"they did come up with the what would jesus drive aimed at SUVS..."
Well, let's see here. He's a carpenter (meaning he has lots of tools, equipment, and supplies) who does a lot of traveling to exotic areas. Sounds like he'd use something like a Ford Excursion.
You know, what a great idea; just be nice. And you know what? For the past 10 years, I've tried this. I say, "no thank you", or "I'm not interested", and so on, and yet I continue to receive between 10 - 20 calls per day between home and work for tons of garbage I'd never consider buying, especially from a telemarketer. So, after roughly 10 years of being nice with a negative impact, I think it's about time to be nice, then levy an $11,000 fine. If that doesn't work, we'll make it $111,000 fine. If that doesn't work, then it's time to outright ban telemarketing.
These idiots hide behind everything from symantecs ("oh no, this isn't a telemarketing call, this is a survey") to the first amendment. Hello, folks - the First Amendment secures the right of the people to speak freely; NOT the right to be heard. Nor does it secure the right of anyone to invade the privacy of another in order to exercise that right. Some people pay monthly fees to screen out as many of the telemarketers as possible, while others look to the caller ID for guidance. My problem with that is that I don't know if the "unknown" or "out of area" caller is a family member trying to get through for help. Hence, I'm subjected to the incessant barrage of unwanted, intrusive phone calls that cost me both time and productivity.
With respect to them "just trying to make a buck", so are cocaine dealers and gun runners. And yet, cocaine dealers and drug runners at least stay out of my home. Can I not expect the same from these telemarketers? If I sign up for calls, ask for calls, or otherwise express an interest in receiving telemarketing calls, I wouldn't complain. But in 10 years, I haven't once asked a telemarketer to call me, I haven't bought a single product, and the situation continues to deteriorate. When I'm nice, they hang up, and they don't call back; until tomorrow. And when they hang up, someone else calls me, and then another, and then another, and then another. It's time to stop.
" Or you could install A pop-up stopper for free and she can continue to use IE."
Sure, she can install yet another program that has to work on top of her already buggy web browser, and then she can continue to use IE. And what does use of IE entail? ActiveX vulnerabilities, browser crashes, cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, stealth software installations (gator/Xupiter, etc), and other assorted issues.
"Does Firebird work well with Flash/Java and the other plug-ins we do desperately need?"
Yes, it does. It has for a long, long time.
Does IE have tabbed browsing, themes, radial context menus, mouse gestures, integrated pop-up and script/javascript supression, image blocking, integrated google search (from the address bar), integrated cookie management, forms manager, web development suite, bug tracking, regular releases, good security, and very strong stability?
As I'm sitting here reading about Maxtor et al's drives failing, my 160GB Maxtor is resetting the heads once again. Having already replaced my 160GB Maxtor through an RMA, I'm quite annoyed to have the same problem only a few months later. So here we are, within a year of original purchase, and I've got two defective units of the same model. How nice.
Oh well, I'm now off to waste a bunch of time and money backing up the data from it to DVD+RWs.
I wasn't uncomfortable with it - in fact, I liked it. For the first few minutes. By your account, doing an hour and a half of the rave scene would have been great. It wasn't the scene in and of itself that bothered me, merely the unendingness of it all. Another point in the movie which I thought was dragged out was the fight between Morpheus and the Agent on top of the truck. I mean, seriously, how many times can he be thrown to and/or hang off of the edge of the damn truck? By about the 17th time he was on the edge of the truck, I wanted to push him off of it!:P
In terms of me "getting any", my lady would disagree with you.:)
" If I own the car (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
Let's replace one word and try again: " If I own the XBox (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
And again: " If I own the DVD player (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
And again: " If I own the matress (and hence the attached tags) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
I don't think it was completely unnecessary, but I do think it was pretty dragged out. It would have been just as informative and not nearly as annoying had it been half as long. There's only but so much stomping and jumping around necessary to send the point across, and the "skin" portions were drawn out in such a way to tease the male audience. I don't think it should have been removed, simply edited a bit better.
You know, I got about halfway through your post before discerning whether you were talking about consumers infringing copyrights or multi-national conglomerates price-gouging and price fixing.
I pay for t-shirts, cds, tickets, etc to support local, unsigned bands. But when it comes to the major media companies, I'm going to play their game until they either play fairly or die. I prefer the latter.
They want to hike up the price for CDs to rates so high even the FTC can't stand it? No problem; I'll just make sure that the CD gets spread around a bit to compensate. They want to screw over artists who are too small to fight back? No problem, I'll simply refuse to montarily support the lying bastards.
You see, you don't get that this isn't about theft, or copyright infringement, or intellectual property. This is a cat and mouse game between the average Joe and massive multi-nationals. They started this little game, and now the average Joe has the technology to fight back. I support the rights of artists to profit from their works so they may continue to produce them full time. I support the securing of those rights via copyright. I support the general idea and original intent of intellectual property. What I do not support is the crminal enterprises which use copyright, patent, and intellectual property laws as a weapon to hold artists and consumers hostage. What I do not support is the abuse by these criminal enterprises of the laws and the judicial system to further their solitary purpose: bleeding the world dry of all possible disposable income through all means necessary.
My attitude has nothing to do with "getting away with it". There are a lot of things I could get away with, which I choose not to do. No; I choose to do what I do out of a conscious effort to level the playing field. I see no problem with robbing the crooks to fullfill the original intent of securing rights to intellectual property - the advancement of art and entertainment for the benefit of the general public.
Call it piracy, call it infringement, call it theft, call it whatever you like; I call it winning one for the home team, and we're by no means finished yet. The stricter the laws they lobby for, the harder they push to control the masses, the more people like me will backlash against them. If Hilary Rosen wants to claim she's starving because of myself and those like me, I have this to say to her: Let her eat cake.
Try the stock retail fan. They last me just fine, and my machine runs in 100+ degree weather a lot. If your CPUs continue to die, there is a different problem. While thermal protection was a missing feature of AMD some time ago, the problem has since been addressed on a number of fronts. Personally, I'd rather go with a fairly bug-free chip that's cheaper and more powerful than one with a corporate logo attached to its 50 gazillion stage pipeline.
On each test, there are usually a few questions thrown out, in which case everyone gets credit regardless of their answer. Questions tend to be thrown out when the question has either no correct answer, an ambiguously-worded question, or there's a typo that changes the meaning of the question. In addition, the results are "normalized". What this means is that in order to receive close-to-expected results, the test scores, as a whole, are shifted upwards a small amount. If I recall correctly, I believe you can get something like 2 questions wrong on the Math portion of the SAT I, and 3 questions wrong on the verbal section of the SAT I and still have a 1600 (perfect score).
Whether the normalizing process is a good thing or a bad thing has long been debated. Personally, I think it's a bad thing, as it doesn't accurately reflect the performance of the students; especially those at the top. Did Johnny get all the questions right? Or did Johnny get 5 questions wrong? There's no way to know, as his score is 1600 either way.
"standardized tests measure *something* well, but we're not sure what."
With regards to the SAT I, it's a test of logical ability. It's not a test of your vocabulary, as they assume you already know the meaning of all words presented. And it's not a test of math, because you could do almost all the math problems with an 8th grade education. There's a reason it's listed as the SAT I Logic Test; that's what it is. Does your logic ability correspond to IQ? There's probably some loose correlation, but the idea behind the SAT I is to give colleges an idea of your potential ability at the collegiate level. You need both the knowledge of the math and vocabulary presented in the SAT I, and the logical ability to distinguish the actual question to succeed at it.
I did ok with my 1330, although had I taken the test more than once, I'd have probably ended up with the magic number of 1400 or higher.
To those who don't know much about the SAT, they take the highest score for the math and the highest score for the verbal section from all the tests you take (there's no limit I'm aware of), and they're added together for your total score. So if I score a 600/700 on my math and verbal respectively on my first test, and then a 700/600 on my math and verbal respectively on the second test, my final score is 700/700, or 1400. The reason I mention 1400 as a "magic number" is because that's the score at which most of the SAT-based scholarships become available.
Put copyrights back to 14 years, as they were originally intended to be, and you'll solve nearly all problems arising from using old samples in new songs. But hey, that might affect the income of the few artists who actually do profit from the current business model, so I guess we can't do that.
Can't work with classic material because the "public domain" has become a fantasy? Welcome to my world.
Slashdot Mirror
AMD released it's AMD-1Billionth today, which the company states is actually rated as it's 17,275,000th processor.
Two Words: Check Card.
If they don't take plastic, I'll find someone who will.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
" Linux is teh 0wn!!!!!! Micro$oft is teh sux!!!!!!!!"
;)
Come on, Rob, log in when you're going to post comments so the new people know it's you!
"they did come up with the what would jesus drive aimed at SUVS..."
Well, let's see here. He's a carpenter (meaning he has lots of tools, equipment, and supplies) who does a lot of traveling to exotic areas. Sounds like he'd use something like a Ford Excursion.
Using a Virtual Machine as a honeypot? Why didn't I think of that? ;)
"I'm calling bullshit."
I'm sorry, Bullshit isn't here to answer your call.
Please leave a message after the tone.
*BEEP*
You know, what a great idea; just be nice. And you know what? For the past 10 years, I've tried this. I say, "no thank you", or "I'm not interested", and so on, and yet I continue to receive between 10 - 20 calls per day between home and work for tons of garbage I'd never consider buying, especially from a telemarketer. So, after roughly 10 years of being nice with a negative impact, I think it's about time to be nice, then levy an $11,000 fine. If that doesn't work, we'll make it $111,000 fine. If that doesn't work, then it's time to outright ban telemarketing.
These idiots hide behind everything from symantecs ("oh no, this isn't a telemarketing call, this is a survey") to the first amendment. Hello, folks - the First Amendment secures the right of the people to speak freely; NOT the right to be heard. Nor does it secure the right of anyone to invade the privacy of another in order to exercise that right. Some people pay monthly fees to screen out as many of the telemarketers as possible, while others look to the caller ID for guidance. My problem with that is that I don't know if the "unknown" or "out of area" caller is a family member trying to get through for help. Hence, I'm subjected to the incessant barrage of unwanted, intrusive phone calls that cost me both time and productivity.
With respect to them "just trying to make a buck", so are cocaine dealers and gun runners. And yet, cocaine dealers and drug runners at least stay out of my home. Can I not expect the same from these telemarketers? If I sign up for calls, ask for calls, or otherwise express an interest in receiving telemarketing calls, I wouldn't complain. But in 10 years, I haven't once asked a telemarketer to call me, I haven't bought a single product, and the situation continues to deteriorate. When I'm nice, they hang up, and they don't call back; until tomorrow. And when they hang up, someone else calls me, and then another, and then another, and then another. It's time to stop.
" ...But did you say a pair of Microsofties was advocating the use of Linux Beowulfs for research?
My calendar says June 2nd. What does yours say?"
Don't know, but I'm flipping through Revelations to see what happens next!
" Or you could install A pop-up stopper for free and she can continue to use IE."
Sure, she can install yet another program that has to work on top of her already buggy web browser, and then she can continue to use IE. And what does use of IE entail? ActiveX vulnerabilities, browser crashes, cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, stealth software installations (gator/Xupiter, etc), and other assorted issues.
"Does Firebird work well with Flash/Java and the other plug-ins we do desperately need?"
Yes, it does. It has for a long, long time.
Does IE have tabbed browsing, themes, radial context menus, mouse gestures, integrated pop-up and script/javascript supression, image blocking, integrated google search (from the address bar), integrated cookie management, forms manager, web development suite, bug tracking, regular releases, good security, and very strong stability?
Can you view its source code?
As I'm sitting here reading about Maxtor et al's drives failing, my 160GB Maxtor is resetting the heads once again. Having already replaced my 160GB Maxtor through an RMA, I'm quite annoyed to have the same problem only a few months later. So here we are, within a year of original purchase, and I've got two defective units of the same model. How nice.
Oh well, I'm now off to waste a bunch of time and money backing up the data from it to DVD+RWs.
I hate hard drives.
<insert Matrix "I know Kung Foo" joke here>
I wasn't uncomfortable with it - in fact, I liked it. For the first few minutes. By your account, doing an hour and a half of the rave scene would have been great. It wasn't the scene in and of itself that bothered me, merely the unendingness of it all. Another point in the movie which I thought was dragged out was the fight between Morpheus and the Agent on top of the truck. I mean, seriously, how many times can he be thrown to and/or hang off of the edge of the damn truck? By about the 17th time he was on the edge of the truck, I wanted to push him off of it! :P
:)
In terms of me "getting any", my lady would disagree with you.
"Not just men. I talk to plenty of women who enjoyed the nude Keanu Reeves."
Are you sure it wasn't his outstanding acting and witty dialog, with such memorable quips as, "whoa", and "huh?" that they were enjoying?
" If I own the car (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
Let's replace one word and try again: " If I own the XBox (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
And again: " If I own the DVD player (and hence the box) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
And again: " If I own the matress (and hence the attached tags) shouldn't I be allowed to hack it, or remove it from my system if I want to?"
I don't think it was completely unnecessary, but I do think it was pretty dragged out. It would have been just as informative and not nearly as annoying had it been half as long. There's only but so much stomping and jumping around necessary to send the point across, and the "skin" portions were drawn out in such a way to tease the male audience. I don't think it should have been removed, simply edited a bit better.
You know, I got about halfway through your post before discerning whether you were talking about consumers infringing copyrights or multi-national conglomerates price-gouging and price fixing.
I pay for t-shirts, cds, tickets, etc to support local, unsigned bands. But when it comes to the major media companies, I'm going to play their game until they either play fairly or die. I prefer the latter.
They want to hike up the price for CDs to rates so high even the FTC can't stand it? No problem; I'll just make sure that the CD gets spread around a bit to compensate. They want to screw over artists who are too small to fight back? No problem, I'll simply refuse to montarily support the lying bastards.
You see, you don't get that this isn't about theft, or copyright infringement, or intellectual property. This is a cat and mouse game between the average Joe and massive multi-nationals. They started this little game, and now the average Joe has the technology to fight back. I support the rights of artists to profit from their works so they may continue to produce them full time. I support the securing of those rights via copyright. I support the general idea and original intent of intellectual property. What I do not support is the crminal enterprises which use copyright, patent, and intellectual property laws as a weapon to hold artists and consumers hostage. What I do not support is the abuse by these criminal enterprises of the laws and the judicial system to further their solitary purpose: bleeding the world dry of all possible disposable income through all means necessary.
My attitude has nothing to do with "getting away with it". There are a lot of things I could get away with, which I choose not to do. No; I choose to do what I do out of a conscious effort to level the playing field. I see no problem with robbing the crooks to fullfill the original intent of securing rights to intellectual property - the advancement of art and entertainment for the benefit of the general public.
Call it piracy, call it infringement, call it theft, call it whatever you like; I call it winning one for the home team, and we're by no means finished yet. The stricter the laws they lobby for, the harder they push to control the masses, the more people like me will backlash against them. If Hilary Rosen wants to claim she's starving because of myself and those like me, I have this to say to her: Let her eat cake.
" So, if you want to have Microsoft software for free, you know what to do!"
Download it from Kazaa?
Oh, wait, I forgot to RTFA.
Slashdot has always been at war with Eurasia.
"I'm still not sure what her face looks like."
:p
Whoa, she has a face? Cool.
Try the stock retail fan. They last me just fine, and my machine runs in 100+ degree weather a lot. If your CPUs continue to die, there is a different problem. While thermal protection was a missing feature of AMD some time ago, the problem has since been addressed on a number of fronts. Personally, I'd rather go with a fairly bug-free chip that's cheaper and more powerful than one with a corporate logo attached to its 50 gazillion stage pipeline.
Damnit, Bill, we asked you to stop posting here! :P
On each test, there are usually a few questions thrown out, in which case everyone gets credit regardless of their answer. Questions tend to be thrown out when the question has either no correct answer, an ambiguously-worded question, or there's a typo that changes the meaning of the question. In addition, the results are "normalized". What this means is that in order to receive close-to-expected results, the test scores, as a whole, are shifted upwards a small amount. If I recall correctly, I believe you can get something like 2 questions wrong on the Math portion of the SAT I, and 3 questions wrong on the verbal section of the SAT I and still have a 1600 (perfect score).
Whether the normalizing process is a good thing or a bad thing has long been debated. Personally, I think it's a bad thing, as it doesn't accurately reflect the performance of the students; especially those at the top. Did Johnny get all the questions right? Or did Johnny get 5 questions wrong? There's no way to know, as his score is 1600 either way.
"standardized tests measure *something* well, but we're not sure what."
With regards to the SAT I, it's a test of logical ability. It's not a test of your vocabulary, as they assume you already know the meaning of all words presented. And it's not a test of math, because you could do almost all the math problems with an 8th grade education. There's a reason it's listed as the SAT I Logic Test; that's what it is. Does your logic ability correspond to IQ? There's probably some loose correlation, but the idea behind the SAT I is to give colleges an idea of your potential ability at the collegiate level. You need both the knowledge of the math and vocabulary presented in the SAT I, and the logical ability to distinguish the actual question to succeed at it.
If you don't like the test, design a better one.
I did ok with my 1330, although had I taken the test more than once, I'd have probably ended up with the magic number of 1400 or higher.
To those who don't know much about the SAT, they take the highest score for the math and the highest score for the verbal section from all the tests you take (there's no limit I'm aware of), and they're added together for your total score. So if I score a 600/700 on my math and verbal respectively on my first test, and then a 700/600 on my math and verbal respectively on the second test, my final score is 700/700, or 1400. The reason I mention 1400 as a "magic number" is because that's the score at which most of the SAT-based scholarships become available.
Put copyrights back to 14 years, as they were originally intended to be, and you'll solve nearly all problems arising from using old samples in new songs. But hey, that might affect the income of the few artists who actually do profit from the current business model, so I guess we can't do that.
Can't work with classic material because the "public domain" has become a fantasy? Welcome to my world.