clinton had the budget balanced and in a yearly surplus by the end of his two terms
That's a lie. In the 1990s, there was a huge surplus in social security, which politicians took out and replaced with an IOU, and used that to cover other programs. It was never truly balanced.
Clinton is the least worst. But lets not play shell games and kid ourselves.
As to the subject at hand, during WW2, the US government voided all patents dealing with radio in order to boost innovation in that area and it really did.
At a minimum cost to taxpayers, they could reform and simplify copyright and patent law for the people and to help small businesses.
But they won't. They'll probably have guns and butter instead.
Most people won't have Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. Those that do probably know what they are doing or are at work where they are constricted in what they can install anyway.
Microsoft doesn't make or warranty most (any?) computers out there unless you consider the Zune a computer (which you can).
This is analogous to Ford discovering you put different computer chips in the control systems to eke out a few more HP. Now, it could have been an underlying problem with the hardware to begin with, but with software controlling the hardware it's hard to argue that Nintendo is 100% in the wrong.
First of all, I don't read German, but "softwarehack" is only one line of that receipt and I doubt it has the same meaning in German and English.
The entire line is: "Ausschluss der Gewaehrleistung durch die Art des Defektes Modifizierung an der Internen Software vorgehnommen Softwarehack."
or in other words, the warranty is voided because of the attempt of a defective modification of the internal software ie a software hack.
And yes, softwarehack means the exact same thing. From looking at the cost, it seems they wanted to charge him the cost of a new wii or close to it (no idea what wiis cost in Europe but considering the American price...)
Tampering with the mail is a felony, and they take it very seriously, which makes the USPS one of the safest systems in the world. It is one of the things that America does extremely well and even the European Post Systems are poor in comparison (especially after Germany privatized parts of their system).
I never used Gamefly, but if it's like Netflix, the entire problem of these things is that both the original and return envelope clearly mark the contents. Something like delivery confirmation, which a small business owner can get for $0.18 a package using endicia (small volume discount rate, nothing like size of gamefly), could probably track down the problem areas in a short time (USPS del. conf. get scanned at hops). However, regulations are such that del. conf. can only be used on "parcels", a bubble-mailer counts - which for DVD movies probably raise the cost significantly for both packaging and processing (hence mailing cost).
Discreet, otherwise unmarked envelopes with several return destinations that don't use "Gamefly Return Center" or whatever in the addressee's name probably would be the best way to go, Netflix, IIRC, used Tyvek envelopes. Or put it in an AOL wrapper, no postal employee would steal those;) although that runs the risk of being trashed by the end user.
Makes me curious what the various XXX services see on stolen discs.
doesn't that just mean a computer can also feed the correct data in, defeating it?
Anyway, the little tests these days are stupid and annoying, and perhaps for some people, getting impossible to do. Perhaps instead of the test being administered at the point of registration, new accounts at places should be automatically monitored for type of activity.
For instance, if the first post at a forum has any links to blacklisted ad sites (could be EasyList USA, whatever), it's probably safe to just kick it out automatically. And things of that nature. Or just the old sign up with a credit card and charge onetime $0.41 trick (or whatever to just cover min fees) to keep bots out of the community's hair.
I'm sure other solutions will have the old How-To-Fix-Email-response "Yes, but your idea won't work because (Mark random amount of 100 checkboxes)"
Because Microsoft had been woken up with Windows 7. For a long time, Windows had a huge loophole that allowed competition - rampant security and stability holes while it's huge benefit was that most software ran on it. Exploiting this weekness allowed Apple to get back into the game.
We all joke about the BSOD, but tability, except for the odd driver, has been mostly a non-issue to the vast majority of users since XP. Security, otoh, seems to have been mostly fixed to the point of being good enough (hardly perfect) in Vista, especially if you don't run as admin all the time. In the days of XP, I had to reinstall my OS once a year just to keep it running at a tolerable rate, 2 years of Vista and the computer is still running fine without running antivirus or antispyware.
Still, this is behind a firewall and I'm not sure I would trust it out in the wireless world or on the road.
I'm glad Ubuntu is upping it's game. Coming out as it did in 2004 probably was probably close to the last point in time that a new linux distro could have been launched, aimed at joe user, that would have gained a significant following. Perhaps if came out in 1998, we'd be seeing Quickbooks for Linux on Walmart shelves by now. But that's making a lot of assumptions about the underlying packages at the time that no single distro could do anything about.
Speaking as a student at the University of Helsinki, nearly all textbooks I need are offered by one of the libraries, who keeps a number of copies of each textbook around so that students can take them out, do the course, and then return them at the end of the semester. Until I read this, I never imagined that university students in this country ever have a hard time getting access to textbooks and would need some kind of outside service like that.
I went to a community college for some outside classes one summer (foreign language, an extra math course, a purely self-indulgent history course since the Prof was interesting). As the name implies, Community Colleges tend to be the cheapest option, the most friendly to the not-so-rich, although they can be pretty good in quality depending on the affluence of the county they are in. They had a humongous library, must have cost millions, however, they never had the books for the courses - which could be some grand conspiracy or just due to the number of courses they offered. They told us that the professor/teacher had to donate them. On those professor's salaries (they got paid less than highschool teachers) that wasn't likely. Sometimes they had the book, but it was editions out of date - you could likely learn the same material from them but were out of luck if the professor was a stickler for work problems (as that was switched around). You also couldn't sign them out no matter what. The math book, sold by the Barnes & Noble run college store, cost $180 new or $150 used if you were lucky.
About the only relief College Students got was half.com and when Amazon.com's used book offerings came online earlier in the decade. That was win/win since college bookstores made it a point of pride to give you nearly nothing to "sell" the book back to them. The Pirate Bay has books sometimes, but often not what one needs.
I often wish for a netflix of books, a digital online library that one can subscribe to, "sign out" any books for a fee if necessary besides membership. I wonder, if the library has a physical copy, if that would be legal. Otherwise media mail is nice and cheap in this country. Google books is nice but often censored.
Czars is more of an expression created by the news media. No official office uses the term.
We "will find the right person for intellectual property czar," Biden said.
Now, I'll believe you that it isn't the formal language that the office uses, or press reports by the White House or the name of the position itself, they use other terms (Commissioner of....), but the mentality is disturbing none the less.
Under criminal code, some things you can't say: "Disparagement of
* the Federal President (Section 90).
* the State and its Symbols (Section 90a). Insult to Organs and Representatives of Foreign States (Section 103). Rewarding and Approving Crimes (Section 140).... Dissemination of Pornographic Writings (Section 184)."
Oh, and if you curse at a bureaucrat, those worthless sacks of shit of which there are way too many, that's "Beamten Beleidigung" and you can get fined 5000 Euro on their word. Germany has Freedom of Speech like Iran has freedom of religion. Some people will undoubtedly point to it's recent past for legitimacy of some of the rules, but I maintain it's from people worshipping the concept of the state and having a strong central government.
There were no "czars" in the Soviet Union, the last one was murdered at the start of the revolution.
Czar->Caesar->Kaiser aka Emperor
I find it amusing, that for a country that went through a Revolution to throw the King's shackles off of us colonists, that we appoint "Czars" now to conduct war on every little indiscretion of the people.
Being saying since the Pentium II days. This "always-be-upgrading-the-latest-spec" is fine for hardcore users, but for everybody else, "good enough" happened quite a few hardware generations ago. The sad part is that we're only now having this conversation.
Being "good enough" depends on your usage. If all you do is small spreadsheets, good enough may have happened in the 1980s. If all you do is word processing, also 1980s. Now, going into office suites, depending on your need and use like powerpoint, it could have been anywhere from the late 90s to mid-2000s.
But it's also based on expectations and expections are too often influenced from past experiences rather than having the imagination of what could be.
I program and I browse. Programming can always use a faster computer at compile time for C-type languages. 10 years ago, I would have said my computer back then would have always been good enough for browsing. Most content was static, it displayed the pages easily enough. You know what happened? Flash, Ajax, and the rest - watching videos, more dynamic pages, etcetera. What a internet "should be" has been redefined. Should I pretend this is the end of the road and no other advances in what we think as the internet will happen? Definitely not. For one, higher speed connections will keep transforming what we think our www experience should be. And a more powerful computer is necessary for that.
And videogames aren't even fooling us yet with their graphics. They got damned good, but they aren't out of uncanny valley yet. And we're not even beginning in 3D displays yet, still looking at these boring 2D planes - when will that happen, what is the killer app there?
How many undiscovered killer apps are there still? When will the first good AI come out? Or robots with real AI?
"Good enough" is not good enough. I can't even believe it's a subject worth pondering. It's not exciting and not a reason to be in the computer field. It's static and boring. The story of humanity is the story of constant progress. The only reason people are looking into it is that the MHZ wars have stagnated, and people haven't the best solutions yet how to harness multi-core, a type of despondent response to the seeming lack of progress, the gigantic leaps and bounds computers were making just 5-9 years earlier. Those are problems worth looking into, but I know computers now are definitely not good enough.
The interface alone is still entirely too dumb, for one.
I bet the wireless coverage doesn't work on a per unit basis, it's either a set fee for amazon, % commission based on online sales, or based on data transferred for all the units.
I don't think Amazon would enter into a deal where they would end up paying for units that are either dead or just thrown in the corner not being used.
Wrong. Parents and taxpayers sacrifice money, time and effort to pay for education; if students are too addicted to X to learn anything then it's money down the drain just like gambling.
People have a voluntary choice whether to gamble or not. Teenage students and school, not so much. Furthermore, they are not face with the bill as a consequence, simply a bad grade.
Everyone pays school taxes, either directly or indirectly via rent, so it's not even like they are saving anyone money by studying. In that instance, they are more like a national investment. Some investments pan out and some don't.
In that POV, the most logical thing to do would be to try strategies to maximize real payoff (not just pushing them out the door with a degree no matter what) which is structuring the system in the best fashion for them to learn something (of value).
Hey, how about maybe the poor school performance was due to the fact that school is boring ( it is pretty much just memorising facts and figures ) and the more bored the child is, the more likely he is going to do something interesting/exciting like, I don't know, gaming?
We could go farther and say that a good number of kids just won't go anywhere academically. That's not an indictment, some kids work well with their hands, some are destined for prison, and some are entrepreneurs who break the rules of the system. And many types in between.
But I agree with you on the facts or figures. From what I remember, school drilled a few things repeatedly (certain English and History concepts that I thought were trivially easy to remember), didn't really move anywhere on math the first 8 years, and so on and so farth.
History didn't really interest me until the history channel. And I think more subjects should have some type Rosetta Stone software, if only that you could break from the teacher's pace and go your own - faster or slower as the material and your mind dictates, which is probably 1/2 the tediousness and anxiety of class.
It would be nice to marry video games and school in a more ambitious way than it was done in the past, typically to teach one limited aspect of one subject, and low on the totempole at that (for little kids) or something like Brain Games for Nintendo DS which is general knowledge or just your memory. There have been attempts at the past to present some material in anime/cartoon form but it often turns out lamer than the text book, I would welcome the interaction and experimenting of a true game.
make a crawler. Have it go through all the usual channels (digg/slashdot/all_the_major_aggregated_news sites/etc) comparing text of recent stories to what the linked-to websites list. Have it send DMCA notices automatically based on Who is information.
Then offer them embedded links, infact offer it on the story page itself just like youtube offers embedded lins. It will bring up the text/video with the added feature of automatically providing links to updates on the story and stuff of that nature without the blogger doing anymore work. Ads still be served by the originating news source. Both sides win.
Slashdot Mirror
The Germans were not insurgents. They also weren't in Iraq, but mainly Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_Campaign
Also, did they have Hummers back then? Or any of that technology? It seems to be much more work than its worth.
That's a lie. In the 1990s, there was a huge surplus in social security, which politicians took out and replaced with an IOU, and used that to cover other programs. It was never truly balanced.
Clinton is the least worst. But lets not play shell games and kid ourselves.
As to the subject at hand, during WW2, the US government voided all patents dealing with radio in order to boost innovation in that area and it really did.
At a minimum cost to taxpayers, they could reform and simplify copyright and patent law for the people and to help small businesses.
But they won't. They'll probably have guns and butter instead.
Most people won't have Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. Those that do probably know what they are doing or are at work where they are constricted in what they can install anyway.
We heard you like BSODing, so we put Windows in your Windows so you can crash while you crash.
Microsoft doesn't make or warranty most (any?) computers out there unless you consider the Zune a computer (which you can).
This is analogous to Ford discovering you put different computer chips in the control systems to eke out a few more HP. Now, it could have been an underlying problem with the hardware to begin with, but with software controlling the hardware it's hard to argue that Nintendo is 100% in the wrong.
The entire line is:
"Ausschluss der Gewaehrleistung durch die Art des Defektes Modifizierung an der Internen Software vorgehnommen Softwarehack."
or in other words, the warranty is voided because of the attempt of a defective modification of the internal software ie a software hack.
And yes, softwarehack means the exact same thing. From looking at the cost, it seems they wanted to charge him the cost of a new wii or close to it (no idea what wiis cost in Europe but considering the American price...)
Tampering with the mail is a felony, and they take it very seriously, which makes the USPS one of the safest systems in the world. It is one of the things that America does extremely well and even the European Post Systems are poor in comparison (especially after Germany privatized parts of their system).
I never used Gamefly, but if it's like Netflix, the entire problem of these things is that both the original and return envelope clearly mark the contents. Something like delivery confirmation, which a small business owner can get for $0.18 a package using endicia (small volume discount rate, nothing like size of gamefly), could probably track down the problem areas in a short time (USPS del. conf. get scanned at hops). However, regulations are such that del. conf. can only be used on "parcels", a bubble-mailer counts - which for DVD movies probably raise the cost significantly for both packaging and processing (hence mailing cost).
Discreet, otherwise unmarked envelopes with several return destinations that don't use "Gamefly Return Center" or whatever in the addressee's name probably would be the best way to go, Netflix, IIRC, used Tyvek envelopes. Or put it in an AOL wrapper, no postal employee would steal those ;) although that runs the risk of being trashed by the end user.
Makes me curious what the various XXX services see on stolen discs.
doesn't that just mean a computer can also feed the correct data in, defeating it?
Anyway, the little tests these days are stupid and annoying, and perhaps for some people, getting impossible to do. Perhaps instead of the test being administered at the point of registration, new accounts at places should be automatically monitored for type of activity.
For instance, if the first post at a forum has any links to blacklisted ad sites (could be EasyList USA, whatever), it's probably safe to just kick it out automatically. And things of that nature. Or just the old sign up with a credit card and charge onetime $0.41 trick (or whatever to just cover min fees) to keep bots out of the community's hair.
I'm sure other solutions will have the old How-To-Fix-Email-response "Yes, but your idea won't work because (Mark random amount of 100 checkboxes)"
Because Microsoft had been woken up with Windows 7. For a long time, Windows had a huge loophole that allowed competition - rampant security and stability holes while it's huge benefit was that most software ran on it. Exploiting this weekness allowed Apple to get back into the game.
We all joke about the BSOD, but tability, except for the odd driver, has been mostly a non-issue to the vast majority of users since XP. Security, otoh, seems to have been mostly fixed to the point of being good enough (hardly perfect) in Vista, especially if you don't run as admin all the time. In the days of XP, I had to reinstall my OS once a year just to keep it running at a tolerable rate, 2 years of Vista and the computer is still running fine without running antivirus or antispyware.
Still, this is behind a firewall and I'm not sure I would trust it out in the wireless world or on the road.
I'm glad Ubuntu is upping it's game. Coming out as it did in 2004 probably was probably close to the last point in time that a new linux distro could have been launched, aimed at joe user, that would have gained a significant following. Perhaps if came out in 1998, we'd be seeing Quickbooks for Linux on Walmart shelves by now. But that's making a lot of assumptions about the underlying packages at the time that no single distro could do anything about.
also get secure Blackberries?
(I assume his immediate family will, as well as WH coworkers, but friends and so on?)
I went to a community college for some outside classes one summer (foreign language, an extra math course, a purely self-indulgent history course since the Prof was interesting). As the name implies, Community Colleges tend to be the cheapest option, the most friendly to the not-so-rich, although they can be pretty good in quality depending on the affluence of the county they are in. They had a humongous library, must have cost millions, however, they never had the books for the courses - which could be some grand conspiracy or just due to the number of courses they offered. They told us that the professor/teacher had to donate them. On those professor's salaries (they got paid less than highschool teachers) that wasn't likely. Sometimes they had the book, but it was editions out of date - you could likely learn the same material from them but were out of luck if the professor was a stickler for work problems (as that was switched around). You also couldn't sign them out no matter what. The math book, sold by the Barnes & Noble run college store, cost $180 new or $150 used if you were lucky.
About the only relief College Students got was half.com and when Amazon.com's used book offerings came online earlier in the decade. That was win/win since college bookstores made it a point of pride to give you nearly nothing to "sell" the book back to them. The Pirate Bay has books sometimes, but often not what one needs.
I often wish for a netflix of books, a digital online library that one can subscribe to, "sign out" any books for a fee if necessary besides membership. I wonder, if the library has a physical copy, if that would be legal. Otherwise media mail is nice and cheap in this country. Google books is nice but often censored.
I would encourage people to contribute here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
We "will find the right person for intellectual property czar," Biden said.
Now, I'll believe you that it isn't the formal language that the office uses, or press reports by the White House or the name of the position itself, they use other terms (Commissioner of ....), but the mentality is disturbing none the less.
Germany's "Meinungsfreiheit":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Germany
Under criminal code, some things you can't say: ...
"Disparagement of
* the Federal President (Section 90).
* the State and its Symbols (Section 90a).
Insult to Organs and Representatives of Foreign States (Section 103).
Rewarding and Approving Crimes (Section 140).
Dissemination of Pornographic Writings (Section 184)."
There are others, but Gerhard Shroder, former Chancellor, actually got a court order banning the media from mentioning his hair:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Freedom_of_the_press
Oh, and if you curse at a bureaucrat, those worthless sacks of shit of which there are way too many, that's "Beamten Beleidigung" and you can get fined 5000 Euro on their word. Germany has Freedom of Speech like Iran has freedom of religion. Some people will undoubtedly point to it's recent past for legitimacy of some of the rules, but I maintain it's from people worshipping the concept of the state and having a strong central government.
Governments always want to subdue and control. They see lack of control as the problem. Citing childporn/hatespeech/_______ is but a means to an end.
Czar->Caesar->Kaiser aka Emperor
I find it amusing, that for a country that went through a Revolution to throw the King's shackles off of us colonists, that we appoint "Czars" now to conduct war on every little indiscretion of the people.
Duh! That's because it's eaten by the gold carts!
(If gas keeps going up again, expect a barn raising on the 9th hole soon.)
Being "good enough" depends on your usage. If all you do is small spreadsheets, good enough may have happened in the 1980s. If all you do is word processing, also 1980s. Now, going into office suites, depending on your need and use like powerpoint, it could have been anywhere from the late 90s to mid-2000s.
But it's also based on expectations and expections are too often influenced from past experiences rather than having the imagination of what could be.
I program and I browse. Programming can always use a faster computer at compile time for C-type languages. 10 years ago, I would have said my computer back then would have always been good enough for browsing. Most content was static, it displayed the pages easily enough. You know what happened? Flash, Ajax, and the rest - watching videos, more dynamic pages, etcetera. What a internet "should be" has been redefined. Should I pretend this is the end of the road and no other advances in what we think as the internet will happen? Definitely not. For one, higher speed connections will keep transforming what we think our www experience should be. And a more powerful computer is necessary for that.
And videogames aren't even fooling us yet with their graphics. They got damned good, but they aren't out of uncanny valley yet. And we're not even beginning in 3D displays yet, still looking at these boring 2D planes - when will that happen, what is the killer app there?
How many undiscovered killer apps are there still? When will the first good AI come out? Or robots with real AI?
"Good enough" is not good enough. I can't even believe it's a subject worth pondering. It's not exciting and not a reason to be in the computer field. It's static and boring. The story of humanity is the story of constant progress. The only reason people are looking into it is that the MHZ wars have stagnated, and people haven't the best solutions yet how to harness multi-core, a type of despondent response to the seeming lack of progress, the gigantic leaps and bounds computers were making just 5-9 years earlier. Those are problems worth looking into, but I know computers now are definitely not good enough.
The interface alone is still entirely too dumb, for one.
I bet the wireless coverage doesn't work on a per unit basis, it's either a set fee for amazon, % commission based on online sales, or based on data transferred for all the units.
I don't think Amazon would enter into a deal where they would end up paying for units that are either dead or just thrown in the corner not being used.
People have a voluntary choice whether to gamble or not. Teenage students and school, not so much. Furthermore, they are not face with the bill as a consequence, simply a bad grade.
Everyone pays school taxes, either directly or indirectly via rent, so it's not even like they are saving anyone money by studying. In that instance, they are more like a national investment. Some investments pan out and some don't.
In that POV, the most logical thing to do would be to try strategies to maximize real payoff (not just pushing them out the door with a degree no matter what) which is structuring the system in the best fashion for them to learn something (of value).
We could go farther and say that a good number of kids just won't go anywhere academically. That's not an indictment, some kids work well with their hands, some are destined for prison, and some are entrepreneurs who break the rules of the system. And many types in between.
But I agree with you on the facts or figures. From what I remember, school drilled a few things repeatedly (certain English and History concepts that I thought were trivially easy to remember), didn't really move anywhere on math the first 8 years, and so on and so farth.
History didn't really interest me until the history channel. And I think more subjects should have some type Rosetta Stone software, if only that you could break from the teacher's pace and go your own - faster or slower as the material and your mind dictates, which is probably 1/2 the tediousness and anxiety of class.
It would be nice to marry video games and school in a more ambitious way than it was done in the past, typically to teach one limited aspect of one subject, and low on the totempole at that (for little kids) or something like Brain Games for Nintendo DS which is general knowledge or just your memory. There have been attempts at the past to present some material in anime/cartoon form but it often turns out lamer than the text book, I would welcome the interaction and experimenting of a true game.
make a crawler. Have it go through all the usual channels (digg/slashdot/all_the_major_aggregated_news sites/etc) comparing text of recent stories to what the linked-to websites list. Have it send DMCA notices automatically based on Who is information.
Then offer them embedded links, infact offer it on the story page itself just like youtube offers embedded lins. It will bring up the text/video with the added feature of automatically providing links to updates on the story and stuff of that nature without the blogger doing anymore work. Ads still be served by the originating news source. Both sides win.
Or is this unimplementable?
Yup, can't see any potential for abuse there.
How about just 20 years? I can't see any reason why it should depend at all on death or not.
Strangely, those proctections only applied to nobles.
Mod +1 Inciteful.