For the first time I'm really concerned about data collection by the government. Sure this will give info about who's on a flight, but I'll be damned if I believe thats the real motivation for this. Oh sure, this system, on some rare occastion, might catch a bonified terrorist, but what I see happening is pattern analysis.
CowboyNeal travels to Seattle... there's a big protest the day after he arrives... the next day he flies home. Hmmm... must be a terrorist. Guess well have to start dumping all cell calls over to the NSA, and might as well hit up his central office, get them to send all land based communications over there too. Next time he wants to fly into a city with a WTO meeting, he might just be picked out for "random inspection"... might just miss his flight too...
This isn't about "we don't want terrorists on planes"... this is pattern analysis of the masses... oh, but what am I saying, Ashcroft is in charge, so it must be all okay.
Whilst I was in school, I was fortunate enough to be given an HP48g... This calc was, and is, far superior to any TI calc I have ever come accross... not only was I using it for The Calculus, Diff EQ, Lin Alg... but of course the physics and engineering classes as well. Once introduced to RPN, I'll never go back.
My question is this: With TI firmly entrenched in the education market... all those schedule of classes reading "TI foo required...", does anyone outside of the student arena use these things? Sure they are feature packed, but I'd think once one wanted to do calculations which would actually use the calculator to it's fullest, they'd move to Mathmatica, or Mathcad.
Twice since leaving school have I seen the HP's used in the field... one is at my work, a weather prediction / ship routing company, and the other was on Junkyard Wars... I think they were carving a prop from a 2x4. As of yet, I haven't seen those TI behemoths outside the hands of students.
Oh, and for a touch of flaimbait, just try pi! on your TI82;-)
Once again there is language to the effect of "...excessive bandwidth usage.". Which brings us back to the question of: What exactly am I paying for when I'm purchasing my home broadband connection?
And are we going to start seeing Cease and Desist letters because of opportunistic IPSec usage?
Or is it going to be: "Your bandwidth usage is more than two standard deviations from the mean... which is not allowed under your residential use contract".
I can't imagine this behavior not blowing up in their faces.
As a baseball fan, every season, I'm subjected to the "Speedy Oil Change and Tuneup" commercial, each time there is a pitching change. Why does SOCaT bother with such tactics? Name recognition, of course! They pay for such publicity so I know where I can get my oil changed... such as it is with piracy.
The way advertising works is very basic math... a percentage of people who hear a commercial will purchase the product. Quite obviously this percentage won't be 100, yet this is exactly what the software giants claim when they speak of losses in the billions of dollars. Don't be fooled for a second if you think Philip-Morris wouldn't love for perfect coppies of their product to be freely distributed... eventually you'd have the addicts buying the original.
So here we have people distrubuting software at no cost to the company. Perhaps I get myself a pirated copy of a $600 product. Turns out I like the product very much, but my pirated copy doesn't come with the support I want, nor does it come with the discounted upgrades. So I purchase the product. The sofware company now has me as a customer. And why? Because I was able to get a copy of their product to test and play with. As it turns out they make an excellent product and I'm hooked (Blizzard).
Face it... a fixed percentage of people who know of your product will buy it. How do you make more money? Make sure lots of people know of your product. For Budweiser its commercials during the Super Bowl, for software it's this no-cost-to-the-company thing called "piracy".
Slashdot Mirror
CowboyNeal travels to Seattle... there's a big protest the day after he arrives... the next day he flies home. Hmmm... must be a terrorist. Guess well have to start dumping all cell calls over to the NSA, and might as well hit up his central office, get them to send all land based communications over there too. Next time he wants to fly into a city with a WTO meeting, he might just be picked out for "random inspection"... might just miss his flight too...
This isn't about "we don't want terrorists on planes"... this is pattern analysis of the masses... oh, but what am I saying, Ashcroft is in charge, so it must be all okay.
My question is this: With TI firmly entrenched in the education market... all those schedule of classes reading "TI foo required...", does anyone outside of the student arena use these things? Sure they are feature packed, but I'd think once one wanted to do calculations which would actually use the calculator to it's fullest, they'd move to Mathmatica, or Mathcad.
Twice since leaving school have I seen the HP's used in the field... one is at my work, a weather prediction / ship routing company, and the other was on Junkyard Wars... I think they were carving a prop from a 2x4. As of yet, I haven't seen those TI behemoths outside the hands of students.
Oh, and for a touch of flaimbait, just try pi! on your TI82 ;-)
I certainly don't mind the work, although Xmas time has taken on a whole new meaning when compared to the same time while I was in college.
And are we going to start seeing Cease and Desist letters because of opportunistic IPSec usage?
Or is it going to be: "Your bandwidth usage is more than two standard deviations from the mean... which is not allowed under your residential use contract".
I can't imagine this behavior not blowing up in their faces.
The way advertising works is very basic math... a percentage of people who hear a commercial will purchase the product. Quite obviously this percentage won't be 100, yet this is exactly what the software giants claim when they speak of losses in the billions of dollars. Don't be fooled for a second if you think Philip-Morris wouldn't love for perfect coppies of their product to be freely distributed... eventually you'd have the addicts buying the original.
So here we have people distrubuting software at no cost to the company. Perhaps I get myself a pirated copy of a $600 product. Turns out I like the product very much, but my pirated copy doesn't come with the support I want, nor does it come with the discounted upgrades. So I purchase the product. The sofware company now has me as a customer. And why? Because I was able to get a copy of their product to test and play with. As it turns out they make an excellent product and I'm hooked (Blizzard).
Face it... a fixed percentage of people who know of your product will buy it. How do you make more money? Make sure lots of people know of your product. For Budweiser its commercials during the Super Bowl, for software it's this no-cost-to-the-company thing called "piracy".