obviously wanted to continue to his destination had a blank look on his face. The study hall teacher then asked "Do you think that was appropriate?" He shook his head and wandered off. I was left to write a 4 page report on why the phrase "Taking a dump" is inappropriate.
By the third revision of my paper I was getting annoyed. He told me he didn't like it and that I should completely rewrite it. So I did. I filled up four pages about how the older generation of people couldn't cope with the cultural changes that had happened over the last couple of decades, so the younger generation had to tread lightly when speaking around them. I fully expected to end up explaining that paper to the vice principal, but instead the study hall teacher shook his head and threw it away. I honestly don't know if what I was saying got through to him or if he realized he was overreacting or if he was just plain bored with the conflict.
Needless to say, I find cartoons about people swearing so much that other characters catch fire pretty funny. I understand the concept of polite conversation, but it still baffles me how some people get so worked up over 'vulgar phrases'. I think it's a generational thing, but if somebody has a better idea I'm all ears.
Heh sorry dudes, didn't have anything real interesting to share about the topic at hand. I just remembered this little story after what the parent poster said about people looking silly by using softer words. I found myself using words like that during the rest of my senior year in high school.
"Microsoft (or a company working with Microsoft) releases a product astonishingly similar to the first companies product, right down to the information provided to Microsoft under NDA."
This point would be more interesting if the resulting packaging wasn't extremely straight forward and simple. Then again, I don't think the issue here is that the packaging is similar, but rather that the technique that was used to make it was shared with a competitor.
I have mixed feelings about this. If the 'proprietary technique' that was used was simple enough for a competitor to use it and provide a cheaper result, is there really any real cause other than the NDA violation to get all uppity? I mean, if Microsoft sued Google under similar circumstances, nobody would be siding with MS.
"No refund, no explanation, nothing. I'm migrating to Mozilla, I'm sick of opera (the company, not the broswer)."
You're right, Opera would be a much better company if they kept charging money for their browser. Heck, they should have raised the price! You would have gotten more bang out of your buck, then!!
" It's no longer just email, it's email and calendaring! See the difference? (No, I don't either.)"
Funny, a lot of people I work with see the difference. I wonder if general ignorance about the usefulness of Outlook is why it's been so hard to find an OSS alternative.
"And in response to your child post, no, it's NOT as simple as plastering a photographic texture to create "realistic" graphics."
Um, yeah it is. Sometimes you do a little fiddling in Photoshop if the source image wasn't perfectly suited to it. It's certainly a lot quicker than trying to conjure up something stylized and making it from scratch.
"Maybe I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen the mass market dislikes the complicated controller of the newest generation. This guy seems to have it all backwards."
Heh. I saw it from a different perspective. Right now, FPS's are the current fad in gaming. This controller is a pleasant step up from Sony and Microsoft's controllers. If anything, Nintendo's catering to the biggest market. Anybody who has played San Andreas knows how painfully limiting modern controllers are.
It's nice and all that they let you have little free samples and all. However, it is still very much an "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model.
There's a difference, at least in MS's eyes, between using 'free components' and commercial apps being carbon copied and released for free. I'm not really sure what I think about this. On the one hand, seems like a risky business to develop a product that somebody with a little coding experience can duplicate. On the other hand, it sure takes the fun out of making a garage app (shareware, etc) with the idea of making a few bucks. I'm undecided, but I'm not surprised MS would refer to it as a 'cancer'. I also don't think this illustrates hypocracy on MS's part. Then again, I'm full on karma.
"IT IS NOT STEALING. When will you people get this through your thick skulls and stop believing the propaganda?"
Whoooah, slow down man. The 'stealing' argument is based on the idea that a music download means one less bit of music purchased. Whether stealing is the correct term or not isn't all that interesting. The claim is that money is lost from downloads. In those terms, the term 'theft' isn't all that unreasonable.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, the only real 'damage' that they've been able to reasonably prove is that the sale of singles has shot way down. (That was two or three years ago, I don't know if it's true today.) According to the RIAA, there were 2 billion songs being traded a month. With numbers like that, you'd expect to see a huge dip in their profits. Not even close. They did have a small dip during a stormy economic time. Blah blah blah.
Frankly, I'm not offended by use of the term 'stealing' when downloading music. I see where they're coming from. What annoys me is the assumed 1:1 ratio between downloaded music and sales lost. I'm also not thrilled with the automatic assumption that downloading of music is automatically some unethical move or that it was some attempt to save money. People went out and spent $400ish on iPods and related gear and where then accused of trying to get 'free music'. A new market was created and the RIAA refused to move into it. Even if they did manage to lose money on it, what'd they really lose money from? Downloading of music or a really bad business move?
What irks me the most about these accusations is my own downloading habits from years ago. (I'm a Rhapsody subscriber now, all my music is 'legit'. If anybody's curious about my experiences with that service, I'd be happy to talk about it.) There were two reasons I downloaded music. 1.) I downloaded music I already had on CD so that I had my collection at work and at home. 2.) I was trying to find new music. The second one is the hot button for me. According to the RIAA, I should go spend $15 to $20 on an ablum I've never heard before, and I cannot return it if I don't like it. Some stores have neat little kiosks where I can preview the music. That's nice and all, but I seriously doubt they want me loitering around long enough for me to make my decision. (Not to mention I've got OTHER things to do...) Funny what happened when I started doing this. I went and bought less music. Because I already had it? Nah. I rarely downloaded a whole album. I just found that there were several individual songs I wanted, but they weren't worth the cost of the whole CD. Yeah I saved money by downloading music. It helped me make wiser spending decisions. It's a pity they didn't sell music on a per-track basis like iTunes does now.
Okay, I've drifted off topic a little bit. Sorry about that. My point is that the theft vs. copyright infringement argument isn't going anywhere. Both sides are talking about two different things. The 'downloading is theft' side is saying that money's being lost. The 'downloading is copyright infringement' side is saying that not all downloading is illegal. Frankly, you're both right. But I think both sides need to think a little bit more about what the other side is thinking. The 'theft' side thinks that the nitpickiness over the term is a wake justification for the bad evil things the other side is doing. The 'infringement' side thinks the theft side is making broad generalizations which sound an awful lot like the "MP3s == Communism" propoganda that was flying around. I think there's a common ground here, but it'd probably help if the term debate would finally die.
"If you steal music, via internet or at the store, you're still stealing. The choice you make, the chance you take, the price you pay. Its simple. These mom suck."
If you run a busines selling music, and you fix prices, and you refuse returns, and you treat the artists like shit, and you refuse to adopt new technologies that come along in favor media that you can over-price, you have no right to act surprised when your customers find their own way to satisfy their demand. These RIAA suck.
"Only when you can write notes and deface them. When they're not copy-protected, for sure. When you can lend them to your friends."
Wow, I can't believe the lists of demands. It's like a hostage negotiation, heh.
Several years ago, I had a PocketPC. I downloaded a couple of e-books and found the experience quite enjoyable. The display and form factor were nice. It was so nice that I could hold the unit in one hand instead of using both to force it to stay open. The scroll wheel made page turning nice and easy. The backlit display killed the problem I have with orienting to the light. (i.e. my head casting a shadow over the book...) I could even highlight sentences of the book and bookmark them. (I like to go look up terms I don't understand, particularly when I read books written in other countries.) I was really intrigued by the idea of having a library of books in that unit. No more storage area for books.
What held me back was that there wasn't much selection. Today, well I'm PocketPC-less, but I've done a little rooting around for ebooks I'd be interested. I found more than I found a few years ago, but I'm not impressed. Maybe it's because I'm too picky, who knows? In any event, I think it's pretty sad.
For all the complaints about DRM and all that other crap, I think the problem is simply supply. Although I'd be willing to bet that the supply problem would ease if more people had palm devices. I don't see that getting rectified any time soon unless wireless internet becomes ubiquitous. Even then, it's a bit of hard sell to anybody who hasn't sat down and read an e-Book. I thought the idea was silly until I found a free one that I was interested in reading. Today I read books thinking "Dammit, I wish I still had my Pocket PC."
Re:The REAL Bad News is...
on
VW Goes USB
·
· Score: 1
" I am suggesting that getting all wet and excited about a fucking USB port is rather pathetic in the context of the larger global energy problems we're facing."
Are you expecting a flood of people to read this article and go buy the car or something?
"Wow, imagine what the possibilities of combining this with interactive porn!!"
I was about to make a joke about a spanking game, but then I remembered something far more disturbing. There's an arcade game in Japan where you put on some sort of glove and your goal is to stick your finger into a.. um.. rather uncomfortable place on a woman. The goal? Do it without pissing her off.
So... Um... Think we'll see home brew apps for this system?
Slashdot Mirror
"... and I'd love to be able to carry a portable jammer in my car so I could *terminate* their unsafe conversations and help them to concentrate on the multi-ton metal object they're supposedly "in control" of..."
That's great until some other guy with a jammer parks in front of your house.
I don't care if cell phone use in cars is outlawed, but jamming is not the solution. It's a social problem, not a techniacl problem.
"Basically I want to find the breaker for the room, and after the breaker, run the power through the UPS and back out to the room. Is the UPS that I have sufficient to run a whole small office?"
Considering that you're married, are you really sure that you want to embark on a project that has the potential to make you a permenant laughing stock at the beauty salon?
"That's perfectly fits with yesterday's news about Mozilla foundation being more reactive to security fixes than M$."
Um, yeah, but it still majorly sucks that these vulnerabilities are still happening quite routiunely. Which, btw, fits perfectly with yesterday's news about Opera being released for free.
"The thing I find most worrying about this story is the implication that high-school students were expected to "take a dump" in a bathroom without private stalls."
I went to 3 different schools (i.e elementary, middle, and high...) in my life (all in the same district) and none of them had doors on the stalls. Are you saying (at least in the US) that this is uncommon?
"Personally, when words like "Freak" and "Darn" are used in place of their vulgar counterparts, I tend to laugh at the person using them. It just sounds wrong."
Heh. I read a Dilbert book (err I can't remember the title, but it had to do with things you should and shouldn't do... it had to do with etiquette, I think.) One strip had to do with swearing and how some people (typically older people) would go haywire if you used the wrong words.
I've seen this happen. I remember one day in high school, there was some stupid play scheduled. The play was going on during the 3rd period. For me, that meant I could stay in the computer class for 3 hours. Neat! So I didn't get the permission slip filled out. Well, I was wrong. They shuffled everybody who wasn't attending the play into study halls. Doh. I was a senior during the peek of my rebellious phase. I was going to do something daring, I was going to skip the study hall. So while everybody was herded to another room, I slipped away. I wandered into a different study hall where one of my friends was. We bs'd for about 20 minutes before I noticed the teacher was taking attendance. Oh... crap. Like a secret agent, I snuck out of the class and started making tracks to where I was supposed to go. I was one floor up from the study hall. If I were caught coming down the stairs, instant bust. So I cooked up a story to the tune of "I had to go to the bathroom. I went up a floor because that level had a bathroom with a door on the stall." Perfect excuse! By the time I came down the stairs, I was anxious. Very anxious. The teacher that saw me spotted me and said "where have you been?!" My anxiety caught up with me and all that came out was "I was taking a dump!"
The teacher's eyes lit up with anger. In retrospect, I should have expected this. But I honestly didn't see 'taking a dump' as being in the same league as 'shitted in a fucking private stall', but the way he reacted I might as well have said that. He was so mad, he actually ran across the hall and stopped a teacher that was passing by. "I asked this young man why he was late to class, and you know what he said?" The poor teacher disinterestedly shook his head. "He said he was..." he actually held up his hands to signify quotes... "taking a dump." The teacher who obviously wanted to continue to his destination had a blank look on his face. The study hall teacher then asked "Do you think that was appropriate?" He shook his head and wandered off. I was left to write a 4 page report on why the phrase "Taking a dump" is inappropriate.
By the third revision of my paper I was getting annoyed. He told me he didn't like it and that I should completely rewrite it. So I did. I filled up four pages about how the older generation of people couldn't cope with the cultural changes that had happened over the last couple of decades, so the younger generation had to tread lightly when speaking around them. I fully expected to end up explaining that paper to the vice principal, but instead the study hall teacher shook his head and threw it away. I honestly don't know if what I was saying got through to him or if he realized he was overreacting or if he was just plain bored with the conflict.
Needless to say, I find cartoons about people swearing so much that other characters catch fire pretty funny. I understand the concept of polite conversation, but it still baffles me how some people get so worked up over 'vulgar phrases'. I think it's a generational thing, but if somebody has a better idea I'm all ears.
Heh sorry dudes, didn't have anything real interesting to share about the topic at hand. I just remembered this little story after what the parent poster said about people looking silly by using softer words. I found myself using words like that during the rest of my senior year in high school.
"Microsoft (or a company working with Microsoft) releases a product astonishingly similar to the first companies product, right down to the information provided to Microsoft under NDA."
This point would be more interesting if the resulting packaging wasn't extremely straight forward and simple. Then again, I don't think the issue here is that the packaging is similar, but rather that the technique that was used to make it was shared with a competitor.
I have mixed feelings about this. If the 'proprietary technique' that was used was simple enough for a competitor to use it and provide a cheaper result, is there really any real cause other than the NDA violation to get all uppity? I mean, if Microsoft sued Google under similar circumstances, nobody would be siding with MS.
"No refund, no explanation, nothing. I'm migrating to Mozilla, I'm sick of opera (the company, not the broswer)."
You're right, Opera would be a much better company if they kept charging money for their browser. Heck, they should have raised the price! You would have gotten more bang out of your buck, then!!
"I am sure not even with the fanboys like you Opera will go anywhere. The truth is that Firefox is here to rule them all."
Given FireFox's blatant copying of Opera's features, this is not surprising.
"Outlook dominates the market because they give it away with Office."
That and it's extremely useful. Doesn't take long for the users to figure that out.
"Call me when you reverse engineer Quantum Leap."
I spotted Sam Beckett once. He had leapt into a homeless man in downtown Portland and was talking to Al all the way down the street.
" It's no longer just email, it's email and calendaring! See the difference? (No, I don't either.)"
Funny, a lot of people I work with see the difference. I wonder if general ignorance about the usefulness of Outlook is why it's been so hard to find an OSS alternative.
"Can't wait to see how many people will go blind with this contraption!"
If they use IR for the flash, nobody will go blind.
"And in response to your child post, no, it's NOT as simple as plastering a photographic texture to create "realistic" graphics."
Um, yeah it is. Sometimes you do a little fiddling in Photoshop if the source image wasn't perfectly suited to it. It's certainly a lot quicker than trying to conjure up something stylized and making it from scratch.
"Maybe I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen the mass market dislikes the complicated controller of the newest generation. This guy seems to have it all backwards."
Heh. I saw it from a different perspective. Right now, FPS's are the current fad in gaming. This controller is a pleasant step up from Sony and Microsoft's controllers. If anything, Nintendo's catering to the biggest market. Anybody who has played San Andreas knows how painfully limiting modern controllers are.
It's nice and all that they let you have little free samples and all. However, it is still very much an "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model.
There's a difference, at least in MS's eyes, between using 'free components' and commercial apps being carbon copied and released for free. I'm not really sure what I think about this. On the one hand, seems like a risky business to develop a product that somebody with a little coding experience can duplicate. On the other hand, it sure takes the fun out of making a garage app (shareware, etc) with the idea of making a few bucks. I'm undecided, but I'm not surprised MS would refer to it as a 'cancer'. I also don't think this illustrates hypocracy on MS's part. Then again, I'm full on karma.
"Strange, the submitter and the article writer share names."
So?
"IT IS NOT STEALING. When will you people get this through your thick skulls and stop believing the propaganda?"
Whoooah, slow down man. The 'stealing' argument is based on the idea that a music download means one less bit of music purchased. Whether stealing is the correct term or not isn't all that interesting. The claim is that money is lost from downloads. In those terms, the term 'theft' isn't all that unreasonable.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, the only real 'damage' that they've been able to reasonably prove is that the sale of singles has shot way down. (That was two or three years ago, I don't know if it's true today.) According to the RIAA, there were 2 billion songs being traded a month. With numbers like that, you'd expect to see a huge dip in their profits. Not even close. They did have a small dip during a stormy economic time. Blah blah blah.
Frankly, I'm not offended by use of the term 'stealing' when downloading music. I see where they're coming from. What annoys me is the assumed 1:1 ratio between downloaded music and sales lost. I'm also not thrilled with the automatic assumption that downloading of music is automatically some unethical move or that it was some attempt to save money. People went out and spent $400ish on iPods and related gear and where then accused of trying to get 'free music'. A new market was created and the RIAA refused to move into it. Even if they did manage to lose money on it, what'd they really lose money from? Downloading of music or a really bad business move?
What irks me the most about these accusations is my own downloading habits from years ago. (I'm a Rhapsody subscriber now, all my music is 'legit'. If anybody's curious about my experiences with that service, I'd be happy to talk about it.) There were two reasons I downloaded music. 1.) I downloaded music I already had on CD so that I had my collection at work and at home. 2.) I was trying to find new music. The second one is the hot button for me. According to the RIAA, I should go spend $15 to $20 on an ablum I've never heard before, and I cannot return it if I don't like it. Some stores have neat little kiosks where I can preview the music. That's nice and all, but I seriously doubt they want me loitering around long enough for me to make my decision. (Not to mention I've got OTHER things to do...) Funny what happened when I started doing this. I went and bought less music. Because I already had it? Nah. I rarely downloaded a whole album. I just found that there were several individual songs I wanted, but they weren't worth the cost of the whole CD. Yeah I saved money by downloading music. It helped me make wiser spending decisions. It's a pity they didn't sell music on a per-track basis like iTunes does now.
Okay, I've drifted off topic a little bit. Sorry about that. My point is that the theft vs. copyright infringement argument isn't going anywhere. Both sides are talking about two different things. The 'downloading is theft' side is saying that money's being lost. The 'downloading is copyright infringement' side is saying that not all downloading is illegal. Frankly, you're both right. But I think both sides need to think a little bit more about what the other side is thinking. The 'theft' side thinks that the nitpickiness over the term is a wake justification for the bad evil things the other side is doing. The 'infringement' side thinks the theft side is making broad generalizations which sound an awful lot like the "MP3s == Communism" propoganda that was flying around. I think there's a common ground here, but it'd probably help if the term debate would finally die.
"If you steal music, via internet or at the store, you're still stealing. The choice you make, the chance you take, the price you pay. Its simple. These mom suck."
If you run a busines selling music, and you fix prices, and you refuse returns, and you treat the artists like shit, and you refuse to adopt new technologies that come along in favor media that you can over-price, you have no right to act surprised when your customers find their own way to satisfy their demand. These RIAA suck.
"Funny when you think about it."
I had to look at it in a really shallow way to find the humor in it.
Thanks for the reply. Have a good weekend. :)
"Only when you can write notes and deface them. When they're not copy-protected, for sure. When you can lend them to your friends."
Wow, I can't believe the lists of demands. It's like a hostage negotiation, heh.
Several years ago, I had a PocketPC. I downloaded a couple of e-books and found the experience quite enjoyable. The display and form factor were nice. It was so nice that I could hold the unit in one hand instead of using both to force it to stay open. The scroll wheel made page turning nice and easy. The backlit display killed the problem I have with orienting to the light. (i.e. my head casting a shadow over the book...) I could even highlight sentences of the book and bookmark them. (I like to go look up terms I don't understand, particularly when I read books written in other countries.) I was really intrigued by the idea of having a library of books in that unit. No more storage area for books.
What held me back was that there wasn't much selection. Today, well I'm PocketPC-less, but I've done a little rooting around for ebooks I'd be interested. I found more than I found a few years ago, but I'm not impressed. Maybe it's because I'm too picky, who knows? In any event, I think it's pretty sad.
For all the complaints about DRM and all that other crap, I think the problem is simply supply. Although I'd be willing to bet that the supply problem would ease if more people had palm devices. I don't see that getting rectified any time soon unless wireless internet becomes ubiquitous. Even then, it's a bit of hard sell to anybody who hasn't sat down and read an e-Book. I thought the idea was silly until I found a free one that I was interested in reading. Today I read books thinking "Dammit, I wish I still had my Pocket PC."
" I am suggesting that getting all wet and excited about a fucking USB port is rather pathetic in the context of the larger global energy problems we're facing."
Are you expecting a flood of people to read this article and go buy the car or something?
Lighten up.
Heh. Off-topic, but 'enrico suave' was a nickname for a friend of mine in high school. It's a long shot, but I don't suppose you grew up in KS?
"Wow, imagine what the possibilities of combining this with interactive porn!!"
.. um.. rather uncomfortable place on a woman. The goal? Do it without pissing her off.
I was about to make a joke about a spanking game, but then I remembered something far more disturbing. There's an arcade game in Japan where you put on some sort of glove and your goal is to stick your finger into a
So... Um... Think we'll see home brew apps for this system?