1. You sign on the line and take the money, but you feel you've agreed to something that is wrong.
2. You refuse to sign and get nothing.
Which one will let you sleep better? Do that.
Seriously, just go with your gut instinct. Me, I'd refuse to sign, because it's the principle of it. But I don't have a family to support. Five years from now, it's quite possible that I'd sign and take the cash.
Reading the comments posted so far, I notice that the usual "lawyers are evil" cries have been dropped in favour of advising you to sue. Funny eh? I guess lawyers are only bad when they're taking your mp3s away...
Re:Hollywood rescue: Yes.
on
Skydriving
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· Score: 2
Okay so he's holding on to it but that's gotta get some respect.
Has the seen-it-in-the-movies jump ever been done, where someone jumps without a parachute and someone else catches up with them? I wonder which is worse, being the guy without the chute or the guy who has to catch him?
Take a look at this picture. Is it just me or is the thought of doing that even more scary than regular skydiving? Irrational, I know, but there's just something about the idea of falling while inside a car, which is normally a safe environment, that adds an extra psychological edge to it all.
This has been done before. In 1998, preview copies of Radiohead's album "OK Computer" were sent out in sealed cassette players. And in 2000, preview copies of "Kid A" were sent out in an encrypted format on Sony VAIO digital players.
True but you're talking about counterfeit goods, ie: CDs and videos/DVDs, etc, produced illegally, made to look semi-authentic and sold on the black market.
He was talking about music swappers (p2p users) and open source developers, and I don't believe anyone in government or in any position of authority has ever accused those people of being terrorists.
He was trying to strengthen his point by taking it to an extreme that went beyond the truth. Kinda like what he was accusing the government of doing.
Re:No big surprise there.
on
Upcoming Cyberwars
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Even in the US anybody who disagrees with the govt gets tagged with the terrorist label. The environmentalists, the "anti globalists", hackers, music swappers, open source developers etc.
Can you provide even a single example (referenced, hyperlinked or even just from memory) of anyone in the US government referring to music swappers or open source developers as "terrorists"?
Maybe I'm just not seeing the artistic value...
on
Crushing Experience
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· Score: 2
... and don't get me wrong, I do have a fair appreciation of what's art and what isn't, but I can't help thinking that the doomed computer could be put to better use by, say, giving it to a school in a deprived area, or even to a family that can't afford to buy one. A few years of learning seems like a better investment than a few seconds of novelty entertainment for people who, I bet, have all got computers.
Just as amusing is the spam that offers to sell me a million "carefully selected e-mail addresses that are receptive to direct marketing". If my address is on that list then the selection process obviously isn't all that careful.
I remember talking about invisibility with friends after seeing the original Predator film.
The concept of light readers on one side of an object and light emitters on the other was an idea that was quickly proposed (by me) and then rejected (by me and others) because (a) it's too much of a "brute force" technique and not particularly scientific, (b) the required resolution to be 100% effective would be so high as to make it practically impossible, (c) it wouldn't stand up to any reasonable human scrutiny, never mind computer analysis, and (d) it would only work with fixed-shape objects, not people or animals, because any change in shape of the enshrouded object would produce distortion in the 'invisibility'. (Presumably this was the logic behind the shimmering effect of the alien in Predator?)
So I hope this patent application isn't successful unless it is *solely* for the implementation, not the idea. If they're trying to patent the idea then I want to claim prior art by at least ten years, even if we didn't get past the discussion stage.
And if I ever try to patent the idea then I expect Jim and John Thomas to take their turn at claiming prior art, and they should win. And I'm sure there were others before them.
From the folks who brought you Dolly the cloned sheep
Dolly is often referenced as a scientific success but don't forget that the success was only partial. She is aging abnormally. The process was imperfect, but pro-cloners seem keen to overlook this...?
genetically modified cloned pigs which they claim may eventually be able to
donate their organs to humans for transplant usage.
The pigs won't be donating anything. They'll be born, we'll kill them with, I'd guess, little consultation or due process, and then we'll take their organs. It's not going to be a voluntary act of piggy good nature.
I mean my opinion of OSX is about as low as it could possibly be, but I won't say outright "it sucks" or "it's stupid" because I know there are people who swear by it, just as I swear by Windows. Some people work well with one set of tools, other people with another set, and of course a big part of it is which OS you work with first.
My problem with OSX, though, is that I believe a lot of it is due to Apple's arrogance. Remember they based an entire advertising campaign around the slogan "think different"? Well I don't necessarily want different, but I do want good, and for me that means ease of use. OSX is designed to (a) look pretty and (b) be easy to pick up for first-time users and people who were raised on MacOS. That's not how an OS should be, in my opinion.
Got it! I knew there was one word that could sum up what I felt about OSX -- inflexible. What could be worse about an OS than forcing you to work one way and forbidding all others? (I'd say that's a fair comment about OSX, but obviously my experience is limited.)
Incidentally I've never had any such complaints about the Linux GUIs I've tried. I'll show my Linux ignorance by admitting that I can't remember what most of them were, but I did work with KDE for a few months and I had no problems at all with it. Fitted me like a glove straight away and allowed me to get on with what I wanted to do. (And I'm by no means an expert, or even very proficient in Linux, so that's saying something.)
You're mad because the Mac isn't just like Windows? What did you expect?
Not because it isn't like Windows, but because it's nonsensical.
Why have the enter key rename a folder instead of open it? To open a folder you have to press Apple+O. It's much more awkward to press Apple+O than it is to press enter, but I'd want to open a folder much more often than I'd want to rename it.
The easiest keypresses should be assigned to the most common tasks. It just makes sense.
I'll give you another example:
The salesman at the store put a DVD in the drive and it played. I started fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing, etc, and then quit the program. Five minutes later I and two salesman -- one of who owned an iMac -- still couldn't figure out how to get the film to play again. All we could do eventually was eject the disc and put it in again. Now I'm sure you'll be able to tell me it's easy and I'm sure it is once you know, but after doing pretty much everything that can be done on a computer for 3/4 of my life I don't expect playing a DVD to be a challenge. Why not just have a "play" menu option as you do on Windows? I'm sure whatever trick you have to do isn't as simple or as obvious as that.
Oh and I'll add my voice to the "single mouse button was a stupid idea" crowd...;-)
The simple fact, as I see it, is that OSX is good for people who want to work slowly and with a minimal interface. Fine. Windows is good for that too. But if you want to work fast, do everything using the mouse or everything using the keyboard, not have to look at the screen while you're working, etc, Windows must surely beat OSX hands down?
Last month I bought a new computer. I'd gone through a phase of *hating* PCs so I decided to get an iMac. I had 100% made up my mind.
So I trecked the 40 miles to the nearest store that had a display model, and spent half an hour or so playing with it. Went home, convinced. Yep, that's the system for me.
Went back a week later to buy it. Decided to have another look and spent about 3 hours just fiddling with stuff, finding out how to do things, and seeing how quickly I could do the tasks that I have to do hundreds of times every day.
I went home without an iMac. Three days later I bought a new PC, a Dell, and I love it. The PC rocks. WinXP rocks. I'm happy.
I've never used such an awkward OS as OSX. It seemed to me that for every little thing about the interface, someone had sat down and thought "how can we do this to make it as illogical as possible?" and then they'd done it. I don't think I need to go further than this one example: Select a folder in the finder and press enter. Should open the folder, right? Bzz! Renames it!?!
Apple had a guaranteed sale. But they want people to "think different" so they created an operating system that I, personally, would find impossible to use on a daily basis. All that praise? All the awards? Bleugh. I found OSX to be unintuitive, silly and downright annoying.
I'm even getting a bit angry thinking about it as I'm writing this!:-)
Just my 2 cents. I hope this doesn't come across as a rant/flamebait/troll.
My preference as a UK citizen would be (a) keep the BBC funded by a license fee because then there's less commercial pressure and better output, and (b) have all other channels charge a subscription fee. Obviously you could choose whether or not you wanted a certain channel.
The trouble is it wouldn't help. Why? Well the evidence speaks for itself: We already have subscription-only channels available by satellite and they show MORE adverts than the normal free-to-air channels. Even channels such as UK Gold and UK Play, which are part-owner by the BBC, routinely show 8-10 minutes of adverts in a 30 minute slot.
(Apart from making you question what the subscription fee is for, this ruins the flow of a show and creates a feeling that these channels are just adverts with programmes thrown in occasionally, instead of the other way around.)
In an ideal world TV would be free. In a plausible world we'd pay a reasonable subscription fee and not have to put up with adverts. Realistically, though, whatever happens, we're going to have more and more adverts thrown at us, whether we pay or not.
But I still don't find ads half as annoying as on-screen logos...
You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the.NET Framework component of the OS Components to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval.
This is on a security update marked as "critical". So my choice is to either leave my computer insecure or agree to be gagged? They even put the EULA in a non-standard text box so you can't copy+paste it.
Not that I want to defend potentially misleading advertising, which there does appear to have been here, but the story is a bit unfair. It starts:
Palm recently announced that they made a mistake
Then in the next sentence:
Rather then admit the mistake, Palm is using every ounce of their spinning power
So they admit it but they don't admit it? Hmm. Get them for the dodgy advertising, sure, but I'm not sure how you can accuse a company of not admitting a mistake when your proof of that mistake is the company's admission of it.
The fact that Voyager is now 12 light *hours* away really puts things into perspective for me. I'm not much of a space nut but I know that the distance from earth to the nearest stars (apart from our sun) is measured in light *years* so it's humbling to realise that even our furthest reach is trivial in the grand scheme of things. We haven't even stepped out of the house yet, nevermind explored the neighbourhood. (That sounds a bit like a put-down but it isn't. I think Voyager is an awesome achievement.)
I'm a programmer with 3 years of experience in C, C++, and Java.
To misquote Bruce Willis from Armageddon: "Three whole years?":-)
Sorry but it just doesn't seem like enough experience to be thinking of starting your own consultancy firm. If you were talking about any traditional skill set (carpentry, electrics, plumbing, etc) then chances are you'd still be someone's apprentice, never mind qualified or ready to branch out on your own.
Already submitted this but Time Warner is also being sued for copyright infringement by the author of a 1997 screenplay called The Funk Parlour, and also by the company which has filmed it. Both cases allege that Time Warner's HBO series Six Feet Under was heavily inspired by the original screenplay. The BBC story lists the alleged similarities. So is this as bad as running a Harry Potter site? Or skipping ads?
Slashdot Mirror
Simplistic but imagine the two scenarios:
1. You sign on the line and take the money, but you feel you've agreed to something that is wrong.
2. You refuse to sign and get nothing.
Which one will let you sleep better? Do that.
Seriously, just go with your gut instinct. Me, I'd refuse to sign, because it's the principle of it. But I don't have a family to support. Five years from now, it's quite possible that I'd sign and take the cash.
Reading the comments posted so far, I notice that the usual "lawyers are evil" cries have been dropped in favour of advising you to sue. Funny eh? I guess lawyers are only bad when they're taking your mp3s away...
Thanks, good info. Someone mod this up please?
Oh my God...
Okay so he's holding on to it but that's gotta get some respect.
Has the seen-it-in-the-movies jump ever been done, where someone jumps without a parachute and someone else catches up with them? I wonder which is worse, being the guy without the chute or the guy who has to catch him?
Take a look at this picture. Is it just me or is the thought of doing that even more scary than regular skydiving? Irrational, I know, but there's just something about the idea of falling while inside a car, which is normally a safe environment, that adds an extra psychological edge to it all.
This has been done before. In 1998, preview copies of Radiohead's album "OK Computer" were sent out in sealed cassette players. And in 2000, preview copies of "Kid A" were sent out in an encrypted format on Sony VAIO digital players.
More info: http://www.followmearound.com/press/083.html
True but you're talking about counterfeit goods, ie: CDs and videos/DVDs, etc, produced illegally, made to look semi-authentic and sold on the black market.
He was talking about music swappers (p2p users) and open source developers, and I don't believe anyone in government or in any position of authority has ever accused those people of being terrorists.
He was trying to strengthen his point by taking it to an extreme that went beyond the truth. Kinda like what he was accusing the government of doing.
... and don't get me wrong, I do have a fair appreciation of what's art and what isn't, but I can't help thinking that the doomed computer could be put to better use by, say, giving it to a school in a deprived area, or even to a family that can't afford to buy one. A few years of learning seems like a better investment than a few seconds of novelty entertainment for people who, I bet, have all got computers.
Just as amusing is the spam that offers to sell me a million "carefully selected e-mail addresses that are receptive to direct marketing". If my address is on that list then the selection process obviously isn't all that careful.
I remember talking about invisibility with friends after seeing the original Predator film.
The concept of light readers on one side of an object and light emitters on the other was an idea that was quickly proposed (by me) and then rejected (by me and others) because (a) it's too much of a "brute force" technique and not particularly scientific, (b) the required resolution to be 100% effective would be so high as to make it practically impossible, (c) it wouldn't stand up to any reasonable human scrutiny, never mind computer analysis, and (d) it would only work with fixed-shape objects, not people or animals, because any change in shape of the enshrouded object would produce distortion in the 'invisibility'. (Presumably this was the logic behind the shimmering effect of the alien in Predator?)
So I hope this patent application isn't successful unless it is *solely* for the implementation, not the idea. If they're trying to patent the idea then I want to claim prior art by at least ten years, even if we didn't get past the discussion stage.
And if I ever try to patent the idea then I expect Jim and John Thomas to take their turn at claiming prior art, and they should win. And I'm sure there were others before them.
I don't think I've ever seen such a good point so efficiently countered!
Works word processor does have a spell checker, and a grammar checker and thesaurus too.
Just goes to show, horses for courses :-)
I mean my opinion of OSX is about as low as it could possibly be, but I won't say outright "it sucks" or "it's stupid" because I know there are people who swear by it, just as I swear by Windows. Some people work well with one set of tools, other people with another set, and of course a big part of it is which OS you work with first.
My problem with OSX, though, is that I believe a lot of it is due to Apple's arrogance. Remember they based an entire advertising campaign around the slogan "think different"? Well I don't necessarily want different, but I do want good, and for me that means ease of use. OSX is designed to (a) look pretty and (b) be easy to pick up for first-time users and people who were raised on MacOS. That's not how an OS should be, in my opinion.
Got it! I knew there was one word that could sum up what I felt about OSX -- inflexible. What could be worse about an OS than forcing you to work one way and forbidding all others? (I'd say that's a fair comment about OSX, but obviously my experience is limited.)
Incidentally I've never had any such complaints about the Linux GUIs I've tried. I'll show my Linux ignorance by admitting that I can't remember what most of them were, but I did work with KDE for a few months and I had no problems at all with it. Fitted me like a glove straight away and allowed me to get on with what I wanted to do. (And I'm by no means an expert, or even very proficient in Linux, so that's saying something.)
Why have the enter key rename a folder instead of open it? To open a folder you have to press Apple+O. It's much more awkward to press Apple+O than it is to press enter, but I'd want to open a folder much more often than I'd want to rename it.
The easiest keypresses should be assigned to the most common tasks. It just makes sense.
I'll give you another example:
The salesman at the store put a DVD in the drive and it played. I started fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing, etc, and then quit the program. Five minutes later I and two salesman -- one of who owned an iMac -- still couldn't figure out how to get the film to play again. All we could do eventually was eject the disc and put it in again. Now I'm sure you'll be able to tell me it's easy and I'm sure it is once you know, but after doing pretty much everything that can be done on a computer for 3/4 of my life I don't expect playing a DVD to be a challenge. Why not just have a "play" menu option as you do on Windows? I'm sure whatever trick you have to do isn't as simple or as obvious as that.
Oh and I'll add my voice to the "single mouse button was a stupid idea" crowd...
The simple fact, as I see it, is that OSX is good for people who want to work slowly and with a minimal interface. Fine. Windows is good for that too. But if you want to work fast, do everything using the mouse or everything using the keyboard, not have to look at the screen while you're working, etc, Windows must surely beat OSX hands down?
How sweet, she's wearing a calculator watch!
Last month I bought a new computer. I'd gone through a phase of *hating* PCs so I decided to get an iMac. I had 100% made up my mind.
:-)
So I trecked the 40 miles to the nearest store that had a display model, and spent half an hour or so playing with it. Went home, convinced. Yep, that's the system for me.
Went back a week later to buy it. Decided to have another look and spent about 3 hours just fiddling with stuff, finding out how to do things, and seeing how quickly I could do the tasks that I have to do hundreds of times every day.
I went home without an iMac. Three days later I bought a new PC, a Dell, and I love it. The PC rocks. WinXP rocks. I'm happy.
I've never used such an awkward OS as OSX. It seemed to me that for every little thing about the interface, someone had sat down and thought "how can we do this to make it as illogical as possible?" and then they'd done it. I don't think I need to go further than this one example: Select a folder in the finder and press enter. Should open the folder, right? Bzz! Renames it!?!
Apple had a guaranteed sale. But they want people to "think different" so they created an operating system that I, personally, would find impossible to use on a daily basis. All that praise? All the awards? Bleugh. I found OSX to be unintuitive, silly and downright annoying.
I'm even getting a bit angry thinking about it as I'm writing this!
Just my 2 cents. I hope this doesn't come across as a rant/flamebait/troll.
My preference as a UK citizen would be (a) keep the BBC funded by a license fee because then there's less commercial pressure and better output, and (b) have all other channels charge a subscription fee. Obviously you could choose whether or not you wanted a certain channel.
The trouble is it wouldn't help. Why? Well the evidence speaks for itself: We already have subscription-only channels available by satellite and they show MORE adverts than the normal free-to-air channels. Even channels such as UK Gold and UK Play, which are part-owner by the BBC, routinely show 8-10 minutes of adverts in a 30 minute slot.
(Apart from making you question what the subscription fee is for, this ruins the flow of a show and creates a feeling that these channels are just adverts with programmes thrown in occasionally, instead of the other way around.)
In an ideal world TV would be free. In a plausible world we'd pay a reasonable subscription fee and not have to put up with adverts. Realistically, though, whatever happens, we're going to have more and more adverts thrown at us, whether we pay or not.
But I still don't find ads half as annoying as on-screen logos...
The UK Campaign for LOGO FREE TV
Sklyarov
l before y
The fact that Voyager is now 12 light *hours* away really puts things into perspective for me. I'm not much of a space nut but I know that the distance from earth to the nearest stars (apart from our sun) is measured in light *years* so it's humbling to realise that even our furthest reach is trivial in the grand scheme of things. We haven't even stepped out of the house yet, nevermind explored the neighbourhood. (That sounds a bit like a put-down but it isn't. I think Voyager is an awesome achievement.)
Sorry but it just doesn't seem like enough experience to be thinking of starting your own consultancy firm. If you were talking about any traditional skill set (carpentry, electrics, plumbing, etc) then chances are you'd still be someone's apprentice, never mind qualified or ready to branch out on your own.
Good luck 'n' all, but...
Already submitted this but Time Warner is also being sued for copyright infringement by the author of a 1997 screenplay called The Funk Parlour, and also by the company which has filmed it. Both cases allege that Time Warner's HBO series Six Feet Under was heavily inspired by the original screenplay. The BBC story lists the alleged similarities. So is this as bad as running a Harry Potter site? Or skipping ads?