I was reading the article with interest, and even went over to look at the n800, but aside from webcam chats, I can't see one thing it does that my PPC-6700 Smartphone will not do.
Most smartphones already have these capabilities, with the addition benefit that you don't need a wi-fi signal to get on the Internet.
Most major cities are covered my CDMA data.
Seems like a huge Smartphone... without the phone.
Um, because they are getting paid YOUR TAX DOLLARS to open the letter?
Actually they aren't. Nobody working for the government gets paid with "YOUR TAX DOLLARS".
They get paid with Federal Reserve Notes well before you remit any of your earnings. And they will get paid whether you remit anything or not. Because there is a printing press that will give it to them regardless.
Your tax Reserve Notes go to the Federal Reserve to prevent devaluation of the currency. And since the "money" is created out of thin air, that's really the only reason you pay taxes.
The more dollars the general population has, the less a dollar is worth. So taxation serves to remove as many dollars out of circulation as possible, thus supporting the fiat currency.
When you pay FEDERAL taxes, you are not directly paying for any employees or programs... as the money is simply printed and given to the Federal Government on demand, to distribute to whomever they want. So why, if money is printed on demand, does the Federal Reserve need YOUR money? They can create as much as they want. They don't need yours.
The reason is value. The more money YOU have, the less *value* your neighbor's money has and the government's money has.
Federal taxation doesn't pay for anything, it simply removes monetary supply from the hands of the populace. Less supply = more demand = curtailed inflation.
In short, your are not paying for anything with taxes. You are just supporting the perceived value of paper and ink that has no intrinsic value in and of itself.
The thing I don't get is how many dedicated host providers offer dual-core servers with RAID Arrays and 2Gb+ of RAM, and then say "1000GB Bandwidth Included".
If someone was only going to use 1000Gigs, then why would they need that type of machine?
I currently do 500GB+/month on a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512Mb RAM and a regular IDE drive. And it has worked well for the past two years, but I have started having some annoying outages and am shopping around for other possibilities.
Also, reading the TOS on those things, you can say "shit" or "fuck" on your own box, or you can't link to sites that contain nudity? WTF?
If I want to link to a shit of Britney's twat on my blog, should I not be able to? Sure, I know it's in poor taste, but this is from 1 & 1's TOS:
You agree and warrant that all data, visual materials, advertising and other matter you store on or allow to be transmitted by 1&1's Equipment shall not violate any Laws concerning obscenity and shall not contain or link to any nudity, pornography, or depictions of bestiality, incest, rape, sexual assault, actual physical violence, torture or disfigurement, or other content deemed objectionable by 1&1, in its sole discretion.
IN IT'S SOLE DISCRETION??!!
Fuck!
Seems like I could make a cottage industry out of charging setup fees, then kicking people off because in my "sole discretion" the content they upload is objectionable. I could do this with only one or two servers and make $200/day. Sweet.
It's really hard looking for a provider, because once you dig into those terms and conditions, they pretty much tell you to go shit in your hat and that you have zero rights or recourse, and it's hard to plunk down a $100 setup fee when people are telling you that.
I guess the only true freedom is getting your own box and sticking it on an expensive high-speed connection, but then again, your upstream provider could drop you.
When you think about it, there really isn't as much freedom on the Internet as people think there is. You can only host what your provider agrees with.
There are people that live just south of the border with Canada that would disagree with you.
So everybody needs to go through this dance twice a year for the one percent of the people that live on the border with Canada?
You would think they would have adapted by now, much like the people that live in Alaska and similarly situated areas.
And even if the 'official' sunrise is before 9am in the winter, if you have hills, trees or buildings to the south of you it will be a while before you see the sun in December and January.
Yeah, and people who work the night shift work in the fucking dark. It's bright enough at 9am just about any day of the year in the overwhelming majority of the country. Hell, I don't think I have even been in complete darkness at 8am. And even if I was... who cares?
We have streetlights. I have headlights. I have light bulbs in my home. Face it, the sun ain't going to be shining 24 hours a day no matter what we do. It's an imperfect planet. Modern society (hell, even primitive society) has leaned to adapt quite nicely to the fact that the sun rises and sets.
I just... don't... see... what bumping the clocks off for 4 months out of the year accomplishes.
I'm not even sure if these supposedly helpless people with poor night vision on the Canadian border support the damn thing.
If Daylight Savings time is such a great thing, then put us on Daylight Savings Time and be done with it.
"Standard Time"... a time that we are only on 33% of the year is a completely asinine concept.
How can something be "standard" when the exception to the "standard" is in effect twice as long?
I had the Verizon Wireless $60 broadband plan and recently terminated it one the contract expired. I had it for 2 years, and it generally worked well, although I only used it one to five days per month.
60 bucks was just too much to justify. Especially given the proliferation of wi-fi in major airports.
When I canceled it, the rep looked at the last months usage and said "Wow, it shows here that you used 150 Megabytes last month. I have never seen that much usage before". She even noted the exact day of the highest usage.
All I really did was download OpenOffice (60MB) one time, and send a few multimedia emails while on the road. (the day of highest usage).
I also watched a few YouTube videos while sitting in the airport waiting for my flight.
I was shocked that they were shocked that I used over 100MB in a single month. And could tell me the exact day that I downloaded Open Office.
But I can confirm that they really do have a day-by-day breakdown of data usage right on the screen of first level customer service. And they will actually scrutinize and question you on it when you call.
I almost felt like I was being scolded, and when I canceled the card, she sounded pleased.
Because we don't want to experience a 10am sunrise during the winter months.
I've never seen a 9am sunrise in the lower 48 states United States regardless of what time shift we were on.
As it is, Daylight Standard time is now only about 4 months out of the year. Or about 1/3rd of the year. The argument could legitimately be made that it is no longer "standard" at all.
As the daylight shift is gradual, it is ridiculous to think that people would not be able to adjust during those 4 months arguably only two of said months (the peak being late December) would pose the most "morning darkness hardship". That's what streetlights and headlights are for. To mitigate the two months of one hour morning slight inconvenience which may or may not even exist.
It seems asinine.
If Daylight Savings Time is preferable for 66% of the year, then stick us on it, and end the ridiculous 4 month "Winter Bastardized Time" which is no longer "standard", and which appears to server no real purpose whatsoever.
I forgot, you really can't argue with a relativist.
What is your seeming obsession with labels? Perhaps someone who disagrees with you is simply a sane and rational person... who disagrees with you? Have you ever entertained that possibility?
I respect opinions as long as their qualified and justified (meaning based in objective fact). Saying that being a journalist implies an interest in concealing truth doesn't seem to be objectively provable.
At one point I had those cherished press credentials that you keep mentioning. I wrote for mainstream outlets who were all corporations, and as thus were run as corporations. I am well aware at how for-profit "news" papers are edited and the advertising and quid-pro-quo policies. The "news" papers I wrote for publically endorsed presidential candidates, and the "news" we uncoovered that never made it to print may or may not suprise you.
Really, it is not that much of a paranoid stretch to realize that a publicaly traded for-profit corporation might edit things to suit the agenda of the corporation. McDonald's, Intel, etc issues press releases all the time... but few of them are for reasons that will harm the interests of their company or it's sponsors, affiliates, or associates. It was widely known that you could pay certain NY tabloids to cover you favorably. There was actually a story about this a couple of month ago.
You think I am paranoid, I think you are naive. But, does it really matter?
I'm sure it happens from time to time (more often than acceptable, even), but I don't think it is the de facto truth.
Okay, then. If that is your position, then so be it. If that were not the majority opinion, mainstream news outlets would hemorrhage cash, so I would say that you are squarely in the mainstream and are a necessary component to maintaining the status-quo.
It seems like a rather paranoiac statement to me, hence the tin foil hat comment. I don't judge all opinions as equal, and thus I can judge it as such. If you have some proof for it, please let me know.
And receive what?
Seriously, what would I get for providing you with example after example after example of spiked stories and overt bias? And isn't that all subjective?
Why don't you prove that all of the stories are accurate, objective, and complete.
You can't. It's a bogus request, although there really is quite a bit of evidence out there supporting the theory of bias.
The Lewinsky thing was initially set to be spiked by Newsweek.
Do you really think that was a lone and isolated incident?
We're obviously never going to agree on anything, but I might as well point out where your objectively wrong:
I read it twice, and didn't find one place where you pointed out that I was objectively wrong. Subjectively perhaps (that being your opinion), but nothing even close to objectively.
We just have to agree to disagree.
If the mainstream media suits your needs, and you think everyone without mainstream media credentials are useless, then so be it.
I disagree.
Trust who you want. Label those with contrary opinions as "tin foil hat wearers" (Someday the "tin-foil hat" cliche' REALLY needs to be added to Godwin's Law).
But the fact of the matter is that I can recognize both John Travolta and Walter Cronkite as members of the media, and not some idiot on YouTube or some 13 year old posting on LiveJournal.
You can personally recognize whatever you want.
Some people believe what is written in the National Enquirer, some don't.
Who/what to believe is a decision that you make for yourself. It is not a decision that you would want others to make for you. No?
Yes, they are participating in what could informally be called "media", as in expression, but that are not participating in the more technical arena of professional, or organized media. It comes down to who has higher acceptance by knowledgeable experts or insiders.
Do you think knowledgeable experts or insiders ever want you to know the full story?
Acceptance by either of this groups often requires a quid-pro-quo that you will keep the lid on certain things, or at the very least, water them down.
Think of the Mythbusters, they are arguably doing science (experimentation, control groups, hypotheses, etc...), but can someone call them scientists with a straight face?
If they so wish... sure. People who run around saying "Men think about sex every 8 seconds" are called scientists. There is so much junk "science" our there, that Mythbusters may well be toward the top of the profession.
This does allow some bloggers media worthiness
Purely subjective.
but only by acceptance of the larger body of journalists, which is why Drudge and Huffington are generally accepted on par with more mainstream journalists, and show up often on news broadcasts, while Samantha the thirteen year old emo MySpacer isn't allowed anywhere, or considered anything. Just writing doesn't make you anything, its the content, professionalism, and recognition that gives the the title.
And the value of said information is judged by each individual. The value should not be judged by any particular entity, and passed down to the population as a whole.
And if Samantha the thirteen year old sees them putting rat poison in the school cafeteria milk, while the local rag doesn't, I'll be on her blog reading about it.
Nobody has a monopoly on information.
Look at me, I'm a random asshat posting to Slashdot, which is a public medium, can I get my journalist credentials now?
There are really no such thing as "journalist credentials". Only invitations to specific events.
If you kiss enough ass and spin things the right way, then you probably could get an invite.
>that a "real" journalists is simply a shill. A mouthpiece for someone else.
If that's all they do then they're a pretty shabby journalist.
If that's all they do then they are an EMPLOYED journalist.
You cannot be a professional journalist AND have an opinion (unless said opinion is that of your employer).
Is this really how you want to get all of your news?
I'll trust a "blogger" any day over a corporate mouthpiece.
And yes, many of the organizations that the "professional journalists" work for are publicly traded corporations, who's only legal duty is make a best effort to return value to shareholders... no different from McDonald's or Nike.
These are the "real" and "professional" journalists that disseminate information to us.
Bloggers aren't real members of the media that's why.
There is not such thing as "real members of THE media".
"The media" is a concept and is subjective in definition.
Everyone is a member of the media. Every time someone writes something or opens their mouth, information, useless or otherwise is being transmitted.
I think what you are referring to is "The mainstream media", which is only marginally useful and vastly overrated, IMHO.
I worked for a major newspaper at one point in my life, and you would be shocked at the stories that don't make it past the editors desk in favor of some fluff piece or some advertisement masquerading as press release. "Journalists" have their have their hands held by self-important opinion makers, and mainstream media outlets are actually giant blogs of the editor/owner. You can work for one of those people, or start your own. It doesn't make you any more or less a "journalist".
There is also intense bias in every major news outlet. Most newspapers actually endorse candidates. This negates them as news sources, IMHO, and relegates them to giant printed blogs.
Everyone is a journalist, everyone is the media. Some may suit you better than others, but "the real media" is all a product of your opinion... as it doesn't tangibly exist.
The truth is, if your not doing something illegal, you aren't very interesting to the police or the government.
I wish I could find the article, but the gist of it was that the average American breaks 7 laws per day. Be it speeding, jaywalking, littering, whatever.
The US has more laws than any nation on earth. It puts a larger percentage of it's population in cages than any other nation... by far. And with the vague wording of many of the laws, just about any action one takes could technically be deemed illegal, or at least suspicious.
Yes, you would first have to make someone's shit list to get this level of scrutiny, but to say "I never do anything illegal" is probably not an accurate statement.
Gone are the days that people used 99% of their time to work on content. Now in some cases it's 50% content, and 50% kissing Google's ass in some SEO-optimizing obsessive compulsive way to get on the main page.
And it's just one search engine. A search engine with a nearly $100 Billion market capitalization. Who know has a "terms of service" that makes people alter their content to please Google. And people find this sane.
People's 'net worth are now being determined by Google, and people are worried about being "caught" by Google or displeasing Google.
What happened?
10 years ago this would have been seen as an aberration, and people would have thumbed their nose at it. I remember when Google was a cluster of free OS servers that was the alternative to the omni-present Yahoo, and everyone was refreshed by the alternative.
Now look at us. Clamoring to climb to the top of some site page by tweaking our websites in any number of unnatural ways... and in my opinion, content has suffered because of it. The best content does not always get your site listed the highest, the most "optimized" site does.
And over the years, I have found the searches less and less and less relevant. I know sites that are the authority on their subject that appear on the 10th page because they concentrate only on content instead of wringing their hands over what Google's bot thinks of them.
It's a shame that we have gotten to this point.
I am aware that it sounds like blasphemy, but Google is now probably my 3rd or 4th engine, well behind *gasp* Microsoft's Live Search which seems to crawl much more frequently and update databases much more often.
Google only has as much power as we give it.
I think we have given it far too much.
I think it is negatively impacting content.
This is only my opinion, and I will get off my soapbox now.
I am off to Search Engine Optimize a site of questionable content... time that could be much better spent by making better content.
Why do governments tax anything in the first place? It's because public services cost money, and that's a convenient way to of collecting said money (and because they are usually the ones that have all the guns).
Not entirely true. The FEDERAL government taxes solely to control inflation. The more money that is in your hands, the less the value of the currency as a whole. Which is not great for government spending.
The government prints it's own money. The currency is fiat. The Federal government does not "pay for anything" with your tax money, they simply give it back to the Treasury to be re-issued at a later time as a cause of monetary policy.
The government by it's very nature cannot run out of money since the Fed will always print as much as it needs.
The Federal government taxes you to take as much money away from you as possible. The more money they can take from you, by whatever means, the stronger the value of the dollar will be.
It is a common misconception that checks the the IRS "pays for stuff". It doesn't.
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
While this is true, it doesn't completely explain things.
Few (if any) home users in NYC, Boston, DC, Chicago, or San Francisco have 25Mbps. These places are easily as dense as an average European/Asian community.
Also, when cable TV first came out, the more rural areas got it far more quickly than we did, and they always had phone service. The infrastructure is there, or can be put pretty much anywhere, we just don't make 5Mbps+ a priority.
Also when speaking of density, you have to realize that the overwhelming majority of the US is largely unpopulated. You can fly from the Mexican Border to the Canadian Border in the West, and save for Las Vegas, you won't see a single house. Alaska's (our largest state) has a land area is something like.001% populated. We have places like North Dakota and Wyoming. Japan and Europe don't have similar wide-open expanses to water-down their overall density numbers, and thus a direct density comparison is extremely difficult.
The PSP is a brilliant piece of hardware, but 99% of the games suck, im not stupid enough to buy my movies over again and its too freakin big for an mp3 player, so most of the time it sits on the desk waiting for some game to come out that I might actually enjoy
I feel you, but have to slightly disagree.
Screw UMD (I would never buy a movie on that format either). I take movies and music videos with me all the time on the Memory Stick. I even surf the net on wi-fi on the thing. It's big, but with the hard case it fits into my back pocket or shirt pocket. If it was smaller, it wouldn't be very good for games (and some of the games are awesome like Hot Shots Golf, Ridge Racer, and 2K6 Baseball.. which plays so close to it's Xbox counterpart that I am stunned).
Yes, there are also some games that look like they were ported from an Atari 2600 too, but it's got a decent amount of power to exploit.
Buy movies over again? Why on earth would you do that. Rip them and use 3GP Converter to stick them right on there. 600Mb will get me a good quality movie on memory stick, and still leaves me lots of room for MP3's and game data. Or if you *cough* download from P2P (which I never do!), you can burn transfer those sucker right over and watch them on the go.
It's a near-Dreamcast-quality game player, a move/video player, a *damn good* audio player (I think it sounds easily as good as an iPod with the right headphones), and an imprompto web browser if you just happen to hit a hotspot (I like to play Poker with other people over the Internet on my wireless network while I am relaxing on the counch in front of the TV). And the battery life is surprisingly good.
If you get the right case, tools, software, and accessories, you might just end up using it more.
The main problem I see is that my cellphone can do all of the above except play the games. I think that is why there are some adoption problems. It's really competing with smartphones more than anything.
The republican who won the election because the democrat didn't get votes which ended up going to a third party candidate is just going to laugh all the way into the oval office.
There is only one effective way to "throw your vote away", and that is voting for one of the two mainstream parties.
Seriously, why bother?
So they differ on abortion and.... uh, well that's about all they differ on. Democrats and Repulicans both authorized military action in Iraq. The Democrats want to raise taxes by 2% and the Republicans want to lower them by 2%. Big fucking deal.
Voting Democrat or Repubican is alot like masturbating. It feels good while you are pulling the lever, but one you are done life goes on as usual and nothing changes.
If you like things the way they are, then knock yourself out. If you want any kind of real change, a vote for any party other than a third is a complete waste.
Just stay home and masturbate in November. I know I will.
I always laugh when people don't realize that the phrase "this call may be recorded" isn't just notifying YOU that it MIGHT be recorded (which it is), but that the same phrase also grants you permission to do the same. It's quite a genius little phrase, actually. Two birds and all that.
Indeed. But we both know it's just a matter of time before they change the language to "We, and only we may record this call for quality assurance"
Then again, in most states you could still record it even with that language, because in most states the law only states that both parties have to "know that the call is being recorded". It's legal to record if the party you are speaking to knows that their call is not being recorded, which would clearly be the case. Basically, one-party-only recordings would not hold up under wiretap laws, and likely any recording made under any circumstances would be legally admissable since the expectation of privacy of both parties ceased to exist once ANY notice of the call being recorded by ANYONE was given to both parties.
At least until a lobbying group legislation to the contrary. And I promise you that they eventually will.
Our corporations will not survive the constant embarassment of more and more people recording their customers service calls, which I know engage in every time I call a company with a "quality assurance" disclaimer.
A speaker phone, a digital voice recorder, and a 120GB hard drive will let me archive 100 years worth of calls.
Because the BBB is a trade association, they really don't have any power over anyone but their members. The collection of complaint stats on non-members is helpful, though, to people who check beforehand, and to find patterns indicating scamsters (who'd get handed off to the state AG or the FTC.
Again, maybe, maybe not.
I know of some local business around here who have grown rather notorious with their shoddy business practices and aven outright fraud. As a matter of fact, a local TV station that was tipped off to fraud bya local mechanic did one of those "undercover" investigations and totally outed this place.
I checked their BBB report, and it was spotless.
I have found BBB ratings to be of little to no use. The process is not transparent in the least, and they can and do put whatever they want out there. I'm pretty sure that you can get a whatever "rating" you want if you grease the right wheels.
They can and will revoke a member's membership if complaints don't get resolved (note that this doesn't mean "resolved in the customer's favor", though). That's the only leverage the BBB has over members.
The BBB is funded by members. So kicking them out is a conflict of interest. Yes, most of the complaints get "resolved", but as you noted, that means little. For the most part, all they have to do is tell the BBB "We tried our best", without anything to back it up, and that is usually that is all that is required to get the complaint "resolved". Don't ask me how I know.
You can probably see why a system like this is fairly useless to the consumer.
They're non-profit, and there are a lot of members, most of whom pay the same or similar amounts for their membership. Therefore, the BBB doesn't need to bend over backwards for any particular member.
First of all, non-profit doesn't mean that the BBB doesn't get paid. Everyone who works at the BBB gets paid whatever salary they decide to pay their employees. The fact that they don't pursue excess money outside of their operating expenses and salaries doesn't mean much.
By that benchmark, I am a non-profit.
If they alienate members, the lose money to pay salaries, raises, office expenses, fringe beneits, and rent. Make no mistake about it, the BBB *does* bend over backward for it's member. As a matter of fact, that is the sole reason that they exist. The BBB still makes a large sum of money, and they attempt to help their members make more money. And if you look at many local BBB sites now, they have now branched out into advertising their "member" companies. The BBB is a marketing group disguised as a "rating" system.
You can complain to them I suppose, but you'll likely find the company you are complaining about VERY unscared about a BBB inquiry. An Attorney General inquiry on the other hand....
Follow the actions, not the words.
They always refer people to the state Attorney General for fraud complaints, and for illegal scams (postal foreign lotteries, etc.) The AG is the one with the power to lay the smackdown on the company.
Most of the illegal scams don't pay BBB fees, so they are more than happy about the AG looking into these people so the BBB can point and scream "See, they weren't members of us... that's why you need us!".
Then again, if you fall for a postal foreign lottery scam, there is nobody that can help you, except Darwin.
Slashdot Mirror
Most smartphones already have these capabilities, with the addition benefit that you don't need a wi-fi signal to get on the Internet.
Most major cities are covered my CDMA data.
Seems like a huge Smartphone ... without the phone.
Actually they aren't. Nobody working for the government gets paid with "YOUR TAX DOLLARS".
They get paid with Federal Reserve Notes well before you remit any of your earnings. And they will get paid whether you remit anything or not. Because there is a printing press that will give it to them regardless.
Your tax Reserve Notes go to the Federal Reserve to prevent devaluation of the currency. And since the "money" is created out of thin air, that's really the only reason you pay taxes.
The more dollars the general population has, the less a dollar is worth. So taxation serves to remove as many dollars out of circulation as possible, thus supporting the fiat currency.
When you pay FEDERAL taxes, you are not directly paying for any employees or programs ... as the money is simply printed and given to the Federal Government on demand, to distribute to whomever they want. So why, if money is printed on demand, does the Federal Reserve need YOUR money? They can create as much as they want. They don't need yours.
The reason is value. The more money YOU have, the less *value* your neighbor's money has and the government's money has.
Federal taxation doesn't pay for anything, it simply removes monetary supply from the hands of the populace. Less supply = more demand = curtailed inflation.
In short, your are not paying for anything with taxes. You are just supporting the perceived value of paper and ink that has no intrinsic value in and of itself.
The only people that need to rush to the post office are those that actually owe money.
I never understood the mid-April rush by the large numbers of people who are due loan paybacks.
You can file your payback in June if you wish ... without penalty.
Why all the mid-April hysteria every year?
I had never thought much about it before, but I once I read this article, I couldn't help but to agree with it: http://www.vegasrex.com/2007/01/26/there-is-no-suc h-thing-as-profanity/
Isn't it all about the context?
There are no such thing as "bad" words in and of themselves.
If someone was only going to use 1000Gigs, then why would they need that type of machine?
I currently do 500GB+/month on a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512Mb RAM and a regular IDE drive. And it has worked well for the past two years, but I have started having some annoying outages and am shopping around for other possibilities.
Also, reading the TOS on those things, you can say "shit" or "fuck" on your own box, or you can't link to sites that contain nudity? WTF?
If I want to link to a shit of Britney's twat on my blog, should I not be able to? Sure, I know it's in poor taste, but this is from 1 & 1's TOS:
You agree and warrant that all data, visual materials, advertising and other matter you store on or allow to be transmitted by 1&1's Equipment shall not violate any Laws concerning obscenity and shall not contain or link to any nudity, pornography, or depictions of bestiality, incest, rape, sexual assault, actual physical violence, torture or disfigurement, or other content deemed objectionable by 1&1, in its sole discretion.
IN IT'S SOLE DISCRETION??!!
Fuck!
Seems like I could make a cottage industry out of charging setup fees, then kicking people off because in my "sole discretion" the content they upload is objectionable. I could do this with only one or two servers and make $200/day. Sweet.
It's really hard looking for a provider, because once you dig into those terms and conditions, they pretty much tell you to go shit in your hat and that you have zero rights or recourse, and it's hard to plunk down a $100 setup fee when people are telling you that.
I guess the only true freedom is getting your own box and sticking it on an expensive high-speed connection, but then again, your upstream provider could drop you.
When you think about it, there really isn't as much freedom on the Internet as people think there is. You can only host what your provider agrees with.
So everybody needs to go through this dance twice a year for the one percent of the people that live on the border with Canada?
You would think they would have adapted by now, much like the people that live in Alaska and similarly situated areas.
And even if the 'official' sunrise is before 9am in the winter, if you have hills, trees or buildings to the south of you it will be a while before you see the sun in December and January.
Yeah, and people who work the night shift work in the fucking dark. It's bright enough at 9am just about any day of the year in the overwhelming majority of the country. Hell, I don't think I have even been in complete darkness at 8am. And even if I was ... who cares?
We have streetlights. I have headlights. I have light bulbs in my home. Face it, the sun ain't going to be shining 24 hours a day no matter what we do. It's an imperfect planet. Modern society (hell, even primitive society) has leaned to adapt quite nicely to the fact that the sun rises and sets.
I just ... don't ... see ... what bumping the clocks off for 4 months out of the year accomplishes.
I'm not even sure if these supposedly helpless people with poor night vision on the Canadian border support the damn thing.
If Daylight Savings time is such a great thing, then put us on Daylight Savings Time and be done with it.
"Standard Time" ... a time that we are only on 33% of the year is a completely asinine concept.
How can something be "standard" when the exception to the "standard" is in effect twice as long?
60 bucks was just too much to justify. Especially given the proliferation of wi-fi in major airports.
When I canceled it, the rep looked at the last months usage and said "Wow, it shows here that you used 150 Megabytes last month. I have never seen that much usage before". She even noted the exact day of the highest usage.
All I really did was download OpenOffice (60MB) one time, and send a few multimedia emails while on the road. (the day of highest usage).
I also watched a few YouTube videos while sitting in the airport waiting for my flight.
I was shocked that they were shocked that I used over 100MB in a single month. And could tell me the exact day that I downloaded Open Office.
But I can confirm that they really do have a day-by-day breakdown of data usage right on the screen of first level customer service. And they will actually scrutinize and question you on it when you call.
I almost felt like I was being scolded, and when I canceled the card, she sounded pleased.
This was about 6 weeks ago.
Make of that what you will.
I've never seen a 9am sunrise in the lower 48 states United States regardless of what time shift we were on.
As it is, Daylight Standard time is now only about 4 months out of the year. Or about 1/3rd of the year. The argument could legitimately be made that it is no longer "standard" at all.
As the daylight shift is gradual, it is ridiculous to think that people would not be able to adjust during those 4 months arguably only two of said months (the peak being late December) would pose the most "morning darkness hardship". That's what streetlights and headlights are for. To mitigate the two months of one hour morning slight inconvenience which may or may not even exist.
It seems asinine.
If Daylight Savings Time is preferable for 66% of the year, then stick us on it, and end the ridiculous 4 month "Winter Bastardized Time" which is no longer "standard", and which appears to server no real purpose whatsoever.
If Daylight savings time is a good thing, then why not have it year-round?
What is your seeming obsession with labels? Perhaps someone who disagrees with you is simply a sane and rational person ... who disagrees with you? Have you ever entertained that possibility?
I respect opinions as long as their qualified and justified (meaning based in objective fact). Saying that being a journalist implies an interest in concealing truth doesn't seem to be objectively provable.
At one point I had those cherished press credentials that you keep mentioning. I wrote for mainstream outlets who were all corporations, and as thus were run as corporations. I am well aware at how for-profit "news" papers are edited and the advertising and quid-pro-quo policies. The "news" papers I wrote for publically endorsed presidential candidates, and the "news" we uncoovered that never made it to print may or may not suprise you.
Really, it is not that much of a paranoid stretch to realize that a publicaly traded for-profit corporation might edit things to suit the agenda of the corporation. McDonald's, Intel, etc issues press releases all the time ... but few of them are for reasons that will harm the interests of their company or it's sponsors, affiliates, or associates. It was widely known that you could pay certain NY tabloids to cover you favorably. There was actually a story about this a couple of month ago.
You think I am paranoid, I think you are naive. But, does it really matter?
I'm sure it happens from time to time (more often than acceptable, even), but I don't think it is the de facto truth.
Okay, then. If that is your position, then so be it. If that were not the majority opinion, mainstream news outlets would hemorrhage cash, so I would say that you are squarely in the mainstream and are a necessary component to maintaining the status-quo.
It seems like a rather paranoiac statement to me, hence the tin foil hat comment. I don't judge all opinions as equal, and thus I can judge it as such. If you have some proof for it, please let me know.
And receive what?
Seriously, what would I get for providing you with example after example after example of spiked stories and overt bias? And isn't that all subjective?
Why don't you prove that all of the stories are accurate, objective, and complete.
You can't. It's a bogus request, although there really is quite a bit of evidence out there supporting the theory of bias.
The Lewinsky thing was initially set to be spiked by Newsweek.
Do you really think that was a lone and isolated incident?
I read it twice, and didn't find one place where you pointed out that I was objectively wrong. Subjectively perhaps (that being your opinion), but nothing even close to objectively.
We just have to agree to disagree.
If the mainstream media suits your needs, and you think everyone without mainstream media credentials are useless, then so be it.
I disagree.
Trust who you want. Label those with contrary opinions as "tin foil hat wearers" (Someday the "tin-foil hat" cliche' REALLY needs to be added to Godwin's Law).
That's really all I have left to say about it.
You can personally recognize whatever you want.
Some people believe what is written in the National Enquirer, some don't.
Who/what to believe is a decision that you make for yourself. It is not a decision that you would want others to make for you. No?
Yes, they are participating in what could informally be called "media", as in expression, but that are not participating in the more technical arena of professional, or organized media. It comes down to who has higher acceptance by knowledgeable experts or insiders.
Do you think knowledgeable experts or insiders ever want you to know the full story?
Acceptance by either of this groups often requires a quid-pro-quo that you will keep the lid on certain things, or at the very least, water them down.
Think of the Mythbusters, they are arguably doing science (experimentation, control groups, hypotheses, etc...), but can someone call them scientists with a straight face?
If they so wish ... sure. People who run around saying "Men think about sex every 8 seconds" are called scientists. There is so much junk "science" our there, that Mythbusters may well be toward the top of the profession.
This does allow some bloggers media worthiness
Purely subjective.
but only by acceptance of the larger body of journalists, which is why Drudge and Huffington are generally accepted on par with more mainstream journalists, and show up often on news broadcasts, while Samantha the thirteen year old emo MySpacer isn't allowed anywhere, or considered anything. Just writing doesn't make you anything, its the content, professionalism, and recognition that gives the the title.
And the value of said information is judged by each individual. The value should not be judged by any particular entity, and passed down to the population as a whole.
And if Samantha the thirteen year old sees them putting rat poison in the school cafeteria milk, while the local rag doesn't, I'll be on her blog reading about it.
Nobody has a monopoly on information.
Look at me, I'm a random asshat posting to Slashdot, which is a public medium, can I get my journalist credentials now?
There are really no such thing as "journalist credentials". Only invitations to specific events.
If you kiss enough ass and spin things the right way, then you probably could get an invite.
If that's what is important to you.
If that's all they do then they are an EMPLOYED journalist.
You cannot be a professional journalist AND have an opinion (unless said opinion is that of your employer).
Is this really how you want to get all of your news?
I'll trust a "blogger" any day over a corporate mouthpiece.
And yes, many of the organizations that the "professional journalists" work for are publicly traded corporations, who's only legal duty is make a best effort to return value to shareholders ... no different from McDonald's or Nike.
These are the "real" and "professional" journalists that disseminate information to us.
It's a bit scary if you think about it too much.
Nobody needs a degree to write.
IMHO, "a degree" can completely kill creativity.
I have a video camera and an idea for a movie. That doesn't make me a fucking member of the Directors Guild.
Luckily, you don't need to be a member of the Director's Guild to make a good movie.
It might even help not to be.
Have you seen the shit that comes out of Hollywood?
The guy who put Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon together for "Taxi" ... what kind of degree inspired that?
There is not such thing as "real members of THE media".
"The media" is a concept and is subjective in definition.
Everyone is a member of the media. Every time someone writes something or opens their mouth, information, useless or otherwise is being transmitted.
I think what you are referring to is "The mainstream media", which is only marginally useful and vastly overrated, IMHO.
I worked for a major newspaper at one point in my life, and you would be shocked at the stories that don't make it past the editors desk in favor of some fluff piece or some advertisement masquerading as press release. "Journalists" have their have their hands held by self-important opinion makers, and mainstream media outlets are actually giant blogs of the editor/owner. You can work for one of those people, or start your own. It doesn't make you any more or less a "journalist".
There is also intense bias in every major news outlet. Most newspapers actually endorse candidates. This negates them as news sources, IMHO, and relegates them to giant printed blogs.
Everyone is a journalist, everyone is the media. Some may suit you better than others, but "the real media" is all a product of your opinion ... as it doesn't tangibly exist.
I wish I could find the article, but the gist of it was that the average American breaks 7 laws per day. Be it speeding, jaywalking, littering, whatever.
The US has more laws than any nation on earth. It puts a larger percentage of it's population in cages than any other nation ... by far. And with the vague wording of many of the laws, just about any action one takes could technically be deemed illegal, or at least suspicious.
Yes, you would first have to make someone's shit list to get this level of scrutiny, but to say "I never do anything illegal" is probably not an accurate statement.
Gone are the days that people used 99% of their time to work on content. Now in some cases it's 50% content, and 50% kissing Google's ass in some SEO-optimizing obsessive compulsive way to get on the main page.
And it's just one search engine. A search engine with a nearly $100 Billion market capitalization. Who know has a "terms of service" that makes people alter their content to please Google. And people find this sane.
People's 'net worth are now being determined by Google, and people are worried about being "caught" by Google or displeasing Google.
What happened?
10 years ago this would have been seen as an aberration, and people would have thumbed their nose at it. I remember when Google was a cluster of free OS servers that was the alternative to the omni-present Yahoo, and everyone was refreshed by the alternative.
Now look at us. Clamoring to climb to the top of some site page by tweaking our websites in any number of unnatural ways ... and in my opinion, content has suffered because of it. The best content does not always get your site listed the highest, the most "optimized" site does.
And over the years, I have found the searches less and less and less relevant. I know sites that are the authority on their subject that appear on the 10th page because they concentrate only on content instead of wringing their hands over what Google's bot thinks of them.
It's a shame that we have gotten to this point.
I am aware that it sounds like blasphemy, but Google is now probably my 3rd or 4th engine, well behind *gasp* Microsoft's Live Search which seems to crawl much more frequently and update databases much more often.
Google only has as much power as we give it.
I think we have given it far too much.
I think it is negatively impacting content.
This is only my opinion, and I will get off my soapbox now.
I am off to Search Engine Optimize a site of questionable content ... time that could be much better spent by making better content.
Such is the state of the web in 2007.
Not entirely true. The FEDERAL government taxes solely to control inflation. The more money that is in your hands, the less the value of the currency as a whole. Which is not great for government spending.
The government prints it's own money. The currency is fiat. The Federal government does not "pay for anything" with your tax money, they simply give it back to the Treasury to be re-issued at a later time as a cause of monetary policy.
The government by it's very nature cannot run out of money since the Fed will always print as much as it needs.
The Federal government taxes you to take as much money away from you as possible. The more money they can take from you, by whatever means, the stronger the value of the dollar will be.
It is a common misconception that checks the the IRS "pays for stuff". It doesn't.
While this is true, it doesn't completely explain things.
Few (if any) home users in NYC, Boston, DC, Chicago, or San Francisco have 25Mbps. These places are easily as dense as an average European/Asian community.
Also, when cable TV first came out, the more rural areas got it far more quickly than we did, and they always had phone service. The infrastructure is there, or can be put pretty much anywhere, we just don't make 5Mbps+ a priority.
Also when speaking of density, you have to realize that the overwhelming majority of the US is largely unpopulated. You can fly from the Mexican Border to the Canadian Border in the West, and save for Las Vegas, you won't see a single house. Alaska's (our largest state) has a land area is something like .001% populated. We have places like North Dakota and Wyoming. Japan and Europe don't have similar wide-open expanses to water-down their overall density numbers, and thus a direct density comparison is extremely difficult.
Someone used my wireless router. What's "WEP"?
Seriously, I can hit 5 unsecured access points right from where I sit.
People who don't know how/don't bother to secure their wireless routers number probably somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.
IP spoofing is no longer necessary to use someone's IP address. All it takes is a $29 wireless card.
I feel you, but have to slightly disagree.
Screw UMD (I would never buy a movie on that format either). I take movies and music videos with me all the time on the Memory Stick. I even surf the net on wi-fi on the thing. It's big, but with the hard case it fits into my back pocket or shirt pocket. If it was smaller, it wouldn't be very good for games (and some of the games are awesome like Hot Shots Golf, Ridge Racer, and 2K6 Baseball .. which plays so close to it's Xbox counterpart that I am stunned).
Yes, there are also some games that look like they were ported from an Atari 2600 too, but it's got a decent amount of power to exploit.
Buy movies over again? Why on earth would you do that. Rip them and use 3GP Converter to stick them right on there. 600Mb will get me a good quality movie on memory stick, and still leaves me lots of room for MP3's and game data. Or if you *cough* download from P2P (which I never do!), you can burn transfer those sucker right over and watch them on the go.
It's a near-Dreamcast-quality game player, a move/video player, a *damn good* audio player (I think it sounds easily as good as an iPod with the right headphones), and an imprompto web browser if you just happen to hit a hotspot (I like to play Poker with other people over the Internet on my wireless network while I am relaxing on the counch in front of the TV). And the battery life is surprisingly good.
If you get the right case, tools, software, and accessories, you might just end up using it more.
The main problem I see is that my cellphone can do all of the above except play the games. I think that is why there are some adoption problems. It's really competing with smartphones more than anything.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff1343.htm
There is only one effective way to "throw your vote away", and that is voting for one of the two mainstream parties.
Seriously, why bother?
So they differ on abortion and .... uh, well that's about all they differ on. Democrats and Repulicans both authorized military action in Iraq. The Democrats want to raise taxes by 2% and the Republicans want to lower them by 2%. Big fucking deal.
Voting Democrat or Repubican is alot like masturbating. It feels good while you are pulling the lever, but one you are done life goes on as usual and nothing changes.
If you like things the way they are, then knock yourself out. If you want any kind of real change, a vote for any party other than a third is a complete waste.
Just stay home and masturbate in November. I know I will.
Indeed. But we both know it's just a matter of time before they change the language to "We, and only we may record this call for quality assurance"
Then again, in most states you could still record it even with that language, because in most states the law only states that both parties have to "know that the call is being recorded". It's legal to record if the party you are speaking to knows that their call is not being recorded, which would clearly be the case. Basically, one-party-only recordings would not hold up under wiretap laws, and likely any recording made under any circumstances would be legally admissable since the expectation of privacy of both parties ceased to exist once ANY notice of the call being recorded by ANYONE was given to both parties.
At least until a lobbying group legislation to the contrary. And I promise you that they eventually will.
Our corporations will not survive the constant embarassment of more and more people recording their customers service calls, which I know engage in every time I call a company with a "quality assurance" disclaimer.
A speaker phone, a digital voice recorder, and a 120GB hard drive will let me archive 100 years worth of calls.
Again, maybe, maybe not.
I know of some local business around here who have grown rather notorious with their shoddy business practices and aven outright fraud. As a matter of fact, a local TV station that was tipped off to fraud bya local mechanic did one of those "undercover" investigations and totally outed this place.
I checked their BBB report, and it was spotless.
I have found BBB ratings to be of little to no use. The process is not transparent in the least, and they can and do put whatever they want out there. I'm pretty sure that you can get a whatever "rating" you want if you grease the right wheels.
They can and will revoke a member's membership if complaints don't get resolved (note that this doesn't mean "resolved in the customer's favor", though). That's the only leverage the BBB has over members.
The BBB is funded by members. So kicking them out is a conflict of interest. Yes, most of the complaints get "resolved", but as you noted, that means little. For the most part, all they have to do is tell the BBB "We tried our best", without anything to back it up, and that is usually that is all that is required to get the complaint "resolved". Don't ask me how I know.
You can probably see why a system like this is fairly useless to the consumer.
They're non-profit, and there are a lot of members, most of whom pay the same or similar amounts for their membership. Therefore, the BBB doesn't need to bend over backwards for any particular member.
First of all, non-profit doesn't mean that the BBB doesn't get paid. Everyone who works at the BBB gets paid whatever salary they decide to pay their employees. The fact that they don't pursue excess money outside of their operating expenses and salaries doesn't mean much.
By that benchmark, I am a non-profit.
If they alienate members, the lose money to pay salaries, raises, office expenses, fringe beneits, and rent. Make no mistake about it, the BBB *does* bend over backward for it's member. As a matter of fact, that is the sole reason that they exist. The BBB still makes a large sum of money, and they attempt to help their members make more money. And if you look at many local BBB sites now, they have now branched out into advertising their "member" companies. The BBB is a marketing group disguised as a "rating" system.
You can complain to them I suppose, but you'll likely find the company you are complaining about VERY unscared about a BBB inquiry. An Attorney General inquiry on the other hand ....
Follow the actions, not the words.
They always refer people to the state Attorney General for fraud complaints, and for illegal scams (postal foreign lotteries, etc.) The AG is the one with the power to lay the smackdown on the company.
Most of the illegal scams don't pay BBB fees, so they are more than happy about the AG looking into these people so the BBB can point and scream "See, they weren't members of us ... that's why you need us!".
Then again, if you fall for a postal foreign lottery scam, there is nobody that can help you, except Darwin.