Well, I still have a dial-up Compuserve account. Why? 1. Because I'm too lazy to change. I don't remember exactly when I started with them but my inital connection was 300 baud text. 2. They have been dead reliable for me for the last 20+ years. Huge list of local access numbers - 3 different pools available to me in town, never a busy signal, hardly ever a disconnect (when I'm actually using the service), no problems straightening out billing issues, always connect at close to advertised speed, email address has changed exactly twice - one from numbers to real name and once from @csi.com to @compuserve.com. I'm sure I could find something cheaper but why mess with it if it ain't broke? Thank God they haven't AOLized good old Compuserve Classic.
You've hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what they really want. The law is on the side of used books so they will use any pressure they can to make it as difficult as possible for the used book buyer. If a book shows up used the day after it is released, maybe there is a good reason like the thing is a big turkey and the author doesn't deserve to sell any more copies. It becomes a free speech issue as well. I may want to express my opinion by selling a book ASAP.
How did we manage to equate TAXES and ROYALTIES. If you happen to buy a used book at a B&M store, you will actually pay sales tax, just like when you buy a used car. None of that goes back to Ford, the "author" of the car. Fortuneatly, Amazom doesn't have to fight too hard. There is already a nice SCOTUS decission of long standing that says basically that, once a book is sold, the new owner can do as he pleases with the physical book including selling it for whatever price he chooses. I tend to buy new because I tend to hold on to most of the stuff I buy for a long time. I lost an auction on an old shop manual that I thought was uncommon. I found it new later for only a few dollars more. Things like my wife's fiction - used or borrowed if possible. Help the author? She borrowed one and bought the rest of the series as soon as they were published (hardcover even).
I have 2 kids, 16 & 17. The older one could boot an XT and navigate text menus when he was 3. The younger one was not comfortable doing much until a year or two ago. I expect most younger slashdot readers (like you) to be far more savy with computers than average. If you like/., you didn't get into computers yesterday. They were talking about 6 to 10 year-olds. Most of them aren't real computer literate yet. What the hay, I almost get caught by some of the fake error message pop-ups and you can guess I'm not a kid (I started programming in Fortran 4 in the late '60s)
I didn't bother with the link, the News is my local paper delivered to my door every day. There is an addage that says, "The farther away from an event you are, the more credible the media reporting". The News is not very reliable. The PD wanted to fish around. There is a very real "chilling effect" of knowing the cops can muck around in all the records because of a receipt. More and more, I think I'll have to wean myself from internet purchases and buy locally for cash. What if I'm totally innocent but have the same tastes as some crook? Look at the number of overturned murder convictions recently if you think the "system" can't decide your guilty and put you away with the flimsiest of evidence. Bad Thornton, yea Tattered Cover
Duh. How about the fact that the hardware/software for DRM will be more expensive. BG/MD/SJ will make MORE money and that pile of liquid cash will grow even bigger. Do you think any of them personally worries about the effect on the consumer. They have their secretary buy 10 copies of the latest DVD so they can have one in each house. They all exist to make more money and being able to charge more for DRM serves that goal nicely.
I'm near Denver which is supposed to be one of the prototype locations for the restart. There was lots of publicity a while back but not a peep recently. I suspect the hang up may be over leases on the light poles for the transmitters. They were trying to work a sweetheart deal to exchange service for the use of pole tops. Where local governments and public utilities are involved, glaciers seem supersonic. Hurry up, I'm waiting none to patiently. I can see one of the little transmitters on the light behind my house. No DSL, hate cable, fire those puppies up!
Finally a solution to copy protection, piracy, and all that. "Borrow" a music only version and record your own vocals. Pay yourself the royalties and never support the nasty RIAA again.
Well, it was 80 in Denver today and supposed to be 30 tomorrow. If you're stuck inside with a lot of snow, you may as well enjoy ressuerecting an antique.
I spelled a term wrong in Google recently and got over 1000 hits on the misspelling. I'm not alone with bad spelling. Of course, when I clicked Google's suggested one, I got 100,000+. Absoultly the best of both worlds there.
I can see $400 for a fancy little device but $35 a month for basically nothing is way out of line. What do you get for that? A minute by minute log of where the kid is? If its similar to Lojak, it only gets turned on when you need it - a few minutes or hours in a lifetime. It can't be on very much or a little kid couldn't carry the batteries it would need.
My kid could boot a PC and handle some basic text menu choices before he was 3. Blew me away. I have no doubt that some kids are more computer proficent than their parents by age 6.
Zip codes work fine for physical addresses but the Post Office actually names servers with a 4 letter city code, a 2 letter state code, and a 4 letter/number identifier. I'm logged into DNVRCOSNA04 right now. A few of the older boxen used a state-city-office-function convention. I was using CODENBMC-PIRS earlier. You might have to be a little innovative if you have several hundred/thousand servers in the same building but the system scales well. I don't know an exact number but we have thousands of servers online.
Here in the USA (Colorado), McDonalds definitly does accept credit cards - Visa, MasterCard, Discovery. My bill has gone up noticeably since that happened about a year ago. The registers at our McDonalds can keep track of several different orders at the same time. As soon as one person orders, they step aside and the next one comes up and orders. Several other people working behind the counter actually put the order together and bring it to the customer. Maybe Denver is a step ahead of some other locations.
I'm left handed so I'll wear my custom scanner watch on my right wrist and just walk close to people. It sounds like something that is just too easy to compromise.
I've put in my 2 cents earlier in this topic but I can't let this one slip by. My wife graduated from Columbine High School so we know the area better than average. NOBOBY I've met or know from around there has an "arms" job. Its a mix like most everywhere. Her father worked in construction, his neighbor worked for Western Power Administration. A friend from church is a State representative. Lockhead-Martin is a large local employer - the Aerospace division. They make rocket boosters and things for outer space like that. We deon't have any real defense-related industry around here. Sorry, that particular logic doesn't wash.
I get real tired of the "blame the parent" attitude. Why? Because I'm the parent in a related situation. My 16 year old son took our car and went down a local street at about 80 MPH. You'd better believe there was a huge wreck. 5 cars, one dead, one in the hospital for months. He was unhurt. I think we were above average parents with an extreemly bright son. He was on a college level program in high school, socially active with his school peers, involved in the church youth group, played sports. Pretty much a model kid. We had a stable, active family life and were involved with both our sons activities. It wasn't perfect but by most standards, we were a typical all-american family. Yet he chose a course of action that resulted in the death of another man. Unfortunately, it was his decision and action. Even in retrospect, I can think of very little we would have done differently in raising him. There are issues of personal responsibility that others flat out can not control. Unlike Columbine (which was my wife's high school), the victum's relatives got a sense of closure when they saw my son lead out of the courtroom to begin serving time.
It just doesn't sink in, does it? If you are a student, in almost ALL cases, the institution where you study has a limited, non-exclusive license to anything you submit as part of the educational process. It doesn't matter how many silly marks you add or hom many places you file your paper. Maybe you should really look at some of the legalese for your school. For colleges, you personally gave them that right when you signed on the dotted line at the bottom of your application. You may still have a personal copyright on your work but they sure have a license to use it.
So what happens if your tax data is on your local hard drive and the drive takes a dive on April 14? Same problem. Do you have a backup or disaster recovery strategy? I keep multiple copies of my financial information, 2 on the hard drive and one on a Zip disk that are up to date and several generations on backup tapes that get rotated. It would be just too hard to try and recreate that data. I use a tape backup at home because I cringe at the thought of rebuilding the machine from scratch. I don't care where my data may end up, its my job to make sure I'm covered. This is not to imply that 99% of home computer users would not be totally screwed by any sort of data disaster.
cc:Mail may no longer be supported but it is far from gone. Just ask out 200,000 users. It actually works pretty good and we have an interface set up to real email. The biggest problems we have are that it is so closely tied to DOS that network printing is always an issue. If we could trash it and f3fill, we would never see another LPT1 capture again.
Gee, I'm not alone. I tried to get to the second page of comments on one article and got dumped back to the front page - several times, no wide lines like some are reporting tho.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I still have a dial-up Compuserve account. Why?
1. Because I'm too lazy to change. I don't remember exactly when I started with them but my inital connection was 300 baud text.
2. They have been dead reliable for me for the last 20+ years. Huge list of local access numbers - 3 different pools available to me in town, never a busy signal, hardly ever a disconnect (when I'm actually using the service), no problems straightening out billing issues, always connect at close to advertised speed, email address has changed exactly twice - one from numbers to real name and once from @csi.com to @compuserve.com. I'm sure I could find something cheaper but why mess with it if it ain't broke?
Thank God they haven't AOLized good old Compuserve Classic.
You've hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what they really want. The law is on the side of used books so they will use any pressure they can to make it as difficult as possible for the used book buyer. If a book shows up used the day after it is released, maybe there is a good reason like the thing is a big turkey and the author doesn't deserve to sell any more copies. It becomes a free speech issue as well. I may want to express my opinion by selling a book ASAP.
How did we manage to equate TAXES and ROYALTIES. If you happen to buy a used book at a B&M store, you will actually pay sales tax, just like when you buy a used car. None of that goes back to Ford, the "author" of the car. Fortuneatly, Amazom doesn't have to fight too hard. There is already a nice SCOTUS decission of long standing that says basically that, once a book is sold, the new owner can do as he pleases with the physical book including selling it for whatever price he chooses. I tend to buy new because I tend to hold on to most of the stuff I buy for a long time. I lost an auction on an old shop manual that I thought was uncommon. I found it new later for only a few dollars more. Things like my wife's fiction - used or borrowed if possible. Help the author? She borrowed one and bought the rest of the series as soon as they were published (hardcover even).
I have 2 kids, 16 & 17. The older one could boot an XT and navigate text menus when he was 3. The younger one was not comfortable doing much until a year or two ago. I expect most younger slashdot readers (like you) to be far more savy with computers than average. If you like /., you didn't get into computers yesterday. They were talking about 6 to 10 year-olds. Most of them aren't real computer literate yet. What the hay, I almost get caught by some of the fake error message pop-ups and you can guess I'm not a kid (I started programming in Fortran 4 in the late '60s)
I didn't bother with the link, the News is my local paper delivered to my door every day. There is an addage that says, "The farther away from an event you are, the more credible the media reporting". The News is not very reliable. The PD wanted to fish around. There is a very real "chilling effect" of knowing the cops can muck around in all the records because of a receipt. More and more, I think I'll have to wean myself from internet purchases and buy locally for cash. What if I'm totally innocent but have the same tastes as some crook? Look at the number of overturned murder convictions recently if you think the "system" can't decide your guilty and put you away with the flimsiest of evidence.
Bad Thornton, yea Tattered Cover
Duh. How about the fact that the hardware/software for DRM will be more expensive. BG/MD/SJ will make MORE money and that pile of liquid cash will grow even bigger. Do you think any of them personally worries about the effect on the consumer. They have their secretary buy 10 copies of the latest DVD so they can have one in each house. They all exist to make more money and being able to charge more for DRM serves that goal nicely.
I'm near Denver which is supposed to be one of the prototype locations for the restart. There was lots of publicity a while back but not a peep recently. I suspect the hang up may be over leases on the light poles for the transmitters. They were trying to work a sweetheart deal to exchange service for the use of pole tops. Where local governments and public utilities are involved, glaciers seem supersonic.
Hurry up, I'm waiting none to patiently. I can see one of the little transmitters on the light behind my house. No DSL, hate cable, fire those puppies up!
Finally a solution to copy protection, piracy, and all that. "Borrow" a music only version and record your own vocals. Pay yourself the royalties and never support the nasty RIAA again.
Well, it was 80 in Denver today and supposed to be 30 tomorrow. If you're stuck inside with a lot of snow, you may as well enjoy ressuerecting an antique.
I spelled a term wrong in Google recently and got over 1000 hits on the misspelling. I'm not alone with bad spelling. Of course, when I clicked Google's suggested one, I got 100,000+. Absoultly the best of both worlds there.
Ah! Did you happen to notice the date? I think this is interesting, funny, and certainly appropriate for April 1.
I can see $400 for a fancy little device but $35 a month for basically nothing is way out of line. What do you get for that? A minute by minute log of where the kid is? If its similar to Lojak, it only gets turned on when you need it - a few minutes or hours in a lifetime. It can't be on very much or a little kid couldn't carry the batteries it would need.
My kid could boot a PC and handle some basic text menu choices before he was 3. Blew me away. I have no doubt that some kids are more computer
proficent than their parents by age 6.
Zip codes work fine for physical addresses but the Post Office actually names servers with a 4 letter city code, a 2 letter state code, and a 4 letter/number identifier. I'm logged into DNVRCOSNA04 right now. A few of the older boxen used a state-city-office-function convention. I was using CODENBMC-PIRS earlier. You might have to be a little innovative if you have several hundred/thousand servers in the same building but the system scales well. I don't know an exact number but we have thousands of servers online.
Here in the USA (Colorado), McDonalds definitly does accept credit cards - Visa, MasterCard, Discovery. My bill has gone up noticeably since that happened about a year ago. The registers at our McDonalds can keep track of several different orders at the same time. As soon as one person orders, they step aside and the next one comes up and orders. Several other people working behind the counter actually put the order together and bring it to the customer. Maybe Denver is a step ahead of some other locations.
I'm left handed so I'll wear my custom scanner watch on my right wrist and just walk close to people.
It sounds like something that is just too easy to compromise.
I've put in my 2 cents earlier in this topic but I can't let this one slip by. My wife graduated from Columbine High School so we know the area better than average. NOBOBY I've met or know from around there has an "arms" job. Its a mix like most everywhere. Her father worked in construction, his neighbor worked for Western Power Administration. A friend from church is a State representative. Lockhead-Martin is a large local employer - the Aerospace division. They make rocket boosters and things for outer space like that. We deon't have any real defense-related industry around here.
Sorry, that particular logic doesn't wash.
I get real tired of the "blame the parent" attitude. Why? Because I'm the parent in a related situation. My 16 year old son took our car and went down a local street at about 80 MPH. You'd better believe there was a huge wreck. 5 cars, one dead, one in the hospital for months. He was unhurt. I think we were above average parents with an extreemly bright son. He was on a college level program in high school, socially active with his school peers, involved in the church youth group, played sports. Pretty much a model kid. We had a stable, active family life and were involved with both our sons activities. It wasn't perfect but by most standards, we were a typical all-american family. Yet he chose a course of action that resulted in the death of another man. Unfortunately, it was his decision and action. Even in retrospect, I can think of very little we would have done differently in raising him. There are issues of personal responsibility that others flat out can not control. Unlike Columbine (which was my wife's high school), the victum's relatives got a sense of closure when they saw my son lead out of the courtroom to begin serving time.
Don't let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. If you don't like it, yes, please leave and quit annoying those of us that are happy here.
It just doesn't sink in, does it? If you are a student, in almost ALL cases, the institution where you study has a limited, non-exclusive license to anything you submit as part of the educational process. It doesn't matter how many silly marks you add or hom many places you file your paper. Maybe you should really look at some of the legalese for your school. For colleges, you personally gave them that right when you signed on the dotted line at the bottom of your application. You may still have a personal copyright on your work but they sure have a license to use it.
I just set a filter to delete anything with an arbitrary asian character. cut my spam waaay down.
So what happens if your tax data is on your local hard drive and the drive takes a dive on April 14? Same problem. Do you have a backup or disaster recovery strategy? I keep multiple copies of my financial information, 2 on the hard drive and one on a Zip disk that are up to date and several generations on backup tapes that get rotated. It would be just too hard to try and recreate that data. I use a tape backup at home because I cringe at the thought of rebuilding the machine from scratch. I don't care where my data may end up, its my job to make sure I'm covered. This is not to imply that 99% of home computer users would not be totally screwed by any sort of data disaster.
FWIW: the Post Office is already testing about a dozen as an experiment in dense city routes.
cc:Mail may no longer be supported but it is far from gone. Just ask out 200,000 users. It actually works pretty good and we have an interface set up to real email. The biggest problems we have are that it is so closely tied to DOS that network printing is always an issue. If we could trash it and f3fill, we would never see another LPT1 capture again.
Gee, I'm not alone. I tried to get to the second page of comments on one article and got dumped back to the front page - several times, no wide lines like some are reporting tho.